‘Really?’

  ‘Tempted?’

  ‘Mmmm,’ Joanne smiled, ‘maybe. Do you have any other clothes?’

  ‘No. Not really. Just a bit of lingerie, some hats, some slippers.’

  ‘Oh,’ she looked mildly disappointed, ‘never mind.’

  ‘You’re really into clothes, aren’t you?’

  Joanne smiled again. ‘Clothes, to me, are like paint to an artist or words to a writer.’

  ‘I’ve noticed,’ said Leah, choosing her words carefully, ‘that you’re quite experimental with clothes.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Joanne. ‘I am.’ She’d finished her wine. Leah poured her another glass. She could see Joanne was getting fidgety and that, if she didn’t get what she’d come here for soon, there was a danger she would leave.

  ‘Let me just see how they’re getting on back there.’

  Clarice and Maya from Santa Monica were set up and waiting, brushes at the ready. The doorbell rang. Leah let in a gaggle of Muswell Hill yummy mummies in designer jeans and Joseph shearling coats. Leah asked one of her assistants to take over on the door and went to find Joanne. She was admiring a pair of ivory silk slippers with pink embroidered butterflies on them. ‘Cute,’ she said, putting them down.

  ‘Gorgeous, aren’t they? Anyway – they’re ready at the back. Do you want to come through?’

  Joanne seemed rapturously interested in every last detail of the blçnk organic cosmetic range. She hung on Maya’s every word, absorbing every reference to beeswax and nettle powder and ground blueberry essence, as if it were the truth of life itself. Leah watched as Clarice stripped Joanne’s face of make-up, with soft pads of cotton wool and a liquid cleanser infused with green tea. She then gave Joanne’s face a gentle massage with something called ‘angel oil’. Devoid of make-up, Joanne looked young but tired.

  ‘So,’ said Clarice, ‘what do you do, Joanne?’

  ‘I’m an actress,’ she said.

  ‘Oh, wow! Really? Like a real proper actress?’

  ‘Yes, well, I trained at the Central School of Drama.’

  ‘Wow. So, have you been in anything I’d have heard of, like a movie?’

  ‘No. I shouldn’t think so. I mostly do stage work. Although I haven’t worked in a while now.’

  ‘Oh, I see. Having kids?’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘Did you stop working to have kids?’

  ‘Why do you ask that?’

  ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘I don’t know. I guess I just talk to so many women about your age and they all tell me what they used to do. I used to be a model, I used to be a marketing director. You know, I just assumed.’

  ‘Well,’ said Joanne, ‘that’s not the case.’

  ‘So – just taking a break, huh?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Joanne. ‘Just taking a break.’

  ‘Well, that’s great. And I have to say, you have amazing skin, Joanne. It must be doing you good.’

  Leah waited at the front of the shop for Joanne to emerge from her makeover. The Pink Hummingbird was buzzing with women. Everyone seemed to know everyone else and there was lots of talk of Gymboree and swimming lessons and skiing in Morzine. It was hard for Leah to believe that she was the same age as these women, when their lives were so entirely different to hers. It took a lot of hard work to look as good as these women did at their age, especially after a couple of kids. It wasn’t a happy accident. It was a full-time job.

  Joanne walked past. ‘Let’s see, then,’ said Leah.

  Joanne spun round, looking slightly alarmed.

  ‘Wow,’ said Leah. ‘You look really beautiful.’

  And she did. Without her own heavy-handed approach to make-up, she looked soft and pretty and warm. ‘Are you happy with it?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Joanne. ‘I am. Well, thank you for inviting me. I’ve had a very nice night.’

  ‘Oh, you’re not going already, are you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But what about those silk slippers? Did you want to get a pair of those?’

  ‘Oh, no. I don’t think so. I may come back another day.’

  ‘But no!’ Leah took a breath to calm her voice down. ‘No. Buy them now! I can give you them at a discount. Twenty per cent off?’

  Joanne wiggled her nose and turned her head to look at the slippers. ‘Hmmm. How much are they?’

  ‘Twenty. Sixteen pounds with the discount.’

  ‘What about that jersey camisole?’

  ‘Yup. That’s thirty-nine ninety-nine. I can let you have it for thirty-two?’

  ‘OK,’ she said, swinging her handbag round onto the cash desk. ‘Do you take Switch?’

  Leah sent an assistant to collect the slippers and the camisole, and hoped that she would be as slow as she usually was. ‘So,’ she said, to the side of Joanne’s head, ‘are you going home now? Back to Toby’s?’

  She turned to face her. ‘Yes.’

  ‘He’s lovely, isn’t he, Toby?’

  She threw Leah a strange look. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘And that house is amazing.’

  ‘Yes. Rather poorly maintained, though.’ She turned impatiently to see what the shop assistant was doing. She returned with the slippers in a box and opened it up for Joanne’s approval.

  ‘They look a bit big,’ said Joanne. ‘What size are they?’

  ‘Large,’ said the assistant. ‘What size are you?’

  ‘I’m a size five.’

  Leah sent the assistant away to get the slippers in her right size and tried to think of a way of turning this conversation to her advantage.

  ‘So, what’s it like living with all those people?’ she began.

  ‘Which people?’

  ‘The people? In Toby’s house?’

  She shrugged. ‘It’s fine.’

  ‘Really? It’s just, I’ve just split up with my boyfriend and now I’ve got to move out of our flat and I’ve been looking at all these flat shares and I just feel so old, so set in my ways. The thought of having to share with people I don’t know is just awful. How do you do it?’

  ‘I ignore everyone. I pretend they’re not there.’

  Leah looked at her in amazement, then she laughed. And then, amazingly, so did Joanne. ‘I know,’ she said, ‘it’s not very nice. But if I actually acknowledged their existence I’d go insane.’

  ‘You know what,’ said Leah, ‘I think you’ve got the right idea.’

  ‘Idefinitely have the right idea.’

  ‘So, will you be moving out soon?’

  The assistant arrived with the right slippers and went off to find the camisole top.

  ‘No. Sadly not.’

  ‘No lovely man in the background who you’re secretly dying to move in with?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Shame.’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘Oh, I see. Not into men at the moment?’

  ‘I’m not really into anyone at the moment.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Leah. ‘Fair enough.’ Joanne was softening as they talked and she knew that given just a few more minutes she might actually start to get somewhere. ‘I’m starting to feel a bit the same myself,’ she said, taking the top from the assistant. ‘I thought my future was in the bag, but suddenly I’m thirty-five and I’ve got to start again. It does make you feel a bit… bitter.’

  ‘Bitter?’ said Joanne. ‘I’m not bitter.’

  ‘No, no, no,’ said Leah. ‘Not bitter, but just a bit – lost. You know?’

  Joanne pursed her lips. ‘There are worse things,’ she said, ‘than splitting up with someone.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Leah, ‘right, yes. I suppose there are.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’m healthy. I’m alive.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Leah took Joanne’s card and swiped it through the terminal. ‘Did you split up with someone? Is that how you ended up in Toby’s house?’

  ‘No.’ She tapped her pin number into the terminal. ‘Not really.’

  ‘Not really?’

  ‘Life is episodic. A certain passage of my life had come to a close. It was time to move on.’

  ‘That’s one way of looking at it, I suppose.’

  ‘It’s the only way of looking at it.’ She handed the terminal back to Leah and they both stared at it in silence for a moment.

  ‘But even if you believe that life is episodic, surely there’s a continuity between chapters?’

  ‘Not necessarily. I’m the heroine of my story. I can go where I like and never meet the same person twice.’

  ‘Like a road movie.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose – like a road movie.’

  Leah placed Joanne’s slippers and camisole in a carrier bag and handed it to her across the cash desk. ‘Ah,’ she said, ‘but the whole deal with a road movie is that the protagonist is either running away from something or in search of something.’

  ‘And who says I’m not?’ Joanne slung her handbag over her shoulder and tightened the belt of her leather coat.

  ‘Running away? Or looking for something?’

  ‘Both.’

  They were just reaching the kernel of the conversation and Leah had run out of excuses to keep her in the shop. Her next question had to be a bullseye.

  ‘And how far along the road are you?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Between what you’re escaping and what you’re seeking?’

  Joanne smiled. ‘About halfway,’ she said.

  ‘Ah,’ said Leah. ‘The hardest place to be.’

  ‘Indeed,’ said Joanne. And then she turned and left, cutting a swathe through the chattering womenfolk of Muswell Hill like a small but very sharp knife.

  32

  Toby and Con were in the kitchen together. Toby was stuffing hunks of Greek cheese into raw chicken breasts and Con was wrapping them up in filmy slivers of Parma ham. In the oven was a tray of miniature new potatoes and garlic cloves, slavered in olive oil and strewn with pine nuts and rosemary needles. Some tenderstem broccoli sat in a steamer basket on the work surface and in the fridge there was a pot of home-made tuna paâté which they would have with some pumpkin and sunflower seed bread rolls that Toby had baked specially this afternoon.

  Con couldn’t believe how much Toby knew about food. How did he know, for example, that you could put garlic in the oven like that, whole? And that you could cut open a raw chicken breast, stuff it with whatever you fancied, then seal it shut with this ham that was like a sort of meaty cling film? He was making out that everything was really simple and really unexceptional, but to Con what he and Toby were creating in the kitchen tonight felt like magic.

  ‘Thanks,’ he said to Toby. ‘Thanks for all of this.’ And then, quite unexpectedly, he found himself giving Toby a hug. Not a bear hug, but a sort of clasp. He was surprised by how solid Toby felt underneath his clothes for someone who looked like they could be blown over by a summer breeze.

  ‘You’re welcome. It’s nice to have an excuse, you know, to do some proper cooking. It never seems worth it just for me. Anyway – I hope you both have a great night. And you shouldn’t be disturbed. I happen to know that Joanne’s out tonight and I don’t suppose Ruby will be around, not on a Friday.’

  Toby went upstairs and Con washed his hands thoroughly with antibacterial handwash. He was being ultra vigilant about hygiene. The thought of accidentally poisoning Daisy and her ending up in hospital because of him made him feel ill.

  He checked the time. Seven-twenty-five. He heard the front door go and jumped. And then he held his breath, hoping that whoever it was would just go about their business and not wonder why there was music coming from the dining room and the smell of baked rosemary coming from the kitchen.

  Footsteps creaked across the hallway floor towards the kitchen, then they stopped. Slowly the door opened and there was Ruby. Con exhaled.

  ‘What the…?’ Ruby looked round the dimly lit room in wonderment. ‘What the fuck is going on here?’

  Con sighed. ‘Just dinner,’ he said.

  ‘Who for?’

  ‘For me,’ he said, ‘and a friend.’

  ‘A friend, eh?’ She smirked and pulled out a dining chair.

  Con sighed. ‘Yes. A friend from work.’

  She sat down and pulled a packet of cigarettes from her handbag.

  ‘No!’ he said. ‘Don’t.’

  ‘Don’t what?’

  ‘Don’t smoke in here. In fact, don’t smoke anywhere tonight.’

  ‘Er… excuse me?’

  ‘My friend. She’s not very well. She’s got a lung thing, condition. So please don’t smoke.’

  ‘Oh, my God, have I walked into some weird freaking parallel universe? Spooky old music, candlelight, ill girlfriends.’

  ‘Just don’t smoke, that’s all. Please.’

  Ruby nodded, tersely, once, and put the cigarettes back in her bag. ‘Just for you,’ she said, ‘just this once. So – who’s the lucky girl?’

  ‘She’s no one,’ said Con. ‘Just a girl.’ He watched the clock on the TV click from 7:29 to 7:30. ‘Look, Ruby,’ he said, ‘I’m not being funny or anything, but she’s going to be here in a minute and I kind of made out we’d have the house to ourselves tonight. So…’

  ‘You want me to fuck off?’

  ‘Yeah, well. Yeah.’

  She sighed and stood up. ‘Fair enough,’ she said, ‘fair enough. But don’t expect me to lock myself away in my room all night, OK?’

  She picked up her bag and turned to leave the room. ‘What’s she got then, this girl? Asthma or something?’

  ‘Yes,’ nodded Con, ‘she’s got asthma.’ And then the doorbell rang.

  33

  Ruby could hear them chatting through the gaps between her floorboards. She couldn’t distinguish any words, just a symphonic series of bass rumbles, mid-tone gurgles and the occasional cymbal crash of laughter. As far as she could ascertain there hadn’t been an awkward silence yet, and Con’s ‘friend’ had been here for nearly two hours.

  She headed downstairs, her third spurious visit to the kitchen of the evening. She’d caught only a fleeting glimpse of the girl as Con had ushered her through the front door and straight into the dining room. She was very small, thinner than Ruby, with that sort of very fine, very blonde hair that Ruby thought of as ‘chalet girl’ hair. She got a whiff of flowery perfume and a flash of silver ballet pump and crocheted shawl.

  She poured herself a glass of water in the kitchen and picked at some leftover bread and paâté. Con and the girl were talking about someone called Nigel and laughing a lot. Ruby wanted to light up a cigarette and blow smoke through the keyhole, straight at the back of the girl’s head. She wanted to go and sit down at the table with them and say, ‘So, little girl, tell me about your incredibly short life. Tell me about the five minutes that have elapsed since you ceased being a child. Tell me all about how little you have achieved and experienced. And then she would tell her all about her own life, about the men and the pain and the nights that should never have happened. She’d show her her tattoos and her scars and describe in great detail the night she fucked Con. Because even though Ruby was eleven years older than Con she had more in common with him than any fresh-faced little overgrown schoolgirl of his own age. He’d lived, at least a little. He knew what it was like to have nothing and no one, to function on your own.

  The sound of a chair being scraped across the wooden floor next door disturbed her train of thought.

  ‘No, leave those,’ she heard Con saying.

  ‘No, no, no,’ said the girl. ‘Let me. You’ve done everything.’

  Before Ruby could think about whether to stay or leave, the girl was standing in front of her, carrying a pile of dirty plates.

  ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘hello.’

  ‘Hi.’ Ruby took a second to consider her own appearance. She was in jeans and a grey T-shirt, hair moderately clean, face moderately made up, drinking a glass of water and minding her own business. There was no reason for the girl to think that there was anything untoward about Ruby or her presence in the kitchen. She brought herself up tall and smiled. ‘I’m Ruby,’ she said.

  ‘Oh, hi. Yes. Con’s mentioned you.’ She put down her pile of plates and offered Ruby her hand to shake. ‘I’m Daisy.’

  Daisy.

  Yes, she would be a Daisy.

  She was pretty, in that undefined way that these sorts of girls often were. Small, straight nose, fine eyebrows, little chin. She had small hollows under her cheekbones, which saved her from plainness. Pretty enough, thought Ruby, but not as good-looking as her. And she looked painfully young, younger, possibly, than Con himself.

  ‘Nice to meet you,’ she said, her eyes taking in the rest of her. Fitted cream blouse, grey woollen shorts to just below her knee, flat shoes, a black waistcoat, a strange necklace with leathery things hanging off it. Kind of a mess, but she carried it off.

  ‘So,’ she said, ‘you work with Con?’

  ‘Yes. I’mat Vogue.’

  ‘Ah,’ Ruby nodded. Of course. A fashion girl. It made sense. ‘And I believe he cooked for you. How was it?’

  ‘Delicious,’ Daisy smiled. She had slightly crooked teeth, but they suited her.

  ‘Really?’ Ruby grimaced. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Honestly! I promise. I’m so impressed with him. Considering when I first met him he wouldn’t eat anything except McDonald’s.’

  ‘Oh, yes. His beloved McMeals.’

  ‘I know! He’s my project. I’m determined to get him to eat healthily.’

  ‘Well, sounds like you’re doing a pretty good job already.’

  ‘Con tells me you’re a singer?’

  ‘Yes. That’s right.’

  ‘What sort of singer are you?’

  ‘Oh, you know, kind of rocky, bluesy, soully. Depends what kind of mood I’m in, really.’

  ‘Wow. That must be amazing. Getting up on stage and singing in front of all those people. How do you do it?’

  ‘Vodka,’ said Ruby, suddenly feeling the need to embellish her rock-chick credentials. ‘Lots of it. I never go on stage sober.’

  ‘God, I don’t blame you.’

  Daisy stooped to scrape some leftovers into the bin. Ruby could see her shoulder blades through her blouse, sharp and angular as scythes. ‘So, Daisy. How old are you?’