Girl in Between Read online

  Rosie laughs. ‘They’re classic, Luce. I actually miss my cups of tea with Denise and stirring up Brian. How’s Glenda?’

  ‘Oh, she and Dad are inseparable! It wouldn’t surprise me if they go down to the jeweller and get those BFF heart necklaces.’

  ‘Do you ever hear from Oscar?’ Rosie asks, giving me a jolt; she hasn’t mentioned his name for the longest time.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Ben messaged me on Facebook this morning. He’s been travelling around Spain after finishing the Camino and he’s coming to London in a month or so for a few weeks.’

  ‘Oh, how did he go on the Camino?’ I ask.

  ‘Good, I think. Said it was both soul-soothing and sole-destroying. But he spelt sole s-o-l-e.’

  ‘Ha! He’s hilarious, Ben.’

  ‘Yeah.’ She smiles. ‘Anyway, it’ll be fun to see him.’

  The following week I muster up the courage to ask Penny if she’d mind reading the first draft of my novel. Penny replies that it would be an absolute pleasure and that evening she sends me a text saying she is totally hooked on the Foster family, and she thinks I have a lot of talent. I take a screen-shot of her message, and make it my wallpaper.

  Over the next month, Rosie continues to head off on various European jaunts, and even though I feel a pang of envy when she comes back raving about snorkelling around Mykonos, I’m enjoying the process of rereading and revising my manuscript. Penny gave me some really good feedback and her suggestions have helped steer my fossickers in the right direction.

  I’m also kicking goals with Storytime, which has become so popular that I now take two separate sessions. After an exceptionally busy Friday, made extra manic by the arrival in store of Rick Riordan’s latest release, Rosie and I decide to hit the pub and then the shops along Oxford Street.

  ‘Tell ya, when I do pick up the drill again there’ll be no shortage of work for me in London,’ Rosie says, glancing at the gaping mouths of some passers-by.

  ‘You should come to Storytime while you’re not working. You’re probably the only one who’ll understand me!’

  ‘You’re really enjoying the bookshop, aren’t you?’

  ‘It’s the best!’ I say happily. ‘It’s so cute seeing kids hooked by a story. And you know Penny?’

  Rosie nods.

  ‘She loves me! And I love her!’

  Rosie giggles.

  ‘Sometimes I have to restrain myself from telling her how much I love her,’ I add. ‘I worry I’d come across as unprofessional!’

  ‘Is she available?’ Rosie asks.

  ‘She’s a grandma, Rosie!’ I exclaim. ‘Happily married for forty years. But it’s made me think that maybe this is what it’ll be like when I meet the right guy. He’ll like me, and I’ll like him, and it’ll all be very straightforward.’

  ‘You are such a dag!’ says Rosie, laughing.

  Up ahead I see a crowd gathered on the pavement outside Topshop. ‘What’s happening up here? Must be a big sale on.’

  ‘Let’s have a look,’ says Rosie, and we insert ourselves into a throng of teenagers wearing chokers and midriffs and ride the escalator down to the basement, where we find a Little Mix concert in full swing.

  ‘Hilarious!’ yells Rosie as we stare at a stage surrounded by racks of vintage tops, handbags and screaming fans.

  ‘How random! Can you imagine Little Mix doing this in Paradise Plaza?’

  ‘I don’t even know who Little Mix are!’ Rosie responds. ‘Are those chicks wearing scrunchies?!’

  We make our way through displays of shoes and accessories and join a crowd of girls dancing metres from the stage, taking photos of the group with their flower crown Snapchat filters.

  ‘Perrie!’ Rosie screams, mimicking their calls. ‘We love you, Perrie!’

  I look across at her and grin. And as we sing along to lyrics we don’t know and jump up and down with the twenty-somethings on the tiles in Topshop, it occurs to me to get in touch with Cher and let her know that you can, in fact, turn back time.

  I appear to be in a casual relationship with Joe.

  It started innocently enough. About a month ago, while Rosie was off on what she swore would be her last European mini-break before getting serious about work, I went to the Jolly Gardeners with Margie and Sally, an Aussie nanny from Bundaberg. Sally ended up getting so drunk I offered her Rosie’s bed for the night. Unfortunately, she snored like a freight train so I went and curled up on the couch with a blanket. Not long after, Joe happened to walk into the lounge room and offered me his bed, saying he’d sleep on the floor. He stayed there half an hour before accepting my invitation of an upgrade to the mattress. Since then, we’ve been frequently sharing that mattress, and the power shower, and even the kitchen table on one rare occasion when no-one else was home.

  At first, when Rosie got back from Prague, it was hard for me to gauge her reaction to me and Joe. I assumed she wouldn’t care less, but one morning over a cup of tea she told me she was worried Joe would hurt me and she couldn’t deal with me having a broken heart again on her own. I told her I was fine and that it was fun to have a casual fling with no pressure or expectation, but she wasn’t convinced. She said she knew me too well to believe I wouldn’t get emotionally involved, and that I was not built for casual affairs. She didn’t think I was capable of shutting off certain sections of my heart.

  Margie, on the other hand, felt that I should absolutely partake in a glorious, liberating romance abroad, if for no other reason than that sex was good for the joints.

  Joe makes me laugh. He shows me exactly where to stand on the platform to board the least crowded carriage in the train and has introduced me to hidden Putney gems, including the Cat’s Back, a charming Edwardian pub that still has lock-ins. Sometimes I worry that he’s more into me than I’m into him, but I enjoy his company immensely, and Margie said perhaps that’s enough.

  Rosie has finally accepted a job and, to my endless amusement, it’s full-time. When I’m not waking up with Joe, I’m emerging from slumber to the sounds of Rosie spraying deodorant and drying her hair. She hates that I’m able to skip off to the bookstore eight minutes before it opens and routinely curses me of a morning—today being no different.

  ‘Could you keep it down, Rosie? I don’t have to get up for two hours.’

  ‘Oh, mate, this is fucked,’ she says, tugging on her boots. ‘You can get screwed.’

  I dive under the covers as she pegs a hairbrush at me.

  ‘Don’t forget tonight,’ she says, halfway out the door.

  ‘What’s—? Oh, that’s right. Where are we meeting again?’

  ‘Spotted Horse. Six-thirty.’

  When I walk into the Spotted Horse at six, Ben is perched at the bar drinking a snakebite. Sporting a tan, a beard and his ever-engaging grin, he jumps from his stool and envelops me in a bear hug. On this cold London night, he radiates warmth and I’m so pleased to see him.

  ‘You look great, Ben!’

  ‘So do you! London suits you, hey?’

  ‘Yeah, I think so,’ I reply, taking off my jacket. ‘It’s been four months now. Your hair goes flat over here. Anyway, how have you been? How was the Camino?’

  ‘Incredible. It’s hard to explain, but I highly recommend it. Sometimes it was crap, and I couldn’t wait for it to end. But then other times it made all the sense in the world and I didn’t want to ever stop walking.’ He begins to laugh. ‘Not sad to say goodbye to those boots, though. Bloody hell, I was nursing blisters for months.’ He glances over my shoulder and I grin as his face lights up like a billboard on Times Square. ‘Hello! Here’s trouble!’

  I turn to see Rosie approaching and Ben greets her effusively, with the same barrelling embrace he’d given me. She returns his broad smile and her eyes flicker with a cheeky glint.

  ‘You look like a lumberjack!’ she teases.

  ‘Part-time lumberjack!’ he jokes.

  She rolls her eyes. ‘Oh, don’t mention part-time, Ben. Those wer
e the glory days.’

  ‘What do you mean? Don’t tell me you’re …?’

  ‘Full-time. Yes, I’m fucking full-time. Never thought I’d see the day and it’s everything I thought it would be. It’s the absolute pits!’ She grins at him and elbows me. ‘Meanwhile, this one here’s having the time of her life reading kids’ books and can get to work in about two seconds.’

  ‘Cider?’ I ask.

  ‘Love one,’ Rosie replies. ‘Oh, and she finished her novel too! Has Penny got back to you about the publisher, Luce?’ Penny, proving yet again that she was an angel come to earth, had sent my revised manuscript to a publisher friend of hers.

  ‘Not yet, but she will. Penny won’t let me down. She loves me and—’

  ‘I know, I know,’ says Rosie, giving me a little shove, ‘and you love her.’

  ‘Congratulations, Luce!’ says Ben, when I return from the bar with our drinks. ‘You’re so bookish.’

  ‘Ha! Can you be hot bookish?’ I ask.

  ‘I don’t know about hot bookish, but look at this, there’s a “chocolate brookie” on the menu! Ha! What do you think that is?’

  ‘Don’t care—it sounds delicious and I’m ordering one,’ says Rosie and we all move with our drinks to a table by the window.

  Tucking into plates of battered haddock and chips, steak and ale pie and honey mustard sausages, we swap both dishes and tales, and as we each take up a spoon and share a chocolate brookie, which turns out to be a fabulous combination of brownie and cookie, I feel thoroughly happy to be with my best friend and a man who seems to make every moment he’s in more brilliant.

  Eventually we get talking about what Ben wants to do next and it’s clear he isn’t quite sure.

  ‘I want to be wild,’ says Rosie suddenly, putting down her spoon. ‘I want to live in wild places and break the rules and tell people who deserve it to get fucked and run my own race and just cut loose and sleep with whoever I want, and work whenever I want.’ She flips a coaster on the side of the table and catches it again. ‘That’s what I want.’

  Ben looks at her as though he’s slightly star-struck and says, ‘Yeah, maybe that’s what I want too.’

  ‘I always thought you and Oscar were made for each other,’ says Ben as we zigzag home, thoroughly pissed. ‘I never saw him so happy as when he was around you, or so preoccupied when he wasn’t. He was always looking out that bloody window to your house.’

  ‘He also has a girlfriend,’ I remind him.

  ‘No he doesn’t—he and Kate broke up ages ago.’

  I feel a twinge of guilt as I remember the scene at the Wild West Saloon. My lasting image is of Kate sitting on the footpath around the side of the pub, crouched over, head in her hands, and Oscar sitting beside her, neither of them saying a word.

  ‘Oh, Ben,’ I say quietly, ‘those days are long gone now.’

  ‘Yeah and she’s shagging Joe, a Scottish dude we live with,’ adds Rosie. ‘He’s a mechanical engineer. Handsome too.’

  ‘Mmm,’ I confirm. Ben’s remarks have sent me reeling sideways, as if a wave I’d had my back to, and never saw coming, had unexpectedly crashed over me.

  ‘What’s news from Brian and Denise?’ Rosie asks me, obviously sensing my need for rescue.

  I seize the lifeline gratefully. ‘They’re crazy. Dad’s been getting arthritis in his fingers and Mum read the best cure is to take medicinal marijuana, so they’re importing packets of hemp seeds from America to sprinkle on their muesli every morning.’ I laugh. ‘I think they’re high as bloody kites half the time.’

  Rosie laughs too. ‘Could you imagine Denise after a bit of hooch? Hilarious.’

  ‘Oh, man, I do not want to know what that would be like,’ I reply.

  ‘Where’s your fella tonight then, Luce?’ asks Ben after a while.

  ‘Ah, he’s gone to an Arsenal match,’ I say. ‘Mad keen on the football.’

  I feel ashamed for not telling Joe about our gathering. Subconsciously, I think I didn’t want him and Ben to meet, although as we reach the Putney Palace and all stagger up the stairs it looks like it’s inevitable. Inside, I head straight to Joe’s bedroom and am so enormously relieved at not finding him there I wonder whether we shouldn’t just break up as soon as he gets home.

  Having no desire to contemplate this thought in my drunken state, I join some Germans on the couch, and watch a Graham Norton rerun.

  Faintly, above the applause and the ad breaks, sounds of Rosie and Ben clanging about in the kitchen drift through to the lounge, and when the Germans turn off the telly, I hear Rosie say, ‘But, Ben, we’re like chalk and fucking cheese!’

  ‘I know! But we could go together like cheese and fucking biscuits!’ Ben replies.

  Joe’s arm feels heavy around my waist and he shifts slightly as I place my hand on his wrist and slink from beneath his grip out of bed and to the bathroom. I walk quickly across the cold tiles and steady myself against the cool porcelain basin and when I look in the mirror I see crescents of grey beneath my eyes. Then, having no desire to hold my own gaze, I drop my head and stand for several moments staring at the cracked enamel of the basin.

  ‘Luce,’ says Joe quietly, knocking on the door and opening it gently when I don’t respond. ‘Are you okay?’ He comes over and wraps his arms around my shoulders. ‘What’s the matter?’ he says, kissing my neck.

  I turn around to face him. ‘Nothing’s the matter, Joe,’ I say abruptly. ‘I just had too much to drink.’

  ‘Ah.’ He smiles sympathetically. ‘Do you want me to carry you back to bed? I’ve always wanted to carry you into bed. Here, let me try …’

  ‘No thanks, Joe,’ I say, laughing lightly as I move away towards the door. ‘I think I might head to Notting Hill this morning. Fresh air is the answer for me.’

  I’ve always enjoyed walking around the Notting Hill markets and with slivers of blue sky now cutting through the grey, the day holds promise and I too feel brighter.

  A couple of streets from the Portobello Road crowds, I stumble across a quaint café with flowers falling from window boxes onto whitewashed walls, and I order a coffee and croissant to have at a table by the door. Patches of dappled sunlight filter down in pockets throughout the room and as I shrug off my jacket, I grin at the thought of Rosie and Ben. Knowing her, there won’t be any shades of grey this morning; she’ll either draw him closer or send him packing, and I can’t predict which she’ll choose.

  In terms of suitability, they actually make a hell of a lot of sense. They’re both adorably mad and could each, with a flash of teeth and a wink, get away with murder. Yes, I think, they could be great together.

  Half an hour later, as I’m wandering down a sloping street of antique stores, my phone pings with an email notification. My heart rate speeds up as I realise the message is from Jacqui Dundas, the publisher to whom Penny had sent my manuscript. But my hopes are quickly dashed. Jacqui writes that while she thinks my novel has great potential, the market is exceedingly tough and she’s just taken on two other historical fiction authors. Unfortunately, she concludes, she will have to pass, but wishes me all the best in finding a suitable agent or publisher. ‘All the best’—the three-word salutation that sounds so congenial but has such a spirit-sinking finality about it. I’ve heard of authors who could papier-mâché a pergola with the number of rejection letters they’ve received, but still, Jacqui’s response stings.

  Because I’m hungover, and feel flat as a tack from Jacqui’s knockback, and horribly confused about my reaction to seeing Ben and hearing him talk of Oscar, I decide that instead of heading home and facing everyone, I’ll go watch Ghostbusters at the cinema at Notting Hill Gate.

  When I emerge a couple of hours later into London’s version of a sunny afternoon I see several missed calls from Rosie. I call her back, and we decide to meet up for a walk in Hyde Park.

  She finds me on a bench by the lake, gazing absentmindedly at people larking about in paddle boats.

  ‘Well, I d
idn’t see that coming,’ says Rosie, plonking down beside me, and because I know exactly what she’s referring to, I double over in laughter.

  ‘Feeling good or bad?’ I ask when I catch my breath.

  ‘Well,’ she says, crossing her arms, ‘for once, I don’t fucking know.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yeah, it’s very odd. Normally I can get a reading on these things. But I can’t read Ben. Well, I can’t read how I feel about Ben.’

  ‘Do you want to see him again?’ I ask.

  ‘I think so. I mean, he’s really fun.’

  ‘Yeah, he’s a great guy. I was thinking about you two this morning. You could actually be perfect together!’

  ‘I’m perfect already.’

  We walk along a wide path lined with plane trees and smile as three little girls wearing stockings and pastel coats skip past us arm in arm, urging their trailing grandad to keep up. In the distance, between patches of oaks, we catch flashes of London’s ubiquitous red buses and black cabs motoring by.

  With a measure of disgust, Rosie tells me about the team-building day she’s being forced to attend at Wandsworth Dental Practice the next morning, and how she’d much prefer to be drilling and filling to being assembled into a human pyramid by overweight former boy scouts who now call themselves ‘change management consultants’.

  When I don’t respond with laughter, as I normally would, she glances across at me. ‘What’s wrong?’ she asks.

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Why are you so serious then?’

  ‘Oh, it’s just that I’m meant to be wearing stilettos not ugg boots.’

  ‘What the hell are you talking about? Are you stoned? Has Denise got you on the hemp too?’

  ‘No.’ I laugh and blink back tears. ‘The publisher friend of Penny’s emailed this morning saying she doesn’t want my novel.’

  ‘But that’s okay, Luce,’ Rosie says and pats my back. ‘You always hear about those authors who had a million rejections. What about J.K. Rowling!’