“Not necessarily! You could have a long-distance relationship…. There’s always e-mail….”
“For two years?”
“Well…” I trail off. Maybe she’s right. They met only a few weeks ago. And two years is a pretty long time.
“I can’t give up a chance like this for some…man.” She sounds like she’s arguing with herself. Maybe she’s more torn than she’s letting on. Maybe, underneath it all, she really has fallen for Tom.
But even I can see it. Jess’s work has been her life. She can’t just abandon it now.
“You have to go to Chile,” I say firmly. “It’ll be amazing for you. And it’ll work out with Tom. Somehow.”
The Pringles seem to have disappeared, so I get up and head for the cupboard. I open the door and survey the shelves dubiously. “We’re out of chips…. I’m not supposed to eat nuts…. We’ve got some old Ritz crackers….”
“Actually, I brought some popcorn,” says Jess, looking a bit pink about the face. “Toffee flavored.”
“You what?” I gape at her.
“It’s in my rucksack.”
Jess brought toffee flavored popcorn? But…that’s not organic. Or nutritious. Or made from farm-cooperative potatoes.
I stare in astonishment as she reaches inside her rucksack for the packet. A DVD comes out too, all shiny in its cellophane, and she stuffs it back, her cheeks reddening further.
Hang on a moment.
“What’s that?” I grab it. “Nine Months? Jess, that’s not your kind of film!”
Jess looks totally caught out.
“I thought it might be your kind of film,” she says at last. “Especially now.”
“You brought this for us to watch together?” I say incredulously, and after a moment she nods.
“I just thought…” She clears her throat. “If you were at a loose end…”
I cannot believe how touched I feel. The first time we ever spent an evening together I tried to get Jess to watch Pretty Woman, and believe me, it was not a success. But now here she is with popcorn and a Hugh Grant film. And telling me about her boyfriend. Just like I imagined having a sister would be like.
“But you have to go out.” Jess is shoving the DVD back into the rucksack. “In fact, you should get going….”
I feel a rush of affection for her — and all of a sudden I don’t want to go anywhere. Why would I spend the evening in some crowded bar, talking to a lot of snobby Cambridge graduates I don’t even know, when I could be spending time with my sister? I can meet Venetia’s Mr. Wonderful some other time. Luke won’t mind.
“I’m not going anywhere,” I say firmly, and tear open the popcorn. “Let’s stay in and have fun.”
We have the best evening. We watch Nine Months — Jess does Sudoku puzzles at the same time, but that’s OK because I’m reading Hello! magazine — and we conference-call Suze to ask her advice on Tom, and then we order pizza. And Jess doesn’t even tell me how we could have made our own for 30p.
She leaves around eleven, saying that I must be tired, and I go to bed, wondering how late Luke will be. He must be having a good time too, to be out this long. When at last a stripe of light from the doorway lands on my face and makes me blink, I realize I must have fallen asleep, because I could have sworn I was receiving an Oscar from the Queen.
“Hi!” I sit up sleepily. “What time is it?”
“Just gone one,” whispers Luke. “I’m sorry I woke you.”
“It’s OK.” I reach for the bedside light and switch it on. “So, how was it?”
“It was good!” There’s an enthusiasm in Luke’s voice that I wasn’t expecting. I rub my bleary eyes and focus on him. His face is glowing and he has a kind of lightness and animation about him which I haven’t seen in weeks, if not months. He strips off his tie and throws it on a chair. “I’d forgotten how much I had in common with all these old friends,” he says. “We talked about things I haven’t even thought about for years. Politics…the arts…My old friend Matthew runs a gallery now. He invited us to an exhibition. We should go!”
“Wow!” I can’t help smiling at Luke’s eagerness. “How fantastic!”
“It was great, just taking a break from business.” He shakes his head wonderingly. “I should do it more. Get things in perspective. Relax a bit.” He starts unbuttoning his shirt. “So, how was your evening with Jess?”
“It was fab! We watched a movie and ate pizza. And I have to tell you her news….” I suddenly yawn. “Maybe tomorrow.” I snuggle back down into the pillows and watch Luke get undressed. “So, what’s Venetia’s famous boyfriend like? Is he as boring as he looks in the picture?”
“He wasn’t there,” Luke says, hanging up his suit trousers.
I stop comfortably snuggling and turn my head in surprise. Venetia’s boyfriend wasn’t there? But I thought the whole point of the evening was to introduce us to Justin the wonder-boy financier.
“Oh, right. How come?”
“They’ve split up.”
“They’ve split up?” I haul myself to a sitting position in bed. “But…I thought she loved Justin more than anyone else. I thought she moved halfway across the world to be with him and they were the happiest couple in the whole universe.”
“She did.” Luke shrugs. “They were. Until three days ago. She was pretty upset about it.”
“Right,” I say after a pause. “I see.”
Suddenly the evening has taken on a totally different slant. It wasn’t Luke being introduced to Venetia’s long-term boyfriend. It was a newly single Venetia crying on Luke’s shoulder.
“So…did Venetia break it off?” I ask casually. “Or did he?”
“I’m not sure which of them ended it.” Luke heads into the bathroom. “Apparently he’s gone back to his wife now.”
“His wife?” My voice shoots up like a rocket. “What do you mean, ‘his wife’?”
“Venetia thought they were separated in all but name.” Luke turns on the taps and I can barely hear him. “She’s had a tough time, romantically, poor old Ven. She always seems to fall for married men and get into complicated situations.”
I’m trying to stay calm here. Shallow breaths. Do not overreact.
“What kind of situations?” I ask lightly.
“Oh, I don’t know.” Luke is squeezing toothpaste onto his brush. “Divorce proceedings…some scandal with a senior doctor at the hospital where she worked…There was an injunction in LA….” He frowns at the tube. “We’re nearly out of this stuff.”
Divorce proceedings? Injunctions? Scandals?
I can’t reply. My mouth is opening and shutting like a goldfish. Every instinct in my body is on red alert.
She’s after Luke.
I watch Luke cleaning his teeth as though with Venetia’s eyes. He’s wearing only pajama bottoms, and he’s still tanned from the summer, and the muscles of his shoulders are rippling faintly as he brushes. Oh God, oh God. Of course she’s after him. He’s good-looking and he owns a multimillion-pound company and they had a romance when they were much younger. Maybe he was her first love and she’s never given her heart to anyone else.
Maybe she was his first love.
There’s a hollow kind of feeling in my stomach. Which is ridiculous, bearing in mind how much is in my stomach right now.
“So!” I try to sound confident and lighthearted. “Do I need to be worried?”
Luke’s splashing water on his face. “What do you mean?”
“I…” I can’t bring myself to say it. What am I implying, that I don’t trust him? “She could maybe try going after single men!” I change tack. “Then life wouldn’t be so complicated for her!” I give a small laugh, but as Luke turns, he’s frowning.
“Venetia’s made some…unwise choices. But none of them were deliberate or out of malice. She’s just a hopeless romantic.”
He’s defending her. I feel totally wrong-footed.
