Initially shehad been kept busy, dealing with the will, the valuation of thehouse in Farnham, encouraging Mark to sell off whatever he couldfrom the family’s belongings and all the attendant paperwork. Therehad been a period of almost basking in the after-glow of successand revenge and she and Mark had even had some quite pleasant timestogether. However, she hadn’t changed her resolve that she and Markwere never going to be forever. Since early summer, really, thelack of change and direction had been preying on her mind and she’dbeen getting increasingly tetchy. It struck her as ironic that asshe tried to make it clear to Mark that she wanted to do more withher life he seemed to be ever more content with their lifestyle andto have become more clingy than usual – it was as if her trying todistance herself had the opposite effect on him.
The thing wasthat without work, and without any really close friends, she wasfinding him more and more irritating. Fair enough, he’d been great,he’d done what she, and they, had wanted but that was it for her.Some nice times together and reasonable sex weren’t enough for her,but whenever she mentioned wanting to do more by herself she couldsense Mark’s panic and desperation almost, and she hadn’t botheredto pursue things. And then, to cap it all, last week he had evenasked her if she wanted to marry him when she’d told him she wasplanning to go away for this weekend. The thing was that she wasn’tsure if Mark’s behaviour might not be a kind of camouflage, anyway;a part of her didn’t or couldn’t believe that he was quite ascontented with life as he made out. He had taken to going to thelocal pub by himself and kept harping on about her lack ofaffection – by which he meant sexual interest, of course. Perhapsthe message was getting across to him; but either way she knew shehad to do something different with her life. It was in desperationalmost that she had looked up and contacted her old friend Rebecca,a few weeks back now. Rebecca had told her that she and Victoriahad met up and were living together and that they’d love to seeGemma. They had arranged for her to come up to stay for theweekend; and she was enjoying herself in a way she hadn’t for somewhile.
Although theCrown was still very much a local pub it was beginning to moveslightly upmarket along with that part of West London in general.They were enjoying a pretty decent bottle of Mateus Rosé and thebrief splash of an Indian summer, which certainly complemented oneanother. It was warm enough for them to be wearing crop tops overthe designer jeans they’d picked up yesterday afternoon on ashopping trip down the King’s Road in Chelsea.
Gemmahad come up to London on the Friday afternoon and the three of themhad gone to see the widely acclaimed revival of Guys and Dolls at theNational Theatre that night. After their Saturday afternoonshopping expedition, last night they had gone to town in more waysthan one. Victoria, whose family seemed to be pretty wellconnected, was a member of the swanky Annabel’s nightclub inBerkeley Square and had booked the three of them in. She had helpedpersuade Gemma to buy a loose, flowy, knee-length dress in creamfor the occasion from Peter Jones up by Sloane Square, along withsome fancy, high-heeled, red sandal shoes. Gemma had never spent somuch on her clothes but, as she told herself, she’d never been sucha rich woman as now and she might as well get used toit.
The eveninghad been a great success: Annabel’s had been packed with what wasobviously a very wealthy crowd but even so the three of them hadattracted more than their fair share of attention. They’d hardlyhad to buy a drink all night and then had been driven back to theflat by someone who appeared to be a cross between chauffeur anddogsbody of the City banker who’d spent a couple of hours trying toget Gemma to go back to his own apartment with him, before doingthe decent thing and seeing them all home for the price of herphone number and a kiss on the cheek.
Like Rebecca,Victoria was delighted to catch up with another old school friendand also with the prospect of having some different people to hangaround with. She was full of herself; clearly in her element atbeing the one who’d brought the three of them all together andorganised their weekend activities.
‘We werebloody amazing last night; and you, Gemma, that Simon, he couldn’ttake his eyes off you and had made sure he’d got your number. Andthose other two guys who sent the bottle of champagne over, did yousee the looks we were getting. My God, Rebecca’s right, you’ve justgot to come and live up here. Why not buy somewhere yourself? Likeyou said the other day, you’ve got your own money. I mean, I knowI’ve got Daddy’s but that’s not same as your own.’
It certainlysounded pretty tempting but then there was Mark. Gemma’s plan hadbeen to extricate herself from Mark soon after her mother’s deathbut dealing with her family’s estate and selling the house inFarnham had taken longer than she had envisioned and they werestill together, and, unless she had misread him, as far as Markseemed to imagine, were pretty much a permanent fixture.
Even thoughshe never intended for her and Mark to be forever, and even thoughshe had basically used him to get things sorted out, Gemma did feela twinge of guilt as well.
