Beneath the table, my hands gripped my knees. The three of us had only been together five minutes and already it was all going wrong. It had been fine at New Year… OK, not brilliant, but fine. So why was it falling to pieces now? If Art had been here he’d have helped to diffuse the situation, but this time I was alone. I lifted my glass of wine and in two swift gulps finished it off. Eleanor sighed and topped it back up. I took that as an apology from her, so thought I’d take the high ground and move the conversation along. Something I could control. I’d talk about work. That would do.
I was about to speak when a squeal ripped through the air. All three of us turned to a table by the window, at which a couple were cooing over a swaddled bundle on the table. They’d moved aside the plates and glasses, and were inspecting the exposed face like a precious specimen. All the while, the bundle twisted side to side like a caterpillar.
“Have you been back to the clinic, Elle?” asked Rosa, quietly.
Eleanor hissed slowly through her teeth. “Just once. I’m hardly a priority though, am I?” She fluttered her arms up and down her body. “Poor and mightily single as I am. Back of the queue.”
“Have they mentioned any treatment,” I said, “for whenever the time comes?”
Eleanor looked at me and I caught a brief but violent flicker of annoyance. It could only have been a microsecond, but I felt its tail like a whip. She blinked and it passed as quickly as it’d appeared. “No, not yet. Besides, it’s going to take a long time to save up, anyway.”
Rosa sat back and pursed her lips. Eleanor obviously didn’t want to go into it, and I was happy not to. Happier things. Light and airy.
“What did you think of Art then?” I said. “I never had the chance to ask you what you thought since the party – if you can remember.” I tried to laugh.
Eleanor pouted. “Audaciousness, that’s what I remember. He was… audacious.” She took a sip of wine and leaned forward conspiratorially. “But honestly, I hate him. I hate you both. You’re both so extremely attractive and yet extremely unavailable. Typical.”
“Just your luck.” Rosa prodded Eleanor in the arm.
Eleanor waved to the moustachioed waiter behind the bar and pointed to our wine bottle, already down to the last inch of red. “Fucking cheek,” she smiled. “Hopefully I’ll get one of you so drunk tonight that I’ll have my way with you anyway.”
“Cheers to that.” We clinked. More like it.
Rosa leant forward across the table. “And we didn’t know he was some sort of famous writer. You kept that one quiet.”
I felt the need to play this down. “He’s not all that famous. But he wants to be. Or at least, he wants to do something famous.”
“Hasn’t he done that already? Now that I know what to look for, his books are everywhere.”
“It’s true,” Eleanor added. “After I got home from your party, I realised I’d had one on my shelf for who knows how long. All this time. Seems I’ve known him longer than you have, Noz.”
“Ah,” I pointed my finger in the air. “But have you read it?”
Eleanor smirked and raised her glass. “No.”
“That’s it, though,” I laughed. God, I’d missed this. “Neither have I. And from what I can tell even people who have read them forget what they’re about straightaway. That’s what Art says. But commercially, it works. People don’t retain the plot, so they buy another. And it doesn’t matter how similar the stories are because no one remembers. The only inkling you get that you’ve read it before is a nice cosy sense of familiarity, and that doesn’t sound bad at all.”
They both nodded. “Well,” Eleanor replied. “He’s got his head screwed on, hasn’t he?”
“And is he, you know,” Rosa whispered, “rich?”
I thought about it. We never discussed our personal accounts apart from when we worked out bills and expenses. Art’s earnings were a mystery to me. He was never ostentatious with money, but then if he really did earn a lot from his work then surely he wouldn’t have needed me. We wouldn’t have met, and we definitely wouldn’t be together. That there was the cold, hard, truth of it. He wouldn’t be sharing this life with me. If his parents were scatterers, they wouldn’t be able to help him. Art was on his own. Perhaps it was no surprise that he kept a close watch on his statements, in case he ended up wearing the same bleached overalls, his skin beneath them burning.
I smiled at Rosa. “Question mark, I’m afraid. We each keep something private. Though I don’t think the bards of this world ever set out to be the richest.”
Eleanor looked confused. “I don’t know. If he’s already got his name plastered over every bestseller list in the country and he’s not bothered about money, then what does he want? What’s he keep pushing himself for?”
I shrugged. “Now he wants to write something that’ll last. He hardly tears himself away from his laptop.”
“Let him. We all need our little hunts. As long as the money keeps rolling in, he’s taking care of you.” Eleanor’s merciless conclusions were usually right.
They thought he was taking care of me, so I’d show them, I’d prove to them he was. I pulled out my left hand from under the table and held it out for them to see. They both stared at my hand like owls; all bulbous, unblinking eyes and pursed bills. Claws perched on the table edge.
“He asked me to marry him.”
Rosa was the first to break their paralysis with a squeal and a flap of her hands. She leapt up to my side of the table and wrapped me in her arms, stamping her feet at the same time. Eleanor smiled slowly, and though Rosa was draping herself
