“What the actual fuck Billy? These are your friends?”
I don’t know what to say, so I don’t say much in reply. And when the waitress comes – she looks the most normal person here – Amber tells her she’ll have the turbot too.
It gets a bit better after that. The table kind of splits in two. James, Oscar and Jennifer mostly talk amongst themselves – I don’t hear what they’re saying, but it sounds as though they’re still re-living their holiday in Europe the other year. And then at my end Eric seems to do his best to make Amber feel welcome. At least, he actually talks to her. Lily is mostly silent. She seems torn between the two groups. But even Eric isn’t his usual entertaining self, and plenty of times we end up silent at our end of the table, and just sort of passengers, listening to James and Oscar banter and bicker between themselves over details of their trip that we didn’t go on.
“So Lily, what are you studying?” Amber asks suddenly, surprising me. I thought we’d settled into not talking at all.
“Oh,” Lily looks startled. “Law.” She replies. “And you? Err… Billy tells me…” She doesn’t finish what she’s saying, probably because I haven’t said much about her at all.
“Design.” Amber helps her out. “But I studied on Lornea, not here. That fun? Law?” She pokes at her fish.
Lily looks put on the spot by the question, and reluctantly turns to Amber. From where I’m sitting, next to Eric, I can see them side by side. They couldn’t look any more different.
“I wouldn’t call it fun. But it’s important.”
“Hmmm.” Amber nods her head.
“I do like your hair color.” Eric says, a minute or two later, and he tries to smile at Amber, but he still seems off somehow.
“Thank you Eric,” Amber replies. “I like yours…” But her words are drowned out by a huge roar of laughter from the other end of the table, and it’s followed by Jennifer giggling for ages, like she’s unable to stop. And I kind of get the feeling it’s fake somehow, from the way she glances at Lily at the end, to make sure she sees it.
“They probably shouldn’t have lion fish in there,” I say, suddenly. I know it’s not the most appropriate thing to say, but I want to try to lighten the mood plus, it’s been bothering me since I sat down.
“What?” Eric asks.
I point at the fish tank, and the large lionfish – Pteriois – swimming slowly behind the glass.
“Why not?” Eric replies. “Will they eat all the others?”
“Yeah, but the problem isn’t in the fish tanks, it’s in the wild. People buy them because they think they’ll look good in their tanks, then when they eat everything else they dump them in the toilets, or release them into the ocean. And they’ve become one of the worst invasive species along the whole coastline of the Americas.”
“No way?” Eric says.
“Yeah. They’re incredibly efficient predators. They have very large mouths, and they drift up close to other fish, and then strike really quickly. But the real problem is how fast they reproduce. The females can produce 30,000 eggs every seven days. They just drive out native species.”
“Really.”
It gets better after that. At least, Eric gets a bit more talkative, and he and Amber seem to get on OK. But there’s still a divide on the table, and Lily still doesn’t say much. Meanwhile James, Oscar and Jennifer seem to be having a great time. They’re laughing, and they keep ordering more wine every time they finish a bottle, which seems to happen a lot, but when they do, they don’t even send the bottle down to our end. It’s like Eric and Amber and me are at a completely different dinner. But eventually it ends, and then I start to worry about the bill. Before – when we were at the beach – I think Lily paid for all the food, and I sort of hope the same happens here, even though that doesn’t seem fair on her, but I’m just worried about how much it’s all going to cost. But that’s not what happens. Instead James orders a round of what I think are brandies for himself and Oscar, and he asks for the check at the same time. But when it actually comes it gets given to him, because he’s the one who asks for it. And after he looks at it, he announces loudly that we should all just split it equally, since that’ll be easier. He looks at me as he says it. It’s pretty much the first thing he’s actually said to me all night. And right away Oscar and Jennifer agree equally loudly, and it’s like it’s settled when it isn’t. I turn to Amber, and I can tell she’s incandescent with rage, and I almost hope she’s going to say something, but I can tell she’s holding herself in. And so she and I just pay what we’re asked, I think just to get out of there.
When we finally leave, James and Oscar and Jennifer say they’re going to go onto a club, and they ask if we’re coming, but I can tell they don’t really mean it. So there’s a painful five minutes, when they sort of pretend to be waiting to see if we’ll change our minds, but really they’re just waiting for a cab, and then they finally get in and disappear. Even then it still feels tense, because Eric and Lily are still here. Lily wants to go home, and Eric says he’ll take her, so they get into the next cab. And then it’s just me and Amber left.
“What the hell Billy?” she says to me, the moment it’s just the two of us. “What the fucking hell was that all about?”
Chapter Twenty-Two
I can’t really pretend it was a success of an evening, so I don’t.
“They’re your friends? The reason
