People fall for their best friend’s partners all the time.
Effie counted silently back to the last time she and Ben had spent the night together—not just under the same roof or in single beds but really together—and came up with the date she had last visited Lizzie at the flat to persuade her to come with them all to France. Five nights after the cancellation email, and two before they had caught their plane: just over a week ago. Why had neither of them told her?
She thought guiltily about the secret she had not yet discussed with her friends—the dark hairs on the pillow, the scraps of conversation she could remember between herself and Charlie. Effie knew they must have shared something that was difficult to take back again once given—his flighty avoidance and mannered behavior since the wedding night had all but confirmed it to her. All there was left to do was finesse the details of what had actually happened between them.
Could it really be true that Charlie, in the half-light between dawn and day, had told her that he had never felt this way before?
Was there any scenario in which the words “Nobody else has even come close” might have left his lips where they had just about kissed the cotton pillowcase next to the one her face, its profile a symmetry, also lay on?
What, Effie ached to know, had she said in return to snuff out Charlie’s feelings so comprehensively ever since? Her side of the partially recalled exchange was entirely missing, scrubbed from the tape like classified information. She just hoped she had been kind; a future with Charlie might have seemed one way out when drunk, but after a mostly sober week Effie knew it wasn’t what she wanted—what she had ever wanted. Or, for that matter, what was good for her.
After this week, Effie resolved, she would concentrate simply on the latter.
She hoped Charlie could be happy with Iso in lieu of her—though she took it as no small compliment to have been ranked over the burnished supermodel lying on a sunbed only a few strides away along the terrace. Little had Effie realized that the candle had burned undimming since university: ten long years, six of them while she had been with James. No wonder they’d never met any of Charlie’s extravagantly unserious other girlfriends: the procession that had masked his pining for the one that had got away.
She looked over at him now, and her heart burned fiercely—the sort of love refined by moments of weakness and chinks in the armor, screams of laughter and hugs of solidarity, rather than the kind that pounces before the lights come up. It was the same way she felt about Anna, about Lizzie.
As Effie looked toward the house, Anna stepped out onto the patio, walked across it, and came to sit on the sunbed next to hers. A little flushed, a little smug-faced. Behind her, Ben emerged into the sunlight too, and Effie’s pulse quickened—not in excitement, but in nervousness. She was grateful when he turned to sit at the other end of the pool, over by Bertie.
“Everything sorted?” she asked Anna knowingly.
Anna nodded and looked across the shimmering water as she spoke quietly, an answer just for the two of them.
“I’ve thought of Steve as part of me for so long,” she said. “That’s what you’re told to look for: a soulmate. Someone who knows you better than you know yourself.”
She swallowed thickly. Cleared her throat and adjusted her sunglasses.
“I’m always angry with myself these days,” she continued. “And I forgot I wasn’t married to myself, but to another person who needs kindness and attention. Just like I do.”
Anna gestured to the bottle of mineral water in the shade of Effie’s lounger and, after a nod from her friend, picked it up, took a swig. She looked more peaceful, more resolved. Happier.
“We made a commitment to look after each other,” she finished. “We haven’t been doing enough of that recently.”
Anna shrugged awkwardly, peroration over. “How about you, Eff? Are you okay?”
“I will be,” she murmured.
Effie smiled at her dear friend, but she felt something snag on her heart as she remembered the face that was missing. Their three had never felt complete as a two—for the odd afternoon perhaps, but no longer. When Lizzie had absconded at university, when she’d gone on those endless make-or-break boat trips with Guy, Effie and Anna had always been waiting for her to come back.
This time, Effie thought sadly, Lizzie had gone too far.
48. Lizzie
I couldn’t lock myself in that beautiful bedroom forever. I couldn’t shut him out indefinitely. As I paced between the four-poster bed and the window, I understood that I was running out of time and places to hide. I already knew how persistent Ben could be.
After the engagement party, weeks passed during which I didn’t see or hear from him again.
“He’s flat-hunting now he’s back from Thailand,” Dan might mention, though I was careful rarely to ask outright. “I’m seeing him for a drink after work next week.”
On those evenings, I’d climb the walls, alone at home with my wedding spreadsheet open and gleaming, waiting for my fiancé to come home and kiss me so I would know I was still his golden girl. That Ben hadn’t let anything slip. I organized and booked and hired and invited like an automaton, just to fill the hours. I saw Anna eyeing the new “bridezilla” me with surprise and disappointment, as though I’d let the side down, when really I was doing my utmost to remain bright and breezy.
As the weeks went by, the clench of dread in my stomach eased and some of the nagging guilt lessened too. After all, if Dan did find out, what had I really done wrong? Nothing. Who
