Just Friends (44 page)

The swing-seat squeaked protestingly as Freya sat upright, jolted by a shocking realization. How blind she had been! The issue of whether she had a companion for this wedding—an issue that had tormented her for so long—was, she suddenly saw, absurdly trivial. It was not
a
man who had made the difference. She wouldn’t be feeling like this if she’d brought Michael or Brett or any other man she knew. What had made the difference was one particular man, a man who took care of her and made her laugh, a man she knew with the intimacy of long friendship, a man she liked—perhaps more than liked? . . .

A hubbub broke through her thoughts, and she noticed that all the guests were now milling toward the driveway at the side of the house, where Roland’s snouted car gleamed like a freshly killed barracuda. Freya’s lips curved in a small, secret smile. No doubt Jack was congratulating himself on his mechanical genius in getting the car moved, even if he’d done nothing more complex than flicking a switch. She strolled over, looking out for him.

Tash had changed into a summer dress splashed with poppies; she looked pretty and excited. Freya saw her hug Annabelle and step into the open-topped car. Roland sat importantly at the steering wheel, a cool dude in shades. Someone was passing around a basket of rose petals to throw.

Roland sounded the horn and Tash stood up on the passenger seat, holding something high in the air: her wedding bouquet. There was a murmur of excitement from the crowd. Tash scanned the faces below her with a slow turn of the head. Her words floated across the air. “Where’s Freya? Where’s my big sister?”

Freya felt a prickle of embarrassment, tinged with anger that Tash should draw attention to her in this manner: her “big” sister, still unmarried. Feeling foolish, she folded her arms, hoping not to be noticed. She had no wish to scramble for the trophy bouquet, even if it was tossed straight into her hands. But she was far too tall to hide; her hat was like a big green “Go” sign. Already Tash had seen her. She had climbed down from the seat and was walking forward with a smile on her face. The crowd parted. Freya heard a collective cooing. “Aah, how sweet.” “What a generous girl.”

Their words brought her to her senses. However they might each feel privately, this was Tash’s version of an olive branch; she could at least accept it graciously. She raised her head and stepped forward to meet her halfway. Tash pressed the bouquet into her hand, then pulled her into a sisterly embrace. Freya bent down to hug her back. She felt Tash’s arm snake about her neck and the smack of breath in her ear as Tash whispered, “Jack’s a big boy, isn’t he?”

Freya jerked with shock. But Tash held tight, her fingernails vicious. “Pity he isn’t your real boyfriend,” she spat.

Then her armlock loosened. There was a gleam of teeth, the triumphant glint of narrowed eyes and she had gone.

Freya rocked on her heels. Blood thumped in her ears, louder than the cheering voices around her. “Good luck!” they called. “Good-bye!” She saw a blur of waving hands. The air exploded into color. There was the growl of an engine, the spatter of gravel, a clinking of tin cans. She was icy cold. If she moved, she feared she would fall over and splinter. Something was digging into her palm. It was the stiff wired handle of the bridal bouquet.

The crowd wheeled and dispersed, leaving her standing alone in an empty expanse of green strewn with petals. From a distance she saw Jack walking toward her. He was smiling.

Ah, there she was.

The last rose petals spun and drifted to the ground. The crowd cleared. Jack saw Freya staring straight at him. Her hat turned her face into a Cubist portrait of fractured light and geometric shadows, and he thought with wonder and affection of all the different women hidden behind that single configuration of features: scornful goddess, brash poker-player, resentful little girl; the clever woman who kept her brain—and her tongue—sharply honed, the gorgeous creature running down the beach. He realized that he wanted to kiss her.

“Freya,” he called.

She turned and walked away in slow motion, like a figure in a dream who cannot hear however loud you shout.

“Freya!”
He loped after her.

“Excuse me.” A female voice shrilled in his ear. “Aren’t you Jack Madison?” He heard a tinkle of jewelry as a manicured claw gripped his arm. “My husband tells me you know Carson McGuire. Our little reading circle in Totteridge—Totteridge
Common
, that is—would be so thrilled to know what he’s really like.”

“I’m sorry.” He was conscious of musky scent and a confection of tinted hair. “There’s something I have to do. I’ll catch you later.” He pushed past, ignoring Marilyn Swindon-Smythe’s gasp of pique.

But Freya had disappeared. He’d lost her. He thought she’d been heading for the house, and hurried inside. It was cool and silent. He peered into the empty library, then retraced his steps to the kitchen. There was the slow drip-drip of a faucet. Bedivere lay pressed to the Aga; he gave a civil thump of his tail. “Where is she?” asked Jack.

He thought he heard a tiny sound from beyond the kitchen, and wandered down the cluttered passageway, looking through doorways. She was standing with her back to him in a kind of pantry room, doing something at the sink.

He smiled with relief. “Freya, I wanted to—”

“Get out!”

She spun around and something hit him low in the stomach. Jack clutched it instinctively—something pulpy and damp—but it was Freya he was looking at. She had taken off her hat. Her face was gray, with witchy slits for eyes.

“What is it, sweetheart?” Jack was appalled. “What’s the matter?”

“How
could
you?” she shouted. “After everything I told you. When you knew how I felt. How could you just—
fuck
my little bitch of a stepsister?”

Jack swallowed. This was bad. “It just happened,” he said. “It wasn’t my idea. I was trying to get some sleep in the library and she—”

“Tash, of all people! What’s wrong with you, Jack? You’re like a dog that has to sniff at every lamppost.”

“It wasn’t like that! She practically seduced me.”

“Oh sure.”

“She did! She came right in and took off all her clothes—”

“Bollocks, Jack. Do you really expect me to believe that? On the night before her own wedding?”

“It’s the truth.” He gestured helplessly. “I’m sorry. I was mad at you.”

“So you thought, ‘I know, I’ll go sleep with Tash. We’ll have a good old snigger together about poor, sad Freya.’ ”

“No!”

“
Yes!
She boasted to me about it. She wanted to prove that no one could like me enough to show me even the tiniest bit of loyalty—that my feelings are worth nothing, that
I
am worth nothing. And the terrible thing is, she was right.”

“That’s not true!”

“You even told her that we weren’t really a couple—that you were pretending. Imagine how great that makes me feel. Imagine how much fun it will be for her to stick the knife in for years to come. But hey—who cares? Jack Madison got his rocks off, and that’s what matters, right?”

“It wasn’t like that.” Jack felt as if he’d been caught by a sudden wave and was tumbling blindly in its murky turbulence. He struggled to find his footing. “It didn’t mean anything.”

“It does to
me
!” Freya slammed her own chest with her fist, so hard that he heard the thud of knuckle on breastbone. A sudden tenderness made him want to put his arms around her. But her teeth were bared. Her eyes blazed wide. “What kind of a friend are you? I ask you to do
one thing
—pretend that we’re a couple, for four lousy days. But you can’t do it—one temptation, and you cave in. You’re pathetic, Jack!”

“Now wait a minute.
You
were the one who pushed me away. It would never have happened if we’d—”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake, grow up! ‘It didn’t mean anything.’ ‘It wasn’t my idea.’ ” Her mimicry was savage. “I don’t give a shit who you have sex with. This isn’t about Tash. It’s about you. About what a useless human being you are.”

Her words poured over him—burning, unstoppable.

“Everything’s always someone else’s fault—your dad, your publisher, Tash, me. You always take the easy way out. You want constant adulation without making any effort to earn it. All the advantages in the world have been showered on you, and you’ve squandered every one of them. You’re too spineless to commit to
anything
—whether it’s a woman, or a friend, or even your own writing.”

“That’s not fair!”

“Isn’t it?” Her face twisted with contempt. “Let me tell you the truth, Jack. You’re not a writer. You’re a spoiled dilettante living on Daddy’s money and wasting your time with people like Candace Twink and Leo Brannigan. You’ll never finish your novel, because you’re too fucking lazy! You will never be a real writer, because you have absolutely no respect for the human heart.”

Freya let out a shuddering breath. There was a long silence. Something was hurting. Jack looked down and saw what she had thrown at him. It was a bunch of flowers—roses. A thorn had drawn a trickle of blood.

When she spoke again, it was with a quiet hopelessness that was more damning than her anger.

“I opened my whole life to you, Jack. The house, my father, my stepmother, how I feel. I thought you were someone I could rely on. Someone I could trust. Someone I could respect. I thought we were
friends
. . .”

Her voice broke on the word. Her head drooped. Jack saw that she was crying. A cavity opened in his chest, as if a great stone had been rolled away.

She looked into his face. Her eyes were raw with tears. “I keep trying to like you, Jack, but I
can’t
. . . .”

He stepped forward. “Freya—”

“Get away from me!” She gave a violent swing of her arm, and nearly fell. She gripped the edge of basin. “Get out! Out of this house and out of my life. I never want to see you again.”

CHAPTER 30

Because it was a weekend at the start of the summer season all the flights to New York were full. Jack had ended up spending the night in Heathrow airport among gray-faced travelers slumped over their luggage and listless cleaners pushing brooms. The hours passed in a fog of jumpy dreams, echoing announcements and relentless internal voices that pursued him around and around.

Finally, midmorning on Sunday, he had been offered a last-minute seat on some Middle Eastern airline, and had handed over his credit card without even bothering to ask the price. He was eager to escape home. He wanted to be out of the airport before Freya turned up for her own flight—the one he would have accompanied her on if everything hadn’t gone wrong.

Now he was in that strange no-man’s-land in the sky, numbed by the drone of the engines, sluggish from poor ventilation, dazed by the flickering images that played out some Arab drama on a screen by the bulkhead. His seat was in a central bank of five, between two voluminous Kuwaiti ladies swathed in shawls. Everyone but himself was Arab or Indian. All the announcements were in Arabic. Thanks to the Muslim code of behavior, the flight would be dry. That meant no alcohol. Great.

He felt tired and sick at heart. Though he longed for oblivion, sleep was impossible. Random scenes from the last few days played over and over in his head. He saw Freya bouncing on the four-poster gleefully hurling pillows; he heard Guy’s dry voice saying, “I’m glad she has someone to care for her.” Most insistently of all, Freya’s words festered and stung. Maybe he deserved her censure; he had made a big mistake. But did he really deserve such ferocious, all-consuming contempt?

She hadn’t given him a chance to answer back. Reeling with shock, he’d packed his bag, propped a brief thank-you note to Guy and Annabelle on the kitchen table, and slunk out of the house like a thief. But now answers and explanations clamored in his head, demanding expression. Jack shifted this way and that on his seat, edgy with frustration. Finally, he reached down for the rucksack he had stowed under his seat, and drew out a pen and his writer’s notebook. He flipped down the tiny plastic table from the seat in front of him, gathered his thoughts and began to write.

Dear Freya,

I know you’ll want to crumple up this letter when you see who it’s from—but
don’t
. Just for once, listen to what someone else has to say.

Yes, I slept with Tash. It was an incredibly stupid thing to do, and I wish I hadn’t. Maybe it’s not an excuse to say that I was angry and drunk, or that she deliberately set out to seduce me, but that’s the truth. I’m not proud of myself. I’m sorry it happened.

But Freya—let’s be honest. Can you give me any good reason why I
shouldn’t
sleep with Tash, or with any other woman?
You
don’t want me: that’s crystal clear.
You
threw
me
out of the bedroom—remember? So why the big melodrama?