Just Friends (49 page)

“Sweetie, what is it?” Suddenly Cat’s arms were around her.

“Nothing,” Freya sobbed. Everyone—
everyone
—was watching. She was ruining Cat’s wedding. How could she?

“Tell me,” Cat asked gently. “What’s the matter.”

“I don’t
know
,” wailed Freya. “You go. Please.” She flapped her hand.

“I’m not leaving you like this.” Cat’s voice was low but firm. “Come on, we’ll go somewhere quiet and talk.”

“You’ll miss your plane, Mikey.” Mrs. Petersen’s chiding singsong sliced through the silence.

Cat’s head snapped up. “The plane can wait!” she answered back. She put a protective arm around Freya’s shoulders and shepherded her to the doorway, where Michael hovered anxiously. As the two of them stumbled past and headed for a door marked LADIES, Freya saw Cat and Michael exchange a look. Michael nodded. He’d wait.

Then Freya was in a small tiled room that smelled of air-freshener. Cat sat her down on an upturned wastebin and crouched in front of her.

“What is it?” she demanded. “Who upset you?”

“Nobody.” Freya wiped her nose with the back of her wrist.

“Here, let me get you a Kleenex.” Cat turned away for a moment and rummaged through her capacious handbag, discarding items on the floor until she found a travel-pack of tissues, which she tore open and passed to Freya. She waited until Freya had blown her nose, then grasped her hands.

“Oh, baby, I thought you were okay about this.”

“I
am
okay.”

“Maybe we should have waited longer?”

“No, no.” Freya shook her head. “It isn’t anything to do with you and Michael.”

“Are you sure?”

She nodded.

“Then, what is it?”

Freya thrashed her head from side to side. The wave of feeling that had been gathering inside her all day—for weeks—for months—finally broke. “It’s ...
Jack
!” she burst out.

“Jack?” Cat rolled onto her heels. Her eyes were wide. Her hair practically crackled with shock. “As in ‘that bastard Jack’?”

Freya’s head jerked up. “He’s not a bastard!” She scowled through her tears.

“The one who slept with your stepsister?”

“He didn’t mean to.” Freya blew her nose loudly.

“The spoiled, lazy good-for-nothing, living off his daddy’s money?”

“He can’t help having a rich father. Anyway, he’s not anymore.”

“The lousy writer?”

“He’s a
wonderful
writer!”

“I don’t get this.” Cat frowned. “I thought you told him you never wanted to see him again.”

“I
know
...” Freya wailed. “But I think he was The One.”

“Oh, sweetie ...”

“And now he’s
married
!”

“What?”

Freya ground the heels of her hands into her forehead. “I’ll never see him again. It’s all my fault.”

Ever since that day in Chelsea, her fury and humiliation had begun to abate, to be replaced with a gnawing curiosity. Where was he? What was he doing? What was he thinking? She replayed the events in Cornwall over and over again. It hadn’t been all bad. Some moments had been good. In fact, some had been
marvelous
. On painful reflection, she admitted that Jack might have told the truth when he said that Tash seduced him. Tash didn’t care about Jack; she’d wanted to hurt Freya—and had succeeded brilliantly. It tormented Freya that Tash had slept with Jack, while she had turned down the chance—twice—and now she never would. Her desire shamed her. By September, Freya had been desperate enough to call the Madison home in Oaksboro (Oaksboro! that was it)—not to talk to him, of course, just to see if he was there, maybe even hear his voice say hello. But her call had been answered by a housekeeper. Freya asked tentatively if Jack happened to be there.
Not right now,
came the answer.
He’s out to dinner with his fiancée ... Miss Twink.
Freya couldn’t believe it. She refused to believe it. Pathetically, she had scrolled through the local papers on the Internet until she’d found the announcement for herself.

There was an urgent rap at the door. “Caterina! ...
aeroporto! ... subito! ...
”

Cat shot furiously to her feet. “In a minute,” she yelled.

Freya made herself stand up, too. She caught sight of her blotched face in the mirror above the basin, and tried to pull herself together. “You must go, Cat,” she said. “It’s your wedding day.”

“Fuck the wedding day! My best friend needs me.” Cat threw her arms around Freya and held her close.

“Oh, Cat ...” Freya gave a weak hiccup of laughter and laid her head on Cat’s shoulder, letting Cat stroke her hair. She stared bleakly into nothingness. “What am I going to do?” she moaned.

Cat pulled back a little and looked Freya in the eye. “Honey,
forget him
.” Her hand swiped through the air. “There are lots of men out there—plenty of ’em. When I get back I’ll find you a nice man, just the way you found Michael for me.”

“But I didn’t find Michael for you,” said Freya, laughing through her tears. They reached for each other’s hands, smiling mistily.

There was another knock, gentler this time. The door squealed open. “Uh, darling? The car’s outside. When you’re ready.”

“I’m coming.” Cat beamed at Freya. “Isn’t he wonderful? Now wash your face. You look terrible.”

While Freya obediently splashed water on her eyes and cheeks, Cat repacked her handbag: passport, paperbacks, mineral water, vitamin capsules. “Oh, look,” she said, “I picked this up at the bookstore.”

“What?” Freya peered blearily at Cat’s reflection. Cat had stood up now, bag slung over her shoulder, and was studying something in her hand. It looked like an invitation.

“Hmm,” said Cat, reading. “Fifth Avenue ... very upscale ... November eighth ... the day after tomorrow.
Perfect!
”

“What’s perfect?” Freya turned to look more closely, and gave a cry of repugnance. “No way!”

“Yes! Don’t you see? It’s a Sign.”

“But that’s my birthday! I don’t want to go to a bloody Singles Evening on my birthday.”

“What else are you going to do?”

Freya opened her mouth and closed it again. She knew where she wanted to be, but that was impossible now.

“Listen: here’s the plan. Promise me, or I’m not leaving.” Cat looked so bossy that Freya couldn’t help smiling.

“I promise,” she said.

“On Monday night you’re going to get all dressed up. Buy something new. Do something with your hair. Think
fabulous
.”

Freya gave a pitiful mew.

“You’re going to go to this Singles Evening.” Cat thrust the card into her hand. “And you’re going to meet a Nice Man.”

“Am I?” Freya sniffed.

“Oh, sweetie.” Cat’s face softened. She drew Freya into a fierce hug. “You never know. Look at Michael and me. Anything can happen.”

CHAPTER 34

Jack stepped out of the office building and paused for a moment to flip up the collar of his overcoat. He’d forgotten how ferocious the wind could get here. While he’d been inside the sky had darkened from overcast gray to soiled black. Yellow lights blazed and blinked around him. There was the grind and screech of congested traffic. Figures blurred past, as if on a continuous loop. Jack savored the tainted air while he considered what to do next. He allowed himself to look at his watch, though he knew almost to the minute what time it was. An inner clock had been ticking in his head for days, for months, getting louder and more urgent until now he could think of nothing else but what might—
might
—happen tonight.

He still had an hour to kill. If he took the subway he could be at his destination in twenty minutes—but then what? To sit alone in some coffee shop or bar, at the mercy of his giddying emotions, was unthinkable. He decided to walk. Shoving his gloveless hands into his pockets, he slotted himself into the pedestrian traffic and headed south at a New Yorker’s implacable stride. It was good to be back in the city. He felt energized by the rush of people on this ordinary Monday evening. He liked the feeling that he belonged, that he was one of this elite band of gutsy survivors.

For it seemed, from what Ella had said to him this afternoon, that he had succeeded on one front, at least. She had looked him in the eye, laid a reverent hand on the manuscript he had mailed off from the little country post office two weeks ago, and pronounced it “wonderful.” The best novel she’d read all year. “Dramatic,” “moving,” “memorable,” “original.” She’d already slipped some pages to a couple of editors; one of them had tried to secure a preemptive offer, but she thought she might have a little fun with an auction. The guy at Knopf who never admitted to liking anything had called specially to yawn down the phone that he wouldn’t mind taking a look. Even the publishers who had canceled Jack’s contract were backtracking wildly, after yet another new broom had taken over. Ella didn’t care to put a figure on the probable advance, but she was confident that it would be “substantial.”

Jack had spent a luxurious couple of hours asking Ella to remind him just one more time what it was she especially liked—which scene, what phrase, that joke on pages 211 (great! wasn’t it?). Hadn’t she in fact, now he came to think of it, uttered the word “masterpiece”? Well, no: in fact, she hadn’t. Jack smiled at his own egotism. The book was good, and he had completed it. That was enough. No one could call him a “dilettante.” Right at the end he worked practically night and day. He’d had to, in order to finish in time for the wedding.

His pace slowed as he reached a bookstore, one of those new palaces of literature and caffeine where you could get lost on your way from New Fiction to Travel, emerging hours later with crisp paperbacks on chaos theory or the Russian Revolution and a stomachful of cinnamon cake. The windows were brightly lit and artfully styled, spilling over with desirably packaged books on every subject. Jack hadn’t seen a place like this for months; he paused to feast his eyes. One window was devoted to a single title, a first novel that had been rapturously praised and lavishly publicized. Copies were propped and piled in opulent heaps, flanked by giant review quotes with the usual superlatives. The
Times
bestseller list, magnified to poster size, showed the title ringed at number four. Nestling among the books were blown-up photographs of the author, a young man with movie-star looks. Jack stared at the cocksure face, waiting for envy to kick in, but he felt only a swell of sympathy.
A great beginning, kid: make sure it’s not the end.

“Hey, man, watch your back!” He heard a shout and the clink of bottles as a delivery man trundled a handcart past his heels and swiveled it toward the glass entrance. The bookstore must be putting on some kind of shindig—a book reading or an author signing. Jack hitched up his trousers, wondering whether to go in and see.

He checked his watch again, feeling his ribs contract around his lungs. The long countdown was almost over. The bookstore might offer a welcome distraction for the twenty minutes still to go. But what if she was already waiting? No, that was crazily optimistic. Jack shifted from foot to foot, making up his mind, while his breath puffed miniature clouds into the frosty air.

CHAPTER 35

“Retail is my life,” Mr. Blue Suit was saying.

“Oh, me too!” agreed Ms. Gray Suit.

“Maybe we could get together some time and really rap.”

“I’d like that. Here’s my business card. You can call me at work.”

Mr. Blue Suit pocketed the card and turned away, mission accomplished, to home in on another quarry. His questing glance skimmed the crowd and swept straight over Freya as if she were invisible. It wasn’t surprising: Freya didn’t fit. She had dressed up to signal unmistakably that she wasn’t really a desperate thirtysomething. “Think fabulous,” Cat had said. So she had. Her dress was sleeveless and severely cut, but made out of the softest possible leather, with buttons all the way down the back; she wore very high heels of a purply colour so sensational that it would have been criminal not to buy them. This was quite wrong. All the other women wore business suits with sensible hemlines and nice white blouses. They were so confident, so smiley, so bloody efficient! Chat, card, move on; chat, card, move on—as if they were harvesting a crop. Did they then go on a dating binge, or hoard the cards as some kind of illusory insurance against loneliness?