She gives me a withering glance. If only she knew.
Two Cat Faces brush past us. One turns – version 1.0 I think – and I swear it’s laughing at me. Surely they’ve renamed 2.0, but I don’t care enough to inquire.
‘Sorry to keep you waiting, girls,’ Liv begins when she appears.
I hate how she refers to us as ‘girls’. We’re not inSex and the City. And if we were, she’d be one of the new characters in the reboot that no one gives a toss about.
Now she’s staring at her phone and clenching her jaw.
‘Everything okay?’ asks Anna.
‘Problems with the orangery,’ she sighs.
She’s referring to the extension she and Brandon are building on the back of their house. The way she talks about it, you’d think she was recreating the Palace of Versailles.
‘Brandon was in construction before he became a personal trainer, so he’s been working on it himself, but now the council’s planning officers are telling us we’ve gone over the agreed boundary by ten centimetres.’
‘Is that all?’ says Anna.
‘I know. But it’s enough for someone to have reported us. How in hell could they have known? Anyway, now we either keep on building, return to the planning department and put in a retrospective application with no guarantee of it being approved, and risk having to demolish it. Or Brandon has to dig out what we’ve already done and start again.’
‘Who complained?’ Anna asks.
‘It was anonymous.’
Liv looks at me for a beat too long. I think she’s studying my reaction.
‘Some people aren’t happy unless they’re making other people miserable,’ I suggest.
The ‘people’ I’m referring to is just one person. Me, of course. While Liv and the family were out one afternoon, I snuck into their back garden to measure theirconservatorybefore comparing it with the planning application listed on the council’s website. It was larger than they’d been granted permission for. If people like Liv are given an inch, they’ll take a mile. And then probably build on that as well. Not this time.
‘What are you going to do?’ asks Anna.
‘I think we’ll have to take it down,’ Liv acquiesces. ‘I’m starting to wonder if someone has a vendetta against us, because the studio had six one-star reviews appear on Trustpilot last night. That’s brought my average down to two and a half out of five. I checked the names of the reviewers against past bookings, and unless they’ve changed their identities, I don’t think they’ve been to any of my classes. And they were all posted within half an hour of each other.’
Once more, Liv’s gaze lingers on me.Guilty as charged, I think. There’s one thing she has yet to learn about me, and that is if you poke your nose into my business, then I will retaliate in kind. By offering Frankie advice about her non-binary phase, Livoverstepped the mark. And don’t get me started on how she tried to humiliate me in front of Anna with that eBay auction. Or led me to believe that she was treating me and not just Anna to the spa weekend. Since she moved here, she has been gaslighting me so often I’m thinking of carrying a caged canary to detect each whiff of deceit.
‘Perhaps Anna and I can leave you five-star reviews?’ I suggest. ‘And if we get Nicu and Drew to do the same, that should push your average back up, shouldn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ she says, a little thrown by my offer. ‘That’d be really kind of you.’
‘Anything for a friend,’ I reply.
Chapter 40
Anna
‘Did someone have fun on their night out?’ Liv asks Margot suddenly. Margot looks at me blankly, then back at Liv. ‘Last night,’ Liv prompts. ‘That Turkish restaurant on the Wellingborough Road, I saw you leaving, all dressed up.’
‘It wasn’t me,’ she replies.
‘You must have a lookalike then. She was even in the same-style Donna Karan dress you wore to our New Year’s Eve party.’
‘Nope.’ Margot shrugs. Her cheeks are reddening. She pushes her chair back and stands up. ‘Little girls’ room,’ she says, as if she can’t get away quickly enough.
This little paroxysm of weirdness doesn’t go unnoticed by either Liv or me.
My buzzing phone distracts me. It’s so bright out here that I squint to read the screen. It’s a text message from Drew to say he’s working late again tonight. That’s four nights in the last two weeks, but I don’t mind. I’m glad he’s finally found a job he’s taking seriously.
