33
NOW
‘Bloody hell, you’re alive!’ Kitty said dramatically again on answering.
‘Why do you always say that?’
‘Oh, I don’t know. Because sometimes you take so long to get back to me I think you’re either dead or have been abducted by aliens or something.’
‘Oh, come on, I haven’t been that bad recently, have I?’ Bella asked, making a face that her sister couldn’t see.
‘I think an average of two text messages a week has got to be classed as pretty poor communication,’ her sister said. But there was a smile in her voice. ‘It’s good to hear from you.’
‘Sorry for being crap.’
‘What, recently? Or throughout your entire life?’
‘Ha ha, very funny.’ Bella wondered, actually, why she hadn’t called Kitty much over the last couple of months. Just hearing her sister’s voice was somehow reassuring, grounding. It had just been hectic, and confusing. And she wasn’t sure which parts of her life would pass the ‘Kitty test’ and which would earn her big-sisterly disapproval.
‘So. Tell me everything,’ Kitty said, and there was a familiar creak as she sat down on her leather couch.
‘Um. Well, it’s all going OK,’ Bella started, hesitantly.
‘Work going well? What exactly is your job again?’
‘Yeah,’ she said carefully. ‘Work is going well.’
‘And what’s the house like, now you’ve settled in? Getting to know your housemates a bit?’
Bella thought of Henri; the nights they’d spent twisted in his expensive Egyptian cotton sheets. The fact they now barely saw each other. She thought of Odette and her cluttered room, the confrontation which neither of them had mentioned since. And Brad, with his easy-going attitude and the fact that he’d sort of rescued her from a difficult predicament at work. And the feeling that she got when he was around that she couldn’t quite explain. ‘Yeah, they’re fine,’ she said at last.
There was silence on the line then Kitty said, ‘You would tell me, wouldn’t you, if you weren’t OK?’
‘Of course!’
‘Because I worry about you; you know I do.’
‘I know. But you needn’t, Kitty. I’m actually fine. Better than fine, really.’
‘Good. Well, good.’
‘How areyouanyway?’
There was a pause. ‘Yeah, I’m OK. Ty’s being a little rascal and refusing to sleep through the night, just when we thought we had that cracked, so we’re trying to survive on a ridiculously small amount of sleep. But otherwise, yeah.’
Bella thought of her own broken nights, but she wasn’t sure nights made short by clubbing, or sex, or worry that you’re pretending to be someone you’re not, quite compared to having to wake up for an infant. ‘Hope it gets better.’
‘Me too.’
There was another pause. The conversation was stilted and neither of them seemed to be able to find a way through. Bella racked her brain but there was nothing much she could say. In the end they finished the call, with Bella promising to catch up again midweek. Once the presentation was over and they’d got Hotel Club status, she would come clean – until then she couldn’t face the fallout.
She lay back on her bed for a while, then seconds later had to jerk herself from the edge of sleep. If she didn’t do something she’d fall back into slumber and lose half the day. And Sundays were precious things – not to be wasted. She had work to do, and washing, and she probably ought to get some food into the cupboards.Well, Bella,she thought to herself as she got up and pulled on yesterday’s outfit,you really are living the dream.
* * *
The doorbell made her jump. She was in the kitchen, sipping a black coffee and scrolling the news on her phone when it happened, and for a moment she waited to see if anyone else would make the effort to answer it. It wouldn’t be for her, obviously. Unless it was some sort of delivery she’d forgotten about.
The other bedroom doors remained resolutely shut so on the second ring she sighed, got to her feet and trudged to the front door, flinging it wide. Then she gasped. On the doorstep, almost unrecognisable in some sort of workout gear, earbud in one ear, the other removed in her hand, stood Claudine.
