‘But you must have known each other.’
‘We did.’
My glass is empty. I wonder if I could make my way to the drinks cabinet and—
‘We were pals, weren’t we, Martin?’
Jarvis is now at his wife’s side, placing a meaty arm around her thick waist. I smell his sweat. He has always smelled like this: of fusty onions and superiority.
‘I wouldn’t say that,’ I reply. ‘But,’ I turn solicitously to Bitsy, ‘we did indeed know each other.’
‘And now here you are again, LS.’ Jarvis blinks slowly. ‘We simply can’t get rid of you.’
I stare at him.
‘Ellis?’ Bitsy says, spearing an olive with a toothpick. ‘Why are you calling him Ellis? He says his name’s Martin.’
‘LS,’ I explain. ‘My nickname used to be Little Shadow.’
‘Because he followed us around all the time,’ Jarvis adds.
‘Goodness! How strange,’ Bitsy says, spitting out bits of olive as she speaks. One of them lands between my thumb and forefinger.
‘Isn’t it?’ I say, nodding my head in a great show of agreement. ‘Such a lack of imagination. At least the nickname could have been funny, couldn’t it, Bitsy? Is Bitsy a nickname?’
‘Gracious me, no.’ She glances at me with horror. ‘It’s short for Elizabeth. That should be perfectly obvious.’ I skewer myself an olive and gesture with it like a miniature sword.
‘As it was,’ I continue, as if she hasn’t spoken, ‘it just all felt … so savagely … boring.’
I eat the olive. Jarvis’s face is pale. He tries to find something to say, chewing the air while he attempts to form a word, but he can’t do it. He closes his mouth with a popping sound, goldfish-like.
And then – praise be! – Serena is back at my side, offering me an ice-cold martini. I feel a quiet anger tremble beneath my skin. I take the drink and she leads me towards one of the sofas. We sit.
‘You looked like you needed saving,’ she says.
‘Thank you.’
I drink. The alcohol punches the back of my throat. Better.
‘Bitsy is deathly.’
‘That’s terribly unfair on death.’
Serena snorts.
‘Death would never wear that skirt,’ I continue.
She tries to swallow her laughter and the effort causes her eyes to well up.
‘Death would rather die than be married to Andrew Jarvis.’
Abruptly, the giggling stops. She sips her drink, gazing at an indeterminate point in the middle distance. I’ve lost her. I find myself scrabbling for a morsel that will return her to me. What did I say wrong? What misstep did I make? And what could I now say or do or be in order to wrestle back her attention?
A great lassitude washes over me. I am reminded of every moment inthe past when I was sucked into the Fitzmaurice orbit and encouraged to believe I mattered. Lady Katherine would smile at me for helping prune the rose bushes. George would pat me on the back after I’d made a croquet hoop. Fliss would wink at me for laughing at her joke across the dinner table. Ben would pass me a roll-up, the paper still damp from his lips. Then the usual seedlings of hope would start sprouting. It was the hope that was cruellest – relentless in its irrepressibility, despite the inevitability of the next day’s trampling, when Lady Katherine would raise her eyebrows at something stupid I said. When George wouldn’t offer me a lift to the station. When Fliss would slam the door to her bedroom. When Ben would go for a beer with Jarvis and not invite me. I would withdraw, silent, unobserved, understanding the cool, clear truth of not being cared about. So then I, too, pretended not to care until it became a muscle I flexed so repeatedly that the pretence was part of me. The Fitzmaurices had taught me that in order to survive, you had to pretend more and care less. And then you had tobecareless. Until there was no caring at all. Then – and only then – you were ready to rule.
‘What are we all talking about?’ Ben says, re-entering the room right on cue with a basket of logs.
‘Your schooldays,’ Bitsy says. She is now ensconced in an armchair, the hideous skirt obscuring most of the upholstery. Jarvis stands behind her like a security guard, but he’s not looking down at his wife. He’s looking at Serena.
