‘I thought it was you!’ the woman said. ‘Anna,’ she continued. ‘Anna Calhoun. We were at school together.’
‘Oh yes,’ Fliss said, but the ‘s’ came out slurred and then she couldn’t think of anything else to add. She snuck the vodka bottle behind her back, hoping Anna hadn’t seen.
‘I’m just here with my ten-year-old,’ Anna said, gesturing towards a lanky boy with blond hair, sloping shoulders and a humiliated air, standing under a tree. ‘We went to the immersive Van Gogh exhibition. Have you been?’
Fliss shook her head.
‘It’s very good. So innovative. I’m not sure how much Harry enjoyed it but – well, you know what it’s like! Trying to interest children in anything other than their screens.’
‘I don’t,’ Fliss said.
‘I’m sorry?’
‘I don’t know what it’s like. I don’t have kids.’
‘Oh, I’m … I didn’t mean …’ Anna frowned and scrunched up her nose. Fliss wondered if she smelled and drew her jacket closer to her. ‘I haven’t seen you for so long, Fliss! It’s hard to keep up. Are you still in Ibiza? What was it you were doing – jewellery or … no, was it yoga?’
‘This and that,’ Fliss said. It came out as ‘Thisssshhh and tha’. She remembered Anna Calhoun as a prim, joyless schoolgirl, her uniform always crisply ironed, always sitting at the front of the class putting up her hand to answer the teacher’s questions. Back then, Fliss had been the cool, popular one and Anna had wanted to be her friend.
‘And … what are you doing with yourself these days?’ Anna asked, with a sympathetic smile. ‘You look …’ There was a long pause before she settled on ‘… like you’re keeping yourself busy.’
There was a low, rumbling laugh. After a moment, Fliss noticed it was coming from her. She hadn’t meant to, but now here it was. She couldn’t stop. She laughed so hard that her stomach started to spasm and she leaned forward and the vodka bottle rolled out from behind her and smashed on the ground. Anna stepped aside so as not to get her sandals wet.
‘Well, it’s been nice to see you, Fliss,’ she said, already moving away. ‘You take care.’
Fliss watched as Anna walked back to her son, grabbing him by the elbow and ushering him briskly in the direction of the station. Shewatched the Breton stripes and the red belt and the blow-dried blonde hair get further and further away until they became an indistinct mush. Then she vomited.
Maybe it was because of what Ben had said to her in the car that day he took her to rehab. Maybe it was because seeing Anna Calhoun had reminded Fliss of a past in which she hadn’t been as fucked up as she became. Maybe it was remembering Cosima and the dead dog and allowing the shame to seep into her. Maybe it was because she’d lost contact with all her friends from her previous life. Or maybe it was just that she was still drunk. For whatever reason, when she picked up the phone to ask for help, she didn’t call her brother. She called Andrew Jarvis.
It’s not that she knew Jarvis particularly well. But at Ben and Serena’s last Christmas party, he had been kind to her. She had been feeling awkward, newly sober and surrounded by noise and extravagance. Serena’s party planner had decorated the Tipworth rooms with oversized candy canes and swags of gold ribbon. The caterers were serving miniature mince pies embossed with the Fitzmaurice family crest. There was a mulled wine bar, where you could choose which candied fruit to add to your serving. Gospel choir singers lined the hallway and performed covers of Michael Bublé. Everyone had been told to come dressed in the same colour theme as the decor but the only thing Fliss owned in gold was a crochet mini-dress, so Serena had lent her a brocade trouser suit which was too tight around Fliss’s hips. When Fliss examined herself in the mirror, she thought she looked like a doomed Eastern European dictator.
‘And what are we going to do about your hair?’ Serena had said, looking at Fliss’s braids with concern.
‘I thought I’d just … leave it down?’
Serena shook her head.
‘No,’ her sister-in-law said. ‘Do you want to borrow some make-up?’
Serena had a way of asking questions that made Fliss feel small and stupid. She never wore make-up but she nodded and took thebronzing contour stick and the liquid highlighter and the shimmery eyeshadow and Vast Lash mascara and applied them as best she could, trying to make herself acceptable.
At the party, Fliss had made small talk with a man who worked in hedge funds and a woman who spoke with great passion about beagles, before escaping to the welcome coolness of the chapel. The chapel was the only part of Tipworth that Ben and Serena had left untouched. It was linked to the main house by a narrow corridor and as Fliss walked down it, she imagined the footsteps of the monks before her, shuffling in silence to evening prayers. She took a seat in one of the pews. It still smelled of incense even though there hadn’t been a religious service here for many years. It was quiet, the jingling music of the party reduced to a tinny murmur.
She shut her eyes and tried to meditate, visualising a circular whiteness that expanded to block out her thoughts. But the thoughts kept coming.
She heard the door and opened her eyes. It was Jarvis, his bulky silhouette stark against the corridor brightness. An unlit cigar hung from his right hand.
‘Fliss,’ he said. ‘Sorry. Didn’t realise anyone was in here.’
She shrugged.
‘Were you hoping to smoke that?’
He laughed.
‘Yeah, I was rather.’
She shifted up the pew, patting the space next to her.
