I’d expected to dislike this tall, slim girl with the cloudy auburn hair because Nate had gone out with her before me. But two minutes in Bea’s presence had sorted that out. She’d been sitting with them all, chatting mainly to Finn, when Nate introduced me.
‘Nate Stanley, in the name of the sisterhood, I am ordering you to be nice to lovely Marin and don’t leave her waiting for you in random pubs,’ she’d said.
‘Yes, or we’ll make you suffer,’ said Finn lazily. ‘He has no manners. Too macho,’ he confided to me.
‘I am not,’ said Nate, stung.
‘He’s a sweetie,’ Bea had whispered to me, ‘but don’t tell him I said that. He’s like the big brother I never had. If he steps out of line, tell me or Finn.’
I wish I could tell her that something feelsout-of-line right now but there’s nothing I can put my finger on. Besides, Bea has enough to cope with. Life as a widow with an almostten-year-old boy is not easy. She’s been alone since a car crash took her belovedJean-Luc ten years ago. She doesn’t need me moaning on with my wild imaginings about Angie wanting to get her hands on Nate. Because that’s all they are.
Bea lost the man she loved in one fatal moment when she was eight and a half months pregnant with their child.
If anyone gets to moan, it’s Bea.
3
Bea
‘Kite-surfing orhang-gliding?’ asks Shazz.
‘I’m so much more akite-surfing sort of gal,’ I say sarcastically, hauling the newly changed duvet onto the bed and making everything neat. I love having fresh bedclothes at the weekend. Ironed and everything. The first time Shazz realised I iron my sheets, she said, ‘You’re fucking kidding me, right?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘I like ironed sheets and a pretty bed, so shoot me. And watch the language – the kids will hear.’
The kids are my Luke and her Raffie, born around the same time, introduced at the health clinic when they were a month old and both of us were single mothers with newborns, reeling with exhaustion. I wasthirty-three, Shazz wastwenty-three. We had nothing in common except our babies, but we clicked.
Raffie’s over here for a play date and there’s much giggling from downstairs as they create baby chickens on Minecraft, the current craze. Shazz has stayed to chat and Christie and the girls are coming later.
‘They hear bad language everywhere,’ says Shazz now, and she’s right. Fighting the onslaught of bad language and the fear of social media awaiting them mean mothering is tricky, to say the least.
I neatly arrange the fake mohair blanket in a seafoam colour at the end of the bed, fix my cushions on the pillows and admire my hard work.
Shazz, one of my best friends since that day in the health clinic and a woman whoseultra-pink hair is almost definitely visible from space, is sitting on the floor against the radiator not helping in the slightest.
But then Shazz has seen me at my worst in this bed, like that time when the kids were tiny when Luke and I both had a vomiting bug and she came over to take care of us, which is not something everyone would do. Anyone who’s stripped the bed and remade it, while I retched loudly in the bathroom, and then tucked me back into bed with rehydration salts and said; ‘Sleep, babes, I’ll take care of everything,’ never has to bother helping again. They have earned the right to sit on the floor and drink coffee.
‘Iskite-surfing that one where they look as if they’re being dragged out to sea?’ I ask, starting dusting.
‘Yeah, I think,’ she says, which is her version of ignoring me. She’s busy on her tablet writing me up a dating profile despite my protests that hell will freeze over before I go on another date. In the past eight years – since Shazz and our other friend, Christie, started pushing me to try again – I’ve been on a few dates. Disaster does not come near describing any of them.
At the top of my list of shame stars Ed. He was aset-up by an old school friend and in her fantasy world, her cousin Ed and I – two lonely people – were going to fall madly in love with each other.
This type of behaviour makes a woman wonder exactly what her old friends think of her when they stick cousin Ed on a platter and say, ‘Now, there you are! A man! He’s just your sort.’
Ed wasnobody’ssort. He had limited small talk unless it was about the rise ofright-wing European politics (he was all for it) or model trains. Ed had been searching for love for years. Years. Women were picky, he said with narrowed eyes. Women expect men to buy them dinner into the bargain. Did they think he was made of money?
It was a summer party, so I excused myself to the bathroom, had no coat to find, and headed for home. I’d had the most amazing, wonderful husband and he’d been snatched from me, leaving me a widow atthirty-three. And people were trying to set me up with losers like Ed?
‘You’re thinking about Ed,’ says Shazz, long neon and diamantepurple-gel nails working the keypad, looking for hunks who’d fancy single mothers. ‘You have an Ed look on your face.’
‘Delayed shock,’ I say.
‘You do French, right?’ she asks.
Jean-Luc was French and we met when I was brushing up my French at an evening course he was teaching.
‘Yeeees,’ I say, dragging the word out. I can see sheer filth coming out of this online profile. Shazz could have so much fun with my ability to do thingsFrench-style.
