Rory smiles wryly. He saw them in action many moons ago. If he can remember my birthday then he can likely remember them shrieking in the driveway one afternoon as he dropped me back at the end of term, my mum throwing a tennis racquet at my dad’s head. A beautiful snapshot of middle-class dysfunction.
‘What you doing with my dad anyway?’
‘Work thing.’ He doesn’t make any move away so I push for more.
‘You’re a chef? Or in media?’ Both surprise me.
‘Neither, reputation management.’ He leans against the bough of the tree and smiles at me. Some men grow into their looks and Rory Walters definitely has, but if he’s working with Dad, that doesn’t speak well to his character.
‘Ah,The purest treasure mortal times afford / Is spotless reputation,’ I quote.
‘Eh?’
‘Never mind. Reputation management? I didn’t know that was a thing.’ I manage not to say it sounds a bit weaselly.
‘Yep, I got in early but it has exploded as an industry now.’
‘You’re going to have your work cut out with my dad.’
‘Yeah, I know. But we can get his optics back on track if he does what he’s told to.’ A laugh escapes my lips. Standing, I drop the end of my smoke to the ground and wrap my blanket around me, aware that I am far from decent and for some reason, caring about it.
‘Come on then, I’ll walk you to the front door, but do you mind ringing the bell and pretending you haven’t seen me? It’ll give me a couple of hours more respite.’
He grins again and nods. I’d never noticed all those years ago how green his eyes are.
Rory.
I hadn’t expected to see Belle today. In fact, I haven’t seen her for years. She’d been a funny thing at university, somehow managing to combine wild with aloof, party girl with snippets of intellectual brilliance – on the rare occasions she turned up.
I had been fascinated by her back then – she was everything my life wasn’t. But for all of her privilege she had always reminded me of a world-worn baby fox on its guard.
I hadn’t been able to put her into any kind of box. I was fond of boxes, assessing people and who they were, where they sat. It had given order to life. She had something of the indefinable. I knew even if I squashed her into that poor little rich girl box she would fight her way out, battering the edges down, refusing to be contained, screaming that there was more.
We had done the same course, English Literature, and our paths had crossed many times. She had been in the same halls as Jessica, they had shared a kitchen, but very little else, and I had found myself driving her home more than once. It had become a habit; with her parents so close to Bristol and mine living there it became an end-of-term routine we fell into. I would drive and she would moan about spending time at her parents, rhapsodise or complain about her latest boyfriend, panic over essays and later her dissertation. For all of her doubt she had a mind that worked so quickly, fair racing past mine.
I have often wondered what happened to her, and when her father’s agent had reached out, curiosity had been awakened. What was she doing now? Who was she? Had she changed? Smoking a joint outside her parents’ house whilst wearing some ludicrous outfit that merged both aging granny and pre-pubescent teen was definitely the Belle I remembered.
I was pleased to see her, but it was bittersweet. I had imagined her trotting the globe, capturing hearts and minds, pushing boundaries and opening worlds in whichever field she had chosen rather than getting stoned in her parents’ garden. But then who am I to judge? And who am I to assume that because she’s home on her mum’s birthday she has not made something of her life, is not happy, successful? Judgement, that was the old me, putting-people-into-boxes me. The Rory that thought if you made the right choices, did the right thing, then you couldn’t go wrong.
I should have been more Belle.
Having given Belle a good five minutes to make her escape upstairs, I press the buzzer.
‘Hello, hello!’ Nick Wilde flings the door open and flourishes his arms, welcoming me into his home. His trademark blond hair is sticking out at all angles atop his ruddy face. A large glass of red in his hand.
It’s eleven in the morning.
Great.
I follow him through to a huge kitchen. The house itself is old and sprawling, a little neglected in places but squeaking with generational wealth, whilst the kitchen itself is new money, achingly modern. Sleek NASA-like appliances, razor-sharp lighting juxtaposes with a blazing fire encased by old stone, and a huge, worn wooden table that could have easily seated the Last Supper and had room for some more.
Cyndi, Belle’s mother, is sat at the table, and her features fuse themselves into a generous welcome the minute she sees me. Performance art. Which, like the ridges, scrapings and stains on the kitchen table, I suspect has been perfected over the generations.
For two hours I sit there listening to why Nick isn’t to blame for his reputation being in tatters. A whole bottle is downed as he talks, chopping vegetables at speed, caressing meat with its fat in marbled thick lines. ‘Do stay for lunch.’
‘Yes, do,’ Cyndi echoes.
‘You know how some women are – flighty, hysterical, will say anything for attention and especially for a payout.’ He continues to prevaricate and my eyes flick to his wife, who is up and filling her mug from the boiling water tap. Her hand is tight on the mug handle, gripping it the same way she is holding her shoulders, taut, her rigidity at complete odds with the looseness of her husband. ‘I could be the Archbishop of bloody Canterbury and the newspapers, that scum, will still find lies to print, to spread on fucking Instagram,’ he adds.
