“Don’t you‘Oh Francesca’me, like you’re some authority on matters of the heart,” she snarled, her chest pain seemingly forgotten. “You’re a shrivelled old spinster, consumed with jealousy.”
Catherine threw her head back as genuine laughter bubbled up from inside her.
Francesca’s eyes bulged. “What are you laughing at now?”
A tap at the door interrupted. Swiping a tear of laughter from her eye, Catherine stood to let in the room service. A young porter set out the dishes on the low table and Catherine closed the door behind him. When she turned back to Francesca, she sat staring at the plates like she didn’t know what to do next.
“Are you going to eat?” Catherine asked.
“Will you have some too?”
Catherine laughed again. “You just called me a shrivelled old spinster, so I’m not about to sit down to dinner with you.”
Francesca waved a hand between them. “You know I say things sometimes in the heat of the moment. Please.Sit with me a while longer.” She shuffled forward, picked up a chip and blew on it before popping it in her mouth. “Look, there’s plenty for us both. We’ll call a truce over chips.”
Catherine flicked her wrist to look at her watch. “Okay, I’ll stay a while longer, but then I have to get back to feed the cat.”
Francesca arched an eyebrow. “That’s not exactly challenging the shrivelled spinster stereotype, you know?”
“It’s my neighbour’s cat. I seem to have a way of getting myself into these… situations.” Catherine retook her seat and poured herself a cup of tea from the pot as Francesca took bird-like pecks from the club sandwich.
“It’s the first time I haven’t been hit by waves of nausea,” she said between mouthfuls of fries.
“Waves of Nausea,” Catherine mused. “Sounds like it could be an Enya album.”
Francesca laughed; a proper laugh that split her mouth wide open and creased the corners of her eyes in a way she’d hate because she’d given too much away. But it made her look so human, so stunningly flawed.
“You know, I thought you were joking the first time you said you liked Enya. There was me with my cool gothic post-punk rock, and you obsessed with a middle-aged Irish woman and her grandma music.”
Catherine’s mouth gaped in mock-outrage. “Enya wasn’t middle-aged in 1988.”
“Yeah, butyoumight as well have been.”
They both laughed, and something shifted between them. For the first time in a very longtime, Francesca’s company didn’t feel discordant. Here they were, getting along. Laughing together like old friends with a shared history and in-jokes.
When the light of day drained away outside, Catherine got up to leave, but for some reason, she paused to see Francesca into bed. And for some reason, Francesca let her.
Francesca’s eyelids drooped, and Catherine brushed away her still-damp hair and kissed her forehead. As she quietly made her way to the door, Francesca’s sleepy voice croaked behind her, “Trusty?”
Catherine spun back around, softened by the sight of the small woman swallowed up in that big bed. “Hmm?”
“Thank you,” she murmured.
10
ALL THE PIECES
Catherine leaned against her front door, letting it click to a close behind her. She breathed in the familiar scent of her apartment, grounding herself in the enveloping stillness.
A laugh bubbled up from somewhere inside her. Her amusement stemmed not so much from seeing Francesca so completely unravelled — the schadenfreude had been far less thrilling than she’d imagined — more at the unexpected sense of resolution she’d walked away with. A lightness washed over her, as if she’d been unburdened of a weight she hadn’t realised she’d been carrying.
It wasn’t as if Catherine had spent the last three decades consumed by Francesca and the scars of their past, but like Penny had said, something had been holding her back. All along Francesca had been lurking in the back of her mind, like a puzzle she’d never quite managed to solve. But Catherine felt like she’d lifted the veil —Narcissistic Personality Disorder.
For the first time, Catherine had witnessed the other woman having a genuine emotional response to something. Catherine wasn’t a sadist — seeing Francesca wounded was far from pleasurable, but seeing Francesca for who she really was vindicated her own heartache.
Francesca wasn’t a psychopath, after all — incapable of love and merely emulating emotion for her own gain. She was a narcissist, craving validation to inflate her fragile sense of self-worth, and now her supply had run dry, she lay in a crumpled heap like a withdrawing addict.
Catherine heeled off her brogues and bent to tuck them into the shoe rack. She padded through to the kitchen, reached for a crystal tumbler from the cupboard and poured herself a double measure of Balvenie; the eighteen-year-old she reserved for special occasions. Neat — no ice, just the way Bridie had taught her to appreciate it.
