The knocker reverberated down the hall. ‘That’ll be her now. I’m glad she can meet you first, before all the others come down.’ Opal strode out the room, and Noah felt himself standing up straighter. She liked him more than the others. He had suspected as much, but it was thrilling to have her all but confirm it.
He ran his hands down his increasingly crumpled shirt, wishing he had taken the time to pass an iron over it. He heard the women’s voices approaching.
He hadn’t entirely understood what Opal had meant by country club wife until he saw Deborah. Her dark hair was similarly coiffed into a bun, though she was sporting a fine, sharp fringe that curled exaggeratedly inwards towards her forehead. Her lips were painted a bright pink and the blue on her eyelids matched the embroidery on the collar of her white shoulder-padded blazer. She too wore a string of impossibly spherical pearls around her neck.
‘So you’re Noah. Hello, I’m Deborah, but call me Debbie. I’m absolutely delighted to meet you. You wouldn’t believe how curious I’ve been about you all, holed up next door. The temptation to just march over here uninvited and take a good look at everyone has been almost unbearable.’ She spoke fast, almost tripping over the last syllable of each word in her hurry to get to the next.
‘It’s a pleasure to meet you too,’ Noah managed to reply in the time that it took Debbie to take a breath. She shook his hand animatedly.
‘When Opal first told me about this whole plan I was intrigued, more than intrigued,fascinatedby the prospect of having all these young, talented artists right on my doorstep,not that it’s anything to do with me really; it was all Opal’s idea. She’s wonderfully creative like that. Well of course you must know that and how lucky that she found you all really. I mean that kind of money …’
Opal cleared her throat theatrically, and to Deborah’s credit, she caught on straight away. ‘Oh goodness, I am going on, aren’t I. You must think me so provincial, and you’d be right; honestly I hardly ever get into town, let alone down to London!’
Noah could only think to smile and nod. He wasn’t sure he had enough context for people like Deborah to have any opinions about her at all.
‘Shall I open a bottle?’ Opal gestured for Noah to take his usual seat, next to her at the head of the table, and for Deborah to take the other side.
‘I’d love a glass,’ Deborah said absentmindedly. She seemed hesitant about sitting down. ‘Isn’t this Martin’s spot? I wouldn’t want to cause any … upset.’
Noah spotted a flash of exasperation pass across Opal’s face, but she had composed it into nonchalance by the time she turned back to the table, bottle and corkscrew in hand.
‘Sit wherever you’d like, Debbie.’
Deborah settled down next to Noah and when she reached across the table to take the glass from Opal’s hand, Noah was overwhelmed by the smell of patchouli. It was a scent that usually reminded him of home, but the perfume that Deborah wore had been corrupted by something overly sweet, almost vanilla. It was quite unpleasant.
He hoped that his distaste hadn’t made itself evident on his face as he sat back and listened to the two women talking, allthe while berating himself for ending up here again, a lapdog at Opal’s right hand.
He was a little relieved when he saw Adam through the doorway. As usual he was neatly turned out, certainly no stranger to an iron, with his navy shirt tucked into a pair of high-waisted pinstripe trousers tastefully broken up by an elegant tan belt.
‘Good evening, Miss Fairfax,’ Adam said smoothly. Noah noticed Deborah’s expression of surprise, and then he noticed Opal noticing it.
‘Opal, please, Adam – that’ll do fine.’
‘Of course, Opal, my apologies.’ Adam shook his head slowly and good-humouredly, ever unruffled. The same could not be said for Opal.
‘Oh please don’t … apologise. There’s really no need.’
Noah felt the urge to defuse the situation, to save Opal from whatever inexplicable faux pas she had committed in front of her friend.
‘I really like your get-up, Adam – great trousers.’ Noah was throwing himself on his sword, but he also meant it; Adam did always look great.
‘Noah, my friend, thank you.’ Adam held his hands together, as though in prayer, and bowed his head slightly. It was probably just an expression, but Noah hoped there was a sliver of truth in that address. ‘My friend’. When their eyes met, deep brown and amber grey, Noah felt sure there was. And if not friendship, then perhaps something else.
Chapter 24
Opal was already beginning to regret inviting Debbie for dinner. There was something about bringing these versions of herself together, one which she was already starting to think of as ‘the old her’, and then whatever this ‘new her’ was, that was deeply unsettling. Debbie, more than Gareth, and even more than Martin, represented a life that she was now trying to get away from.
She was also a woman, so she understood the cues of reinvention more than Opal’s distracted husband. That was why she’d opted for the skirt suit, the eyeshadow and the pearls – she couldn’t bring herself quite yet to kill this other Opal, to shed that skin completely. And she knew that when it came to bearing witness to that transformation, it would be Debbie’s perception that really mattered. There would be no going back then.
Not because Debbie would be judgemental, quite the contrary. Because if Debbie perceived the new Opal and didn’t much care either way, it would mean that the pantomime version of herself, the one Opal had been loyally playing for the past decade, was a show that nobody had ever asked for. And what a devastating waste of time that would make it.
Now, though, it was too late. Everyone had taken their seats and there were three courses to get through. Opal would have to contain her multitudes for one more dinner at the very least.
Johan had taken the seat next to her, unusually leaving Ruby in the lurch to squeeze in beside Deborah. Opal wondered what was going on between them. She wasn’t so oblivious as not to have noticed the budding sexual tension between them. She had suspected that at least a part of Ruby’s hostility against her was somehow about impressing Johan, or challenging Opal for his affections. Their encounter in the corridor earlier had confirmed it.
And now, as Heather sat in her seat, that left Martin to take the other head of the table. She would have rather not been facing her husband, especially as she battled with the strange heat that rose within her whenever she was close to Noah, but that’s how things had turned out.
‘What are we having then, darling, or should I ask Hetty?’ His tone betrayed an edge of resentment, perhaps for having been banished from his spot next to his wife by a younger, prettier man. Opal found herself revelling in it.
