Tom was obvious – with his expensive clothes and theatre background it wasn’t hard to see what they had in common. Clare had always loved good-looking people, women as well as men, and she took an uncomplicated, generous pride in the attractiveness of friends. There was nothing snide about her admiration – she was beautiful enough herself to be unthreatened by beauty in others – and she loved helping people make the best of themselves, even the less promising candidates like me. I remembered being dragged around to shop after shop before a big night out, with Clare holding up dresses against my skinny bust-less frame and pursing her lips in appraisal until she found the one that was perfect for me. She had an eye for what flattered. She was the one who had told me I should get my hair cropped. I had never listened to her back then. Now, ten years later, I wore it short and I knew she’d been right.
Melanie and Flo were more mysterious. Something Melanie had said during the early emails had made me think she worked as a lawyer, or possibly an accountant, and she did have the faint air of someone who would be more comfortable in a suit. Her handbag and shoes were expensive but the jeans she was wearing were what Clare, ten years ago, would have called ‘mum jeans’ – generic blue, unflatteringly cut to bunch at the top.
Flo’s jeans on the other hand were pure designer, but there was something oddly uncomfortable about the way she wore them. The entire outfit looked like it had been picked wholesale off a display in All Saints with no regard for whether it fitted or flattered her frame, and as I watched she pulled awkwardly at the top, trying to tug it down over the soft chubby bulge where the waist of her jeans cut into her hip. It looked like the kind of outfit Clare might have picked out for herself, but only someone cruel would have suggested it to Flo.
Flo and Melanie together made a strange contrast with Tom. It was hard to imagine the Clare I’d known with either of them. Was it just that they had been friends at university and had stayed in touch? I knew that kind of friendship, the one you make in Freshers’ Week and realise as time goes on that you’ve nothing in common besides staying in the same halls, but somehow you keep sending birthday cards and Facebook likes. But then, it was ten years since I had known Clare. Maybe the Melanie-and-Flo Clare was the real one now.
As I looked round the circle, I realised that the others were doing the same thing; sizing up the guests they didn’t know, trying to fit the strangers in with their mental image of Clare. I caught Tom’s eye as he stared at me with a frank curiosity that bordered almost on hostility, and dropped my own gaze to the floor. No one wanted to go first. The silence stretched until it threatened to become awkward.
‘I’ll begin,’ Melanie said. She pushed her hair back off her face and fiddled with something at her neckline. I saw that it was a tiny silver cross on a chain, the kind you get as at christenings present. ‘I’m Melanie Cho, well Melanie Blaine-Cho now I guess, but it’s a bit of a mouthful and I’ve kept my own name for work. I shared a house at university with Flo and Clare, but I took two years out before uni so I’m a bit older than the rest of you guys … at least I don’t know about you, Tom? I’m twenty-eight.’
‘Twenty-seven,’ Tom said.
‘So I’m the group granny. I’ve just had a baby, well, six months ago. And I’m breast-feeding so please excuse me if you see me running out of the room with giant wet patches on my boobs.’
‘Are you pumping and dumping?’ Flo asked sympathetically, and over her shoulder I saw Nina go cross-eyed and mime strangling herself. I looked away, refusing to be drawn in.
‘Yes, I thought about trying to bag it, but I thought, well, I’ll probably be drinking and taking it back down will be a right pain. Um … what else? I live in Sheffield. I’m a lawyer, but I’m on maternity leave. My husband’s looking after Ben today. Ben’s our baby. He’s … oh well, you don’t want to hear me bore on. He’s just lovely.’
She smiled, her rather worried face lighting up and two deep dimples forming in her cheeks, and I felt a pang at my heart. Not broodiness – I didn’t want to be pregnant in any way, shape or form – but a pang for that complete, uncomplicated happiness.
‘Go on, show us a piccie,’ Tom said.
Melanie dimpled again and pulled out her phone. ‘Well, if you insist. Look, this was when he was born …’
I saw a picture of her, lying back on a hospital bed, her face bleached to clay-colour and her hair in black rats’ tails around her shoulders, beaming tiredly down at a white bundle in her arms.
I had to look away.
‘And this is him smiling – it wasn’t his first smile, I didn’t catch that, but Bill was away in Dubai so I made sure I snapped the next one and texted him. And this is him now – you can’t see his face very well, he’s got his bowl on his head, bless.’
The baby was unrecognisable from the angry, blue-black stare of the first picture – a chubby fat-faced little thing, crowing with laughter. His face was half-obscured by an orange plastic dish, and some kind of green goop was running down his round cheeks.
‘Bless!’ Flo said. ‘He looks just like Bill, doesn’t he?’
‘Oh my God!’ Tom looked half-amused, half-horrified. ‘Welcome to parenthood. Please abandon your dry-clean-only clothes at the door.’
Melanie tucked her phone away, the smile still on her lips.
‘It is a bit like that. But it’s amazing how quickly you get used to it. It seems completely normal to me now to check my hair for gobs of porridge before I leave the house. Let’s not talk about him anyway, I’m already homesick enough, I don’t want to make it worse. What about you, Nina?’ She turned to where Nina was sitting beside the stove, hugging her knees. ‘I remember we met once at Durham, didn’t we? Or did I imagine that?’
‘No, you’re right, I did come up once. I think I was on my way to see a mate at Newcastle. I don’t remember meeting Flo, but I definitely remember running into you in the bar – was that right?’
Melanie nodded.
‘For those of you who don’t know, I’m Nina, I was at school with Clare and Nora. I’m a doctor … well, I’m training to be a surgeon, actually. In fact I just spent three months overseas with Médecins sans Frontières where I learned a whole lot more than I ever wanted to about gunshot trauma wounds … in spite of what the Mail’d have you believe we don’t see a whole load of those in Hackney.’
She rubbed at her face and for the first time since we’d left London I saw her veneer crack a little. I knew Colombia had affected her, but I’d only seen her twice since she came back and both times she hadn’t talked about it, except to make some jokes about the food. For a moment I got a glimmer of what it might be like to patch people together for a living … and sometimes fail.
‘Anyway,’ she forced a smile. ‘Tim, Timmy-boy, Timbo: shoot.’
‘Yes …’ Tom said, with a wry look, ‘well, I suppose the first thing that you should know about me is that my name is Tom. Tom Deauxma. I’m a playwright, as previously advertised. I’m not huge, but I’ve done a lot of fringe stuff and won a few awards. I’m married to the theatre director Bruce Westerly – maybe you’ve heard of him?’
There was a pause. Nina was shaking her head. Tom’s eye travelled around the circle looking for recognition until it rested hopefully on me. Reluctantly I gave a little shake. I felt bad, but lying wasn’t going to help. He gave a small sigh.
‘Oh well, I guess if you’re outside the theatre maybe you don’t notice the director as much. That’s how I know Clare – via her work for the Royal Theatre Company. Bruce does quite a bit with them – and he directed Coriolanus, of course.’
‘Of course,’ Flo said, nodding earnestly. After my previous failure I felt I could at least pretend knowledge of this, so I nodded along with Flo – maybe slightly too enthusiastically: I felt my hair tie slip out. Nina yawned and got up to leave the room without a word.
‘We live in Camden … We have a dog called Spartacus, Sparky for short. He’s a labradoodle. Two years old. He’s completely adorable but not the ideal dog for a couple of workaholics who travel a lot. Luckily we have a brilliant dog-walker. I’m a vegetarian … What else? Oh dear, that’s a terrible indictment, isn’t it? Two minutes and I’ve run out of interesting things to say about myself. Oh – and I have a tattoo of a heart on my shoulder blade. That’s it. How about you, Nora?’