they were.
‘Thank you, Emily. Good luck with the rest of your course. I look forward to reading your first novel one day.’
‘Yeah. Right.’ Emily threw him a final glance over her shoulder before closing the door behind her.
It would be almost a year before she saw him again.
AUGUST 1998
‘President Bill Clinton has given a nationally televised statement, in which he admits that he had an “improper physical relationship” with White House intern Monica Lewinsky, and that it was “not appropriate”.’
WHITSTABLE
Melissa opened the bottle of champagne with a practised pop and expertly poured some into each of the four glasses she had lined up on the granite worktop.
‘Not for me, thanks.’ Sophie wouldn’t look at Melissa as she spoke, turning away from her and perching on one of the stools lined up against the breakfast bar.
‘What? You’re joking, aren’t you? I’ve known you for eight years now and you’ve never once turned down champagne.’
‘I’m not feeling great, to be honest.’
Melissa’s antennae prickled. Sometimes she thought she knew Sophie better than she knew herself. Something was very wrong and she did indeed look like death.
After a moment spent staring at Sophie’s back, Melissa quickly drained Sophie’s glass and put it in the sink. Then she picked up two glasses and handed them out to Amy and Emily who were sitting at the pretty cloth-covered wooden table by the window. They were chatting animatedly and hadn’t noticed the exchange between Sophie and Melissa.
‘Here’s to Amy and Nick!’ Melissa interrupted, striding into the middle of the room with her own full champagne flute aloft.
Sophie scuttled to the cupboard and retrieved a wine glass, which she quickly filled with tap water. Melissa pretended not to see.
Amy, wearing a short, floaty green dress that showed off her long, toned legs and matched her vivid eyes perfectly, stood up and twirled in delight, sending her long auburn hair swinging behind her.
Melissa watched her, envy scorching through her like heartburn as she raised her glass to toast Amy’s engagement. Nick had proposed to her during a romantic weekend in Capri. According to Amy, he had waited until they had arrived by chairlift at the top of a mountain before bending down on one knee and producing a stunning antique diamond ring. He was rich, he was so handsome it was almost comical and he was madly in love with Amy.
Melissa couldn’t understand why she felt so envious. She had no desire to settle down and anyway, she hadn’t met anyone she would want to settle down with. Yet Amy’s happiness and radiance made her feel as though she had somehow failed.
How different Amy’s life suddenly seemed to the others’, having all travelled down such wildly contrasting paths since their weekend away last year. Emily was still scrimping and struggling to support herself and Jack alone; Sophie seemed to have lost her natural sparkle and disappeared into her own melancholy world and Melissa’s love life was non-existent. Well, that wasn’t strictly true. Melissa’s sex life was excellent. It was just that there wasn’t much love involved in any of her liaisons, mainly because the men she slept with were usually married, or in long-term relationships. She told herself that she didn’t care: she was young and she was having fun. She dismissed the niggling voice whispering in her ear in the middle of the night that sex, however good, was no replacement for love. Nor was it actually very much fun.
‘So when’s the big day then?’ Emily’s voice cut through Melissa’s maudlin thoughts as they all pulled a chair around the table and sat down. Distractedly, Melissa picked up a corner of the checked blue-and-white tablecloth and began to twist it around her thumb, remembering as she did so how, as a child, she used to twist her special blanket in the same way, before sucking her thumb. She had a sudden flashback to her four-year-old self, sitting on the stairs watching her mum and dad scream at each other with pure hatred in their eyes. That must have been the last row before they split up for good. She couldn’t remember being in that house after that night.
Amy took a sip of her champagne, the bubbles dancing in the liquid like a perfect reflection of the glints of light in her green eyes. Happiness, Melissa decided, unable to pull her own eyes away from Amy’s, was the best beauty product there was. She had never seen anyone look more beautiful.
‘I’m not entirely sure but I think it’ll be about this time next year. Nick’s in charge – he has very firm ideas about what he wants. I’ll just do what I’m told.’
‘We could make our weekend away next year your hen weekend!’ Melissa’s thoughts snapped back to the present and she glugged her glass of champagne greedily, eager to shut out the flashbacks to the past. She placed it carefully on the table, before lifting the bottle and refilling, noticing that Sophie made to cover hers with her hand just in case Melissa tried to refill it. But as no one else had drained their glass the way Melissa had, she just returned the half-empty bottle to the table.
‘That’s a great idea!’ Amy paused and looked at each of them in turn, as if she was contemplating whether to say something. ‘Actually,’ she began, clearly having decided to say whatever it was. ‘There’s something I’d like to ask you all…’
A whisper of anticipation swept around the table. Melissa’s eyes instinctively turned towards Sophie, who raised her eyebrows.
‘I wondered if you might consider being my bridesmaids?’ Amy suddenly looked shy.
‘What? All of us?’ Sophie had a slight look of panic on her face.
‘Yes! All of you!’ A tiny furrow appeared in the skin between Amy’s eyebrows, as if she was suddenly unsure whether she had said the right thing. ‘Although… only if you want to.’
‘Of course we all want to!’ Melissa threw Sophie a what the hell? look. What was going on with her?
‘Y… yes!’ Sophie stuttered out the words. ‘We’d l… love to!’
Amy’s face relaxed into a wide smile. ‘Oh, that’s amazing! Thank you.’ She clapped her hands with glee. ‘And Em, I was thinking that maybe Jack could be my pageboy?’
Emily nodded immediately. ‘He’d love to! As long as you don’t dress him up in velvet pantaloons.’
‘No pantaloons, I promise.’ Amy sighed happily and took a sip of her champagne, oblivious to the tumultuous emotions swirling around the heads of all three of her friends.
Emily emptied her small suitcase onto the pretty quilted throw on the bed and looked out of the latticed window towards the beach. The sun was beginning to lose some of its heat and turn from yellow to peach, though it hadn’t yet dipped in the sky. She watched two figures making their way out along the strip of shingle that had risen up from beneath the waves as the tide slowly retreated.
Watching them
