was relieved. She rested her chin in her hands and beamed across the table at Harriet. ‘Isn’t this always the best bit of a party? When everyone’s gone, and you can sit back and talk about them?’
‘I had a good time. Did you?’
Jane gave a long sigh. ‘I don’t, usually, not at my own parties. All that scurrying about with drinks and dips. Husbands are useful for that, at least.’
Harriet grinned. ‘Leo was never much good at it. You’d do better to hire a butler.’
Jane wasn’t listening. ‘But I did enjoy tonight. Did you see him, in the blue shirt? Yes, of course you did. You danced with him, didn’t you? What did you think of him?’
Harriet opened her mouth but she heard the warning bells. She had felt relief that Jane didn’t know him a little prematurely, it seemed.
‘About who? Oh, yes. Him. Quite nice, I suppose.’ Harriet stretched her feet out on the chair next to her. She saw that someone had neatly dropped ash in the suede folds of her boots.
Jane was listening carefully enough now. She looked narrowly at Harriet. ‘Did you fancy him?’
‘What? No. Or only from afar.’ She had locked herself in Jane’s bathroom, run through the entire future sequence of events, and decided that she couldn’t spare the time. That was all. ‘I’m too busy for that sort of thing.’
‘Hmm. He’s staying with the Greens. He’s some sort of a builder.’
‘So I gather.’
‘You talked to him as well?’
Harriet held up her hands, laughing, defending herself. ‘Only for five minutes. He’s yours, take him.’
Jane sighed again. ‘I’d welcome the chance. Well, he knows where to find me.’ She frowned at Harriet, not quite soberly. ‘What do you mean, you’re too busy for that sort of thing? Perhaps a short sharp affair is just what you needed at this point?’
‘I don’t think so. I haven’t told you what I’m going to do. Can we forget the builder for a minute?’
‘If you say so.’
‘I’m going to start a business.’ Harriet jumped to her feet, unable to keep still while she talked. She began to clear up, cutting a swathe through the debris. Jane watched her, blinking, her chin still resting on her hand.
At the end, Harriet leaned back against the sink and folded her arms. ‘So what do you think?’
Jane pondered. ‘I think …’
Harriet waited, knowing that Jane’s approval was as important, in its different way, as Charlie’s had been, and also knowing that she would go ahead with her plan whatever Jane said.
‘I think it sounds a fine idea.’
‘Thank you.’ Harriet bent down and hugged her, and the fraying plait tickled her cheek.
‘So put that bloody tea towel down, and tell me how you’re going to get started.’
‘Homework. Lots of homework, and then trying to raise the money. Charlie made it quite clear that it wouldn’t be easy.’
Jane thought for a moment. ‘I’ve got some money saved. A couple of thousand, that’s all, but you could have that if it would help.’
Harriet was amazed. Jane’s generosity was on a far grander scale than her embryo plan called for, and she was touched by it. To hide her feelings she teased, ‘It might be a good investment. You’ll get a healthy return on your money, I promise.’
Jane was scandalised. ‘I offered it for you, not because I want to make money out of you.’
‘I know that,’ Harriet told her. ‘And I’m grateful.’
‘I hope so. Oh God, look at the time. It’s nearly four o’clock.’
‘I’m going home alone to Belsize Park.’
‘To slip between the balance sheets.’
Their laughter acknowledged their singleness, and their affection for each other.
‘Won’t you stay the night?’
‘I’d rather go home. I’ll come back and help with this in the morning.’
Harriet was thinking about the game, propped up against the wall in the empty flat. It drew her back, as if they needed one another’s protection.
‘You’ve done more than half already. Call me.’
Jane stood in the circle of light from her porch to watch her go.
The streets were empty as Harriet reversed her zigzag journey. The gangs of youths had filtered away and even the few cars that swept past her seemed to travel without human intervention. It was as if she was alone in the world. It was pleasant to be warm and safe and isolated in the darkness. Harriet smiled. She wasn’t thinking about Charlie Thimbell reaching up to touch her breast, or about the man in the blue shirt. She was thinking about friendship, and the evening’s confirmation of it. She hummed as she drove.
The shop was empty, at the end of a rainy Monday afternoon, except for two girls trying on leotards in the mirrored cubicles at the far end. Harriet knew that they might end up buying headbands, or leg-warmers at the very most, most probably nothing at all, but she left them in peace because that was the shop’s policy. They would come back, perhaps, when they did have money to spend. Besides that, she liked the look of them. They were young and skinny, with their hair done up in asymmetric tufts like plumes on the tops of their heads. They admired the diminishing perspectives of their own back views in the mirrors, then collapsed into choking giggles.
One of them emerged from behind the curtains in a shimmering tube of bright pink Lycra. She made a few stiff movements at the barre that ran around the shop, the plume of hair nodding in a dozen mirrored reflections.
‘Makes me look like a horrible ice-cream,’ she sniffed.
‘The leopardskin one would be better,’ Harriet encouraged her. ‘Go on, try it on.’ It was the first time she had spoken to them, and at once they looked startled and guilty. Harriet went to the rack where the folds of leopardskin print lay and shook one out.
‘Go on,’ she repeated. ‘I’d like to see you in it.’
The girl was thin. Her spine was a chain of knobs, and her hipbones jutted out. When she put the leopardskin on and sidled out between the curtains, she was transformed into a cat. A small, hungry but confident cat. The girl pirouetted and her friend whistled between her teeth. Harriet tried to remember what it felt like, to be just their age, not a woman nor quite a girl any longer. It seemed a long time ago.
‘It suits you, she told her.
Without making any more suggestions, Harriet went back to her place behind
