waft down the corridors, the scent of warm wax polish and lemons heady in the air, the dust swirling in the sunlight and say, ‘If I could bottle this, girls, I’d be the happiest woman alive.’
Now, though, when Libby pushed open the big wooden front door and said proudly, ‘So here we are,’ Eve found herself rigid, frozen to the top step in horror.
What had they done?
‘Little bit different to how you remember it, I think,’ Libby said with an expectant smile.
Eve felt her hand go up to cover her mouth.
White walls, white tiles, no pictures.
‘It makes such a difference, doesn’t it? Opens the place up. Makes it look much bigger, don’t you think?’ Libby went on, seemingly talking until she got a reaction from Eve. ‘Just all clean lines. That’s what we were looking for. Why are you looking at it like that? Don’t you think it’s lovely? We really like it.’
We.
We. We.
Eve knew it wasn’t we. This was Jake. It was Jake all over. If Jake could whitewash the whole bloody world, he would. He hated mess. He hated clutter. He had to have everything just so.
‘Yes, it looks lovely,’ Eve said with as much enthusiasm as she could muster when all she really wanted to do was shout, What have you done? You’ve ruined it, you idiots!
Libby tipped her head, could clearly sense Eve’s reticence. ‘Eve, look at it. Come further in. It was so dated before. No one had touched it in years.’
‘I believe you, I know. I said, it looks lovely.’ Eve nodded and smiled. ‘Really lovely.’ She didn’t need to look at it. She knew what it looked like. Cold and white.
‘Honestly, Eve. It needed freshening up,’ Libby pushed. ‘People don’t want that kind of décor any more.’
Eve nodded but all she could hear were Jake’s opinions in Libby’s voice. ‘Libby,’ she said, ‘if you’re happy with it, that’s all that matters. You don’t need to persuade me. And I really like it, anyway,’ she added, an unconvincing afterthought.
Libby swallowed and turned away. ‘Well, yes. Yes, we like it,’ she said and started to walk forward, leading Eve to her room.
They walked up the stairs in silence, Eve staring at the walls willing the pattern of the wallpaper to come out from under the paint.
‘Where are the pictures?’ she said.
‘In the garage,’ Libby replied. ‘With the carpet.’
Eve could concede on the carpet. It was old and swirly and fairly hideous, but the rest of it … She looked up at the light fittings and winced when she saw long metal strips of halogen bulbs. The surfaces were bare, trinket free. The windows were curtainless, now just covered with simple white blinds.
‘I put you in your old room,’ Libby said as they reached the furthest room along the corridor. She put the key in and turned the door handle. ‘You’ll be happy—it hasn’t changed.’
Eve could remember it perfectly. Lying on the bed like a penniless monarch, her grandeur falling down around her. She’d left the plaster bare in her ramshackle conservatory at home and let the ivy grow in through the roof to conjure up the feeling of this room.
She glanced inside and breathed a sigh of relief at the sight of the huge wooden wardrobe, the damp patches on the peeling wallpaper, the big bed with the chipped gold paint, and the heavy brocade curtains. And then the wind rustled the trees and she smelt the lemons waft in through the open window.
‘Libby, I’m sorry if you think I’ve offended you somehow,’ she said. ‘I do really think it all looks nice.’
‘But …?’ Libby said, arms crossed.
‘But nothing,’ Eve replied. Then when Libby looked at her, almost willing her to carry on, she couldn’t stop herself adding, ‘Just remember that people don’t always know what they want, what they like, until it surprises them. I agree it all needs updating but this place always had character. Style. You know, just maybe you don’t need to get rid of it all.’
She walked over to the window when Libby didn’t reply and looked out to see the lemon grove, the familiar image of the waxy leaves winking in the sunlight. She wondered how it was that people could be so close at one point in their lives and then become so distant. Eve was as wide open as they came, but Libby, she took some chipping away to get beneath the polish. Especially now that she too had a great stamp across her saying, ‘Jake’.
Sometimes, when Eve had put the kids to bed, she would sit down with a glass of wine and read Libby’s blog. There was always some gorgeous looking lemon and basil drizzle cake to salivate over or a plate of something delicious that Libby said she’d thrown together because she was feeling peckish but would take any normal person hours.
Eve knew it was all gloss. All shine. But slowly she would feel herself prickle with jealousy, like pins and needles starting in her neck. She found herself jealous of the life made quirky and cool through the many filters of Instagram. Of the parties Libby catered, of the selfies with famous guests, of the Rainbows and Roast Beef Supper Clubs that she held at her flat with Jake there sipping red wine from a glass as big as a bowl.
Eve had lived in the flat below Jake for three years. She knew he was an arrogant pain in the arse half the time; she had eaten batches of Libby’s mistakes, she had been to the pillar-box tiled kitchen and seen the beautiful hand-thrown bowls the colour of oatmeal and the lovely little white enamelled saucepans and thought they were lovely, if a bit impractical, but, in the pictures, in the lifestyle, she coveted them like no other. Because they seemed to symbolise this other life—where everything went right.
And over the years it had made Eve start to stay away. Because somewhere along the line, her friend Libby had become lifestyle blogger Libby Price, while Eve was a scruffy, haphazard mother of two who struggled to run a business and fit into her countryside lifestyle and be an interested wife and not believe that everyone else was doing marvellously while she was just keeping her head above the surface.
So in the end there was no point seeing Libby because, while it was all aesthetically lovely when she did, they never had the time to get beneath the facade to make it worthwhile. It was all just too nice and polite to bother.
But what was so frustrating was that she knew the truth of Libby. Eve knew what was under there, had seen her drunkenly dancing in her bedroom at three in the morning, had seen her laughing so hard that she snorted lemonade out her nose, had seen her stuffing her mouth so full of chocolate that she couldn’t breathe, had seen her sobbing on the doorstep because she couldn’t take the pressure of all her brothers and sisters and her mum out of a job, but over time the walls had gone up and now it was just that bit too high to reach.
Peter had done this whole lesson at school on entropy. He used pictures of the crumbling disused ballrooms of Detroit to show that everything falls into disorder in the end. The walls always came down. It was just a case of how long it took. And how much one was willing to try.
‘OK well …’
Eve turned to see Libby backing out of the door.
‘Anything you need just let me know. I’m thinking
