Bookends

Chapter twelve

It’s very strange to see someone again after ten years. Strange to see how that person has changed, whether they have, in fact, changed.

I remember bumping into three girls I went to school with a couple of years ago. I hadn’t seen them in twelve years, and they were all mortified because I said they hadn’t changed at all, but it was true. Their faces were older, their hairstyles more sophisticated, but I would have known them anywhere.

Yet although Portia should not have changed, I can see that somehow she has. Her face seems harder, and, even though she is still tremendously beautiful, her look more polished than even I could have imagined, there seems to be something brittle about her. We stand there for a few seconds, both half smiling, both unsure of how to greet one another after all this time.

And though I know my face doesn’t give it away, I’m nervous as hell and I can feel my heart beating wildly, and I just hope that when I speak I’m not completely breathless with nerves.

‘Oh my God!’ Si’s shrieking breaks the reverie, and he flings his arms around her in a bear hug before she can say anything. She laughs and gently disengages herself, then leans forward and gives me a kiss on the cheek.

‘But how did you…? What are you…?’ Si is as surprised as I am, and I realize that this isn’t his set-up, his surprise.

‘Don’t ask,’ she smiles. ‘I got your message, but you never left your phone number. I read about this in the local paper and it mentioned your name, so I thought I’d pop in to say hello.’

‘You look amazing,’ I find myself saying, unable to help myself, because she does, she looks as if she has just stepped from the pages of a glossy magazine. Make that an expensive glossy magazine. Her hair is a rich sweeping curtain of mahogany, her eyes bright and clear, and her voice rings with a confidence and authority that has evidently developed tenthousandfold over the years.

Put it like this: if you spotted Portia walking down the street, even if you had no idea who she was, you would assume she was a high-powered media star who always gets exactly what she wants.

‘Thank you,’ she smiles. ‘And it’s a relief to find you look exactly the same. The same old Cath. Still presumably as disinterested in fashion as ever, although,’ and she fingers my jacket and takes a close look, ‘do I detect a hint of Emporio in here?’

Si gasps with pleasure. ‘I told you,’ he nudges me. ‘Told you it was worth the money. I’ve been trying, Portia’ – he looks at her with a shrug – ‘but you know Cath. This is the first decent thing she’s worn in the last ten years.’ It’s odd to hear his tone of voice, friendly, light, familiar. Almost as if it has only been a week since we last saw her.

‘You look good too,’ she says to Si. ‘This is so weird, coming here and finding that you’re all here and still friends and still looking the same.’

‘Because you’ve had to imagine us these last few years?’

Portia looks bemused but is poised enough not to look embarrassed; she simply raises an eyebrow as a question.

‘I should say I’m angry, but actually I’m rather flattered, because Steen is gorgeous.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘Well, it’s us, isn’t it?’

Portia laughs. ‘God, you wouldn’t believe the number of times I’ve heard people say they know it’s about them. Si, I hate to disappoint, but they are fiction.’

‘Portia, we’re not stupid,’ I interject gently at this point, not wanting to push the point, because what if we are all wrong? Although I know we’re not.

‘But it’s fiction,’ she repeats, refusing to admit anything, doubtless for fear of being sued.

‘Anyway,’ I say brightly, ‘you’ve done so well. We had no idea the show was yours.’

‘Thank you,’ she smiles. ‘I haven’t done too badly.’ She looks around the room and says, ‘Josh must be here. I’d love to see him.’

‘And Lucy, you haven’t even met Lucy,’ Si says protectively, shooting me a warning look. ‘You’ll love her. Let’s go and find them.’

I’ve always been fascinated by memory. Fascinated by the fact that you can avoid thinking about the past for years and years, and then something will trigger a memory, and you find yourself swept back to times you are absolutely certain you have forgotten.

As I lead Portia through the room, towards Lucy, and Josh, I remember Elizabeth. I remember Portia entwining Josh like a snake, before cruelly dumping him, and I think of Lucy’s shining face and bright eyes.

And as I walk I thank God that these ten years have passed, and that Portia is not, presumably, the insecure girl she was at eighteen, and that Josh and Lucy are the strongest couple you could ever hope to find.

I say I thank God, but lying in bed, later that night, I realized that I was actually praying.