Playing by the Rules (5 page)

Well, not alone exactly. The room was full of people, but for all Kate was aware of them, they might as well have been furniture. All she could see was Josh. Specifically, the way his black, black hair curled behind his ears and made her want to tangle her fingers in it. And how, in the soft light of the gym-turned-wonderland, his eyes were exactly the colour of chocolate. High-quality couverture, the sort that if you blended it with cream, would soften to the colour of his skin.

It was possible that she’d had just a touch too much champagne in too short a time.

Luckily, they weren’t alone for long. Almost before Jo had disappeared, two girls Kate recognised immediately as having played Helena and Hermia in their final-year production of
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
descended on them, with smiles and hugs for Kate, and admiring glances for Josh.

Since Kate had only been stage crew, not cast, she was a little surprised that they remembered her so readily, but she was also amused. On this, surely one of the oddest nights of her life, it seemed appropriate to be connected by a play that was all about going to strange places and having very strange experiences, all in the name of love.

Then, when they left, there was Tara from the yearbook committee, Emily from the maths club, a very heavily pregnant Clare from the social justice group and Rebecca and Mila, who had sat next to her in French for three years running.

After them came girls who remembered that Kate had been good at dancing, but lousy at sport; girls who remembered that she had always carried a clean hankie, but frequently couldn’t remember where it was; girls who said they used to hate her for being so smart, but didn’t any more; girls who said they had wished they were as smart as she was, but never told her; girls who remembered that her mum made the best chocolate meringues; and one girl Kate had a lot of trouble placing, until she revealed that she had had three lots of cosmetic surgery since they had last met.

In fact, Kate was a little surprised by just how many people wanted to talk to her. She had enjoyed the academic side of school and (Crystal aside) had got on well with most people, but she had never thought of herself as especially popular. She hadn’t been expecting this many people to even remember her, let alone be so keen to catch up.

She couldn’t help wondering if it was Josh who was keeping them coming. He was certainly no liability in the popularity stakes. Most of the girls seemed very happy to get an eyeful, and delighted to find that he was as charming as he was gorgeous. But, unlike Crystal, their interest was generally good-natured and congratulatory, rather than predatory. The happily married Clare seemed to sum up the general consensus when she whispered behind her hand, while Josh was talking to her husband, ‘Half your luck!’

At first, this attitude, while flattering, didn’t do much for Kate’s peace of mind. After all, in reality, Josh wasn’t even her boyfriend, much less her fiancé, and she had been supposed to come to this reunion with a
real
fiancé. Now that Josh was refraining from interfering with her thought processes – although he was still showing a disconcerting tendency towards holding her hand – she couldn’t help thinking of Alain.

It really should have been Alain here with her. He
should
have asked her to marry him. All the signs had been there – or so she had thought. What was the matter with him? What was the matter with
her
? Did she handle it badly? Was she just not marriage material?
Why
hadn’t he asked her to marry him?

It was a pointless merry-go-round. He hadn’t and that was that. No amount of thinking was going to change it. But it didn’t stop the thoughts going around and around on a seemingly never-ending loop, just as they had ever since that dreadful dinner. Even as she exchanged updates and mobile numbers with her old friends, she could hear the thoughts in the back of her mind.

The difference was, though, that now, she could also hear Jo’s voice, telling her that it was time to move on and have some fun. And by her side was Josh: a walking, talking, charming personification of exactly the sort of fun Jo was suggesting.

The combination was powerful and, in the break from small talk provided by nose-job girl asking Josh a barrage of questions about New York, Kate decided she should pay attention. After all, who was better to listen to? The bastard who left her, or the friends who picked up the pieces?

Kate took a deep breath and tensed for the effort of stopping the broken record in her mind. It was past time. Alain was gone and that was all there was to it. He’d made that quite clear. She gripped her glass and prepared to swallow the hippopotamus-sized lump that normally appeared in her throat when she contemplated that reality.

To her surprise, though, when she went to sip, she found that it didn’t feel very hippopotamus-y tonight. Perhaps a baby hippo. That was a nice change. She took another sip and found that it had, miraculously, become smaller still.
Platypus-sized
, she thought, with a touch of humour that she had never before associated with this pain. Miracles upon miracles. She tried again. To her amazement, this time the lump was only the size of a goldfish – and not a very well-fed one, at that.

Kate had no idea what had brought about this transformation. She shrugged off the whispers coming from her left hand, which was firmly encased in Josh’s right. Yes, Josh was hotter than January in Coober Pedy. He was also a great sport and apparently willing to do almost anything for his sister. And he was here, in the comforting, disconcerting flesh.

But he was hardly a replacement for Alain. She had meant to
marry
Alain. She had made plans around him. Alain had represented everything she’d always dreamed of: family, stability, happiness. From what she’d heard from Jo, Josh was in no hurry for a family and didn’t know the meaning of stability. And for all she knew, he could be leaving in a few days. He was undeniably lovely, but he was quite a different prospect from Alain. Or what she had thought Alain was, anyway.

Kate pulled herself up short. There was no point replacing one merry-go-round of speculation with another. It didn’t matter what had caused it. However it had happened, and no matter how short-lived it might prove to be, this hippo-to-goldfish miracle was definitely worthy of celebration. And that’s what she would do. With her right hand, she flagged down a passing waiter, swapped her empty glass for a full one, threw back her head and washed that puny little goldfish right down the big red lane.

When she looked up, she found that the cosmetic surgery girl had gone and Josh was looking at her with an amused expression.

‘Jo didn’t tell me you were such a drinker.’

‘Oh, but I’m not! I mean . . . I was just . . .’

‘Drowning your sorrows?’

‘Oh . . . not exactly. More . . .’

Too late, Kate realised that she should have just agreed. This was hardly the time or the place to start a conversation about her complicated feelings about Alain. Nor was Josh the right person to have it with.

Luckily, an old conversation with Jo came to her rescue.

‘I’m just taking your lovely sister’s advice.’

‘And what advice would that be?’

‘Her coping with high heels advice.’ They both looked down at the strappy sandals, which were undeniably elegant, but much higher than Kate was used to. ‘She always says that, at weddings and cocktail parties and the like, when you are all frocked up in the high heels of doom and forced to stand there are only two ways to handle it.’

‘Which are?’ Josh asked, smiling.

‘Well, you either find one of the very few available chairs and stick to it heartlessly, even when faced with the pregnant, the infirm and the elderly – which clearly I have failed to do – or . . .’ she drained her glass with a flourish. ‘. . . you drink until you can’t feel your feet!’

‘Ah, I see,’ Josh said, with another, lingering look at Kate’s feet. ‘Very sound advice, I’m sure, and it sounds exactly like my sister. It’s just that it is time to go and sit down and I was wondering whether you could walk, or whether I would have to carry you.’

Just in time, Kate caught on, and she managed to rise to the occasion, although the mental image of being carried in Josh’s arms was doing its best to distract her. She drew herself up to her full height, put her nose in the air and in her best posh voice said, ‘That won’t be necessary, thank you, young man. I will, however, take your arm, if you would be gentleman enough to offer it.’

With a grin, Josh bowed low and then straightened up, rearranged his face into a very good imitation of stuffed-shirt respectability, and proffered his arm. He looked like a butler from a Victorian parlour drama.

‘Madam,’ he said, in deep, almost mournful tones, ‘I am at your service.’

For a moment, Kate managed to maintain her snooty air. But the combination of his face and his manner, in which he was somehow combining obsequiousness and self-importance, got the better of her.

She started to laugh. It began as a chuckle but when she caught sight of his face, rigid with pretend outrage, it became a chortle, then a gurgle, until she was finally rocking with silent laughter.

He lasted a little longer. All those amateur theatricals must have been good practice for keeping a straight face. But even he couldn’t hold it for long. His lips were first to betray him. They tightened; then they twisted and twitched up. Next, his nose wrinkled, his eyes creased at the corners and his chest heaved with the strain of holding it in. Finally, a half-strangled chuckle escaped and he gave up the fight and laughed out loud.

He had a great laugh. It was loud and unembarrassed and very infectious. Before she knew it they were both roaring. Real, rib-heaving, belly-aching laughs, which rippled out to the people nearby and had them laughing in sympathy, even though they had no idea why.

She knew that it wasn’t really that funny, but now she had started, it felt as though a dam had burst inside her, and it felt much too good to stop. She couldn’t remember the last time she had laughed like this. Certainly not since she had left Paris and, now she thought about it, not for some time before that.

Eventually, they wound down and Josh put his hand on her arm.

‘You know I was joking, don’t you?’ he said, a little breathlessly. ‘I don’t really think you’re a drunk, I just thought you could use a laugh.’ He stooped slightly, to look her in the face. ‘Was I wrong?’

Kate smiled back into his gorgeous, big brown eyes and shook her head.

No, he wasn’t wrong. That laugh had cleared out weeks’ worth of stress, with the therapeutic power of silliness. Pure silliness, something Josh seemed to have a talent for. Alain was never silly. He was much too sensible. She had thought she liked that about him, but tonight, in the shape of Josh, she was beginning to see that silly could be very attractive too.

So attractive, in fact, that it was very hard to withdraw her gaze from his. But even in an eye-lock, she could see that the people around them were moving. She pulled herself together and formulated some words.

‘I think you’re right. We should go and sit down. It looks as though dinner is starting.’

He straightened up and beamed at her.

‘Excellent! I’m starving. What about you?’

‘Ravenous,’ Kate replied, truthfully. Wonder of wonders, her appetite, which had been conspicuously absent since Paris, had actually come back.

She considered this an excellent sign and she took the arm he offered with a lightness of heart that, not long ago, she would not have thought possible. It seemed her plan of having a flingy good time was coming together beautifully. It could only get better from here.

Famous last words.

Not that Kate realised that, at first.

Indeed, as she slipped into her seat, Kate thought that the organisers must have gone out of their way to help her have a good time. Jo and Matt had been placed on Josh’s left and on her right she was delighted to find Clare and her husband. True, she didn’t know the man opposite her, but otherwise, as far as company went, she seemed well set up for a pleasant evening.

But as she was exchanging greetings with Clare and her husband, the female half of the fourth couple arrived and Kate’s appetite disappeared as fast as it had come. It was Crystal.

‘So, Kate,’ Crystal said, into the silence that her arrival had cast over the table. ‘Are you having a good time?’

Kate choked slightly on her wine.

‘Yes, lovely thank you,’ she replied, when the coughing stopped. The ‘until you got here’ went unsaid, but was understood by at least three other people at the table.

‘That’s good, Kate,’ Jo chimed in. ‘How’s the
plan
going?’

Kate shot her a look, but didn’t dare to be too obvious in front of Crystal.

‘Fine, thank you,’ she said, with a tight smile.

‘What plan is that, Kate?’ Crystal asked, her spider senses obviously forever attuned to a chance for blood.

Kate thought as fast as her champagne-sodden brain would allow and found the answer in the champagne itself.

‘The one about my feet.’

‘Your feet?’

‘Yes, I’m wearing these terribly high heels and I was afraid my feet might get sore. But so far, they seem fine.’

Jo snorted into her wine and Kate resolved to make her pay later.

Clare lifted the tablecloth to look at Kate’s shoes.

‘Oh, they’re lovely. Good on you for being brave enough to wear them. I haven’t been able to wear anything like that for ages,’ she said, putting her hand on her very pregnant front.

Kate leapt on the change of subject.

‘Congratulations, by the way. When are you due?’

‘Soon! Can’t be soon enough for me. I’m well over it.’

‘Is it your first?’ Josh asked, showing a willingness to be friendly that only made Kate like him more.

‘No, my third,’ Clare replied, smiling at him. ‘I know, I’ve been busy! But I always said I wanted to have my family early.’

‘Ah, another woman with a plan. This school seems to make a habit of turning them out.’ Josh squeezed Kate’s hand, which took any sting out of his comment, not least because it sent a very pleasant quiver all the way up her arm to her shoulder.

Clare laughed. ‘Well, they did encourage us to go after what we wanted. Luckily I found a man who wanted the same things.’ She smiled at her husband, who seemed a calm, sweet foil to Clare’s ebullience.

‘But enough about me! You have news too, Crystal tells me. When did you get engaged?’

Kate stiffened in her seat. Oh, heavens, what had she got them into? They would have to tell the truth, now. It was one thing to claim an engagement to score points off Crystal. She had been hoping never to see Crystal again. But it was quite another thing to have to provide details. No matter what Jo said, this was too much to ask of a real friend, much less a man who’d only signed up for a casual date – or possibly fling, whatever that involved. She had to get them out of this somehow.

Then Josh covered her hand with his, smiled down at her anxious face, and looked up to grin at Clare.

‘It’s very new. In fact, it just happened tonight.’

Kate drew in a sharp breath. The cheek of him! Did he really think he could get away with this?

Clare beamed at them.

‘But that’s so romantic! Congratulations!’ She stopped for long enough to lean awkwardly sideways and kiss Kate. ‘You must tell me more! Where did you meet?’

Kate felt faint. Without really knowing what she was doing, she found herself looking around for the nearest exit.

‘Right here!’ Josh’s gesture took in the gym with one hand, while his other kept Kate’s hand anchored to the table. ‘That’s why it’s so appropriate that we sealed the deal tonight.’

‘But —’ Clare began.

‘Okay,’ Josh broke in, grinning. ‘Not literally here. But we did meet because Jo came here, so it still seems appropriate that the school should get the credit.’

‘Well, go on!’

‘Oh, do you want to know the details? I don’t want to bore you.’

Clare mock-glared at him and motioned avidly for more. Kate wondered when her old friend had become the straight man for her . . . what? Casual date? Fling? Fiancé? She wasn’t quite sure what he was any more.

‘You know Jo is my sister, of course?’

Clare nodded.

‘I don’t know if you remember that she started here part way through a school year?’

Clare shook her head.

‘No? Well, anyway, it was because we moved here from Mauritius. Our mum’s Mauritian but our dad’s Australian and he always intended for us to come back here for high school and uni. He didn’t quite get organised in time for me; I had already finished school by the time we came back. But he managed to wangle a job transfer in time for Jo to come here.

‘Unfortunately, it was halfway through the school year when we moved, which was a bit rough for Jo. She had to leave all her friends behind and start again, and she was nervous and lonely at the beginning. Kate took her under her wing.’

‘She saved my bacon,’ Jo said with a smile. ‘And possibly everybody else’s sanity. I was so mad about being moved from home that I’m sure I was a complete pain, but Kate was lovely to me.’

‘I only did what anyone would have done,’ Kate objected. ‘I know what it’s like to be the new girl.’ She squirmed a little as she said it, uncomfortable about being the subject of such praise. A lifetime of being the new girl – the
smart
new girl – had taught her the value of self-deprecation in maintaining good relations with others. It wasn’t easy to shed the habit.

She was also aware of Crystal’s narrowed eyes across the table. Kate had enjoyed scoring one over her earlier, but the old self-defence instincts told her there was no point in antagonising her unnecessarily. There was only so much animosity Kate needed in one evening.

‘Correction, Kate,’ Jo said, interrupting Kate’s surreptitious Crystal-monitoring. ‘Anyone
could
have done it. But it was you who did. And I was very grateful.’

‘And I heard about it,’ Josh said, taking back the story. ‘Boy, did I hear about it! Every day, when Jo got home, it was Kate this and Kate that. She hardly talked about anything else.’

He turned to look at Kate as he continued.

‘The way Jo told it, you were smart and funny and talented as well as generous and friendly and loyal and an all-round wonderful person.’

He paused to take a sip of his wine and Kate wondered whether it was possible to die from a surfeit of praise. Josh was laying it on with a shovel. But, bizarrely, it didn’t feel as though he were making it up. When he looked at her and said these amazing things, it felt intimate and real, weird and wonderful, all at the same time. If it was an act, it was a damn good one. Kate felt dizzy.

‘About the only thing she could find to criticise was your lack of drawing talent.’ Jo sniggered and Clare joined in. The sniggers didn’t bother Kate, since she would have been the first to admit that her art skills were on a par with the average three-year-old. An uncoordinated three-year-old. They did, however, seem to remind Josh that he was supposed to be telling this story to Clare. He turned away from Kate to address her friend again.

‘But there was one thing that Jo didn’t tell me.’ Josh paused again. Kate got the distinct impression that he was doing it for effect and that he was enjoying himself.

‘She neglected to tell me that Kate was stunning.’ The butter knife that Kate had been fiddling with dropped from her fingers. Fortunately, since its fall coincided with Jo choking on her wine, it went largely unnoticed. With her peripheral vision, Kate thought she saw Crystal’s eyes narrow even further, but she couldn’t bring herself to look straight at her to be sure. Josh politely waited until his sister recovered, then went on, apparently oblivious to the inner turmoil being experienced in the seat next to him.

‘I didn’t stand a chance. I already knew I would like Kate. From what Jo had told me, she sounded fun and I was grateful to her for looking after my sister and making her happy again. But when she walked into our house, with her creamy skin and honey-coloured hair and devastating smile, she walked out with my heart.’

Clare, who was a hopeless romantic, and laden with pregnancy hormones to boot, had tears in her eyes. But it was all too much for Jo.

‘But you never told me you fancied Kate!’ she exclaimed.

‘Really, Jo?’ Crystal enquired, frighteningly mildly.

‘I meant, he didn’t tell me that he fancied her then,’ she recovered smoothly.

‘Of course I didn’t,’ Josh said, backing her up. ‘I was eighteen. I had my reputation to consider. I was hardly going to tell my fifteen-year-old sister that I had the hots for her best friend. You would have laughed at me! And mum would have
killed
me. You know what she’s like,’ he said, appealing to Jo. ‘She doesn’t think fifteen-year-olds should go out with anyone, much less eighteen-year-old layabouts with too much time on their hands.’

Jo nodded and Kate thought that that much, at least, was true enough. Jo’s mum would
not
have been impressed and she was not a woman to be trifled with. The layabouts crack sounded like a quote. But Josh didn’t give Jo a chance to say anything.

‘Besides, I wasn’t even on Kate’s radar,’ he went on. ‘I was just the geeky soccer-nut brother who was always hanging around. I’m sure she thought it was because I didn’t have anything better to do. She was always polite, but beyond please and thank you, I could barely get her to say two words to me.’

It was all Kate could do not to stare at him. It was true that she’d barely spoken to him in those days, but it wasn’t because she didn’t like him. It was because she’d had such a big crush on him she couldn’t make her vocal cords work in his presence. She’d always assumed he’d known that and the mortification of him knowing made the problem worse. But perhaps he really hadn’t known. She didn’t know whether to be pleased she hadn’t embarrassed herself as much as she’d thought, or sad about lost opportunities.

‘I assumed she was in love with the same guy that Jo was,’ Josh continued. ‘The blond idiot who played Romeo in the school play. What was his name? Justin something, I think. What chance would I have had against Romeo?’

Jo was silenced, but Kate thought she could see the same wonder in Jo’s eyes that she herself was feeling at the accuracy of his memory. Kate hadn’t thought about Justin in years, although now that she was reminded, she remembered well enough how gone Jo had been on him. But how had Josh remembered? How had he known in the first place? It wasn’t the sort of thing Jo would have discussed with her big brother. Not back then, anyway. She looked at him, her eyes full of questions, but he was looking at Clare, who was demanding more details.

‘So what happened? You can’t leave the story there!’

‘I packed up my broken heart, and left the country.’

‘What?!’

‘How romantic,’ Crystal added, sounding at though she thought it anything but.

‘I suppose it isn’t quite storybook hero behaviour, is it?’ he laughed. ‘And you’re right, of course. I wasn’t just running from unrequited love. I’d like to say I was! That would make a much better story. But the truth is, I inherited some money from my great-grandmother and I had itchy feet. So, to the disgust of my parents, I chucked in uni and left to see the world.’

‘Where did you go?’ asked Crystal’s date.

Crystal glared at the man who obviously hadn’t got her memo about not encouraging old enemies and their fiancés, fake or otherwise.

‘Everywhere! Egypt, South America, China, Africa, back to Mauritius to visit the family, then, when the money started to run out, to Europe, where I ended up working for a big hotel in Prague. I’ve been working in hotels ever since, still moving around the world. And everywhere, I’ve been, I’ve taken the memory of Kate with me.’

Crystal snorted and Kate thought that surely, now, the jig was up. But Josh just smiled at her and steamrolled on.

‘Too much? Okay, I admit I wasn’t pining the
whole
time. Of course, I’ve had other girlfriends. But it’s true that I could never quite forget Kate. She was my first love, after all.’ He smiled down at Kate and squeezed her hand, but whether it was to reinforce his words, or warn her not to contradict this alarming taradiddle, she didn’t dare guess.

‘Anyway, to make a long story slightly less long, the job I am doing at the moment has me moving to a new country every couple of years. I usually come home for a break between jobs, and this time I got lucky. Kate was here! And she was still as great as I remembered, even more gorgeous, and, by a miracle I can only put down to divine intervention, still single. I wasn’t about to let her get away again. So I seized the opportunity, and here I am!’

He beamed at the group in general. Kate stared at him. Trying to make sense of what he had said was like trying to navigate through a sea where the landmarks were familiar, but the water had suddenly turned purple.

Clare, though, loved it. She seized Kate’s free hand with both of hers and squeezed it with stars in her eyes.

‘Oh, Kate, that’s so romantic!’ She turned to her husband. ‘Isn’t that a wonderful story, Andrew? It’s like a fairy tale!’ Andrew smiled indulgently at his wife. Kate thought she heard Jo mutter ‘More than you know . . .’ under her breath.

‘What was that, Jo?’ Crystal asked, with a crocodile smile.

Jo cleared her throat and looked significantly at Kate. ‘I said “I need to go”. I think the champagne has caught up with me. I might pop off to the ladies for a minute before they start the formal bits. What do you say, Kate? Come with me?’

She stood up. Kate swallowed. She suspected Jo was going to ask questions she didn’t have any idea how to answer. Oh well. She might as well get it over with. She stood up and released Josh’s hand, realising belatedly that she had been clinging to it like a drowning woman clinging to a rescuer. He held on for a moment longer. Just long enough to raise her hand to his lips, kiss it and say, ‘Don’t be long.’