The Sunshine And Biscotti Club (16 page)

‘So you think I’m right?’ Eve said, leaning against the wardrobe in one of the vacant bedrooms, looking up from her phone.

‘I concede that there are merits in both styles,’ Libby said, staring at a patch of peeling wallpaper.

‘Oh come on, Libby!’ said Eve, sliding her phone into her back pocket. ‘It’s OK to admit it. The white does not work.’

Libby didn’t know what she thought any more. She’d liked the white. Jake had liked the white. But then she knew that Eve had a point. She understood where Frank was coming from when he said the décor wasn’t unique enough in the lobby.

She went over and sat down on the bed, blowing her hair out of her eyes. ‘I don’t know, Eve. I think I’ve got to a point where I’ve lost all faith in my own vision.’

Eve came over and sat next to her on the bed. Not close. There was a metre or so between them. ‘Did you trust your aunt?’ Eve said.

‘Sort of,’ said Libby. ‘It was always a bit of a state though, wasn’t it?’

‘It was ramshackle. That’s good sometimes. This is your history, Libby.’

Libby looked up at the green and gold wallpaper flopping off the wall.

‘OK, how about we go for a middle ground,’ Eve said, standing up so she could point to the different walls. ‘This one, where the paper is fine, we leave it. This one, where the paper is bad, we strip it, line it, paint it to match the main colour of the wallpaper, or just white so the wallpaper becomes a feature?’

Libby thought about it. ‘That could be OK,’ she said. ‘But I don’t know how to line a wall.’

‘Oh, don’t worry, I do.’

‘How?’

‘Well, when you’re bored and alone in the countryside you learn all sorts of things,’ Eve said, laughing.

‘It can’t be that bad living in the country,’ Libby said, getting up from the bed so she could stand in the middle of the room and imagine what it might look like.

Eve was checking her phone again. ‘No, it’s not that bad,’ she said, a faux lightness in her tone as she put her phone back in her pocket.

‘What about the curtains?’ Libby said, walking over to touch the decrepit velvet. ‘I feel like they might disintegrate in my fingers.’

‘I love the curtains,’ said Eve.

‘The curtains have to go. They smell.’ Libby held one up to her nose and grimaced.

‘Well, maybe we just go simple. If we’re accenting the wall with the colour of the wallpaper, we have simple cotton curtains the same colour. If we’re going for white, we go for simple white curtains. Personally I think we should do it on a room by room basis, depending on how bad the wallpaper is in each.’

‘Where will the curtains come from?’

‘I don’t know. You’re the one who lives here.’

‘I can make curtains,’ a voice said from the doorway. They both looked to see Giulia standing with some folded towels in her arms.

‘You can?’ Libby asked.

Giulia nodded. ‘I can make them for you. There is no more of this white?’ she asked, cautiously. ‘No more of these blinds?’ she added, pointing to the simple roller blinds Jake had installed.

Libby shook her head.

‘Then I can make curtains for you,’ she said, adding, ‘you just tell me the colours,’ before walking off with the towels.

Libby covered her shocked smile with her hand. ‘Blimey,’ she said. ‘That’s a turn up for the books.’

Eve was on her phone. ‘Yeah,’ she said, glancing up with a nod.

‘OK, what is going on with your phone?’

‘Nothing?’ Eve frowned, clicking it off and putting it in her pocket.

‘Something’s going on.’

‘Let’s go and inspect the rooms,’ Eve said, brushing past her as she headed for the door.

They started with Jessica’s, the red room, immaculately made up, everything neatly folded away, just her laptop on the desk and her toiletries and make-up lined up on the dresser. It smelt clean like washing powder and shampoo.

Libby went over to the window. Outside it was sweltering. The butterflies fluttered like their wings might burn. Sprinkler water dripped from the plants like sweat trickling down their leaves. Jimmy was out there, sawing errant branches off the cherry tree under the blazing sun. Libby looked across at Eve who had clearly spotted him too.

‘I think this is in pretty good shape,’ Eve said, turning her back on the window. ‘The wallpaper’s nice, furniture’s a bit dated but I think probably just getting rid of the wardrobe would be enough. There’s drawers in the dressing table people can put their clothes in. And what do you think, cream curtains? I think if they were red it would be too much.’

Libby nodded, certain something was going on that Eve wasn’t saying. ‘Sounds good to me,’ she said.

‘OK, write cream down for Giulia,’ Eve said, and they moved on to the next room.

Libby got her notepad out and started a list, all the time watching Eve’s hand as it kept moving to her back pocket checking that her phone was still there. Libby had assumed it was something to do with Jimmy, but that didn’t explain the phone.

*

Next was Miles’s room and Libby forgot all about questioning Eve as she was hit by the scent of him. She tried not to look around as she headed over to the windows to examine the curtains. The wallpaper was black and gold, the curtains moth-eaten black velvet.

‘The paper’s bubbling here.’ Eve went over and tapped on the far wall. ‘You could do with a huge mirror in here, over the bed. You may as well ramp up the decadence.’

Libby couldn’t look at the bed. ‘There’s one in the garage,’ she said, staring outside, the sun blinding in her eyes.

‘And the curtains I think will have to go,’ Eve carried on, sticking her finger through a moth hole.

It was only going to get hotter. Libby could almost taste the sizzle bubbling in the air. The wisps of clouds burnt down to strands like aeroplane trails darting across the sky.

‘You know there is something …’ Eve started, coming to stand next to Libby, her phone in her hand.

But all Libby’s senses were infused with Miles and she couldn’t concentrate. ‘Do think maybe we should go into the next room?’ she said.

Eve nodded, visibly clamming up as she turned to walk away, and Libby immediately regretted cutting her off.

It was Eve’s room next. The yellow room. Buttercup walls and heavy gold and cream brocade curtains. Eve’s stuff everywhere, clothes scattered over chairs, books piled up on the bedside table, make-up spilling from her bag out onto the dresser.

Libby went over to study the old wallpaper, moving a heap of clothes so she could stand up on a chair to see how easily a corner peeled away. She wanted Eve to pick up the conversation but she was over by the curtains, examining the details.

‘I think these are salvageable, just need a good wash. And, actually, this is one room where white might work quite well, don’t you think?’

Libby nodded, trying to press the wallpaper that had peeled off like an orange back on the wall. Eve was back to being matter of fact; it seemed unlikely she was going to broach the subject of her phone again, so, concentrating on the wallpaper, her back turned intentionally so there was no threat of eye contact, Libby said, ‘What was it you were saying? About there being something?’

Eve was inspecting the wardrobe and the old desk.

‘Oh, it’s nothing,’ she said, waving her hand.

Libby stayed where she was on the chair, still not turning to look, and waited. She could hear Eve checking the curtains again. Heard her pause by the window and maybe look outside. Was she looking at Jimmy?

She heard Eve sigh.

‘Basically I’ve hacked into Peter’s emails,’ she said, and Libby swung round on her chair, unsure if she’d heard correctly.

‘You’ve done what? Why?’

‘Because I’m stupid. Because I was feeling quite good, you know, with the cake win. I haven’t had any creative inspiration for months, Libby, and suddenly I was completely alive with it. I knew exactly what I was doing.’ Eve ran her hands through her hair, holding it back from her face and then letting it flop down again. ‘And I suppose I thought that I wanted to tell Peter. I wanted to talk to him about it, but we’re not talking to each other so I couldn’t,’ she said, perching up on the window ledge. Libby stood down from her chair and sat on it instead. Eve carried on. ‘So—he’s written this script that at one point he wanted me to read and I thought if I went into his emails and got it, it would be a nice thing to do, you know, to read it. And almost be a way of talking to him.’

‘Right?’ Libby said, uncertain, still stuck on the email hacking part of the story. Jake would never let her near his emails—even his phone. They had this massive row once when he said it was an invasion of his privacy and she said that if he had nothing to hide he shouldn’t mind. He said it wasn’t about having anything to hide; privacy was a basic human right. She’d been won round. It transpired he had something to hide.

Eve pulled her phone out of her back pocket and tapped the screen a couple of times to bring it back to life. ‘So I found emails to her.’

‘Who?’

Eve sighed. ‘The bloody supply teacher.’

Libby frowned, stood up from the chair, and moved over to where Eve was sitting on the window ledge to look at the phone. ‘Eve, has Peter had an affair?’

‘No.’ Eve shook her head. ‘Not as such. It’s an almost affair. He found himself nearly doing something.’

‘Why did he tell you?’

Eve exhaled slowly. ‘I don’t know. Because he can’t keep a secret? He tells me everything.’

Libby watched her stare at the phone screen again before slipping it back into her pocket. She could feel the sun on her back as she perched herself up next to Eve, could smell the lemons and the petrol of Jimmy’s chainsaw. She thought how Jake never told her anything. How she was always the last to know. Catch-ups with his group of mates were usually spent
with Libby trying to get hold of all the gossip he never told her, while Jake was off talking with his big, wide, flirting eyes that sucked women in like her Dyson. Children were born, marriages ended, houses sold, without Libby having the faintest clue. The idea of having a partner who told her everything was almost unimaginable.

‘What about Jimmy?’ Libby found herself saying before she could help it. Knowing she was stirring but her relationship envy getting the better of her.

Eve glanced up, eyebrows drawn. ‘What about Jimmy?’ she said.

‘You and Jimmy. Last night,’ Libby said, angling her head towards where Jimmy had moved onto the rangy olives.

Eve’s expression was like she might hiss at her. ‘Nothing happened with Jimmy last night.’

Libby sat back into the corner of the window sill, pulling her legs up and wrapping her arms around them. ‘So where did you go?’

Eve jumped down, defensive. ‘Just to the water. To look at the sunset. That was all.’

Libby watched her. Eve held her gaze. Challenging, intimidating. Libby wondered whether to push it or leave it there—with her unbelieving. She left it. ‘Fair enough,’ she said, immediately annoyed with herself for copping out, then, sliding herself off the ledge as well added, ‘Next room?’

Next was Jimmy’s—the oldest room of the lot, orange walls with garish curtains. The furniture all needed replacing.

‘I don’t want to be in here,’ said Eve. ‘I think we can safely just say new curtains, new everything.’

Libby nodded.

They backed out, closing the door, and went on to the next. Dex’s. Harrods green walls, a massive wooden sleigh bed in the centre, brown blanket curtains. Dex’s laptop was in one corner, his open suitcase in the other. It smelt of expensive aftershave and warm wool as the sun streamed through the half-drawn blanket curtains.

‘It’s calm in here, isn’t it?’ said Eve, seeming surprised. She sat down on the side of the bed. ‘Curtains are hideous, though.’

Libby smiled; she walked over, ran her hand over them and then went to sit next to Eve on the bed. ‘So these emails?’ she asked. ‘Have you read them?’

‘No.’ Eve shook her head, then reached up to tuck her hair behind her ears.

‘And they work together?’

‘Yes.’

‘So they could be work emails?’

Eve scoffed.

Libby sighed and leant back, the palms of her hands resting on the crisp white sheets.

‘I think I should read them,’ Eve said.

Libby sucked in her top lip, stared over to the brown curtains, the sun peeping through the weave of the wool like a chequerboard. She had wondered quite often if she was glad she had found out about the affair website. Or whether actually she would have been perfectly happy carrying on with her nice life as it was. Comfortable, pleased, happy most of the time. Lonely sometimes.

But wasn’t that better than what a lot of people had?

It hadn’t been a surprise when Jimmy had said there were other affairs. She knew. Somewhere down there she knew. Jake bored easily. He had this restless energy about him that built and built. His self-worth was so heavily tied up in what people—women—thought about him that it seemed as if he needed to go out every few months and get his fix. And he’d come back relaxed again, less angry, calmer. Happier. Had she minded? Of course she had. Had it stripped away layers of her own self-worth? Of course it had. But was she happier now? Now that he was gone.

‘I don’t think you should read them,’ Libby said.

Eve had got her phone out again. Her eyes flicked up. ‘You don’t?’

‘No.’

Libby had met Peter only a couple of times but both times he had made her laugh. Out loud. He had talked to her as a person. He hadn’t flirted, he hadn’t talked about himself all night, he had asked questions and he had listened to the answers, and Libby had found
herself envious of Eve for having him in her life. She had been envious that Eve, who had always been so flighty, so adored, so coquettish, had grown up to get this guy. This man who listened.

Libby bit her lip. ‘Peter told you nothing happened, yes?’

Eve narrowed her eyes and nodded.

‘He told you something almost happened but it didn’t,’ Libby clarified, toying with the sheet beneath her fingers. She sat up straight. ‘Eve, all those emails will do is either confirm or deny what he’s said. And if they confirm it, and they’re flirty and close, they’re going to make you mad. They’ll make it all more visceral. And all of it much worse.’ She re-tied her hair for something to do with her hands and said, ‘He’s told you that something almost happened but he stopped it. That’s all you need to know. If you trust him.’ Libby tightened her ponytail and brought her hands down to rest on her knees, watching Eve throughout. ‘In the same way you told me nothing happened with Jimmy. I’d bet that something almost did though.’