Keith reached the end of his story and all the girls laughed at once, throwing their heads back, shaking their shiny hair. She was never going to see him again, after this weekend. That was the truth. None of these people. Sure, maybe once or twice they would respond to a message, express surprise at her departure, vaguely wish her well, a week or a fortnight or a month after she had sent it. But now that she had nothing to offer them, would anyone in this room bother to keep in touch? Of course they wouldn’t.
Ned was by the bar in the ballroom, drink in his hand. Annie made a beeline for him. From a velvet-lined DJ booth made entirely of refashioned wood from the pulpit of the island’s tumbledown chapel, someone – was it Calvin Harris, or was he on later? – was attempting to enthuse the sluggish dancefloor. It was always the same with Home members – it’s hard to dance like no one’s watching when everyone always is.
Maybe if she just swanned up to Ned and said sorry, the whole thing would defuse. Four and a half drinks in – where had she acquired this new one, she wondered, and how long had she been holding it, and where had the other half of it gone? – that had started to seem like a plausible assumption.
Then, as she was approaching and her heel caught a little on the edge of a Persian rug, her hand shooting out to steady herself, Ned looked up.
And she saw the way he registered her stumble, an accident that might have happened to anyone. The quick glance up at her. The cruel flicker of a sneer. And it hit her that it did not matter, that an end had always been inevitable, that she could have been younger, older, quieter, louder, said too much to the press, said not enough to the press, and there would always have been a reason to get rid of her eventually.
And in that moment she realized there was really only one thing left for her to do.
Nikki
It was almost midnight, and the elegant Powder Room – oak panelling, chequerboard floor, gilt-framed mirrors and veined Carrara marble sinks – was more than living up to its nudge-nudge name. All around her, members lounged on pale pink sofas, retouching their lipstick or patting their nostrils in their mirror, readjusting their dresses. Designer clutch bags were discarded everywhere – detritus left by drunk girls so used to someone picking up after them that they could no longer be trusted to keep hold of an accessory for an entire evening.
Three actresses came stumbling out of one of the cubicles together, and Nikki slipped into it.
If she was honest, for all their glamour, these launch parties could be unbearable. All the air-kissing. All the arse-kissing. All the tedious, performative debauchery. Men shouting. Women cackling. Annie dressed as a disco ball. Adam eyeing up every woman under thirty.
Five minutes’ peace, that was all she needed. Five minutes away from Ned, from having to hear his voice, see his face, pretend nothing was wrong, from every second wanting to hurl herself at him and demand to know the truth. What he had done. Why he had done it. How he could live with himself. Every time he’d smiled at her, every time he had rested his hand gently on her arm to move her out of the way of something, every time he had invited someone they were talking with to notice how fantastic she was looking tonight – ‘Home’s staff supermodel!’ – Nikki had felt her skin tighten.
Having locked the cubicle door, she removed her tuxedo jacket and hung it on the large brass hook. She felt flushed, shaky. Too hot even in only the thin, pale blue silk slip dress she was wearing. Ned would no doubt have something to say about the abrupt manner in which she had excused herself, the peculiar way she had dashed off when Ned beckoned Kurt over from across the room to join them. Not least since Georgia Crane had been in the middle of an endless anecdote, and one of the unspoken rules at Home was that you never interrupted or excused yourself or gave the slightest hint of your attention flagging when a member was talking. Even if it was a story you’d previously heard verbatim, recounted in the bored and detached style of an actress two years into a West End run, who had outgrown the role long ago.
The story Georgia had been halfway through telling was how she and Jackson had got together, what it had felt like to be on stage your very first night in your very first professional acting role after graduation （Cassandra in a modern-dress version of The Oresteia at the Almeida） and to look up and see someone you’d admired so much for so long sitting right there looking up at you from the front row. About the flowers he had sent her backstage, the note. About their first date, at The River Café, and how nervous she had been, her panic about what to wear. Nikki wondered how rude it had looked, just turning and walking away while Georgia was still talking.