“I haven’t heard,” I say. “But I’m sure she’ll be there.”
“Mm-hmm. And Bean?” adds Mimi softly. “Is there…anyone?”
Immediately my heart creases up. Because Gus’s love life may be what you’d call suboptimal, but Bean’s…
Thinking about it still gives me actual pain, even a year on. It is the saddest, simplest story. Hal—who we all loved—asked Bean to marry him. He did this proper proposal in the park and we were all so thrilled…Bean was so happy…But then three days later he changed his mind and ended it. Not just the engagement, the whole relationship. Over.
They’d been about to choose a ring. Bean was actually on her way to the jeweler’s to meet him. Oh God. It was awful. Awful. I had the happiest sister in the world, and then I had the most heartbroken. Lovely, kind, sensitive, generous Bean. It’s just not right. That stuff should not happen to her.
And, yes, I know it wasn’t Hal’s fault. He was totally frank with Bean about how he’d got carried away and then realized he just wasn’t ready, and he was desperately sorry and screwed up about it. I guess he had to do what he had to do, but…
God, love is crap. It’s crap.
“Don’t think so,” I say, gazing at a dead leaf. “She hasn’t mentioned it.”
“Mm-hmm,” says Mimi again, in that tactful way she has. “And you, darling? Is there anyone…interesting?”
“Nope,” I say, more bluntly than I intended. “No one.”
“I hear the Murrans are going to the party,” says Mimi lightly, snipping a rose.
“Yup,” I say, even more curtly. “I heard that too.”
“Joe’s turned into quite a celebrity, hasn’t he?” She sounds entertained by the fact. “Although his mother says he can’t stand it. We had coffee the other day. He’s left Twitter, she said. Apparently he was besieged after he was on the TV. Besieged! The clip’s still on the Internet, you know.”
“I’m sure it is,” I say after a pause.
“Have you watched it?”
“No,” I say, staring at the sky. “Can’t say I have.”
Which is a lie, but I’m not going to say, Of course I have, every single female in Britain has watched it, and half of them have proposed marriage to him while the other half have FedExed him their knickers.
Mimi has clearly received the message that I do not wish to talk about Joe. She shuts her secateurs, puts a hand on my arm, and smiles.
“Come on. Let’s have some tea.”
* * *
—
As I enter the kitchen, I stop dead and gaze at the cupboard in front of me. There’s a little illustration in the corner of the door, done in Sharpie. A tree and a bird. Simple and gorgeous.
“You’ve been drawing!” I exclaim.
“Yes.” Mimi smiles. “Just a little. You like it?”
I can’t answer for a moment.
“Yes,” I manage at last. “I love it.”
“It’s a new start,” says Mimi, her eyes crinkling. “Darling, would you like supper?”
“Yes please.” I draw breath. “And listen, Mimi, d’you want to go out on Saturday night? Just you and me? Go out to a restaurant or something?”
“What about the party?” says Mimi, flipping on the kettle, and I feel a spike of frustration. Wasn’t she listening?
“I’m not going. I’d rather be with you!”
Mimi exhales softly, then turns to face me. “Effie, my love, I’m busy on Saturday night. I have…” She hesitates. “I have a date.”
My insides slither around for a few hideous seconds. A date? My mum? A date?
“Right,” I say, in a strangled voice. “That’s…You know. Great!”
My mind is suddenly full of unwanted images. Mimi clinking champagne glasses in a restaurant with a smarmy silver-fox type wearing a cravat, saying he’d like fun and more.
Argh. No. Stop. I cannot compute any of this.
“And I think you should go to the party,” Mimi continues implacably. She puts a gentle hand on my arm. “Darling, is there more to this than you’re saying?”
For a moment I’m silent, trying to think how to answer.
“It’s just been hard,” I say finally. “You know. With Krista. And Dad. And everything.”
At the word Krista, Mimi twitches, just the tiniest bit. She never talks about Krista, but when she first saw a photo of her, I did notice her face kind of cave in slightly.
“Of course it’s been hard,” she says at last. “But you love Greenoaks. This is your chance to say goodbye. And there must be things you want to collect from the house—”
“Nothing,” I contradict her, almost in triumph. “I cleared out my bedroom, remember?”
I should probably have cleared out my room years ago. But Bean and I—and Gus, for that matter—never properly “moved out.” We were always going back for the weekend before the divorce, so it made sense to keep some stuff at Greenoaks. Bean actually moved back in for a while, when she was redecorating her own place, and she’s still got so many belongings in her room, it looks as if she still lives there.
But not me. Not anymore. A month ago, in a kind of defiant gesture, I hired a company to go and pack up everything in my bedroom that wasn’t furniture, stow it in boxes, and put it in a storage unit.
“But furniture?” Mimi persists. “Books?”
“No. There’s nothing there I want. Anyway, it’ll all go into storage. It’s not exactly urgent.”
The kettle comes to the boil, but neither of us moves.
“I still think you should go to this party,” says Mimi gravely. “I feel it strongly, Effie.”
“Well, I’ve already declined,” I say, in a light, almost flippant voice. “So, too late. I can’t.”
We don’t talk about the party again. Mimi cooks me supper and we watch TV, and as we hug goodbye, I’m actually quite cheerful.
* * *
—
At home I wallow in a hot bath for a while, then get ready for bed. And it’s only when I’m giving my phone a last check that Bean’s WhatsApps start arriving.
Mimi says you’ve DECLINED??