‘Sure, okay.’ Faye smiled brightly again, not wanting him to go. Reluctantly, she turned to Mallory.
‘Hi, Mallory,’ she said as amicably as she could.
‘Oh, hi, Faye,’ Mallory replied in the same falsely jolly tone. ‘Don’t you look…severe, this evening.’
It’s like she has literally no social skills,Faye thought.
‘Thanks.’ She didn’t bother to exchange a compliment, genuine or otherwise. ‘Excuse me. Going to the ladies.’
Faye made her way to the toilets, found a cubicle free, went in and leaned against its wall, closing the door behind her. Her head was spinning from the champagne. She had absolutely no desire to talk to Mallory and was keen to avoid her nagging about attending Ruby’s coven meetings; hopefully, when she got back from the toilet, the other girl would be gone.
She rarely drank this much and she hated feeling sick, but she could feel it coming. She leaned over the toilet and vomited everything she had just eaten into it.
Faye was alarmed. Perhaps she was ill. She wasn’t usually sick after a few glasses of champagne.
However, with much of her stomach’s contents gone, she felt a little clearer and closed the toilet lid, sitting down and wiping her mouth.
As she did so, Faye heard the door to the bathroom open and voices spill into the white-tiled room.
‘She’s some kind of witch, I heard,’ one said, over the sound of a cubicle door opening and closing.
‘Scottish,’ another voice confirmed. So, she was being talked about.
‘She’s really pretty,’ the first voice commented. ‘They met up at that Scottish festival last summer. The one that was in the papers?’
‘I heard about that. Weird goings-on,’ the other one called out from the cubicle.
‘Mallory says she’s, like, enchanted him or something,’ the other voice, out by the sinks, ventured.
‘What, like, cast a spell on him? That’s stupid,’ the other girl said. Faye heard her ripping off toilet paper from the dispenser. ‘Mallory’s jealous, that’s all.’
‘I don’t think she is. Just concerned, like. That’s what she told me.’ Faye smelled perfume being applied. ‘Have you got any lipstick on you? I forgot mine and it’s come off already.’
The cubicle door clicked again and Faye heard the girl rejoin her friend.
‘Don’t believe it for a second.Concerned.Like she doesn’t want Rav back big time. It’s so obvious. Always hanging around him, staying back after meetings. Calling into his office. It’s not like she has a reason to, not as much as she does. I’ve heard them in there, laughing, joking around. They’re not working. Took some files in the other week and she was sitting on the edge of his desk, leaning over in this low-cut top. I swear they’d just kissed or something ’cos they both looked really guilty when I came in.’
‘What?Really?!’ The excitement in the other girl’s voice was in a directly inverse proportion to Faye’s dread, which roiled her stomach. The nausea returned.
‘Definitely. I’m telling you!’ The first girl’s voice was smug, thick with triumph at her secret. ‘Don’t tell anyone I told you, obviously. Rav made out they were looking at some spreadsheet or something, but she left right away and he was really embarrassed. I could tell something was going on.’
The door opened and closed, and their voices trailed away, leaving Faye alone. Carefully, she opened the cubicle door, stepped into the communal space and stared at herself in the mirror.
A few weeks ago. About the same time that she’d come home to find Mallory in the flat. They’d likely kissed. Mallory and Rav. And he’d lied about it.
He’d had the nerve to makeherfeel guilty. And the even greater nerve to send her off for coffee with his…whatever Mallory was, to make nice. To make friends. Presumably so that he and Mallory could carry on their affair behind her back without her suspecting anything.
She couldn’t go back to the table and pretend everything was okay. She wouldn’t be able to keep up any pretence that she hadn’t heard what she’d heard.
Faye pushed the door to the ladies’ bathroom open and stepped out back into the main room, keeping to the wall. While she’d been in the bathroom, a DJ had started a set, and a lot of people were dancing already. She watched their drunk, jerky movements, looking for Rav. He wasn’t much of a dancer, so she wasn’t surprised not to see him there, though Roni had joined the fray and was flailing around flamboyantly in his shirt and trousers, having taken his jacket off.
Faye kept to the wall and walked along it, scanning the crowd. She didn’t want to talk to Rav; she was too angry. But she needed her coat and bag. She was leaving, and she didn’t want him trying to persuade her to stay, or worse, to have a huge argument in front of everyone.
He wasn’t anywhere near the table, so she made her way quickly to where she’d left her bag and picked it up, avoiding the glances of the people standing around it talking. Sumi waved at her from the bar, beckoning her over, but Faye only smiled and pointed off into the room as if she was needed elsewhere.
It was then that she saw them. Mallory had her hand in his, half-dragging him to the dance-floor; Rav was protesting, but the crowd of friends around them were pushing him towards the other bodies, laughing; he was laughing, too. He wasn’t looking for Faye, and he wasn’t refusing Mallory; his hand stayed in her grip.
Faye watched as Rav and Mallory joined the writhing bodies, jumping and moving to the heavy beats that filled the warehouse like a pulse. Her own heart pounded along with it, but it was anger and sadness that fuelled it.
