Page 49 of The Woman Who Said Yes

Trying to quell his unease, Sam goes to the picture again and slides his phone across the table. He is conscious of sitting as stiffly as the knobbly twigs in the vase on the table as Lucy taps out the number on her own phone. While it rings, she gazes casually out of the window as if she were calling a friend. Then: ‘Oh, hello,’ she says smoothly. ‘Who is this please?’

Sam watches, agog at her confidence, while the other person speaks. ‘I am sorry,’ Lucy says, frowning comically. ‘I didn’t mean to upset you. Think I must have a wrong number. Bye!’ She finishes the call, sets down her phone and looks at Sam.

‘What did they say?’ he asks.

Lucy laughs. ‘“Who the fuck are you?”’

‘God, really? I’m so sorry!’

‘I don’t care,’ she announces. ‘I’m not a delicate flower, Sam. And she – it was a woman, by the way – didn’t sound like one either.’

As they leave the café Sam tries to reassure himself that it’s okay. That Dom will never find out that someone he doesn’t even know called a number from his contacts. And – crucially – that Eva will never know either. But still, this is starting to feel far more entangled than he’s comfortable with, and now he’s annoyed at himself for allowing that to happen there.

Lucy hugs him and rushes off to do an urgent client call. Someone messaged to ask if she could fit them in at short notice – a real person with real problems, Sam reflects once she’s gone. Rather than this unknown ‘G’ from Dom’s contacts who seems to have wormed her way into Sam’s brain.

At least he knows it’s a woman now. And although he’s not exactly sure why, he also knows that he must find out who she is, before Eva’s wedding. And the only person he can admit this to is Andie.

28

WEDDING COUNTDOWN: 13 DAYS

Andie

‘Lucy called the number?’ I knew it was irrational to be put out when Sam phoned me last night. But really?

‘It’s just the way it happened,’ Sam insisted.

The way it happened? What did that mean? Calm down, I told myself. It wasn’t as if Sam had cheated on me (although, ridiculously, it felt a bit like that). She’d just gone ahead and done it, he explained – and apparently he’d sat there and let her do it. Encouraged her, even? Who knows? Far be it from me to suggest that this sensitive matter should be kept between ourselves. Because maybe, as a little gang, things are changing now? And that’s why I’m feeling so prickly because, ridiculously, I expect everything to remain as it was, just as Niko’s menu has remained virtually unchanged since 1987, and what the hell is wrong with moussaka anyway?

Besides, Lucy can call whoever she likes! They were having coffee after a film, Sam told me. On a Saturday, when he’d usually have a full, busy day at the shop? What about Farrah? Did she mind him swanning off like that, leaving her to manage things all by herself?

I didn’t say any of this. Instead, I tossed and turned for much of the night, conscious of the eyeless Gideon lying beneath me and feeling somehow replaced as Sam’s… well, as his what, exactly? I’m only a friend, and if he’s found someone he’s really clicked with, then isn’t that great? And shouldn’t I be delighted?

And now, waking to a colourless sky and a sense of foreboding, I decide that Sam will probably bring Lucy to Eva’s wedding even though they’ve only been out together, what, a handful of times? It’s that self-torture thing again – the giant man’s pyjamas! – as if Eva’s wedding hasn’t quite been enough to shake things up. She has emailed out the invitations, beautiful designed by herself, and featuring a picture of her and Dom on the cruise together, clutching cocktails. It reads:

What a catch! Eva and Dom are delighted to invite you to their wedding at 1pm on Saturday May 9. Strictly no presents!

There’s no plus one as, naturally, Eva assumes that Sam and I will go together. But surely she’ll be fine with Lucy coming too?

I know I’m jumping ahead of myself and inventing a narrative, as Marnie would put it. Churning over stuff needlessly in my head. I never used to be like this. I just cracked on with life, enjoying my work, seeing my friends, missing Jake with him being away in Bristol, but loving the times we all got together. But the discovery of the sex swing receipt seemed to switch something in me. After that, my reasonably normally functioning mind turned into one of those stone-polisher machines that Marnie had begged for one Christmas. You put in rough stones and some kind of grit, and the little drum churns and churns until finally, after 200 years or when you simply can’t bear the noise any more, the stones come out all glossy and smooth.

Perhaps another effect of Phil’s philandering was to make me too reliant on Sam and Eva? Sam especially – at least initially as, when it all came out about Gina, Eva was away in Canada, styling fashion shoots for a magazine. So I’d rushed over to Sam’s and we’d set off for the park with Pip, his crazy little brown and white terrier. Instead of sobbing the whole way round, as I’d fully anticipated, we ended up doubled over in laughter as Pip emerged from the bushes. It wasn’t a stick, clamped between his jaws, but an enormous pink vibrator which he dropped at our feet like a gift. I can’t say that cured me but, at that moment, it helped.

Sam and Eva have always been there, throughout everything. And now Eva is all wrapped up with Dom, and Sam is… well, I assume he’s busy right now and, even though my instinct is to message him, I don’t. Instead, I make coffee and turn my thoughts to the more pressing matter of ‘G’. It still seems to me that listing a contact by their initial suggests some degree of intimacy. But that doesn’t mean she’s on the scene now; she could be an ex, in which case there’s nothing to worry about. Still, I need to find out for sure.

To build up the nerve, I down coffee after coffee until finally, with my caffeinated heart battering away, I tap out the number. I don’t know what I’m going to say. I’m just hoping to glean a little more intel than Sam and Lucy managed to gather, which wouldn’t be difficult as apparently the woman had sworn at them and cut them off. Amateurs!

It rings and rings, and just as I’m assuming that G enjoys a lie-in on a Sunday morning, she answers with a sharp, ‘Hello?’

‘Oh, hi there!’ I clear my throat. ‘Sorry to call you out of the blue…’

‘Who is this?’ the woman snaps.

‘I, um… I was at the barbecue,’ I blurt out, picturing the grubby aproned Dom, brandishing his tongs. ‘And I’m pretty sure I, er…’ Shit, why didn’t I plan this? ‘I think my purse fell out of my bag,’ I say quickly.

‘What?’

I exhale slowly, trying to exude calm. ‘I know it’s been a while,’ I go on. ‘I couldn’t work out where I might have left it, but a friend said, um⁠—’