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‘Or underdressed.’ She poured water for them both.
‘Hey.’ He put his fingers on her chin and turned her head to face him. ‘I’m really sorry, you know, about everything.’
‘It’s alright. I get it.’
He looked at her doubtfully.
‘No, really,’ she said. ‘I believe you. It was just a shock.’
‘I should have told you straightaway about what happened at the barbecue. I was an eejit.’
‘I was a bit eejity myself, in fairness. I’m sorry I went off the deep end.’
‘We were simultaneously eejity.’
‘We could do one of those cartoons, you know, with the naked people.Love is, dot, dot, dot, being eejity together.’
He laughed. ‘Or surviving simultaneous eejitocy.’
‘I don’t think that’s a real word, Ro.’
‘I let you get away with eejity,’ he said, feigning indignation.
‘You owed me one.’ She bit her lip. She shouldn’t have said that.
‘Yeah, fair enough,’ he said, and somehow, they were alright.
She looked straight into his eyes and caught the infinitesimal expansion of his pupils. It was as if, after months of speaking two different languages, they had suddenly rediscovered the key to understanding each other.
* * *
The waiter came back with their drinks: two Kir Royales.
‘Claire,’ he said, ‘tell me what I can do.’
Claire, having lifted her drink, put it down again and twirled the stem between her fingers.
Then, she raised it again and tipped it off the edge of the other glass. ‘Fuck her,’ she said, sitting up straight.
‘What? Who?’
‘Alison Fucking Rafferty.’
There was no better glue, after all, than a common enemy.
‘What?’
‘Alison and her cronies don’t know whoweare. It doesn’t matter, not in any real way, what they think happened or didn’t happen. We have plenty to be thinking about without letting that lot into our heads. Fuck them all.’
‘Yeah?’
‘Yeah.’
‘On trinque?’ He raised his glass.
‘Trinquons,’ she said, and they each watched the other take a healthy slug.
‘Ooh yum,’ said Claire. ‘Just like fizzy Ribena.’
