The Girl Before

By nine P.M. on Saturday the house is packed. I’ve put candles all the way up the stairs and outside in the garden and dimmed the lighting right down. The fact that Housekeeper doesn’t have a “Party” setting does make me a bit worried at first. But I’ve checked The Rules and “No parties” isn’t on the list. Maybe they just forgot, but hey, a list is a list.

Of course, our friends can’t believe it when they walk through the door, though there are plenty of jokes about where’s all the furniture and why haven’t we unpacked yet. Simon’s in his element—he always likes to be the envy of his friends, to have the most exclusive watch or the latest app or the coolest phone, and now he has the best place to live. I can see him adjusting to this new version of himself, proudly demonstrating the stove, the automatic entry system, the way the electric sockets are just three tiny slits in a stone wall, how even the drawers built under the bed are different on the man’s side and the woman’s.

I’d thought about inviting Edward Monkford but Simon persuaded me not to. Now, as Kylie’s “Can’t Get You Out of My Head” ripples through the crowd, I realize he was right—Monkford would loathe all this noise and mayhem and dancing: He’d probably make up another rule on the spot and throw everyone out. Just for a moment I imagine that happening—Edward Monkford turning up uninvited, turning off the music, and ordering everyone to get out—and it actually feels rather good. Which is stupid, because after all it’s my party.

Simon goes past, his hands full of bottles, and leans in to kiss me. You look great, birthday girl, he says. Is that a new dress?

I’ve had it for ages, I lie. He kisses me again. Get a room you two, Saul shouts over the music as Amanda pulls him into the knot of dancers.

There’s a lot of booze, a little bit of drugs, plenty of music and shouting. People spill into the tiny garden to smoke and get yelled at by the neighbors. But by three in the morning everyone’s starting to drift away. Saul spends twenty minutes trying to persuade Simon and me to come on to a club but despite having done a couple of lines I’m exhausted and Simon says he’s too drunk and eventually Amanda takes Saul home.

Come to bed, Em, Simon says when they’ve gone.

In a minute, I say. I’m too tired to move.

You smell gorgeous, gorgeous, he says, nuzzling my neck. Let’s go to bed.

Si, I say hesitantly.

What? he says.

I don’t think I want to have sex tonight, I say. Sorry.

We haven’t since the break-in. We haven’t really talked about it. It’s just one of those things.

You said everything would be different here, he says softly.

It will, I say. Just not yet.

Of course, he says. There’s no hurry, Em. No hurry at all.

Later, as we lie beside each other in the darkness, he says quietly, Remember how we christened Belfort Gardens?

It had been a silly challenge we’d set ourselves: to make love in every room before we’d been there a week.

He doesn’t say anything else. The silence lengthens, and eventually I fall asleep.

NOW: JANE

I invite some friends to lunch, a little housewarming gathering. Mia and Richard bring their children, Freddie and Martha, and Beth and Pete bring Sam. I’ve known Mia since Cambridge—my oldest and closest friend. Certainly I know things her own husband doesn’t, such as that in Ibiza shortly before their wedding she slept with another man and almost called it off, or that she contemplated having an abortion when she fell pregnant with Martha because her postpartum depression with Freddie had been so bad.

Much as I love these people, I shouldn’t have invited them together. I only did it because of the novelty of having enough space, but the fact is, however tactful my friends try to be, sooner or later they start talking to one another about their children. Richard and Pete patrol after their toddlers as if jerked after them by invisible reins, fearful of the stone floor, those lethal stairs, the floor-to-ceiling glass windows that a running child might not even see, while the girls pour huge glasses of white wine and complain quietly but with a kind of battle-weary pride about how boring their lives have become: “God, last week I fell asleep watching the six o’clock news!” “That’s nothing—I’d crashed by CBeebies!” Martha regurgitates her lunch over the stone table, while Sam manages to smear the plate-glass windows with fingers previously dipped in chocolate mousse. I find myself thinking there are advantages to not having a child. A part of me just wants them all to go so I can tidy up.

And then there’s a funny little moment with Mia. She’s helping me get the salad ready when she calls out, “J, where do you keep the African spoons?”

“Oh—I donated them to the charity shop.”

She gives me a strange look. “I gave you those.”

“Yes, I know.” Mia went to do voluntary work in an African orphanage once, and she brought me back two hand-carved salad spoons, made by the kids. “I decided they didn’t quite make the cut. Sorry. D’you mind?”

“I suppose not,” she says with a slightly put-out expression on her face. Clearly, she does mind. But pretty soon lunch is ready and she forgets about it.