Nine Perfect Strangers

‘Thank you,’ said Zoe.

Frances picked up a cushion and hugged it. ‘I’m perfectly capable of going for ten days without a glass of wine, I just . . . well, I don’t know, I was being wicked.’

‘I don’t even like wine,’ said Zoe.

‘Oh. Did you just want to prove you could beat the system?’

‘I brought the wine to toast my brother’s twenty-first birthday. It’s in a few days. He died three years ago.’

She saw Frances’s inevitably stricken face.

‘It’s okay,’ she told her quickly. ‘We weren’t close.’

People usually looked relieved when she told them that, but Frances’s face didn’t change at all.

‘I’m so sorry,’ she said.

‘It’s fine. Like I said, we really . . . didn’t get on.’ Zoe tried to clarify it for her. Don’t stress! You’re off the hook.

She remembered her friend Cara, the day after Zach’s funeral, saying, ‘At least you weren’t close.’ Cara was really close to her sister.

‘What was your brother’s name?’ asked Frances, as if this were somehow important.

‘Zach,’ said Zoe, and the name sounded odd and painful in her mouth. She heard a roaring sound in her ears and felt for a moment as if she might faint. ‘Zoe and Zach. We were twins. Very cutesy names.’

‘I think they’re lovely names,’ said Frances. ‘But if you’re twins that means it’s your birthday in a few days too.’

Zoe took a sprig of lavender out of a vase and began to shred it. ‘Technically. But I don’t celebrate on that day anymore. I kind of changed my birthday.’

She’d officially moved her birthday to the eighteenth of March. It was a nicer date. A cooler, less tempestuous time of year. The eighteenth of March was Grandma Maria’s birthday, and Grandma Maria used to say it had never once rained on her birthday and maybe that was true; everyone said they should check the weather records in case it was some sort of phenomenon only Grandma Maria had noticed, but nobody ever got around to it.

Grandma Maria had always said she’d live to one hundred, like her own mother, but she died one month after Zach of a broken heart. Even the doctor said it was a broken heart.

‘Zach died the day before our eighteenth birthday,’ said Zoe. ‘We were meant to be having a “Z” party. I was going as Zoe. Which seemed really funny at the time.’

‘Oh, Zoe.’ Frances leaned forward. Zoe could tell she wanted to touch her but was stopping herself.

‘So that’s why I changed it,’ said Zoe. ‘It’s, like, not fair to Mum and Dad to have to celebrate my birthday the day after when they’re still totally wrecked from the anniversary. January is really hard for my parents.’

‘Of course it would be,’ said Frances. Her eyes were bright with sympathy. ‘Hard for all of you, I imagine. So you thought it would be good to . . . get away?’

‘We just wanted somewhere quiet, and a health resort seemed like a good idea because we’re all really unhealthy.’

‘Are you? You don’t look at all unhealthy to me.’

‘Well, for a start, I have way too much sugar in my diet,’ said Zoe.

‘Sugar is the new villain,’ said Frances. ‘It used to be fat. Then it was carbs. It’s hard to keep up.’

‘No, but sugar is seriously bad,’ said Zoe. It wasn’t hard to keep up at all! Everyone knew sugar was terrible for you. ‘They’ve done all this research. I need to withdraw from my sugar addiction.’

‘Mmm,’ said Frances.

‘I eat too much chocolate and I’m addicted to Diet Coke, that’s why my skin is so bad.’ Zoe put a fingertip to a blind pimple near her lip. She couldn’t stop touching it.

‘Your skin is gorgeous!’ Frances gesticulated wildly, probably because she was trying not to look at Zoe’s pimple.

Zoe sighed. People should be honest.