Jane Green - Bookends

‘And what about your love life?’ she asks finally, and Si gives her a blow by blow account of his relationship with Will, insisting that this time, despite what I have told him, it may well be The One.

‘What about you?’ he says. ‘You don’t look married, and’ – he picks up her left hand before letting it drop gently down into her lap again – ‘there’s no ring. So are there any potential Mr Fairleys lurking on the scene?’

‘God, no,’ she groans. ‘The only men I seem to meet these days are middle-aged television executives who are all married and desperate for a glamorous bit on the side. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve been invited for a “quick drink after work”.’

‘Do you ever go?’

Portia laughs. ‘I did in the beginning. Before the series, back when I was naïve and desperate for my big break. Also before I understood that a quick drink after work meant a quick bonk in the shabby hotel around the corner.’

‘Oh.’ I don’t say anything else, too busy trying to picture Portia in a shabby anything, anywhere, but it doesn’t quite work.

‘They could at least have booked Claridge’s,’ sniffs Si, and we all start laughing.

‘I know,’ Portia says. ‘That’s exactly what I said to him when I turned on my heel and left.’

‘So you didn’t…’ Only Si could have asked that question.

‘No! I most certainly did not.’

‘So how does it feel to be this huge success?’ I ask. ‘Do you love it? Has it changed your life?’

‘Absolutely.’ She looks at me. ‘And it’s wonderful, but it’s also very strange. I always used to think that the one thing I wanted more than anything in the world was to be famous. I used to have daydreams about being a film star, or anything really, just being recognized, being loved by everyone.’

I catch Si’s eye, and I know immediately what he’s thinking. That of course Portia would have wanted fame, that the only thing she thought would make her feel secure would be the adulation of strangers, and that if anything it was astounding that she wasn’t now starring in Hollywood on the silver screen.

‘Not that I’m famous now,’ she says quickly, ‘but I am known . I’ve gone from being the journalist, the one who does all the interviews and asks all the right questions and has the power to rip someone apart if she so chooses, to being the vulnerable one, and I’m not sure how much I like it.’

‘But I would have thought you’d love it.’ Si echoes my thoughts. ‘You must have changed more than we thought.’

‘I don’t think so,’ she smiles. ‘I haven’t really changed, but I never expected to feel so vulnerable. You never know what someone’s agenda is. And when the series first took off every paper and magazine wanted to interview me, and I thought I needed to do everything, so I did.

‘So I’d let people into my home, trust them in my personal space, open up to them and be as honest as I knew how, and then open the paper a week later to see that they’d torn me apart. And I know I used to do the same thing, but then I thought that this was the price people paid for being in the public eye, and that it wasn’t personal. Except most of the time it is.’

‘Jesus,’ whistles Si. ‘Sounds like a nightmare. I’d be slashing my wrists every day.’

‘It’s amazing how quickly you develop a shut-off mechanism,’ she says. ‘But it never really stops hurting. You just try to avoid the negative pieces because all it’s going to do is upset you, and it’s not as if anyone’s giving you constructive criticism, they’re just slagging you off because they don’t like you and because they can.’

‘But what about the good things? Aren’t you going off to amazingly glamorous parties and hobnobbing with the stars at premières and things?’

‘Sometimes,’ she says, shrugging, ‘but actually it’s not very exciting at all. If you’re willing to play the game, then it’s great – you go to two or three things a night, air kiss the same people, do a few lines of coke to keep you going, and have the same vacuous conversations as the ones you had the night before.’

‘God, if you ever need an escort, I’m usually free,’ Si grins, throwing up his hands and saying, ‘I’m joking, I’m joking’ when he sees the look on my face.

‘I would have thought the trick is to surround yourself with people you trust. Just the really good friends,’ I say. ‘So you can go to all these things, but you know that it’s not real, and that the real people, the true friends, are the ones you spend your real time with, rather than the fake people you see at these do’s.’

Portia thinks for a while. ‘In theory you’re absolutely right, Cath. Of course that’s what you should do. I suppose I’ve just been so busy with my career I haven’t had a chance to find the sort of people I’d want to surround myself with.’ There’s a long pause. ‘I haven’t found those sorts of people since university,’ and with that she looks first at me, and then at Si, and I pray that my blush doesn’t become any more fierce, for we, after all, chose to lose contact with her when we had all graduated. We were the ones who hadn’t returned her calls.

So is she saying that she’s missed us, that she valued the friendship we once had, that it isn’t too late for us to resurrect it, which would be the point of her turning up this evening?

‘God, I’m boring you!’ she says suddenly, turning to me and laying a hand on my arm. ‘Cath, you will never know how good it is to see you after all this time. It’s your turn. Tell me everything.’ And I do.

Half an hour later, or possibly an hour, or might it even be three, Lucy comes over with a tray of steaming lattes for us, refusing to sit down because there are still a handful of people here who need looking after.

‘Oh, damn,’ she says, turning round just as she’s started to walk off. ‘Cath, I forgot. The gorgeous James was looking for you.’

‘Was he?’ I perk up for a second, as Portia raises an eyebrow.

‘The gorgeous James? I thought you said there weren’t any men in your life.’

‘There aren’t,’ I say quickly, as Lucy laughs and shouts over her shoulder, ‘Not yet, but he’s definitely her not-so-secret admirer.’

‘I don’t think so.’ I haven’t forgotten what happened earlier, but nevertheless it is encouraging to hear he’s been looking for me.

‘What’s he like?’ Portia asks.

‘Gorgeous,’ Si says. ‘Young sexy Farmer Giles type. All dimples, floppy hair and big white smile.’

‘Rather like him?’ she says, gesturing to the door, as I sink back into the sofa, feeling sick at having thought there might have been a different outcome.

‘Yes.’ I watch in a deep dark gloom as James guides Ingrid out the door, her face lighting up in a most uncharacteristic way as she turns her head to laugh at something he has said. ‘Exactly like him.’

I didn’t mean to get drunk last night. In fact I think I was doing incredibly well. Lucy stopped me going hell for leather, and then I’d been knocked sideways by Portia turning up, which definitely sobered me up, and then, after all that, I had to deal with my admirer not actually admiring me in the slightest.

But once the guests had gone, once Portia had left with strict instructions to be at Lucy and Josh’s house on Saturday the eighteenth (instructions from Lucy, needless to say, Josh having gone back home to pay the babysitter), once it was just Lucy, Si and I, I really let my hair down.

Bill and Rachel attempted to clear up, but Lucy and I shooed them home with a bottle of champagne each, only regretting it afterwards when we saw the state of the bookshop.

Our newly polished oak floors were covered in cigarette butts and pools of liquid, and our sparkling coffee tables, strategically dotted close to the old, beaten-up leather sofas, now looked distinctly second hand. Books had been taken off the shelves and randomly shoved back where they clearly didn’t belong, and the air smelt of musty smoke and too many people crammed into too small a space. But I have to say, it was worth it.