Anne Billson - Stiff Lips

Sophie sighed impatiently. 'I'd heard it wrong. It wasn't ashoo , it was ash. Hash . They were selling dope.'

I asked if she'd bought any. Sophie said she never touched the stuff, but let out such a loud and dirty laugh that the teenagers looked up and saw us. Sophie greeted them cheerfully. 'Hey,' she said. 'Whassup.'

Whassup . I nearly died with embarrassment.

'Bless you today?' one of them shouted as we passed.

'Not today, thank you,' Sophie called back.

'I thought you said you never touched drugs,' I said.

'It's a standing joke,' said Sophie. 'After that business with the sneezing, they started calling me the Bless You Lady.'

I said they probably called her lots of other things too, when her back was turned.

I'd considered inviting Carolyn and the others to my housewarming, but the idea of the invitation being turned down had struck me as so mortifying that I'd chickened out. Normally I would have asked Graham as well, but I didn't think it was wise to put him in the same room as Sophie, just as I thought it prudent to save Dirk and Lemmy for a separate occasion. Miles, I knew, was spending the weekend with his parents in Ottery St Mary (where he'd never dared take me , though Sophie had always looked on it as a second home, and I'd heard Ligia had already been made welcome there), but I had mixed feelings about the prospect of him and Sophie getting back together again and probably wouldn't have invited him anyway.

So in the end it was just me, Sophie and Marsha. All girls together, plus a bottle of Australian Chardonnay.

'Very nice,' Marsha said, when she saw what I'd done with a lick of paint, a few hand-woven rugs and a couple of floor cushions. 'You've made it quite habitable. I must say I wasn't happy about this place being empty all that time.'

'Surely you're not frightened by a few ghosts,' purred Sophie. Purred was the operative word here; I had detected a slight cattiness in her attitude to Marsha ever since the Robert Jamieson business. Sophie never passed up on an opportunity to compliment Marsha on what she was wearing, even if it was something with patchwork inserts, or sequins sewn into amusing patterns on mohair jumpers, or beasts of the jungle appliqued in silver and gold — flourishes which I knew Sophie would have swallowed strychnine before allowing into any wardrobe of hers.

It was obvious to me that she was being the bitch of all time, but Marsha either failed to notice or chose to ignore it. 'No such thing as ghosts,' she said jauntily.

'Who knows?' said Sophie.

Marsha obviously thought it was time to change the subject. 'It's just the three of us?'

'Who else is there?' I said, though as soon as I'd asked the question I realized it sounded wistful, rather than blasé, as I'd intended.

'I thought you might have invited your gentleman friend,' said Marsha.

I was perplexed by the twinkle in her eye. 'You mean Walter? He couldn't make it.'

'I meant the bloke you were with the other night.'

I had no idea what she was talking about, and said so.

'You were in the Duke of York on Friday?' asked Marsha.

I thought back. 'Yeees.' I remembered popping in to look for Dirk and Lemmy, and staying for a gin and tonic, though I hadn't run into anyone I knew.

'I thought as much,' said Marsha. 'I thought I'd seen you through the window.'

'You should have come in. I would have bought you a drink.'

'Didn't like to interrupt,' Marsha said with a funny little smile. 'The two of you were getting along so well.'

I scoured my memory again, and came up with a resounding blank. 'But I was on my own.'

'Sure you were,' said Marsha, winking broadly.

Sophie was looking from one of us to the other, like a Centre Court spectator.

'I was on my own,' I repeated. 'Honestly.'

'It's OK,' said Marsha, 'I won't tell anyone.'

'There's nothing to tell,' I said, getting a bit annoyed.

But it was as though Marsha was equipped with a filter that blocked out everything she didn't need to hear. She'd pounced on one of my sketchbooks and was now flicking through it, uttering complimentary little cooing noises as she did so. 'These are nice. You're so clever. Ooh, look at that. I wish I could draw.'

Sophie peered over her shoulder at my rough sketches of the dead tulips, Dirk staring into his beer, the view from the window, and the odd feeble attempt at self-portraiture.

'So what are you working on right now?' she asked.

For a microsecond I thought about lying. But it was no good. 'Puddings.'

Sophie sniggered, and I realized she'd known the answer all along. She'd just wanted to hear me say it.

'Not still on the puddings! Poor puddingy Clare! You must be so sick of them.'

'They pay the rent,' I said.

'You're not paying rent,' Sophie pointed out.

'I'm still paying it in Hackney.'

'What puddings?' asked Marsha.

I slid the latest batch of step-by-steps out of my folder and spread them out over the table-top with a certain amount of pride. The work might have been lacking in glamour, but it looked slick and professional. By following my illustrations, a person really could learn how to bake.

'Good Lord,' giggled Sophie, pointing to the nearest. 'What in heaven's name is that?'

'Victoria Sponge,' I said.

'The well-known soap actress,' said Sophie.

I ignored her. 'And that one's Tarte au Praline .'

'You did all these?' squeaked Marsha. 'But they're so neat. You are so talented. I can't tell you how jealous I am.'

'It's nothing,' I said, wondering whether it might not be a smart move to swap my friendship with Sophie, long-standing as it was, for a more confidence-boosting association with Marsha.

'The things people eat,' said Sophie, staring with horrified fascination.

I picked up the Tarte au Praline sequence and stared intently at it. 'My style has changed, don't you think?'

Sophie asked, 'What do you mean?'

I ignored the warning note in her voice. 'Don't you think my drawings are getting darker, more intense?'

'You mean a darker, more intense kind of pudding?' Sophie scrunched up her face, trying to focus on the finer details. 'You've got better at hands,' she observed. 'Some of your earlier efforts looked like clumps of fish-fingers.'

I felt disappointment welling up. 'You don't think they look at all sinister? Or surreal? As though something horrible might intrude into the frame at any moment?'

'This one's scary enough as it is,' said Sophie.

'I think they all look delicious,' said Marsha. 'You must give me the recipes.'

I offered to get her some of the cookery books that had already been published.

'You mean people actually eat junk like this?' asked Sophie.

Marsha persevered, sunny as ever. 'Don't you ever cook, Sophie?' she asked.

'Yes, but proper food. Not crap like this.'

'This isn't crap,' said Marsha, without antagonism. 'They're traditional recipes, exactly the sort of thing we serve at Cinghiale, only English rather than Italian. Oh, but Clare — these drawings really are brilliant.'

I was dreading what Sophie would come out with next, but all of a sudden she was looking beaten, as though Marsha's implacable niceness had finally worn her down.

'Maybe you're right,' she muttered. 'I suppose there's nothing wrong with a bit of tradition.'

And I saw her drag the fingers of one hand through the roots of her hair, several times. It was a new habit, and she didn't seem aware she was doing it, but it left her hair in the most frightful tangle.

The more time Sophie and I spent together, the cattier she became, though I suppose the two things might not have been unrelated. I was also spending more time with Carolyn and Charlotte and Grenville and Toby and Isabella as well, and although I didn't feel altogether at ease in their company, they seemed to accept me as one of them, even if nobody took much notice of me. I told myself that anyone looking on from the outside would have been hard-pressed to spot the difference.