Page 6 of The Girlfriend

“Here you go, one apple martini,” said her friend, thrusting a glass at her.

She saw Nicolas look up. It was a drink he’d introduced her to and she immediately wished she hadn’t ordered it.

She turned sharply and walked away and heard the blond girl sit down and ask hushed questions about who she was.

When she got to the bar, she looked back and saw them huddled.

He was trying to persuade her to drink up so they could leave; and all of a sudden, Cherry didn’t want to be the one left behind.

She threw back her drink, grabbed her friend’s hand, and announced they were going.

It wasn’t how she’d planned it. She’d wanted him to be impressed, wonder if he’d made a huge mistake dumping her at the end of the summer, maybe even realize he wanted her back.

For Cherry had always believed Nicolas would rescue her.

Pluck her from the celebrity chef’s restaurant chain where she worked.

A dead-end mistake of a job that she should never have had.

She’d been destined for better things. Incredibly bright at school, she was too much for the overstretched teachers who’d just given her more work and let her get on with it.

When she’d left with five top-grade A Levels, she was completely broke.

University was out of the question. She just couldn’t afford it.

It wasn’t just the cost and the debt; Cherry had an urge to escape from her poverty-ridden lifestyle.

She wanted to do the most simple of things, like learn to drive, move away from home, start to create a life for herself.

But her generation was entering a future that had very little to offer.

Unemployment for the under-twenty-fives was at an all-time high, and they certainly had no hope of buying a home.

Instead their long-term financial burden would be paying off the nation’s debt.

In desperation, she’d disappeared on a working vacation to Australia with her meager savings from a Saturday job, thinking that there would be opportunities there, that she would try a number of different jobs and someone would notice her cleverness, her potential, but she soon realized it was a treadmill of fruit picking and waiting tables.

Worse, she’d felt poor. She wasn’t meant for backpacking.

So she’d come back and the only job she’d been able to get was as a hostess at the restaurant.

A step above waiting tables. What was supposed to be temporary had slipped one year into the next and she’d watched, incensed, as the graduates in the training programs got fast-tracked to managerial positions and bigger paychecks.

People her own age who were less smart than she was, but who had been able to afford university, apparently received automatic kudos.

Just when she was at her lowest, Nicolas had come along and her world opened up again.

Being with him made her feel good, feel special, like she belonged.

Her brain reengaged as they debated how to fix the economy and youth unemployment.

He gave her a taste of what life with money was like and she had held her head high in the fancy restaurants and been a natural at picking out a good wine.

Then it all ended abruptly one Saturday evening when instead of picking her up as planned, Nicolas had phoned to tell her his parents wanted him to concentrate on university and they felt she was a “distraction.” They were forcing him to choose between her and a role at the family business and he couldn’t put her through an uncertain future, which he might well have if he wasn’t gifted a job with his father.

The breakup devastated her. All the time that she’d been honest about her humble upbringing, the inadequate school, the working-class family, it had been a bitter mistake.

She realized by the way he’d cast her aside that she wasn’t going to find her opportunities being who she was.

So Cherry decided she would reinvent herself.

Then she would immerse herself in the world in which she aspired to belong.

Only this time, she wasn’t going to tell anyone where she came from.

All through her school years, Cherry had had one loyal ally, an ally that fought side by side with her to put her in a better place: books or, more commonly, the Internet.

It was extraordinary what you could learn.

She’d read avidly, one link pulling her to another until before she knew it, she’d woven an intricate web of self-acquired knowledge.

Added to this were day-to-day world affairs from the Guardian, where she’d absorbed the language of the erudite journalists and carefully eliminated any last trace of Croydon from her voice.

When she’d gone for the interview at Highsmith and Brown real estate agency, she’d felt reassuringly well-armed.

With a few embellishments on her résumé, the research from her false persona as a Chelsea-ite, along with that web of knowledge she’d worked so hard to create, she landed the job.

It had been five months since she’d joined, almost to the day. She knew because she’d seen the date approaching in her diary, marked with a red circle that was placed there as a target—or maybe a warning—and so far the only male attention she’d had, had come from the window cleaner.

“All right, love?” he said as she changed the sales details in the window and she stiffened before checking whether anyone had taken any notice.

He continued to cast glances at her as he swooped his squeegee in arcs over the window and she fumed with humiliation.

Why couldn’t he chat up one of the other girls?

Abigail or Emily. She felt he could see through all she’d built up and recognized a kindred working-class spirit.

She was horrified that his attention might expose her.

“Talk to me again and I’ll have you fired for hitting on me,” she said, then turned her back.

Other than that, they were married, gay, coming in with their girlfriends, or so far up their own arses that they didn’t notice her.

But all that was behind her now—finally her luck had changed.

* * *

As the orchestra got up for the interval, Daniel turned to her.

“What do you think?”

She was suddenly filled with a heart-soaring happiness. Here she was on a glorious summer evening at a classical concert with a man who seemed intent on making sure she had a good time.

“It’s fantastic.”

She looked around and sensed she could spot those with money; the girls were made up of a disproportionate number of blondes, their hair effortlessly honeyed and falling in long waves that they tossed from side to side, knowing it would fall coquettishly back over their eyes.

The boys were tanned and their expensively casual shirts fell outside shorts that were slung low over buttocks.

The same as the boys back (she never said “home”) where her mother lived, but the difference between here and her part of Croydon was the cost of the underpants.

She felt a sense of fierce pride that she could hold her head up amongst them.

She was no different from these people; in fact, she was probably smarter, and the fact she’d made it so far proved that she was capable.

It just went to show what you could achieve if you thought about it and put some effort into it.

For the first time in a long time, she felt she was creating some real distance from her upbringing.

“Can you play anything?” she asked.

“I was forced to learn the piano until I was fifteen.”

“‘Forced’?”

“Actually, it wasn’t that bad.” He looked at her and felt he could say it. “My teacher’s daughter, who was three years older than me, used to sunbathe in the garden in full view of the double doors from the music room.”

She laughed and thought: It’s good that he can be relaxed enough to tell me these things.

Cherry genuinely didn’t mind hearing them.

She knew men hated high-maintenance women, and she would save the jealous outbursts for when they had purpose, to bring him into touch with how much she cared. It was one of those cards worth saving.

“You?”

Cherry had already decided not to lie too much about her background if it could be helped.

Lies had a nasty habit of catching up to you.

Still, this friendship was at a fledgling stage and there was no need to weigh it down with the dreary truth that there hadn’t been the room for a piano, even if there had been the money.

There was barely room for the sickly cream leather sofa her mother had saved months for, eyeing it in a DFS discount store until the sales started.

It had built-in reclining seats, something Cherry found diabolically tasteless.

“I wasn’t really the musical type. Languages were my thing. French especially. ”

“Fluent?”

“Oui.”

“Any others?”

“Spanish.”

“Impressed.”

“And Italian.”

“Really?”

She shrugged modestly. “They’re all very similar. You just have to think about it.”

“You must have been good at school.”

“I was. Except they only did French.”

“So, how . . . ?”

“Taught myself. Downloaded courses.”

“Wow!” He looked at her with renewed admiration. “Wow! I could have done with you on my Grand Tour.”

“You had a Grand Tour?”

“My mother’s idea. It was great, we took the Orient Express as far as we could—her idea again—then trained across Europe. I got to see some amazing places.”

Cherry, who had only been abroad once, to Australia, was taken with the idea of a long sojourn through Europe’s best cities, but they didn’t have time to talk anymore as the orchestra started warming up again so they rearranged themselves to face the stage.

Cherry sat with her arms around her knees and watched avidly, wondering how long it would take to learn to play an instrument at such a level and if she might start learning.

There were probably lessons online. After a while, Daniel put his arm loosely around her right thigh and she felt a thrill at the possessiveness, this first touch of its kind.

Then she leaned against him and they exchanged small intimate smiles every so often.

“It seems early,” said Daniel as they walked back across the park after the concert had finished.

It was still light, the evening was long and inviting, and both had their minds on what was going to happen next. Neither wanted to go home yet.

“Do you fancy a drink?” asked Cherry, looking dubiously at the packed trendy bars, where people were spilling out onto the streets .

“We’re a bit laden,” said Daniel, indicating the picnic ware.

“You want to take that back?”

“And have my mum insist on meeting you?” He smiled at her. “As much as I’d like that, she’ll have to wait.”

Cherry’s heart jumped with delight. Daniel was already thinking about introducing her to his mother!

She thought about it and decided that they already had another date in the bag, and if they woke up together, there was the very strong possibility they’d spend all of tomorrow together too.

She could make him wait until he moved into the apartment he’d just had an offer accepted on, but that was still a few weeks away. She felt that was too long.

“I’ve got a nice bottle of Sancerre in the fridge.”

He smiled. “Thank God one of us has got their own place.”

He made it sound as if her situation were the preferable one, even though he was in the multimillion-pound house. When he’d told her where he lived, she knew exactly how much it was worth; then she’d Google Earthed it, homing in to see as much detail as possible until the picture had blurred.

They smiled at each other, each knowing the path they’d just taken. He took her hand, and held it all the way to the tube, just like they were a couple.