Jessica stiffened and she could see Bruno notice.
‘You are all friends?’ Bruno said as he looked between them.
‘Kind of,’ said Jessica.
‘In a fashion,’ said Miles at the same time.
Bruno nodded.
The sun seemed like the fourth person in the conversation, beating down on them all, firing up the unescapable cicadas, a tinnitus hum in her ears.
‘Yes,’ said Miles. ‘Yes, we’re all friends.’
Bruno had his eyes still on Jessica, absorbing her reactions. She looked down at the dirty tiles.
‘Well, I erm …’ Miles pointed to the bucket. ‘I just came for that. I’m giving Jimmy a hand.’
‘I kind of need it,’ Jessica said. ‘Isn’t there another one?’
Miles frowned. ‘I don’t know. Jimmy just said there was a red bucket.’
‘OK, fine,’ she said. ‘You have it. I’ll find another one.’
Miles looked a bit hesitant.
‘Seriously, have it, I can do something else,’ she said, pushing the bucket his way.
Miles walked over and picked it up, the water sloshing over the sides in what seemed to be his haste to leave.
Bruno watched him go and then said, ‘I’ll go and find Ms Libby.’
At the top step he stopped and glanced back. ‘I’ve never met a Jessica before,’ he said.
‘Well, now you have,’ Jessica said, pushing herself up to standing, still distracted by the arrival and departure of Miles.
He nodded. ‘You look like a Jessica.’
She put her hands on her hips and sighed. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
Bruno shrugged. ‘An interesting challenge,’ he said with a smile, and sauntered off in search of Libby.
The sun was low in the sky, just brushing the line of trees as it tipped into late afternoon. Everyone was exhausted. The heat had sucked them dry of energy. Libby and Eve had done some fractious decorating, unable to agree on almost any of the renovation choices. In the end they had focused on ripping up the carpets with Bruno.
Jimmy and Miles had slashed half the garden. It looked like a first day haircut, no one quite sure whether it would settle into something good or bad. She was amazed Miles had flown all the way from the States to be there. He said he’d been due a holiday but she wondered if really he’d been craving something familiar. He hadn’t mentioned Flo so neither had Libby but in retrospect she wished she had. It was weird though, to know what to say to him, because he looked so unlike himself nowadays—all polished and smooth-edged.
She’d wondered what Jessica had thought when she’d seen him. But then she’d seen the sparkling poolside patio and, putting two and two together, Libby had presumed she’d been in need of hard-work distraction.
The terrace, on the other hand, was practically untouched, Dex having had a snooze in a lounge chair for most of the morning.
Now as Libby stood in front of them all in the outhouse she suddenly felt a bit stupid for cajoling them into a baking class. They were all there, standing reluctantly behind their benches like school children. Jessica had her phone on her table and was trying to surreptitiously scroll through her emails.
‘OK, so, what I’m thinking is that there will be scheduled baking times every day throughout the week. So, one day we’d make muffins and things for breakfast, another day bread for lunch, and then in the afternoon, like now, we’ll make a dessert or petit fours for after dinner with coffee. That’s how I planned it. It might change. That’s why you’re here. Guinea pigs. OK.’ Libby gave a small laugh and tied up her hair.
Miles tried to stifle a yawn behind his cup of coffee. ‘Sorry, jet lag,’ he said.
It was much easier when she did it to camera for her YouTube videos, with no one watching her.
Dex was leaning forward, chin cupped in his hands, elbows on the table, staring unblinking at her. The not-concentrating looks between Eve and Jimmy were equally distracting. All that as well as Jessica unsubtly tapping away on her phone. The worst, however, were the glares of complete disdain from Giulia at the back, who Libby had roped in to up the numbers and to try and win her round to the concept.
‘OK,’ Libby said again, then she felt her cheeks start to flush. She couldn’t work out how to start without clapping her hands together like a strict Home Economics teacher. These were her peers, not people she could teach. They were people she had lived with, laughed with, fled the pub with after Jimmy was caught cheating in the quiz, sat in the hospital with when Dex got run over on his bike, lazed on the roof with as Jake’s barbecue puffed with plumes of smoke, squirmed with as the boys tried to convince Jessica there was a ghost knocking on her window at night, sat in darkness with as Eve hid from a pestering one-night stand, exchanged sniggering glances with as Miles took the stage in some grimy club. How could she now tell them all what to do like a teacher?
She looked down at her workbench—at the little bowls of flour and sugar that she’d measured out and prepared like a TV chef. ‘Oh god, now I’m getting hot.’ She pressed her hands to her face.
‘It’s all right, Lib,’ said Dex. ‘It’s only us. Just do it however you like.’
Libby exhaled. ‘You’re making me more nervous than strangers,’ she said, then she laughed.
In her head, in all the planning sessions, Jake had been in the room, maybe leaning against the wooden mantelpiece, a cup of tea in his hand, a cocky smile on his face. He was the chatter. The one who made people feel instantly at ease.
Supper clubs had got much better when he’d stepped in to help. On her own they’d been a complete disaster. The first one she held, her fingers had shaken so much from the pressure that she’d barely been able to prepare anything. Smoke from the sizzling chorizo had set the smoke alarm off. The kitchen had gone from boiling hot to arctic cold when she’d had to throw all the windows open. Then the boys upstairs had thrown an impromptu party—Miles’s decks in situ right above her beautifully laid table, the thumping of feet on bare floorboards, the wine running out, her beef overcooking, her cream over-whipping, and the stem ginger ice cream refusing to set. It had been an all-round disaster. The three couples had sloped out before the coffee had bubbled up on the hob.
The door had closed on her overly effusive goodbyes, and, needing to take it out on someone, she had stormed up the stairs, thrown open the door of the boys’ flat, pulled the plug on the speakers, and shouted, ‘Well, thank you very much. You destroyed that for me. I hope you’re proud of yourselves.’ All the achingly cool party-goers had stared with disdain and she’d wished she hadn’t gone upstairs at all.
And of course Jake had come downstairs after her, because that’s the kind of thing he did. He took control of situations. He smoothed over cracks. He’d leaned in the doorway and said, ‘We’re sorry. We’re thoughtless, pig-headed arseholes.’
She knew he didn’t really mean a word of it but it had made her feel better. It had made her smile when he’d taken a seat and looked down at the plates in front of him with a frown—at the split cream; the burnt, cracked pavlova; the liquid, unset, failed ice cream—and said, with a quirk of his brow, ‘This all looks excellent.’
‘It’s been a disaster,’ she’d said.
‘Nah.’ He’d sat back in his chair, hands behind his head, a grin on his lips. ‘It’s just the beginning. Teething problems,’ he’d said, then he’d taken