their
profile - they all wanted to raise their profiles and they all
didn’t want it to cost anything, she thought despairingly.
She finally managed to persuade them into a series of
‘fasting’ lunches. ‘People pay to come and then eat bread
and cheese and drink water; it raises a lot of money, and at
grass-root level does a very good PR job. It’s what the
charity’s about, earns it respect, and it still gives the ladies
who lunch a reason to dress up and gossip.’
Tom was out at a dinner when she got home; the
children were all asleep. She had been hungry, but it had
worn off by now and that was good. Calories in hand, as
she thought of them. She made herself a large mug of
peppermint tea and went to check the answering machine.
There was only one message, left at ten that morning:
‘Hallo, Boot. Only me. Give me a ring if you have a
minute over the next few days. I’m not doing anything. As
usual. Seems ages since we talked properly. And there’s
something I have to tell you.’
Louise. She’d been thinking about her a lot lately,
missing her. They met far too seldom, separated by their
lifestyles, but they managed to remain close by phone,
picking up a conversation almost where it had been left off,
often after weeks of silence.
She dialled Louise’s Cheltenham number: it rang for a
while, then Louise’s husky, musical voice, breathless,
slightly fraught, said, ‘Hallo?’
‘Louise, it’s me. Octavia.’
‘Oh, Octavia. How lovely. Listen, can I ring you back in
ten minutes? No, make that half an hour. I’m just putting
Dickon to bed, he’s not very well, and there’s also a very
nasty case of outraged hungry male here, demanding its
food. Let me feed the beast and then I’ll get back to you.
Or are you going out?’
‘No,’ said Octavia, ‘no, I’m not going out.’
‘I’ll ring you nine at the latest. ‘Bye, Boot.’
That silly nickname; a diminution of Old Boot, which was
what Louise had called her whenever she was being bossy,
or humourless. Which had been a great deal of the time,
thought Octavia, putting down the phone, staring into
space, seeing Louise suddenly, vividly, as she had been then, this person who had been the most important thing in her
life for all her growing-up years. She remembered watching
her on almost her first day at Wycombe Abbey, running
across the lacrosse pitch at the end of a game, chasing after
two girls, laughing, and then catching them up, walking
between them, talking animatedly, her arms round their
shoulders, tall and graceful and golden haired, wondering
who she was, hearing someone say, ‘Louise Madison gets
prettier every term,’ and envying her, from her lonely,
frightened, friendless state, finding it impossible to imagine
what it must be like to be her.
For the first half term, she watched her from afar,
fascinated by her; they were in different houses, and
different forms, in spite of being in the same year, and their
paths hardly crossed. Louise would smile at her sometimes,
even say ‘hi’, and Octavia would nod at her, and say ‘hallo’
awkwardly back, but that was all. Louise was gloriously
popular, the star of the games circuit and settled comfortably
near the bottom of every academic subject; Octavia
was on a full academic scholarship, got top marks for
everything and couldn’t hold a ball if it was dropped into
her hands. Louise had already been at the school for a year,
having been been kept down because of her poor scholastic
performance; Octavia was still unsettled after two months,
wretchedly homesick, an only child, over-protected, young
for her age, while intellectually precocious and trailing the
glory of her scholarship.
It had been a strange friendship then, formed one
evening after supper as they met in one of the cloakrooms,
each emerging from a lavatory where they had been crying
silently, or as silently as they could manage — Octavia
because nobody
profile - they all wanted to raise their profiles and they all
didn’t want it to cost anything, she thought despairingly.
She finally managed to persuade them into a series of
‘fasting’ lunches. ‘People pay to come and then eat bread
and cheese and drink water; it raises a lot of money, and at
grass-root level does a very good PR job. It’s what the
charity’s about, earns it respect, and it still gives the ladies
who lunch a reason to dress up and gossip.’
Tom was out at a dinner when she got home; the
children were all asleep. She had been hungry, but it had
worn off by now and that was good. Calories in hand, as
she thought of them. She made herself a large mug of
peppermint tea and went to check the answering machine.
There was only one message, left at ten that morning:
‘Hallo, Boot. Only me. Give me a ring if you have a
minute over the next few days. I’m not doing anything. As
usual. Seems ages since we talked properly. And there’s
something I have to tell you.’
Louise. She’d been thinking about her a lot lately,
missing her. They met far too seldom, separated by their
lifestyles, but they managed to remain close by phone,
picking up a conversation almost where it had been left off,
often after weeks of silence.
She dialled Louise’s Cheltenham number: it rang for a
while, then Louise’s husky, musical voice, breathless,
slightly fraught, said, ‘Hallo?’
‘Louise, it’s me. Octavia.’
‘Oh, Octavia. How lovely. Listen, can I ring you back in
ten minutes? No, make that half an hour. I’m just putting
Dickon to bed, he’s not very well, and there’s also a very
nasty case of outraged hungry male here, demanding its
food. Let me feed the beast and then I’ll get back to you.
Or are you going out?’
‘No,’ said Octavia, ‘no, I’m not going out.’
‘I’ll ring you nine at the latest. ‘Bye, Boot.’
That silly nickname; a diminution of Old Boot, which was
what Louise had called her whenever she was being bossy,
or humourless. Which had been a great deal of the time,
thought Octavia, putting down the phone, staring into
space, seeing Louise suddenly, vividly, as she had been then, this person who had been the most important thing in her
life for all her growing-up years. She remembered watching
her on almost her first day at Wycombe Abbey, running
across the lacrosse pitch at the end of a game, chasing after
two girls, laughing, and then catching them up, walking
between them, talking animatedly, her arms round their
shoulders, tall and graceful and golden haired, wondering
who she was, hearing someone say, ‘Louise Madison gets
prettier every term,’ and envying her, from her lonely,
frightened, friendless state, finding it impossible to imagine
what it must be like to be her.
For the first half term, she watched her from afar,
fascinated by her; they were in different houses, and
different forms, in spite of being in the same year, and their
paths hardly crossed. Louise would smile at her sometimes,
even say ‘hi’, and Octavia would nod at her, and say ‘hallo’
awkwardly back, but that was all. Louise was gloriously
popular, the star of the games circuit and settled comfortably
near the bottom of every academic subject; Octavia
was on a full academic scholarship, got top marks for
everything and couldn’t hold a ball if it was dropped into
her hands. Louise had already been at the school for a year,
having been been kept down because of her poor scholastic
performance; Octavia was still unsettled after two months,
wretchedly homesick, an only child, over-protected, young
for her age, while intellectually precocious and trailing the
glory of her scholarship.
It had been a strange friendship then, formed one
evening after supper as they met in one of the cloakrooms,
each emerging from a lavatory where they had been crying
silently, or as silently as they could manage — Octavia
because nobody
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