Monday, 8 July

‘So,’ says Alix, smiling at Josie across the desk in her studio. ‘Denim. Are you happy to talk about that today?’

‘Yes. Sure.’

‘So, I’ve noticed that most things you wear are made of denim and I’m curious about that. For example, today you are wearing a denim skirt, with a pale blue top and denim plimsolls. Your handbag is made of denim and your dog is in a denim dog carrier. Do you have a story, or a theory? About your love of denim?’

‘Yes. I wasn’t sure at first when you mentioned it last week. I wasn’t sure what the reason was. I think I always just thought I liked it because it’s practical, you know. Easy. But you’re right. A denim jacket is one thing – everyone has a denim jacket. But denim accessories are another thing completely and you know, in my bedroom I actually have denim curtains. So clearly there’s something going on. And I think it’s got something to do with the early days of my relationship with Walter, you know. I was wearing a denim jacket the first time I went out with him. I wore it a lot during the first couple of years we were together and it became, for me, almost a part of our love affair. Always there. On the back of a chair. Or hanging off my shoulders. He’d put it there for me, if the sun went in and I got cold, just put it there. Like I was a princess or something. And then one day he picked it up and cuddled it and sniffed it and said something really cheesy like: “This jacket is you, it’s just you.” Something to do with my essence being inside it? Something to do with the smell? And he made the jacket sound so powerful and important and it made me feel like the jacket was maybe lucky, in some way? Had brought us together? I don’t know, it all sounds so stupid when I try to explain it. But after that I think I always made sure I was wearing something denim, so that maybe the way Walter felt about me then might last forever.’

Alix leaves a stunned moment of silence, and her mind fills with the image of the old man in the window of Josie’s flat.

‘I believe you brought some photos along today, of you and Walter, when you were both younger. Shall we have a look at those now?’

Josie nods and pulls an envelope from her shoulder bag. ‘There aren’t many,’ she says. ‘Of course, this was pre-smartphones, so we only took photographs with cameras and obviously, back then, well, we were kind of still a secret, so we weren’t exactly snapping each other here, there and everywhere. But I found a couple. Here.’

She passes them across the desk to Alix. Alix looks at one and then the other. Her eyes widen. ‘Wow,’ she says. Then she laughs drily and gazes at Josie. ‘Wow! Walter was quite a hunk.’

She sees Josie flush pink. ‘He really was,’ she says.

Alix looks again, studying the two photos more carefully. In one, Josie wears a denim jacket and baggy jeans. Her chestnut hair is mid-length and clipped back on one side. She appears to be wearing lipstick. She stands a foot away from Walter, who is beaming down at her from his elevated height, wearing a hoodie and jeans and a baseball cap. In the other, Josie sits on his lap, her hair in a ponytail, her head resting back against his chest, smiling widely into the camera, which is being held aloft by Walter. His hair is thick and shiny, his skin is clear and smooth, he looks young for his age, more early thirties than early forties. His forearms are big and strong. His eyes are madly blue. Alix feels a sick swoop in her stomach as she acknowledges that if she were to bump into forty-something-year-old Walter today, she would be attracted to him. And she gets it. She gets it. And the fact that she gets it sickens her. Because Josie was a child, and he was a grown man, and he may not have looked like a paedophile then, but he looks like one now, and whether he looks like one or not, he was, and he is.

‘You look so young,’ she says, handing the photos back to Josie. ‘So very young.’

‘Well,’ she replies. ‘I was. I was young. I was … It’s crazy, when you think about it.’

‘So, if you could go back to thirteen-year-old Josie, just before she met Walter, what would you say to her?’

She watches Josie’s face. She sees it fall slightly before lifting again, almost with an effort. ‘I don’t know,’ she says, her voice tight with emotion. ‘I really don’t know. Because in some ways, being with Walter all these years has been the making of me, you know. Having the babies young. Having something solid in my life. Having something real, when other girls my age were running round being fake and ridiculous, searching for things. But on the other hand’ – Josie looks up at her with glassy eyes – ‘on the other hand, I do wonder, I wonder quite a lot, especially now that the girls are grown, especially now I’m middle-aged and Walter is getting old and …’ Josie pauses and sighs. Then she looks straight at Alix, something sharp and clear suddenly shining from her nearly black eyes, and she says, ‘I wonder what it was all for, you know? I wonder what else might have been. And actually, all things considered, I’d probably tell thirteen-year-old me to run for the hills and not look back.’

11 a.m.

‘What’s your cat called?’ asks Josie as they pass back through the kitchen an hour later.

‘Skye.’

‘Skye. That’s a beautiful name. Are you still looking for a puppy?’

‘Hm. Not really. It seems a lot right now, you know? I have other issues that seem more pressing than house-training and sleepless nights.’

‘What sort of issues?’

‘Oh. Just …’ Alix pauses and gazes at the floor for a moment. She hasn’t told anyone about Nathan’s recent behaviour, not even her sisters. They would judge him, and they would judge her for putting up with him. They would tell her to fix it, to deal with it, to do something. She thinks of all that Josie has shared with her these past few days and finds herself saying, ‘Nathan. You know – he’s amazing. Obviously, he’s amazing. But he has … he has a drink problem.’

She sees Josie flinch.

‘Like, not all the time. Most of the time, he’s fine. But when he’s not fine, he’s really not fine. He goes on benders. Doesn’t come home.’

Benders.

It sounds like such an old-fashioned word. It must surely have been superseded by now by something more modern? But it’s the only word Alix can find to explain what her husband does. What he did on Saturday after Giovanni’s dinner party. What it now seems he will keep doing from here on in unless she starts issuing ultimatums and threats.

Josie sucks in her breath. ‘Oh,’ she says. ‘That’s not good.’

‘No,’ says Alix. ‘No. It’s not good.’

‘And does he cheat on you? When he stays out all night.’

Alix starts at the question. ‘God. No! Nothing like that. No. I don’t think he’d be capable of doing anything like that, even if he wanted to. Which he wouldn’t. Because it’s not his style.’ But even as she says the words, an image flashes through her mind: her reflection in the bathroom mirror on the night of her birthday party, Nathan’s arms around her waist, his smile buried into her neck, her brusque rejection – Are you actually mad? – and his subsequent disappearance into the petrol-dark Soho night.

She shakes the image from her mind.

Josie stares at her intensely. ‘What are you going to do about it?’ she says.

Alix sighs. ‘I have no idea. He used to do it a lot before the children were born, and I did have my concerns back then. Did wonder if he was going to be the right father for my children. But then Eliza arrived, and he changed, overnight. I thought that was that. You know. But then, a couple of years ago, it started up again. It feels almost as if he thinks that we’ve got to the end of the intense bit of parenting, that we’re on the home run, that he’s, well … free again .’

Both women fall silent. Then Josie sighs and says, ‘Men.’

And there it is, the point which it all boils down to eventually. The point where there are no words, no theories, no explanations for behaviours that baffle and infuriate and hurt. Just that. Men.

‘Alix,’ says Josie. ‘I’ve been thinking, about the denim. It’s weird. I know it’s weird. It’s like I’ve been holding on to something for so long and there’s no meaning to it any more. Walter doesn’t feel that way about me any more. He hasn’t for a long time. Walter barely sees me, you know? So what’s it for? And I have a little money, an inheritance, and I want to, I suppose, refresh my life? My clothes? The flat? And I hope this doesn’t sound strange, but you …’ She waves her hand towards Alix. ‘You always look so nice and I wondered if maybe you might want to go shopping, one day? Help me?’

Alix blinks at Josie. And then she smiles. ‘Of course!’ she says. ‘I’d love to!’

She glances at the time on the clock above the hob. It’s not even midday. ‘Do you know the boutique, on the corner, the Cut?’

‘Yes. I think so.’

‘It’s on your route home. We could go in there now, maybe?’

Josie glances at the time too. ‘OK,’ she says. ‘Sure.’

Midday

Josie has walked past this boutique a hundred times and never set foot inside the door. Not for her . She’d imagined the clothes inside to cost hundreds of pounds, the sales assistants to be snooty and rude, the other customers to be entitled and sour. But as she pulls the price tag on a black jersey dress closer to inspect it she sees that it is only £39.99. And then a young girl appears at her side and makes baby noises at the dog and says, ‘Oh my God, so cute! What’s her name?’

‘Oh,’ says Josie. ‘Him. He’s a him. He’s called Fred.’

‘Fred! Oh my God. Cute name. Sophie, look!’ She beckons over her colleague, another very young girl, who coos and clucks and says, ‘How old is he?’

‘He’s one and a half.’

‘Oh my God, he’s a baby!’

Josie wills Fred not to growl or snarl at the girls and he doesn’t. ‘Did you want to try that on?’ the girl called Sophie asks.

‘Er, yes. Sure.’

‘I’ll just hang it in the changing room for you. Let me know if you need any help.’

‘Here,’ says Alix, heading towards Josie with a handful of summer dresses, some knitwear, a blazer-style jacket in red. ‘Try these on too.’

Josie hands Fred to Alix and heads into the changing cubicle. She tries on the black jersey dress first, the one she’d chosen. It hangs loose and shapeless on her and she immediately takes it off and puts it back on its hanger. Then she tries on one of the dresses that Alix chose for her; soft floral jersey with a V-neck, fitted to the knee, and she checks the price tag and sees that it is £49.99 and that she can afford it and then feels a shiver of excitement because the dress is exquisite and because it makes her look pretty and shapely and young and because it is not made of hard-wearing denim but of a soft, silky fabric that feels beautiful to touch, and she takes it off and then tries on another and another and another and all of them make her look like a woman she has never met before and would like to know better, and she takes all three dresses, both pieces of knitwear and the red cotton blazer to the till and watches in breathless awe as all six items are rung through by one assistant while the other assistant wraps them in tissue and the total is £398.87 and that is more than Josie has ever spent in one go on anything ever in her life but the atmosphere feels celebratory, somehow, as if Alix and the sales assistants are all cheering her on, as if the purchase is an achievement of some kind, a reward, an award, a prize for good behaviour.

She tries to hold on to that feeling as she says goodbye to Alix outside the boutique, lets Alix bring her in for one of the hugs that come so easily to her but that still feel so strange to Josie, tries to hold on to it as she walks the ten minutes from the boutique to her flat, tries to hold on to it as she enters the flat, sees Walter’s eyes turn towards her, questioningly, smells the stench from Erin’s room even from here, sees the faces of the people on the bus at the stop outside staring numbly through her grimy windows, wondering about the people who live in here and never, she is sure, coming even halfway close to the reality of it.

She takes the bag straight into the bedroom and hangs the dresses in her wardrobe, puts the tissue-wrapped knitwear in a drawer and then, from the inside pocket of her handbag, she takes the bracelet she’d seen sitting on Alix’s console table by the front door. She holds it in the palm of her hand and stares at it. It’s gold with tiny little diamond droplets, like a little puddle of glitter. She puts it to her lips and kisses it before putting it in the back of her underwear drawer.

Then she goes to Pinterest, to the page she started a few days ago for inspirational quotes about being single. She thinks of Alix’s husband disappearing for hours and days, leaving his beautiful wife alone at home, scared and angry and unhappy. Josie recognises that Alix has shown some vulnerability in sharing this with her, and thinks that maybe Alix needs this today, needs to know she has options. Josie scrolls through the memes, chooses one and WhatsApps it to Alix.

A WEAK MAN CAN’T LOVE A STRONG WOMAN.

HE WON’T KNOW WHAT TO DO WITH HER.

Underneath the image, she types in a row of love-heart emojis interspersed with strong-arm emojis. She presses send.