Odi et amo.

Just when I thought the worst was over at the wedding rehearsal, Julian and Alex reminded me how deeply in each other’s pockets they had once been, and how the seeds of their enmity had grown in their former intimacy. Once, as Al reminded me, they had pricked their fingers under a full moon and sworn undying fealty. Blood brothers by choice. I don’t doubt both meant it at the time. They did complete each other for years — hot and cold, dark and fair, wild and smooth. Julian brought Al into the 21st century, and Al taught Julian how to lean into his less tamed impulses, for better or worse.

To say I was the one who split them apart would give me too much power. No, they were set upon that journey almost from when they first met — their love for each other (I do not hesitate to call it love) was too dazzling to last. There was never anything physical between them, as far as either has ever told me, but their love was once all-consuming and exclusive. Girls existed, for Julian at least, purely to feed physical desires; intellectual and emotional needs were well-fed by their friendship. When it still worked well between them, being in their presence was like standing quite close to an electrical storm — negative ions pumping up your mood, with the undercurrent that something spectacular of beauty or danger might happen at any time.

After Amanda and I had bonded over being prepared and lubricated ourselves a little further with rum, and the bridal party had traced their steps in and out of the church, Jamie and Bex bundled us into waiting minibuses hired to take us to dinner back in town. My one contribution to the wedding weekend had been to suggest to Bex that the rehearsal dinner be held at an Italian restaurant — options for vegans, carnivores and everyone in between — while blanking on Alex’s tomato intolerance. By the time I’d remembered, the restaurant had been booked, and I crossed my fingers there’d be at least a fettucine alfredo he could manage. He made do with a linguine al limone in the end — I couldn’t deal with an evening of Julian referring to Al as “Gas-X” so I was happy to put that worry to one side.

When I’d thought “Italian,” I’d imagined a cozy trattoria, almost a caricature with candles in straw-wrapped wine bottles, red-and-white checked cloths, maybe some terrible Muzak version of “O Sole Mio” playing in the background. This vision rose, I think, equally from memories of a slightly dingy hole in the Valley named Piccolino’s my dad used to take us to when Rachel and I were kids, and from repeated viewings of a VHS copy of “Lady and the Tramp” when my grandparents babysat. What I had managed to select for Bex was, indeed, the only Italian restaurant in town, but one which chose a more ascetic aesthetic. Our voices bounced off the white walls and high ceilings in such a cacophony that I could scarcely imagine the din had we not reserved the entire place for our group of twenty-four.

Still, a group of twenty-four was large enough for Al and I to tuck ourselves away at the far end of the table from Julian and Amanda. As much as I had enjoyed drinking her rum and making fun of Jules from our perch in the pews, I’d turned down her invitation to be her neighbor at the table. “It’s not Julian I’m worried about,” I’d told her as the vicar was giving his last instructions to the assembled party. “Not that much, though I don’t put a snarky little comment about, well, anything past him.”

Amanda snorted. “Well, Al’s temper is only slightly legendary. I don’t know how you endure it. Can’t say I miss it much.”

At the altar, Alex and Tom Gregory (that wankstain) were paying close attention to the vicar’s words, while Julian appeared to be deep in conversation to one side with Jamie’s dad. “He’s not that way with me. I’ve only ever seen it turned on others. Like with Fenn this summer.” Shit. I popped a hand over my mouth to keep other would-be runaway trainwreck confessions from steaming out, powered by rum.

“Oh good lord, Fennella Carr. Haven’t thought of her in years, not since Al and Min’s wedding.” Amanda waved energetically at Julian as the bridal party began ambling down the aisle to the exit. “How is that lunatic these days? Did she ever manage to escape their mother?”

“We saw her this summer. She’s got an exhibition in Los Angeles in the spring. Julian’s been kind of her patron.” I wiped my cold nose on the kidskin gloves I’d remembered to bring along, recalling similarly frosty church environs at midnight masses I’d endured as part of Suffolk Christmases past.

“Bet Al’s thrilled.” Amanda ducked down in the pew to suck down one more sip of rum before Julian could reach us; I joined her for a stealthy slug.

“It wasn’t particularly fun to watch Fenn and Alex have a colossal double meltdown with the volume turned up when he found out, so you might say he wasn’t terribly fond of the idea.” Amanda stuffed the flask I passed back in the pocket of her fluffy faux fur coat, and took the hand I offered to rise as one. I’d decided I’d let myself enjoy Amanda’s temporary and liquor-fuelled bonhomie for the evening, but reminded myself that she’s almost as mercurial as Jules. Giving away any further details of Fenn’s visit might trigger her return to the sour and churlish woman with whom I was quite familiar.

As I leaned over to smooth out my dress, Amanda whispered, “Do I smell drunk? I feel drunk.” She wobbled a little on her heels. “Shit. Well, not much to do about it now.”

Her nonchalance surprised me, given her familiarity with Julian’s feelings about drunk women, particularly if that woman was his. That terrible, wonderful night that he’d deserted me at a party, leaving me crying into a Smirnoff Ice, it had been for being a little too friendly with Will after sinking back several shots of blackberry schnapps.

“Do you know how it makes me look when you’re like this?” Josh Brooks’ words echoed from the past and came from Julian’s mouth; a shiver of memory, of terror shot through me. “What do you think the others must think of me? That I would choose to be with a woman like you, a slut like you? I don’t like it when you act like a whore, Liss.”

“I’m not drunk.” There was still enough of me back then to say this without weighing the consequences of such an outburst too much. “And it’s not like I fucked Will, I just gave him a little kiss when he asked for one. Go be angry with Will.”

“Do you know how I look? Everyone saw. Everyone was looking. Everyone thinks I can’t control my woman enough to keep her faithful to me. You make me look like an idiot in front of my friends and who are you? Some girl who I thought hung the moon, but you’re just another slut.”

Adrenalin and alcohol started closing the aperture on my field of vision; the bedroom he’d followed me into seemed too big and too small at the same time. I wanted to bolt from the room and hide under the duvet and punch Julian and hit myself. And for the first time since high school, I felt like I had when I’d been with Josh: small, vulnerable, and wrong, wrong, wrong. “Just go, Jules. Just let me be alone.” You’re scaring me.

I’d been sitting on a single bed strangely situated in the center of an oversized bedroom, like an island in a sea of crumpled papers and dirty clothes. A few discarded coats tumbled from the bed’s surface onto the floor when I’d perched myself there, but I didn’t really care. Julian leaned down to put his face in mine, his own breath thick with the Macallan he’d been sipping on with Jamie and Tom Gregory. His eyes were watery and I felt faintly repulsed when he pressed his mouth on mine and pushed his tongue inside. It’ll feel nice and then it will feel gross when he sticks his tongue in your mouth, and then it’ll feel nice again. Rachel’s words from five years before ricocheted in my brain. When will it feel nice again? I wondered. But I didn’t protest — he was quite obviously drunker than I was, and I was very aware of how this could turn ugly on a dime should I prevent him from taking what he wanted. And in that moment, he wanted to brand me, to remind me to stay in line.

“Don’t ever forget you’re mine,” Julian snapped as he drew back. “What you do shows who I am. Don’t show me up or we’re done.”

Through the open door, I saw Alex slouch by, his hands shoved in the pockets of his old grey flannels, unaware of the sad little drama inside this room. There’s a world out there, Melissa, I reminded myself, and Julian’s only a part of it. I pulled my eyes to his. “I may be yours, but you’re mine, too.” Crack-crack-crack, the mask of surrender I’d begun to wear since the beginning of term snapped to pieces and fell in my hands.

“I’m sorry, Jules. I didn’t mean to make you feel bad, and I went too far with Will.” Pleasure drew his mouth into a grin — he’d had my apology, but he wouldn’t have my submission. “But I’m not drunk, and no one thinks poorly of you. Everyone was laughing because it was just a joke. Let’s move on.”

Julian’s features scrambled, went loose and rearranged into a fury I’d never seen on him before. His fair face flared scarlet. “They were laughing at you, bitch. They were laughing at how drunk and how vulgar you are, just like my mother said.” His face thrust back in mine, and he shoved me down on the coats. His hot, sour breath filled my nostrils, yet I wanted to draw him close and tell the boy who lived within him still that he was loved, that he was deserving of love. I wanted to let him inside me, to give him the protection from the world he so sorely desired. I could tell he was aroused by how he had control over me now, holding my arms against the bed on a pillow of jackets, and briefly I thought he might cast his restraint to one side and force himself upon me, right there in Tom Gregory’s cornflower blue bedroom, on the skinny island-bed.

From the hallway, Minty and Miranda’s laughter flitted in to break his dazed intensity and his grip on my arms. “I don’t need this tonight, Mel. Find your own way home.” With a push, he rolled me off the coats that remained on the bed and extracted his own from the pile before stalking out of the room.

In this East Sussex church, however, Julian had no power over me. I stood on tiptoe and breathed in Amanda’s heavy-handed application of Flowerbomb. I’d always found the scent a little de trop and blowsy, but it was doing a fantastic job of masking the pong of alcohol. “You smell fine. But you’re swaying.”

As if on cue, she tripped and fell back into the pew. “Ooops.” She stifled a giggle behind her glove; the beachy waves she’d commanded Kendra to curl into her hair earlier were now a complete mess. “How is it you’re not bombed?”

“I had a turkey club at the spa and a handful of nuts before I left the house.” Not sure how I’d had the foresight to pick at the bowl of walnuts in the library after that scene with Julian, but I was grateful for it now. “Have you eaten anything today?”

“Eaten? Pfffffffffffft. That’s for amateurs.” She chewed on one of her drooping red curls. “Do you think Julian’s going to be boring about this?”

“Well, you’re about to find out.” Over her shoulder, Jules stormed down the length of the pew, his face pinched with frustration. Alex raised his hand to me to let me know he was watching closely, but he kept his distance.

“Liss,” Julian muttered. “I thought you said you were going to keep an eye on her? Don’t think I didn’t see you giving her more to drink.”

Leaning back in the pew, Amanda bestowed a woozy smile on Julian, her blue eyes widened in a “who me?” expression. “Not Mel’s fault, Jules. I just get… so nervous at these things. And nervous because… you make me feel so… overcome.”

“‘Overcome’?” Jules repeated, stroking his beard. “By what?”

“I shouldn’t say in front of Melissa, it doesn’t feel right.” Batting her eyelashes at us both, she sighed. “Just… memories. Thoughts of us. And how much I want this to work.” Oh, nicely done, Amanda. “I’m so sorry, Mel, if that was rude. Julian’s just so dear to me, and I feel nervous.”

She stifled a small burp, and allowed Julian to help her rise to her feet. “And sometimes I drink when I get very nervous,” she continued, punctuating her thought with a giggle. “But now that you’re here, Jules, I know that was just silly of me.” Julian accepted her kiss on his cheek grudgingly at first, but when she moved her lips to his mouth he took her a little too enthusiastically for my liking, or for church.

Taking their face sucking as my opportunity to exit, I slipped past them and caught up with Alex, who was deep in discussion with Tom (wankstain) Gregory about the likelihood of withdrawal from the European Union by the end of the month, as Boris Johnson had promised. “Wish I’d never voted ‘leave,’ seemed like a good idea at the time,” Tom was grousing as I approached.

“Lots of things I could say that about,” Alex joked as he wrapped an arm around me. “How is the Lady Amanda? As rat-arsed as she looked from up at the altar?”

“Completely rat-arsed,” I confessed. “You know how Julian loves that in a woman.”

“Excellent! Pay up, Gregory.” Cursing under his breath, Tom fished a crumpled tenner out of his wallet and pushed it into Alex’s waiting palm. “You both seemed to be enjoying yourselves back there, and I bet Tom Amanda would come out the worse for wear.” He pressed a kiss on the top of my head.

Tom shrugged. “Bet you that tenner back that Amanda will chunder in Julian’s lap by the end of dinner.”

Alex stuffed the note in the inner pocket of his blazer and patted it with some small satisfaction. “No thanks, mate. That’s a bet I’m likely to lose.”

***

With Julian a respectable distance away, dinner itself passed fairly uneventfully. To my right was Jamie’s brother Barrett, the youngest of the three Fairleigh sons and the only one interested in animal husbandry in a family of farmers. I learned more about nutrient requirements for Holstein cows than I’d ever truly thought possible over the course of a meal, but Barrett’s enthusiasm and mild self-deprecation was endearing.

“You know I introduced Jamie and Bex, right?” Barrett said between bites of wild boar ravioli. “Went on a colossally awkward date with her in London after we both swiped right. Lovely woman, but there was no spark for her when we met up. I didn’t get any of her jokes, and she told rather a lot of them. Took me about half an hour to realize she was more Jamie’s sort of girl, so I gave him a ring and asked him to come meet us.”

“You asked your brother to take over your date?” I was surprised I’d never heard this story before; it was precisely the sort of gossip Will and Miranda liked to snack on.

“Mmmm. Bex seemed game for it after I showed her a few pics, at the very least it would make a good story, she said.” Barrett stabbed at his ravioli. “It wasn’t love at first sight for them, but he thought she was the funniest, gamest woman he’d ever met.” (This part I did know.)

“Has your mum gotten any better about all of this?” It was common knowledge that Mrs. Fairleigh was not fond of Bex. While not as aggressively toxic in her dealings with her darling son’s partner as Jocasta had been with me, Ruth Fairleigh was formidable in her own right. I at least got to put an ocean and a continent between my mother-in-law and me; poor Bex had hers under 200 miles away, a distance, to paraphrase Bill Bryson, an American would travel for a taco. Further, many of my social sins could be dismissed under the banner of “American Fool”; Londoner Bex didn’t even have the good grace to be born middle class as I had. Mrs. Fairleigh fretted loudly that her grandchildren would be raised to enjoy holidays at Butlins rather than in Sardinia. Bex punched back though, frequently speaking like Eliza Doolittle pre-Higginsization to get under Ruth’s skin.

“Hardly. She’s now pushing Felix to marry Cecilia to ‘cancel out’ this marriage. Last week, she thanked me for being the ‘second spare’ in case Fee gets cold feet.”

After 14 years in the midst of these relentlessly well-bred people, I never fail to be shocked at their casual cruelty and rudeness about things great and small. And when confronted, invariably protests will be dismissed as “reading too much into things.” It’s like an entire social class of people are gaslighting the rest of the country.

Throughout dinner, I’d watched Julian carbo-load Amanda in an effort to soak up the rum she’d put away in the church pew. Thick slabs of bread from the basket, slathered with butter, spaghetti bolognese and zeppole went in her mouth with a little cajoling from Julian, who at first had to pry open her lips with his fingers. It must have been awfully embarrassing for him, and I was savoring each morsel of mortification.

After the dishes were cleared, in speeches peppered with gentle pisstakes of each other, Jamie and Bex thanked us all over shots of grappa. Julian let Amanda drink one, purely for appearance’s sake, I’m sure — it wouldn’t do to broadcast further his control over what he would let Amanda eat and drink. Alex leaned over to me and whispered in my ear, “We’re next, sweetness. Too bad we can’t just turn up at Gretna Green any longer — I’d make you my wife next week.” He lifted my hair to touch his lips to my neck, where my pulse quickened for him. “But we can have our wedding night every night until the day itself. And every night after.”

I blushed to think of our afternoon in bed, his careful ministrations to my body turning into something more powerful, matching the growing intensity of the storm that was building outside. You’ve gotten greedy, Julian’s voice fought its way into my head. It’s never enough with you. Though I knew better, I looked to the far end of the table where Julian was deep in conversation with a visibly more sober Amanda. He looked… kind. His eyes creased at the corners, a soft smile curled his lips. No wonder so few truly believed him to be the monster who’d strolled into my life to unpick all the fastidious work I’d done after Josh to trust myself again. Shouldn’t a beast have fangs and claws and speak only in growls and grunts?

To the clear chagrin of Ruth Fairleigh, who looked close to fainting, Bex stood on a chair and clapped her hands to draw us all to attention. “OI! You lot. You’ve had our speeches, so I won’t say again how much you being here and being with us tomorrow means to us both. But me and the maids are popping off back to our house” (she made sure to drop the “h” just for Mrs. Fairleigh’s benefit) “and everyone’s invited except Jamie, who can bugger off until he’s needed tomorrow. Get used to it, James, I’ll be ordering you about for the next 50 years.”

While Jamie laughed and raised what was left of the wine in his glass to his bride-to-be, his mother stood up and snapped her fingers at her husband. “We’re leaving now, Simon. You too, Barrett.”

My dining partner ducked his head and spoke to the tablecloth. “No. I’m not 10, Mum. I’m going back to the house with everyone else.”

“Oh, Mum,” Felix groaned, sinking his head in his hands. Cecilia, his girlfriend, cast her eyes about with a panicked look I recognized from my own past with Julian: seeking validation from any of us that she hadn’t unwittingly slotted herself into a family ruled by a haughty, overdramatic asshole, which of course she had.

After helping Bex down from her perch and dotting a brief kiss on his almost-wife’s lips, Jamie helped his mother into her coat and mouthed apologies to us all. “Ah, Mum, that grappa was a bit strong, wasn’t it? Let’s get back to the house and we can all have a nice cup of tea.” Ruth Fairleigh gave her eldest son a curt nod, knocking off kilter the chic beret she’d just balanced on her head; her son and husband pretended not to notice and bustled her out of the restaurant.

At the other end of the table, Julian broke away from his snogfest with Amanda and addressed those of us remaining. “Right everyone!” he announced with a smart clap of his hands. “Jamie asked me to ensure everyone is on those minibuses and back in town, so we’d best be off. Thanks for the invite Bex, but I think the bride needs her time alone with her maids for quiet reflection. The rest of us will make do, somehow.”

“I didn’t know Felix died and Jules is now the best man,” Alex said quietly to Barrett and me as he helped me into my winter coat. I sniggered and punched Al on the shoulder.

“What’s that, Carr?” Julian called out. “Care to share?” He unfurled a nasty alligator’s grin.

Alex shrugged on his blazer and looped around his neck a scarf I’d knitted for him years ago. “I said, Cranford, that I didn’t know that Felix had died and that you’d stepped into his best man’s shoes.” He placed his hands — left, right — on the table and leaned towards Julian.

No one moved for several beats, not even Bex’s great aunt Hildy, who I’m sure had no context for this exchange. Even the waiter who was approaching Felix with the bill stopped mid-pace.

Felix broke the stillness as he dug in his trouser pocket for his wallet. “I’m quite alive, but always happy to share the load with another one of the boys.” This was quite obviously a complete load of rubbish, but a tidy save of the situation from tumbling into something much uglier.

Julian slapped Felix on the back and took the bill from the waiter’s hand. “Just trying to help Jamie any way I can. He’s always been here for all of us, isn’t that true, Carr? I seem to recall that when you and Minty were going through the mill, he was one of the people who kept you going. Your girlfriend was another. Good man, Jamie. Safe hands in troubled times.” Briefly inspecting the receipt, he handed over his Amex Black Card — he made sure we all saw it — to the waiter.

The air in the room crackled. Alex white-knuckled the edge of the table. “Please leave Min out of this.” Wait, Minty gets left out of this but not me?

Julian fished in his pocket and pulled out that fountain pen I’d given him on our very last Christmas together. I’d been told only the month before on a message board I’ve taken to posting on (again) that it was “a good pen for everyday work, or a nice gift if you don’t want to go all out,” so I was oddly touched that he still carried it. “Didn’t mean to offend, Al. Nasty business all around.” He signed the bill with a flourish.

“Don’t,” I muttered to Alex, whose entire body was tensed like a jungle cat, waiting to pounce on its prey. “It’s not worth it.” Even Tom Gregory had edged around the assorted older relations to pat Al on the back reassuringly.

“Don’t know what you ever saw in him, Mel. Complete wanker.” Tom picked up the half-empty glass of red one of the bridesmaids had left on the table and sipped at it thoughtfully, then thought better of it and tipped the rest in his mouth. “Let’s get moving, Carr. I don’t want to see a gobshite like Cranford get the best of a better man.” (When did Tom Gregory stop being such a wankstain?)

Alex let me fasten the buttons on his pea coat as he slapped his hat on his head. “I know you’re both right. Let’s get going. Miranda just texted me from their house, and apparently Will’s already half-cocked, Min’s losing her mind about Lucy trying to literally climb the chandelier at her parents’ house, and Sasha’s asking Charlie to inspect her moles. We’d best be off to sort out that mess, Ms. de Mornay.”

Alex offered me his left arm, and I nestled my hand in its crook. Not to be outdone, Tom offered his right arm, and flanked between them I swept past Julian, who was coaxing Amanda into her coat. (“Come on, poppet, we need to leave. When we get back, why don’t I let you have a glass of that Bolly I had delivered this afternoon?”)

On the curb, our breath curled and rose before us in the glacial night; the light from the restaurant cast our shadows hard on the pavement. Tom Gregory, who’d neglected to wear a proper coat, stamped his feet and rubbed his hands. My gloved hands were stuffed in Al’s pockets, not for warmth but to feel him closer, to feel safer, to block whatever harm Julian might visit upon us. Another event down, just the wedding day to follow, and a nightcap with the others. Mischief almost managed.

“Ah, sweetness.” Al drew me closer. “I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“Sorry he and I ever brought you into our mess.” A brush of his lips on my head to dispel the ghosts he must have known were worrying me. You’re not the queen in his game. He’s using you as a pawn in a match he and I have been playing for a long time, quite apart from you. I want you to tell him this, Mel. Tell him: game on.

At my elbow, Tom coughed lightly. “Did you say Miranda St. George is going to be there?” From the corner of my eye I saw him breathe into his palm, as if to test for garlic breath.

“Tom,” Al cautioned, “you do know she calls you ‘wankstain,’ right?”

Tom clapped his hands, his face lighting in soppy rapture. “Fantastic woman.” He shook his head as if the nickname were a term of ultimate endearment. “Who doesn’t like a challenge?”

“Poor Miranda,” I said half into Alex’s peacoat as we watched Tom climb into the minibus that was headed to the house where Miranda and the others were floating themselves on numbing rivers of alcohol.

“Poor Tom, more like.” Alex snorted. “She’ll nibble him around the edges until she’s bored, then bat him away for him to discover his wounds. I know you love her, but she hasn’t changed. Not that much.”

If she hasn’t changed, I thought, drawing into myself as Al hustled me from the curb to the relative warmth of a grey velour seat onboard, has she ever stopped wanting Alex? I shut my eyes and tipped my head on the window as the bus filled with “the children,” as Ruth Fairleigh had referred to us earlier that evening. The quiet buzz of conversation swelled as I heard the bridesmaids and Bex board — they’d had more grappa than anyone else except Simon Fairleigh, by my reckoning, and were now singing Lizzo’s “Good As Hell” in strong Estuary accents.

“Mel.” Alex’s finger jabbed me in the ribs. “Mel. Look.”

Upon opening my eyes, there was Amanda Harrington in the aisle of the bus, tossing her red curls back, shriek-singing along with the maids. “If he don’t love you anymo-o-o-ore / Just walk your fine ass out the do-o-o-o-r!” Behind her, Julian ascended the three steep steps to the interior in time to behold his maybe-someday-wife dipping low to the floor as she ground her extremely generous chest against Barrett Fairleigh’s knee.

“Oh god, now I remember why I dated Amanda!” Alex cackled.

I smacked his hand in a minor twinge of jealousy, but had to admit this was a bravura performance. And I saw it: Amanda was pushing back, testing Julian’s limits in public. She wanted to know — rightly, really — if she could be her very most intemperate self before him. Though she’s a waspish, egocentric, vicious snob, she’s also a woman who’s lived on her own and on her own terms for the better part of her adult life. And as much as she might want the security of marriage and the blessing of Julian’s fat wallet and a black card of her own, I suspected Amanda wanted a partner who indulged her peevishness and left a wodge of cash on the credenza with no strings attached. With Julian, every dollar bill and five pound note came with a string that he grasped tightly and pulled at a whim. Still, Julian might be desperate for a “companion” he could trot out at meetings of the Pasadena Republican Club without fear that she’d start arguing that her brother always told her that Keynesianism is the only relatively sane economic theory that a just and moral government could adopt (this was a definite risk with Fenn). Amanda might not know who her competition could be, but she was keenly aware Julian was bride-shopping, and that she was number one on that list. She had the upper hand, and intended to use it.

After a brief scuffle to get Amanda seated (he even buckled her in for good measure), and assurance to the driver that we were all present, Julian stood and thanked us all on Jamie’s behalf for our good work at the rehearsal tonight. As the minibus lurched into gear, he reminded us that we needed to be compos mentis for the ceremony tomorrow. “So please respect the bride on her day.” He treated Bex to the stiff little salute of a man who’d watched “A Few Good Men” twenty times but never would have sullied his hands with the armed forces.

Bex exploded in laughter. “Good one, Jules. Everyone, go get loaded. Your hangovers are on you, but that’s what Photoshop’s for.”

It was a short ride to where Bex and her attendants were staying; the other house was a further journey into the countryside. By then, the party mood had mellowed into a smattering of snores, though behind us Tom Gregory chattered incessantly to Barrett about Miranda. “Wait ’til you meet her, Bear. Tart little pip of a woman. Haven’t stopped thinking about her since uni. Treated me like dirt but once I’d had a taste…”

Miranda and Tom Gregory? Now, this was something I didn’t know. I didn’t want to wake Al, whose head was now tipped back to enable the full blast of his foghorn snore in the darkened bus. I carefully pulled my hand from his and tapped out a text to Charlie, the only person I trusted not to bleat out its contents to the crew waiting for our arrival. Question: were Miranda and Tom Gregory ever a couple at Bristol?

We bumped down a country road, past the outlines of hedgerows and farmland. I stared at my phone, willing an answer before we pulled up to the house. As we rounded a particularly sharp corner, Alex snorted briefly into consciousness and I stuffed the phone in my pocket where I felt the buzz of an alert. When the grumbly snuffles that presage his snores picked up, I fished it out.

Yes. 2nd yr. “couple” is not a word I wd use – more like

Like what? Like what? Charlie didn’t finish the thought before we reached the other house, where Minty welcomed us with glasses of spiked cider and trotted me about on a tour. Unlike the vicarage, where six of us rattled around a plush five-bed pile, the second house crammed seven assorted guests into four: Julian and Amanda in the master suite; Felix and Cecilia in lesser but still comfortable en suite digs; Tom Gregory and Barrett in two double beds crammed into a room made barely for one; and Minty in a poky boxroom that had a moderate odor of mothballs. (“It’s fine!” she assured me with the same sunny grin that she plastered on in most occasions when it was simply more comfortable to deny the truth than to embrace it, everything from stubbed toes to dead siblings.)

After an extended demonstration of the peculiarities of the toilet she shared with Tom and Barrett (“You really need to give the handle a bit of welly to get your business down”), I darted downstairs to locate Alex. He wasn’t in the living room, where Amanda was fussing over Julian, handing him a glass of what looked at a distance like port before removing his shoes for him. (Ew. Even I only did that for him the one time he sprained his ankle hill-walking in the Pennines.) Nor was he in what I took to be a music room from the presence of a beaten up upright piano, and where Felix and Barrett were quarrelling about quite how rude their mother had been at dinner, as Cecilia scrolled through her phone, looking at what looked like a TikTok video of a kitten grooming a puppy.

In the kitchen were Miranda, Tom and Sasha — Miranda was pointedly trying to exclude Tom from her conversation with Sasha, but Sasha kept bringing him back in. “Ooooh Tom, I’ve been dying to ask you. Miranda and I were talking tonight and she didn’t know the answer to this, but I’m sure you must know. Can you explain what a synthetic derivative is?” Seizing the opportunity to, I guess, impress Miranda with his encyclopedic knowledge in this area, he puffed out his chest a little before launching into a monologue. Miranda spotted me in the doorway and pulled me inside. Sasha snortled.

“Thank god you’re here.” She steered me back through the pantry, towards the mudroom door, past a snickering Sasha. “That wankstain seems to think he can woo his way into my trousers. He’s exceedingly tiresome.” She pulled her coat, smart black cashmere with rows of gold buttons and military frogging, off a peg near the back door. Though there was little light in the darkened room, the moon picked out the labels of tins of Heinz beans and the yellow and blue of three boxes of Weetabix.

“Outside?” I didn’t fancy it.

“You’re looking for Al, right?” The moon hit her in profile just so, throwing into relief the point of her chin, the tiny turn at the end of her nose, the slenderness of her hand as she pulled on a leather glove. “Out there with Will and Charlie.”

She placed her hand on the doorknob, but I covered it with mine. “Wait.”

“Quick. I need to get out of here before Wankstain tries it on again.”

“Why are they out there?” I stuck my fingers in the louvered blinds and caught a glimpse of Alex, smoking a cigarette and jabbing his left index finger towards Charlie rather threateningly. Will was forming great “O”s of smoke rings from a cigar and launching them towards the night sky.

“Best let him tell you. Out you get.” With a turn of the doorknob, and an unceremonious push from Miranda, I was out in what must have been a well-tended garden in the spring and summer, but was now a prospect of pruned, brown plants and low stone walls. Caught smoking, Alex dropped the cigarette on the frost-tipped earth where it slowly burned out in the damp.

The three raised their hands in greeting, each face some level of sozzled, yet all discomfortingly serious for being at least partially sloshed. Alex walked up and pulled me closer, breathing deep as he burrowed his face in my hair. “Sweetness, I know I’m not supposed to smoke. I’m so sorry.” As much as I hated the smoking, the odor was nostalgic, bringing back memories of our hastily-snatched moments in cluttered broom cupboards and the bathroom of a sticky-floored old man’s pub during a gig and once, very, very fate-temptingly, in the flat Al shared with Julian, right there on the countertop.

Charlie cleared his throat. “I think it’s best if you and Al go back to our house. Get the fire started again.”

“He started it, don’t know why they should leave,” Will groused, kicking at the root of the bare-limbed apple tree we were standing beneath.

“Because he’s staying here, you twit,” Miranda chided.

“Al,” I mumbled into his coat. “What’s going on?” Like I didn’t know.

“Jules said something uncalled for to Alex when you were upstairs with Minty,” Charlie said.

“Mel,” Will asked, at a volume far lower than his usual bellow, “you’re not playing away from Al, are you?”

“ENOUGH!” Alex roared. I tore myself away from him; his face was lit red hot with indignation. He stabbed his arm through the cold night towards the house. “I’ve had enough of this from him, I don’t need to take his lies coming from your mouth, too, Will.”

“Told you there was a reason they’re outside,” Miranda said out of the corner of her mouth. She’d clasped my gloved hand in hers; I was glad of the human connection in that moment because the world was spinning far away from where I thought I’d been planted safely.

“Alex,” Charlie warned, clapping a hand on his shoulder. “Not worth it. I’ll come back with you. Hell, we’ll all go back together in two cars.” Oh Charlie, a smoother of tempers, a fixer of injuries trivial and mortal. Even you can’t heal this festering carbuncle. Best to let it pop and drain.

“Will someone tell me what’s going on?” I asked, but no one answered. Al was fumbling to light another smoke, his hands too stiff with cold and fury to coordinate properly, and he kept striking and restriking the lighter. Charlie swiped it away and lit the cigarette for him.

“We were all in that ghastly living room,” Miranda explained, “Amanda was draped over Jules, that sow. Al was being ever so well-behaved, you’d have been proud of him.”

Alex sneered and grunted, and took a long drag on his cigarette.

“You were!” she continued. “And then Amanda asked Julian if he’d ever heard of something called ‘Ashley Madison.'”

I knew where this was going immediately: near the end of the rehearsal, I’d mentioned in passing to Amanda that I’d been amused to see ads on an internet forum I frequent for Ashley Madison, considering that the forum itself is at least partially for marriage-minded folk. She’d never heard of the website, and I explained that it was for married people and those in committed relationships looking to start an affair. Amanda had scoffed at the idea. “What’s wrong with just meeting your lover in person at a hunt ball? Both my parents did that.”

“Julian seemed astonished she’d even heard of such a thing, and asked her who’d been filling her head with ideas of affairs. Man told the queerest little story about ads on a forum you’d been looking at.” Miranda sniffled. “And Julian said, ‘Everyone knows your ads are linked to your browsing history. Mel might have been doing some browsing of her own for a little something extra.'”

“Quite out of line,” Will griped. “And it’s not even completely true about how those ads work.”

Alex was pacing by now, wearing a path in what remained of the dried lawn. “I’ll KILL him!” he yelled towards the stars. We were far enough out in the country that there was little light pollution, and each dazzling dot pulsed back at me, not safe not safe not safe.

Charlie picked up the narrative. “Well, Alex called him a pompous, lying, selfish cunt. Jules asked Al not to be so ‘provocative’ in his language, particularly with ladies around.”

“Little sexist shit,” Alex sputtered, rolling the cigarette between his fingers. “I walked out, Mel. I felt like a coward, but I didn’t want to make things worse for you.”

My hand passed from Miranda’s warm clasp to Alex’s chilly paw. “Of course I’m not cheating on you,” I reassured him. “There must have been someone using the wifi before we got there that was looking, and the ads populated that way.”

“Never thought you were, sweetness.” Drawing my hand to his cheek, the hard set to his jaw softened, the antic glow in his eyes dimmed. “Charlie’s right, though. We should go.”

“Right!” Will slapped Alex on the back. “Plenty of that excellent brandy back at the house, and Sasha’s stuffed a couple of bottles of Julian’s Bolly into her knapsack. Let’s go scoop the old girl up and hit the road.” Falling into line behind Will’s confident march back inside, we filed through the kitchen and into the hallway, where Al peeled off with Charlie to say good-bye to Tom, who’d moved on to boring the Fairleigh brothers and Cecilia. We found Sasha and Minty sitting at the base of the stairs, flipping through pictures of Lucy.

“She’s so lovely,” I said, taking a seat on Minty’s right. “She looks just like you.”

“Do you think?” Minty was looking closely at a snap of her daughter in her pink gingham school uniform and red cardigan, brandishing the plastic pirate’s sword she tried to bring everywhere. “I can only see Alex when I look at her.”

She wasn’t wrong — Lucy was a near-replica of her father, from her wild curls to her slim build to her fierce independence. How would it have felt, I wondered, had Julian and I had that baby he wanted so badly, and I had to see his face every day in my child long after our divorce?

“Don’t be silly, she’s a Bosworth. Look at that mouth.” Sasha patted Minty’s arm. “And you said she’s getting to be quite good at baking cakes. Not like Al at all.”

A flash of blond hair caught my eye — Julian had slipped into the hallway from the living room in his stocking feet. “Ladies, just getting some more champagne for Amanda.”

“Oh, piss off, Jules,” Miranda scolded. “You made it weird.”

“I was only drawing a conclusion any man in my position would. Honestly, it would do Alex well now to come to the same one I eventually did. Save himself time, money and sanity.” He bestowed a little smile on me. “Now, he may be into that sort of thing, and if he is, I won’t judge his kink.”

“That’s quite enough!” Charlie — Charlie! — boomed, his voice drawing Alex and Will from the music room, followed by the Fairleigh contingent and Tom. Even Amanda stumbled to the hallway.

“SHUT UP!” I yelled, standing up from the stairs. “I am NOT cheating on Alex, and I never cheated on you!”

“Of course not, Liss.” Julian’s words were honey-sweet. “No one here ever thought that, did they? How many here ever truly thought I was right? Charlie? Minty? I seem to recall you believed me. Will? Sasha?” He walked up to Miranda, took her chin in his hand briefly until she batted it away. “Even you, Ran.”

It happened so quickly I didn’t see Alex move from where Will had been blocking his path. So quickly my brain took a few extra beats to put together the image in front of me — Alex had charged the length of the hall to shove Julian against the wall, knocking a framed London Jazz Festival poster to the floor. Breathless, he drew back from Jules and put some space between them, as if thinking better of going further. I stretched my arm towards him to pull him away, and in that moment Julian took advantage of Al’s distraction and shoved back. Alex stumbled, briefly stunned. I grabbed his arm to steady him.

“Didn’t think I had it in me, did you?” Julian panted. “You were always the thug, the big guy. Still are. Can’t solve anything with words.”

Felix stepped between them. “This is over. Not tonight. Alex, it’s for the best if you leave.”

“Melissa? Are you paying attention?” Julian was pointing at me. “This is how he solves his problems. What’s to say he won’t have you against the wall someday when you say the wrong words?”

“Al, let’s go outside before this gets worse,” Will suggested. “Cars are on their way.”

Julian cracked his knuckles. “That’s right. Better leave. It’s not like he can solve it like a civilized man.”

“Oh, do shut up, Jules. Terribly boring,” Amanda drawled. “Come, let me finish what I started with you.” (Ew. I wasn’t sure exactly what that meant, but almost certainly, ew.)

And then we were in the wintry Sussex night, a clutch of six, where once we had been ten. Divorce and jealousy had stripped us of Amanda, Minty and Julian over the years; Jamie had set himself apart, quite wisely, after meeting Bex. Once we had been ten, but of us, at our heart, there really only ever had been two. Two boys who had loved each other with the ferocity of the daytime storm that had slicked the windows and rattled their casements. Two men whose anger and spite towards each other now clattered and banged at a similar pitch.

Two men I love, have loved, will love.