“Go in again.” I wave my hands agitatedly at the building. “Search around! Find out more!”
“I’m not going in again!” objects Sadie. “You’ve found out all you need to know.”
Actually, she has a point.
“You’re right.” Abruptly, I turn and start walking away from the flat, so preoccupied that I nearly bump into an old man. “Yes, you’re right. I know which restaurant they’re going to be at, and what time; I’ll just go along and see for myself-”
“No!” Sadie appears in front of me, and I stop in surprise. “That’s not what I meant! You can’t be intending to spy on them.”
“I have to.” I look at her, perplexed. “How else am I going to find out if Marie’s his new girlfriend or not?”
“You don’t find out. You say, ‘Good riddance,’ buy a new dress, and take another lover. Or several.”
“I don’t want several lovers,” I say mulishly. “I want Josh.”
“Well, you can’t have him! Give up!”
I’m so, so, so sick of people telling me to give up on Josh. My parents, Natalie, that old woman I got talking to on the bus once…
“Why should I give up?” My words fly out on a swell of protest. “Why does everyone keep telling me to give up? What’s wrong with sticking to one single goal? In every other area of life, perseverance is encouraged! It’s rewarded! I mean, they didn’t tell Edison to give up on lightbulbs, did they? They didn’t tell Scott to forget about the South Pole! They didn’t say, ‘Never mind, Scotty, there are plenty more snowy wastes out there.’ He kept trying. He refused to give up, however hard it got. And he made it!”
I feel quite stirred up as I finish, but Sadie is peering at me as though I’m an imbecile.
“Scott didn’t make it,” she says. “He froze to death.”
I glare at her resentfully. Some people are just so negative.
“Well, anyway.” I turn on my heel and start stumping along the street. “I’m going to that lunch.”
“The worst thing a girl can do is trail after a boy when a love affair is dead,” Sadie says disdainfully. I stump faster, but she has no problem keeping up with me. “There was a girl called Polly in my village -frightful trailer. She was convinced this chap Desmond was still in love with her and followed him around everywhere. So we played the most ripping joke on her. We told her that Desmond was in the garden, hiding behind a bush as he was too shy to talk to her directly. Then, when she came out, one of the boys read out a love letter, supposed to be from him. We’d written it ourselves, you know. Everyone was hiding behind the bushes, simply rocking.”
I can’t help feeling a reluctant interest in her story.
“Didn’t the other guy sound different?”
“He said his voice was high from nerves. He said her presence reduced him to a trembling leaf. Polly replied that she understood, because her own legs were like aspic.” Sadie starts giggling. “We all called her Aspic for ages after that.”
“That’s so mean!” I say in horror. “She didn’t realize it was a trick?”
“Only when the bushes all started shaking around the garden. Then my friend Bunty rolled out onto the grass, she was laughing so hard, and the game was up. Poor Polly.” Sadie gives a sudden giggle. “She was foaming. She didn’t speak to any of us all summer.”
“I’m not surprised!” I exclaim. “I think you were all really cruel! And, anyway, what if their love affair wasn’t dead? What if you ruined her chance of true love?”
“True love!” echoes Sadie with a derisive laugh. “You’re so old-fashioned!”
“Old-fashioned?” I echo incredulously.
“You’re just like my grandmother, with your love songs and your sighing. You even have a little miniature of your beloved in your handbag, don’t you? Don’t deny it! I’ve seen you looking at it.”
It takes me a moment to work out what she’s talking about.
“It isn’t a miniature, actually. It’s called a mobile phone.”
“Whatever it’s called. You still look at it and make goo-goo eyes and then you take your smelling salts out of that little bottle-”
“That’s Rescue Remedy!” I say furiously. God, she’s starting to wind me up. “So you don’t believe in love, is that what you’re saying? You weren’t ever in love? Not even when you were married?”
A passing postman shoots me a curious look, and I hastily put a hand to my ear as though adjusting an earpiece. I must start wearing one as camouflage.
Sadie hasn’t answered me, and as we reach the tube station I stop dead to survey her, suddenly genuinely curious. “You were really never in love?”
There’s the briefest pause, then Sadie flings her arms out with a rattle of bracelets, her head thrown back. “I had fun. That’s what I believe in. Fun, flings, the sizzle…”
“What sizzle?”
“That’s what we called it, Bunty and I.” Her mouth curves in a reminiscent smile. “It starts as a shiver, when you see a man for the first time. And then he meets your eye and the shiver runs down your back and becomes a sizzle in your stomach and you think I want to dance with that man .”
“And then what happens?”
“You dance, you have a cocktail or two, you flirt…” Her eyes are shining.
“Do you-”