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Chapter One

The first time I met Josh, I thought he was a nice guy but a transient friend. The first time I met Si I fell hopelessly in love and prayed I’d somehow be able to convert him.

But the first time I met Portia I thought I’d found my soulmate.

She was the sister I’d always longed for, the best friend I’d always wished I had, and I truly and honestly thought that, no matter what happened with our lives, we would stay friends for ever.

For ever feels a long time when you’re eighteen. When you’re away from home for the first time in your life, when you forge instant friendships that are so strong they are destined, surely, to be with you until the bitter end.

I met Josh right at the beginning, just a few weeks after the Freshers’ Ball. I’d seen him in the Students’ Union, propping up the bar after a rugby game, looking for all the world like the archetypal upper-class rugger bugger twit, away from home with too much money and too much arrogance.

He – naturally – started chatting up Portia, alcohol giving him a confidence he lacked when sober (although I didn’t know that at the time), and despite the rebuffs he kept going until his friends dragged him away to find easier prey.

I’m sure we would all have left it at that, but I bumped into him the next day, in the library, and he recognized me instantly and apologized for embarrassing us; and gradually we started to see him more and more, until he’d firmly established himself as one of the gang.

I’d already met Si by then, had already fallen in love with his cheeky smile and extravagant gestures. I was helping out one of the girls on my course who was auditioning for a production of Cabaret. It was my job to collect names and send them into the rehearsal hall for the audition.

Si was the only person who turned up in full costume. As Sally Bowles. In fishnet stockings, bowler hat and full make-up, he didn’t bat an eyelid as the others slouched down in their hard, wooden chairs, staring, jealous as hell of his initiative. And his legs.

He went in, bold as brass, and proceeded to give the worst possible rendition of Cabaret that I’ve ever heard, but with such brazen confidence you could almost forgive him for being entirely tone-deaf.

Everybody went crazy when he’d finished. They went crazy because he so obviously loved, loved, being centre stage. None of us had ever seen such enthusiasm, but even though Si knew every song, word for word, he had to be content with camping it up as the narrator, as Helen, the director, said she never wanted to hear him sing again.

Eddie was a friend of Josh. A sweet gentle boy from Leeds who should probably have been overwhelmed by our combined personalities, but somehow wasn’t. He was easy company, and always willing to do anything for anybody he cared about, which was mostly us, at the time.

And then of course there was Portia. So close that our names became intertwined: Catherine and Portia. Two for the price of one.

I met Portia on my very first day at university. We were sitting in the halls of residence common room, waiting for a talk to begin, all sizing each other up, all wondering whom to befriend, who seemed like our type, when this stunningly elegant girl strode in on long, long, legs, crunching an apple and looking like she didn’t have a care in the world.

Portia, with her mane of dark auburn hair that reached down between her shoulderblades. Portia, with her cool green eyes and dirty laugh. Portia, who looked like she should have been a class-A bitch, but was, then, the greatest friend I’d ever had.

Her confidence took my breath away, and, when she flung her bag down on the floor and sank into the empty chair next to mine, I prayed she’d be my friend. She stretched out, showing off buttersoft suede thigh-high boots, exactly the boots I’d dreamt of wearing if I ever got thin enough, and, taking a last bite of the apple, tossed it with an expert flick of the wrist into the dustbin on the other side of the room.

‘Yesss!’ she hissed triumphantly, her cut-glass accent slicing through the room. ‘I knew all those years as goal shooter would pay off sometime,’ and then she turned to me. ‘I’m Portia. When does this bloody thing start?’

Portia had more than enough confidence for both of us. We found, within minutes, that despite our different backgrounds we had the same vicious sense of humour, the same slightly ironic take on life, although it took a few years for the cynicism to set in.

We made each other laugh from the outset, and there never seemed to be a shortage of conversation with Portia. She had a prime room – one of the most coveted in the building. A large bay window overlooked the main residential street, and Portia repositioned the armchairs so that they were in the bay, draping them with jewel-coloured crushed velvet throws. She sat there for hours at a time, watching people go by.

Most of the time I’d be there too. The net curtains would be rolled around the string of elastic from which they hung, and in summer the window would be open and we’d sit drinking bottles of Beck’s, Marlboro Lights dripping coolly from our fingers, waiting for the men of our dreams to walk past and fall head over heels in love with us.

They frequently did. With Portia, at any rate.

Even then she had more style than anyone I’d ever met. She would go to the hippy shops in town and pick up brightly coloured beaded dresses for a fiver, tiny mirrors sprinkled all over them, and the next day I’d find her finishing off two stunning new cushions, the mirrors glinting with ethnic charm.

She did have money, that much was obvious, but there was never anything snobbish or snooty about Portia. She’d been brought up in the country, in Gloucestershire, in a Jacobean manor house that could probably have provided accommodation for most of our campus.

Her mother was terribly beautiful, she said, and an alcoholic, but, Portia sighed, who could blame her when her father was sleeping with half of London. They had a pied-à-terre in Belgravia, to which Portia eventually decamped when she refused to go back to boarding school, opting to do her A-levels in a trendy tutorial college in London instead.

It was a world away from my own background. I was intimidated, impressed, and in awe of her life, her lifestyle. My life had started in deepest, darkest suburbia, in an ordinary pre-war semi on a main road in North London. My father, unlike Portia’s landowning, gambling, semi-aristocratic parents, is an accountant in a local firm. My mother is a housewife who works occasionally as a dinner lady in the local primary school.

As far back as I can remember I would escape from my humdrum world by burying myself in books – the one true love of my life when growing up.

I love Mum and Dad. Of course. They are my parents. But the day I went to university I realized that they had nothing to do with me any more, nothing to do with my life, with who I wanted to be, and never was I more aware of cutting the umbilical cord than when I met Portia.

I used to wonder whether style was something you were born with, or whether it was something you could buy. I’m sure that it’s something you’re born with, and Portia was just fortunate in being able to afford the very best as well. I still have no doubt, however, that she could have made a bin bag look sophisticated. The rest of us would shop at Next, but she always looked like she was wearing Yves Saint Laurent. She’d joke about it, about our sweaters covered in holes, and our faded old Levis, the more rips and holes in them the better. She’d laugh about how she found it physically impossible to walk in anything with less than three-inch heels due to a birth defect. She’d sink to her knees and grab the bottom of my favourite sweater – a sludge-green crocheted number that, with hindsight, was pretty damn revolting – begging, pleading, offering me bribes to burn the sweater and have her N. Peal cashmere sweater instead.

There were a few people who were jealous of her. There always are. I remember one night when Portia was cornered by some big rugby bloke in a pub. She politely declined his offer of a shag, to which he responded by screaming obscenities at her and telling her she was a rich bitch and the most hated girl at university. He made some references to her being a Daddy’s girl, and then said she was the university joke. Eventually, when she recovered from the shock, she slapped him as hard as she could and ran out to the garden of the pub.

I found her there. I hadn’t known what was going on. I’d been in the other room, chatting to people, and it was only when I noticed Portia hadn’t come back that I went looking for her.

She was curled up in, a heap at the bottom of the garden. It was raining and she was soaking wet, her hand covered in blood, her skin torn through to the bone. She was sobbing quietly, and I took her in my arms. After a while I insisted she go to hospital for stitches. Even there she refused to say what had happened, and the next day the rumours flew that he, the rugby oik, had hit her, had pushed her down the stairs. She never said anything about the incident, neither confirmed nor denied, thereby making the rugby bloke into something of a pariah with women.

Months later we were sitting in a café on the high street, when Portia suddenly said, ‘Do you remember that night? The night of the bloody hand?’

I nodded, curious as to what she was going to say, because she’d never spoken about it before.

‘Did you think he’d hit me? Pushed me down the stairs?’

I shrugged. I didn’t know.

‘I did it myself,’ she said, lighting up a cigarette and examining the tiny scar on the knuckle of her right hand. ‘It’s this thing I do,’ she said nonchalantly, dragging on the cigarette and looking around the room as if to say that what she was telling me wasn’t important. ‘I have a tendency to hurt myself. Physically.’ She paused. ‘When I’m hurting inside.’ And then she called the waitress over and ordered another coffee. By the time the waitress had gone, Portia was on to something else and I couldn’t get back to the subject again.

It was the first indication I’d had that Portia wasn’t perfect. That there might be things in her past that weren’t perfect. It was only as I got to know her better that I realized the effect her parents had had on her.

It wasn’t that they didn’t care, she said. It was quite simply that they hadn’t been around enough to care. Her mother lay in bed all day, in an alcoholic haze, and her father disappeared to London, leaving Portia to fend for herself.

This cutting, this occasional self-mutilation when life became too hard, was clearly an act of desperation, of Portia screaming to be noticed, to be heard. But if you didn’t know, you wouldn’t know, if you know what I mean. She was funny, generous and kind. When she got fed up with my persistent moaning about my mop of dull mousy hair, she whisked me to the hairdressers and instructed them to do lowlights.

The girl at the hairdressers didn’t like Portia, didn’t like her imperious manner, but Portia’s mother went to Daniel Galvin, so Portia knew what she was talking about. When Portia said not the cap, the foil, they listened, and when she chose the colours of my lowlights, they listened. And when they finished, Portia showed them a photograph of a model in a magazine, and they cut my hair so that it fell softly around my face, feathery bits brushing my cheek. I had never felt beautiful before, only ever mildly attractive on a very good day, but for a few minutes, in that crappy local hairdressers surrounded by old dears with blue rinses, with Portia smiling just behind me, I felt beautiful.

Portia was the most sought-after girl at university. As the builders at the end of our road one summer used to say, ‘She’s got class.’ When I walked past they’d scream, ‘Cor, fancy a night out, love?’ To which I’d smile coyly and continue walking, faintly irritated by the interruption, but nevertheless flattered that they had even bothered to notice me.

When Portia walked past they’d fall silent. Downing their tools one by one, they’d step to the edge of the scaffold to watch her glide by, her face impassive, her eyes fixed on the middle distance. And once she’d passed they’d look at one another with regret, regret that she wouldn’t talk to them, regret that twelve feet up a collection of steel poles was the closest they’d ever get to a woman like Portia.

But the thing was that underneath, beneath the designer trappings and soigné exterior, Portia was just like me. We were both eternal romantics, although we hid it well, and both desperately needed to be loved.

Portia had been practically abandoned by her parents since birth, and, though my background wasn’t quite so dramatic, I was the product of people who should never have got married, of people who spent their lives arguing, shouting, who led me to believe, as a young child, that it was all my fault.

My parents were still together, very much so, but I suppose every family has its problems, and mine no less than anyone else. We just don’t talk about it. Everything is swept under the carpet and forgotten.

Perhaps that’s why I loved Portia so much. She was the first person I’d met with whom I felt able to be completely honest. Not immediately, but she was so warm and so open herself (years of therapy, she said) that it was impossible not to fill the silences after her stories with memories of my own.

We gradually allowed more people to enter into our world. Only a select few, only the people who shared our humour, but eventually, by the end of the year, we were a small group of misfits, all from completely different walks of life, but all somehow feeling as if we had found another family.

So there was Eddie, Joshua, Portia and Si. It never occurred to me that we didn’t have any close female friends, but with each other we never needed them. Sarah entered halfway through the second year, by virtue of going out with Eddie, but, although we made her feel welcome, she never really belonged.

I longed to bring someone into the group in the way that Eddie had brought Sarah. And I had my fair share of flings. Of going on drunken pub crawls and ending the evening in a strange bed with a stranger, waking up knowing that you weren’t going to see one another again, but praying that, nevertheless, you would. But they were only flings. The grand passion of which Portia and I talked, relentlessly, eluded me during those years, and one-night stands were the best I could get.

I remember how philosophical Portia was after her first one-night stand. She had lost her virginity the summer before starting university, on holiday, with a strapping Swede on the Greek island of Mykonos, and had said that one-nighters weren’t for her.

I dragged her along to a pub crawl one evening, and tried not to look too horrified when she staggered up the road with a boy who had already worked his way through our entire hall of residence.

And possibly more horrifying was seeing Portia drunk. She simply wasn’t the type. It didn’t suit her.

‘Don’t worry,’ she slurred, throwing her arms around me just before she left, ‘I’vegoddacondom… hic’ and with that she was gone. I sort of knew what she was doing. When we talked about our own one-night stands, Portia always seemed to feel slightly left out, and I suspected she was trying it, just to see what it was like.

I’m ashamed to say that I slept with pretty much anyone who wanted me at university – my self-esteem so low, that show some interest, the faintest bit of interest in me, and I was yours.

I still vividly remember the craving for affection. It wasn’t the sex I wanted, it was the cuddling afterwards. It was the lying in bed, arms around one another, softly murmuring as they stroked your hair. I would sleep with them, then wake up, eyes pleading for one more taste of the affection I had had the night before. But invariably the orgasm of the previous night had taken the intimacy with it, and I would either be ignored, or have to indulge in polite conversation before getting out of there as quickly as possible.

I was sitting in Portia’s room when I saw her walk up the road, still in her little black dress, high strappy heels swinging back and forth from her left hand. As she got closer I could see she had washed her face free of all make-up – something few of us did at home, never mind when away – and she grinned as she saw me, and waved.

I switched on the kettle in her room and was scooping Gold Blend into a mug as she came in.

‘Well, I’ve done it,’ she announced, ‘and I don’t know what the big deal is. I walked home and on the way I decided that I could do one of two things. I could either feel dirty and ashamed, because, let’s face it, Cath, I’ve been well and truly used. Or,’ and she paused. ‘I can write it down to experience, learn from it, and move on.’

‘Need I ask which one you’ve chosen?’ I asked, impressed by her confidence, because, frightened though I was to admit it, after each one-night stand, each rejection, I felt more and more unworthy.

‘I’ll tell you one thing,’ she said, sinking into the chair and lighting up a cigarette, ‘the sex was terrible. I can’t imagine why anyone would want to sleep with a stranger. And he’s supposed to be one of the best lays in this whole bloody town.’

There wasn’t anyone good enough for Portia, I decided. Not here at the university. But then, towards the end of the second year, when we were sharing a little house just off the high street with Josh, Si and Eddie, Sarah not yet having made her mark in the way she was evidently hoping to, Portia came home smiling. She said she’d met someone lovely at the library, and would we mind if he came over that night for supper?

I did mind a bit, actually. It was the first time Portia had ever seemed interested in anyone, and I suppose I must have been jealous, but as soon as Matt walked in, we all fell in love with him.

Matt really was the perfect man. He was funny, charming, kind, bright, and he adored Portia. Adored her. You know how some couples just look perfect together? That was Matt and Portia. And I didn’t lose her. Rather like fathers of the bride who say they’re not losing a daughter, they’re gaining a son, I gained another best friend.

But it didn’t last. It never did, in those days, with Portia. For a year they were inseparable, and then, out of the blue, she split up with him. No reason, no explanation, nothing. She just decided it was time to move on, but what was an easy decision for her, left the rest of our tiny group devastated. And that was when it all started to go horribly wrong.

Chapter Two

There was a girl called Elizabeth. A friend of Eddie. Someone with whom he had been to school, his best friend, who had opted for a job rather than university, and who had secured for herself the rather grand-sounding title of Marketing Assistant.

Eddie adored her. Throughout the first term we kept hearing about Elizabeth: Elizabeth this, Elizabeth that. How Elizabeth taught Eddie to smoke, and borrowed her parents’ car while they were away, and how at sixteen Elizabeth and Eddie were driving, drunk, all over town, piles of their schoolfriends hanging out of the sunroof.

Eddie admitted that when he first met her he had a huge crush on her, but then everybody did, he said. She was gorgeous. Far and away the most beautiful girl in school, and even at fourteen she was the talk of the sixth form.

Elizabeth began to take on mythical qualities. She was the elusive beauty that we had heard so much about, but none of us was entirely sure that she really existed, at least not in the way that Eddie had described.

We assumed that Eddie’s crush had blinded him to her actual attributes. We assumed she’d be pretty. Striking, even. But unassuming.

And then Eddie announced she was coming to stay for the weekend. He was giving up his bed, he said, and would be staying the night at Sarah’s so that Elizabeth would be comfortable.

‘Yeah, yeah,’ Josh ribbed him. ‘Bet you’ll be sneaking back into your bed in the middle of the night, Sarah won’t be too happy about that.’ Sarah was not, at that stage, a permanent fixture, but we could see that Eddie had, up until this visit from the infamous Elizabeth, fallen for her.

Eddie looked shocked. ‘Absolutely not. I’d never dream of doing anything. You know how I feel about Sarah, and anyway Elizabeth is my friend. That’s all.’

We all caught Eddie’s excitement in the days before Elizabeth was due to arrive. All of us except Portia.

‘Don’t you want to meet this paragon of female loveliness?’ I asked her, and Jesus, how clear this memory is. I remember asking that question. I remember exactly where we were, and the memory is so strong I can suddenly smell it.

I can smell the old seaside café, perched on the side of one of the narrow cobbled streets running up from the beach. During term time it was filled with students, noisily chattering, shouting at one another, sitting for hours over one cup of coffee, but then during the holidays it was full of old ladies, scarves wrapped around their hair, gnarled fingers clutching iced buns.

I loved it best during the holidays. I loved staying there, seeing the town in a completely new light, feeling like a local rather than an unwanted student. I loved sitting in the café by myself, often with a book, but usually the book was only for show, enabling me to listen in on their conversations.

I remember that day with Portia. I was supposed to be at a lecture, but I skipped it, vowing to make up for it later. I remember queuing for two steaming mugs of sweet, milky tea, and debating whether to treat myself to a bun, but deciding against it because those were the days when I actually cared what I looked like.

Portia and I were sitting at a tiny table with our lighters precariously balanced on our packets of Marlboros, the air smelling of smoke, and freshly baked cakes, and salt from the sea. I remember being full of the joys of a flirtation with a boy called Sam, and telling Portia everything about the night before, in minute detail.

And, being Portia, she listened and laughed in all the right places, and encouraged me every step of the way, and when I had finished I said I couldn’t wait to meet Elizabeth. And Portia didn’t say anything.

‘You’re coming with, aren’t you?’ I asked, having told her that all of us were going with Eddie to the train station to pick her up. Portia shrugged.

‘Why wouldn’t you come?’

She shrugged again, then smiled suddenly. ‘I’m sure I will,’ she said brightly. ‘I’ve just got to go to the library, so I might have to miss the grand arrival.’

And it didn’t occur to me at the time that there might have been more to it.

‘What do you think she’s like?’ I giggled. ‘Do you think she’s as perfect as Eddie makes out?’

‘She’s probably a total bitch,’ Portia said, which seemed out of character and took me by surprise, but then I entered into the spirit of things.

‘Or hugely fat,’ I chuckled, mentally applauding myself for resisting the bun.

‘Yup. She’s probably put on ten stone since Eddie last saw her, eating for comfort now that he’s gone. Either that or she’s balding.’

I looked at Portia as if she were mad, and we both cracked up laughing.

Portia didn’t come with to pick up Elizabeth, and in the end neither did I. Josh took Eddie and Sarah, as he was the only one of us with a car, and I sat in the kitchen at home, waiting for them, and waiting for Portia to come back from the library.

I’d just made tea – which is all we ever seemed to do that year – when the front door opened and I heard a babble of voices. As soon as Josh and Eddie walked into the kitchen, I could see they were both in love. Their eyes were alight and they were laughing, excitement making their cheeks flushed. Right behind them in walked Elizabeth, and I understood what had caused their reaction.

She was, simply, gorgeous. Not in the way that Portia was, in a slightly imperious, untouchable way. Elizabeth was the classic girl next door, and as soon as she saw me she came over with a huge smile – whaddya know, perfect teeth – and I could see how the others had fallen under the spell she had cast.

Sarah had gone off to the library, but Josh whispered that even she seemed to think Elizabeth was lovely, and I remember being hugely impressed that she wasn’t racked with jealousy in the way that I’m sure I would have been had I been in her shoes.

Si came back from a drama rehearsal soon after, and it didn’t take long for her to work her magic on him, but the person who was quite clearly the most affected was Josh.

I hadn’t seen Josh like that before. He couldn’t take his eyes off her, and as the afternoon progressed I began to notice that she started paying him more and more attention. It started with a few looks – her eyes would come to rest on him slightly more frequently than on the rest of us, and soon she was laying a hand on his arm, begging him to stop teasing her. Because this was the only way that Josh, at nineteen, knew how to flirt.

‘Isn’t she amazing?’ Si said, when we left to go to the corner shop and buy some more cigarettes.

‘I didn’t think I’d say this, but she is. I totally understand what Eddie was talking about. She’s just so nice, and natural, and funny! I’ve been in stitches all day.’

‘And gorgeous,’ Si said as we stamped down the street, our breath clearly visible in the crisp, cold air. ‘If I were straight she’d be my perfect woman.’

‘What about Portia?’

‘Nope.’ Si shook his head. ‘Portia’s beautiful, but there’s something impenetrable about her, something slightly cold. Elizabeth’s just so natural. Jesus, what’s Portia going to think of her?’

‘What do you mean?’ We went into the shop and picked up the cigarettes, milk, and a Pot Noodle for Si.

‘She’s going to hate her,’ he said smoothly. ‘She’ll be eaten up with jealousy.’

I stood stock-still and stared at him. ‘Portia? Jealous? Don’t be ridiculous.’

‘Cath, she won’t be able to stand not being the centre of attention, and have you seen Josh? He’s practically salivating over her. I adore Portia, but I wouldn’t want to be the one pushing her off centre stage.’

‘But what do you think she’ll do?’

‘Dunno,’ Si said with a wicked smile, ‘but, whatever it is, I’m sure it’ll make bloody good material for my improv.’

When we got home Portia was there. She was sitting at the kitchen table, talking to Elizabeth, and, although I refused to admit that Si had been right, the atmosphere had definitely changed, and was I going crazy or did Portia suddenly seem to have a cold, flinty look in her eyes?

‘So what’s on the agenda for tonight, then?’ Si put his shoes on the table as he slurped his Pot Noodle.

‘We thought we’d do a pub crawl,’ Eddie said, looking at Elizabeth for her approval.

‘Sounds fantastic,’ she laughed. ‘Haven’t done a good pub crawl for ages.’

‘Elizabeth pissed is not a pretty sight,’ Eddie said as she hit him, but neither Portia nor I missed the fact that Josh had not joined in with the laughter, too busy gazing at Elizabeth’s lovely face.

Portia came downstairs at seven o’clock, and Si nudged me to turn and look at her as she stood in the hallway, shaking out her hair in the hall mirror.

‘See?’ he mouthed silently. ‘She’s dressed for battle.’

And she was. She was wearing a tight red dress that Josh once claimed gave him an instant orgasm just by looking at it, and what Si always referred to as her Fuck-me Shoes.

Si raised an eyebrow at me and I shook my head, because I really didn’t want to believe Si, but all the evidence was pointing to Portia being very definitely up to something. I just didn’t know what it was.

But it didn’t take me long to find out. Eddie had established that Elizabeth thought Josh was ‘cute’, and Josh didn’t need to say anything to anyone for his feelings to be established.

Eddie told us this with a mixture of pride and jealousy. Pride because Elizabeth was everything he had described, and so much more, and jealousy because it was absolutely clear that a part of him would always have a crush on her.

We started out at the King’s Head. Portia, as always, turned heads wherever we went, but Elizabeth was also generating a fair bit of attention, not just because of her undeniable looks, but because there was a sweetness about her, and of course it may simply have been that she was fresh blood.

Nothing happened until we hit the club. At every pub we’d been to Josh had sat next to Elizabeth, and by the fifth pub they only seemed to have eyes for each other. Eddie shrugged resignedly, and Si and I just sat quietly, watching the blank look on Portia’s face, wondering whether she would dare to say anything to Elizabeth.

Because of course Josh had always had a thing for Portia. From the moment we had all met, right through the first year, and on through the second. It had become a standing joke in our group, and even Josh was quite happy to be teased about it. Portia knew, and he knew that Portia knew, and he’d accepted that it was never going to happen. He used to joke with Portia, saying, ‘A guy can dream, can’t he?’

But the strange thing was that out of all of us, Josh and Portia seemed to make the best match. Josh might have come across as a bit of an upper-class twit at times, but underneath he had a heart of gold, and he was the only one who came from a background that was similar to Portia’s.

Up until that night, Portia had always laughed when Si and I teased her about Josh’s unrequited crush, saying that Josh was far too nice for her, but tonight I could see that she couldn’t deal with another woman in the picture.

And sure enough, in the last pub we went to, the last one before hitting the local nightclub, Portia literally shoved Elizabeth out of the way, sidled up next to Josh and started whispering things in his ear, her coat flung casually on the seat to prevent Elizabeth from coming close.

Poor Josh looked as if he’d been hit by a truck. Stunned. Here was the woman he’d lusted after coming on to him for the first time in his life, and yet here was this other woman, who was also gorgeous, who simply didn’t know how to deal with Portia.

Elizabeth sat quietly next to Sarah, and Si tried to act as if everything were normal, even while Portia did her Mata Hari impersonation. In other words, as Si put it later, acting like a complete bitch.

As soon as we walked into the club, Elizabeth went to the toilet and I joined her to tame my hair and put on some more lipstick just in case Sam should walk in the door.

‘Are you coming?’ I asked Portia, but she shook her head with a smile and followed the others to the bar.

‘Josh is lovely, isn’t he?’ Elizabeth said, as she washed her hands. ‘Eddie thought that I’d love you all, but he never mentioned how gorgeous Josh was.’

‘He obviously likes you too,’ I said, smiling, as she turned to look at me.

‘Is there something going on with him and Portia, though? Eddie said absolutely not, but I feel like she’s defending her territory or something.’

‘Don’t worry about it. Portia’s fine, she’s just not used to you, that’s all, and no, there’s nothing going on between her and Josh,’ and we left to go back into the club.

Elizabeth saw it first. I heard this little gasp, and I turned to look at what she was looking at, and there was Portia. Well, Portia and Josh. Locked together in a passionate embrace in the middle of the dance floor, Portia entwined around him like a snake.

I couldn’t tear my eyes off them, not least because I had never seen Portia do this, she wasn’t a believer in public displays of affection, and it was an extraordinary sight, to see such blatant passion in public.

I knew Elizabeth was walking away, and I know I should have gone after her, but then Eddie and Sarah were tearing past me to reach her, and I found myself walking over to Si, never taking my eyes off Josh and Portia.

‘See?’ he said gravely, having to shout into my ear above the loud din of the Housemartins. He tried to look shocked, but the Gossip inside him was completely loving this drama. ‘Told you so.’

I watched as Portia and Josh finally broke apart, and I could see that Josh, while thrilled to have finally got together with Portia, was also completely bemused. He looked like a little boy lost, whereas Portia was positively triumphant.

She led him to our table by the hand and picked up a triple vodka, downing it in one before reaching up and whispering something into Josh’s ear, sucking Josh’s earlobe as Si kicked me hard under the table.

‘Where are the others?’ she shouted above the din.

‘Where do you think, Portia?’ Si said, and Portia smiled, as a flash of what I swear must have been guilt passed over Josh’s face.

‘Oh well. May the best woman win,’ she said, picking up another vodka before dragging Josh over to the dance floor and wrapping herself up in his arms.

That night we all got drunk, but what I do remember quite clearly, even to this day, was lying in bed and hearing Elizabeth’s quiet sobbing coming from Eddie’s room next door, and the rhythmic creaking of Josh’s bed upstairs.

That old Victorian terraced house wasn’t built to hide feelings of betrayal, of jealousy, of misplaced passion, but I hadn’t known that until that night.

I remember hearing Portia’s soft moans, and feeling like a voyeur, even though I couldn’t see anything. I remember pulling the duvet over my head to block out the noise, and eventually falling into a dreamless sleep.

Elizabeth had gone by the time I woke up. Eddie had left to take her to the station, and Si was already up, watching children’s television with a plate of greasy fried eggs and toast balanced on his knees.

‘What a night,’ he said, in between mouthfuls. ‘I could hardly sleep with all that noise.’

‘Is she okay do you know? Elizabeth?’

Si shrugged. ‘Not particularly, but I’m sure she’ll get over it. Eddie’s taken her to the station. She couldn’t face spending the weekend here, apparently, so she’s gone.’

‘How’s Eddie about all of this?’

‘Upset because Elizabeth’s upset, and because he doesn’t understand what was going on last night. He knew that Josh liked Elizabeth and that Elizabeth liked Josh, and he said he knew they were going to get it together and he didn’t mind at all. Actually, he said he was bloody pleased it was Josh.

‘But most of all he doesn’t understand what happened with Josh and Portia. One minute they were just walking in the club, and the next Portia and Josh were all over each other, and Eddie says he doesn’t understand it.’

‘God, poor Elizabeth. I have to say I don’t really understand it either.’

‘You’re not serious?’ Si looks at me in amazement as I shrug. ‘Cath, don’t be thick. Portia’s chosen us as her friends because we’re all a bit in love with her. She has to be the centre of attention, and she couldn’t stand the threat that Elizabeth posed.

‘It was bad enough that we all thought Elizabeth was fantastic, but the one thing she absolutely couldn’t cope with would have been if Josh and Elizabeth had ended up together.’

‘For one night? What’s the big deal about them spending one night together?’

‘Because,’ Si said slowly, ‘it might not have been one night. One night would have been fine, but what if Elizabeth and Josh had turned out to be an item? What if Elizabeth started coming up here every weekend to see Josh? What then? She had to sabotage it. She didn’t have a choice.’

‘Of course she had a choice,’ I said defensively, ‘and anyway, Portia’s not a bitch. I can’t believe she’d do that.’

‘So you think that Portia coming on to Josh last night was just a coincidence, and that she’s secretly been harbouring a massive crush on him for years, but now that she’s finally found the courage to do something about it, they’re going to live happily ever after?’

‘They might.’

‘Cath, I promise you that this is not a situation that will be repeated. Portia slept with Josh to make sure he stays in love with her, and, providing he does, she’ll never sleep with him again. It’s definitely a one-night stand between them. Trust me,’ he sighed. ‘I’m the expert.’

And, sure enough, it was a one-night stand. Of course Portia didn’t say that. She said that she adored Josh, had always fancied him too, but that they were better off as friends. She wouldn’t be able to bear it if they got involved and then it ended, and she lost him as a friend.

I think Josh was bewildered by the whole thing: he just nodded mutely and seemed to agree with everything she was saying. And after that everything changed. Josh was bewildered, hurt and confused, and the worst thing was that she didn’t just destroy him, she destroyed all of us.

She destroyed our friendships, and, although we tried to forgive her, she’d somehow driven a wedge into the heart of our group, and things really were never quite the same after that.

For a while we still tried, even though we didn’t trust her any more. We were still sharing a house, and Portia would make coffee in the mornings and bring it into my bedroom, curl up at the end of my bed like the old days, but then we never ran out of things to talk about.

A stiffness hung in the air, imbued our conversation with a peculiar formality, and after a while it became more and more difficult to look one another in the eye.

‘Where will you be living?’ she asked, as we were packing up the house, graduating, getting ready to start our real lives in London.

‘With some old school friends,’ I lied, knowing that Portia would realize I was lying but not really caring. I pretended to be busy folding knickers so I didn’t have to look at her. ‘Natasha and Emily. You don’t know them.’

I never asked her where she was going to be living. As it turned out, she ended up renting a tiny flat by herself, which I suppose is exactly what she would have done, given that I had, quite clearly, made other plans.

Eddie moved to Manchester, still unable to forgive Portia for hurting Elizabeth as much as she did, and Josh and Si moved to London with me.

All of us had huge plans, but, as we tried to forge ahead with our careers, we drifted further and further apart from Portia. Suddenly I realized that I hadn’t spoken to her in over three years. None of us had.

I had heard she was living in Clapham. I was in West Hampstead by that time, as were Josh and his wife, Lucy, and Si was in Kilburn, so I knew that with the North/South divide it was unlikely we’d see each other by chance.

She’d gone into journalism, and after a while I gathered she’d joined the Standard. I’d see her by-line first in tiny letters, and then gradually bigger and bigger, eventually accompanied by a picture in which she looked absolutely stunning.

I was working in advertising. I started as an account executive for a big, buzzy trendy ad agency that had recently scooped armfuls of awards, and I loved it. And every night I’d get on the tube with my copy of the Standard and look out for Portia’s pieces, savouring every word of my former friend, who was now almost famous.

But then, about two years ago, her by-line disappeared. I went through a stage of buying every single paper for a couple of weeks, just in case her name should pop up somewhere else, but it never did, and after a while I gave up.

Josh and Lucy, and Si, were, are, my closest friends. Eddie is married to Sarah, and has become a hot-shot director for a television company, so we don’t see him very often, but he comes down to stay from time to time. Apparently he remains in touch with Elizabeth. She was at their wedding four years ago, as lovely as she had been back then, but even after all these years she avoided us.

Si is still on the hunt for the perfect man, as indeed was I up until a few years ago, but I’ve given up now, particularly given that Si is the perfect date for those social and work occasions I can’t face on my own.

The funny thing is, if you had asked me whether we would all be friends ten years after graduating from university, I would have said yes, but only if Portia were included, because she was the star around which we all revolved. Yet even without her, it works.

We do talk about her, though. Do still miss her. They say time heals all wounds, but I find myself missing her more as the years go by. Not less.

Josh has a friend who was a journalist on the Standard, and it seems she’d left to write a book. Josh said she was still single and was now living in Maida Vale. I remember feeling a pang when I heard that. Maida Vale. Up the road. I could bump into her at Waitrose. Or drive past her in Swiss Cottage. Or maybe I’d see her having a coffee in West End Lane.

It wasn’t that I didn’t want to see her. I did, it’s just that the more time passed, the harder it was to pick up the phone and call her. Then a few more years went by, and my career took off. I had relationships, and flings, and my wonderful friends, particularly Si, and they all conspired to fill the void that Portia had left all those years before. Gradually I stopped thinking about Portia as much, although if I’m honest she was always there, in the back of my mind.

Once I thought I saw her. I was grabbing a coffee in the West End, and, as I turned to leave, out of the corner of my eye I could have sworn I saw Portia walking past, rounding the corner. She had such a distinctive stride, and all that mahogany hair. If it was her, she looked amazing, far more stylish than before, but I wasn’t sure, and I was in too much of a hurry to follow. And even if I had gone after her, what would I have said?

PRAISE FOR JANE GREEN’S SPELLBOUND

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jane Green

BOOKENDS

PENGUIN BOOKS

THE BEGINNING

Contents

Acknowledgements

Chapter One

Chapter Two