Two Wrongs Read online

  ‘I know,’ she snapped, feeling stupid. ‘That was what I meant.’

  Rav raised his eyebrows but seemed to think better of making a fuss. He disappeared into the living room, humming as he went.

  She had known that. She knew far more about books and films than Rav did. She didn’t answer. Instead she turned to the wardrobe, looking for her navy dress. It was round-necked and short-sleeved with a fitted waist. She called it her ‘boring dinner-party dress’; it was the one she took out when she wanted people to think she looked nice but not think any further than that.

  ‘Is that what you’re wearing?’ asked Rav, coming into the bedroom, his hair freshly pushed back with water, beads of it on his skin. Even when he was irritating her, even when he was forcing her to go to dinner with the person she could stand least in the world, she couldn’t help noticing how obscenely beautiful he was. His mother’s skin tone, her huge eyes. His father’s cheekbones. Long, lean muscles.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. Then she weakened. ‘Did you have something else in mind?’

  ‘No, no,’ he replied, dragging a towel over his head.

  Chloe cocked her head to one side. ‘Really?’

  He put his hands up as if she were pointing a gun at him, trying to laugh his way off the wafer-thin ice. ‘I just thought that pink one from the other day was nice, that’s all. It was a bit more … party.’

  The ‘pink one’ was a short, silk dress with spaghetti straps and a flirty skirt. She’d bought it out shopping with Lissy. She had only tried it on because she’d been so agonizingly bored of hearing about nipple shields, but when she’d looked in the mirror at herself she’d wondered if the dress had some sort of magic. A heavily pregnant Lissy had said something about wanting to jump in front of a bus because she was so fat and had then compelled Chloe to buy it. It was a dress for a better evening than this one.

  ‘If you want to give Max something pretty to look at,’ said Chloe, doing up the buttons on the front of her dress, ‘you’re welcome to borrow the pink one.’

  Rav shook his head and fastened the buckle to his belt. ‘Do you really still hate him so much?’

  Chloe spritzed perfume on her wrists. ‘Are you calling the Uber or am I?’

  Perhaps he knew he was in dangerous territory, or maybe he didn’t want to hear the answer. Either way, he picked up his phone and left the bedroom. ‘I’ll do it,’ he called back.

  Chloe had just finished redoing her eye make-up – not as neatly as the first time – when Rav shouted, ‘The car’s going to be here in two minutes.’ He was already standing on the doorstep. ‘Ready?’

  She picked up her bag. ‘Ready,’ she said, closing the bedroom door behind her and pulling the skinny strap back up her shoulder. Rav grinned. ‘You changed.’

  ‘I did.’ She smiled. ‘Entirely for your benefit. Have you got the wine?’

  Rav held up two bottles of fancy-looking Malbec. He’d clearly slunk off somewhere impossibly grand in Mayfair on his lunch break yesterday. Between the wine and the bunch of flowers she’d bought that morning they’d already spent a decent £75 on this evening. She wanted to tell Rav that he should stop bothering, that Max would never be impressed by something as mediocre as a bottle of wine, and that Rav would lose points in his eyes for doing something as pedestrian and middle class as bringing two bottles to dinner. But she couldn’t bring herself to. There was a fizz to Rav’s mood, the same excited bounce he always got when they were doing something new, when he felt he was about to break new ground. So she smoothed her hair instead and picked up the flowers. ‘I suppose we’d better go, then,’ she said.

  ‘You never know,’ said Rav as he closed the front door behind them. ‘You might even enjoy yourself.’

  No fucking way, thought Chloe, as she walked to the taxi.

  5

  Then

  ‘Who’s the boy?’ asked Lissy, putting a fistful of Bacardi Breezers down on the pub table, two for each of them. She had to raise her voice to be heard above the deafening Rihanna song.

  ‘What?’ replied Chloe. She took a long drink of the sugary pink liquid, hoping that if she drank enough of it she would forget that she was having the exact same night out she used to have at home.

  ‘You’ve been staring at your phone all evening,’ said Lissy. ‘There’s definitely a boy. Right, Sam?’ She raised her eyebrows at her friend Samantha, a sweet, plump girl with a moon face who also lived on their corridor.

  Chloe shook her head, watching as Lissy counted her change back into her wallet, which had a picture of a puppy wearing a tiara on it, then zipped it back into her sensible bag. In their second week, Lissy had tried to talk all the girls on their corridor into going to a talk about staying safe on campus. Chloe had said no, and been subjected afterwards to Lissy going on about putting your keys between your fingers as an anti-rape method and carrying hairspray to use as mace on anyone who attacked you.

  ‘So, who is he?’

  Chloe shoved her phone into her pocket. ‘No one,’ she said. ‘It’s not a boy.’ Which was true. The person she was waiting to hear from, the person she’d woken up every morning praying to have a text from, was Zadie. There was no way to explain that to Samantha and Lissy.

  ‘There’s nothing to be embarrassed about,’ Samantha assured her. ‘They’re all the same. Ian still hasn’t messaged me.’

  Samantha had watched too many reruns of Friends on Channel 4 in the common room and had told her long-term boyfriend, Ian, still back at home in the Midlands, that she wanted to go ‘on a break’. Ian was presumably now making hay while the sun shone. Chloe tried to stop her eyes from rolling back into her head. On the table next to them was a bigger group, screaming with laughter and buying round after round of shots. Lissy was leaning across her to talk to Samantha about Ian’s text silence. Chloe tried to scrape up some enthusiasm for the conversation. It wasn’t difficult. She only had to throw in a ‘You’re too good for him’ or ‘You should get over him by getting under someone else’ and she’d be golden. She should do it. Samantha and Lissy had been kind to her. Yes, their Sex and the City marathons and obsession with home-made face masks were a long way from her vision of university, the hoped-for debates and literary salons, but it had to be better than nothing.

  Something buzzed against her thigh. Jumping, she scrabbled for her phone, pulling it out. ‘Busy tonight? Z x,’ read the screen.

  ‘She’s blushing!’ said Samantha.

  ‘He texted you?’ Lissy looked delighted, as if this was playing into the sitcom she was living out in her head. Chloe nodded, deciding that was easier than explaining. ‘Not busy, just having drinks with girls from my/our corridor. C x,’ she texted back.

  ‘Don’t text back now!’ yelped Lissy as she watched Chloe press send. ‘You have to wait!’

  ‘Too late,’ smiled Chloe, taking a swig of her drink.

  ‘You won’t hear from him until at least tomorrow now,’ said Samantha, her face solemn. As if in reply, Chloe’s phone buzzed, spinning on the sticky table. Her body thudded as she picked it up. ‘Want to come over? 29 Archer Crescent.’

  The sickly lemonade taste of the Bacardi Breezer burned the back of Chloe’s throat.

  ‘What did he say?’ Lissy pulled at Chloe’s arm.

  ‘Asked me over,’ Chloe confessed. She wanted to share the excitement, even if she wasn’t being exactly honest. ‘Where’s Archer Crescent?’

  Both girls raised their eyebrows, almost in unison. ‘He lives on Archer Crescent?’ Chloe nodded and pretended to listen while Samantha gave her directions and Lissy explained how much houses on Archer Crescent cost.

  Chloe got to her feet, grabbing her bag. ‘I have to go,’ she said. ‘Drinks on me tomorrow, okay?’

  The girls smiled at her back as she turned for the door. Chloe knew they’d spend the evening talking about what a mistake she was making, about how easy she was. But she quite literally could not have cared less.

  Archer Crescent was a half-moon of yellow s
tone houses set on a hill. They looked down over the river and sat a few hundred metres away from the boathouse. Number 29 was at the furthest end. Chloe looked down at her feet as they moved over the cobbled street and pulled her coat closer around her. It was cheap acrylic and the wind seemed to find its way up the sleeves and down the neck. She sniffed, hoping the cold wouldn’t have made her face too pink. Her nail varnish was chipped, she realized, as she pressed her finger to the porcelain doorbell.

  She heard the bell, shrill and old-fashioned, sound inside and after a few minutes feet on the stairs. The door swung open and standing in the warm yellow light was Zadie.

  Her feet were bare on the stone floor, her hair piled up on top of her head. She wore a pair of pyjama shorts, a man’s jumper and an excited expression.

  ‘Chloe!’ she cried, throwing her arms around her. ‘You’re freezing! Come in, come in.’

  Stepping over the threshold, Chloe tried to keep her face expressionless. There were bunches of flowers in vases on every surface. Art on the walls. The hall led down to a huge kitchen with a dining table and sixteen chairs.

  How could a bunch of students afford to live here? How could anyone afford to live here?

  ‘Come upstairs,’ said Zadie, taking the steps two at a time. ‘I’m still getting ready.’

  ‘Ready?’ said Chloe to Zadie’s back. ‘For what?’

  Zadie stopped, throwing open the door to an enormous bedroom. She turned, looking surprised. ‘I didn’t tell you? We’re having a party.’ She went to the wardrobe, which ran almost the length of the room, and pulled open the doors. It was stuffed full of garments on hangers. Dresses, T-shirts, jackets, and jumpers Chloe didn’t need to touch to know they were cashmere.

  ‘This place is amazing,’ she said, taking it all in. ‘No wonder you don’t want to live in our room.’

  Zadie laughed. ‘Isn’t it obscene? Max’s parents bought it when they found out he was coming here, so that he could be close to the gym. They’re loaded, and he’s their little prince. Can’t do wrong, nothing ever good enough. You know the type.’

  Chloe didn’t know the type, but she didn’t say that. ‘Does Max play rugby?’

  Zadie rolled her eyes. ‘Yes, but do not ask him about it, otherwise he’ll want to talk about it and, honestly, the only thing more boring than watching rugby is listening to people talk about it. He only came to uni here because it’s so good for sport. And then I came here because I’m pathetic and I missed him.’

  Chloe sat down on the bed, sinking into its heavy covers, her head spinning at the idea that you could get into a university like this one just because you wanted to be with your boyfriend.

  Zadie started to pull things off hangers. ‘I am so useless. I can’t believe I didn’t warn you about the party. Do you want to borrow something? You’ve probably got stuff back at college that you’d rather wear, but seeing as you’re here already, this would be great on you.’ She held up a short black silk dress.

  Chloe knew she should at least protest that she didn’t want to wear it, that she was happy in her jeans and top. In her head her mother’s voice was scolding her about taking things from people, asking why anyone like Zadie would want to lend someone like Chloe a dress. But in spite of all that, before she’d even realized what she was doing, she was stripping her clothes off with a kind of abandon that didn’t belong to her, her jeans and top were shoved into her rucksack and she was looking into the mirror at a girl in a beautiful dress.

  Zadie gave a dramatic sigh when Chloe turned around to show her. ‘Fuck, you look great. Do you want shoes?’ She turned back to the dressing table, where she was doing her make-up in front of a huge antique mirror. ‘What size are you?’

  ‘Five.’

  ‘Oh, I’m a seven. Annoying. Never mind, just go barefoot.’

  ‘You’re sure you don’t mind?’

  Zadie looked at her in the mirror, their eyes meeting in the glass. ‘Mind?’

  ‘The dress, and everything.’ She shifted from one foot to the other, not sure where to put herself.

  Zadie put her lipstick down and turned to look at her properly. Did she sense Chloe’s discomfort? ‘D’you want to go and get us both a drink before everyone gets here?’ she said. ‘Glasses are in a cabinet by the back door, and there are loads of bottles in the fridge. Just open one. Max should be around somewhere.’

  Relieved by the idea of having something to do, Chloe padded down the stairs and into the kitchen. It was warm in the house, the kind of indulgent warmth that came from having the heating on all the time. People like Max and Zadie didn’t worry about bills. They probably had someone to sort things like that out. Chloe couldn’t imagine someone as sparkly as Zadie having to deal with the dullness of paperwork.

  How was it possible that the people who lived here were in their teens and twenties? The kitchen looked like something her mother would cut out of an interior-design magazine. Marble floor, pale grey walls, a huge island in the middle with a marble top and stools all around it. It was also, strangely, empty. Enjoying the feeling of being in the room, as if she were on the set of a film, she took two glasses from the cabinet then pulled open the door of the American-style fridge. A girl she had known at school had a fridge like that, with a door which made ice. She’d always made a point of letting them have a go with it at sleepovers.

  The fridge was full of mineral water, champagne and Diet Coke, nothing as pedestrian as food. She pulled out a bottle of champagne and as she pulled off the foil around the top of the bottle she was grateful, for the first time in her life, that she’d spent two years working at the Sun and Mitre on the high road and so knew how to open it. Expertly, she twisted the cork from the bottle. It gave a low hiss as it came cleanly off, not a drop spilled over the neck.

  A voice came from behind her. ‘Impressive.’ Startled, Chloe spun around, catching the bottle with her wrist and tipping it over on the counter. ‘Fuck!’ she yelped.

  The boy was tall and broad-shouldered and had dark hair. His eyes were somewhere between green and brown and he looked – Chloe couldn’t find a better way to explain it – like a grown-up. The boys she had met so far, with their fleeces and trainers and stubby fingernails, had all seemed like children. But everything about this boy screamed adult, despite the fact that he couldn’t have been any older than twenty-one.

  Smiling at her distress, he took a cloth from the side and threw it to her. ‘Usual house rules say that if you spill it, you have to lick it up. But seeing as you’re new here, I think we’ll make an exception.’

  Chloe raised one eyebrow, trying to think of something smart to say, trying to ignore the fact that every single cliché from every book she had ever read was taking place underneath her ribcage. She put the cloth on top of the pool of champagne that was fizzing on the counter.

  ‘You’re very kind,’ she said, smiling up into his face and parting her lips to tell him her name, but as she did so Zadie entered the room. Her long hair trailed over her bare shoulders and her skin glowed. She grinned at Chloe. ‘Oh, good. You two found each other. I wanted you to meet.’ She pulled her lithe body up on to tiptoes and kissed the boy on the lips. The realization of who he was came crashing down around Chloe’s shoulders. It was as if someone had dropped an ice cube down her back. She fixed her face into a smile, horrified at her own reaction.

  ‘We just met,’ said Max, crossing the room to get another champagne glass. He set it on the marble countertop with a clink and took Chloe’s hand in his.

  ‘I’m Chloe,’ she said.

  ‘It’s nice to meet you, Chloe. I heard you came to Zadie’s rescue the other day.’

  He picked up the bottle, filled three glasses and handed one to each of the girls. His eyes were locked into Zadie’s. How could a gesture that innocent feel so intimate? ‘Here’s to Chloe,’ he said, raising his glass. ‘Our saviour.’

  ‘Our saviour,’ repeated Zadie, with a grin.

  6

  Now

  ‘
We’re late,’ said Rav, sighing and looking at his phone. He’d been putting it back into his jacket pocket then taking it out again for the last twenty minutes, as if staring at the time had any influence on how late it was or how slowly the traffic crawled.

  ‘Not very,’ Chloe replied. She looked to the front seat of the car, searching for the time on the dashboard, hoping it disputed the numbers on Rav’s screen. The driver was playing Magic FM, the ‘Greatest Hits of the Eighties’, but he’d turned the volume down so low she could hardly hear it. She never understood why people did that.

  ‘Half an hour late,’ said Rav. He sounded genuinely worried. Something about the rawness in his voice pulled at her, making her want to comfort him.

  ‘I thought he said seven thirty for eight?’ Her voice was bright and cheerful, though she wasn’t sure why. How had it become her responsibility to cheer Rav up about going to a dinner she had tried to refuse to attend?

  Rav looked away, staring out of the window at the bumper-to-bumper cars. Chloe could have told him they’d have made better time getting from north London to south-west London if they’d taken the Tube. But there was no point. He already knew that. He’d probably be ashamed of himself for thinking that getting a taxi across London was an impressive way to arrive, as if Max gave a shit how they got there, as if he would even notice. She didn’t need to say any of it. Rav would already be bullying himself internally about it.

  The closer they got to Max’s house, the more she wanted to ease the tension. If they fought now, they’d still put on a good show when they arrived, of course. But Max had always had a nose for these things – a strange character trait for someone so jocular. Chloe pushed the button to open the window. It squealed as it did so, raspingly dry against the frame of the door. The air outside was warm and laden with petrol fumes.

  ‘Thank you for doing this,’ said Rav, looking out of the window on his side of the car. ‘I know you didn’t want to.’