The Secret Life of Evie Hamilton - Catherine Alliott [51]
Why did I let her talk to me like this? As if I was a child? Had I always? I sank into my tea, knowing she was right.
‘Who's Camilla Gavin?’ I asked meekly as she punched out a number.
‘She's the ex-DC of our Pony Club. A terrifying woman in her day, but she's mellowed slightly, and she does have some terrific ponies. Her children move on so swiftly they're all on horses now, and Pamela Martin told me she'd be happy to let one of the ponies go out on loan.’
‘On loan!’ I perked up. ‘You mean I don't even have to buy it?’
‘No, but you have to look after it, scrupulously, which will be much harder work than that screw from Docherty's, which you could throw in a field and forget about. It'll probably be quite old, so it'll feel the cold, and it's bound to be kept in. There'll be stables to muck out, rugs to change…’
‘Oh, but that's marvellous. If I don't have to buy it and yes, of course I'll look after it! I'm not working, after all…’
I ignored her pointed, ‘Quite.’
All of a sudden I was back in my original fantasy, tending to a dear little old white pony, brushing its mane as it gazed sleepily at me, giving it an apple… and not having to part with any filthy lucre. I sat up.
‘Excellent, Caro. Definitely ring her.’
‘Which is precisely what I was going to do before you went charging off to Lenny the— Camilla? Camilla, it's Caroline Milligan here!’
I sank guiltily into my tea as her voice went up an octave. She whinnied on in the secret language of horsy women, asking about laminitis, clipping, boxing, proficiency in traffic, but in the nicest possible way, of course, because this was clearly a woman Caro looked up to and respected, unlike me, who she despaired of. I watched as she listened to Camilla's responses, eyes bright, cheeks flushed, bust thrust out: almost as if she were talking to a lover, I thought. I'd seen Caro on the phone to many boys. Seen that light in her eyes.
‘Oh, he sounds orfully sweet!’ she was saying in a voice she'd never used at school. ‘Yes, I do remember, came second in the crorss country!’
When had we become these two women, I wondered, as, phone still clamped to her ear, and in a pair of jeans she wouldn't have been seen dead in years ago, too short, too flared, Caro marched across the room to swat a bluebottle on the window with her Boden catalogue. She wiped the sink while she was there, tossing the dishcloth back in efficiently. When had we stopped throwing away the washing up, rifling through the ashtrays in our Summertown flat for butts long enough to relight? When did we start noticing the dripping tea bags, and when would they, our children, start noticing too, and become different people? Long may they drip, I thought vehemently, because if I found her so changed, how did she find me? Arrogant? Aloof? That seemed to be her constant theme.
As I listened to the gales of laughter coming from the playroom, I mourned our younger selves. When did Caro stop being the first person I'd go to in a crisis, the sort of crisis I had now? When did we stop getting so pissed we had to hold each other's hair back as we threw up, stop borrowing each other's clothes, painting false freckles on each other's noses with eyeliner, giggling over the Cathy and Claire page in Jackie, lying on the floor and doing up each other's jeans with the hook of a coat hanger? When did we become the sort of women who watched each other's children's exam results like hawks, wanting so much more for them than we'd ever wanted for ourselves? I longed for those halcyon faraway days, before we'd had to grow up and marry and have children and discover our husbands had… don't go there, Evie. Don't. I sank into my tea.
‘Oh, Camilla you're a complete star… Yes, I know he's a poppet, I've seen him. Does a dear little dressage test… Well, that's orfully kind of you. Are you sure? Tack as well?… Shall