And because I was her best friend, she didn't hold it against me, though once or twice I got the impression she wished I'd kept my mouth shut. As though that would have made everything all right. As though it were better to live a lie. Maybe Sophie could live like that, but I couldn't.
We were having lunch. Crossing the city to eat out in the area was something I did regularly; it kept me sane. Sophie had discovered a brilliant little Thai cafe off Ladbroke Grove; Mick Jagger sometimes ate there, she said. This was only one of the reasons I had always wanted to live in that part of London. The only celebrities you were likely to encounter in Hackney were Labour MPs and they never actually lived there. I once read an interview with an alternative comedian who declared that he was proud to live in Hackney, but the next time I read about him he'd just bought a five-storey town house in Elgin Crescent.
The Thai cafe didn't have a licence, but you were allowed to bring your own alcohol. I always left the choice of wine to Sophie, ever since the time she and Miles had invited me to dinner and I'd recognized the wine they were cooking with as the bottle I'd left with them on my previous visit.
Our meeting got off on the wrong foot, as it were, when Sophie glanced down and said, 'What on earth have you got on your feet?'
'Loafers,' I said.
Those loafers meant a lot to me. I'd bought them only a few days previously, but the idea of them dated back several months, to when I'd glimpsed the advert in an American fashion magazine. It was an outdoorsy scene in which a smiling woman with rumpled blonde hair and country-casual clothes perched on a gate in front of a vista of fields and hills. The model was not uncommonly attractive, and yet she glowed with self-assurance. She had been born into a world infinitely better than mine. This was a woman who had never had to stand in the middle of Tesco, totting up small change to see whether she had enough for an individual fruit pie to go with her jar of instant coffee. Come to think of it, individual fruit pie and instant coffee would never have passed her lips. She would have sipped only the choicest ground beans freshly brewed in a solid silver cafetière, nibbled only the costliest, most delicate pastries airlifted in from authentic Parisian patisseries.
That woman reminded me of Sophie. They had the same sort of golden aura. But at least Sophie had tasted instant coffee. I knew she had, because I had served it to her.
There was no item of clothing, no accessory in the advert that appealed to me directly, you understand, not even the loafers themselves. They were soft and tan and you could see the model's ankle-bones because she wasn't wearing socks. I had never owned a pair of shoes like that, nor had I ever wanted to, but now I found myself in the grip of a strange compulsion. I wanted those loafers. I needed those loafers. If I was going to lead the sort of life I wanted to be leading, those loafers had to be mine.
I studied loafer after loafer in shoe shop after shoe shop, but none measured up to the picture in my head. Until finally I thought I'd found what I'd been searching for in the window of a humble Hackney cobbler's. I narrowed my eyes, I peered at them sideways — yes! They were as close as I would ever get.
And so for the past few days, I'd been wearing them proudly. I teamed them with sea-island cotton socks and strode out with my hands thrust deep in trouser pockets, a golden aura radiating from my body, feeling brilliant and casual and supremely tasteful.
And then I'd met Sophie for lunch and she'd said, 'What on earth have you got on your feet?'
'Loafers,' I said.
'They look like Cornish Pasties,' said Sophie.
And so, with a mere few words from my so-called friend, my newly acquired golden aura was irredeemably soiled, and I'm prepared to admit I was feeling rather ratty over lunch that day. If it hadn't been for the Great Loafer Disaster, maybe, just maybe, I wouldn't have said what I said.
As usual, I was shovelling down nosh while Sophie picked her way fastidiously across her plate. Halfway through my pork dumplings with peanut sauce, conversation turned to the impending divorce of a couple we'd known for some time. Donna had been five months pregnant with their second child when she found out that Harvey was not on an extended business trip to the United States, as she'd been led to believe, but shacked up in Chelsea with a nineteen-year-old art student called Dorinda.
'What a bastard,' I said. 'But that's typical. That's what men are like.'
'Not all men,' said Sophie. 'Miles isn't like that.'
But you're wrong, I thought, Miles was exactly like that. All the time he and Sophie had been living together, he'd been conducting a string of extra-curricular relationships. I'd been the last but one.
And before I could catch myself, I was saying, 'Well, even if he was like that, you wouldn't want to know about it, would you.' I stated it as a fact, not a question. 'All successful partnerships require a degree of delusion on the part of one or both of the partners,' I said.
Sophie's fork froze in mid-air, and her slippery noodles plopped back on to the plate. She stared at me as though I'd kicked her in the stomach.
'What do you mean?'
'Nothing,' I said.
'What do you mean?'
'You wouldn't want to know.'
'Something's going on, isn't it?'
'Not really,' I said.
She put her fork down. 'If you don't tell me,' she said, 'I shall never speak to you again.'
So I was forced to tell her. She didn't leave me any choice. I told her the truth, which was that, for the past three months, Miles had been having an affair with a woman called Ligia. I didn't tell her about Holly, or Janie, or Carolyn, or any of the others, and I certainly didn't tell her about me.
'Ligia?' she echoed.
'As in Tomb of, but without the "e",' I explained.
'What a stupid name,' said Sophie.
'Czech,' I explained.
Sophie drained her glass and poured herself some more wine. She seemed quite calm. 'Damn,' she said. 'Now I can never listen to Dvorak again.'
'Just be thankful she wasn't French,' I said, 'or you'd have to give up croissants.'
'Or Janacek or Smetana,' she added, looking down at the table and trying not to cry. Sophie was into classical music in a big way. She didn't like pop music at all. It was one of the things about her that I admired and tried to emulate, though I couldn't help listening to some of my old Madonna tapes when no one else was around.
'Are you all right?' I asked. Privately, I was a little disappointed she was taking it so well.
'Not really,' she said. 'I think I want to go home now.'
She slapped down a twenty pound note to pay for the meal, and stood up and left without another word.
I finished my food, paid up, and kept the change.
Within twenty-four hours, Sophie had moved out of the flat she shared with Miles. I felt rather hurt when we next met and she let slip she was sleeping on Carolyn and Grenville's sofabed.
'You could have moved in with me,' I said. I felt my ears burning. 'I have a spare bedroom.'
'It's terribly sweet of you,' she said, 'but I'd rather stick to W11. Everyone lives round here.'
'Everyone except me,' I muttered under my breath.
Miles was already begging her to move back, but she had been resolute. She'd been looking at flats with a view to renting. 'I'm going to let him stew for a couple of months,' she said. 'Then we'll see.'
'He's finished with Ligia, then?' I asked.
Her answer was cagey. I got the impression that Ligia was still very much part of the picture. This hadn't been what I'd hoped for, but I decided to make the best of it. 'It'll be good for you,' I said, 'living on your own for a bit.'