Chapter 100: Because I Wanted To

We met in the library room on a Thursday evening. Four chairs, a table, a kettle available through the booking arrangements and a clock that nobody intended to use as an alibi.

Vivienne arrived carrying biscuits in their packet.

“Bought,” she said, setting them down.

“We can read the label,” Priya replied.

Vivienne smiled and left the packet as it was.

Beth came straight from work with a book in a bag containing a measuring tape. I had brought a novel I hadn’t finished. When Vivienne asked how far I’d got, I told her.

“I may spoil the ending,” she said.

“Then I’ll ask you to stop.”

The exchange was so easy that I nearly missed its importance.

We began by deciding what the meeting was for. Reading and conversation. Not a refuge available only to those who accepted advice, not a committee quietly acquiring responsibility for somebody else’s private life. If one of us wanted practical support another time, she could ask specifically and accept an honest answer.

“And if we don’t finish a book?” Beth asked.

“We don’t pretend,” I said.

“A demanding standard,” Priya observed.

We laughed.

There was no fifth chair left empty to make Celia present in the room by absence. We had not erased her, but neither had we organised the furniture around her for the rest of our lives.

What she had done was known. The conviction, the sentence, the money and the betrayals remained true. So did the fact that four women could meet without making that knowledge the subject of every evening.

Beth had brought the novel with the woman who went back to work and ate a sandwich on a bench. She turned to the familiar passage without explaining it as a code.

“I like a different part now,” she said.

“Which?” I asked.

“The day after. When the work is dull and she goes anyway.”

She described the scene in her own words. No revelation, no rescue, just a woman doing the ordinary thing she had chosen after the excitement of choosing it had passed.

Priya thought the author let one secondary character off too easily. Vivienne disagreed and found the page she meant. The discussion grew animated. Nobody interpreted disagreement about a fictional woman as a test of loyalty to a real one.

At one point, Vivienne began saying what Beth should read next, then stopped.

“Would you like a recommendation?”

“Not yet. I’ve got three waiting.”

“Fair enough.”

She moved on. The room did not crack. Beth did not have to thank her for accepting a refusal.

Halfway through, Priya checked the time. She had promised to collect her daughter from an activity and needed to leave in ten minutes.

“Shall we finish the discussion before you go?” I asked.

“Carry on if you want. I don’t have to hear every sentence.”

She packed her book when the time came, said goodbye and left. None of us followed her to ask whether something was wrong.

The three of us continued talking until the room booking was nearly over. We washed the mugs, wiped the table and put the chairs back where the instructions asked. The small responsibilities were shared without becoming a measure of anyone’s goodness.

At the door, Vivienne asked whether we would like another meeting.

Beth checked her diary before answering. I said I would confirm after looking at my work rota. Vivienne wrote nothing on anybody’s behalf.

Outside, the air was mild. The streetlights reflected in a patch of rainwater beside the kerb. Beth headed towards her own home. Vivienne and I walked part of the way together.

“I’m glad you came,” she said.

“So am I.”

She glanced at me, and I recognised the old question she might once have asked: whether this meant things were all right, whether forgiveness had arrived, whether she could stop feeling unsure.

She didn’t ask it.

At number twelve, she said goodnight and went inside. I continued to number six, where Tom had left the hall light on and Poppy’s schoolbag stood beside the stairs.

“Good evening?” he asked when I came in.

“Yes.”

“Are you going again?”

“If I want to.”

I put my book on the table. My bookmark remained well short of the ending. There would be time to read the rest, and if I disliked it, I could say so.

Upstairs, Poppy called a sleepy goodnight. I answered, took off my coat and sat beside Tom.

I had gone because I wanted to.

My phone lay on the sideboard without a message requiring an immediate explanation. There might be one tomorrow. A client might change Beth’s plans; a family problem might interrupt Priya’s evening; Vivienne might make another mistake and have to apologise. None of us had acquired a perfect life by surviving an imperfect friendship.

We had something smaller and more usable: the right to ask, the right to answer honestly, and the room to hear no without making it a betrayal.

I opened my book where I’d left it.

Next Thursday was still mine to choose.