Free The Exchange by Carrie Williams

were about to climb into the taxi outside Kyle’s. I didn’t blush easily, in general, but now I felt my cheeks blaze red.
    As Roger gave me an appreciative glance and then made his way to his own table, I struggled to regain composure. I was convinced, by now, that Tatiana had guessed what had happened at Kyle’s house and that her sole purpose in inviting me here was to humiliate me. There was to be no boutique, no introduction to her friend. It had all been an expensive ruse to lure me out on the pretence of friendship and a favour and then to slap me in the face, whether metaphorically or physically. Tatiana was playing some strange little game in which I may be nothing more than a pawn. Perhaps this was her way of getting her revenge, in slow but sure stages, on Morgan.
    I made my excuses and headed for the loo, through the warren of rooms with their little alcoves and bohemian-chic mash-up of styles – velvet sofas beside church pews, old pulpits next to Indian carvings, and even an old pulpit and some stained glass. In one corner I spotted a pair of famous young actresses from a rom com, one of them jogging her new baby up and down on her knee as she fed herself soup. Further along, another actress, this one in her 60s and currently making a comeback in a popular period costume drama, dined with a much younger man who could have been her son but might also have been her lover.
    In the loo, I leaned against the wall and tried to meditate, to calm my racing heart. I wanted to run out of the door and never see Tatiana again, but our food had been ordered, and I felt bad wasting money and time, no matter whose it was and how badly they squandered it themselves. It just wasn’t in my nature. That was a bone of contention between me and Konrad. It’s not that I denied myself – when I loved something, I generally treated myself, and god knows I had plenty of stuff in my life as evidence of that. But Konrad acted as if money burnt a hole in his pocket, as if it would never stop flowing towards him. Thus far, he was right. But god forbid that the silver river would start to dry up for him – he’d never be able to cope. I on the other hand was in my element in thrift shops and bargain basements.
    The thought of Konrad calmed me, although I don’t think it was so much Konrad himself as the thought of home. I could go back any time I wanted to, I reminded myself. Rachel and I hadn’t signed any contract; we’d made this arrangement casually, and in fact it was she who said that whatever happened in terms of work or any other commitments that either of us made during these six months, if one of us wanted to reclaim their life and apartment, all that was needed was a week’s notice to make the practical arrangements.
    But then I thought of the songwriting course, and of how I had this opportunity to make real change and find my passion. To date, I hadn’t found anything to live
for
. I was living, but I had never been driven by anything but fun. And suddenly fun didn’t seem like enough.
    I went back to Tatiana, and I forced myself to get through the meal, partly by turning the focus on her and questioning her about her career. It turned out she was semi-retired, now only accepting very special roles. She’d travelled too much, she said, and now she just wanted to be a homebird, enjoying the wealth she’d accrued and making a beautiful home for herself and Morgan.
    ‘You’ll have to come round sometime,’ she said, eyes fast on mine. I felt like a fly caught in a spider’s web. ‘I think you’d find it pretty special. You seem like a woman of taste.’
    I used the compliment, whether it was sincere or not, to turn the conversation to the subject of her friend Lulu, and to glean some information that might put me at an advantage when I met her, and so I navigated us through the potential minefield of the meal. It was a relief to finally get out of the restaurant and to find out that the shop was just around