Free Afterwife by Polly Williams Page B

if sewn artfully into a Puffa jacket. In order to take the pretense to the next logical level, she would decant it from its white cardboard box into a cake tin. But she didn’t own a cake tin! Of course she didn’t. Why the hell
would
she own a cake tin?
    She glanced at her watch and groaned. Yes, once again, she’ddone her crap shtick of arriving unfashionably early. (She was the only person in London for whom the traffic lights were consistently green and the Tube rarely delayed, as if the great traffic controller in the sky had marked her out for some kind of loser’s social experiment.) She waited a few moments, took a deep breath of the pleasant wood-smoke-smelling air and pressed the bell. Three shrunken
Happy Birthday
balloons hanging from string on the door knocker bounced jauntily in the wind.
    A heavy plodding, then the cherry red front door was flung wide. Suze beamed at her, a vision in an orange batik blouse with that wedge of hair and, mystifyingly, a round, wet circle on the front of her blouse the size of a twopence piece. “You didn’t flake!”
    “No.” She tried her best not to be offended that Suze had her down as a flaker and tried even harder not to look at the bizarre stain on Suze’s blouse, which appeared to actually be spreading like ink on blotting paper.
    Suze pulled the stained blouse away from her bosom and flapped it. “Sorry. Feeding baba.”
    Jenny blushed. Of course! She hovered uncertainly, wiping her sweaty palms on her pressed navy trousers. Apart from the fact she’d lost all social skills since Sophie died, it felt odd meeting Sophie’s friends without her, as if she’d turned into one of those traitorous people you introduce to a friend and who then goes on to invite the friend to dinner without you. When she stepped into the yeasty heat, the house reminded her of Sophie’s but on a far messier, less cool scale. There was a jumbled row of Wellington boots in tiny sizes pushed up along the hall wall, like the entrance to a classroom. Next to them, children’s scooters, five, six, covered in stickers and elastic bands. Toy cars, a one-eyed doll and a bumper pack of recycled loo rolls were heaped at the bottom of the stairs.
    The hall walls were painted a cheerful apple green and stamped with children’s pictures—collaged topographies made from gluedlentils and milk-top foil—and endless family portraits—lots of kids on rainy beaches wrapped in toweling ponchos—blown up too large on canvases so that they’d gone blurry. There was a smell too, yes, unmistakable, a smell of cakes actually baking. And, just as unmistakable, an undernote of urine.
    She followed the swinging slab of Suze’s bottom down the hall and tried to identify the orange blob stuck to Suze’s back jeans pocket—satsuma segment? lone nacho? She heard the crack of female laughter. As she entered the kitchen, a large
Keep Calm and Carry On
poster bossily glared down from the wall. She’d never liked those posters.
    “Ladies,” said Suze. She stepped aside to reveal her catch. “I bring you the famous Jenny Vale!”
    “Lovely to meet you all,” she managed, relieved to find only three women sitting round the table. She’d feared an Amazonian tribe in Breton stripes and ballet pumps, heatedly discussing organic baby food and breastfeeding rights.
    “Hello!” the voices chimed back. A noisy metal boiling kettle clicked somewhere. It reminded her of a long-forgotten sound from her own childhood. Something in her relaxed a little.
    “Take a pew,” said Suze, pushing the face-eating frizz away from her face. No wonder. “How do you take your tea, Jenny?”
    “Milk. No sugar, thanks.” She sat down on the nearest chair, not realizing that there was a gaping hole in the wicker of its seat. She perched on the edge of its hard frame, grateful for her well-upholstered sitbones. “So this is Soph’s other life,” she said, speaking her own thoughts.
    “Yep, welcome to our world.” Suze dunked