Hestia

I limped up the path leading to Hestia’s front door as a girl does when the stiletto heel of one of her shoes has broken off. You don’t expect that from a Jimmy Choo, do you? I always think that Chimmies, as I like to call them, are the perfect Thursday lunchtime shoe—especially if one is sitting outside in the sun.

In Jimmy’s defence – I’m such a good customer that I feel we’d be on first-name terms if we met - as I was saying, in Jimmy’s defence, I guess, at the design stage, he wouldn’t think about the bloody gap between the slabs outside Luigi’s restaurant, where the saffron risotto is to die for. That is an exaggeration; I wouldn’t die for the risotto. Well, no one would, would they? I mean, it’s such a silly thing to say.

What was I telling you? Oh, yes. That bloody gap outside Luigi’s. Do you know it’s the perfect size to get a Jimmy Choo stiletto wedged into? And that’s what happened to me. I was wedged. Well, not me, but my stiletto was wedged. My shoe was well and truly wedged. I will email Jimmy and explain about the gap outside Luigi’s. Don’t laugh; feedback is important.

I’d just stubbed out my cigarette, looked over at an odd man on the other side of the road, and before you could say, “Mind the gap,” there I was, immobile outside Luigi’s. I sort of wiggled a bit, wobbled a bit, and quietly to myself said, “Oh, shit.” It may have been a smidge louder than quietly to myself because an elderly gentleman walked by and turned down his hearing aid.

Then a terribly handsome man came over to me and asked, “Are you OK, love?” I twirled my hair and said, “I’m afraid I’ve got my Chimmie stuck.” He looked a little bemused, so I pointed to my shoe, but before he could help, I wiggled a bit too much and snap went the stiletto. “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” I said. “I couldn’t have put it better,” he said.

So, that’s why I was limping up to the front door of my best friend’s, Hestia’s. I let myself in with my key and went into the garden where I found Hestia smoking amongst some new delphiniums she was arranging. “Bloody hell, Hess, when I went out you were reading some deep and impenetrable tome on extentionalism...”

“Existentialism, dear.”

“Existentialism. Now you’re dressed like a Stepford wife. Oh God, give me a drag, life’s just shit, look.” I showed her my stilettoless shoe. She handed me her cigarette. I took several deep drags and waited for the nicotine to work its magic, which it did very quickly.

“Oh no, what happened, Fred?” I handed Hess back what remained of her cigarette. She took a final drag, smiled softly as she exhaled, and stubbed out her cigarette in an ashtray.

“Do you know that outside Luigi’s there is a designer gap between the slabs that is the perfect size for a Chimmie stiletto?”

“I didn’t, sweetie,” said Hestia, “but now I do know, I’ll avoid it. You should send Jimmy Choo some feedback.”

“I will, feedback is important. I explained what happened to my shoe. Love the delphiniums, by the way.”

“I always think they’re very homely,” said Hessie, a little wistfully, I thought.

“They are very pretty,” I gently smiled out the words. “You haven’t bought delphs for ages.”

“I know, I just felt it was the right time.”

I opened my handbag to get my cigarettes. “Oh shit, I...”

“...have no cigarettes,” Hessie finished my sentence. She’d lit two cigarettes and handed one to me. “Thank you. It’s bloody spooky when you do that.”

“Do what?”

“When you know what I’m thinking.”

“Sweetie, there’s nothing spooky about it. We’re very close, so occasionally we both know what the other is thinking and feeling, like...”

“...synchronising our menstrual cycles.”

“There you go, sweetie; you can do it too. And the other thing is that I’m very observant. Your handbag was open, you were searching in it, and I saw no cigarettes. And another thing, Bella, how on earth can you lose anything?”

“Darling, I think that’s why I’m good at finding things, because I’m always losing things.”

I sat down on a garden bench and drew deeply on my cigarette. Hessie sat by me and put her arm through mine. “But apart from ruining your Chimmies and losing your cigarettes, how was lunch?” Hessie asked.

I groaned, “Darling, don’t ask.”

“Too late, Fred, I’ve asked.”

“It was embarrassing,” I groaned again.

“It was embarrassing, or you did something embarrassing?”

I covered my face with my hands, leaving a little gap for my mouth, “What do you think, Hess?”

“I think we’ll enjoy our cigarettes and you can tell me later.” Hessie was having one of her special moments with her cigarette. I totally adored smoking. But for her—and for me also to a lesser extent—it was smoking that made Hessie who she was.

It was a very hot day. We stubbed out our cigarettes and went inside. We thought we’d sit in an air conditioned room for half an hour. We curled up on the sofa and in moments I was asleep. As I came out of a deep sleep, I could hear Hessie sniffing and blowing her nose. “You’re watching a weepy,” I said.

“Brief Encounter,” Hessie sniffed.

“Oh God, I start crying just hearing the title. You can’t say that title without passing me a tissue. Why didn’t you wait for me?”

Hessie passed me a tissue. “You were fast asleep.”

“Now I feel like I’ve got an emotional deficit. I need a good cry to balance my emotional state with yours.”

We both went and showered: eventually. After the incident with the spider. Hessie was in the bathroom, and I heard her scream. I knew what it was. Hessie isn’t a screamy kind of girl, unless she hasn’t had a cigarette for more than three hours; then she’s climbing the walls without a parachute and is likely to scream—after she’s shouted, pouted, and wept. Sometimes screaming comes before weeping. I’m the same.

But this wasn’t nicotine withdrawal. This was a close encounter with an arachnid, or more likely, a long-distance encounter with an arachnid. My darling Hessie is an arachnophobe. It is most unlikely that she’d hang around to get too close to a spider.

If you look up what it means to be an arachnophobe, it will tell you that you have an irrational fear of spiders. Frankly, there is nothing irrational about wanting to avoid a creature with eight bristly legs, a body that looks like it’s going to explode, a cluster of bloody eyes, and the ability to liquify prey with its venomous fangs. You might want to cuddle a spider. To me, that’s bloody irrational. I’m nowhere near as bad as Hessie. That’s why she called me.

Okay, as spiders go, this wasn’t the largest. I’d say it was about the size of a fingernail—the fingernail on my little finger. So, I did the thing with a glass and cardboard, at arm’s length, without looking at the monster-eyed creature. I then threw it out the bathroom window.

Now we showered in relative safety. After which, we went and sat in a pretty little summer house. The décor was super feminine and cottagecore to the max. We both wore comfortable, pretty bathrobes. We poured large glasses of chilled white wine—Chablis—and lit our darling cigarettes.

“Hessie, you’re wearing your bangle.”

“Yes. It’s been three years, and it reminds me of happy things. And, you know, Fred, we’ve always said life has to go on. Also, it’s super pretty and shouldn’t be locked away.”

I kissed Hessie on the cheek. She was happy, and so was I.

“So, Arabella Ariadne Montague, tell me what happened at lunch?” said Hestia.

I groaned yet again, but in a perky, flirty voice, I said, “Hmmmm, you sound so assertive when you talk like that.”

“Talk like what?”

“Like a headmistress.” I deepened my voice a little and mimicked Hestia—and for dramatic effect and exaggeration, I wagged my finger like a windscreen wiper on one of those old Citroen cars—“Arabella Ariadne Montague, you’ll sit on this sofa with your hands on your head until you tell me about lunch.”

“I do not sound like that. That was almost a baritone voice.”

“You sound so much like that. When you get all assertive and bossy, it’s like you grow hairs on your chest. You’re so scary. I’m all, ‘Yes, Miss Hestia.’ And you’re like, ’I’m not Miss Hestia. I’m Miss Hestia Madeleine Hailsham. Say it, Child.’” At that point, we both burst out in a fit of giggles. “Oh my God,” I said, “that was giggle-gasmic. I’m still giggling; I must be multi-giggle-gasmic.”

Hessie wiped tears of laughter from her eyes. “Bella, do behave and tell me what you did at lunch.”

“Oh my God, it’s just so embarrassing.” I covered my eyes with my hands. “When I woke up this morning, I was practically deaf in my left ear. Bloody earwax.”

“You’ve been cleaning your ears with those bud things again, haven’t you? I told you not to do that, Bella.”

“Oh my God, Hess, first you’re a headmistress, now you’re my mother. Do you want me to tell you about lunch or go to my bedroom? I’m not looking at you, and I know you’re sticking out your tongue at me.”

“I’m sorry, sweetie, do carry on.”

I gave a mock-offended look—where I kind of tilt my head back and sniff at the same time. “As I was saying, I was practically deaf in my left ear. So, I syringed it, which usually works perfectly, but it left water in my ear. The improvement was slight. And to make things worse, my left ear is my good ear.”

“Your left ear is your good ear?”

“That’s right, Hess, my left ear is my good ear.”

“Bella, dear, when I said, ‘Your left ear is your good ear,’ it was a question. It was shorthand for, ‘Oh, is that so, Bella?’ You’ve never mentioned before that one ear is better than the other. Do you mean it looks prettier than the other ear? Or do you mean it works better than the other ear? Oh, and by the way, in the 20-odd years or so we’ve known each other, you’ve never mentioned this before? Do feel free to elaborate.”

“Sweetie,” I said, like I was talking to a naughty Labrador, “you can’t do sarcasm. Scary, you’re good at. Assertive, you’re very good at. When it comes to weird, you’re off the bloody scale. But leave the sarcasm to me. That’s my particular area of expertise.”

“Now, where was I? Oh yes, my hearing is a smidge compromised. I turned up at the restaurant to meet Fiona. Fiona was sitting there with Bruce.”

“Bruce?”

“Bruce, it seems, works with Fiona. He just happened to be in the restaurant and thought he’d join Fiona while she was waiting for me. I wasn’t late, by the way. Fiona was early. I thought I’d make that point.

“As you know, Fiona is softly spoken. I couldn’t hear a bloody word she was saying. And I was sitting by her side, not facing her, so I couldn’t lip-read.”

“I didn’t know you could lip-read, Bella.”

“I can’t.”

“I’m not going to say anything, Fred.”

“Thank you, Hess. We were outside; the noise of the traffic, the noise inside the garden restaurant, and Fiona’s soft voice made it very challenging for me. In the end, when she introduced me to Bruce, she had to write his name down. That was after I’d tried Goose, Moose, Juice, and Loose. ‘Oh Bruce,’ I said, ‘what an unusual name.’ Don’t look at me like that, Hess, I know it was a bloody stupid thing to say. But it was all I could think of after calling him Goose and Moose.”

“Good point, Fred. I have to say, though, that as far as embarrassing things that you’ve done go, that was pretty tame. I’d say it’s about like Ronald McDonald being outed as a veggie.”

“Sweetie, it got worse. Far worse. We pretty soon went from Ronald being outed to Freddy Krueger being found in a nail bar.”

“That bad?”

“You be the judge, Hess.”

“Fiona touched my arm and pointed at Bruce, and I was certain she said, ‘Bruce is a Merman.’ Yes, dear, I had the same look on my face as you now have on yours.

“Honestly, I thought it totally weird. Not your kind of spooky weird, Hess. More kind of kinky, ‘lock me in a dungeon without a safe word’ kind of weird. But you know me, live and let live and all that. So, I started talking about tails and fins, and for some reason, I was doing the same kind of flapping movement with my hand as you’re doing. I remember saying, ‘Does it zip up or is it elastic, and don’t you worry that the heat might reduce your sperm count?’ when all of a sudden, he screamed at me, ‘I’m a fuckin’ Mormon, not a merman!’”

“Oh my God, Bella, oh my God. No, no, no. Even by your standards, that is next door to unbelievable. I think I must be multi-giggle-gasmic as well. That is not Freddy Krueger caught in a nail bar embarrassing. That’s Snow White’s search engine history being found for sale on the dark web embarrassing.”

“Darling, it’s not funny. Please don’t laugh like that. Hessie, you’re going to pee yourself.”

“Oh Fred, it is that funny. It really, really is that funny. If I pee myself, it’ll be worth it.”

I lit a couple of cigarettes and handed one to Hestia. I took a sip of wine—I took several sips of wine, about half a large glass worth of sips—and said, “I think it seems terribly easy to confuse Mormon and merman. Even for someone whose hearing was not compromised.”

“Of course, it is, sweetie. “How’s your hearing now?”

“Better, but still a little compromised. On the compromised scale, I’d place it about at the level where a nun gets caught reading 50 Shades. In the restaurant, it was more like the same nun getting caught sleeping in sleek, silver, shiny handcuffs.”

“Did anything else happen that you’d like to tell me about?”

“No, not really.”

“Sure?”

“Nope, nothing, zero, nada-Prada, zilchy-wilchy.” I drew on my cigarette, exhaled smoke with a soft smile on my lips. “Oh, apart from the strange man on the other side of the road.”

“A strange man on the other side of the road?”

“You know you keep repeating my points in the form of a question?”

“What strange man, Fred?”

“The strange man on the other side of the road that caused me to get my Chimmie caught in that gap between the paving slabs.”

“Tell me more, Bella.”

“Well, he was behaving oddly. He was watching me in the restaurant. And he was watching me when I came out. Because I was looking at him watching me, and not watching my step, my Chimmie went in the gap.”

“He was behaving oddly because he was watching you? Is that all, Arabella?”

“Darling, Hess, you’ve gone horribly serious all of a sudden. He was behaving like he was trying to hide the fact that he was watching me, and that made it more obvious that he was watching me. In fact, it’s not too much to say that he was behaving so much like he wasn’t watching me that he was obviously watching me. He couldn’t have advertised the fact more clearly if he had a newspaper, which he didn’t—he did have an umbrella, though, and it was a gloriously sunny day—and cut two holes in it—the newspaper, not the umbrella—to look through. He also had a raincoat.”

“Anything else?”

“No, just the umbrella and raincoat.”

“I mean, did he do anything else?”

“Yes, he followed me here.”

“For fuck’s sake, Arabella, I know you can be the pinup girl for the scatter-brained, but did it not occur to you to mention this several hours earlier? Like at the moment you walked into the garden?”