My bell rang. She was early. “Ah, fuck!” I flung my toothbrush hard into the sink.

Jacqui looked me over and said, “Oh, good, you’re ready.”

Actually, I was still in my work clothes (pink ballerina-style skirt, pink vest, fishnet cutoffs, and ballet slippers embroidered with flowers), but as my work clothes looked more like party clothes than most people’s party clothes, I decided I’d do.

As the cab moved through the Friday-night traffic, I thought: I’m on my way to meet you. You’ll be there tonight, you’ll have come straight from work to the restaurant. You’ll be wearing your blue suit and you’ll have taken off your tie, and when Jacqui and I walk in you’ll wink at me to show that you know I have to be mannerly and say hello to everyone else first, that you and me can’t immediately start slobbering over each other, but the wink will say it all, it’ll say, “Just you wait till I get you home…” “Hmm?”

Jacqui had just asked me something.

“A good sun cream,” she repeated. “Factor fifteen at least. Will you steal me one?”

“Sure, yes, whatever you’d like.”

Then I tried to climb back inside my head. We’ll politely speak to everyone there but you’ll do something small and intimate, something only I’ll know about—maybe you’ll pass by me and quickly circle your thumb over the palm of my hand or—

Jacqui had said something else and resentment flared momentarily. I loved being in my own head so much, it was getting harder and harder being with other people. I’d be thinking lovely happy thoughts, then they’d say something and drag me back to their version of reality, the one where Aidan was dead.

“Sorry. What?”

“We’re here,” she repeated.

“So we are,” I said, in surprise.

Flanked by Jacqui, like I was a prisoner on a one-day release, I walked into La Vie en Seine, where a crowd awaited: Rachel, Luke, Joey, Gaz, Shake, Teenie, Leon, Dana, Dana’s sister Natalie, Aidan’s old roommate Marty, Nell, but not Nell’s strange friend, thank Christ. They were standing around, drinking champagne from flutes, and when they saw me they pretended they weren’t mortified and a little cheer went up and someone said, overjovially, “Here’s the birthday girl.” Someone else handed me a flute, which I tried to down in one go, but those yokes are so narrow that I had to tilt my head right back and the glass stuck to my face and left a perfect circle on my cheeks and across my nose.

Everyone was smiling and looking at me—people were always either supercheery or supersolicitous, no one could be normal—and I couldn’t think of a single thing to say. This was worse, far worse, than I’d anticipated. I felt I was standing in the middle of the world while everyone and everything retreated farther and farther.

“Let’s take our places,” Rachel said.

At the table, the insides of my jaws hurting from holding a smile, I picked up another glass of champagne—I wasn’t sure it was mine, but I couldn’t stop myself—and drank down as much of it as I could without it suctioning onto my face again. Up until now I’d stayed away from heavy drinking because I was afraid I might like it too much. It looked as if I’d been right.

As I wiped sticky champagne dregs from my chin, I realized a waiter was standing patiently beside me, waiting to hand me a menu. “Oh God, sorry, thank you,” I murmured, thinking: Act normal, act normal.

Jacqui was telling me how hard it was to get hold of a Labradoodle, they were in very short supply and were being sold on the black market, some had even been kidnapped from their owners and sold. I was trying to pay attention but Joey was diagonally opposite her and he was singing “Uptown Girl,” changing the real words for snide ones about Jacqui. “Wannabe girl, she only hangs around with the rich and famous, she wishes she lived in Trump To-wer, so her and Donald co-ould be best buddies…”

He was being very unpleasant—nothing unusual there—but he was really putting an extraordinary amount of work into it. Normally, Joey couldn’t ever be coaxed to sing. Then I understood—oh my God…he fancied Jacqui.

When had that started?

Jacqui was adept at ignoring him but my nerve endings were so raw that I had to say, “Joey, could you stop?”

“Wha—? Oh, sorry, man.”

I was getting away with a lot: everyone had to be nice to me. There was no telling how long it might last, so I might as well make the most of it.

“It’s the voice, yeah?” Joey said. “Tone-deaf, always was. People get asked, what special power they’d like? They always say they’d like to be invisible. Me, I wish I could sing.”

At the next table my attention was caught by a young, beautiful woman. She was very New York—sleek and coordinated with shiny, blown-out hair. She was smiling and talking animatedly to the dull-looking man with her, her manicured hands flashing to emphasize what she was saying. I watched her shirtfront rise and fall as she took a breath. And another. And another. And another. And another. And another. And another. And another. And another. And another. And another. Breathing. Staying alive. And one day she wouldn’t breathe anymore. One day something would happen and her chest wouldn’t rise and fall. She’d be dead. I thought of all that life stuff going on beneath the skin, her heart pumping and her lungs lifting and her blood flowing and what makes it happen and what makes it stop…

Slowly I realized that everyone was staring at me.

“Are you okay, Anna?” Rachel asked.

“Um…”

“It’s just that you were staring at that woman.”

Oh my God, I was out of control. What should I say? “Yes…wondering if she’s had Botox.”

Everyone turned to look.

“’Course she has.”

Then I felt wretched. Not just because I was sure the woman hadn’t had Botox—she was so animated—but because I wasn’t fit to be let out.

Gaz squeezed my shoulder. “Have a proper drink.” And I decided I would. Something strong.

When my martini arrived, Gaz said encouragingly, “You’re okay, there. You’re doing great.”

“D’you know something, Gaz.” I gulped from the glass and heat flooded my system. “I don’t think I am. I have this…sensation…that I’m looking at the world through the wrong end of a telescope. Have you ever felt like that? No, don’t answer it, because you’re so nice, you’ll just say that you have. Can I tell you how it feels? A lot of the time, like not just tonight, although it’s very bad tonight, it feels like my lens on the world has been interfered with, so that everyone looks much further away, do you know what I mean?” I took another deep gulp of my martini. “The only time I feel half normal is when I’m at work, but that’s because it’s not the real me, it’s because I’m acting a role. Can I tell you what I was thinking when I was looking at that beautiful woman. I was thinking that one day we’ll all be dead, Gaz. Her, me, Rachel there, Luke, you, Gaz—yes, you, too. I’m not singling you out, Gaz, please don’t think that, you know how fond of you I am, I’m only saying that you’ll be dead one day. And it mightn’t be in forty years’ time or whatever you’re counting on. Gaz, you could go like that.” I tried to snap my fingers, but couldn’t manage it. Could I be drunk already? “I don’t mean to be morbid, Gaz, saying you could drop dead any minute, it’s the truth. I mean, look at Aidan, he’s dead and he was younger than you, Gaz, by a couple of years. If he can die, so can any of us, including you. Not that I mean to be morbid, Gaz.”