Page 53 of We Chase Shadows

Rosie gets a cheer, then feels Amy’s hand on her knee.

‘You’re not an old lady,’ says Amy. ‘Steve’s an old lady. You’ll never be one.’

Rosie squeezes Amy’s hand. She feels old. But an eighth pint will sort that out. When she had her fall in South Carolina she hadn’t been drinking. That was what was so frightening about it.

‘Something’s not right with all this,’ says Lee. ‘I don’t know what, and I can’t work it out. It’s like something’s been stirred up from somewhere.’

Rosie feels the same. But they’ve met Georgie Glazier now, they’ll meet Tommy Griffin very soon, and hopefully Sara Lindstrat will let them know how they can find Eriksson. The picture will surely become clearer.

There is a cheer from inside the pub. Rosie wonders if there is anywhere in the world more idyllic than an English pub garden in the evening sun, but then remembers an evening in 1987 in Mötley Crüe’s jacuzzi. The English pub garden is a pretty close second though.

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Kitchen islands, thinks Georgie Glazier, unwinding for the evening. That’s the real problem here.

Georgie knows she shouldn’t really have got involved with Vern again. Shouldn’t have asked him for money. For what she was due.

Did Rosie and Steve know she was lying about it? Probably, they’re no fools the two of them.

She loved Vern as a teenager, and she wishes him well still, up to a point, but her life is a lot simpler without him around.

And yet.

Georgie sips her mint tea and looks through Instagram images of kitchen islands. She knows she shouldn’t. She knows that kitchen islands are the top of a very slippery slope. But a couple of minutes won’t hurt, surely? She clicks on a video, a pop star who lives in New York and has a kitchen island with a TV that pops out. Georgie shakes her head, she doesn’t need a kitchen island with a TV in it. Nobody does. Georgie does what she always does in these situations. She gives herself a pep talk.

‘Georgie, you do not need a kitchen island. Repeat, you do not need a kitchen island. You have plenty of worktop space, you have a good draining board. Just because Lily Allen has a kitchen island, it doesn’t mean you have to have one. Put Instagram down.’

She clicks on another image. An influencer in America has two kitchen islands. The influencer is saying, ‘I call my islands Trinidad and Tobago. Food prep on Trinidad, Mommy meals and family feels on Tobago.’ Georgie is both disgusted and aroused. She feels an awful lot of dopamine exploding in her brain, but also a little bit of sick in her mouth.

‘Switch it off, Georgie. Do some work.’

Reluctantly, Georgie leaves Instagram and opens her order book. This is the perfect way to stop thinking about kitchen islands.

Business is still very healthy. She’s just listed 50,000 chemical peel masks she’d ordered from a factory outside Shanghai, and the tills are ringing. £1.20 per unit to her, and she’s charging £30 for three. So that’s about £325,000 profit after costs if she sells them all, which, looking at the numbers, she will.

She scrolls through some of the reviews for another recent bestseller, a bee serum under-eye cream. Reviews are absolutely key in her industry.

‘Saw results in three days,’ says Jane1792. ‘Cheaper than the shops but just as effective,’ says FurBabyFiona12. ‘Absolute life saver on my wedding day,’ says LuckiestLadyAlive43891. When her customers are happy, Georgie is happy.

That there is no bee serum in her bee serum under-eye cream is neither here nor there. Wedding days often involve a suspension of disbelief.

In truth, Georgie has been thinking about kitchen islands – oh no, here we go again – ever since Rosie D’Antonio told her about Vern’s recent problems. Georgie likes a quiet life, values her privacy and freedom. She wouldn’t want what Vern has, the bodyguards, the gates, the fences, the paranoia. None of which seem to have been effective anyway. Georgie likes to do her Tuesday and Thursday afternoons in the charity shop, have coffee with the Pilates girls, potter about, watch This Morning and know she has enough money coming in. More than enough.

But Rosie was right. Her house is a little small for someone who has been around such money. It’s fine, absolutely fine. Big comfortable sofa, nice TV, couple of spare bedrooms, a table large enough for six people to sit around. She doesn’t need anything else. She and Vern used to have a chef and a driver and a gardener. She remembers those days well.

Would it be nice to have a kitchen island? Well, yes, why not, all things being equal? Slip a couple of stools under the overhang, have coffee with pals.

But all things aren’t equal, are they? That’s the point.

First things first, if she had an island, she’d need a bigger kitchen, and that would mean a new house. She likes this house. Likes the neighbours, it’s near Waitrose, there are weekly bin collections. A lot of places these days have their bin collections fortnightly, and Georgie doesn’t think that would suit her at all. She uses a lot of cardboard.

And say you do buy a new house, what then? You have your kitchen island, your dreams have come true, but then there will always be someone, like the awful lady in America with the beautiful hair, with two kitchen islands. There are probably people with three. Kim Kardashian probably has a whole archipelago of kitchen islands. The more kitchen islands you have, the bigger the kitchen you need. The bigger the kitchen you have, the bigger the house you need. The bigger the house you have, the further you are from friends and shops and community and pottery cafés and ice-cream vans. Is a friendly neighbour really going to help you take your shopping indoors if your driveway is half a mile long?

So, while a kitchen island would be nice, just look at what it leads to. It leads to a villa in the Tuscan hills and twenty-four-hour security.

Yep, you get a kitchen island and, before you know it, you are Vern. And the big difference between Georgie and Vern is not money, not lifestyle and not kitchen cabinetry. The big difference between Georgie and Vern is that nobody is threatening to kill Georgie. And that’s worth a lot in this day and age.

Georgie makes her mind up once and for all. Leave Vern well alone. Her life is ticking along nicely. She doesn’t need a kitchen island.