Never Tell A Lie

by Gail Schimmel

  ‘I guess there’s something about old school friends,’ I say, carefully not confirming anything that he has said. ‘You want them to think the best of you. Not that they could otherwise,’ I say, indicating the patio, the gin bar, the large garden with its perfect lawn. The patio is always beautifully furnished, but now there are large vases of roses and plates of snacks, and, of course, the drinks table set up where the baskets of pool towels are usually situated.

  ‘I guess,’ says Leo. ‘She has a lot of demons left over from those school years, I think.’

  I sip my gin again. I have never had that impression, but I feel like I can’t speak to Leo properly about April without somehow betraying her.

  ‘I mean,’ he says, ‘some of it was hard for her. People judged her. The incident on camp.’

  I turn to him; I still don’t know what happened on that bloody camp and suddenly I think maybe I can ask Leo. But as I open my mouth to speak, April comes across.

  ‘Look at the two of you having a little tête-à-tête,’ she says. She is carrying a large glass of wine that is almost empty. ‘So intimate,’ she says.

  Leo slips his arm around April. ‘Just catching up with Mary,’ he says. ‘I haven’t seen her for so long. I need to know how the world of whisky is going.’

  I laugh and make some comment about the last issue of the whisky magazine. We will not, it seems, be referring to April’s anxiety about the evening in front of her; and I will not be finding out what happened on camp.

  ‘It’s so nice how well you two get on,’ says April, and she sounds quite aggressive about it. I wonder how much she has had to drink.

  ‘Any friend of yours is a friend of mine,’ says Leo. His smile is still there, but it’s not reaching his eyes. ‘On that note, let me go and check that everyone’s glass is full.’ He pauses, slightly. ‘Yours seems empty, darling, although I would swear I filled it just a moment ago.’

  April watches Leo walk over to Michelle and Laurel, and then turns to me. ‘If you knew what he was really like, you wouldn’t like him so much,’ she says in a conversational tone, her eyes fixed on the middle distance.

  ‘April,’ I say, ‘I know he can be difficult, but I’m not going to start being rude to him. That wouldn’t really help anything, would it?’

  April looks at me, and I can see her eyes won’t quite focus. Jesus, she’s had a lot to drink and the whole meal still needs to be put on the table. ‘You’re right,’ she says. ‘He’d get very suspicious if you weren’t nice to him.’

  She tries to take another sip of wine, but the glass is empty. ‘Still,’ she says. ‘Don’t let him seduce you. Wouldn’t be the first bloody time.’

  She’s smiling and I don’t really know how to react, so I change the topic. ‘Can I help you with the food?’ I say. ‘And maybe get you a glass of water?’

  She peers at me. ‘Am I drunk?’ she whispers. ‘I can’t be drunk. Leo will be furious.’

  ‘You are very drunk,’ I say. ‘Let’s get some water into you.’

  ‘Okay,’ she says in a mock whisper. ‘Let’s do that before anyone notices.’

  I think it’s probably too late for that, especially as she clings to me as we walk to the kitchen. In the kitchen are her two domestic helpers, Beatrice and Bontle. Bontle rolls her eyes when she sees April.

  ‘You need to keep her away from the wine,’ she says to me, like it’s all my fault. ‘Or Mr Leo and her will make fireworks.’

  I digest this while getting a glass of water.

  ‘Are you guys on top of dinner?’ I ask. ‘Do you need April for anything? Or me?’

  Beatrice looks at me blankly, but Bontle speaks up. ‘We’re fine,’ she says. ‘Just don’t let Mr Leo see her like this. Or her see Mr Leo.’

  ‘That’s going to be difficult,’ I say.

  ‘It’s always difficult around here,’ mutters Beatrice, but she’s not looking at me, so I can’t be sure that I heard correctly.

  April, meanwhile, is downing the water. Then she fills her glass with soda and a lemon. ‘Let’s face the masses,’ she says, pulling on my arm. ‘Let’s go chat to the people. This is a dinner party, not a funeral.’

  With a backward glance at Bontle, I allow April to drag me out.

  She pulls me over to where Joshua is standing, and he seems to almost instinctively take on board what is going on and what he has to do. He leads April by the elbow to a couch and sits down with her, offering her crisps from the bowl on the table. Hopefully, he can help sober her up. He starts asking her all sorts of questions about the house, and the décor, and I can see that the conversation is soothing her. I give Joshua a wink that April can’t see, and then I wander over to where Steve is chatting to Linda, unaware of the stress her presence has caused April.

  ‘Oh my God,’ says Linda. ‘Isn’t this place amazing? Isn’t April so lucky? What a house. My God.’

  ‘It’s lovely, yes,’ I say.

  Linda’s over-the-top reaction is making me feel a bit uncomfortable. The house is lovely, and big, and clearly expensive. But Linda doesn’t live in a pigsty herself. I would put money on me being the one with the most modest home, between all of us. But there’s something about the way Linda’s big eyes are looking around; something a bit judgemental.

  ‘Leo works hard,’ I say. ‘And April has an excellent eye. A real talent.’

  ‘I would die for a home like this,’ says Linda. She elbows her husband in the ribs, and he laughs.

  ‘Always aspiring, my Linda,’ Chris says, but without any judgement or discomfort. Maybe I’m being silly.

  ‘How are you, Steve?’ I say, turning to him. ‘Any interesting new cases?’ And then I blush, because he’s seen April about all her marital questions and he probably knows that I know, and thinks that I’m digging.

  ‘My work is boring,’ he says, without giving anything away. I’m impressed. He waves towards Joshua, who is still chatting to April and feeding her crisps. ‘I’m not in interesting law like your chap.’

  ‘I think your work is really meaningful,’ I say. ‘You can help people in a practical way during a really hard time of their lives.’

  ‘That’s a nice thing to say, Mary,’ says Steve. ‘I often wonder if I should have done something more glamorous with my qualifications. But you’re right. And I actually do enjoy it.’

  ‘Well,’ I say, ‘if I ever needed to get divorced, I’d come straight to you.’ And then, because I’ve had a drink maybe, and because there’s something about Steve that makes people say outrageous things, I add, ‘But the man I needed to divorce died in a head-on collision, so that sorted that out.’

  Steve’s eyes widen, and then we both start giggling, with Linda and Chris not really sure how to react, and then we’re laughing so hard that we have to hold on to each other. It attracts Leo and Michelle and Laurel over to the group, and obviously we can’t really explain why we’re laughing, but in trying to stop, we somehow make the others laugh too. So now it’s everyone except April and Joshua standing with us, laughing at they don’t know what. I glance over to where they are sitting. Joshua is smiling quizzically, but April is glowering.

  ‘Come on,’ I say to everyone. ‘Let’s go sit and calm down. I know April has an absolute feast for us, so let’s have a drink, and get our tummies ready for heaven.’

  The whole sentence sounds a bit forced to me, but everyone smiles and moves to sit down with April and Joshua. And April smiles at me and blows me a kiss. I try to smile back.

  As the evening progresses, I don’t know if the others are picking up the hard energy coming out of April. It’s difficult to describe it, except to say that I find myself stepping around her, being careful what I say, unsure of her reaction. I know Joshua is also on edge with her, and Leo certainly seems to be trying to contain her. But when I look at the others, they seem oblivious. They laugh when she makes a comment, not feeling the sharp barbs that I feel in each of her jokes. The barbs seem to be directed either at Leo or me, and I’m not
sure what it is I have done to earn her ire.

  The food is magnificent. There’s little tomato and goat’s cheese tarts to start, served with a small salad of micro herbs and parmesan. Then there’s salmon en croûte, which is something I would never try, because how do you cook the pastry without overcooking the salmon? I make a mental note to ask April what the trick is. The salmon is served with perfectly cooked asparagus and carrots. And for dessert there’s a buffet – a chocolate cake, a pavlova with berries and a lemon meringue. Honestly, it’s slightly overkill for the number of people. It’s hard to reconcile the scratchy April sitting at the table with all the work that must have gone into the preparation. But as people rave about the food, she seems to relax.

  Leo raises his glass and says, ‘April – you have produced many a fine meal for me, but this may just be the finest’; and we all drink to April, and finally – finally – I feel those claws retract. She completely changes. All it took was one nice comment from Leo. It’s sweet but also a bit pathetic, and it makes me feel sad for her.

  In the car afterwards, the first thing Joshua says to me is, ‘That was really a strange evening.’

  ‘I know,’ I say. ‘It was . . .’ I can’t find a word to describe it.

  ‘Off,’ says Joshua. ‘I know April is a good friend to you, and usually very sweet. But there was something off about her tonight.’

  ‘She was very drunk,’ I say.

  ‘Yes,’ says Joshua. ‘She was drunk when we arrived. That’s . . . off.’

  I sigh. I feel like I want to defend April. ‘I know,’ I say. ‘But she was very tense about this for some reason. I think she kind of self-sabotaged.’

  ‘Poor Leo,’ says Joshua. ‘He was like a juggler trying to catch the balls.’

  ‘I know,’ I say. ‘But I think he’s the reason she gets so tense. Did you see how she kind of came right when he praised her?’

  Joshua is quiet.

  ‘When I was talking to her,’ he says, after a long pause. ‘When we were on the couch and you were all laughing, she was kind of . . . catty about you.’

  ‘Like how?’

  ‘She said, “Oh, Mary’s always the centre of attention, isn’t she?” But she didn’t say it in a nice way.’

  I try to digest this.

  ‘Maybe it just came out wrong,’ I say. ‘Like her tone wasn’t what she meant it to be.’

  Joshua nods. ‘Could well be,’ he says.

  We say nothing more about it, but something has shifted. Joshua doesn’t like April any more, and I’m not sure what to think.

  I decide that when we next meet for coffee, I’ll ask her straight out. I think we are close enough friends for that.

  Chapter 29

  She has tried to hide it with make-up, but when I see April for coffee on Tuesday, there is no doubt: her cheek is badly bruised. It takes all my words out of my mouth – all the words I’ve been carefully rehearsing to ask her about how much she drank and how she sometimes doesn’t seem to like me at all. All those words evaporate, because under a thick layer of base, there is a violent bruise on her cheek.

  ‘What happened?’ I say, before she’s even sat down.

  ‘What do you mean?’ she says.

  ‘Your face,’ I say. ‘What happened to your face?’

  Her hand reaches up to the bruise.

  ‘Oh. That,’ she says.

  ‘Yes, that,’ I say. ‘What the hell happened to you?’

  April sighs. ‘I’m so embarrassed,’ she says.

  I feel like every nerve in my body is on high alert, ready for what she will say next.

  ‘I was really, really drunk on Saturday,’ she says.

  ‘No kidding,’ I say, but softly, and I’m not sure if she even hears.

  ‘And I fell. We saw you all off, and I was so relieved that it was over, and I turned around and basically fell up the stairs to the front door.’

  That’s not what I was expecting. But it makes sense.

  ‘Are you sure?’ I say.

  April looks at me hard. ‘I’m not the sort of drunk who has blackouts,’ she says. ‘I remember exactly what happened.’

  I want to say that that was not what I had meant. But instead I just say, ‘Oh. Okay. It looks really sore.’

  She touches her face again. ‘I guess,’ she says.

  After the last time, when she spent hours apologising about nothing, I’m kind of expecting her to now apologise for what was very definitely not nothing. But she doesn’t mention her behaviour. She says, ‘Saturday was fun, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Yes,’ I say, although I’m not quite sure that is true, but what else can I say? ‘The food was really great,’ I add.

  ‘Oh,’ says April. ‘I had it catered in the end.’

  I’m flabbergasted. ‘But all that planning,’ I say. ‘And all that angst. And you said that Leo wouldn’t let you. And there were no caterers in the kitchen.’ My voice is rising. I can’t help it.

  April waves her hand in the air. ‘It was making me so stressed, Mary. And then I remembered your clever suggestion, and I just got them to deliver everything, and I put it on our plates and all that.’ She giggles. ‘I may have deliberately made things look less perfect.’

  I’m speechless. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with having a dinner catered; not that I’ve ever had that luxury, but that doesn’t make it wrong. April and Leo can afford that sort of thing, so good for them. But I feel uncomfortable with the lying. I’m pretty sure if I had something catered, I’d tell everyone. Hell, I’d be so proud to have reached that level of sophistication that I would probably shout it from the rooftops.

  Then I remember how Leo had complimented the food. ‘Did Leo know?’ I ask.

  ‘Not before,’ says April. ‘Afterwards, he realised.’

  ‘Oh.’ I don’t know what to make of this. ‘Was he cross?’

  ‘Disappointed,’ says April with a sigh. ‘My capacity for disappointing Leo is really quite remarkable.’

  ‘But it’s not a big deal,’ I say. ‘It’s not like you’ve never done it before.’

  ‘He only knows about the time with the minister,’ says April. ‘That time he understood.’

  ‘I see,’ I say. ‘Well, either way, it was delicious.’

  ‘I should hope so at that price,’ says April with a laugh, and then she winces and touches her cheek.

  ‘Have you been to a doctor?’ I say, indicating the cheek. ‘It could be cracked or something.’

  ‘Even if it is,’ she says, ‘not a lot they can do.’

  ‘Oh.’ I don’t want to ask why she’s so sure about this. I’m still sort of waiting for an apology or some sign of embarrassment.

  ‘So,’ she says, taking a sip of her latte. ‘What’s going on for you this week? Play date for the boys tomorrow? We can eat the leftovers.’

  I laugh, and the conversation moves on, and I can’t quite find my way back to where I wanted to be – confronting April about her attitude to me.

  When my phone rings later that afternoon, I don’t recognise the number.

  ‘Mary Wilson speaking,’ I answer.

  ‘Hi, Mary. It’s Leo here. Leo Goldstein. April’s husband.’

  ‘Leo,’ I say. ‘Gosh. How are you?’

  Leo has never phoned me before. He didn’t even phone that day that April went to Steve.

  ‘Sorry to bother you,’ says Leo, ignoring the niceties. ‘Can you chat for a minute?’

  I glance around at my desk, shoved into the corner of our lounge and covered with notes on an article that I am working on, notes on the growing novel and a number of empty teacups.

  ‘Sure,’ I say. I’m so curious I probably would have said yes even if I was in the middle of a job interview.

  ‘I just felt I maybe had to apologise for April’s behaviour on Saturday. I know she was very drunk, and I know she was quite rude to you. And I also know that when she’s like that, she forgets. She won’t know she was odd to you.’

  I don’t
know how to respond. My instinct is to politely pretend that I don’t know what he means, that she was lovely, that everything was fine. I don’t know if I would feel like this anyway, or if it is tied up with what I know about their marriage. But I want to keep Leo talking.

  ‘The dinner was lovely,’ I eventually say.

  Leo laughs. I can imagine him throwing back his head, dimpling.

  ‘That’s very diplomatically handled, Mary,’ he says. ‘Indeed, dinner was lovely. She had it catered.’ I can’t tell from his tone what he really thinks about this.

  ‘I believe so,’ I say.

  ‘You must be a good friend if she told you,’ he says.

  I laugh. ‘Well, not before,’ I say, not wanting him to think that I knew before he did. ‘But this morning, she confessed.’ I laugh again, to show that I don’t think that she really had anything to confess.

  ‘Oh,’ says Leo. ‘Did you see her this morning?’

  Dammit. I am never sure if Leo knows how often we have coffee and see each other. I get a subtle vibe from April that it’s not a secret, but it’s not not a secret. For example, she’ll always pay with cash, and has commented that it’s so he doesn’t see it on the credit card bill. I hardly think that he’d object to the cost of the coffee per se, so it must be the actual buying of it that is the issue. Or the being with a friend part. But I can’t say that I didn’t see her this morning, because then if she says that I did, it will look like she’s lying and when it all comes out, I will come off looking mad.

  ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Quick coffee between things. You know how it goes.’

  ‘Indeed,’ says Leo. There’s an awkward pause before he speaks again. ‘Shame,’ he says. ‘Did she tell you about her fall?’

  I feel my body clench.

  ‘Well, it was pretty hard to miss the bruise,’ I say. I’m about to say more when Leo continues.

  ‘Yes,’ he says with a laugh. ‘I’ve told her a million times that the tiles in the kitchen are slippery, but when you’ve had a few drinks, I guess you forget that.’