Her Closest Friend (ARC)

by Clare Boyd

  ‘I guess so. I was an obvious target. All keen and dorky. You’ve seen the pictures. I was plump, back then, and I had that awful bloody hairdo.’

  ‘That’s how you see yourself. But everyone else would’ve seen a gorgeous, smiley, happy person, and she would’ve been spitting with jealousy.’

  He brushed his thumb over my right cheek, over where the dimple should have been.

  ‘Not so smiley any more,’ I said, luxuriating in his touch, but continuing before I lost my thread. ‘But you’re right, she was a jealous person.’

  ‘Why did you put up with it?’

  My feelings about Sophie began to unravel, as though unwrapped finally from some kind of protective film.

  ‘Sophie’s dad left her mum when she was pregnant with Sophie. To this day, she’s never met him. He legged it to Canada, or somewhere, and then when Sophie was eight, her mother left her in the middle of the night without saying goodbye. And her grandfather was left to pick up the pieces, and he was basically a functioning alcoholic, but then…’

  He interrupted. ‘I know her bloody sob story, Naomi.’

  I pushed on. ‘But then she met me, and I’d come from this loving home with two sensible parents who had plodded along, and had always been there for me, and I think she resented it and made me feel bad about it.’

  ‘And you felt sorry for her.’

  ‘Not really. She was very cool back then. She was so guarded and aloof, and that intrigued me somehow, as though her life was more exciting and exotic than mine. But she was damaged, that was obvious, and I thought I could help her.’

  ‘You were trying to save her, or something?’ he asked, looking hopeful, as though he needed to believe that my part in the friendship had been less about being a wet blanket and more about being noble and impressive.

  ‘I wasn’t together enough at the time to save anyone. I just wanted her to feel as good about herself as I felt about her. I think I wanted her to know she could be loved, that’s all. I really believed it would make a difference to her. To know that one person wasn’t going to leave her like everyone else had.’

  ‘Her grandfather didn’t abandon her.’

  ‘He was a lovely man, but honestly, he thought vodka was the cure for everything. He wasn’t equipped to bring up a small girl. It was heartbreaking, really, what she had to cope with. From ten years old she was making her own supper and washing her own clothes. She basically brought herself up.’

  ‘It sounds like you’re making excuses for her again.’

  ‘No! No way. I know I’ve always used her childhood as an excuse for her bad behaviour, but I’m over that now. I know people who’ve had some serious shit thrown at them and they still manage to be decent to other people. I’m trying to understand it myself, I think.’

  ‘So that you can forgive her again?’

  ‘After what happened today to Harley? That will never, ever happen,’ I shook my head, gulping down my last mouthful of cereal. ‘She’ll never change. Never. I know that now.’

  Goosebumps ran up my arms. Until I had said it out loud, to Charlie, just then, I had not accepted that Sophie was utterly incapable of overriding her insecurities, that her self-worth had not improved, even by an inch, since the beginning of our friendship. Even now, even after her confession about the hit-and-run, part of me had hoped that she would change. Once she was settled into the cottage, once she had made a bit of money, she would realise that material gain could not possibly compensate for what she had done, could not possibly wipe it out. I suppose I had still hoped that she might grow a conscience, learn something finally. But in spite of my best intentions, and in spite of her grandfather’s love, she had not.

  ‘Shall we have a cup of tea?’ Charlie asked, clearly lost about what else to suggest.

  Now that the cereal, the sugary comfort, was gone, I wanted a glass of wine. There was no way I would be able to tell him everything without one.

  ‘I’ll make them,’ I said.

  ‘Are you sure?’

  I kissed him on the lips. ‘Yes.’

  In the kitchen, I put the kettle on and found a screw-top bottle of wine, knowing that it would not make a sound when I opened it. Quickly, into a mug, I poured the wine up to the top, planning to get as much down me as I could before the tea was made.

  Just as I poured the boiled water onto the teabags, with the mug of wine at my lips, the liquid melting inside me, Charlie came into the kitchen.

  He must have seen the guilt flash across my face.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘I was thirsty,’ I said, my heart pounding over my lie.

  He walked straight over to me and took the mug out of my hand to smell it.

  I stood there, arms flopped at my sides, head down, a child caught out. I couldn’t look at him. My cheeks were flaming.

  A long, deep exhale. ‘I’m going to bed,’ he muttered.

  I could have followed him. I could have insisted he hear the rest of my sorry tale, the winding back of the clock, to the night Jason Parker died, when the timer had been set, the countdown on a bomb that would explode my life. I could have chosen tonight to tell him. For a moment, there, I was going to. I should have.

  I preferred the taste of the wine in the mug.

  Tomorrow, I would tell him, maybe. Or the day after that. Or next year. Or never.

  Never, never, never.

  I became drunk. So tired and so drunk.

  I played loud, angry music from my mobile into my earphones. I danced in the kitchen, wild and unseen. The wine provoked bad thoughts, dredged up raw anger: Jay had deserved to die. Jason Parker, the rapist, had deserved to die.

  I hated him with every fibre of my being. I did not care that he had let out his last breath alone, face down in a ditch. It was a blessing to the world, to lose such a predator, for whom only his mother felt the loss. His death on that road that terrible night had been timely; it had saved other women from being abused and violated. Nothing we did now would bring him back, and I was glad of it.

  My life was not going to be ruined by Jason Parker a second time. A confession to the police would be like flipping a coin on my own life. Heads you win. Tails you lose. Why risk losing? I would not go through with it. Not a chance in hell.

  Sophie had acted out what I had secretly desired, and I experienced a ghastly rush of love for her. In vino veritas.

  Charlie was digging the grave, while Izzy and Diana had decorated a cardboard box with stars and moons and dogs and cats floating in a dark blue poster-painted sky. It was a messy, heartfelt work of art in honour of Harley.

  The drunken, warped love that I had felt for Sophie, last night, was now a splitting headache, and my feelings had flipped comfortably back into the more permanent state of hatred for Sophie: pure, neat, justifiable hatred. Fuelled by that hatred, I was going to battle on, in defiance of how she had used me for her own gain. Nobody was going to use me any more. Nobody was going to push me around.

  While the girls were upstairs getting ready, changing into black clothes – they insisted we all wore black – I had placed the small black bag inside the cardboard box, shuddering at the hard, cold form inside. I secured the lid with masking tape.

  ‘We’re ready, Mummy!’ Izzy called through the closed kitchen door.

  ‘It’s okay now. Come in.’

  The two of them walked in with a sombre air, a little overdramatic. Diana wore a black sweater of mine, belted at the waist, and had tied up her blonde ringlets with a red satin ribbon. Izzy wore black leggings and an inside-out black t-shirt with the yellow stitching of the logo for their theatre club showing through. They didn’t own black clothes. The colour didn’t suit them.

  ‘Mummy. You can go and change now.’

  I wished I did not have to change out of my pyjamas, which I had wanted to live in day in, day out, but I could not let the girls down. I was battling on. And they had conjured up a ceremony in their heads, possibly based on a scene in a film or a cartoon, and I
could not disappoint them. Harley deserved it.

  Wearing my black dress, holding the decorated box, we walked down to Charlie. His face was pale and sweaty from the exertion of digging a hole two feet into the hard ground.

  The morning sun did not penetrate the canopy of the pine trees, whose cracked, thin trunks seemed to stretch into a dark infinity above our heads. The spongy carpet of pine needles under our feet released a damp, sweet aroma and spiked my knees as I lowered Harley into the hole.

  Charlie wiped tears away from his face with the backs of his hands, leaving soil smears. For two days, Charlie and I had barely communicated, barely looked at each other, but he grabbed my hand as Diana read a poem called ‘Unicorns in Space’ and crushed my fingers when Izzy scattered glitter onto the box.

  After a few words from each of us about what Harley meant to us, Charlie shovelled the soil on top of his makeshift coffin.

  I thought of my parents’ funerals, held in close succession. My grief came back to me as a twist of pain. I looked at the girls and thought of Ilene Parker burying her son. I could not imagine what she had gone through.

  After Izzy and Diana had decorated the mound of earth with pine cones and rocks, they made a cross with two sticks and some string.

  ‘Daddy, will you bash this in? I can’t do it,’ Izzy asked, struggling to push it into the ground.

  The two girls held the cross still at its base and Charlie used his shovel to sink it deep into the soil.

  The three of them – the reason for my existence – were grim and sad and focused in their task. Black figures in grief saying goodbye to a family member.

  In my head, I, too, wondered if I was saying goodbye. Not just to Harley, but to this. To them, to this closeness I shared with them, to this family unit as it stood now and would never be again. With my eyeballs skinned of their rosy tint, I scoffed at my original plan to go to the police. I had believed it would release me from the lifelong burden of Sophie. Such naivety! A confession would achieve nothing. If I told my story, Sophie would tell hers, and she was likely to lie, exonerating herself completely, condemning me further. If the truth about the rape came out, they would inflate our charges from death by dangerous driving to murder, and enrage Ilene Parker. Whichever way I looked at it, nobody would gain. However much I tried to bring Sophie down, I would risk dragging myself and my family down with her. Unless Jason Parker was outed as a rapist, the whole truth would not prevail, rendering the honourable motivations for the confession null and void.

  Effectively, Sophie had played with me, played with the secret, harnessing its power to take more and more and more away from me. And still she wanted more. She was insatiable, and I was the life force that she sucked from. Unless I stopped her, she would continue to take from me, until I was in my own coffin being covered in earth; too late to wonder why she had ruined my life, too late to stop her. I had no choice. I had to stop her. And as I stood there, dressed in black at Harley’s grave, I said goodbye to my naivety and said hello to survival.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Dylan burst out of Adam’s car and ran straight over to Bear, who bounded up to him, whining and barking. Adam turned off the engine to get out, which was a surprise to Sophie. Usually, when he dropped Dylan off on Sundays, he would stay in the car and speak to Sophie through the open window with the engine running.

  This time, Adam approached Sophie and stood on the doorstep of the cottage, by her side. Together, they watched Dylan and Bear greet each other with kisses and cuddles.

  ‘How’s he been this weekend?’ Sophie asked.

  ‘A bit subdued.’

  ‘How’re his elbows?’

  ‘Very itchy last night. I’ve put the hydrocortisone in his washbag,’ he replied, handing her Dylan’s rucksack. ‘How are you?’

  ‘Not great.’

  He stroked her arm. ‘I’m not surprised.’

  His touch gave her goosebumps.

  ‘Thanks for taking him when it wasn’t your weekend. I needed the headspace.’

  ‘Any time. You know that.’

  All weekend, from the moment Adam had collected Dylan on Saturday evening, shortly after they had heard the news about Harley, Sophie had been in turmoil. She was sad about Bear, she was sad about Harley, but she was frantic about Naomi, about losing her, after everything they had been through. If Naomi wasn’t on her side, Sophie would have nobody. Nobody.

  In a state of wretched loneliness, she had spent hours outside, weeding the flower beds around the house, walking in circles, in tears, barely eating, struck down by the sudden knowledge that she had no friends or family to call. Not a soul in the world to ask advice from or to listen to her. Deda, Adam and Naomi – and, by proxy, Charlie, Izzy and Diana – had been her only true allies in the world.

  The newly exploded rash on her palm had sweated into the glove; Bear had run up and down the garden terraces, more nervous than ever. In spite of his mood, he had been a gratifying companion. All her life she had wanted to make more friends, but the secret of Jason Parker forbade it. She could never have forged close bonds with anyone new while she harboured such horrors. The idea of relaxing or getting drunk or having intimate chats with someone who had not been part of that night was a fantasy. All human interactions were limited to superficialities, were dangerous even.

  When she had met Adam, she had thought she’d found a way to be close without revealing herself fully, but even that was over now. He was here, next to her, but he wasn’t truly here in the way she wanted him to be.

  ‘Will Bear be… you know… be…’ Adam stuttered.

  She said it for him. ‘Put down?’

  He nodded.

  ‘The police haven’t been round yet, but I’ve read up about it. It’s more likely they’ll recommend a muzzle and a leather lead.’

  ‘That’s not so bad.’

  ‘I feel awful for Naomi and the girls,’ Sophie said, swallowing hard. ‘She’ll never talk to me again.’

  ‘It wasn’t your fault.’

  ‘Naomi won’t see it that way.’

  Adam’s worry fell into the creases across his brow. ‘Call her. Talk to her about it.’

  He did not know that their friendship was at a crisis point. All the same, she piggybacked on his hope, wanting to believe that she could find an opening in Naomi’s heart, somehow.

  ‘Want to come in for a beer before you head back?’ she asked, taking the risk, cashing in on his sympathy.

  ‘Yes, I’d like that.’

  Glad of the company, she decided not to care why he had agreed to cross the threshold of the cottage.

  * * *

  After two beers, Adam had agreed to read Dylan a bedtime story.

  After three, he had agreed to stay for supper.

  After four, he was in her bed.

  Sex had not felt like sympathy, but it had felt familiar and comforting, rather than shocking or forbidden. It seemed that their connection had not been lost in their separation.

  The next morning, early, as the sun came through the curtain at six o’clock, he was still there. She couldn’t believe her luck.

  She watched him wake, and then she brought him coffee.

  ‘I miss this,’ he said, placing the cup on the side table.

  ‘Natalie doesn’t make you coffee?’ she asked facetiously.

  ‘I meant you, I miss you.’

  ‘You say that, and then you’ll go back to her.’

  ‘She stayed at her mum’s all of last week.’

  Sophie’s breathing stopped. ‘Why?’

  ‘We had a row.’

  Trying to sound nonchalant, she asked, ‘About what?’

  ‘She folds my socks.’

  Sophie guffawed. ‘You mean, she rolls them?’

  He had begun to laugh. ‘No, properly in half, one on top of the other, and then lines each pair up next to the other in the drawer, and if I mess them up, she goes mental.’

  ‘Who does that?’

  ‘Natalie does!�
� he had chortled.

  Sophie and Adam had descended into giggles. He had pulled her onto the bed again, knocking the coffee cup over, ignoring it, fumbling to get her nightie off.

  ‘Shush, Dylan’s still asleep,’ Sophie had said, pressing her hand over his mouth as he groaned.

  Afterwards, they lay there, in bed, in the white, bright bedroom of the cottage and they chatted about Dylan and Adam’s latest jobs, and the awfulness of Bear’s attack, over which she shed some more tears.

  They fell back to sleep, until Dylan knocked on the door at seven thirty. Their little boy, whom they both loved so much, climbed under the covers in between them, just like old times.

  ‘Will you take me to school, Daddy?’ Dylan asked.

  ‘You won’t miss driving with Mummy in those hot new wheels of hers?’ Adam grinned, winking at Sophie.

  ‘It’s a Volvo four-by-four. It’s hardly hot,’ Sophie scoffed.

  ‘It’s so cool, Daddy, it even has a television!’ he cried. Then he added, ‘But I love your car, too.’

  ‘Come on then, if you get dressed into your uniform quickly, I’ll make creamy porridge before we go.’

  Before scurrying out of bed, Dylan snuggled into Adam’s chest. ‘I love you, Dadda.’

  ‘Love you too, little man.’

  Sophie wanted to spring out of bed and pump her fist in the air, sensing a sizeable shift in Adam, but she remained composed, inscrutable.

  After a fun morning – the three of them working as a team again – Dylan hopped into Adam’s car, with a belly full of his Daddy’s porridge, smarter than ever in the tie that his Daddy had knotted for him.

  ‘Bye, then,’ Adam said, kissing Sophie and squeezing her bottom playfully.

  She squealed, then pressed her lips onto his, holding them there, sensing his reluctance to part from her. Dylan honked the horn and they jumped apart, laughing.

  ‘What time do you want to pick him up next Saturday?’

  ‘I’ve been meaning to say, I’m working next weekend. July the nineteenth,’ he said, kicking up some gravel. ‘But Soph, what if I stayed here again sometime? The following weekend?’