Her Best Friend's Secret: A gripping, emotional novel about love, life and the power of friendship

by Mansell, Anna

  Pete shook his head and it made Amanda want to smash him in the face. He used to do it when they were together, shaking his head like he knew better than she did about something, usually something to do with herself, like sure, you’re really sorry about x or, of course you’re not going to kick off about y. God, he was irritating. Especially when he’d do that shake of his head to himself, then flex his jaw muscle straight after and he knew fine well that Amanda always found that a total turn on. She never knew why… maybe it took her back to the days he’d walk her home from babysitting and they’d stand beneath the streetlight, her hand held in his, all youthful and carefree. He’d tease her, he’d act all aloof, like he wasn’t really interested, before leaning in to kiss her and it was always the most intense kiss. The most enveloping moment.

  ‘Amanda.’

  ‘What? Sorry, I…’ She hopped off her stool and hid her head in the cupboard, searching out a bag of crisps or something to focus her mind on. ‘So what do you think I should do? I’ve texted her. I wanted to take her out on Sunday. She just doesn’t seem to want anything to do with me. I don’t know what to do.’

  ‘I know. I’ve told her she’s being unfair.’

  ‘You have?’ Amanda did hate him, but she did also like him. He had his moments.

  ‘Of course I have. I’ve said she’s only got one of you and however much of a douche you can be, you’re basically a good human being and she could do a lot worse.’

  ‘Wow, you really know how to big a girl up.’

  ‘They weren’t my exact words. I was paraphrasing.’

  ‘And what did she say.’

  ‘Not a lot.’

  ‘Right.’

  He knocked his wine back. ‘I guess, really, I was just dropping by to let you know that she is fine. To not worry. To give her some space. I think this has less to do with you and more to do with Billy Harvey.’

  ‘Billy Harvey is a shit.’

  ‘He is.’

  Pete moved around to Amanda. ‘Come here, dickhead. Give us a cuddle.’

  ‘I hate it when you do this,’ she said, totally allowing herself to be wrapped up in his strong arms. ‘And don’t call me a dickhead.’

  ‘It takes one to know one.’ He kissed the top of her head.

  ‘You know you didn’t have to come round to tell me all of this, you could have called. Or texted.’

  He looked at her as he let her go and walked ahead of her back down the hallway. With his hand on the door latch, he said, ‘I could have. But it’s been ages since I saw you so…’ Opening the door, he turned to face Amanda. ‘Give Zennor some space, she will come round. I’ll keep on at her.’

  ‘Promise.’

  ‘Promise.’ He jogged down the path, pausing at the gate. ‘I did love you, for the record.’ Then he turned and left, waving over his shoulder as he went and Amanda was irritated by his assumption that she’d still be watching.

  Lolly

  Exhausted, Lolly pulled the bedroom door closed, child number two now fast asleep, and she could practically hear the gin and tonic calling. She was a walking maternal cliché and she very much did not care.

  Downstairs, Kitt lay on the sofa, his long legs stretched out so she couldn’t sit down anywhere except on them or in the rocker in the corner. She nudged his feet, making him snore then jump awake. ‘Tired?’ she asked, aware of the disdain in her tone.

  ‘Knackered! I don’t know what’s up with me. I’ve just been full on these last few weeks.’

  Yes, full on, thought Lolly. It’s tough juggling… work and work and, basically, just work. ‘Mmmm,’ was all that she said.

  ‘You okay?’ He moved up to give her space.

  ‘Yup.’ She hated that she just answered yes when actually she was supremely pissed off with him, but she couldn’t quite work out how to say what she wanted to say, or what was wrong, over and above the fact that she was alone in juggling work and home and kids and had had enough. It’s not that he wouldn’t do things if she asked for help, she just sometimes got fed up of asking.

  ‘You wanna watch Breaking Bad?’

  ‘Yup.’ Her clipped response was probably disguised by her picking up the gin and tonic, ice clinking against the glass. She took a long sip, feeling the ice-cold liquid trickle down her chest and into her legs. That was the thing she liked best about gin, the fuzz it gave her. The way it knocked off the edges of her day. It was like being wrapped in cotton wool and right now, as bruised as she felt by the state of their lives, she needed cotton wool. Kitt navigated Netflix, picking out the latest episode for them to watch. Did he not realise she was pissed off, or was he ignoring it? Was he avoiding it, like he so often did, because he didn’t want a row? Were they not worth the fight any more?

  ‘God, I can’t remember any of that last episode,’ he said as the catch-up played out before the new episode.

  ‘No. You fell asleep.’

  ‘You sound pissed off.’

  She took another sip of gin. ‘No. No.’ Yes! Yes!

  Kitt paused the telly and sighed. He shifted again, this time to cross his legs beneath himself. ‘What’s the matter?’

  Lolly’s eyes stung.

  ‘Why are you pissed off with me?’

  ‘You were supposed to pick the kids up, Kitt. I was working. You were supposed to be there.’

  ‘I know, I know. And I’m sorry, I don’t know how it happened. I just totally lost track of the days, I’m sorry.’ He leant forward, reaching out for her hand but she kept them firmly grasped around her glass. ‘It’s more than that though, isn’t it?’

  She bit the inside of her mouth, then took another sip of drink.

  ‘Talk to me.’ He searched out eye contact.

  ‘I just… I don’t know… I feel… I can’t explain how I feel, actually. I keep trying to work it out and I don’t know. Things aren’t right. We’re not right. I want another baby and you don’t seem to care, even though I thought we’d agreed to it. I thought we’d signed up for it? Together!’

  ‘You signed up for it,’ he said, dropping eye contact.

  ‘You agreed! You had your vasectomy reversed!’

  ‘Because you wanted a baby so desperately. Because you want one so desperately.’

  ‘What, so you’re not remotely bothered?’

  ‘I want you to be happy.’

  If that were true, it didn’t sound much like it. It sounded as if he thought the very thing was an impossibility. As if her happiness were so unlikely, he didn’t know why he bothered trying. Was that fair, she wondered? Was she impossible to please at the moment? She didn’t think so… she thought they were on the same page. Instead, he was sat in front of her, all folded in on himself. Crossed arms and legs. Defensive. She sort of knew she was being obstinate with her response, but she felt obstinate. She didn’t feel like letting him off the hook entirely. ‘So, you don’t actually want another baby.’

  ‘I didn’t, no. But you explained why you do and I support that, I mean… I can’t promise it’ll be the girl you seem to have your heart set on, but I can try. I can do my bit.’

  ‘That requires you to actually do your bit.’

  ‘Is this about last Thursday? I was tired, Lolly. Does it really matter when it happens?’

  ‘Yes! It does! That’s the point! The whole thing for us is that with your reversal and my age, we have the odds stacked against us, so yes! It does matter when it happens, to give us any chance whatsoever, it has to be when my temperature is right.’

  ‘Which is the least sexy thing in the world. I’m not a performing monkey, Lolly. Christ!’

  ‘You’re a bloke! How difficult can it be?’

  ‘Well…’ He looked at her. Did she see an element of hurt in his eyes? Any guilt she felt, if she did, was quickly replaced with the feeling of tough because he’d said he wanted another child and he knew what it meant to her and she didn’t want to be made to feel guilty about something they’d both signed up for. ‘It’s not difficult getting it up, per s
e,’ he said. ‘It’s difficult when… it feels so perfunctory. So…’

  ‘What, so I’m shit in bed?’

  ‘That’s not what I said. Oh my god, Lolly, this isn’t about you being crap in bed or even about us and our sex life. This is about the fact that I feel used and you feel let down. This is about us hitting a rocky patch in our marriage and you are blaming me for it all and it’s not fair.’

  ‘A rocky patch?’ Since when did he think they’d hit a rocky patch? At what point in the last few months had it been difficult? They’d been married fifteen years, she knew about rocky patches. She remembered when they’d just had their first and wondered if she even loved him any more. She remembered the time a colleague made a pass at her and she had that feeling in her pants that she’d not had with him for bloody ages. She remembered the way he flirted with one of her friends because he thought she wasn’t looking. Of all the times they might be in a rocky patch, now did not feel like a rocky patch. ‘I just want another baby, Kitt. I didn’t realise that forced us into a rocky patch. I want a daughter. I want what Joanna had with Mum. That fierce connection between mother and daughter, that sense that she is a tiny part of you and you are helping to shape her future.’

  ‘That’s what you do with the boys.’

  ‘But…’ Lolly felt her eyes sting again because every time they talked about this she felt like she just hadn’t found the way to articulate what mattered. Because in truth, she didn’t really know. Except that Joanna had got the best of their mum’s years. Joanna grew up in their mum’s care, she saw her as a woman to look up to and be inspired by. Their mum saw Joanna as the tiny version of her, learning, growing, the bits of her that were feisty and powerful were Mum. The bits of her that were strong and funny, they were Mum. The bits of her that could survive anything that life threw at them, they were Mum. Lolly didn’t have that because their mum passed away before she even got to walk. To talk. To tell her mum that she loved her and hear it said in return, rather than imagined, whispered on a falling white feather, or the chirp of a robin. Lolly loved her boys, that wasn’t in question, she just wanted to love a girl too, then be around for that girl until she was fully grown. To be there for the important moments in life. There for all the things that Lolly wished her own mother had been there for. She looked over at the photo of herself, a babe in her mum’s arms. She wanted that, there, captured on an old Polaroid. They were at a street party. Lolly was a tiny, days-old baby, wrapped in a white shawl and yellow knitted baby clothes. Her mum was in a stripy jumper and had permed hair. She didn’t want the hair… or the stripy jumper, but she wanted the babe in arms.

  Jess

  Friday night. Jay had been avoiding Jess since walking in on her chat with Matt on Wednesday. When she arrived on Thursday morning he was in the meeting room. They caught sight of each other, she smiled, he seemed to stare for just a minute longer before going back to the discussion he was having. He joked in the office with everyone, he wasn’t rude to her. In fact, she didn’t imagine anyone had noticed the frost between them, but she knew it. She felt it. Her muscles were tight from the stress. Her shoulders ached. Her head ached. She would join conversations and avoid his eye. She presented her usual in charge, in control, on top of her game self. Until she sat back at her desk. There, despite being in full view to the team, she would stare at the screen. She’d read files, make notes that were nothing but doodles on the pad. She’d go to the filing cabinet, she’d go back to her desk. She’d wait until he’d made a drink before she went to the kitchen.

  And at night, when the team had left, she brought up her CV and worked on it. She browsed job sites. She looked at houses in Exeter and Bristol. She worked out how much she had in savings and her bank account to see if she could move away. It was all doable. She could sell her house, the market in Cornwall was still moving. Maybe it would sell quickly and then she’d have no other reason to stay. She looked at the files on her desk, the pile of work she’d not achieved these last few days. She piled them into a bag to take home and catch up on over the weekend, then she dropped into her chair, exhausted. ‘Fuck!’ she shouted out. ‘Fucking fuck!’

  ‘You always were a potty mouth.’

  Jess held her breath. She didn’t want to turn around this time. She didn’t want to see him there. She didn’t want to have this conversation, whatever conversation he’d come back to have, she wanted to avoid it. She wanted to just pretend nothing had happened and hand her notice in and move on. She wanted to run away. She always ran away.

  Running away was what lost her Jay in the first place…

  ‘Should we talk?’ he said.

  ‘No. We shouldn’t talk. You should go home. I should move on.’

  Jay moved to stand beside her desk. ‘Don’t be stupid.’

  Jess could hear her heart and wondered if he could hear it too.

  ‘Moving on is crazy. This is your team, your career. Why would you throw that all away?’

  ‘Because I can’t bear the idea of working here, with you. That’s why. Especially not now, now you know. God, I can’t even—’

  ‘Look at me.’

  ‘No.’ Her eyes stung.

  ‘Look at me, Jess. Please.’

  ‘If I don’t look at you, I don’t have to see the pity in your eyes. I don’t need that. I don’t need to be patronised.’

  Jay turned to face her, in her peripheral vision she could see him look at her. What did he think? What did he see? Was it a pitiful sight? Was she old and stupid? Did she look like a woman who’d wasted her life pining for a man she walked away from? Did he see how vulnerable she was?

  ‘I miss you, Jess. I’ve always missed you.’

  ‘Don’t, Jay. Don’t do this. Whatever you’re thinking, whatever your plan is. Just go. Leave.’

  ‘I thought we could make it work. I thought we could be friends.’

  ‘I thought I’d come back from travelling and you and I would pick up where we left off. Sometimes things don’t work out.’

  Jay perched on the edge of her desk. ‘We were kids, Jess. That was never going to happen, was it? Surely you knew that when you left?’

  ‘If I knew it, I wouldn’t have…’ She paused. She gathered herself. She began again, quieter. ‘If I knew it, I wouldn’t have gone.’ She turned to face him this time, his smile glassy through her tears. ‘I wouldn’t have gone Jay, I just…’

  Jay nodded, looking down at the floor.

  ‘I was a kid, I was just… stupid. I needed to go. I needed to get away from here. I needed to work out who I was and what I wanted out of life. I needed to escape. I thought you’d be there when I got back. Fuck!’ She laughed. ‘The arrogance.’

  ‘I probably thought I’d be there when you got back too.’

  ‘And yet…’

  ‘And yet you made it clear you were doing your thing. Travelling. Experiencing life. Living it. You made it clear you weren’t coming home until you had seen and done all of the things you wanted to and you…’ Jay’s words dried up. He moved to perch on the desk in front of Jess’s.

  ‘And I, what?’

  ‘You changed, you weren’t you. You all but said you thought I was wasting my life by working and waiting, you said my lack of ambition wasn’t attractive. You said I was lame.’ Jay fixed her with a look that suggested she wasn’t the only one who’d been hurt by the turn of events. It was a look that didn’t apologise for reminding her that she had said all of those things. It wasn’t a look of anger or hatred, but it was a look that said the damage was done, long before she finally made it home from her travels. ‘You told me to move on.’

  ‘I didn’t mean it.’

  ‘I didn’t know that.’

  ‘I… I was an idiot. Drunk, probably. Especially if I said all those things whilst I was in New Zealand. I drank A LOT in New Zealand.’

  ‘What? You don’t remember saying those things?’

  Jess sighed. She could feel her cheeks colour up. ‘Of course I remember,’ she whispered
. She remembered saying all of those things because she very definitely wasn’t drunk when she said them. She’d spent the day sobbing on the bed of her bedsit, wondering how to climb out of herself, how to heal the pain, how to escape. She hurt and she wanted him to hurt. She wanted to go home but she wanted to hide. She wanted to drink and smoke and have casual sex and skinny dip and jump from the highest cliff into the deepest blue pools. And yet, none of those things made her feel better. And that day, the last time she spoke to Jay, she couldn’t bring herself to confess that really, she hated travelling and being away from home and being without Jay by her side, but the intensity of their feelings was too much. It fought with the fear that lived in her stomach since the night of Emily’s party. It scared her. She didn’t want to feel anything. She wanted invisibility, she craved numbness.

  ‘You moved on, Jess,’ he said. ‘We were naive to think it could have ended any other way. We were kids.’

  Jess bit down on her lip because she knew it wasn’t okay to tell him that she may have been a kid but she knew that she loved him.

  ‘I always wondered what might have been,’ he said, standing to move beside her.

  ‘Don’t, Jay.’

  ‘I’ll never not wonder…’

  Jess steeled herself. ‘Go home, Jay. Go home to your wife.’

  The room fell silent for just a second before Jess heard Jay’s footsteps walking away.

  She’d had time to work it out now. It had been twenty years of hiding from her feelings. Him arriving in her office was a shock, but nothing like the shock she felt to realise she’d been avoiding relationships all these years, avoiding the chance to meet somebody new, it had all been because her heart hadn’t healed. She’d carried as much fear of her feelings as she had this love for him. But Matt was right, she didn’t deserve to feel like this, she had as much right as the next person to be happy. To love and be loved. Maybe it was time to let go, she just didn’t know how. Would seeing Emily help? If she didn’t, she might never fully move on.