by Rosa Temple
I tap on the door and before Carey can do her usual act of subterfuge and come out before I can go in, I open the door wide and saunter inside. Carey is sitting up on her bed and she is in tears.
‘Carey,’ I whisper. ‘What happened?’
She shakes her head and sniffs and then looks at me through glassy eyes.
‘I don’t even know. Everything and nothing, I suppose. I don’t really know.’ She grins through the tears and my heart breaks.
I sit against the headboard with her. Her room is lit only by the lamp on her side of the bed and most of the room is cast in shadow. The curtains are open and the moon is bright in a clear sky. I put my hand on hers.
‘It was a great party. Thank you,’ I say.
‘Well you organised it.’
‘I couldn’t have done it without you.’
‘We make a great team.’
‘Maybe we can do more. That is if you don’t mind me extending my stay.’
She has a hopeful look on her face and her eyes, still watery are dancing with a smile.
‘I suppose you knew Jed was going to ask me about taking a job on the news team?’ I say. She nods. ‘I think I said yes. I’ll have to call him tomorrow to find out exactly what I did say. I had a lot to drink.’
‘You and me both.’
I can’t help it, but my eyes swoop across the room. The photograph beside the door has been beckoning my gaze since I walked in. I hadn’t forgotten about it, or Carey’s writing pad and what it had revealed to me. I look back at Carey. She would hide behind her hair if she hadn’t gathered it into a top knot for the party. She has no way to hide and I have no way of stopping myself asking this.
‘Carey, who is in the photograph over there?’
The silence that fills the air is like a lead weight. I sense the wave of anger, mixed with anxiety and impatience rising from this diminutive woman beside me and I want to run and hide as soon as the words are out. I’m sobering up by the second and with each second Carey’s discomfort grows.
‘I’m tired, Sydney. You must be too. Let’s call it a night, shall we?’
‘I’ve been afraid to leave here,’ I say.
‘What? My room?’
‘Your room. This house. Bridley.’
‘Why, because you didn’t have a job sorted? Because you couldn’t face Rob?’ Carey says looking at her thighs and brushing imaginary crumbs from her jeans.
‘Afraid to leave you on your own because I didn’t know what you’d do. You know with the holidays and everything. People feel more sensitive to their problems.’
‘Sydney, what are you –?’
‘I know you’re L,’ I say and Carey springs up from where she is sitting. Feet on the floor, she hasn’t left the bed, but she has her back to me.
‘How could you know? Did you spy on me?’
‘As a matter of fact, I did.’ Carey sits upright and doesn’t move. ‘It’s not what you think. I didn’t set out searching for a clue about L. I wouldn’t have guessed at all if I hadn’t seen the letter you started.’
‘Letter?’
‘Yes, the one that said you might commit suicide.’
Carey turns toward me. ‘I never said anything about suicide. What are you talking about?’
‘I recognised L’s handwriting and the note paper.’ I nod toward her writing desk. ‘I knew it was you writing in to Dear Vicky when I saw the unfinished letter. I’ve read every letter you’ve ever written. They’re all in my desk at the office. I know, Carey, that you have one hell of a secret inside you and I know this secret is eating you up. So much so you want to kill yourself because you can’t live with it. But please, Carey, my friend, my good, good friend, treat me like a friend and trust me. Share it with me, whatever it is, and I’ll do everything I can to help.’
‘You mean in the haphazard way you help yourself? You leave your old life behind and you want to take up with the first handsome face you see in a village full of strangers. You can’t survive for five minutes without having a man in tow, you can’t turn your life around and find a job until a man bails you out of trouble.’
I clench my teeth for a second and then swallow.
‘When you think you’re cornered you go into attack mode,’ I say calmly. ‘You either shut down completely or you lash out. How are you any better than me? You think it’s healthy to carry the burden you’ve obviously been carrying for God knows how long? At least I’m an open book. I open up and I talk about my problems. Maybe I should keep things to myself sometimes, like the fact that my best friend is in the depths of despair. No matter what you think of me I can’t live with what I know and stay silent.’
‘And what is it you think you know?’
‘I know that whatever happened in your life to make you the way you are happened before you came here. Just like me. That you adapted to life in a village of strangers. Just like me. You made a good go of things and you had to deal with a broken heart and get your life together. Just like me.’
‘So, are you saying we’re the same? That if you can get over your problems, then so can I?’
‘Honestly. It’s not easy, but it isn’t impossible.’
‘You think your suffering could match up to anything I’ve been through?’
‘How would I know? Carey. How would I know unless you talk to me?’
She turns away from me again, so I shift over and sit next to her. We both look out of the window. The moon appears to be moving across the sky but standing still at the same time.
‘Did you run away from them?’ I ask after a moment or two.
‘Run away from whom?’ Carey asks turning to me.
‘The hands in the photograph. Your ex-husband? Your baby perhaps?’ I swallow hard and squint my eyes closed because I can feel Carey gathering an angry retort. ‘I’m sure you had your reasons. No one would blame you if you were unhappy.’
When she speaks her words are far from angry.
‘Unhappy?’ she says. ‘Those were the happiest days of my life. I didn’t leave my family, Syd. They … they …’
I want to finish her sentence. Did her husband take the child from her? They left her? I move my hand closer to Carey’s, but I don’t hold it. She chokes out two words. ‘They died.’
I turn to face her. Carey’s face has dropped to her chest. I can imagine her screen of hair covering her face, her expression and her emotions. But that doesn’t happen tonight. Tonight I see everything. She’s can’t hide anymore.
‘I was in my studio,’ she says softly. ‘It was in the basement. I was working late and I’d been busy working all day. I hadn’t eaten. Marc had fed Lori, bathed her, put her to bed. He’d said goodnight through the closed door and said he was going up to read. I suppose he must have fallen asleep. I had a deadline, you see? I had a series of photographs I had to send in to a publishing house. Everyone was relying on me, but I’d stupidly taken on another job at the same time as the first. Thought I could do them both, gain an extra client and look after a ten-month old baby. Stupid, stupid, stupid.’ She slaps her hands against her brow to punctuate each rebuke.
‘You don’t have to go on,’ I say because now I’m fearing all kinds of incidents, none of which I want to be true and I feel awful for making her rake it all up.
‘How can I not? You wanted to hear it so I’m going to tell you. I ran out of some fluids I needed because in a panic I managed to spill the bottle on the floor. I couldn’t complete the prints without it. Rang up a friend who said, sure, come over and take all you need. I didn’t call up to Marc. I left a in flash. Had on an old pair of trainers, a thin t-shirt in October and it was bloody cold. I remember that. So, I picked up a cardigan I had on the back of my chair and flung it over my shoulders. I ran out the door, forgot to grab my phone, and that was it. I had to get from Bristol to Worcester in a hurry. Even at that time of night the bloody motorway was busy. I was so anxious and upset I wasn’t going to get this job done. When I picked up the chemicals I drove home as
fast as I could. Round the corner from home I started to panic. I knew something was wrong but I couldn’t put my finger on it. Lori hadn’t been feeling too well that day so I thought something might have happened to her and I wasn’t there. Then I thought, if Marc tried to call me, he’d hear my phone ringing in the studio and would have to just deal with it on his own. But he was great with Lori. I shouldn’t need to worry.
It was as I turned into our street I saw the lights. I saw the ambulances, the crowds outside, the smoke coming from my house and an enormous fountain of water from the fire engine as they tried to beat down the flames.’
‘Carey. Carey, no. No. I-I’m so, so …’
‘Sorry? No one is more sorry than me. I did a lousy job of wiping up the chemicals I was using. I knocked one of my lamps onto the floor when I rushed out. I knew because I heard it fall. I heard it fall but I didn’t stop to pick it up. If I’d only picked it up. When that stuff heats up, a fire can take hold. They never stood a chance.’
‘It was an accident, Carey. That’s what it was.’ I rub her arm as tears flow from my eyes and off my cheeks.
‘That’s what everyone said. It was an accident.’ She looks at me with the deepest of frowns, no tears just a look of absolute exhaustion. Carey has no more tears left to cry for her family. I wonder over how long she has wept for them, for herself. ‘I’ve seen countless therapists. The last one, before I finally decided I needed to get out of the city, was probably the most helpful. I really thought I’d got a handle on things but the darkness I felt was never that far away. I started writing to Dear Vicky after first reading the magazine. It’s not that I thought she would heal me. I had no friends here and I had no one to talk to. But I didn’t want pity so I never told Vicky what actually happened. I’d ghosted everyone from back then, even family. Made it clear I needed a break and that I didn’t want reminders from the past. The people from the dinner party were the most persistent. They never lost touch.’
‘But you kept a reminder.’
‘What?’
‘Of Marc and Lori. The photograph.’ I turn to look at it. Most of it is in shadow but the point at which the two hands meet is quite visible.
‘I took it when Lori was four months old. I love that photograph. It was one I managed to save, one of the few that didn’t get damaged in the fire. Everything else, my family, the loves of my life, were lost. That was five years ago.’
I bring Carey in for a hug and she allows me to cradle her, stroke her arm, her back. When we pull away, I see she has started to cry again and I can’t help but follow suit.
‘I’m sorry,’ I say. ‘I didn’t know what you were going through. Now I know I understand why you’d want to end it, but Carey –’
‘Wait. Why do you keep saying that? I never said I wanted to end it.’
‘The letter I found started by saying you couldn’t go on. So I thought …’
Carey looks confused. She’s trying to remember her last, unfinished letter.
‘Ah, no. What I was going on to say is that I couldn’t go on being sad. It’s incapacitating. Marc was always proud of me, proud of my work. It’s the one thing I do well and for years I haven’t been enjoying it. Taking jobs that don’t challenge and aren’t at all artistic. I couldn’t go on like that. I had to get back to being the photographer I was before it happened. I know he would hate to see what I’m doing now. I want to honour him by taking pride in my work and I’m hoping if they can see that I’m making changes they’ll both be proud of me. It’s the only thing I can do to make what a short time we had together count and mean something.’
‘You can do it, Carey. I’ll do everything I can to help you through this.’
Minutes pass. I can’t say how many but it’s as if Carey and I are floating in our own space in time. Above our problems and secrets, our tangled pasts, and far from the events of tonight.
‘There’s something I need to ask you, Carey,’ I say. I break the comforting silence when I remember a question I still don’t have an answer to. ‘The initial, L. Where does it come from?’
‘Marc gave it to me. Years ago. It’s short for Leibovitz. Annie Leibovitz has to be my biggest influence in photography. I wanted to rise to her ranks and Marc always said I could and surpass her. He had so much faith in me.’
‘Now it’s me, Carey. I’m the one with the faith in you. You are an amazing artist and never forget that.’
‘Thank you, Sydney. I will try.’
‘When I came in you were crying. Were you thinking about them? Marc and Lori.’
‘Actually, silly, I was thinking of you. You are the one that helped me see I was wasting my life away.’
‘Because I am Britain’s biggest loser?’
‘No, because you tried. You tried to get your life back on track. I said some horrible things about you just now. I’m the last person to judge you about what you did. And it was wrong of me to attack you like that, especially since I care about you so much, Sydney. I’ll do better by you. In all honesty, I take my hat off to you for doing everything you could to turn your life around.’
‘Even though I made a pig’s ear of it?’
‘On the contrary. You have a bright new future ahead of you. I’ll miss you when you move to Drydean.’
‘I was kind of hoping to buy a car and commute to Drydean from here. If you’ll have me that is.’
Carey throws her arm around me.
‘Of course I want you to stay.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes, silly. I told you I was crying because I thought I was losing you. Now you’re staying. It’s fantastic.’
I can’t stop crying but they’re happy tears now. We’re going to be the best of friends. There for each other. Always. I know this to be true.
‘I suppose I should sort out some bedding,’ I say. ‘Although I’m not tired anymore and I’m feeling really hungry.’
‘Let’s go and see what we can salvage from our wreck of a kitchen.’
I can hear Dad snoring from my room as we tiptoe downstairs. I can’t wait to tell them my good news about the job.
‘By the way,’ Carey says. ‘I still say you were after the wrong brother. Jed was the one giving you the eye the night we met them at karaoke.’
‘Giving me the eye? How old are you?’
The kitchen is a complete mess but there is bread and pâté on a plate. I put on the kettle.
‘You were the one who told me I don’t need a man in my life to move on,’ I say to Carey.
‘True. There’s plenty of time for all that I suppose. Plenty of time.’ I can see the cogs in her brain working. If I’m honest, the cogs are making a chugging sound in my brain, too, but as Carey so eloquently put it – there’s plenty of time.
Dear … Anybody?
I have a sneaky suspicion my boss has a massive crush on me. He doesn’t give much away but his feelings for me are undeniable. To be perfectly honest, I have the same feelings for him. My housemate told me months ago that he liked me and she could clearly see how much by the way he looks at me. I suspect it’s only a matter of time before I do embark on a new relationship. I want to ask him to be my plus one at a wedding I’m going to in May. I can’t wait for that.
My colleagues all tell me to go for it, ask him to the wedding. They are the best team of people I could have asked for and I’ve found myself in my dream job. The hours are long but no two days are the same. I just love it here and I get to write some exciting and some not so exciting news articles every day.
I have a new best friend. Someone I admire and trust and whose artistic prowess goes from strength to strength as does her ability to come to terms with what was the most difficult time in her life. I can’t believe that she credits me with her recovery going so well. Me? I feel honoured at the thought.
As for me, I eat well, sleep well and I’ve found my Chi now that I’m practising yoga in a much more dedicated way these days.
I suppose you’re wondering what my problem is
and why am I writing. Well that’s just it. I don’t have a problem, not a one. And that’s unusual for me. I’ve been nothing but a vessel for problems and terrible things happening. I suppose I’m writing because I want to give thanks. Time has allowed for everything to turn around for the best. I just want to say if it can happen for me, and for my best friend, then it could happen for anybody.
If you’re reading this, if anybody is reading this, please just have faith because time really is a great healer.
Love
Sydney x
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More Books by Rosa Temple
Sleeping With Your Best Friend
Natalie’s Getting Married
Single By Christmas
Playing By The Rules
Playing Her Cards Right
Playing For Keeps
