Freya hunched her shoulders and looked down at her drink rather than at Carly’s face. She’d never been one to handle the giggly girl-talk of sex and relationships.
Feet thumped on the wooden boards. Freya looked up at the sound. Andy, face suffused with anger, had appeared behind Carly. He grabbed her arm, his eyes slits in his livid face. “So this is why you lie like a dead fish in bed. You’re getting your jollies from your lesbo friends.”
Freya opened her mouth to defend Carly. Andy, usually the most affable of blokes, who’d seemed to have no problems with anyone’s sexuality, bristled with tension. Carly’s jaw hung open and she wrenched her arm from Andy’s grip and clung to Lily’s arm. Her gaze had snapped back into clarity. In turn, Lily, placed a comforting hand over Carly’s.
“Easy, Carly,” she said in soft tones. “Don’t jump. Now is not the time.”
Freya looked from one to the other in bewilderment. Lily’s hand on top of Carly’s. Carly’s fingers clutching Lily’s arm. The closeness of their posture, leaning in towards each other, shoulders touching. Lily and Carly? Carly, who not ten minutes ago had been proclaiming her straightness and wishing her husband had managed to make her party. And Lily, who in those same ten minutes had been getting up close and personal with Janie. Janie, who leant against the bar, staring at the unfolding scene with an expression of bemusement on her face.
Freya shut her mouth with a snap. Something wasn’t right here, but she didn’t think the obvious scenario was the correct one. She flicked a glance at Andy. Emotion and anger simmered below the surface of the three players in this conversation. Words unsaid, feelings not made clear.
Carly shrugged off Lily’s hand and stood. The moment of clarity had passed and she swayed slightly, and put a hand on Lily’s shoulder to steady herself. “And what if I am? I have to get some fun somewhere. After all, you’re going elsewhere for yours. This kettle calls the pot black.”
For a second, Andy’s face wore a wide-eyed look of surprise. Then his eyes shuttered and a smile hovered briefly over his lips. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Lily’s brow pinched tight between her eyes for a second. “Carly, this isn’t a conversation to have when you’re drunk.”
“I can’t think of a better time.” Carly’s posture straightened, and she lifted her hand from Lily’s shoulder to push the hair from her eyes. “Kim. The office manager where you work. The woman you’re fucking.” She spat the word into the noisy room.
Freya jerked in surprise and her gaze flicked to Andy. He stood like a rock, his face still, eyes watchful.
“You think I’m some stupid bimbo who can’t put two and two together? Fuck you, Andy. I know where your car’s been parked. You don’t even bother to hide it.”
Andy was silent; only the lurid flush above his collar hinted at his anger. “Shut up, Carls. You’re drunk. Let’s go home.”
“Why? So you can talk me around? Tell me Kim keeps the bloody office supplies in her bedroom? Tell me you needed a new fucking stapler?”
Andy’s hand shot out and grasped Carly’s wrist. “Shut the fuck up now. This is not the time.”
“Why?” Carly’s voice was shrill. “Or you’ll make me shut up? Big brave man.”
Freya surged to her feet. “Let her go, Andy.” She focused on Andy’s large hand, encircling Carly’s wrist.
“Gonna make me?”
Lily moved lightly around to Andy’s other side. “There are plenty of people here who will make you.”
Andy’s lips curled in a sneer. “You must be Lily.” His finger stabbed at her chest with enough force that she took a step back. “Stay away from my wife.”
Carly jerked her wrist, tearing free. “I called your office whenever you worked late. You never picked up.”
“And that means I’m having an affair.” His laugh grated on Freya’s ears. “Get real, little girl.”
“Who lives at 14 Wattletree Road? It’s not the prime minister.”
Her shrill voice was loud enough that the women at the next table fell silent. Remy stared down at the table. Over at the bar, Janie stood alone, her gaze never leaving Lily.
Andy’s face had gone still, watchful. His eyes were intent on Carly’s face.
“Don’t try and deny it.” Carly sat abruptly, as if her legs could no longer support her weight.
Her husband turned away without a word.
“Is that it?” Carly’s broken cry was loud enough to silence the group of chattering women at the bar. “You’re just walking out? Back to her?”
Andy turned on his heel and stalked back. “You’re too drunk to hold a conversation.” His glance flicked over Lily dismissively and settled on Freya. “I’m sure Freya will put up with you for the night if your lover has had second thoughts.” He left without a backwards glance.
“Andy, wait…” He ignored Carly’s wail. Tears leaked from her eyes to track silent streams down her cheeks. “What have I done? Lily, what have I done?”
“Shush.” Lily gathered her into her wide embrace, and stroked Carly’s disordered hair. Gone was the effervescent friend Freya knew; in her place was a sobbing, broken woman. Lily caught Freya’s gaze over the top of Carly’s head. “Let’s get her home. I’m not sure if she owes the pub anything, but can you explain that she’ll settle up with them tomorrow if so? I’ll meet you outside.”
Thoughts pounded in Freya’s head about the topsy-turvy world of the last few minutes, but she nodded. Right now, getting Carly home was the most important thing. Home to Lily’s flat, she presumed. If Carly and Lily were indeed lovers, it was the obvious place. She went over to the bar and arranged for Carly to settle her tab tomorrow. She mentioned to a couple of Carly’s friends that she and Lily were taking Carly home. Most nodded; no doubt they had seen Carly’s increasing inebriation, if not the fracas with Andy, and drawn their own conclusions. Janie had moved over to talk to Lily, but the conversation seemed short, and when Freya next looked, Janie had disappeared. Good. That was one less drama to deal with.
Carly’s sobs disintegrated into sniffles, and even her curls seemed subdued. Out on the street, the three turned towards Freya’s and Lily’s homes. Carly clutched Lily’s arm with one hand and her other found Freya’s hand. Linked, they walked along. The only sounds were the swelling cicada chorus and Carly’s harsh breathing.
At the shared entranceway to the shops, Freya stopped. “Do you want me to come up for a bit?”
Lily fumbled around in her bag for keys. “Do you have a spare bed?”
The question surprised Freya “No. I have a fold-out futon, but the mattress has lost most of its stuffing. It’s murder to sleep on.”
“I don’t, either.” Lily found her keys and jiggled them from hand to hand. “I’ve a couple of sleeping bags that I could put on the floor. My couch isn’t great for sleeping on.”
“I’m not a parcel to be handed around,” Carly spoke out, too loud in the still night. “If neither of you want me to stay with you, just say so. I’ll go and sleep in the park, or something.” Her voice cracked.
“Don’t be silly, Carly. You can stay with either of us. Your choice. Freya and I are just deciding how to make you comfortable.”
“I can share your bed. Either of you. Both of you together.” She giggled. “Maybe not yours, Frey. It’s only a double. Lily’s got a king; we can share that.”
“Of course you can.” Lily’s words were measured, as if she were picking them carefully. “I just thought that after Andy’s accusations, you might prefer not to share a bed, in case it gave him ammunition.”
“Fuck Andy.” Carly’s mouth turned down and tears leaked from her eyes once again. “Except I’ve done that. Now he’s fucking Kim and I’m fucking nobody.”
“Let’s go upstairs rather than debate this in the street
.” Lily opened the door. “Hang on to the handrail, Carly. The stairs are steep.”
Freya shuffled her feet, feeling as if she had been dismissed. A worm of annoyance twisted. Carly was her friend too; she should be the one caring for her now. She took a deep breath, and pushed down the self-pitying thought. Lily was caring for Carly, that was the main thing.
“Seems like you two are set, then.” She made her voice bright and breezy, “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Carly grabbed her hand. “Come too, Frey. Please.” Her voice was a plea of insecurity. “Andy was a dickhead. I’d really like to talk about it with you.”
“You have Lily—”
“Please? I could do with the advice of both of you right now.” Her deep exhale reeked of defeat. “Oh, and some coffee.”
“I’ll put the kettle on. Come on up, both of you.” Lily’s legs, clad in tight-fitting jeans that made the most of her curves, disappeared up the stairs.
Lily’s flat was a mess. Piles of clothes were everywhere, as if Lily had dumped her laundry, and stacks of books toppled over on the table. Freya caught a glimpse of a title, Exercises to Revitalise Your Sex Life. Her lips thinned; she’d managed to put Lily’s ridiculous idea of yoga for sexual wellbeing out of her mind.
Lily came back from the kitchen. “Sorry about the mess. The books are new stock; I was in the middle of checking them off. Do you both want coffee?”
“Yes, please,” Freya said. If it was going to be a long night, she would need caffeine.
Lily cleared the table and brought out not only the coffee but some sort of slice. It looked delicious. At least she didn’t need to quiz Lily on the ingredients. When they were seated, Lily pushed the sugar over to Carly without her needing to ask.
Freya sipped her coffee. It was not too strong, not too bitter, just the right amount of body. She set her cup down. “You took me by surprise this evening, Carly,” she said. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realise things had got that bad. I didn’t know that you thought Andy was being unfaithful.”
“I suspected for a while. He was always working late, always with an excuse.” Carly spooned three sugars into her mug and stirred hard enough that the liquid dipped into a whirlpool. “He always called me on his mobile to let me know he’d be late. Yet when he called from work in normal hours, he used the office landline to save his mobile credit. If I ever called him at the office on those evenings, the call would go straight to his voicemail and he’d never call back.” Her voice morphed into bitterness. “I turned up unannounced once, after he’d told me he had to work late on some project or the other. The office was in darkness. I sat outside and called the office. It went to voicemail.” Her shoulders slumped, and she picked at the edge of a thumbnail. “I called his mobile. For once, he picked up. I asked where he was, and he said he was at work, and that there were four of them all beavering away, trying to meet a deadline. I was too upset to challenge him on it, so I drove home. He returned three hours later.”
She paused and took a sip of coffee. Tears ran faster from her eyes, and she wiped them away with an impatient hand. “I bought one of those vehicle trackers from the internet and hid it in the boot of his car. I could track it online. Every night he was ‘working late’, his car was parked at the same address. It didn’t take much sleuthing to discover it was where Kim lived.”
“How long has it been going on?” Freya ran a finger around the rim of her mug.
“Six weeks now I’ve known. I didn’t know what to do. I was too ashamed to tell anyone.”
“You could have talked to me.” Freya used her soothing tone of voice, her yoga teacher’s voice.
Carly peered at her through the mess of hair over her face. “I wanted to. But I thought you’d give me that lecture. I know you mean well, Frey, but the last thing I wanted was for you to tell me how you can never trust a man, and that I would be better off without him.”
Carly’s words cut deep. Was she that dogmatic, that insensitive? Would she have pressed her own agenda on a friend in need? Freya shifted in her seat, and examined her thoughts. Sure, that would indeed have been what she would have thought, but she would never have said it. No, it wouldn’t have been the time or the place. But a needle of pain stuck into her chest because what mattered was that Carly believed she would have, and that was why she hadn’t come to her.
She glanced at Lily. “Did you know this?”
Lily took her time before answering. “Some,” she said finally. “Carly came to me after the first sexuality class, just over a week ago.”
“That’s why I signed up for the class.” Carly’s tears had stopped, but her words were punctuated with sniffs. “I thought if I learnt how to be amazing in bed, I might win Andy back.”
Freya bit back her retort: that it was Andy, not Carly, who needed to make amends. She swallowed a too-large mouthful of coffee instead. It scalded her throat.
Was it only then that Lily and Carly had become lovers? That still didn’t add up. Carly was so adamantly straight, and that didn’t gel with her desire to get Andy to return.
Lily was watching her inner battle, and one corner of her mouth lifted in a tip-tilted smile. “Carly and I aren’t lovers,” she said. “Andy jumped to the wrong conclusion. Or maybe he just wanted to shift his guilt.”
“No way.” Carly managed a wobbly grin. “Sorry, Lily, but you’re still the wrong gender for me. I guess Andy misinterpreted something I said.”
Lily squeezed her hand. “You were saying I was spectacular in bed.” Her glance flicked to Freya. “I think you were talking about the sexuality class, but it didn’t sound like that to Andy.”
“Oh.” Carly drew the word out in a long wail of anguish. “I have to explain. I have to find him and tell him—”
“Do you? You accused him of infidelity. It would appear, on the surface, that he is the one who should come to you and not the other way around.” Freya chose her words with care. “You’ve done nothing wrong; Andy is the one who strayed.”
“But he thinks—”
“Does he?” Lily’s voice was a beacon of calm, battered by Carly’s desperate words. “Or is he seizing on what he thinks he heard as a way of deflecting your anger? From what you said, Carly, you have enough circumstantial evidence to suggest he’s having an affair. Enough, certainly, that the onus is on him to tell the truth, not on you to explain a misunderstanding.”
Carly sniffed and clutched her mug with both hands. “He’s having an affair. I’m sure of it. I couldn’t bear to talk about it for ages as it made me sound pathetic, a loser of a woman with no control over her life. But every single time he’s worked late, his car has been at her house, except for one time, when it was outside The Seafood Palace—the expensive restaurant he always told me was too pricey for us.” She set the mug down with a shaky hand and pushed the heels of her hands into her eye sockets. “What should I do? Please, one of you, tell me. You two are the wisest people I know.”
Freya met Lily’s eyes over Carly’s bowed head. She had no idea what was the best thing to say. Her instinct was to put some strength into Carly’s spine and tell her to leave the bastard. Once a cheater, always a cheater. But Carly’s earlier comment made her hesitate. This wasn’t about a set of rules to live by; this was about her friend, who was hurting badly.
“If not for this affair, were you happy with Andy?” Lily spoke to Carly, but her gaze never left Freya’s. “Was he your love, your friend? Did he make you laugh? Did he support you? Did you feel loved?”
“I thought all of those things.” Carly spoke the words to the tabletop. “But I was living a lie. I must have been. I can’t have given him what he wanted.”
“Don’t blame yourself.” Freya hunkered down beside Carly’s chair. “Did he ever voice his discontent before now? How could you fix something you didn’t know was broken?”
“I just want things to be back the way they were. I thought he loved me. I thought we were happy. We’ve been trying for a baby. The bastard. He was going to leave me with a baby and go off with Kim.”
“You can’t know that. You’ll need to talk to him,” Freya continued. “But before you do, you must decide what you want. If you go in without any clear direction, it will be harder.”
Lily nodded. “Sort through the evidence. Are you jumping to the wrong conclusion? Could there be some other explanation?”
Carly shook her head, a miserable, defeated gesture. “I tried. I went through every possible explanation from the simple to the utterly bizarre. He could really be working on a project with her, and working from her house is simply more comfortable. Or she’s a long-lost half-sister he never knew about.” Her laugh held the strained quality of despair. “But none of it makes sense. Why hide something that’s innocent? And, too, if it was innocent, he would have turned up for my birthday drinks on time, not nearly three hours late. Last year he didn’t come home in time to take me out. That probably means this has been going on for years now.”
Freya rested a hand on Carly’s shoulder. “You need to sleep on this. It’s late; we’re all tired. Go to bed.” She glanced at Lily, who gave a slight nod. “Sleep as well as you can; don’t try to decide what to do now. Just try and sleep. Do you remember the breathing exercise that promotes sleep?”
Carly nodded.
“Try that. And in the morning, the three of us will talk again. Okay?”
“I don’t want to sleep alone.” Carly’s eyes filled with tears again. “Please. I’ll just lie awake brooding, thinking of my life alone. Please, stay with me.”
“You’ll be sharing my bed. I’ll find you something to sleep in.” Lily stood and picked up the empty coffee mugs.
Party Wall Page 11
