When We Were Friends

by Tina Seskis

  20

  Hyde Park

  Although Juliette and Renée used to be absolute best friends, the nucleus of the group in some ways, things had never been the same since Renée slept with Juliette’s boyfriend in America – none of them had ever quite managed to move on from it, even though Stephen had sworn to Juliette that it had only happened the once, and besides he and Renée had both been paralytic. Juliette had always known that Renée adored male attention, as if it proved how attractive she was, made her a better person somehow, but she couldn’t believe that she’d targeted Stephen. Even now, over twenty years later, Juliette couldn’t bear the thought of the two of them together, of where Stephen’s lips and hands and, well, everything else had been, it was quite revolting, and she’d very nearly not taken him back – she didn’t care that she and Stephen had been on a break at the time, there are some lines you just don’t cross. But perhaps it was for the best that it had happened, Juliette had secretly thought, maybe it was a sign that she should make a fresh start. Stephen had had to get super-inventive to make her come round, and of course he had blamed it all on Renée, describing how she had flung herself at him, and, frankly, in Juliette’s opinion and from the little Sissy had said about it, it was probably true.

  Juliette didn’t know what had happened to Renée. Since America she seemed to have changed so much, lost her self-respect, become almost promiscuous if the truth be told – maybe, Juliette thought sadly, it was some weird response to having been raped by that man she’d been trying to sell encyclopaedias to. It must have been so dreadful, and she couldn’t understand why Renée had never gone to the police, but Renée just seemed to be so ashamed of what had happened, as if it was all her fault, which was ridiculous. It had taken her weeks to even confess to Sissy apparently, and by then, Renée had argued, there was no evidence, only the man’s word against hers. She’d rather just get back to England and forget about it, she’d said, and Sissy hadn’t known how to persuade her otherwise.

  Juliette sighed as she looked down at her drink, and then across at the men tying up the last of the boats on The Serpentine. She still missed Renée, really missed her, even after all these years – they’d been so close once, like sisters even, and somehow them being here tonight in each other’s company, sat together on a patchwork of rugs, not quite touching, unsure how to reach each other again, just made Juliette more lonely than ever. Perhaps if she hadn’t got back with Stephen she and Renée would never have drifted apart, and she wondered whether she might even be happier now, with a proper best friend rather than a husband she’d never loved, not really, not like she should do, she could see that now. Not that she and Renée had actually ever discussed any of it of course, it was all so unspoken it was horrible.

  Renée seemed to sense Juliette’s thoughts, and she turned a little and looked, and Juliette appeared so terribly sad, bereft even, it caused Renée a tiny jolt of anguish, and so she turned back to Sissy and complimented her on her pasta salad, on how it tasted so much better than it looked.

  ‘You cheeky mare,’ said Sissy, and it was nice to see Sissy smiling again, she seemed to have lost all capacity for fun since Nigel had died – and suddenly Juliette was smiling too, and it felt almost like old times for a second, and Renée wondered whether they could ever be real friends again. She was sure in that moment that everyone did still need each other in a way. Perhaps their friendships were worth fighting for after all. Maybe all they had to do was try harder.

  21

  Cleveland

  Immediately afterwards Renée had felt too scared, too ashamed to go to the police. She’d been so shaken and tearful she hadn’t even thought to call at another house, try to get someone to help her – and as people seemed to drive everywhere in Cleveland there had been no-one walking along the streets to notice her state, just a couple of little kids who stared numbly at her, bewildered by her wailing. She hadn’t even known how to get home without the car, and she couldn’t possibly hang around for hours until Sissy was due to pick her up. She couldn’t bear to talk to anyone. She couldn’t think what to do.

  She wanted her mother.

  Renée bent over double, her head reeling, and vomited into the gutter. Then she stood up, wiped her mouth on the front of her T-shirt, and started to walk – her cries quieting as she moved, until her steps were in time with her snivels – not knowing where she was going, whether she was even going in the right direction, what the right direction was. She tramped relentlessly through suburb after suburb of detached family homes with neat front yards and shiny basketball hoops and massive untapped sales potential, jaywalked over six-lane highways, cut across pin-neat malls and the odd green space where no-one played. The day was stinking hot and her throat was rancid, but she couldn’t cope with the thought of doing anything other than moving her feet, one in front of the wretched other, not until she’d got home and showered, had rid herself of the taint of what had happened to her body, of the man’s bulk on her, of the vile stench still in her nostrils. Eventually she reached one of the main highways through Cleveland, and at last she recognised where she was, knew she could get a bus home from here, and when it arrived she slunk on and hid at the back, in the corner, like a scolded dog.

  The house looked empty as Renée approached it – all the windows were shut and there were no cars in the driveway. She thought perversely how it must have been lovely once – large, well proportioned, set in a generous plot, with great expanses of window that instead of letting light in from the outside seemed to absorb darkness now, so that the house felt unloved, dead. As she opened the front door she was relieved that she’d been right about no-one else being home yet, particularly Melissa (who to be fair probably wouldn’t have noticed Renée’s state, would just have moaned about her own day). It was only half past three, and even the students who never knocked at a single door, instead found their own tree to sit under for the day, didn’t risk coming back much before four, in case the area manager turned up on one of his spot visits. Renée went straight up to the shower and scrubbed viciously at herself with the soap, and then she heaved herself to the very top of the house, to the room she shared with Sissy. Although it was stiflingly hot and furniture-free, it was small and homely – Sissy had brought some pictures from England that she’d Blu-tacked up: that black and white one of the French couple kissing and some moody promo posters of Lloyd Cole and Paul Weller, plus a few Monet postcards she’d bought in Paris. Their sleeping bags were laid out neatly side by side where the beds should have been, and Sissy had even rigged up a string across the corner of the room where their few pathetic clothes hung from wire hangers she’d got from the local dry cleaners. Renée wished Sissy were here now, she felt so helpless and alone, and she lay down in her towel on her sleeping bag and sobbed until her chest hurt, and then she found she couldn’t stop, it was as if some long-plugged gash had opened up inside her. She was just so scared, sickened, homesick – but for where? Where was home anyway, now that she’d graduated, now that the safety of three years in Bristol was over? She hated going to her father’s house in Clacton, and she hadn’t seen her mother since that last trip to Paris, when it became clear to them both that Renée couldn’t forgive her mother for choosing her lover over her daughter, and even though she’d been only fourteen at the time there seemed little common ground between them anyway, they were both stuck in different places somewhere between childhood and adulthood, and it had all felt too awkward, fractious. It had been a relief for Simone to put the child back on the plane at Charles de Gaulle, and then the next year it had seemed easier for Renée to say no, she didn’t want to go to Paris this summer, she’d rather go to Cornwall with her cousins, and then after that she hadn’t been asked again. It seemed perverse that it was her mother she pined for now, but maybe that was the way it worked – that when things were really bad only your mother would do, no matter how useless they may have been before then.

  Renée tried to decide how she should handle it. As she lay
on her bedroom floor, her revulsion and hatred grew, but she found it was aimed as much at herself as at him. She knew she should have listened to Larry Johnson, who’d warned her about walking into strangers’ houses, had tried so hard to save her from danger. She should have trusted her own instincts: it had been obvious from the start that last guy was a creep. It was all her fault. She started sobbing again.

  There was a knock at the door. Renée sat up quickly, wiping her eyes on the edge of her sleeping bag. She checked her watch – it was just before four, still a little early for anyone to be back yet. She adjusted her towel as the door edged open.

  ‘Oh. Sorry. Are you OK?’ asked Stephen, retreating a little. ‘I could hear you from downstairs.’

  ‘Oh, God, sorry,’ said Renée. ‘I … I just had a really shit day, that’s all.’

  ‘Oh no, what happened?’ asked Stephen. He hung outside the door as if he didn’t want to intrude, she was half-naked after all, but didn’t want to leave her either. He looked like an anxious little boy somehow, and it was endearing.

  ‘Oh … oh, you know,’ said Renée. ‘Just … just some arsehole customer,’ and she decided in that moment not to tell anyone what had happened, not even Sissy. She knew it was mad, she’d done nothing wrong, but she felt ashamed anyway.

  ‘Look, I was going to have a quick shower and then go for a swim at the lake,’ said Stephen. ‘D’you want to come?’

  Renée didn’t particularly want to spend time with Stephen, he still irritated her, but she needed to get out, she’d go mad if she stayed in this boiling box of a room on her own for much longer, and she had no idea when Sissy would be back – Sissy would soon be driving around the suburb Renée was meant to be working in, looking for her, not realising she was home already, and knowing Sissy she wouldn’t give up for ages, she’d be beside herself. It could be hours before she got home.

  ‘OK,’ Renée said. Maybe a swim would cleanse her, help hose off the revulsion the shower hadn’t reached.

  ‘Good. Looks like you could do with getting out. I won’t be long.’ He disappeared, pulling the door gently closed, and Renée sat there for a while, wondering what she’d just agreed to.

  Stephen had a surprisingly good body. He always looked so beefy in clothes, bulky rather than fat, as though he’d been over-inflated, but in his Speedos his skin was smooth and hairless, his legs well defined, his form nicely triangular, almost as if he was on the way to becoming a body-builder but before the steroids had kicked in. Renée was nearly beginning to see what Juliette saw in him, especially as he’d been so kind since he’d found her crying. Maybe finally she, Juliette’s feisty, kick-ass best friend, wasn’t a threat to him, had shown her sensitive side at last, and on the bus he’d been concerned but not prying, seemingly genuinely interested in how she was, what she had to say for a change.

  Renée felt overly aware of Stephen as she stripped down to her bikini, super-conscious of her body and his body, almost as if her hideous ordeal earlier had heightened rather than diminished her sexuality. She tossed her sundress onto her towel and raced down the beach, feeling self-conscious of her pale exposed flesh, towards the waves that she found hard to fathom were not part of a sea or an ocean but were just a lake, a huge landlocked mass of unsalted water where you couldn’t even begin to see the land on the other side. As she ran across the sand into the water the splashes felt icy against her overheating body, but she didn’t slow down, instead she careered in, as fast as she could, until it was deep enough for her to dive into the waves, and then she put her head down and swam, out away from the shore, breathing hard, doing her schoolgirl front crawl, trying to swim away from the cold, away from herself, from Stephen, away from America.

  Finally she stopped, panting, and turned to look back towards the beach. She was surprised at how far out she was, and although Stephen was now in the water too, he was still close to the shore, watching her.

  ‘Are you OK?’ he yelled, and she shouted back yes, she was fine, although she wasn’t really, not in her head anyway, and as she started to turn back the cramp hit her, hard, as if her left leg were made of wood, she couldn’t move it at all, and then as the pain shot down through her spine she panicked and tried to scream, and as she did so she took a mouthful of water and it tasted disgusting, dieselly, and now she was waving her arms frantically as her head bobbed under the waves, and eventually Stephen seemed to understand and started swimming towards her, but he was taking too long, she couldn’t be that far out, surely, and she took another gulp of filthy water and then another and she really thought she was drowning now, she couldn’t stay up with just her arms, she was tired, the waves were too big, she was sinking, definitely, was this really how it was all going to end, here in this lake after all she’d survived; and then at long, long last there was Stephen, and he grabbed her around the neck and turned her over, and started swimming back to shore, towing her behind him, and she could feel his body hard beneath her even though she was about to pass out, and it seemed to be taking so long, surely it wasn’t that far, and then everything went black for a second until another wave slapped at her, and yet they still weren’t there, it was hopeless, she knew it now – and then finally, finally she could feel the coarseness of the sand grazing against her legs, and her heart felt double its size, pounding outside her chest, and her eyes were glazed and her mind was blank.

  22

  Dagenham, East London

  Terry Kingston emptied the kibble into Humphrey’s bowl, placed it carefully on the floor on top of yesterday’s newspaper (the Independent, 5th July 2011), partially obscuring both poor Milly Dowler’s and Rebekah Brooks’ faces, and told him to sit. The dog obliged, eager, adoring, awaiting further instructions.

  ‘Down,’ said Terry, and Humphrey went to the lino, head between his feet, eyes looking up into Terry’s.

  ‘Go on, then,’ Terry sing-songed at last, and Humphrey lurched to his arthritic feet and padded over to his dinner. His name tag tinkled against the metal of the bowl as he ate, and Terry found the noise strangely soothing.

  ‘Dinner’s nearly ready,’ said Maria, from behind him.

  ‘OK, thanks,’ he replied. He wondered briefly how his wife still had such a strong accent, she’d been in East London longer than she’d ever lived in Italy. He sat down at the oval dining table, which she’d covered with a transparent plastic cloth, so the wood could only peer through pitifully, as if desperate for air. Two faded stripy placemats sat on top of the plastic, the knives and forks laid out haphazardly either side of them.

  ‘This looks nice,’ he said disingenuously, as she put the bowl of gnocchi drowning in an unidentifiable sauce in front of him. He paused. ‘By the way, I won’t need dinner tomorrow night, thanks. I’ll be out.’

  ‘Oh, where?’

  ‘A private job,’ he said.

  Maria didn’t ask more, simply nodded her dark head and started to eat.

  Terry couldn’t think of anything else to say to his wife. He was annoyed with his client, dragging him into such a sordid business, and he didn’t want to tell Maria, implicate her in any way.

  ‘I think I’ll clean out Frank and Dean after dinner,’ he said eventually, as a way of starting conversation.

  ‘Really, Terry, do you have to talk about such things when we are eating?’

  ‘Oh – sorry, love,’ he said.

  Terry Kingston adored his pets, almost certainly more than his wife these days, which was a shame for both of them. His love for his animals extended from Humphrey the spaniel, through Snoopy the cat (unremarkable in all but name), onto the pet rats Maria had been horrified by when he’d brought them home a couple of months earlier. Maria hated animals, thought they were dirty and pointless, and she insisted on Humphrey’s bowl being placed on newspaper that could be thrown away afterwards, he was such a messy eater it was dees-gusting, she said. But she loathed the rats especially – the sight of their pink eyes and whip tails made her stomach turn like a cranked engine, and she banishe
d them to the spare room, the one where the babies had been meant to go, the ones that had never come, even when they’d been trying. Terry debated now if he should get rid of them, for her sake.

  Terry finished his dinner and sat watching his wife. She looked like a little bird, small and delicate, although not pretty exactly, and he wondered again how they’d ended up together. He knew he had a pleasant enough face, but his eyes often looked like they were going to cry, like they might soon be brimming with tears, he suffered terribly from hay fever. Otherwise he was nondescript: average build, average height, mousy wavyish hair, and he prided himself on being the type of person who could meld into the background and just observe, and he found he enjoyed this, it was less stressful than trying to think of things to say.