When We Were Friends

by Tina Seskis

  Terry sometimes wondered whether Maria was as dissatisfied as he was these days, but she always seemed happy enough, and so he never dared broach it, risk having to talk about his feelings. What he did know annoyed her though was his increasing interest in miniature wargaming, the hours and hours he spent painting the figures, and he dreaded breaking it to her that he wanted to go to another convention in Nottingham next weekend. But, he reasoned, she seemed to be pretty busy herself with the choir these days, so hopefully she’d be all right about it. He just needed to pick his moment to ask her.

  23

  Hyde Park

  The skies had darkened over Hyde Park and the picnickers were well on the way to drunkenness now, a most dangerous destination for this particular combination of women. Sissy had tried not to have too much Prosecco at first, having never been much of a drinker, but Renée kept insisting on filling up her glass, and what with all the tension she had eventually stopped objecting. She was relieved nothing serious had kicked off between anyone, although as the evening continued it was an increasing possibility, with Siobhan in particular threatening to cross into danger zones – she’d kept moaning on about her boyfriend Matt, how he would never commit, and how the others were so lucky to have husbands, and then she’d said, ‘Oh, sorry, Sissy,’ and Sissy could have throttled her. Natasha seemed pretty uptight too, which was unlike her, normally everything was totally marvellous in her world, but she seemed to have the hump with both Juliette and Renée for some reason. And of course Juliette and Renée didn’t get on and hadn’t for years, so there was that to deal with too. Only Camilla was behaving normally, now she’d got over the presence of shop-bought scotch eggs and the absence of sufficient picnic chairs. Honestly, thought Sissy, this is the last time we should do this, it’s just too stressful – we’ve got to stop living in the past, we’ve all got our own lives now. She looked out towards The Serpentine and wondered idly whether it was a river or a lake, and what it was like to swim in. She knew people did but it looked dirty to her, unappealing.

  ‘Sissy,’ said Natasha, obviously not for the first time; her tone was the one Sissy took with her own children the fourth time of asking. ‘Would you like some cheesecake?’

  ‘Oh, sorry, Natasha, no thanks, I’m fine,’ said Sissy. ‘I’m going to have to think about going soon, I’ve got an early start tomorrow.’

  ‘Oh, come on, Sissy,’ said Siobhan, helping herself to another of her profiteroles. ‘Why don’t you just let your hair down for a change? You’ve got to start enjoying yourself again. It would do you good.’

  ‘Siobhan, shush,’ replied Renée. ‘Don’t be so bloody insensitive.’

  ‘Yeah, well, we can’t all pussy-foot round her for ever, it’s not good for her. And at least she’s had a husband,’ said Siobhan, and she’d obviously had far too much wine now, and not just down her trousers. ‘No-one’s ever wanted to marry me.’

  Everyone was silent for a moment, stunned.

  ‘Well, I’m not surprised with that attitude,’ said Renée in the end. ‘You are quite possibly the most selfish person I know.’

  ‘I hardly think so,’ said Siobhan, and her tone was more sober suddenly. ‘I think we all know Juliette’s married to the person who wins that prize.’

  ‘Siobhan, shut up,’ said Natasha. Her tone brightened, like the school nurse with a sickly child. ‘Now, who’s going to have this last piece of cheesecake? It’s a shame to waste it.’

  ‘Yeah, well, Sissy would still have a husband if it wasn’t for Stephen, wouldn’t she?’ said Siobhan, as though Natasha hadn’t spoken, and as she said it she tried to stop herself but her mouth wouldn’t cooperate, and she knew she really had gone too far this time.

  There were at least three involuntary intakes of breath, and then there seemed to be no breathing at all, and nobody said anything for long empty seconds that even the irrepressible Michael Bublé failed to fill. Sissy downed the rest of her glass in one, and then she stared out at the water again, and it lay still, seemingly breathless too, and she wondered whether everything was slowly dying in her world, and she tried to work out what would be the quickest way to get home, so she could pay off the babysitter and go straight upstairs and hide under her duvet, and never come out again.

  24

  Cleveland

  Renée lay on the beach and belched a great flood of lake water into the sand. Stephen was just clambering off her, and she was dimly aware that he had saved her life. She lay still, her breathing shallow and irregular, as she heard other voices now – American, loud, concerned – saying they were going to call an ambulance.

  ‘No, no, I’m OK,’ she mumbled. ‘I’m fine, I don’t need one.’ And she tried to sit up and found that she could, in fact she felt surprisingly normal, just a little giddy perhaps.

  ‘Well, let’s get you inside and fetch you a drink, and see how you are then,’ said one of the voices, and she looked up to see that it belonged to a man with a fierce-looking face, like a wrestler’s, and he had long, straggly hair untamed by a baseball cap. He was wearing huge hitched-up jeans and an open shirt, and a gold medallion shone through the hair on his chest, like treasure.

  Stephen and the stranger helped Renée up and wrapped her in a towel – even though it was still so hot she felt shivery, which must have been shock, she supposed. A little, sinewy woman in a tiny skirt and cut-off top, with deeply brown tattooed skin, as if she were wearing her hurt on the outside, quietly gathered up the rest of their belongings. Stephen held Renée under one arm whilst the burly man took the other and, as she was propelled between them, she felt like she was floating now, not drowning any more. They walked her one block back from the beach, helped her up some concrete steps and into a big empty bar that looked out over the tops of buildings and the main lakeshore road, towards the drabness of the water. They sat her on a vinyl bench seat, but she was still so cold and shaky that someone turned the air conditioning off and Stephen gave her his T-shirt, which she put on over her bikini, keeping the towel wrapped around her like a skirt. A drink got shoved into her hand, and when she took a sip the liquid was warmly brown and strong-tasting, and instantly the blood in her veins felt a little livelier, as if it were being chased around her body rather than creeping reluctantly.

  ‘Stephen, I’m so sorry,’ she said, as he came back from the restrooms, involuntarily half-naked still, towel draped over his brawny shoulders. ‘I don’t know what happened, I just got such excruciating cramp I must have panicked.’

  ‘That’s all right, you don’t need to apologise. I’m just relieved I wasn’t towing a corpse. I honestly thought you were about to die on me.’ He smiled, looking young and nervous, his mid-brown hair beginning to curl at the ends where it was drying, and she thought again that she must have misjudged him. She was still aware of him in a way that she recognised with a shock as maybe the reason why she hadn’t liked him much before, and she pushed that thought aside. After all, he was her best friend’s boyfriend – they might be on a break but she was sure Juliette would have him back, once they were both home; and she was also sure he would go back, he adored Juliette, who didn’t? And why the hell was she even thinking like this after what had happened just a few hours earlier with the stranger in his kitchen? Renée shivered again and took another swig of her drink, a larger one this time, as she tried to process the events of this unimaginable day, tried to work out precisely what impact they had had on her, what she should do. When finally the solution came to her she couldn’t believe she hadn’t done it. Of course! She needed to go to the police – that’s what she should have done in the first place, as soon as it had happened.

  Why hadn’t she gone to the police?

  She stood up, ignoring Stephen’s protestations to take it easy, and walked unsteadily to the bathroom where she gazed at herself in the mirror, shaking with cold, or perhaps fear. Her mind was racing. There would be no evidence now, only the faintest of marks on the left side of her neck – it would be his word against h
ers, and she’d already sussed what the local police thought of booksellers, she’d been moved on enough times, despite having her licence. They probably wouldn’t believe her, and even if they did it could just prolong the ordeal – they might want to keep her there, for the court case or something, she might even have to miss her flight home. No, there was no way she was going to risk that.

  Renée continued to stare in the mirror, barely recognising herself, hardly believing she was here. She had escaped death twice in one day. She was lucky to be alive. Surely that was enough? She washed her hands again, holding them for ages under the dryer, and then she made her way unsteadily back to the bar, just as Stephen was coming to check that she was all right.

  25

  Soho

  The restaurant was small, charming and candle-lit, the perfect backdrop to the start of an affair. Natasha’s husband looked across the table at his companion’s lips, as red and vital as newly spilt blood, even in the half-light, and decided she’d looked better before she’d excused herself and gone to the bathroom to apply it – she was well into her forties now and it didn’t suit her, aged her even. It didn’t matter though – he found he didn’t really care what she looked like, or what they ate, or what they spoke about, he just wanted to get her back to his hotel and fuck her senseless. It was quite extraordinary really – that he should be at this table with one of his wife’s oldest friends, that she should have been the one to take the first step with him, and he wondered how much the chronic lack of sex in his marriage showed through, in the starvation in his eyes. She must have guessed about that, he was sure Natasha wouldn’t have spoken about it to anyone, Natasha was too proud, she wore her life like a trophy – look at me, look how far I’ve come, with my two adorable children, my brilliant career, my handsome novelist husband, my detached house in Barnes, my sub-45 minute 10k runs. Life was just wonderful as far as Natasha was concerned, she would never admit otherwise. Alistair often wondered when he’d first regretted marrying her, and he thought it may have been even before the wedding, once the sex had started to dwindle – around the time the preparations had been fully cranked up: Invite List A minus four months from the Big Day, Invite List B (finalised and mailed minus two months according to acceptees from Invite List A), separate spreadsheets for hotels, menus, flowers, thank-you gifts, transport. She’d made them have weekly meetings, with an agenda and everything, to discuss it. And then immediately afterwards there’d been the baby-making to be getting on with: no more wild abandon, no letting nature take its course, just those offensive ovulation sticks from the get-go, dictating their appointments with passion, purely so she could have autumn or, at worst, December babies – they had so much better an outcome in life, she’d read somewhere. The biggest bang he’d had on his Mauritian honeymoon was on Day Eight, exactly when Natasha would be ovulating, and she’d made him endure abstention for three whole days beforehand to ensure his sperm was top-notch for the conception. He’d nearly bloody exploded. He’d always known she was competitive, and it had served him well in many ways, but he’d preferred her when they’d first met, when she’d channelled it into who could have the most orgasms (her) and finding him an agent – she’d been unstoppable at both in the early days.

  ‘I think I might have the sea bass,’ his wife’s friend was saying. ‘What about you?’

  ‘Um, yeah, sounds good,’ Alistair said, and his nostrils filled with fishy smells and his mind crawled with visions of her with her legs apart and him going down there for the first time, like an explorer, and he forced himself back to the little restaurant behind Carnaby Street and told himself, ‘Just a couple more hours,’ and as he looked at her he thought he might even blow right there with the agony of it all – so he tried to think of something else, recalled his wife bossing the nanny around this morning, going on about the importance of a nutritionally balanced packed lunch, and that settled him down again.

  Natasha’s friend shifted in her seat and looked shyly down into her wine glass, as if the answer to something lay there. ‘So were you surprised when I texted you?’ she said. ‘I do hope you didn’t mind, I just really needed someone to talk to about … about …’ She trailed off.

  Alistair thought then that maybe he’d got it wrong, maybe she simply wanted him as a friend, wanted some advice, about writing perhaps. Maybe he’d imagined she wanted the same thing as him, had imagined that she too was after dirty, messy, uninhibited sex with a nice smear of guilt to top it off. He started to feel insanely edgy, like he really needed to get this over with, one way or the other.

  ‘Um, well, of course not. Though I was a little surprised,’ he managed. He wondered then, for the first time, as if a revelation, why he had never thought to be unfaithful to his wife before. It would have solved so many problems (and inevitably caused a few others, but he wasn’t concerned about those at this precise moment). He must have just got caught up in the frustration of it all, and of course there was the Internet these days and his almost obsessive level of wanking which meant he did it at least three times in the en suite on a bad day. But surely that was better than cheating on her, he’d always thought, not even consciously really – and then he’d got THAT text and it had given him ideas, but maybe he’d misinterpreted it; and now he was stuck here feeling unsure, and he didn’t want to sit and eat dinner or chat about anything, large or small, he just wanted to go and fucking finish himself off if she wasn’t going to go through with it. Maybe he had some kind of a problem, a little voice whispered, and he looked up desolately, and as he did so she took a sip from her glass, seductively, and her lipstick smeared bawdily, and she reached her foot under the table and rubbed it against his ankle, and as she smiled at him with her smudgy crimson mouth he felt relief gush over him like he’d already ejaculated. ‘Shall we go?’ he asked urgently, and although she looked surprised she acquiesced and there was no more messing about, thank God, and since then he’d got laid at least once a week, and he thought it was doing them both good.

  Less than half an hour after leaving the restaurant, Natasha’s friend lay on her back next to Alistair and wondered just what she’d done. She felt wracked with guilt, but more because of Natasha than anyone else. What on earth was she doing sleeping with her friend’s husband, no matter how miserable her own circumstances? What had happened to female solidarity? It didn’t help that Alistair had proven something of a disappointment anyway – it had been over so quickly for a start. She’d initially hoped he would talk to her about writing, give her some advice, but he hadn’t seemed interested, not at all; in fact he hadn’t even wanted to stay in the restaurant for long enough to eat, and she felt cheapened now.

  Just as she was about to get up, get dressed, try to get the hell out of there, Alistair turned over in the bed and opened his eyes, and as she stared at him, as if he were a stranger rather than someone she’d known for years, he grabbed at her again (his recovery time was miraculous, she had to hand it to him), and this time it was slower, quite nice even, and he was handsome, a famous writer, and it did seem to help heal the aching loneliness in her heart – so somehow she agreed to see him on a second occasion, and before she knew it they were meeting every Wednesday, and she dreaded the next time she’d have to see Natasha.

  26

  Cleveland

  Stephen and Renée found themselves getting on better, even becoming friends, after he’d saved her life. They often found themselves seated next to each other at breakfast, it just seemed to happen that way, and the others began to notice, and Melissa even said something once in her normal tactless way, but Renée told her not to be so ridiculous. Sissy seemed anxious about it too, as though she could sense the trouble to come, and Renée privately thought that Sissy was worrying about Nigel, scared that he might meet some nice bronzed girl in Australia. And anyway, Renée knew Stephen was off-limits, plus she didn’t even fancy him, he wasn’t her type at all. She just got on well with him these days, and what was wrong with that?

  The waitr
ess stood patiently in her short brown tunic, beige frilly apron tied neatly, white bobby socks and sneakers over American Tan tights, grey permed hair tucked tidily into her matching cap, waiting for Melissa to order. Melissa’s performance had become something of a ritual they all bizarrely enjoyed, in their own ways.

  ‘Have you got muesli?’ asked Melissa, studying the menu, which was large and laminated.

  ‘No, ma’am, we have Corn Flakes or Rice Krispies.’

  ‘Ohhhhh, I wanted muesli,’ said Melissa. ‘I wish you had muesli,’ and she said it sulkily, as if the diner not having muesli was a personal slight on her.

  ‘I’m sorry, ma’am, that’s all we have. What would you like?’

  Melissa couldn’t help herself. ‘I’d like muesli,’ she said.

  ‘Just shut up, Melissa,’ said Renée mildly. My God, she’s even worse than Siobhan, she thought. ‘Do we have to go through this every single day? Just pick something else.’ She turned to the waitress. ‘I’m sorry about her. I’ll have two eggs over-easy please, and some coffee.’

  ‘Same for me,’ said Stephen, and everyone else ordered whilst Melissa slumped moodily in her seat. Finally the waitress turned back to her.

  ‘Have you decided yet, ma’am?’ she said.

  ‘I suppose I’ll have to have Corn Flakes,’ said Melissa, with a harrumph. ‘If you haven’t got muesli. And tea please, but not with the teabag left on the side of the cup, in a pot so that the water’s boiling, like it should be.’

  ‘I’ll see what I can do, ma’am,’ said the waitress and whisked the menus away. Renée rolled her eyes at Stephen, and she wasn’t sure if she imagined it but he seemed to press his knee against hers, under the table.