When We Were Friends

by Tina Seskis

  ‘Weren’t you with her the other night?’ he said. ‘In Hyde Park?’ He wondered if Terry knew anything about any of this – he bet he did, the sneaky little cunt, no wonder he hadn’t been returning his calls.

  ‘Yes,’ said Juliette. ‘But the rest of us had left, it must have happened after.’ The lie came out surprisingly easily, and she was ashamed of herself.

  ‘She was drunk,’ she added, as if an afterthought, and gave a little sob.

  ‘This is fucking awkward for me,’ he said, thinking of the front page he’d been about to push the button on.

  ‘Well, I think it’s a bit more awkward for Siobhan, don’t you?’ his wife said softly, and put down the phone.

  63

  Bristol

  Juliette stood alone in the phone box around the corner from her flat, a piece of paper propped up on the scratched black ledge in front of her. It was the torn-off back of an envelope that she’d received from her bank a couple of weeks earlier, and she had written the phone numbers on the patterned blue side of the paper, not the plain white side, for some reason she couldn’t fathom now. The digits were hard to decipher, blue writing against a blue security pattern, the ink smudged and messy, almost as if she’d wanted not to be able to read it. There were only three numbers in W3, and two in W12. She’d copied out the fourteen others she’d found in the rest of London, just in case.

  Juliette paused before she pressed the last digit of the first number. Should she really be doing this? What would Cynthia say if she knew? She’d be devastated, that’s what, Juliette acknowledged, especially at her daughter doing it behind her back. Why hadn’t she told her at least?

  Juliette stood and watched her breath in the dankness of the booth, little puffs of white going nowhere, just fading into nothingness. She took so long deciding whether or not to punch in the last ‘7’ that eventually the phone must have thought she’d completed her dialling, and the wrong number tone screamed into the thin air like a warning. She clacked the receiver into the cradle, to stop it.

  Why on earth was she doing this? It seemed insane suddenly. She thought of her own mother in Berkshire, kind and well-meaning, but ultimately unconnected to her. She thought of who her real mother might be.

  What harm can it do, Juliette thought in the end. She wouldn’t say who she was. She ran the forefinger of her left hand along the length of the number as she dialled it again. Her nail was thick with over-painting, but there were no actual chips in the bright-pink colour today, just a steep ridge of varnish that ran across the nail a quarter of the way down from the cuticle, where it had grown out from the last time she’d painted it.

  The phone took forever to connect, but eventually those familiar thrum thrums started and Juliette’s heart started to beat faster and louder, and she very nearly hung up but her breath had come up into her mouth so she closed it and it made her feel giddy and fluttery, and she was so distracted that she kept the call going until at last her heart settled down and she almost felt ready to speak, if anyone would ever answer. After twenty or so rings, just as she was about to give up, there was a clatter and a knock and a rustle and a few moments of silence, and then an impatient breathless voice finally said, ‘Hello?’

  Juliette panicked and went to put down the phone, but instead she froze and held the receiver away from her, in limbo, as if it were contaminated, which it was.

  ‘Hello?’ said the voice again, sounding far away, disembodied in the glass box. ‘Who is it?’

  ‘Um, is Elisabeth Potts there?’ said Juliette, putting the receiver back to her ear at last. It reeked of stale saliva.

  ‘No, there’s no-one of that name here,’ said the voice, irritated now. ‘You’ve got the wrong number.’

  ‘Sorry, bye,’ said Juliette, and as she hung up her ears burned red with shame.

  64

  Berkshire

  A few days later, Juliette sat opposite her mother in the sitting room of the house she’d grown up in – Cynthia said it would be better in there, although Juliette hadn’t been quite sure what her mother had meant by ‘better’. Barney was at school and her father was at work and the house felt only half-inhabited, as if ghosts instead of real people lived there. Juliette felt oppressed by the formality of the room today, of sitting across from her mother, perched on the edge of the sofa with a cup and saucer on her lap while Cynthia looked thin and sad in Giles’ armchair. Why couldn’t they sit in the kitchen where the sun streamed in and forced a modicum of jollity into the atmosphere, where the Aga gave the room some warmth, some substance? Juliette felt her heart beating fast in her mouth, and despite the wild erratic thuds it was a vacant, empty feeling somehow, above her tongue, and it wouldn’t go away, even when she sipped her tea.

  ‘What is it, Juliette, dear?’ asked her mother eventually, once it was clear Juliette wasn’t going to start the conversation. ‘Why have you come home like this? Is there something wrong?’ She paused. ‘Is it Stephen?’ she asked, although she knew it wasn’t.

  Juliette looked at her right hand, in its black lace fingerless glove, holding the delicate handle of the teacup clumsily, like a chimpanzee in one of those tea ads. Why couldn’t she just have had a mug? She looked at her mother’s hands, which although small were large-palmed and raw with washing, it must be all the cooking she did; she really ought to use hand cream. She looked past her mother to the window-ledge, full of knick-knacks and photos: of Juliette and Barney on the beach at Salcombe; of Juliette with Popcorn (the latter proudly wearing a blue and white rosette, his head at a jaunty angle, as if he knew he had won); of Giles and Cynthia on their wedding day, the looks in their eyes innocent, from a different era (the only photo of their wedding she’d ever seen, now she came to think of it); of Giles as a boy with his brother and their parents, and this picture was from another even earlier time, another universe – the dour dark clothes, the two boys’ ears jutting out of their brutal haircuts, their parents looking old despite surely being still in their thirties, the grimly startled expressions, fear of the camera she supposed. She wondered why that picture had been framed at all, it wasn’t a good one.

  ‘Juliette,’ said her mother again. ‘What are you thinking about, dear?’

  The question yanked Juliette out of the distant past, back to more recent events, to the furniture-polish smell of Somerset House, the inky curl of the letters, the thickness of the paper, the words. The phone box.

  ‘You know,’ said Juliette finally, but she didn’t say it accusingly, just in a let’s get on with it kind of resigned tone.

  ‘You wanted to know where you’re from,’ said Cynthia. ‘It wasn’t for your course, was it, darling?’

  Juliette shook her head slowly as tiny tears formed just above her eyelashes, and they sparkled like drizzle in sunshine.

  ‘What have you done about it, Juliette?’ said Cynthia. ‘Have you done anything?’

  Juliette put down her tea on the mahogany coffee table and the gentle clink of the fine bone china, of the cup and saucer chattering with each other sounded loud, explosive to them both.

  Juliette stared out of the window, past the eclectic assortment of photos, towards the house across the street, and she saw that the neighbours had a brand-new car – it was red and shiny with a ‘C’ number plate, although she would never normally have noticed, she had little interest in cars.

  Juliette sat silently still. She didn’t know how to broach it, even though she’d come home specially, on a Friday – after her abortive phone search she’d felt like she’d explode with the not-knowing. Cynthia waited resignedly, looking at Juliette’s black-lace hair band and tights and gloves and thinking it all looked a bit over-the-top, how the lace didn’t go with the pink flowery skirt and Aran knit jumper and heavy boots, but she didn’t say anything of course, she didn’t want to hurt her daughter’s feelings.

  ‘Elisabeth Potts,’ Juliette said in the end. ‘Who is Elisabeth Potts?’

  Cynthia tried not to react, but her back stiffen
ed.

  ‘Where did you get that name, Juliette?’

  ‘You know, Mum,’ Juliette said. ‘It’s on my birth certificate.’

  Cynthia looked forlorn then, as if it were game over, although of course really it had only just started. This was the end of the family she’d tried so hard to create. She’d always been aware Juliette would want to know one day, but she felt like she’d failed her daughter somehow. Poor Juliette, she was too young still – she, Cynthia, should have managed it better. It was never meant to be like this.

  ‘Maybe we ought to wait until your father gets home,’ said Cynthia. ‘We should all talk about it together, as a family.’

  ‘NO,’ said Juliette. She looked shocked at herself. ‘I’m sorry, Mum, but I can’t wait any longer.’ And Cynthia saw that she couldn’t, that she was bursting with hope and fear.

  ‘It’s just I know the name,’ said Juliette. ‘I know that I know it, but I can’t think how, or where from.’

  Elisabeth Potts. A name to remember? Juliette sat across the room from her mother, auburn hair glowing, her mind searching forensically over her past life, searching out the time, the place, she had first heard those two words. Elisabeth Potts.

  65

  Belgravia

  Terry Kingston sat sullenly in the fluorescently bright interview room feeling thoroughly resentful. He’d been interviewed for over two hours now, and was fed up with saying the same thing over and over again. He’d known they thought he was dodgy anyway, but at the mention of his client’s name, they had reacted first with disbelief and then with outright hostility, and it seemed to have made it all worse, not better. (The duty solicitor had shifted in his seat and wondered what the hell was going on here, this case he’d been randomly allocated suddenly looked like it might get even more interesting – it wasn’t just dead girls in lakes and dodgy blokes in bushes, now there was a major newspaper editor involved too. This was bloody dynamite!)

  ‘So what you’re telling me is that you are a private investigator and that Stephen Forsyth is your client? The Stephen Forsyth, the newspaper editor?’ The policewoman was openly sneering now.

  ‘Yes, that’s right,’ said Terry, and he felt relieved, now it was out.

  ‘And just what were you doing on his behalf?’

  ‘I was keeping tabs on his wife. He … he thought she was having an affair.’

  ‘And how do you know Mr Forsyth?’

  Terry sighed. ‘I’m his half-brother.’

  The male police officer looked incredulous.

  ‘You?’

  ‘Yes, that’s right.’ A loser like me, Terry said in his head, but of course he didn’t say it out loud.

  The policeman seemed lost for words at this revelation, so the woman took over again. She was black with one of those faces that was plain until she smiled, and then was transformed by her beautiful white teeth, like the sun coming out. She wasn’t smiling now though.

  ‘And so you were in the park spying on Mrs Forsyth, and then what happened?’

  Terry sighed again.

  ‘I wasn’t spying on her, I was being paid to keep her under surveillance.’

  ‘Then what happened, Mr Kingston?’

  ‘I told you, I was bored because it was clear to me that this was just a tedious women’s night out, with them all going on about school admissions policies and salmon recipes and the like, but I couldn’t leave in case Mrs Forsyth was going on to a rendezvous later in the evening, which was possible, I suppose. So I was just sat minding my own business …’

  ‘Hardly,’ said PC Williams, her gleaming teeth firmly under wraps now, and he realised, quite perceptively considering the pressure he was under, that his misogynistic bent wasn’t helping him here.

  Terry tried again. ‘I was waiting for Mrs Forsyth to leave, not really listening to the conversation, and once they’d moved from the Diana fountain I couldn’t really hear the detail of what they were saying anyway – by then I think they’d all been drinking and everyone started arguing (he chose not to bring up some of the words he’d overheard, particularly the ones like rape and murder) and there was lots of screaming and shouting, and then one of them just seemed to totally lose it for some reason and ran off hysterically. The others were all packing up anyway, so they started to leave without her – they were really fed up with her, I suppose, and it was getting late anyway … and … and then … and then there was a splash.’

  ‘Who heard the splash?’

  ‘We all did.’

  ‘How do you know they did?’

  ‘Because one of them said, “What was that splash?” ’ He tried not to sound sarcastic, he knew it would do him no good. ‘And then they all started discussing it, and they were nearer to me now, although they still couldn’t see me, so I heard it all … And one of them said she was sick of her anyway, and … and … and that she could drown for all she cared.’

  ‘Who said that?’

  ‘I don’t know, they all sounded the same.’ (Horsey, posh, drunk, he meant.)

  ‘And then what happened?’

  ‘They started saying they thought it was a bird, but it obviously wasn’t, it was much too loud to be a bird – but the weird thing was that after the splash there was no other sound. No splashing, no struggle, nothing. And then one of them said that if her friend really had gone and drowned herself she’d just say she’d already left and hadn’t heard it, and that she was going home, she’d had enough of all the melodrama. And once she decided to go, they all went, she was obviously the ringleader … and I was about to follow, to keep up with my target … and then … and then I thought I couldn’t just leave … just in case she had fallen in … so I ran and looked but I couldn’t see anything … but the splash was so loud … I couldn’t be sure … and I couldn’t just leave her … and so that’s when I called the police.’

  PC Williams had been doing this job long enough to know when someone was lying. Up until five minutes ago she’d been convinced this shifty little creep had had something to do with it, the way he couldn’t look them in the eye, his evasiveness around their questions. But she’d spotted his resemblance to Stephen Forsyth as soon as his name had been mentioned, knew the part about them being brothers at least might be true – and now the man seemed to have found his voice, become eloquent despite his hesitation, and she just knew that Terry Kingston, pathetic loser, small-time dick, was telling the truth at last.

  66

  Barnes/Battersea, South West London

  Early one hot July morning, a week to the day after the picnic, Natasha had got a grip on the situation at last and was jogging effortlessly across Barnes Common, trying to get hold of Juliette (she was not only super-fit but the queen of multi-tasking). She didn’t want to have to speak to her, although she thought she ought to at least try, and was glad in a way Juliette wouldn’t come to the phone – her cleaner had answered and said she was ‘indisposed’, so perhaps she was having a breakdown. When Natasha couldn’t get hold of Camilla either, on a whim she tried Renée’s mobile.

  Renée sounded thoroughly miserable, which undoubtedly wasn’t helped by having to talk to Natasha.

  ‘Are you all right, Renée?’

  ‘Well, what do you think? This is bloody awful. Poor, poor Siobhan, I still can’t believe it.’ She hesitated. ‘I feel terrible about lying to the police as well.’

  ‘Shush,’ said Natasha, although in actual fact there was no-one to hear either of them. Renée was cooped up alone in her tiny flat, which was the epitome of flea-market kitsch, in the less salubrious part of Battersea, the part where the gangs still roamed and the petrol stations had grilles between the staff and the customers. Natasha was at this precise moment running through a particularly remote part of Barnes Common, swamped by trees with oversized leaves and great herds of cow parsley, that even the dog-walkers rarely reached. ‘That’s why I’m ringing. Have the police called you?’

  ‘No,’ said Renée, wary now. ‘Why should they have? I’ve given my st
atement.’

  ‘Well, they called me,’ said Natasha. ‘And they’ve said that the bloke who called 999 originally, the one they arrested, they’ve said he heard us all talking, and he’s told them we heard the splash.’

  ‘WHAT?’ screamed Renée, and then she started swearing, saying fuck fuck fuck over and over like a mantra, before moving onto panting, virtually hyperventilating, down the phone – and then there was a tremendous crash in Natasha’s ear.

  ‘Renée? Renée? Are you there?’

  ‘Yes, sorry,’ said Renée finally, after much clattering. She seemed slightly calmer now. ‘I dropped my phone. Oh my God, what are we going to do? We’ll be arrested. This is horrendous.’

  ‘No we won’t,’ said Natasha. ‘I’ve looked it up on Google – I went to an Internet cafe, they’ll never be able to trace the search back to me. We haven’t committed a crime as such. As long as we say we heard a splash but that we thought it was just a bird, we’ll be OK. And even if he did hear us say something about her drowning it was obviously a joke.’

  ‘But we’ve already said the opposite,’ said Renée, moving over to the window, staring down at the choking grey of the main road below, crying now. ‘We’ve given our statements, we told the police we didn’t hear anything. We’ll get done for perjury.’

  ‘I’ve looked that up too,’ said Natasha, and she sounded almost pleased with herself. ‘We haven’t perjured ourselves, you can only do that in court. We can just change our police statement, people do it all the time apparently.’

  ‘Really? But … but that makes us look terrible … and surely … even if we don’t get done for that … surely it must be a crime to leave someone to drown? Isn’t it negligence or something?’

  Renée’s obviously spent a lot of time agonising over this, Natasha thought. She hoiked her Lycra shorts out of her bottom as she jumped across a ditch. She should’ve been proactive and looked into it, like I have.