Gary points at Zelda, who was friends with Sam first I imagine.
The three boys who have lost their fourth man, therefore are no longer a unified quartet, collectively groan, “Rowing at uni.”
“Ah yeah, that’s how he got these shoulders.” I turn and grin at Sam, clutching his shoulders affectionately. “I remember now. He was always dashing off to row.”
Zelda’s staring straight through me as Sam reflects my admiration in equal measure.
“Rowing, too,” Grace says, “still keeps me sane, to this day.”
She does look like she could hold her own. I guess she needs to be fit in every way in a job like hers.
“And how do you know Sam?” I ask Zelda.
She appears, even dare I say, agitated as I hold her gaze. “We once went out.”
“Oh, really.”
She flaps her hand about, as if it was nothing. “It was hysterical, really. Just a drunken fling at uni. It was only two weeks…”
…and yet she’s stuck around until now.
“…I’ve felt a responsibility to stick around ever since, to make sure he doesn’t get himself into trouble, or anything. Right, boys?” She makes a point of getting the agreement of the rowing trio on this. They lift their eyes from their close-knit conversation, sort of shrugging, as if they couldn’t care less about Zelda. Clearly, she’s a hanger-on. Maybe her and Grace were friends and then Zelda ended up tagging along with the rowing crew.
Isn’t it strange how we get ourselves involved with certain people in life? Sam could have made friends with a bunch of people from uni, such as the various reprobates we met on our course, and yet he’s remained friends with these rowers, who have all apparently stayed in the local area. Including Zelda.
I place my hand on his thigh under the table and squeeze. Then I lean over and whisper in his hear, “Later, my treasure. Later.”
He colours just with my words and I am happy to admit, I’m enjoying every single second of Zelda’s squirming. I feel incredibly territorial around Sam, when I never did with Gage. Strange.
All I’m really glad of right now is that Sam remained friends with me – for all the right reasons.
A FEW HOURS later, we find ourselves in a new, rowdier bar. I’m stood with Sam, who’s still on water. He has his hand resting lightly on my shoulder. I’m ready to go home and Sam knows it, but we’re staying for a drink to be polite. When he leaves my side to head to the bathroom, Hugo sidles up next to me and asks, “So, how did you do it, then?”
“Do what?”
“Tie him down.”
I laugh in his face, making him chuckle. Hugo actually reminds me a lot of Gage, who was dark too. However, Hugo has the softer look of a man in the arts, whereas Gage was all brute, no part of his soul philosophical in the slightest.
“I haven’t tied him down yet, but there’s an idea for later.”
He nods along, impressed. “I see why he likes you. You’re clever and witty, not to mention pretty.”
“Yes. So, why aren’t you convinced?”
“Just know what he’s like, that’s all.”
“People change.”
“Sam won’t change.”
“That’s for me to worry about. Anyway, when are you going to finally tell Grace you like her?”
Hugo’s mouth goes dry. He tries but fails to lick his dry lips. “What?”
“I can see through you like I can see through everyone, including Sam. You let me worry about his soul. I’ve got it in the palm of my hand.”
Hugo purses his lips. “Do you think she knows?”
“Not a clue.”
“What do I do?”
“You go over there right now and bloody walk her out of the door, take her somewhere where there’s no alcohol.” He appears equally amused and scared. “I know! Take her for ice cream at that posh place down the road and just ask her to talk about how she feels. Then invite her back to yours for tea or coffee and ask if you can kiss her. It’s bloody simple, Hugo.”
“It’s not bloody simple. What if she doesn’t like me?”
I grab him by his collar and shake him. “What if she does?”
Hugo gulps, but without telling Si or Alan what he’s doing, he leaves our group and pulls Grace to one side, tearing her away from some scintillating conversation with Zelda near the bar. Zelda looks annoyed when Grace and Hugo leave together. I think she was just ranting on at Grace about something. I wonder what…
Anyway, Hugo looks at me over his shoulder and nods his head in thanks. Grace looks pleased to have escaped Zelda, whose boyfriend Gary ditched us ages ago to go home and play Fallout 4. It suddenly dawns on me Alan and Si are together when I see Alan’s hand resting surreptitiously inside the back pocket of Si’s jeans. So, when Sam said to beware of all three of his mates… he didn’t mean like that… he meant for me to beware of what they might tell me about Sam.
Sam returns from the loo and re-joins us. We huddle around a tall circular table, standing up.
“Where’s Hugo?” he asks.
“He took Grace for ice cream,” I tell Sam, who smiles, impressed by my wiles. We share a knowing look. He knew Hugo had the hots for her, too.
“We’re gonna head off. Got a big project coming up,” Alan says.
“Yeah, and I have to hear all about it, all the bloody time,” replies Si.
Over dinner I learnt that Alan is two or three years older than the rest of the gang. He’d come back to university as a post-graduate, a few years after graduating, to get his MA in geography. He’s now working for the council in their planning office, or something. Si meanwhile is a musician who travels all around the country playing as a violinist for various orchestras. He also does violin lessons on the side. His degree was in psychology. I guess what degree you do doesn’t always determine your path. Look at Hetty. She studied social work and is now designing dresses.
“Lovely to meet you,” I tell the pair, and they shake hands with Sam before leaving.
Sam I stare at one another across the table. “Nearly ready to go?” he asks.
“Yeah, just going to drink the rest of this.” I hold up my gin and tonic. I’m savouring it. Hugo is a poet, but during the day he’s a consultant of some sort, so he’s very rich and this was top-shelf gin he got me when he bought the last round.
We’re giving each other the eye and he’s urging me to hurry up and drink my gin, when Zelda suddenly arrives at the side of our table. I’d almost forgotten she was still here.
It becomes clear she’s horribly drunk. She’s swaying and sort of knows she’s not welcome, but isn’t leaving either.
There’s an awkward period of about two minutes when she just stands beside us, swaying, sipping her drink through a straw. Never a good look.
I down my drink and Sam announces, “So, we’ll see you, then?”
“What? Going? Oh no, stay, stay!” she insists, grabbing his hand and trying to steal him, or something. “Come on, stay for one more.”
“I’ve got to get Liza home.”
She rolls her eyes and I give him a look, trying to warn him she’s going to kick off if we’re not careful.
“Liza,” she says, in an annoyed tone of voice. “Liza comes along and that’s it, right? I’ve been waiting years and what… no. I’m not good enough.”
Sam’s jaw clenches and his nostrils flare. “We’ve been through this. It was two weeks. Five years ago. You’ve got Gary now.”
She throws her head back laughing and I almost swipe my hand out to throat-punch her. Thankfully, Sam grabs me by the hand and says, “Let’s just go. She won’t even remember this tomorrow.”
We’re heading out of the bar, nearly at the exit, when I feel a hand on my shoulder. I turn around wondering what it is she thinks she’s doing, when I see Marvin staring at me instead.
“Oh… Marvin.”
“I thought it was you. Who’s this?” He gives Sam a good, long look.
“This is Sam, an old, old friend o
f mine. We’ve just been having dinner with friends at Sleepers and are now heading home.”
He interprets me correctly, because his eyes fall to the floor. “Good for you, Liz,” he says, but with an edge of sadness.
“How’s everything?” I ask.
Sam remains behind me, his hand tight on my shoulder. He must recognise Marvin, perhaps. Most of the rugby players are recognisable around here.
“Okay,” he tells me. “Everything’s okay.”
“Good. I’ll see you, then. Say hi to the team for me, and your mum. Okay?”
“Sure, Liz. You look good. I’m glad.”
“Thank you, Marv.” I lean in for a hug and he squeezes me hard.
I leave his hold and we’re just about to leave the bar finally when I spot Zelda at the other side, still just swaying with a drink in her hand. She doesn’t even know we’re still here.
“You might wanna put that drunk bitch in a taxi,” I tell one of the bouncers as we’re leaving, and he nods, telling me, “Already spotted that drunk bitch. If only she was the only one.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
AS SOON AS WE CROSS the threshold of my house, I kick off my shoes in the hallway and ask Sam, “Hard or soft drink? You decide.”
“Liquor, immediately. Just gonna take a slash. Been drinking water like a fish tonight. Definitely not good for me.”
I laugh heartily as he enters the downstairs loo, situated just beneath the staircase.
I can’t remember what we’ve actually got in. When I check the drinks cupboard, I discover there’s tiny bit of navy rum left and a little brandy from last Christmas. I have a couple of bottles of red wine on the sideboard that Hetty and Joe left here, so I start opening one of those.
“Here, let me,” he says, sneaking up behind me.
I move to the glassware cabinet and take out two red wine glasses.
“You took your rings off,” he states, while he’s still grappling with the cork. An actual cork. Not a screwcap. I guess Het and Joe like decent wine.
“It was time.”
“Nothing to do with meeting my friends tonight?”
“Might have been.” He turns and pours wine into the glasses, focusing on what he’s doing. I stare at his profile while he pours, wondering if that’s why he became so upset earlier on tonight. “There’s no liquor of interest in the cupboard. I drank the gin and Gage left nothing decent in there. I guess that proves his level of drinking. I nearly always kept a bottle of scotch for when people come round and want a nip at the end of an evening.”
Something passes over Sam’s face. I don’t know what it is, but I let it go. It’s either annoyance or impatience, one of the two.
“Was that Marvin Sinclair we saw tonight?” he asks.
“Gage’s best mate, yeah.”
“Ah, his best mate.”
I search his eyes. “Why do you say it like that? Best mate,” I mimic him, because it sounds like he believes Marvin isn’t as decent as he would have us all believe. “Marvin is the only decent friend Gage ever had.”
“Well, I believe that,” he says, before taking a seat at the kitchen table.
I raid my kitchen drawer for candles and set some out around the room. It’s more my junk drawer actually and while I’m rummaging around, I also find an old draughts set.
I plonk myself opposite him at the table and set up the draughts. I reach behind me to dim the lights and we’ve got ourselves the perfect dim-set scene for a post-mortem on what transpired tonight.
Gathering my hair over one shoulder, I pull my legs underneath me at the table and warn, “I’m very competitive.”
“Really?”
“You’ve been warned.”
As the game gets underway – me with my white counters, him with his black – he continues his earlier pondering…
“Was Marvin at the funeral?”
“I don’t know…” I try to focus on the counters, but I end up just playing any moves. “I can’t remember anything of that day… except arguing with my mother and feeling an enormous sense of fatigue and loneliness. Why do you ask?”
“I feel like he may have had something to do with Gage’s demise.”
My head jerks upwards and I pin my eyes on his. “What?”
“Just a feeling, baby. Don’t take it literally… I feel he may not have been as good a friend as you perhaps perceive.”
“You’ve concluded this from just one brief meeting tonight? And don’t think I didn’t notice. You two didn’t shake hands.” I avoid his eyes when I say this, and I also make another ill-judged move on the draughts board in front of me.
Sam collects six of my counters in one fell swoop, trying not to smile as he considers a comeback.
“I think best friends keep each other’s secrets, that’s what I think. I also saw the worry in his eyes when he spotted us together.”
“Worry, or sadness?” I challenge, collecting four of his draughts – but still losing.
“Worry.”
“Marvin is a salt-of-the-earth type, trust me,” I insist passionately. “In fact, if it wasn’t for him, I don’t know if Gage would’ve got on the team. He probably would’ve become a bricklayer if it wasn’t for Marvin.”
Sam wins the game, of course, but I set out the counters for another match. Sam pours more wine and I catch his eye across the table. He looks happy to be at the table, surrounded by candlelight, just hashing this out.
I can tell the tide’s turning even before he says, “So, what did you think of everyone?”
I take a sip of wine and make my first move on the board. “Your friends, you mean?”
“Yes.”
“Can I just ask… are they your only friends?”
“Erm, no.”
“But they are your sort of local go-to social circle?”
“I have other friends. Yes. They are my local crew, I suppose.”
“You’ll have to forgive me, but it seemed like they’re not your… best friends?”
Sam purses his lips and makes a bad move. I feel a win is on the cards this time, now the tables have turned.
“No.”
“Ah.”
“What did you think of Hugo?” he asks.
“I liked him. And Grace. I think they’ll make a good pair. They both seem sort of dark humoured, which I like. I didn’t get chance to talk to Si and Alan much. They seemed ensconced in one another.”
“Yeah.” He makes another move, but it gives me the opportunity to leap over a number of his pieces and take them. Sam continues, “It was quite sweet with those two for a while. Will they, won’t they type of thing. Now they’re inseparable, when they’re together anyway.”
“That’s nice, don’t you think?”
“They’re lucky; they live for one another,” he gushes.
“It’s good. They seem like nice people.”
“Yeah.”
“And Zelda? Something tells me that tonight was about getting her off your back.”
He loses the game, dignified in defeat before pouring more wine. “You see right through me.”
“Is she always bugging you? Texts? Emails? Stuff like that.”
He picks up his phone. “Let’s check.”
He searches his apps and then says, “Ah, yeah, here we go…”
Sam passes me his phone and I read what’s on the screen.
Sam, I’m prepared to forgive you for tonight, but I’m awaiting your apology. Zelda.
My eyebrows discover a new angle of expression. “Oh, goodness.”
“I would understand if I had ever given her hope, but I haven’t. I really haven’t.”
“But she’s got Gary?” I exclaim, deadpan.
We both laugh the house down. Bland Gary who said nothing all night but ate double the amount everyone else did and with his mouth open the whole time.
I scroll through his message thread with her. There are numerous one-sided texts, some of them joking about his absence from Friday night drinks (when
he was probably comforting me as I was grieving). She states that he must have found a place to put his cock again. That’s a lovely way to speak about a member of your fellow sex.
“You need to delete her and never see her again. It’s unhealthy, Sam. You must do this.”
“Keep scrolling,” he encourages me.
I scroll through mountains of strange, random outbursts of phrases like, you know how good we were together… promise me when you settle down, it’ll be me. Then I arrive at the sad stuff: I want to cut myself again. Please Sam, help. I can’t stop myself. Please. Her texts are accompanied by photos of cuts and bruises along her arms and legs.
“These aren’t her arms and legs, Sam.”
“What? You don’t know that.”
“I have a photographic memory. I noticed tonight she has an unusual amount of moles all over her skin, with her being dark and all. There are no moles in these pictures. She’s taken them off the internet. You must delete her, I insist. Promise me.”
Sam looks shocked, taking the phone off me to look twice at the pictures. “Do people actually do this?”
“Some people will do whatever it takes to get what they want.”
“Why?”
“Because they have no faith.”
“No faith?” he questions, still aghast at all of this – and probably feeling like a bit of a fool.
I take a sip of wine before explaining, “People with no belief in anything spiritual or any sort of higher existence, such as the importance of being somehow integral to a grander scheme of things – they live with no purpose except to achieve the things they want and covet – the material in the here and now. They don’t fear their actions coming back to haunt them because all they fear is not getting what they want. They have no faith that being greater than their own limitations is what matters most of all, and that by living in a companionable, amenable way, you attract everything you need and want without the need for underhanded tactics or controlling behaviour, as exhibited by our Zelda here. I associate her with having no faith in anyone or anything, otherwise why else would she do something like this? All people like Zelda know is what she wants, not what she needs. And in reality, she needs to get rid of Gary and move on.”
Guilt Page 24
