Your Closest Friend

by Karen Perry

  But Monica’s looking at me funny. She says, ‘Fine,’ in a tight voice.

  It’s only then that I realize I’m smiling – a big stupid grin charting its progress over my face.

  It’s Emerson’s turn to pick the music, so we’re subjected to Michael Bublé while we work, and this makes me think of Connie and that time she took me to the parking lot behind Toys R Us on a Sunday evening and gave me my first driving lesson. Bublé was on the radio singing ‘Come Fly With Me’. Our moms were back at the house, all geared up and excited over some recipe Elaine had found for making toothpaste from scratch, or some other hare-brained scheme to ‘get back to basics’. The two of them were so deep in their enthusiastic ministrations, turning the kitchen into a freaking laboratory, cooking up their potions while knocking back screwdrivers, that they probably didn’t even notice Elaine’s Pinto was gone. My feet just about reaching the pedals, the car lurching across the dusty lot under the orange floodlights towards a row of dumpsters, Connie squealing with laughter as the Pinto shuddered and shuffled like some old drunk relative, her hand over mine squeezing hard down through the gears.

  I look down at my hand now, holding the scoop for the tuna paste, and it’s like I can feel the soft press of her fleshy palm against the back of it. For just a moment, the whole kitchen around me seeps away and there’s nothing, only Connie’s laughter and her hand over mine, and that feeling – like nothing else matters, only this.

  I’m so absent, so lost within my own thoughts, that I don’t see Haqim approach my bench. I don’t register his presence behind me, or feel him reaching to slot the newly washed trays back where they belong on the shelf above my head. The trays are wet and slippery and Haqim is rough and imprecise, so that my jolt back to reality comes as they crash down on top of me. Eight or nine stacked aluminium trays skating off my head and over my shoulders, clattering on the ground about my feet. Even the customers by the windows can hear me screaming.

  ‘You fuck! You stupid fuck!’ I holler, and I can hardly hear myself above the angry hum in my head that has built to a crescendo as I round on Haqim and fling the metal scoop with force at his face.

  It connects with his nose and instantly he bends double, holding his face and bellowing. When he straightens up, there’s blood between his fingers and a fierce look in his eyes, but it’s nothing to the anger that’s inside me. The rage vibrates through me – I am shaking with it.

  ‘You goddamned fucking terrorist!’

  He takes a step towards me and I reach behind and find my knife. And when I hold it out in front of me, I am ready for him. I am full of intent. It’s like something clean and beautiful – a pure thought: I could kill you.

  ‘Amy!’ Monica bellows from across the room. ‘Put that knife down!’

  I don’t look but I can feel her propelled by indignation across the kitchen towards me. Still I hold the knife and Haqim’s hate-filled stare. And just as I’m aware of Monica’s approach, so I can feel the hushed stillness of all the others watching: Emerson and Lucy, Pamela by the coffee machine, the craned necks of customers gaping from the shop floor.

  ‘What the hell are you playing at?’ Monica shrieks, and she makes a grab for my wrist. I’m almost a head taller than her, but she’s fearless and angry, and I let her take the knife. I don’t look at her though, only at Haqim – the whites of his eyes yellowy-brown, like tobacco stains, his eyebrows curling above them – injured pride in his gaze.

  ‘Both of you, upstairs. Now!’

  My heart is beating fast, my stomach all twisted up. Everything is pressing down on me – the too-bright lights reflecting off every goddamned chrome surface in the place, the rows and rows of plastic containers neatly displaying the store’s offerings like some kind of Stepford Wives’ supermarket, how as soon as you leave the store’s anodyne space and enter the Staff Only realm the whole place turns shitty, like they couldn’t give a crap what kind of environment their sandwich-making goons would have to sit in on their breaks – and it makes me so mad, all the anger backing up inside me now, thinking of Neil spending the last few minutes of his life in this shitty place. And I’m especially mad at him because it was his fault we were still there – his fault for taking way too long over cleaning up. If he hadn’t been so fucking dreamy we’d have shut up the shop ten, fifteen minutes earlier and then he’d still be alive.

  I’m thinking of this and I’m so angry because I want to be back thinking about Connie and the times we had in that old Pinto. I want to be thinking about Friday night and Cara reaching out to grab my hand. I know I can’t go up into that staffroom. The certainty of that thought hits me with force. I grab my things from the floor where I dumped them.

  ‘Hey! Where do you think you’re going?’ Monica asks as I push past her.

  I don’t answer, not even to say that I fucking quit. I just take my baseball cap from my head and toss it like a frisbee out over the shop floor. My mom’s voice is in my head again: Fly by the seat of your pants, honey. And, for once, it strikes a chord within me.

  Emerson’s eyes widen with astonishment, but that’s all there is by way of goodbye. It’s enough.

  I sail out on to the street, pulling my jacket tight about me, no regrets. That episode of my life is over. Done with. I have a new purpose now. I push forward, no music in my ears, but happy nonetheless, knowing exactly where I’m going.

  5.

  Cara

  A wind has picked up as I push open the doors, a welcome blast of it hitting me with a rejuvenating force. I should never have agreed to go on air. Foolish of me to allow myself to be pressured into an inherently uncomfortable situation. I’m mad at Victor for pushing me into it – mad at Derek for colluding with Vic. But mainly mad at myself for being vulnerable to them. So when the show is over and they suggest lunch in the Chinese nearby, I bluntly refuse. I need to go and buy a new phone anyway, to replace the one I’ve lost. Little chance of my bag turning up now. There’s a Carphone Warehouse on Tottenham Court Road, and if I hurry, I’ll have time to nip into Marks & Spencer’s afterwards to grab a sandwich for lunch. These thoughts are chasing through my mind as I exit the building and turn the corner, when I feel a hand reach around my upper arm and roughly grab me. The breath catches in my chest as I swirl around and come face to face with Finn.

  ‘Great. So you are alive then. Just checking,’ he says, then dismissively releases my arm and continues on his way up the street.

  For a couple of seconds, I stand there, watching him, the flare of his parka, caught in the wind, flapping around his long legs. I’m shocked by the ferocity in his demeanour. Even the hunch of his square shoulders exudes anger. When I run and catch up with him rounding the corner on to New Cavendish Street, his face is set into a grimace of simmering anger, and he pointedly avoids eye contact with me.

  ‘Wait,’ I urge him. ‘Let me explain.’

  ‘What’s to explain? You don’t owe me anything.’

  ‘Please, slow down. I can’t talk to you like this.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘All injured and furious.’

  ‘I think I have a right to be furious.’

  ‘Oh, come on –’

  He stops suddenly, turning on me. His eyes widen with incredulity.

  ‘You walk away from me on Friday night right into a shit-storm. I have no idea if you are alive or dead. I spent all weekend calling you, messaging you, and nothing. Nada. Not so much as a text message to say you’re okay. I was going out of my mind!’

  He’s looking at me intently, brown eyes ablaze. I have known him for so long now, his face almost as familiar to me as that of my husband. Reddish-brown hair greying at the temples. A mobile mouth that usually suggests humour – although, right now, there’s no mistaking his anger.

  ‘I couldn’t call you –’

  ‘Oh, please. Are you trying to tell me you couldn’t find five minutes to hide in the loo and send me a text without your other half seeing you?’

  ‘It’s not that
–’

  ‘Instead, I have to resort to ringing around hospitals. Do you know, I even went over to your apartment block?’

  ‘You didn’t.’

  ‘There I was on Sunday evening, steeling myself to call up to your flat, just to see if you were alive. I had a little speech all worked out in my head for when your husband answered the door. “Hello there, mate. Sorry to disturb. Just wondering if your wife made it home alive on Friday night? Oh yeah, and I’m the bloke she was sneaking off with. Cheers.” ’

  I’m shocked by the notion. Finn has never been to my home. Up until now, those two parts of my life have remained separate from each other – inviolable.

  ‘I wasn’t sneaking off with you,’ I say, my voice rising with sudden anger. ‘Nothing happened between us.’

  ‘You thought that was nothing?’ He stares at me, then shakes his head in slow disgust, but I can see the hurt in his eyes.

  The strain of the situation is showing in our voices. I can feel how dangerous Finn’s mood is, and suddenly I don’t want to be out on the street with him, having this conversation. People are streaming past on either side of us, hurrying on their lunch breaks. It seems altogether too public.

  ‘Can we go someplace to talk?’ I ask, searching his face for a hint of submission. ‘Please?’

  He doesn’t look at me, fishing for his phone in his pocket, then checking it, as if there is some more important engagement he has overlooked. There’s something petulant and childish about his behaviour, but strangely endearing too. I can feel the want in him battling against his own indignation.

  ‘I owe you an explanation. Please? Let me buy you lunch.’

  He is turning the thought over in his mind, and I feel him beginning to cave, his anger dissipating.

  ‘Alright then,’ he relents.

  We go to a pub around the corner from Wogan House. I’m taking a risk going to a place like this, knowing there’s a possibility that someone from work might be here, might see me with Finn, put two and two together. We’re just two old friends meeting for lunch, I tell myself.

  Whenever anyone asks me what a series producer does, I always answer, ‘We manage egos.’ Whether it’s persuading a researcher, who has just spent three days on the phone with a subject, that their story has to be bumped for something more pressing, or if it’s managing the whims and outlandish needs of some pampered celebrity, my job is to smooth out the wrinkles and persuade the various personalities to cleave to the greater needs of the listeners. It’s something I’m good at, and God knows I’ve been well tested, particularly throughout the years of my relationship with Finn.

  Live radio is the business I’m in, and I can’t think of a better one. The feeling of satisfaction that comes at the end of a good show is something I crave. The spontaneous and responsive nature of it appeals to me, the risks involved in it. For underneath the sensible exterior, there lurks within me a particular kind of adrenalin junkie. It’s not something everyone sees in me – but Finn does. Sometimes it feels as though most of the chances and gambles I have taken in my life have been intimately connected with Finn.

  Take Friday evening, for instance. I had been leaving work, fully intending to get the train home, when my phone buzzed and I looked at the screen and saw Finn’s name flash up and experienced an immediate swoop of feeling in my stomach – fear or excitement, I couldn’t be sure which. It was the first time in years I had heard from him. Instantly my mind went to the date, and knew it couldn’t be a coincidence. When I answered the call, he told me outright that he had been thinking about me and wondering if I was okay. He was in Spitalfields, he said, killing time before meeting some friends later that evening. Did I want to jump on the Tube and whizz over there for a drink? I knew at once that I wanted to, even though there were many good and hard-learned reasons why I shouldn’t. But it was years since I had seen him, years since I had spent time in his company, and I thought to myself: One drink can’t do any harm, surely? So we sat together in the Water Poet on an oxblood-coloured chesterfield, elaborate Venetian masks peering down at us from their places high up on the walls above the bar. We sipped our drinks and talked and it was so easy – so comfortable – as if nothing bad had ever happened between us.

  ‘I’m thinking of selling the house,’ he told me, and despite the fact it was a part of my past, not my present, I still couldn’t help feeling a pang, a sudden regret at the loss of that beautiful house.

  ‘But why?’ I asked, a plaintive note entering my tone.

  He had shrugged and made a face. ‘It’s not right for me any more. It’s never been right. Parsons Green – it’s for families, not for single blokes like me.’

  He had bought the house at a time when he and I were contemplating making our own family, but now that was firmly out of the question, it seemed pointless to linger there, he said. The words held no malice or accusation, more a statement of plain fact. And then the subject changed to less weighty matters, and I felt the alcohol loosening the muscles in my body, easing the clamps of wariness, and when he pointed to my glass and said, ‘Same again?’ I didn’t have to think twice.

  While Finn waited at the bar, I took out my phone and texted Jeff that I was meeting Kamila and would be home later, and then I stuffed my phone deep into my handbag, and tried not to think about my deception. The pub was beginning to fill up now that the offices were emptying, a Friday evening sense of release and possibility with the added excitement of the bank holiday. Finn was coming back to me, a drink in each hand, a broad smile on his face, his eyes locking on mine, and I felt that instant connection between us, still vital, despite the intervening years. It was an old, warm feeling of familiarity – of rightness. And all the time I sat there with him, I wouldn’t allow myself to think about Jeff waiting for me at home. I refused to turn my thoughts to Mabel and the possibility of her disappointment at my absence. We had three rounds before leaving, my legs nicely wobbly as I walked Finn back towards Shoreditch where he had arranged to meet his friends, even though Liverpool Street Station and the train home lay in the opposite direction, just to savour those extra few minutes where I could pretend that we were still young and not embittered, shrugging off any scraps of sense or earned wisdom.

  And now, as Finn slides on to the banquette opposite me in the Horse & Groom, shrugging out of his coat, I can feel again that dangerous tug, the desire to unlearn all I know, to turn back the clock. Underneath, he’s wearing a worn grey shirt that I recognize with a pang as one I gifted to him shortly after we had first arrived in London, almost fifteen years ago. It was back in the early post-student days when a pay cheque seemed like a minor miracle, and lifelong love seemed like an inevitability. I almost comment upon the shirt, but he’s still holding on to his injured air, perusing the menu in silence, so I say nothing. Still, I can sense a softening in him.

  When the girl comes to take our orders, he snaps into his default charming mode, listening attentively as she goes through the specials. I notice how she addresses most of her attention to Finn, and it crosses my mind that maybe she recognizes him, or perhaps a vague suspicion has been aroused that he might be a minor celebrity. It’s been almost ten years since he faded from the limelight of the television screen. As he puts it himself, ‘I’m someone who was someone.’

  The waitress smiles as he gives his order – waitresses always smile at Finn. He exudes a natural warmth and affability, when he’s not radiating antipathy.

  ‘Anything to drink?’ she asks.

  Finn gives a brief but emphatic shake of the head. ‘Not for me, thanks.’

  I’m tempted but refuse, wondering whether his denial was partly for my benefit, showing off his hard-won self-control. It was, after all, his lack of self-control in that department that had eventually killed us.

  She caps her pen and moves away. Finn leans back in his seat and fixes me with a level gaze.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘I couldn’t call you because I had lost my phone.’

  H
e raises an eyebrow sceptically, then says, ‘That sounds like “the dog ate my homework” for an excuse.’

  ‘I know. But it’s true. In fact, I was on my way to pick up a new phone when you accosted me.’ And then I tell him about what happened after I left him on Friday night, how I had strayed into the path of murderers, briefly witnessed their bloody work, before being hauled to safety by a stranger. He listens to my account in silence, impassive. It’s only when I get to the bit about Amy that he nods his head.

  ‘I heard you on the radio,’ he tells me gently, his elbows on the table, looking at me directly in a way that suggests his feelings are softening, anger giving way to concern.

  ‘You were listening to the show?’

  He shrugs, and says, ‘Of course. I always listen to your show.’

  I’m taken aback by this and strangely touched. For over six years we have been living apart, making lives separate from each other. It never occurred to me that he might be tracking the progress of my career from a distance.

  ‘I was surprised to hear you,’ he admits. ‘Isn’t that breaking one of your cardinal rules? Shouldn’t the producer always remain firmly out of the spotlight?’

  ‘I didn’t want to go on air,’ I tell him. ‘It was a mistake. I kind of got coerced into it.’

  He leans forward now. I can see from his expression that his interest is piqued, and it feels as if the restaurant has emptied out, grown quiet around us.

  ‘The girl – Amy – did you know she was going to be part of the interview?’

  ‘No. I had no idea.’

  ‘How did they even find her?’

  ‘She called in, apparently. Heard the show and recognized my voice. It all happened very quickly.’

  ‘Just a coincidence then.’

  ‘Yes. I suppose.’

  His gaze feels a little heavy and I know where he’s going with this. I drink from my glass of water, wishing it was wine.

  ‘That stuff she said at the end – about how you’re safe – what did she mean?’