Your Closest Friend

by Karen Perry

  He crossed the room and sank on to the couch and, for a moment, there was only silence. But when he looked up at me and said my name, I knew. The restaurant, our friends, my silk dress, all of it gone.

  ‘We will do it,’ he assured me. ‘But not yet. Not until she’s ready.’

  There are certain things that are understood when you fall in love with a man who has children, and foremost among them is the concession that those children will always come first. Their previous claim on him, the nature of their bond, takes precedence. Best to understand that from the get-go, accept it, not try to fight against it – an argument you can never win. And so you prepare yourself for a life of interruptions, of delayed pleasure, of compromise, and I thought I was ready for that. But whatever I thought of Olivia and her machinations, I had not expected her to sabotage my wedding day.

  That morning, as he sat looking hollowed out, bewildered by the night’s events, I didn’t say any of this. I held him in my arms and accepted his murmured apology, his promises that we would do it all later – the wedding, the lunch – just not right now. And then we each took up our phones and began the strained business of undoing our plans, negotiating with the restaurant, letting our friends know.

  In the months that followed, Jeff made every attempt to make it up to me, and I made a concerted effort to improve relations with Olivia. It was in those months that I discovered I was pregnant. It was, in retrospect, a happy time, but the one thing that corrupted my happiness was the memory of what Olivia had done. The selfishness of her act, but more than that, the cold-hearted precision of it. For though I never said it to Jeff, I understood that what she had done had not been a cry for help, or a plea for attention – it was not even a protest over a marriage she did not wish to take place. It was an exercise of power. Her way of saying to me: You see? I will always come first.

  We did get married, eventually. Four months after Mabel was born, the four of us went to the registry office in Westminster and in the presence of Jeff’s sister, Laura, and her husband, we made our vows. Afterwards, Laura took Mabel for the afternoon and Olivia went out with her friends, while Jeff and I went for a celebratory lunch in the Savoy. It was quiet, intimate, romantic. I got to wear my Stella McCartney dress, my Louboutins, and I felt happy. But here’s the thing – you lose something when you postpone the pleasure. That is what I learned. For all the noises of acceptance you make about the compromises, the delays, the interruptions caused by the children of the first marriage, in your heart you feel the toll they take. And you tell yourself that it won’t always be this way, that those children will grow up, move on, have their own busy lives. But sometimes little niggles of doubt set in, so that while you are waiting for their lives to start so that yours can move on, a door silently opens within you, barely noticeable, ushering in uncertainty and dissatisfaction, doubt.

  That evening, over dinner, I tell Jeff about the note.

  ‘It just said: I’m here for you, waiting,’ I say. ‘There was no signature.’

  His eyes are on the steak he’s cutting, but I have his attention.

  ‘It’s odd, certainly,’ he remarks, before looking up. ‘What do you think?’

  From the sitting room come clattering sounds as Mabel plays with her toys. The combination of Jeff’s calmness and the noisy domesticity of my child playing takes some of the strangeness out of it. For even though the past couple of days have been busy, niggling thoughts of this anonymous note have lingered over everything. Now, saying it out loud, it sounds more silly than sinister.

  ‘I don’t know. It’s probably just some loon who listens to the show. God knows, there are plenty of them out there.’

  ‘Indeed.’

  ‘Vic laughed when I showed it to him, said that I should see some of the poisonous missives he receives.’

  ‘Ha! Yes, I can imagine.’

  He smiles at me across the table, and I feel the warmth and steadiness of his presence. It acts as a reminder of why I first fell in love with him. His unflappability. His quiet reserve of strength. From the first time we met – at a dinner party hosted by a mutual friend – I knew somehow that he was the sort of man who could be relied upon in a crisis, a decent man who would never deceive me, never let me down. He had a directness of manner coupled with an old-fashioned chivalry that I found greatly appealing. After the volatility of Finn’s moods and caprices, my relationship with Jeff felt like sinking into a warm bath after battling through a storm.

  ‘It must happen all the time,’ he goes on. ‘There are so many people walking around, disturbed, angry, looking for some outlet for their madness. People in the public eye can seem accessible. They are easy targets.’

  ‘Finn used to get some weird letters and cards from fans, or from people who couldn’t stand him.’

  Jeff reaches for his glass, sips without saying anything.

  ‘But I think he mainly enjoyed the attention,’ I add.

  Jeff snorts with amusement. ‘He would,’ he says with the slightest hint of malice. ‘He probably sent them to himself.’

  We both laugh, but it sparks a thought that unsettles me, for Jeff has inadvertently lit on a possibility. A lover of the practical joke, Finn has often gone to great lengths to construct elaborate webs to trap his unsuspecting victim. I remember how tenacious he could be and how this tenacity, which at the beginning was so attractive to me, could also be repellent, even dangerous. Could he be behind the note?

  ‘So Ingrid got in touch again today,’ Jeff says, interrupting my thoughts. ‘About a project she’s been working on.’

  ‘Ingrid?’ I ask, spearing some salad with my fork.

  ‘Yes, remember? I did some work with her before Christmas? Anyway, they’ve been looking for someone to manage the project for them and my name came up.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘It’s a fantastic opportunity, Cara.’

  ‘That’s terrific, sweetheart. Well done you.’

  ‘The thing is, they’ll need me to go to Berlin.’

  I put down my fork.

  ‘Just during the week,’ he goes on. ‘I can fly home at weekends.’

  ‘How long for?’

  ‘Six weeks, probably. I’ll know more once I go over there.’

  Consternation starts up in my chest. I try to keep my voice level.

  ‘But what about Mabel?’

  He laughs briefly, saying, ‘Mabel will be fine! I’ll call her every day – we can FaceTime. And I’ll be home at the weekends.’

  I get up from my chair, bring my plate over to the sink. I can feel him watching me.

  ‘Come on, love. It would only be for a couple of months,’ he protests.

  ‘I thought you said six weeks,’ I say quietly.

  He sighs, puts down his knife and fork. I have my back to him, but I hear the scrape of his chair across the floor, and then he is standing next to me, putting his plate on top of mine.

  ‘Cara –’

  ‘Who’s going to mind Mabel in the mornings when I leave for work?’ I ask, turning to face him.

  He’s half a foot taller than me and he inclines his head to meet my gaze. ‘Couldn’t you drop her off at nursery on your way in?’

  ‘The nursery doesn’t open until seven thirty. I leave here at six, or had you forgotten?’

  ‘Perhaps you could juggle your working hours a bit? Start later?’

  ‘Oh yeah. Sure. “Sorry, guys, we need to reschedule the show to a later hour, because my husband needs to go to Berlin. Just for a month or two. Then we’ll return to the usual schedule. Everyone okay with that?” ’

  ‘There’s no need for sarcasm. I just meant that maybe you could conduct some of your prep meetings the day before. I don’t know.’

  He turns back towards the table and starts clearing away the salad bowl, the glasses, the salt and pepper shakers. His excitement at his announcement has been choked off by the practicalities. But it bothers me that Jeff seems unable to grasp the fact that I am the main breadwinner and
, as such, my working hours must be protected. It galls me that even though I earn more than him and my work is salaried and steady, I am still expected to drop everything when the childcare arrangements fall through.

  ‘When are you going?’

  ‘They want me to go over next week, to talk things through face-to-face.’

  ‘Christ,’ I say softly, wiping my hands on a tea towel.

  This kitchen feels hot, like I can’t breathe. All at once, I need to be outside in the cool air.

  ‘I don’t want to have a fight about it,’ he intones softly in his reasonable voice. ‘This is good news, Cara. Aren’t you the one who’s always going on at me to look for more challenging work? So that I don’t slip into early senility?’

  ‘I never said that. I merely pointed out that it would be good for you to do new things.’

  ‘And now I am!’ He catches himself, brings his voice back under control. ‘There must be agencies that deal with this sort of thing. I’m sure we can get someone to live in – an au pair.’

  ‘At this short notice? And for such a limited period? Besides, I’m not sure I like the idea of a stranger living with us.’

  He puts the half-empty salad bowl into the fridge, then closes the door and looks about him to see if there’s anything left to be put away. For a moment, the only noise in the kitchen is the buzz of the fridge. A thought flits across my mind – a possibility.

  ‘I’ll ask around at work,’ I tell him. ‘There might be someone who can help us out.’

  We spend the next few minutes cleaning up the kitchen in silence.

  On Friday, I spend my spare minutes in work on the phone to various agencies, as well as cornering other mums in the office to ask their advice. The responses are mostly negative. The short notice coupled with the uncertain time frame means my options are limited. By the time the lunch break arrives, I’m feeling despondent from all the fruitless enquiries, the apologetic tones from the agency contacts, the sympathetic glances from my co-workers. I’m also a little put out by the fact that it’s me who’s ringing around for a childminder, not Jeff.

  Sometime in the afternoon, my phone pings with an incoming text, and when I check it, I see that it’s from Amy.

  ‘Lovely to catch up with you yesterday. Give me a call if ever you want to meet up.’

  The possibility has been scratching away at the back of my mind, and prompted by her text, I call and put the proposition to her.

  ‘It will just be for five or six weeks,’ I tell her. ‘A temporary thing.’

  ‘That’s perfect!’ Excitement makes her voice sound light and breathy.

  I’m not completely easy about the situation. But time is running out and I don’t have many options. And at least I sort of know Amy. I take comfort in the memory of how sure and self-controlled she seemed on the night we were holed up together. In the face of all that fear and confusion she was calm and decisive.

  ‘I’ll need to get references, of course.’

  She replies, ‘Absolutely. No problem,’ and promises to forward letters of recommendation from the family she has worked for, as well as from her manager at Pret. We make arrangements for her to come to the apartment at the weekend to meet with Jeff and Mabel, and then we say our goodbyes, but not before she gushes her thanks down the phone in a way that seems most unlike her.

  I put the phone down and sit for a minute, thinking back to yesterday’s conversation, in Gianni’s around the corner. I remember the tension running between her square shoulders, defensiveness in the way she hunched over her coffee. She had seemed nervous and unsure; there was no sign of the almost casual complacency she displayed the night we hid in the storeroom. Sitting at the table opposite her, I noticed a tiny puncture in the side of her nose where a nose ring must once have been, and a tattoo in the crook of her arm – a black square. No text, no image. Just this oddly blank mark. It must be exhausting having to work so hard at looking tough. And yet there was something endearing about her nerves, her eagerness to please. There’s some quality to her that I like.

  The office around me hums with activity. There’s a slew of emails I need to respond to, as well as a pile of post that Katie has left on my desk, wrapped in an elastic band which twangs as I remove it. I go through it hurriedly, most of it rubbish that I toss in the bin. I pause when I get to a white envelope, my name and work address written in black Sharpie ink. I open it quickly, draw out the plain white card and read the words:

  25 August 2017. A night to remember.

  Your Closest Friend

  X

  My heart gives out a little thud, confusion worming through my brain. Is this Finn? I wonder. Or someone else? For just a second, Amy’s face flashes across my mind.

  I look at the signature, the kiss, and I remember the moment on Friday night when I said goodbye to Finn on Redchurch Street. He had leaned in to kiss me and I had stopped him. Seeing the look of injury crossing his face, I’d tried to soften it, saying that we could just be friends. ‘Friends,’ he had repeated, then raising an eyebrow, his tone becoming teasing and lascivious, ‘very close friends, I hope.’

  There is still a chance that it’s not him, but some crazy listener who’s decided to concentrate their attention on me. I take the card and the envelope and roll my chair a few feet along to Katie’s desk, and show it to her.

  ‘Any ideas?’ I ask.

  She shakes her head blankly. ‘It was just brought up with the rest of the post,’ she says, turning it over. ‘You could try asking down in the post room.’

  ‘No point. It’s external mail. They’ll know as much about it as we do. It’s probably just a practical joke.’

  She hands it back to me. ‘Kind of weird, though,’ she says.

  I’ve just exited Clapham Junction station on my way home when I hear my phone ping, and when I check, there’s a text from Jeff, asking if I can pick up coffee on the way home – we’re having friends for dinner, and he’s realized we’re running low. It’s the first day of September and I note that the evenings are getting cooler already, even though it’s barely six, as I reach the Lidl near our home and duck inside.

  I’m in the aisle, hunting for coffee, when my phone pings again. When I look I see that it’s a number I don’t recognize, and the message reads: You are everything to me. YCF x

  It makes me stop in my tracks. There amid the Nescafé and the Maxwell House, the Horlicks and the Cadbury’s Bournville Cocoa, I try to process the tangle of thoughts turning over rapidly in my head. I text back quickly: Who is this? Then I wait. One person rises above all others in my suspicions. There have been missed calls and texts from Finn since our lunch on Tuesday, pleading with me to call him, and even though I’ve been studiously ignoring them, now I feel pinched with curiosity. Could this be his way of luring me into making contact? When there is no reply to my text, I call the number, a defensive feeling making my shoulders feel tight as I listen to it ringing. No one answers and eventually it rings out. There is no voicemail facility, and the deadness at the end of the line leaves me feeling frustrated. I scroll through my contacts for Finn’s number and, despite my better judgement, I press the call button. He picks up straight away.

  ‘At last. I was waiting for your call,’ he says.

  ‘Were you?’

  ‘I’ve snagged tickets for Sigur Rós tonight. They’re playing the Hammersmith Apollo. And I thought to myself, who do I know that loves Sigur Rós?’

  ‘I can’t, Finn.’

  ‘Oh, come on! Make an excuse. Come out with me. You know you want to.’ That pleading, cajoling voice I know so well.

  ‘We have people coming for dinner.’

  ‘Babe, that is just so middle-aged. Come on, say something’s come up at work – some crisis or emergency. Tell them you’re needed elsewhere. Because you are. I need you.’

  For just a second, I imagine doing it. The memory of our recent evening together still shines inside me, and the prospect of another calls to me, like the old days beck
oning.

  ‘Have you been sending me messages?’ I ask, remembering why I called him.

  ‘Subliminal messages? Sexual messages?’

  ‘Actual messages. Anonymous ones. I’ve been getting these cards sent to work, signed “Your Closest Friend”.’

  ‘A secret admirer. And you thought it was me?’

  ‘Is it you?’

  ‘I’m not telling. Where would be the fun in that? What do they say, anyway?’

  ‘There was another one just now – a text message. It said: “You are everything to me.” ’

  I wait for his response.

  After a pause, he says softly and with sincerity, ‘You are everything to me, Cara.’

  I feel the blood rush to my face. Stupid, this silly schoolgirl reaction. This fast-beating heart, this flood of gladness.

  ‘Finn,’ I say gently, but firmly. ‘This has to stop.’

  I hang up before he can answer.

  Our guests arrive shortly after eight, all of them landing in at the same time. I can hear laughter and raised voices through the intercom as I press the buzzer to let them in.

  A little while later, six of us gather around the deal refectory table centred in our kitchen. All evidence of Jeff’s culinary exertions have been tidied away, and there is candlelight and smooth jazz; the red petals of the geraniums growing in terracotta pots beneath the stairs are flares of bright colour against the soft grey walls.

  I’m a little nervous at the prospect of one of our friends bringing up the terrorist attack. Kamila – my unwitting alibi for that evening – is among the guests, and I’m wary of any conversation that might reveal my deception. So, from the outset, I make it clear that the evening mustn’t become mired in gloomy doomsday conversation.

  ‘I’m declaring a moratorium on all discussion relating to terrorism, Brexit and Donald Trump,’ I say, before Jeff says, ‘Hear, hear!’ and then launches into a story involving a mix-up in the Airbnb booking for his Berlin trip.

  He’s on good form tonight. We both are. The difficulty that arose between us yesterday has dissipated, now there is a solution to the childcare problem, and he is once more buoyant with the news of his imminent work adventure. I watch him moving around the table, slopping wine generously into glasses, cracking jokes at his own expense. We always make an effort with friends, and are good at presenting a united front. Looking at us tonight, you would never know of the chinks in the walls of our marriage, the hairline cracks. There is a glow inside me, and even though I am present in conversation, in laughter, in joining in the fun, inside I am reeling with a wild dizziness. The thrill of it: You are everything to me. At the time, I had expressed disapproval, even annoyance. But now, in the warmth and safety of my home, I take pleasure from turning the thought over in my head. Finn’s voice hums through me, sensuous and absorbing.