Your Closest Friend

by Karen Perry

  At some point in the night, Peter mentions how he spotted Phoebe Waller-Bridge from Fleabag in a restaurant during the week, and our conversation swerves in the direction of how promiscuity in women is depicted in modern culture.

  ‘It’s just getting so dreary,’ Graham says, ‘so full of self-loathing. I mean, aren’t there any young women out there having fun?’

  ‘Fun sex obviously doesn’t market as well as complicated sex,’ Kamila adds.

  ‘But surely it’s a step up from the old days when only men were allowed to sleep around in popular culture,’ Jeff says, reaching behind him for another bottle from the counter.

  ‘I don’t see that it’s much of a step forward,’ Jenny offers. ‘I mean it’s still the same old story: promiscuity in men is seen as a rite of passage, but in women it must be punished.’

  The men bray a bit at this, Peter saying, ‘You can’t win, can you? I mean, on the one hand you’d complain if all TV shows were depicting men getting their kicks, and yet you’re not satisfied when these young women are getting laid on telly either –’

  ‘I didn’t say that,’ Jenny interjects.

  Beyond the entrance to the kitchen, on the little table where we drop our keys, I hear my phone ping with an incoming text.

  ‘Jenny is right,’ Kamila says. ‘There’s no fun in it for these young women. It’s all so joyless and depressing.’

  ‘Well, at least they’re getting laid,’ Jeff remarks with dramatic melancholy, and everyone laughs.

  ‘Not fulfilling your wifely duties, eh, Cara?’ Graham says.

  I laugh and throw a look down the table at Jeff, and say, ‘Poor neglected husband!’

  But there’s a barb twisting in the laughter and the jokey comments that only he and I are aware of. Since the night of the terror attack – the night Finn and I reconnected – Jeff and I have not made love. It’s only been a week, but even before then, I could sense a staleness had entered our bedroom relations. And despite my attempt at deflecting his jokey remark, I am hurt that he would allude to it in this way.

  I take the opportunity to leave my seat and go into the hall.

  ‘Listen,’ Graham pipes up. ‘When I had the vasectomy, I was promised loads of sex. That’s how the idea was sold to me. No, don’t try to deny it, Jen.’

  ‘I’m not saying anything!’

  A blocked number. A simple statement: Look outside. YCF x

  I stare at it. In the next room, the conversation has erupted into laughter once more, but here in the hallway, I am completely still, frozen. Is he outside? Would he dare risk coming so close to my home?

  From where I am standing, I can see the night sky through the window of our sitting room. The curtains are still open, and in my mind, as I’m crossing the floor, I’m telling myself that this is perfectly normal, that if Jeff or one of our guests comes out into the hall and sees me, they will assume I am drawing the curtains.

  It’s a large window – one of those Victorian industrial jobs – that looks out on to the carefully tended grounds that front the building. There are mounds of dark shrubs down there, the spidery limbs of trees, hump-backed shadows of cars parked along the perimeter, but I am aware of these things as only vague familiar shapes in my consciousness. For what draws and holds my attention is the flickering of votive candles in the courtyard. Tiny lights in the darkness. There must be dozens of them burning away, all arranged into the shape of a love heart.

  Once, when we were at university, Finn made me a Valentine’s card. He was prone to spontaneous romantic gestures, but rarely went in for what he called Hallmark holidays. Only one time he made an exception. The card he gave me was a computer printout of a line drawing of a love heart, and above it was a mathematical equation. Mathematics was his principal subject, and although his passion for it was eclipsed in time by his love of comedy and celebrity, at that point it held a fascination for him. He spoke about equations in terms of beauty.

  ‘You’re giving me an equation?’ I’d asked, half-joking.

  And he’d pointed to the heart, explaining, ‘The equation maps the line, you see? It’s the equation of the heart.’

  This comes back to me now, as I look out into the darkness at the flickering shape on the ground below, and the memory makes my heart pound. I lean my head against the window, feel the heat of my own skin against the glass. I wonder: Is he down there in the darkness, watching? My eyes scan the grounds, but there is no figure under the street lamps, no face staring up at me from the darkness. And yet, I feel that there is someone down there. I feel like I am being watched.

  A smile passes over my face – I can’t help it – and I raise my hand, a brief salute to my dark admirer.

  An acknowledgement.

  The response is almost immediate. The phone buzzes in my hand.

  I look down, scroll to texts, and there it is – the blocked number. A simple message. No words, just an emoticon. Tiny though it is, it lights up the screen.

  ♥

  8.

  Amy

  ‘I like your hair,’ Cara tells me.

  We’re in my bedroom – or what is temporarily my bedroom, although it is Jeff’s daughter’s room really – and she’s just shown me where I can put my clothes, my things. I’m still marvelling at the expanse of it, the softness of the carpet, the miracle of the en suite bathroom that I share with Mabel. She is skipping around the bed, picking up objects off the bureau and briefly inspecting them. I get the feeling that this room has been off-limits for her, and now she’s making the most of the opportunity to absorb every little thing.

  I put my hand to my hair, self-conscious suddenly. Two days ago, after Cara’s phone call, I went into a place on the high street near Sean’s house and, dipping into my emergency escape fund, spent over a hundred bucks dying it chestnut brown, and getting what the hairdresser laughingly described as ‘a feathery cut’, like I was some class of poultry looking to be groomed. It’s more feminine, I guess, which is what I wanted.

  ‘Thanks,’ I say, and look down, feeling the sweep of my embarrassment.

  ‘I hope it’s not because of what I said?’

  ‘Sort of,’ I say, laughing to take the sting out of it. ‘I mean, I was going to get it done anyway …’

  ‘I’m sorry. It was a stupid assumption to make.’ She’s smiling at me, but it’s a pained sort of smile, like she wishes she could take it back.

  I don’t want her to feel awkward. I don’t want there to be any gaps or pauses between us, so I say, ‘That’s okay. Actually, my mom was a lesbian. Sort of.’

  My eyes flicker over at Mabel, to see if she’s listening to this. But the kid has picked up a fan and is busy spreading it, then collapsing it. She’s a cute little thing, all dimples and curls. She looks like Cara, not a trace of her father in her, none that I can see anyway.

  ‘I didn’t know it for years,’ I continue. ‘Her friend that I told you about, Elaine? She lived with her daughter, Connie, in this house just outside Scranton in Pennsylvania, and when I was little my mom and I went there and lived with them for a while. I don’t know how they knew each other – Mom and Elaine – how they’d met, but I just thought they were really good pals. I thought that for, like, ages. Until one day they were working on something in the kitchen – they were always doing these little projects together – and me and Connie were out on the porch and we could hear our moms in the kitchen hooting with laughter, and then Connie just looked at me with this kind of pained expression and said, “Fucking dykes.” And that’s how I found out.’

  I lower my voice for this last bit, and lean in to whisper it conspiratorially to her. When she smiles, her mouth grows long and curved. I’m noticing small things about her: the slight discoloration of a lower tooth, a dimple in one cheek missing a twin. Each detail gathered up and stored away to be pored over later, treasured.

  ‘How did that make you feel?’ she wants to know. She’s sitting on the bed now, looking up at me, relaxing into this conversation. God
, how strange it is to talk like this! I can’t remember the last time I could be this honest with another person, this open.

  ‘I was sort of shocked, I guess. A little disgusted too. I started spying on them, sneaking out of bed in the night, creeping down through the house to watch them together on the porch, sharing a beer, talking. Sometimes they’d reach out and hold hands. One time, I saw them necking.’ I give a little shudder. ‘They were pretty discreet, I guess. Like they had separate bedrooms and all that. But I remember feeling like she’d somehow betrayed me.’

  ‘Your mother?’

  ‘Yeah. Like she’d kept something about herself back from me – something that other people knew about but I didn’t. It hurt that I had to learn about it from someone else. That knowledge came like a gut-punch. Like when you find out there’s no Santa Claus.’

  ‘Did you find that out from Connie too?’

  I give a rueful smile that tells her she’s guessed correctly.

  ‘I’m making her sound like a real bitch,’ I say. ‘But she wasn’t. She just wasn’t good at keeping secrets to herself.’

  ‘You were close to her?’

  ‘Yeah. She was like my best friend. I could talk to her about anything. She could be really kind and sweet, and sort of practical, you know? Like you could always trust her to give you good advice.’ And then, because I’m somehow moved to say it, warmed as I am by the release of this conversation, the welcome I’ve received here and the great opening out of possibilities that giddily present themselves, I say, ‘You sort of remind me of her.’

  Her smile broadens, her eyebrows tilt. ‘Do I?’

  But I’m embarrassed now. I’ve admitted too much.

  ‘A little,’ I say, and turn away to start unpacking my things.

  The husband is not what I expected. Cara had told me how there’s an age gap between them, but still. I can’t get over how middle-aged he seems, grey spreading through his hair, the skin under his chin beginning to pucker and sag like an old frog. But it’s like he hasn’t noticed his age yet, or is choosing to ignore it. He wears jeans and green Asics, his hair a little too long on top as if going for that foppish, boyish look. He has that jaunty niceness – that English good cheer – that always seems like a wall to me, something impenetrable that could not possibly go all the way to the core. Everyone’s got a dark side, I don’t care how nice they are.

  ‘Settling in alright?’ he asks, and nods absently at my response. I was half-worried he’d start quizzing me about the night of the attack, and the first time Cara and I met. I’d had my answers all worked out, of course, but he never even asked. I get the feeling that his politeness is a veneer for his lack of interest. For all the conversation between us – the small talk – I don’t think he listens to a word I say. Still, he’s leaving in the morning, and I won’t have to deal with him then.

  The first night, I feign tiredness and slope off to bed early, deeming it best to show I can be sensitive to their need for privacy – let them have their romantic last evening away from prying eyes. Cara shot me a look of gratitude and I felt like I had done the right thing, a neat little check-mark in the column of my private accounting. In my room, I slip off my shoes and socks, hang my jeans over the back of a chair, and then lie down on the bed, spreading my arms and legs wide and then pulling them in close like I’m making a snow angel on the covers, marvelling at the stippled softness of the waffle linen. Everything about the room holds a cloudy softness, from the thick-pile carpet to the chalky grey-blue walls. A porthole window looks out on to a parapet tiled in Victorian slate, a sliver of sky beyond.

  While I lie there taking it all in, amazed at the corner my life has turned, I hear Connie’s voice in my head, saying, Check you out, Keener. On the pig’s back now, aren’t ya? And for once the voice doesn’t sound like a mean kid, saying one thing but meaning another.

  It’s Mabel who tells me about the apartment. About how it belonged to the dead wife.

  It’s Tuesday afternoon, and I’ve just settled her at the table with her cup of hot chocolate after school, absently talking through what she learned that day while I get started on the dinner preparations. This week in school, the little kids are discussing houses. A kind of kiddie-class on rudimentary architecture, I guess. They’ve all been tasked with projects on their own homes – drawing pictures of their houses, answering questions like: Does your home have a fireplace? How many windows does it have? How many steps from the front door to the back door? Sounds like some busybody teacher having a good nose around the finances and properties of her young charges to me.

  Mabel is drawing her picture. From this, you’d swear she lived in a red-brick Victorian mansion, but in truth, the building is split into apartments, some single dwellings, others, like this one, sprawling split-level affairs. The building itself is a bit of an aberration. It’s called The Village, although I can’t think why. A Victorian red-brick school conversion, more plush than forbidding after the job that was done on it, turning it into luxury apartments. It stands proud above the small narrow streets that surround it, lined with terraced houses that can’t help looking mean and cramped in comparison. I’d done some snooping around property websites, and knew the purchase prices of these apartments easily top the million-pound mark. It’s weird because the surrounding area is kind of run-down, streaked with poverty. Like someone airlifted a chunk of Belgravia and dropped it in Battersea.

  Mabel puts down her pencil, looks up at me with some consternation, and asks, ‘But how will they know which part I live in?’

  ‘Why don’t you draw arrows?’ I suggest. ‘Or you could circle your bedroom window?’

  She does this – both the arrows and the circling – and then throws down her pencil in a hot little burst of temper.

  ‘It looks silly!’ she says, all mulish and unhappy.

  ‘Come on, it’s not that bad.’

  ‘It’s a silly house. I wish we didn’t live here.’

  ‘You’re pretty lucky, you know, Mabel. Loads of people would kill to live in a place like this.’

  ‘Mummy doesn’t think so. She keeps telling Daddy we should live somewhere else.’

  I put down my knife, turn away from the chopping board, my attention caught.

  ‘She says that?’

  ‘She says it’s always going to be Claire’s house.’

  ‘Who’s Claire?’

  She rolls her eyes theatrically, then pushes herself away from the table and leaves the room. I think she’s marched off in a strop, but she’s back a few seconds later with a framed photograph she’s taken from the hall table.

  ‘Claire,’ she says emphatically, thrusting the picture into my hands.

  I look down at the image of a woman and a young girl, both smiling into the camera. It’s one of those studio shots, and there’s something stagey about their matching sweaters, the soft glow of their skin, their hair.

  ‘This is your dad’s first wife, right?’

  ‘Mm-hmm.’ She’s back at the kitchen table, her burst of petulance easing, taking up her pencil once more.

  ‘And this is her apartment?’

  She doesn’t answer, her little tongue visible at the side of her mouth as she concentrates.

  ‘Mabel?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘How do you know all this stuff?’

  ‘Because I hear them fighting,’ she explains unhappily. ‘I hate it when they fight.’

  I press her on it, but she’s clamming up and soon enough I go back to my prep in silence.

  But as I stand there chopping onions and then leeks, I think about what it must be like – to live in a dead woman’s house. This place is full of old furniture, antique chests of drawers, slouchy sofas that look ancient, carved wooden chairs circling the table. I had it in my head that these were things that Cara and Jeff bought together, or maybe some family heirlooms. But now I’m rethinking it, wondering how much of this shit belonged to the dead wife. For a second, I imagine the ghostly sweep of her
hand over every chair back, every door handle, on the bannister along the stairs.

  When we were locked up in the storeroom together, Cara told me how unhappy she was living in this house. How she hated the sense of privilege that attached to the place, the fortress-like walls that surrounded it, the cruel-looking spiked fencing. Everything about it screamed a conservative entitlement that she felt she hadn’t earned, and automatically rejected. That is what she told me. But she never mentioned the real reason. Not a word was spoken about jealousy, about the past. Not a word said about the dead wife.

  By the end of the first week, we’ve settled into a routine of sorts. As soon as I hear the front door closing behind Cara in the mornings, I get out of bed. I like to have my shower finished, my room straightened up before going into Mabel to rouse her from sleep. She’s a funny kid, a complicated mixture of childish innocence and worldly enquiry. Her questions often catch me by surprise: What would happen if the moon exploded? How did they make the first Tube? Why is bone-growing painful but hair-growing isn’t? Such is the zone that I now patrol, the maze of questions forming the five-year-old mind.

  After dropping Mabel at school, watching until she is safely inside, I head back towards home and stop at Lidl or Asda to buy the ingredients for dinner. I have little experience of cooking, but I’m keen to learn, and have been trawling through the shelves of cookbooks in Cara’s kitchen, picking out the ones I think I can manage. Any gaps in my knowledge are plugged by message boards and YouTube videos. I’m hoping to get more ambitious as the weeks go on.