Your Closest Friend

by Karen Perry

  Here at St Saviour’s. About to start. U coming?

  My thumb hovers above ‘send’, indecision nipping at my edges. I’ve already texted a reminder earlier this morning. I don’t want to piss her off.

  I’d told Cara about the funeral a few days ago, reminding her about it yesterday. Both times, she’d been non-committal. I know she’s got to work, but still. She was in the room with him too. At the end of his life, she’d been there. Me and her together. That’s got to count for something.

  From some unseen place up above, an organ groans out a hymn, and we shuffle to our feet to pay our last respects. I’ve always kind of liked churches. Liked the feeling of stepping out of your life for a short interval, any real interaction suspended while some stiff in a dress drones on in a way that allows your mind to drift.

  So now, while the priest intones about the mysteries of life and death, I try to zone out of this space, put my mind somewhere far from this church, these people, that corpse in a box. What I think of is Connie, one evening back when I was sixteen and she was twenty-three, the two of us in this bar in the town near where we lived. I was too young to be served, but Connie bought me a soda. And when the bartender’s back was turned, she tipped some rum into it from a small bottle she kept in her purse, a bottle like one of those miniatures you see in hotel-room fridges. Connie’d already had two or three Buds – she’d been in here drinking since her shift at the dry-cleaner’s ended. Booze made her skittish, restless eyes roaming the bar for trouble.

  There were two guys in suits sitting up at the counter, ties loosened, relaxed. Youngish guys, I don’t recall wedding rings on their fingers. I knew, even before Connie clapped eyes on them and said to me, ‘Hey, let’s have some fun with those guys,’ how it was going to play out. At least I thought I did. She didn’t get her kicks from flirting, or attracting a guy’s attention – she could do that easily enough. She liked to shock.

  At first she waited until one of them noticed us, held his stare for just a second too long, then threw her head back and laughed, displaying her whole long, lovely neck, as if I’d just cracked the funniest joke in the world. I knew how to play along, how to act like we were enjoying each other’s company immensely and didn’t require any third parties interrupting, thank you very much. Not so hard to act, really. Once she was sure of their attention she focused in on me, petting my hair, resting her hand on my knee, leaning in close to whisper nonsense in my ear, the two of us giggling and making eyes at each other, all the while pretending we weren’t performing to an audience.

  We’d done it before. Stupid stuff to titillate dumb guys. It was fun to see how easy it was to turn them into slavering dogs. It never went any further than that. But this evening, there was a side to Connie that I hadn’t seen before, like she was lit up from inside with a different-coloured light.

  ‘We should kiss,’ she said, and I laughed and hiccupped. It was dark outside and I knew I should get back – Elaine would be getting worried.

  ‘You heard me,’ she said again, and I felt it even sharper now, the edge in her voice pushing me, the way her green eyes seemed to draw me in.

  She was holding herself very still, that little smile lingering on her face, like she was waiting, and I understood it was up to me to cross the divide. The invitation sitting there plumply between us. My heart thrumming hard in my chest, I swallowed my hesitation, and leaned forward, set my lips on hers, felt the soft give in them, an opening. I had kissed a few boys. Hell, my virginity was gone a full year at that point. But this was something different. All those other kisses had felt transactional – a pushing and pulling, an exchange, an exploration – this felt like something I was offering with no return. I drew away, confused, and the look she gave me stoked up all sorts of feelings inside.

  We left the bar not long after that, neither of us speaking as she drove us home. But what I remember clearly was the next morning, me and Connie sitting over breakfast while Elaine whistled out on the porch where she was swapping out rotten wood for new planks. I was sipping coffee while Connie polished her nails, those two odours fighting each other, heat gathering in the morning air around us.

  ‘Hey, that was some crazy shit, wasn’t it?’ I said to her. I wanted to tell her how I’d lain awake half the night thinking about it, reliving it, trying to make some sense of it.

  ‘Uh-huh,’ she’d answered, dabbing at her nails with the little brush, like she wasn’t really listening.

  ‘Those guys. I’ll bet we were in their dreams,’ I went on, pushing her towards it.

  ‘Just a pair of dumb guys. So what?’

  She screwed the lid back on the polish, wafted her nails around in the drying air.

  ‘The looks on their faces. After we kissed.’

  Her eyes flicked sharply towards me, shards of ice flecking those green irises.

  ‘What in hell are you talking about, Keener?’ Her voice light as innocence.

  It was a question that held a warning in it. A disavowal. And I saw straight away my mistake. I had broken the rule. Brought the secret out into the light, hardened it with words. In my mind I scrambled backwards, desperate to claw it back, to make it unsaid.

  We never mentioned it again. But it was there between us, all the time. A wound that wouldn’t close up.

  I don’t know why I’m thinking of this now, my thoughts knotting and twisting around this memory. Gnarled as it is, I can never tell, each time I relive it, how it will make me feel.

  The air in the church fills with a foreign smell, incense rising from the brass censer swung on chains around the coffin. From where I’m standing, I can hear the thrup of holy water flicked on to the wooden casket. These ancient rituals drawing it all to a close – a whole life ending in smoke and water. If I had charged out into the night, instead of Neil, it would be me in that coffin. I feel cold, the damp ends of my jeans chilling my ankles. And then the coffin goes past me and some people make a hasty sign of the cross and lower their gaze, but I don’t. I follow the casket’s progress down the aisle with my eyes. I catch sight of Monica looking across at me. Her eyes are large and flat, a kind of baffled interest in her stare. Is she wondering what happened between us in those last moments before Neil ran out into the night? Or is she thinking of my sudden departure, the craziness of my actions? Her hand raises in a tiny wave – a little chink of an opening. And I think of how easily I could drift over to her afterwards, chat to her and Emerson and Pamela, trot out some tired and facile remarks about Neil’s character, our loss. Then afterwards, we’d all go somewhere for a drink, sit in some crepuscular pub with the rain dampening the windows and the floor, making everything smell musty and off. I think of how they’d chat about Pret, and the dull stream of my old life appears fleetingly before me, and I know that I can’t do it. I’m well past it now, that life stale and finished. I break Monica’s gaze and file out of my pew.

  Outside, the crowd of mourners huddle in groups under a canopy of umbrellas, but I’m done with all that grief. I hurry away, across the paving stones oily with rain, past the Coral towards the high street, moving with purpose. I’m a different person now. I’m not the drifter that I was. There is a goal now, a meaning. Before I met her, I felt like an absence. But since she burst into my life, I have become a presence. The fact that she didn’t come today doesn’t change that. She’s with me always. I carry her in my heart.

  I check my phone for updates and see that she has an appointment with the dental hygienist this afternoon. A few days ago, when she was in the shower, her laptop open on the kitchen table, I quickly installed the programme I’d discovered. Among other advantages, it gives me access to her Google history, and from this I find the details of the surgery she is attending. It’s not far from the vintage guitar shop I’d planned on sussing out, and I’ve a good few hours left before I have to collect Mabel from nursery. If I hurry, I can catch Cara just as she’s coming out. My plan is to surprise her and then suggest a coffee, tell her about the funeral, reminisce a
bout the night that we met and maybe use that to gain access to her thoughts and feelings, seek out an opening to push this thing to a higher level.

  I take the train to Charing Cross then change to the District Line and even though the connections are quick enough, I arrive late, and have to run from my station to the surgery. I’m not familiar with this part of London, and have to keep stopping to check Google Maps to prevent myself from getting lost. I’m standing on a road with shops on one side, a wide expanse of grass on the other, when I hear it. Laughter, so familiar to me now, that it makes me look up. A couple are walking along the footpath bisecting the green, hand in hand, and at first, I think: It can’t be. Jeff is in Berlin. I don’t know this man with his reddish-brown hair, his loping walk, so it can’t be her. But even as my mind works furiously through this, the reality surfaces like oil separating from water.

  Oh, of course, I think as I watch them move away together, their step easily falling in with one another. I watch her say something to him and see his face turning to hers, leaning in easily to kiss her. That kiss is a needle in my heart. All the work I have done, all the careful building, the labour and time and effort and sheer fucking longing, and despite all of that, she’s here, proffering her mouth to this guy, this interloper. I can’t believe it.

  Jealousy is churning inside me as I start to follow them, across the green on to a residential street. It burns like acid sloshing around inside, but it has nowhere to go. I don’t notice anything about the houses I pass, the cars lining the streets, the trees and shrubbery. I’m careful to keep my distance, and yet part of me wants her to turn and see me. I want to witness the look on her face when she realizes her dirty secret has been discovered. I fantasize about a scene where she’s begging me, here on the sidewalk, to forgive her, to not tell. I’ll do anything, she pants, anything.

  They round the corner, and a few seconds later I round it too, and I stop, stricken with momentary panic. The street is empty. My eyes scan quickly, and then I see. Two of them outside a doorway. The house registers with me vaguely in terms of its grandness. Huddled there together, they seem dwarfed by the size of the door he is unlocking, the arch of the portico a good deal higher than their heads.

  He opens the door and before stepping inside, he turns to her, slides a hand around her waist. My stomach lurches as I watch her melting into him, their faces mashing together in a nauseating blur. I watch for longer than seems decent but I cannot draw my eyes away. And when the door closes behind them and I am left alone, stranded out here on this street, I feel bereft, a wave of grief surging in my chest. I stand there looking at that closed door, imagining what is happening beyond it. The explorations, the shudders of ecstasy, the low moans and cries.

  It is a long time before I turn away.

  I am silent for the rest of the day. When I collect Mabel from nursery, I avoid eye contact with the other minders, the moms. Her hand in mine feels hot and soft as she trots along beside me in a stream of banal chatter. I stare ahead stony-faced, the strap of her schoolbag cutting a line across my arm.

  Cara is having an affair. I can’t believe it, and yet there’s something so pedestrian and obvious about it that I can’t help but be disappointed. I know I should be thinking of how I can leverage this new knowledge, calculate how best to deploy it as a tactic, but I’m too heartsore, and paralysed by this impotent rage charging around inside.

  When I open the door to our building, and Mabel complains about the stairs, ‘I’m too tired!’ she whines, I pinch her hard high up on her arm. She lets out a piercing yelp, but then falls silent, snivelling quietly as she follows me. I know she won’t tell. I’ve made sure of that.

  Partly to appease her, and partly because I just can’t deal with her demands right now, I let her watch a DVD even though it’s a weekday and that’s breaking one of the rules. But I’ve had it with sticking to the rules. Why should I bother after what Cara’s done? Her betrayal sits inside me like a dull pain, heavy and relentless.

  I sleepwalk through the afternoon, going through the motions – getting Mabel’s snack, emptying the dishwasher, tidying and putting things away. There’s a stack of laundry, and I fill a basket, tucking it under my arm and leaving Mabel alone, descending to where they keep the washers and dryers. It’s cold and dank in the basement, but the laundry room holds a warm fug, a couple of machines humming through their loads. There’s an ache in my back as I bend down and start to feed the clothes into the drum. Everything this afternoon has been a blur, my attention skating off the surface of things, unable to settle. But now, as my fingers touch upon something cool and satiny, and from the tumble of clothes I draw out Cara’s nightdress, something coalesces inside me. The shimmery, airy weightlessness of the nightdress, the sensory ripple it elicits, galvanizes the anger inside me, stirring it up into a rage.

  I realize my hands are shaking. Knuckles whitening, my grip on the fabric tightens as I hold it against my chest, all the sorrow and rage building in my body until I can’t bear it. The fabric is light and rips easily, and I hear the echo of my furious sobs bouncing off the walls and machines, as I tear it with my hands, picking up scraps off the floor only to tear them again. And when that is done, I shove the shredded gown into the hole of the machine and slam the door. It bounces straight back and I slam it again. Over and over, I keep slamming and slamming, grunts of rage channelling through me.

  13.

  Cara

  When I ask him the question, he answers no.

  ‘Oh, come on!’ I say, one finger teasing out a curling chest hair.

  We are lying in his bed in the lingering hours of Thursday afternoon. The sharpness that marred the ending of our previous encounter has been forgotten. The draw of him throughout the intervening days apart has softened my feelings, desire eclipsing memory, so that now as we lie together there is no hint of animosity or regret. There is peace in this bedroom, and also, strangely, forgiveness – for all that has gone before, all the hurts and betrayals, the deceptions.

  How easily we have fallen into a routine. I leave work early and get on the Tube, meet him in some quiet out-of-the-way coffee shop, and inevitably, we wind up back here, in this bed that I once thought of as our marital bed, spinning out the afternoon in acts of passionate rediscovery followed by a lazy hour of gentle musings before I rise and dress and return to my ordinary life. I try not to think about what this rekindling of feeling between us means, or where it might lead me to. In the same way, while I am in this room, I try to keep all thoughts of Mabel and Jeff at a distance. Some trick of the mind allows me to view these encounters with Finn as within a capsule. He and I, alone together, are separate and apart, distinct from my ordinary life, removed from it. And it is this trick of the mind that allows the affair to persist, keeps me going as I tread the rocky path through my marriage. For I know, in my heart, that it is a fleeting thing – something that must end, and soon. But just for now, I am here because of some need within me, an unresolved question, unfinished business.

  ‘Surely there must have been someone,’ I persist, softly, but I want to know.

  ‘I’m not saying I’ve been a monk,’ Finn replies. His eyes are closed, and there’s a blurred quality to his words, like he’s just coming out of sleep. ‘After you left … well, there were a lot of girls. I was lonely and angry.’

  ‘At me?’

  ‘Partly. Mostly at myself. Fucking was like revenge. There was no joy in it.’

  It’s strange, reliving that part of our history. When either of us touches upon it, inevitably an air of sadness or regret stirs in our thoughts, silvering our conversation.

  ‘And when you became sober?’

  ‘Then I was too boring for anyone to fuck.’ He says this in a morose tone, and I pinch the skin on his chest.

  ‘You could never be boring.’

  ‘Couldn’t I? You threw that word at me once. Don’t you remember? In the heat of one of our rows towards the end. You turned on me and said I’d become just another bo
ring pisshead. Spat the words at me. I didn’t mind the pisshead part, but boring hurt.’

  ‘I’m surprised you remember.’

  His eyes are open now, and he’s turning to me, awakened, his hand finding my breast, cupping it hard. ‘You’d be amazed the things I hold on to,’ he says, leaning in to kiss my neck, starting things up again.

  ‘Don’t,’ I tell him gently, but make little effort to stop the progress of his kisses as they chart down my body, raising goosebumps over my flesh. It seems such a long time since I’ve felt this way – desired, sexual. That side of my marriage has tended to feel more loving than passionate, gratitude and comfort taking the place of desire. But now the thought of Jeff has wormed its way into my head, I cannot escape from it. Finn’s kisses reach my stomach and I pull away firmly.

  ‘I have to go,’ I say, forcefully, but still tinged with regret.

  ‘Stay,’ he whispers.

  ‘No.’

  His body is holding me there, one hand clasping my wrist to the pillow.

  ‘Stay and we can make love. Then afterwards we can shower and sit around in bathrobes. I’ll order in some food, and we can watch a movie – something romantic. Your choice. Casablanca. Brief Encounter. Whatever you want.’

  I laugh at the idea. He hates those films.

  ‘You know I can’t,’ I say gently. ‘I have to get home.’

  ‘But he’s not even there.’

  ‘He’s coming back tomorrow.’

  Neither of us, I have noticed, use Jeff’s name when we speak of him. At least not when we’re in the bedroom. It is, perhaps, a conscious choice, an effort to keep at bay the powerful feelings of guilt that wash over me if I’m not careful. Since this thing started, I seem to lurch between euphoria and guilt, joyful abandon and debilitating remorse. I am alternately amazed and horrified by what I am doing. I suppose it makes things a little easier, Jeff being away. It’s not like I have to face a nightly confrontation with my treachery. Still, that doesn’t prevent these feelings of guilt from sneaking into the bedroom, lying plumply between us like some bitter third party in the bed.