Your Closest Friend

by Karen Perry

  I almost feel embarrassed for her, so obvious is her crush. How have I been blind to it?

  She turns the heat down under the meat, and begins hurriedly clearing the mess strewn over the kitchen table.

  ‘I didn’t know you’d be home this early,’ she explains, gathering plastic bags of vegetables, packages of nuts and dried fruits. ‘I thought I’d do something special – as a surprise. You mentioned you like Asian food and I found this great recipe for tempura, so I thought I’d give it a go.’

  ‘Please stop that, Amy,’ I say, and her voice peters out. ‘You and I need to talk.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘About what happened last night.’

  She looks down, blood rushing up her neck, mottling the skin. From where I’m standing, I can see that she has carefully parted and combed her hair. Underneath her apron, she’s wearing a button-down top, a smart, newish-looking pair of jeans. Her usual look is unkempt, almost slovenly, but there is something neat and put-together about her now, like she has taken care with her appearance. And that is when I realize that she has dressed with care for me. She looks up and her eyes meet mine and I see they are opened with a sort of wonder. Christ, I think. She’s in love. The nausea, the light-headedness, the sickening feeling of abuse – it all flees now, chased away by this revelation. She has no idea of what she’s done.

  ‘I don’t remember what happened between us, Amy. Last night is a blank. All I remember is waking up in your bed this morning.’

  ‘You left so fast. I was still asleep.’

  But I remembered her turning over, and had the sense that she was only pretending to sleep.

  ‘I need you to fill in the blanks for me. I need you to explain what happened.’ I’m gripping the back of the chair for support. Part of me is crying out to sit down, but the greater part demands that I hold my ground.

  ‘You don’t remember?’

  ‘No.’

  She smiles, and reaches to touch the ends of her hair. This new girlishness – this coquettishness – seems alien and strange. It’s like all her hard edges have been blurred and smudged.

  ‘You were upset,’ she says in her new soft voice. ‘You needed someone to listen. To comfort you.’

  ‘I took some medication last night – something to help me sleep. And then, with the vodka … Yes, I was upset. But I think you might have misconstrued …’

  ‘I helped you. You needed me and I helped you.’

  There it comes again – this new beatific smile of hers. An ache runs up the backs of my legs and I tighten my grip on the chair.

  ‘Did we sleep together?’ I ask, and she dips her head, made shy by the bluntness of the question. It angers me, pushes me to add, ‘Did we fuck?’

  The word visibly knocks her. The smile falls from her face.

  ‘Don’t call it that.’

  ‘Did we?’

  She frowns, plucks at the apron around her waist, looking down at it with an air of regret. Mulishly, she says, ‘It wasn’t like that.’

  ‘Tell me then, because I have no clue what happened. Tell me what it was like.’

  ‘Why are you testing me like this?’

  ‘Christ, there are bruises between my legs. I have a bite-mark on my thigh! What the hell happened?’

  ‘Don’t say it like that, don’t twist it –’

  ‘Twist it?’

  ‘You’re making it sound like something smutty or dirty, when it wasn’t like that at all. It was beautiful.’

  She throws out the word but it’s mismatched with the dark, sullen expression that has come down over her face.

  ‘Beautiful? Oh my God.’

  I’m suddenly overwhelmed. Hurrying to Mabel’s bedroom door, I gently pull it closed, fearful lest my little girl walk out of her room and into this hissed confrontation. When I round back on the kitchen and come to the table, she has taken off her apron and is regarding me carefully.

  ‘I was out of it last night, Amy. You must have seen that.’

  ‘You were upset. You reached out to me –’

  ‘Not in that way! What? Did you think I fancied you? That I wanted to seduce you?’

  ‘I just –’

  ‘You took advantage of me!’

  She flashes me a look of teenage defiance, then shakes her head and looks down, mumbling something incoherent.

  ‘What did you say?’

  I wait for her response. Her eyes sweep the table furiously. She can’t seem to meet my gaze. I can barely make out the words when she repeats them.

  ‘It wasn’t just me. Don’t make it out to be all one-sided.’

  I wait for a beat.

  Finally she brings her eyes up and says, ‘I know you care for me. Why are you pretending that you don’t? After last night, there’s no point.’

  ‘Amy, you sexually assaulted me.’

  ‘I … no. That’s not how … not even remotely … no.’

  Her chest is moving with the effort of all the emotion rising up inside her, tears spill over her cheeks.

  ‘You reached out to me,’ she says. ‘You let me kiss you, you let me touch you. I could tell you wanted it, that you wanted me –’

  ‘Stop it!’ The images are coming at me too fast, making me nauseous.

  But something has been released inside her, and she can’t seem to stop.

  ‘From that first night, I knew there was something between us. You reached out for my hand. You needed me. All I wanted was to help you. That’s all I’ve been doing. Don’t you see? We were supposed to meet that night. It was supposed to happen. You weren’t happy – you needed something to fill the hole inside –’

  ‘I was upset that night! That’s all. The rest is in your head! There was no gaping void inside me waiting to be filled. I have everything I want –’

  ‘Your marriage is a sham – anyone can see that.’

  ‘How dare you?’

  ‘You don’t love him. You love me.’

  I want to get her out. Nothing matters more than that.

  ‘You’d better go, Amy. Pack your things and leave. Now.’

  ‘But –’

  ‘I said, now!’

  My voice cracks on the heated note. I can’t remember the last time I felt this enraged. It’s like my blood is bubbling and surging in my veins. It takes a moment for her to take it in. She just stands there in front of me, a liquid mess of tears and misery like some sulky adolescent throwing a tantrum. But she’s not a teenager. She’s a grown woman who has strayed way too far into my life. How have I let it come to this? I’m appalled at my own negligence. My recklessness.

  She takes a deep breath, tries to gather herself. With an aura of martyrdom, she walks past me to her room. I hear the door close, and I wait. I’m aware of the tension in my shoulders, the iron grip of pressure at my temples. I pour myself a brandy and knock it back at the sink to steady myself, then fill the glass with water and knock that back too.

  When she emerges from her room a few minutes later, she has her coat on and a duffel bag in one hand, a shopping bag stuffed with possessions in the other. Her face has a raw look about it from the crying, but her mouth is a grim line across her face. She takes her iPhone from the speakers, then pauses by the entrance to the kitchen and gives me a last look, as if waiting for a late reprieve, a last-minute pardon.

  ‘Leave your keys on the hall table,’ I tell her, my voice deliberately hard. No good luck, no take care. No goodbye at all.

  Sadness briefly flickers across her face, but it’s chased by something cold and hard.

  In a small voice, she tells me, ‘I’m going to make you see. I’ll show you how much I love you.’

  And then she flips her keys and they land on the hard surface of the table with a small clatter that makes me flinch. I wait until I hear the firm click of the front door closing behind her, before releasing the breath that I wasn’t aware I was holding. In the silence that follows, I try to compose myself. The muscles in my body begin to unclench. And even though my
mind still teems with the horrors of what happened between us in the night, I feel a sweeping sense of relief, like I am reclaiming my space, taking control of my life once more. I pluck her keys from the table, feel the hard angles of them pressing against the flesh of my clenched fist.

  18.

  Amy

  In the hallway, I hesitate, guts wrenched into a ball, like all my inner organs are clamouring up towards my mouth. I’m so fucking angry I can’t think straight. A big part of me wants to turn back and hammer on that door until she opens up and then explain it to her until she sees that we love each other, that what we have goes deeper and far beyond anything either of us could ever feel for anyone else. I’m so convinced of it that I do turn back. I put my forehead to the door. Inside I can hear Mabel squealing, and Cara laughing. How could she do that? Be so cruel and disdainful with me, and then switch on her joy for her kid? Through the door, I can smell the tempura I’d been cooking, oily and heavy like thick globules of fat hanging in the air. My stomach does a kind of flip, and I back away, nauseous, pick up my bags and call the lift. But my expression reflected back at me in the elevator doors is pained and frightened and I don’t want to look at myself. So I take the stairs instead.

  Darkness has come on and there’s a damp cold lingering beyond the brick walls of the apartment complex. Sounds of traffic zoom in the distance, and I can hear someone laughing from an open window, a can being kicked and bounced across the street. I’m walking away from the place I’ve called home but I’ve no idea of where I’m going. And it comes to me that I will always be like this. The person who’s in the wrong, the person who’s forced to step out into the evening with her belongings, the person who’s forced to leave. My limbs are shaking like I’m cold or something, and the bleakness of my indecision seems too much to handle.

  A wooden bench sits on a platform of concrete pavers, around which are various plantings of trees and bushes, prissy little round orbs of box hedging. All the weeks I’ve lived here, never once have I seen a person sitting here. These people, I think with a push of anger as I throw my weight on to the bench now, slinging my bags alongside me.

  Lights are coming on in the apartments as people come home from work, set about their cosy evenings – dinner, a glass of wine, some TV before bedtime. How easily I came to accept it, to rely upon it. I badly want a drink. Never much of a smoker, I find myself itching for a cigarette now. Any kind of hit to jolt me out of this quivering uncertainty. My eyes scan the building.

  A voice in my head whispers: Where is she? Where is she?

  Two floors up, on the right side, I can make out the tall blank rectangle of the living-room window, darkness beyond. A little to the side, the neat rectangles of the kitchen window panes, illuminated from within, but there’s no passing shadow, no silhouette, and my anger turns to something more muted. Sadness. Despair.

  Aw, poor baby, the voice in my head says. Sitting all alone, all broken-hearted, missing your little lady-friend.

  ‘Shut up,’ I murmur.

  But I do miss her. I miss the smell of her, the familiar sound of her voice. I miss the certainty of her return every evening, that moment when she turned her green eyes to me. I miss the touch of her hand against mine, the sweetness of her mouth.

  You miss twiddling her rosy nipples, Connie says in my head, and I hiss at her, ‘Shut your fucking face, Connie.’

  For weeks, her voice had disappeared from my head. I’ve had no need of it. But now she’s back with me again, needling. The ribbon of her laughter shimmers on the night air.

  And then the light in the living room snaps on and I see Jeff walk to the shelves by the fireplace to switch on the lamp. How did he slip past without my noticing? He’s pausing at the window to look out and I keep myself very still, wondering if he can see me here in the shadows. Something calls his attention away and he turns back to the room. And then I see him bending down and when he straightens up, he has Mabel in his arms, swinging her around. A third figure joins them, standing a little distance away, hands on her hips. I strain in the darkness towards her, desperate to know what she’s saying. I almost want to stand up and shout, wave my arms at her, so desperate am I to offer her this one last chance. A warm look, a kind word could turn this whole thing around. And then Jeff puts the child down and goes to his wife, his arms reaching for her.

  I’m sitting in the darkness on this chilly bench, willing them to stop, willing him to let her go. And when he does, she comes to the window and looks down. I raise my hand.

  I’m here, I want to say.

  She tugs the curtains shut. And I think about them in there, the memory of their embrace imprinted on my mind, and my thoughts unspool, imagining them sitting down to eat the meal that I prepared, then, after the kid is in bed, settling on the sofa with an open bottle of wine – the sofa where only last night she had opened herself to me, asked me to take a plunge deep into her depths – her turning to him and explaining my absence. I had to let her go, Jeff. Her behaviour had become a bit odd – clingy. You’ll never guess what she said to me. Maybe she’ll act all upset, like I’d scared her with my feelings, and he’ll be suitably horrified. Or maybe they’ll laugh about it, make a joke of it, turn it into a story they’ll trot out for their friends over a nice dinner.

  The skin on my wrist is bleeding now where I’ve pinched and twisted it.

  Fucking callous bitch, Connie says softly.

  I head into the city. I’ve only half a mind on where I’m going. It’s getting dark and I know I should be thinking about checking into a hostel for the night but I’m still reeling from what happened. My brain churns from the effort of scrabbling around to find an excuse for her, for what she did. Street lamps have come on, orange lozenges fizz through the purple gloom, a teaming mass of tail lights on the Tottenham Court Road all blurring into a blinking red stream as I pound the pavement, barely noticing anything. How do I make her see what I see? Her vision has been clouded by duty and responsibility and shame. But we don’t have to be ashamed. What we have is something pure and clean. It deserves to be celebrated, not hidden in the shadows.

  For the love of God, I hear Connie say, her mocking laughter scratching inside my skull. You sad sap. I push down on her voice, crush it as I head underground.

  I get the Tube to King’s Cross, the strap of my duffel bag cutting into my shoulder as I trudge up to Attneave Street. Friday night, and the house is loud, music blaring from deep inside. I have to lean on the buzzer for a full minute before anyone comes.

  ‘Look who’s back,’ Jez says when the door opens. He leans against the door jamb, legs crossed at the ankles, and stares at me unsmiling. ‘Thought we’d seen the last of you.’

  ‘Is Sean here?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I need to see him. I need … I’ve got to … Is he –?’

  ‘He’s down the boozer.’ A tilt of his chin towards the corner of the street.

  ‘Right.’

  I’m so tired, for a moment I’m not sure if I can make it as far as the pub. I’m half-thinking of asking Jez if I can sit down here in the doorway for a minute, just until I get myself together. And then I catch the way he’s looking at me, his head to one side, a slight wrinkling of his nose.

  ‘Are you alright? Has something happened?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So why are you crying?’

  From behind him, in the pit of the house, comes a small crash, chased by the squawk of a girl’s laughter, but Jez doesn’t turn to look. He’s watching me bringing my hands to my face, my skin tingling to the touch, my fingers coming away wet. Like some freaky dream where the shape of it keeps changing, I can’t get a handle on my emotions.

  I go to turn away, and trip on the shopping bag I’d left down on the ground. The contents crash and spill out – jumpers and books, a box of junk I’ve no idea why I’m hanging on to, some coins spinning gleefully away from me down the slope of the pavement until they dip and plummet down the drain.

  ‘Hey
, maybe you should come in for a while,’ Jez says. His eyes are steady but the alarm’s there in his voice.

  A door opens behind him, a billow of music and voices blows out, and I’m already backing away down the street.

  ‘Hey!’ Jez shouts after me. ‘Your stuff! Amy!’

  But I don’t go back. I don’t need that shit. Clutter keeping me slow and tethered. What does it matter, anyhow? I can still hear him shouting as I reach the end of the street and turn the corner, disappearing for good like those spinning coins.

  Sean is way down the back of the pub, squeezed into a corner behind the slot machines, his arm around some girl I don’t know. She has long, lank hair in a nondescript colour, the same flannel-clean skin as he has. The only mark of colour about her is the single earring dangling from her left ear – a beaded thing with a lurid blue feather at the end.

  The two of them are wearing polo necks and drinking his ’n’ hers beers, laughing about something that probably isn’t even funny. It’s all so goddamned pure and happy, it makes me want to puke. And maybe I should just walk away but I can feel the anger building inside me, so I order a Captain Morgan’s and Coke at the bar and take a quick swig, the ice clanging against my teeth.

  ‘Hey there,’ I say, and I realize how breathless I sound.

  The girl’s smile fades as they both look up at me.

  ‘I was just passing, and Jez told me you were in here, so …’ I smile and then swoop forward, my hand extended to her, saying, ‘I’m Amy. Who are you?’

  Gingerly, she takes my hand, darting Sean a little look.

  He says, ‘What’s this about, Amy? What do you want?’

  ‘Nothing. Just wanted to know your girlfriend’s name. So, what is it?’

  ‘It’s Margot.’

  ‘Margot?’ I say, beginning to giggle. It’s like I can’t stop laughing at her stupid name, even as the girl draws her arms back off the table, lowering her chin to her chest.

  Sean gets up from his seat. ‘What the fuck’s got into you?’ he snarls, grasping me by the elbow so hard it hurts, and drawing me away from the table where his chick is sending out sulky little glares.