Perfect Liars

by Rebecca Reid

  On the other side of the fire Nancy could see Georgia holding court, Sophie, Katie and Laura hanging on to her every word. She watched as Georgia dipped a key into a little bag of white powder and offered it to one of the girls, who sniffed it ineptly, knocking half the powder on to the ground. The girls screamed with laughter and Nancy forced a smile. Idiots. Clearly they’d never snorted anything before. Lila and Heidi sat further back from the crowd, their faces orange in the firelight. Lila clutched her knees to her chest but Heidi’s bulk prevented her from copying the position. She sat with her legs stuck out at angles, like a broken doll. Nancy felt a moment of affection towards Lila for taking one for the team, for utilizing Heidi’s obsessive crush to stop her from doing anything stupid.

  ‘Vodka?’ asked Carmen, after a few moments of silence. Nancy smiled. There was more to this girl than she had thought. She watched as Carmen drank thirstily. The three blondes were getting gigglier and gigglier. One of them had produced a speaker from her rucksack and plugged a green iPod into it, spilling out bad, tinny pop. Before long, all four of them were on their feet, spinning and dancing. Nancy caught Georgia’s eye across the flames.

  ‘George!’ she shouted. ‘Heads up!’ She threw the hip flask clear across the fire. Georgia caught it, unscrewed the lid and drank deeply. The other girls cheered and laughed, holding their hands out and clamouring to share.

  Nancy stepped back, watching as they all spun and twisted around the flames. Georgia had grabbed hands with the other girls and they were circling the fire, all screaming the lyrics of a stupid song. The enormity of where they were struck Nancy, the fact that they could make so much light and noise, so much disruption, and yet no one was aware of them. No one in the world knew what they were doing or where they were. It was the first time any of them had truly been free. The girls were jumping now, opening their mouths to catch the light raindrops that had persistently drizzled for the last six hours, making their tents and clothes and skin wet.

  Nancy lit a cigarette, more for the excuse of it than anything else, leaning against the rock. It was warm on her back, absorbing the heat from the fire. It felt nice. Solid, reassuring.

  She didn’t want to dance, or laugh. Too much energy today had already been spent on pretending. There would be even more pretending when they got back. Not for the rest of them – it would be easy for them to say they didn’t know and they weren’t sure. But for her, it would be work, at least to start with, at least until she was sure that Georgia and Lila could stick to a story.

  ‘Nance,’ called Georgia, ‘come on!’

  Nancy said nothing. Lila jumped to her feet and joined Georgia, taking her hands and spinning around, then stopping to peel off her jumper, left in only a thin white T-shirt. Lila never wore a bra. She enjoyed the power of confusing male teachers with her stiff nipples underneath her semi-sheer school shirt far too much for that. Nancy watched with a scientific interest as raindrops landed on her friend’s skin, her nipples puckering under the damp cotton. Georgia, never one to be outdone, had pulled her T-shirt off, laughing in her pink lace bra. Her breasts were bigger than Lila’s and her hips had a more aggressive angle to them. It was Georgia’s body which got them served in pubs and bars and clubs. Not because anyone really thought Georgia was eighteen, but because they felt less guilty pretending that they did.

  ‘Come on!’ the girls shrieked. Nancy faked a smile and raised her top above her head. Then, because she never simply followed suit, she peeled off her jumper, her top, her sodden tracksuit bottoms, and her bra, leaving just her black knickers. She paused to let the other girls stare at her. A moment of stillness. A pretty note of confusion. And then, predictably, each of the other girls reached for their own T-shirt. Pastel-coloured cotton flew through the air, landing on the ground, in the fire, on the rocks, and around the fire danced a tribe of girl-women. Some high, some drunk, some simply swollen with their first real taste of freedom, or the illusion of belonging.

  The only figure still fully clothed, sitting on the ground and watching the scene unfold, her face a picture of misery, was Heidi.

  NOW

  Nancy

  Georgia was clearly heartbroken about the sick situation. She had ineffectually tried to get rid of the smell with a variety of organic, hypoallergenic, not-tested-on-animals, probably gluten-free cleaning products before eventually disappearing into the cellar and coming back up with a dusty bottle of bleach, which she was now splashing liberally over everything that Lila’s vomit had touched. Nancy took a breath, letting herself enjoy the comforting, familiar scent. There was something so lovely about the smell of bleach.

  ‘I’ll pay for anything that’s ruined,’ said Roo, who had reclaimed his position at the door, smoking yet another cigarette.

  ‘It’s fine,’ called Georgia, her voice icily cheerful. ‘Nothing is ruined. I only hope Lila is OK.’

  ‘She’ll be fine,’ said Charlie. ‘She’s a trooper.’

  ‘Has anyone actually checked on her?’ asked Brett, who was stacking plates at the other end of the kitchen. Nancy scolded herself inwardly. She had half forgotten that he was there. ‘Should I take her some water?’

  ‘No,’ said Nancy, without thinking. Where had that come from? It wasn’t like her to feel defensive of Brett.

  She shouldn’t have brought him here. What was this feeling? Acrid. Something which felt a bit like jealousy, but jealousy wasn’t a feeling that Nancy allowed herself. Her mother had said, from childhood, that a person couldn’t own another person and to try to do so was fruitless. Trying to prevent your partner from wanting another woman (or man) was a fool’s game. It was about as petty as being annoyed at someone for going to the cinema with another person. Besides, becoming overwrought about it just made you less appealing. The only thing you could do to keep someone, she had told Nancy, was to stay beautiful and interesting and to make a world with yourself in it much more appealing than one without. So that’s what she had done.

  Her lack of jealousy had proved useful. She didn’t compete with anyone in the office, preferring to calmly plug away at her own ambitions. It had always worked. And boyfriends had liked it too. No temper tantrums about female friends or passive-aggressive messages about flirty waitresses in restaurants. Providing a threesome for a major birthday present was her signature move. She had lost track of how many times she had celebrated a beau’s thirtieth, thirty-fifth or fortieth birthday by booking a woman from an escort agency (always the same reputable agency where the girls were clean, and never anyone equal to, let alone more attractive than she was). Sometime around the moment when she was kissing her flavour of the month while he pounded into a twenty-two-year-old Russian, he would look up at her and know what a joy it was to date a woman who wasn’t capable of feeling envy.

  At least, not until now.

  ‘She’s fine,’ she replied. ‘I’ll go and check on her in a moment.’

  ‘I think she should probably go to bed,’ said Georgia. ‘It’s fine, Roo,’ she followed, seeing that Roo was rolling his eyes. ‘You don’t need to take her home. She can fall asleep here and you can get an Uber later, or she can stay the night. Does Inigo need her tonight?’

  He snorted.

  ‘What?’ asked Nancy.

  ‘Inigo barely even knows who she is at this point.’

  ‘What?’ asked Charlie. Nancy registered surprise. She hadn’t thought of Charlie as having any interest in anything other than work and, when they were younger, Georgia’s chest.

  ‘What do you mean?’ added Georgia. Idiots. They were pushing him too hard. They had overreacted to his statement, which was going to make him think what he was saying was important. Now he would hold back and they would get far less information.

  ‘Nothing,’ said Roo. ‘I didn’t mean it.’

  ‘Is she struggling?’ asked Georgia.

  This was interesting. And if Georgia wanted the dirt on Lila’s mothering – or lack thereof – she was going about it entirely the wrong way.
/>   ‘Lila’s fine!’ Nancy said purposefully, refilling her wine glass. ‘Absolutely fine.’

  Roo rounded on her. There was nothing Roo liked more than disagreeing with someone, especially Nancy. He would seek out topics which he thought would inflame her and then needle her with them all evening. At the dinner party for Georgia’s thirtieth birthday he had asked her whether she thought feminism was a waste of time before they had even cut the cake. At Georgia’s engagement drinks he’d questioned her about whether she felt panicked that she would never get engaged, or that being so ‘masculine’ was the reason she could never keep a boyfriend. Announcing that Lila was fine was the quickest and easiest way of getting Roo to tell her what was going on.

  ‘Actually, Nancy, she’s not,’ he said. She tried not to smile. How could anyone be so easy to play? She raised her eyebrows, pretending to be surprised at his reaction.

  ‘It’s none of my business, Roo, but I feel like she’s doing a great job for a new mother, especially considering what she’s been through.’

  ‘She gets drunk every single night. Did you know that? She gets the teenagers next door to look after him while she goes to the pub and hangs out with a load of twenty-two-year-olds who she met there. They only like her because she used to buy them drinks. I had to take her credit cards away because her spending addiction was so out of control, and three weeks ago she dropped Inigo. She dropped him. What kind of a mother drops her own child? He barely knows who she is any more. All I asked was that she do some childcare, spend some time at home, act like a fucking mother for a few years, but of course she can’t do that. And now she’s pulling stunts like this every single time we go out.’

  Roo’s words bounced around the kitchen, highlighting Georgia’s apparent objection to soft furnishings. When he finished, a silence floated between them. Nancy thought about telling him that it was his fault. She could explain how his lack of interest in his wife’s career or feelings or life had left her isolated and miserable, which had clearly turned into late-onset post-natal depression, coupled with grief at losing a baby. But there was no point. He wouldn’t listen, nothing would change.

  There was a rustling noise as Georgia peeled off her washing-up gloves and dropped them into the bin – concealed in a cupboard, naturally. Nancy found herself seized with the desire to slip into the room next door and see whether Georgia had gone full Surbiton and hidden the television in some kind of awful cabinet.

  ‘We should put Lila to bed,’ said Georgia, across the room. Her tone was weary. Clearly, she had done this before, more often than Nancy had realized. She made a mental note to thank her for it later. Georgia was a martyr – deep down she’d be glad that she’d been allowed to do all that good work. But it wouldn’t do to look ungrateful. None of the men moved. Brett looked embarrassed. Thankfully he had the sense to realize he couldn’t help. Neither Charlie nor Roo even seemed to consider it. Roo was rooted in his seat, one leg casually flung over the other, refilling his own glass, and Charlie’s. Nancy watched as he hovered the bottle over the glass nearest to Brett. How many times had he forced Brett to refuse alcohol that evening? It must be giving Roo a manly kick every time. Brett wasn’t an alcoholic of course. He and his friends had landed on the concept once and been taken with it. It made them seem more exciting, more like their idols. No British twenty-something would give up booze because they’d blacked out a couple of times or had a slightly heated discussion with a policeman. But Brett was precious. He was the kind of man who openly talked about having feelings and allergies.

  She looked down at the ring on her left finger. She’d managed to put off introducing him to her parents this weekend by treating her parents to a trip to the South of France. She’d told Brett with a long face that they would be away. He’d cuddled her and told her that it sucked but it didn’t matter – they’d meet soon.

  The idea of him sitting around the same table as them, earnestly talking about his writing and the off-Broadway play he had written (so off Broadway it was in New Jersey) made her cringe. They would be polite, but he would bore them. They wouldn’t say anything, they would claim to be pleased for her. Once, when she had been at Oxford, she had brought home a boy whom her father had found googling ‘Mon-ay’ in the hall. He’d waited until they had broken up to reveal the story, but even so, each time one of her parents regaled a table with the anecdote, always thinly veiled with the intro of ‘We’re so pretentious, we’re such a cliché!’, it was a humiliation. Eventually she would find someone who could manage a dinner party in her parents’ kitchen. And then she would take him home. But it wouldn’t be fair to put Brett through that horror, especially as she probably wouldn’t go through with the marriage anyway.

  It would be easy enough to end it. She would claim that her trip to London had made her realize how much she wanted to be back there, and that she wouldn’t feel comfortable asking him to move, so while they had had something wonderful, it had to end.

  ‘Are you coming?’ asked Georgia. Nancy stood up, sending a look which said, ‘Calm the fuck down, you’re not supposed to seem stressed.’ Georgia gave the tiniest nod imaginable and wrapped a smile across her face. ‘She’ll be in the bathroom. Sometimes she falls asleep in there and then it’s a nightmare to get her out.’

  THEN

  Lila

  The canopy of the tent was uneven. They hadn’t pitched it properly. Unsurprising, given the dark and the drizzle and the fact that none of them had ever slept in a tent before. Lila could feel the warmth of Georgia and Nancy either side of her, swathed in their sleeping bags. Each time someone moved there was a faint rustle. Lila couldn’t help but ask herself: were there really people who did this for fun?

  ‘What are we going to do tomorrow?’ came Georgia’s whisper.

  Closing her eyes, Lila wondered how many times they had lain in the same dark room, whispering. In so many ways it was just like it always had been. Only before, the worst punishment for being caught was being sent to the isolation dorm. Up in the eaves of the ancient boarding house, every gust of wind sounded like a scream. It only had one bed in it, the walls were completely bare. Everyone said it was haunted. Lila had found herself there once. The girls had been giggling and shrieking and Matron had marched in, forgone the requisite verbal warning and sent Lila straight upstairs. Nancy had volunteered to go instead. ‘I was making the noise,’ she had lied, ‘I’ll go.’

  Matron hadn’t believed her; even then Nancy didn’t look like the kind of girl who giggled or shrieked. Lila had sat, wrapped in the unfamiliar duvet, with her back against the corner wall, her eyes frozen open, waiting for it to be light, waiting to be safe, when Nancy had crept up the stairs. They had slept, the two of them squashed in one tiny single bed, until the morning when the light stripped away the shadows.

  That was what Nancy did. She was your worst enemy until you needed her and then suddenly she was the best of best friends.

  Was that still true, Lila wondered. Would it still be true tomorrow morning when everything became real?

  ‘We need a plan,’ Nancy breathed, her voice almost nothing. She was lying on her back, looking upwards, her face solemn in the dark. ‘In case they don’t believe us.’

  Lila lay still, listening to the other girls breathing, to the faint snuffles coming from the other tents. They must be asleep. All the booze, all the walking.

  ‘We could run away? Maybe by the time they found us they’d be so worried that we wouldn’t be in trouble?’ said Georgia. No one replied. It was a stupid suggestion. As if they’d survive a week on their own. ‘What would happen if …?’ Georgia trailed off. Her voice was very small and very frightened. Lila wished she hadn’t asked the question.

  ‘The problem is Heidi,’ said Nancy. ‘She hates us.’

  ‘She hates you and me,’ said Georgia, her voice was harsher now and Lila could see her frown in the half-light.

  ‘That’s true,’ said Nancy. ‘She doesn’t hate Lila.’

  The silence rang ou
t between them. ‘We need sleep,’ said Nancy eventually. ‘We’ll be able to think more clearly in the morning.’

  Lila murmured her agreement. ‘Night,’ she whispered.

  ‘Night,’ said Georgia.

  ‘Night,’ said Nancy.

  Lila stared into the darkness, listening to her friends’ breathing become slower, waiting until they were unquestionably asleep, so asleep they wouldn’t stir as she slipped away from the tent, phone in hand.

  It was true, that expression about it being darkest before the dawn. Lila had watched the tangle of sleeping bags and rucksacks and walking boots grow darker and then slowly illuminate as the sun rose behind the clouds and light seeped through the tent.

  Lila watched Nancy’s eyes flicker under her lids. Her hand seemed to be searching for a pillow which didn’t exist. It was strange, watching someone wake up, watching them try to work out where they were. As she came to, Nancy sat up. She looked affronted. Lila realized that in all the time she’d shared a dorm with Nancy, she’d never seen her asleep. She was always the last to lose consciousness and the first to wake up, lying on the floor doing her sit-ups before the others had even opened their eyes.

  ‘How long have you been awake?’ asked Nancy.

  ‘A while,’ said Lila. Georgia began to murmur. She was always the slowest to wake up, the least willing to get out of bed, trying to bribe the others to smuggle her some toast from the dining hall so that she could snatch another fifteen minutes of sleep. ‘What time is it?’ she whispered. ‘What’s that noise?’

  All three of them paused to listen. It was a heavy whirring, like a washing machine on a superfast spin.

  ‘What is that?’ asked Nancy, repeating Georgia’s question.

  ‘A helicopter,’ said Lila, fiddling with a bit of skin on the side of her finger. It wasn’t long enough to get a proper grip on, so she couldn’t quite manage to pull it off.