About Three Authors

by Patti Roberts

  Clive offered her an outstretched hand, which she ignored. “Becky… I… Listen-”

  Holding up her own hand, she shot him a steely glare, silencing him.

  Clive’s arm dropped limply to his side. His sigh told her he’d realized that this was a battle he was not going to win.

  She held his gaze. “I don’t care, Clive. Nothing you say will make any difference. It. Won’t. Change. Anything,” she said between clenched teeth. She turned her back and walked away. Suddenly she stopped, and turned back around to face him. “Merry fucking Christmas, Clive.”

  Sorry Mum. I’ll stop swearing tomorrow. I promise.

  “You deserve someone a lot better than Roger, Becky,” he said in a last ditch effort to stop her from walking away.

  Becky spun around. “Like you, Clive? Do I deserve someone better, like you?”

  “Why not? You can’t deny there is something between us. I feel it, and I’m pretty sure you feel it, too.”

  “Well, you are right about one thing. There is something between us. Your sister. She was my best friend, Clive, and she’s been screwing my boyfriend. I can just imagine how that is going to work out. I can just see it now, sitting around the table at Christmas time celebrating Christmas lunch. Tell me, would we have Christmases at their house or our house? Even if there was something between us, Clive, don’t you see it could never work? Not now, anyway. Mandy saw to that.”

  “I don’t have all the answers, Beck. But don’t we owe it to ourselves to give it a chance? See where things lead before we start planning Christmas lunches? I just think you need time to see things from a different perspective.”

  “A different perspective? Really? Because the way I see it is, I never want to see either of their faces again. Ever. She’s your sister. You have to see her, I don’t.” She turned back around and headed for her car, leaving Clive standing on the doorstep staring after her.

  On the drive home, she wanted nothing more than to call in on her best friend, and tell her what she had just done. Over copious amounts of wine, they would laugh about the stink of the rotting prawns until their faces hurt and they were completely out of breath, tears running down their cheeks, wine squirting out of their noses. That’s all it would take, a good cry and a good laugh, and she would be back on her feet, her best friend by her side. Together, there was nothing that they could not get through. But of course, she couldn’t do that. Not now. Not ever again. Mandy was no longer her best friend, and she suspected that Mandy hadn’t been her friend for quite some time now.

  She thought about whose betrayal had hurt her most, then realized they had both hurt her equally, in the worst possible way. Betrayal was betrayal, no matter how you looked at it.

  “Damn you both to fucking hell,” she shouted through a fresh wave of hiccups and sobs.

  She opened her apartment door slowly, listening for any sounds to indicate that Roger had come home, but heard nothing. She quickly packed a small overnight bag, scribbled a note on a piece of paper, telling Roger that she was staying at her parents’ house for a few days, and that he should pack up his belongings over the weekend, and get the fuck out. She said she didn’t want to speak with either of them, so don’t bother calling.

  PS. Leave the keys to the apartment on the table, you lying, cheating, fuckwit of a bastard piece of bat shit. I hope your tiny little dick drops off and Mandy chokes on it.

  PPS. Congratulations, you’re going to be a daddy.

  Now Mandy would not have a choice in not telling him…

  Wouldn’t it be funny if he thought I was pregnant, she mused. That will really give the wanker something to think about. Bastard!

  Picking up her overnight bag, she plucked a red scarf from the coat stand in the hall and wrapped it around her neck, and then stormed out of the apartment and ran back down the stairs as fast as her legs would carry her.

  Chapter 3

  Yesterday’s Girlfriend.

  BECKY JENSEN’S FACEBOOK STATUS: How could they be such arseholes???

  Becky drove the long way back to her parents’ house, past the little tree-line park she had played in as a child. The sprinkle of white snow settling on the branches of the Christmas tree in the centre of the park created a magical Christmas-card setting. She quickly yanked on the steering wheel, turning her car around to pull over onto the side of the road.

  Tugging her coat tightly around herself, she stepped out of the car and pulled the woollen hood of her coat up over her head. She walked towards the lonely tree, her boots sinking into the white ground, until she stood at its base. Looking around, she discovered she was alone in the park. Of course she was alone, she thought, rubbing her gloved hands together to dispel the frosty chill in her fingers. Normal people would be warm in their homes, sitting around decorated dining-room tables with family and friends, eating a lovely homemade Christmas Eve dinner, or screwing someone else’s boyfriend in a lavatory at the pub.

  Roger hadn’t been the perfect boyfriend, but he had been her boyfriend, and they had shared some wonderful Christmases together over the years. Now Roger was Mandy’s boyfriend, and most likely, Mandy’s future husband, and they would be spending their Christmases together without her from now on. She was the third wheel now, not Mandy, who had often bestowed the title upon herself on numerous outings that the three of them had shared.

  Being the ex-girlfriend was far worse than being the third wheel, Becky decided, blowing a warm breath into her cupped hands. More thoughts came, torturing her further still. Mandy would be the mother of Roger’s children, and she would be nothing. Not the best friend they would lovingly refer to as Aunt Becky - Aunt Becky who would babysit their children when mummy and daddy were out on a date night, rekindling the romance in their sleep-deprived relationship.

  No, she would be none of those things. She was yesterday’s girlfriend - the kind of girlfriend who wasn’t quite worthy of being a wife or a mummy. Yesterday’s best friend – the kind of friend who had been good enough to share a few laughs with, but now that you were in a serious relationship and about to have a baby, well…

  “What was her name again? Becky, wasn’t it? Didn’t her mother die of cancer on Christmas day a few years back? Whatever happened to her?”

  Or worse, they would cross the street when they saw her coming in the opposite direction, or push their stroller into the nearest store, anything to avoid an awkward confrontation. The frigid air sent a flurry of wind whipping around her legs, and she shuddered just as a gut-wrenching sob escaped from somewhere deep down inside her. Giving in to her misery, Becky dropped to her knees and stared blankly ahead. She wanted her life back. She wanted to turn the clock back two years, before everything in her life turned to shit.

  She buried her face in her gloved hands. Loud, uncontrollable sobs tore through her body until there was nothing left to give. After a long moment, she stood up, gazing up at the angel at the top of the tree. Her breath was visible, floating in the air as she exhaled.

  “I don’t want to be this sad, pathetic person anymore. I need to get out of here, to be anywhere but here.” The angel rocked back and forth in the flurry of fresh snow. Becky closed her eyes tight. “Please,” she whispered. “Help me.”

  “And where would you go, if you could have this wish of yours?” a man’s voice asked from beside her.

  Becky’s eyes sprang open and she stepped backward, nearly losing her balance in the snow. A man in a long coat and bowler hat was standing beside her. His gloved hands were clasped behind his back, and he was staring up at the angel swaying on the top of the tree.

  “Sorry,” he said, his eyes remaining fixed on the angel. “I didn’t mean to frighten you.”

  “You didn’t,” Becky lied, clearing her throat. He was tall, thin, and dressed in a matching grey coat and hat. He reminded her of Doctor Who, one of her childhood heroes. She smiled, imagining how fabulous it would be, if he could jettison her away to some faraway place in his TARDIS. She turned back to look up at
the angel. “Lovely, isn’t she?”

  The man nodded. “She sure is.” He turned and looked down at Becky, a serious look on his face. “Nice scarf,” he said.

  “It was my mother’s,” she replied, her hand reaching up to stroke the soft woollen scarf looped around her neck.

  “You didn’t answer my question,” he said after a moment. He took a pack of Chesterfields out of his coat pocket, tapped it on his hand, and offered her one.

  She waved her hand at the open pack of cigarettes. “No, thanks. I don’t smoke. What question?”

  “Good for you, disgusting habit. Do you mind if I smoke?”

  She shook her head. “Your lungs.”

  He placed a cigarette in his mouth, flicked open a lighter, and inhaled. “Yes, very true. My lungs.” He studied her profile for a moment as she turned to gaze back up at the angel. “You said you wanted to get away from here. Where would you go?” He tilted his head back, and one by one, he exhaled five perfectly round smoke rings.

  “Scotland, maybe,” she replied.

  “Oh, be brave. You look like you could use a little adventure. Think of somewhere a little farther afield.”

  “You know, maybe I will have a cigarette.”

  He took a cigarette from his pack, lighted it, and then handed it to her. “Your lungs,” he warned. “Two packs of these things a day will kill you. And I should know.”

  Becky frowned, then took the cigarette. She tilted her head up to look at him, then smiled. She liked this game. “Paris.” It was almost a dare. She took a long draw on the cigarette, then exhaled in a splutter of coughing. “I don’t think I should smoke,” she said in between wheezing gasps while pulverising the discarded cigarette in the snow with her boot.

  “I agree,” the smoking man said, giving her a wink. “Anyway, back to our game. It’s your wish, so make it worthwhile.”

  “Italy,” she said, laughing.

  “Come on… Italy’s barely five minutes from here. Farther,” he encouraged her, drawing back on his cigarette.

  “Australia,” she said triumphantly.

  “That’s more like it, dear girl. Australia it is,” he said, dropping his cigarette on the ground and rubbing it out in the snow with the toe of his shiny black shoe. Noticing his shoelace was undone, he leaned down and began tying it up, whistling the tune, “White Christmas”.

  Suddenly, a brisk wind whipped around Becky, blowing the scarf from around her neck and sending it twirling in the air as though it were as weightless as a feather. Within moments, the blood-red scarf spiralled earthward, until it rested at the base of the Christmas tree like a fresh wound bleeding into the white snow. She ran to get it, blinking tiny snowflakes from her eyelashes. Picking it up, she quickly draped it back around her neck.

  “Well, it certainly would be nice,” she said, twirling around to answer the stranger, feeling jubilant and completely caught up in the thrill of the moment. She frowned, scanning the park, but he had gone. She looked at the spot where he’d been standing alongside her only seconds ago, but the only footprints that remained in the snow were her own. The smoking man had vanished as quickly as he had appeared, leaving her completely alone in the park.

  “Bloody hell, I’m losing my bloody mind,” she sighed, trudging through the thick snow back to her car, looping the scarf securely around her neck.

  Chapter 4

  Lemons.

  BECKY JENSEN’S FACEBOOK STATUS: I think I’m going crazy!

  After a long soak in a piping hot bath, into which she had emptied half a bottle of Felicity’s rose scented bath oil, Becky stomped down the stairs in an old pair of purple flannel pyjamas covered in gold stars, which she’d found in a box marked, ‘Becky – clothes for charity’. Her old bedroom, she decided, resembled a parallel universe where her teenage self, her best friend Mandy, and her mother still existed.

  Coming to a standstill in the dimly lit kitchen, she stared at the fridge door. On her feet was a pair of fluffy rabbit slippers with long pink ears, which had been a gift from Victoria when she’d turned thirteen. No, she’d been fourteen. At the time, she’d thought them a little childish, but she had pushed her feet into them enthusiastically, telling her mother that she loved them.

  Feeling guilty with the memory, she dropped her head and stared at the slippers. Wriggling her toes, she made the long rabbit ears flap up and down.

  “I really do love them, Mum,” she whispered. She looked back up, her eyes returning to the refrigerator door. Great quote, she thought, reading the giant lemon magnet on her parents’ fridge, which read, ‘When life gives you lemons, make lemonade’. She still thought of the fridge as her parents’ fridge, not her father and Felicity’s fridge. It would never be Felicity’s fridge.

  Becky opened the fridge door and stared at the meagre contents, completely uninterested until she spotted half a bottle of lemonade and a heart-shaped box of Thornton’s chocolates.

  “YES. Comfort food.” She tucked the box of chocolates under one arm. The bottle of lemonade definitely had potential written all over it. She preferred the quote, ‘If life gives you lemons, find somebody whose life has given them vodka, and have a party’. Of course she didn’t have any friends to party with, only cheating ex-friends, so it wouldn’t be much of a party.

  She let the fridge door swing shut and unscrewed the cap of the lemonade bottle. It made a pathetic little hissing sound. Flat. She didn’t care. It suited her mood perfectly. With a plan fixed in her mind, she grabbed an unopened bottle of vodka off the kitchen counter, uncapped it, and carefully poured a generous amount into the lemonade bottle until it was full. It was time to drown her sorrows, she decided. She could, and would, berate herself in the morning when she woke up with a massive hangover, feeling even sorrier for herself than she did right now.

  “Cheers,” she said, holding up the bottle, then taking a good long swig. “Fuck you, fuck you, crap, shit, and fuck. YOU.” She wondered if Roger and Mandy were fucking right now, and if they were deliriously grateful that their dirty little secret was out in the open at last. Now they were free to move in together and raise their darling little baby together, the bastards, while she sat all alone watching reruns of Friends on Comedy Central. The word ‘friends’ put a bitter taste in her mouth, so she took another swig of the vodka to wash it down, and wondered why the word ‘fuck’ made her feel so liberated every time she said it. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

  She walked into the living room, knocking over all the framed photographs of Felicity with the tip of her finger. “Whoops, whoops, whoops…” She paused, picking up a photograph of her mother taken the Christmas before she fell ill. “You were right about Roger, Mum. He is a pretentious tosser. Arsehole,” she added with venom, putting the picture back down carefully and taking another swig of vodka. She flopped down onto the sofa, put the bottle and her feet up on the new glass-top coffee table, obviously an addition by Felicity, and pried open the box of chocolates. She popped one into her mouth, savouring the chocolate and strawberry flavours as they melted together in her mouth.

  Squirming, she reached down and pried the remote control out from under her bottom. “Oh, right.” She pointed the remote at the television as though she were wielding a deadly weapon. The television blazed into life. Renée Zellweger was miming the words to, “All By Myself”, from the movie Bridget Jones’s Diary. “You and me, sister,” Becky said, turning the volume up, raising the lemonade bottle above her head, then lowering it and taking another swig. “You and me, Bridget, and your crusty knickers. Everyone else can just go get buggered.” She popped another chocolate in her mouth.

  Her mobile rang on the coffee table. She leaned forward and picked it up, looking at the screen. Roger. Phff. She pushed ‘accept’. “Fuck off, you cheating tosser, arsehole,” she slurred with a mouthful of chocolate, then hung up, giggling. The phone rang again, and without looking at it, she let it go straight to messages. Moments later, the phone rang again.

  “Bugger me if I’m not
popular tonight.” She picked up the phone and read the screen. Mandy. She accepted the call and held the phone out in front of her. “Bugger OFF, you two-faced cow,” she yelled into the phone, then switched it off and put it back down on the coffee table.

  By the time Cyndi Lauper was singing “It’s Raining Men”, and Mark Darcy was taking another swing at Daniel Cleaver, Becky was running up the stairs two at a time in her bunny slippers. She pushed the bathroom door open, fell down on her knees, and with her arms wrapped securely around the toilet bowl for dear life, she threw up. “No carrots,” she said, peering into the toilet bowl, strangely pleased with herself.

  After five minutes of hiccupping and throwing up, she raked strands of damp hair off her face and behind her ears. She stood up, flushed the toilet, then staggered to the hand basin. Leaning against the rim, she studied her reflection in the mirror: the dark rings under her eyes, her downturned lips.

  “God, you look bloody miserable. No wonder he left you.” She leaned down, splashed cold water on her face, then cupped her hands and filled them with water. She took long slurps of the water, washing away the vile taste of vomit in her mouth. What was left of her waterproof mascara ran down her face, which made her look like a racoon on crack. She moaned, patting her face dry with a fluffy pink towel. Putting the towel down, she slowly pulled open the double mirrored doors to the medicine cabinet and peered inside.

  The first thing she noticed was all the pretty perfume bottles and beauty products filling the shelves, where boxes upon boxes of her mother’s medication had once been stacked. Xeloda oral, Tarceva oral, Cisplatin IV, Oxaliplatin IV. The list of unpronounceable medications had been a mile long, and at the end of the day, totally fucking ineffective.

  Delicately, she pushed aside pretty bottles with names such as Be Delicious, Charlie, Fifth Avenue, Anything, Poeme, Beautiful… Vampire… “Vampire? Really?” She had never heard of that one, but the brand name suited Felicity perfectly! She gave herself a squirt, then sneezed five times in a row.