by Melissa Hill
“You know damn well what I’m talking about and don’t pretend that you don’t.”
“Nicola, I don’t know where all of this is coming from but –”
“No, of course you don’t, Helen. You don’t know where this is coming from because you’re so consumed in your own little life, you’re so immersed in what’s happening with you, that you don’t know or care what’s going on around you, do you?”
“What? What the hell are you talking about?”
“I’m talking not just about denying your own child in front of your new boyfriend, but denying on her on a regular basis. You’re never with her, Helen! If you’re not dumping her on me, you’re dumping her on Laura, who God knows has had enough to contend with these last few months between planning a wedding and setting up a new business without having to look after a four-year-old!”
“Helen, it’s OK. I don’t mind having Kerry –” Laura began.
“But you don’t care about what Laura has to contend with, do you, Helen?” Nicola went on as though Laura hadn’t spoken. “As long as she serves your purpose, you don’t give a shit! And she’s just too nice and too loyal a friend to tell you to stuff it. She’s too good to you and you and I both know you don’t deserve that.”
“Anything else?” Helen said, her hand on her hip.
“Well, now that you say it, Helen, yes there is. Kerry needs her mother’s attention, she needs you to help her with her speech, she needs you to listen to her. You know that – the speech therapist has advised what you need to do. But you don’t give a shit about that, do you? You don’t believe in helping people, you’d just prefer to bury your head in the sand and pretend it isn’t happening!”
Helen’s expression would have been same had Nicola slapped her across the face.
“That’s not true . . . I try my best. You have no idea how hard I try but it just doesn’t work –”
“It is bloody true!” Nicola spoke over her. “That’s what you always do. You’re not there for Kerry, for your friends – anyone. Jesus, Helen, we’ve all done our best for you over the years, and you’ve never been there for any of us! Quite the bloody opposite!”
“Oh! Oh, I get it now,” Helen began, her eyes hardening. “Now I know exactly what you’re getting at It’s all coming out now, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it certainly is.” Nicola felt like she was on a runaway train. She was on dangerous ground but couldn’t stop herself – she just wanted to catch the silly bitch and shake her.
“Nicola, please calm down,” Laura beseeched.
“No, Laura, let her speak. Let good old Nicola get it over and done with,” Helen interjected, glaring at Nicola. “So come on then! While you’re at it, why not get it all off your chest, why not have a good old dig at me – you haven’t done it for ages so go on!”
“You stupid cow –”
“No, seriously, go on.” Now Helen was in full flight, her voice high and artificial. “I know you’re dying to bring it up, you’ve been dying to bring it up again for years so why the hell don’t you?”
“Helen, please!” Laura implored.
“All right then, seeing as you asked me, seeing as you seem to take some kind of sick pleasure in hearing it, then I will tell you straight out. Do you think I’m bloody stupid? I saw your carry-on earlier and you just can’t help yourself, can you? Old habits die hard and you’re still nothing but a slapper, Helen Jackson – a sad, selfish, man-stealing slapper!”
“Good girl!” Helen clapped her hands in fake applause and the two women stared angrily at one another. “That must have felt really good, did it, Nicola? All the old resentment coming home to roost, yes? Just because I didn’t drop everything and come running when you wanted me to. Just because I made a mistake – a single, stupid mistake – something that could happen to anyone! Just because I wasn’t a candidate for best friend of the century! Then again,” she added bitterly, “I couldn’t possibly beat good old Laura for that particular prize, could I?”
“Don’t be so bloody stupid, Helen.”
“No, seriously, you’ve always held that against me, haven’t you? You’ve always held it against me just because back then I wasn’t there to hold your hand like everyone else did!”
“I didn’t care about you holding my hand! I cared about Laura!”
“Nicola, you’re no bloody angel yourself. You –”
“For goodness sake, will you two stop it!”
In shock, the two women spun around to see Laura standing there, tears in her eyes.
“This is my home,” she pleaded, her hands held out in front of her. “This is my home.”
For a long, long moment a tension-filled hush descended on the kitchen.
Then Helen looked at Laura and her hand flew to her mouth. “Oh, Laura, I’m so sorry,” she whispered. “I’m so sorry, we didn’t mean . . . you don’t know what we were –”
“What you were talking about?” Laura finished for her, her expression hard. “Of course I know what you were talking about, Helen. I’ve always known.”
It took Nicola a little longer to come to her senses. She tore her gaze away from Helen and looked at Laura as if seeing her for the very first time.
Oh no, she thought, looking again from one woman to the other. What in God’s name have I done?
Chapter 29
“I’VE ALWAYS KNOWN, Helen,” Laura said, wearily slumping down on one of the kitchen chairs.
Helen stood rooted to the spot, unable to meet her friend’s eyes.
“Did you think really that Neil – my husband – would have hidden something like that from me? What kind of a sap do you think I am – both of you?”
Nicola tried to make amends. “Laura, it was nothing, really. I saw the whole thing – it was a long time ago . . .”
“I know!” Laura said wearily, her head in her hands. “I know all about it. Only unlike you two, Neil thought enough of me to tell me. What kind of a relationship did you think we had? Neil loves me; there was no way he would have kept it a secret from me. Helen, I’ve known since the very beginning.”
Just then, the door from the dining-room opened softly and Neil popped his head around it. “Is everything okay, love?” he asked.
Helen looked guardedly at him.
“Everything’s fine,” Laura answered stonily, not taking her eyes off Helen.
“Well look, the lads and myself might pop down to the local – get out of your hair for a while, okay?”
“Okay,” Laura gave a tired nod as the door closed after him.
Helen looked at Laura, guilt written all over her face. “Oh, Laura . . .” she began, “why didn’t you ever say anything? Why didn’t you ever confront me about it?”
“Because I’m a bloody coward, that’s why,” Laura said bitterly. “I should have said something. In fairness I should have slapped you hard, but you’re my friend and at that time I knew you were hurting.”
Oh God, Nicola thought. She should have told Laura at the time. She wanted to but it wasn’t her place and she had been torn . . .
* * *
Nicola remembered the whole thing as clearly as though it happened yesterday. It was Christmas – not long after Jamie had abandoned Helen and six-month-old Kerry. Nicola was living in England at the time. She had come home that Christmas to see her family, mostly to convince them she was doing OK, but also to attend a New Year’s Eve party at what had been Laura and Neil’s old rented house in Goatstown.
There was quite a crowd, and everyone had been drinking heavily with the exception of Nicola, who that night was feeling particularly sorry for herself. New Year’s Eve was often a very lonely night for single people, especially newly separated single people. Laura was well out of it, she and Neil having consumed nearly a full bottle of Southern Comfort between them – eventually, she went to bed early while Neil stayed up mingling with the guests.
Despite her recent pregnancy, Helen looked absolutely stunning that night. She had a salon tan, an
d was wearing a jaw-droppingly sexy gold knitted dress, which clung to every curve and emphasised her newly flat stomach. Every inch the social butterfly, Helen flitted teasingly from one man to the other, flirting madly all night.
Nicola was being chatted up by a friend of Neil’s, who seemed greatly intrigued by her. “Aren’t you great altogether?” he was saying. “The way you get out and about – not a bother on you.”
“I’m not an imbecile, you know,” Nicola answered, trying to be annoyed, but despite herself, amused at the reaction she had been getting from people on her return home. It was as though everyone expected that she should have lost her mind, as well as everything else.
Feeling a bit of a headache and deciding she might just go to bed early, she made her way to Laura’s spare bedroom, trying to remember if she had left her overnight bag there or in the living-room upon her arrival earlier. She hoped it was in the bedroom, otherwise she would have to make a big song and dance about saying goodnight to the others. Anyway, the party was already beginning to break up and she suspected Helen might have left already, as she hadn’t seen her in a while. Idly thinking it was a bit rude of Helen not to say goodnight, Nicola opened the bedroom door and, switching on the light, stopped short.
There, on the bed, bodies moulded tightly together and kissing passionately, were Helen Jackson and Neil Connolly.
“What the fuck?” Nicola couldn’t contain her anger. “What the hell do you two think you’re doing?”
Eyes glazed, Neil sat up and, horrified, looked drunkenly at Nicola and then back to Helen. Immediately he pushed Helen off him. “Oh Jesus,” he said, “oh God, Nicola, I . . . it’s not what you think . . . I would never –”
“Not what I think? Then what is it, Neil? Because I sure as hell don’t know what else it could be!”
Helen rolled onto the other side of the bed and said nothing, watching Neil flounder.
“Nicola, I swear to you – I just don’t know what happened . . . I –”
“Get out of my sight, Neil,” Nicola ordered, ignoring his pleas. “I want a word with Helen.”
Neil stayed rooted to the spot.
“Out, Neil – now!”
“OK, OK, I’m going but . . .” He stood up and, quickly buttoning up his shirt, he looked directly at Helen. “There was nothing . . .”
Nicola flashed him another look and Neil bolted, swaying slightly as he went. Her hair and clothes greatly dishevelled, Helen swung her legs off one side of the bed and the two friends faced one another, daggers clearly drawn. Helen didn’t look in the slightest bit guilty – in fact Nicola thought she looked almost triumphant.
“What the hell are you playing at?” she spat, when Helen didn’t say anything. “Laura is your friend!”
Helen waved a hand in the air. “Laura, Laura, Laura,” she slurred. “Seems poor old Laura is just as fucked up as the rest of us.”
“What?”
“Well, look at how things turned out,” she said, as if it all made perfect sense. “You get messed up by Dan, I get messed up by Jamie – now we’re all quits.”
Nicola was so angry at her she could hardly speak. She knew Helen was finding things hard in the last few months but to deliberately . . .
“You’re telling me that you set out to seduce Neil tonight, just to get back at Jamie?”
“Nope.” Helen slumped drunkenly back onto the bed. “To get back at Laura.”
“What? But why? What has Laura ever done to you? She’s your best friend, for goodness sake!”
“Oh, she’s so bloody perfect!” Helen hissed, sitting up. “Everything always goes so well for our Laura. She has her nice little job, and her nice little boyfriend and she never loses her temper, everyone loves her and I’m just so bloody sick of it!”
Nicola resisted the urge to strangle her. “You stupid cow! Just because you’re jealous of Laura, just because your life is a mess right now doesn’t mean that you can go around messing things up for her! She loves Neil and, despite what I saw just now, I’m sure he loves her too! What kind of a person are you, Helen? If we all went around doing things like that, just because our own lives weren’t going according to plan –”
Helen seemed bored by the conversation. “Yeah, I know. I know. It could be worse. I mean, I could have ended up like you!”
This time there was no restraint. This time Nicola moved forward and slapped her friend hard across the face. What had happened to Helen? Was she so full of bitterness towards Jamie that she was no longer able to feel compassion for anyone else?
Helen had given her a look that would cut diamonds before picking up her shoes and exiting the room.
Things changed the next day though. The next day, a clearly mortified Helen turned up at Nicola’s parents’ house in Crumlin.
“I’m sorry,” she bawled, a sleeping Kerry in her arms. “I don’t know what I was trying to prove. I didn’t want to hurt Laura . . . I was just so lonely and fucked up and . . . I’m sorry for what I said about you.”
Nicola wasn’t having any of her self-pity. “Just promise me that you will never ever do anything like that again. Grow up and start taking responsibility for your actions. You’re an adult, and now you have a child to look after. Cop on, Helen!”
“I’m sorry,” she said again. “I’m just finding it hard. I miss him so much, and I’m terrified that I won’t be a good mother.”
Nicola had sat Helen down and told her that it was early days, that she had just been through a tough time, that she was still in mourning for Jamie and that everything would eventually fall into place.
And, Nicola thought, it had. Helen seemed genuinely contrite, had afterwards stayed away from Neil and Laura, and began to pick up the pieces after Jamie’s departure. Neil had phoned her too, beside himself with remorse and begging her not to think badly of him.
“Nicola, you have to believe me. I’ve never done anything like that before in my life. I can’t believe I could have been so stupid. I adore Laura, I’d do anything for her and I would never, ever do anything to hurt her.”
“You didn’t think a quick shag with her best friend while she was upstairs asleep would do anything to hurt her?” Nicola had said.
“Oh God, Nicola it wasn’t like that. We were just talking in the kitchen and then Helen got upset and somehow we just ended up in the bedroom and . . . oh God, I want to die!”
Nicola had agonised for a while, but eventually decided not to tell Laura anything about that night, perceiving it to be a drunken lapse by Neil, who in fairness was pretty out of it and suffering badly now as a result. There was no point in upsetting Laura by telling her that her best friend and her boyfriend had had a drunken, meaningless fling on New Year’s Eve. Not wanting to think about what might have happened had she not interrupted them, Nicola had thought it the right thing to do.
Apparently, Neil hadn’t felt the same way, yet the thought had never crossed Nicola’s mind that he would come clean with Laura. She had always thought he would be much too afraid of losing her. Yet now that she thought about it, it wasn’t too surprising he had confessed all. Neil Connolly was a kind decent man, who was prepared to sacrifice his relationship, and possibly Laura’s trust in him by being honest with her. Although, she had had her doubts, and it had taken her some time to trust him after that night, Nicola now had to admit that he had behaved admirably.
* * *
Now Laura looked at them both, her expression stony. “I know you two thought ‘Oh poor Laura, we’d better not tell her, she couldn’t handle it – no need to upset her.’ Why does everyone think that? Why is Neil the only one who gives me any credit? You,” she said, pointing at Helen, “my supposed best friend tried to undermine my relationship like that and, Nicola, you knew about it but never told me!”
“Laura, it wasn’t like that,” Nicola began. “We were only trying to protect you . . .” She trailed off when Laura held her hand up.
“I’m sick of it,” she said. “I’m sick to the teeth o
f it all. Why does everyone think I need protecting? I’m nearly thirty years of age!”
“But at the time . . .”
At the time, Nicola had been placed in a horrible position, dealing with doubts in her mind about Neil, trying to cover up for Helen and feeling bad about keeping secrets from Laura. This wasn’t friendship – this was a bloody nightmare!
What had happened to the three of them? What had happened to trust, loyalty, support – all the things that should be taken for granted in friendship, real friendship? How had they let one another down like this?
“Laura, it was all my fault,” Helen began. “It was New Year’s Eve and I was feeling lonely and I just wanted someone . . . a man, to hold me and to comfort me and –”
Laura’s tone was hard. “It wasn’t just any man, Helen – it was Neil. And he wasn’t exactly fair game. Okay, he wasn’t actually innocent either but at least he had the guts to come and tell me about it, at least he respected me enough to let me decide what to do about it. I know you two think I’m too soft, too emotional. Oh, believe me, I know you’ve always thought that. But I’m not as stupid as you seem to think. I said nothing to Helen, because I had heard Neil’s side of the story, and I believed him when he said it was nothing but a stupid drunken fling that had got out of hand. After all, I know full well what Helen can be like.”
At this Helen hung her head, clearly ashamed.
But then Laura’s tone softened. “But I also knew that you were suffering, Hel, and I tried to be there for you. I’ve always tried to be there for you, but in the last few years you and I have grown apart. You’re different, Helen. Ever since you had Kerry, you’re different.”
“Why wouldn’t I be?” she said hoarsely. “Why wouldn’t I be different after nearly four years of being on my own looking after her –”
“She’s your daughter!”
“I know,” Helen said softly. “I know that. I just . . . I just feel so lonely sometimes.”
“Helen, from where I’m sitting, you have bloody everything! A wonderful job, designer clothes, a fantastic apartment and, more importantly, a daughter any mother would be proud to have. What more do you want?”
