That looks amazing, Flick!
I’m surprised to see her using the old nickname, Flick – despite the growing warmth of our messages over the last few weeks, this is the first time anyone has used it. For some reason, it feels like a turning point, and for a few seconds I allow myself to hope. I hope that this trip makes everything go back to normal. I hope it brings us back together. I hope it gives me back my friends. I hope it allows us all to forget why we’ve been apart.
Most of all, I hope it gives each of us what we deserve.
The family sharing my carriage get out at Heathrow too, all of us blinking into the light and looking around for the exit. It’s been so long since I got on a flight – in fact, I think the last time was at university, the skiing trip to France that I couldn’t really afford but didn’t want to miss out on. I follow the signs to the terminal, and the crowd becomes busier; I scan the faces, looking for Alice or Hannah, wanting to see them but at the same time feeling the anxious butterflies in my stomach fluttering madly. At a sign for the toilets, I duck in and reapply my make-up, my fingers shaking slightly. It’s just adrenaline, I tell myself, the adrenaline of being somewhere new, out of the flat, out of the usual routine of my boring, boring life. It’s a good thing. It proves I’m alive. That I’m not broken, after all.
I smear foundation over my cheeks even though I already have lots on, and dab lip balm on before washing my hands with the weird, slimy, colourless soap they tend to have in airports. I stare at my reflection in the mirror, trying to see myself through their eyes. My light brown hair that hangs to my shoulders, my muddy brown eyes, small upturned nose and slightly thin-lipped mouth. There are lines on my forehead that weren’t there before. What will they think of me now? It’s been two years, almost to the day, since I saw them. We will all look a little bit older, a little bit more tired. Apart from Felicity, of course. Judging by the photos, Felicity will look better than ever.
‘Excuse me, can I get past?’ There’s a dark-haired woman trying to move behind me and I start, realise I’ve been standing there dumbly, staring at myself in a daze. She looks at me, impatient almond eyes waiting for me to respond.
‘Sorry,’ I mumble, and there’s nothing for it now, no more time to procrastinate. I leave the toilets – ‘How was your experience?’ asks an automated voice, and I mindlessly press the happy face. May as well start as I mean to go on.
My phone beeps as I re-enter the terminal. It’s Hannah: Come to the champagne bar in Terminal 5. Have checked in already. Will get you a drink. Alice here too.
So they’re together already. Insecurity creeps up my stomach – did they travel here together, after all? What are they talking about? Are they discussing me? I had imagined us all meeting at the exact same time, on an even footing; I hadn’t pictured the two of them cosying up in a champagne bar without me, my having to play catch-up. The last one to join the party. The tag-along, again. A memory flashes back to me, of hot tears running down my face, the sound of their laughter in a cold, smoky courtyard, filtering through a small toilet window as I crouch breathless on the floor. I push it away: now is not the time to go down that road. Not when we’ve come so far.
I give myself a little shake, tell myself I’m being ridiculous, grab my case and hurry towards the security gates. I’ve got the electronic boarding pass that Felicity sent through on my phone and the queue isn’t too bad – it is a random Friday in March, after all. I take off my boots and coat and walk through the body-scanner. When the machine beeps and a security guard steps forward to pat me down, I realise it is the first time I’ve been touched in over a week. The thought shames me; I think of Ben and Rosie, laughing at me, my perceived lack of sexuality.
‘Are you carrying any metal, any dangerous items?’ the guard says, and I shake my head, impatient. I want to catch up with the other two. I don’t want them talking without me, catching up, sharing secrets over a glass of airport champagne. Not when I’m not there to join in.
Or to defend myself.
‘Clear,’ the woman says and I step forward, relieved, collect my bag and head through the gates. The smell of duty-free hits me; expensive perfumes, the sticky fizz of sweets, a whiff of alcohol as I pass a whisky-tasting pop-up. There is too much choice, too many colours – prices leap out at me, overwhelming in their number. I hurry through, resisting the urge to down one of the dark, potent shots of whisky, my shabby little case catching slightly on the trail of a stranger’s scarf, and then I see it: a round champagne bar, brightly lit, surrounded by high, faux-leather stools.
And there they are: my oldest friends. Alice and Hannah, bags by their side, heads together as though they are conspirators. Exactly as I remember them. Thick as thieves.
Chapter Four
27th March
London
Hannah
It’s really difficult holding her stomach in whilst sitting on these stupid high stools. Hannah had arrived at the airport first, and thought this might be a good way to break the ice; it seemed like a better alternative than sitting having a smoothie in Pret for two hours. She hasn’t told the others, but she had a glass of champagne before either of them even arrived – she knows it’s early, but surely holiday rules apply, and to be honest she had needed something to settle the nerves. Hannah hasn’t drunk any booze for months and months, firstly because of what happened – the thought of alcohol made her guilt even worse – and then because of the baby, so the bubbles have immediately gone to her head. Her boobs are still sore because she’d used the breast pump so much earlier, but at least the fridge is full of milk for Max and once that runs out, Chris will have to fend for himself and go to Boots.
It’ll be good for him, Hannah thinks. A chance for him to see what her life is actually like, tending to the baby 24/7. When she comes back, he might start helping out with Maxy more. Ha! Perhaps it’s the champagne talking now. Don’t get ahead of yourself, Hannah.
‘Are you going somewhere nice?’ the bartender asked her earlier when she’d arrived on her own.
‘Botswana. A Safari lodge,’ she’d told him, and he’d whistled, nodded.
‘Very nice. Gonna be hot out there, even this time of year. Hope you’ve had your jabs. You’ll have to keep your wits about you, you look like the type who might burn. A proper English rose.’
Hannah had found herself blushing, even though he might not have meant it as a compliment. It has been so long since she has sat in a bar, even a fake, stand-alone one in the middle of a noisy, busy airport, and so long since she’s had a conversation with a man who isn’t Chris. She touches her arm, the small indent in the skin a reminder of the vaccinations they all had before coming. Even going to the clinic felt exciting, a promise of adventure to come. The nurse had handed her a clutch of brochures, warned her of typhoid, cholera, hepatitis A. Hannah had nodded and smiled. It would have sounded strange to say that even the mentions of disease excited her – the words sounded exotic, other-worldly. For months she had thought only of mastitis, colic, post-natal complications. Of motherhood, in all its guises.
Felicity’s photos look amazing. Hannah sips her drink, wondering who else will be there. She doesn’t know for sure, but suspects that Felicity and Nathaniel, her old boyfriend, may have split – she hasn’t mentioned him, and there is nothing on her social media that indicates their relationship anymore. Perhaps that is a good thing. Shame burns in Hannah’s stomach at the thought of seeing him, given what a state she’d been in last time. Remembering his kindness, the follow-up calls, she feels guilty all over again.
Who else, who else? Presumably, friends she has made in New York – Hannah shudders at the thought of them seeing her in her bikini. None of them kept in touch with anyone else from school, so she’d be surprised if anyone like that turned up – it was always just the four of them. Felicity’s uni friends – Deb and Andrew maybe? Her family? Hannah feels a shiver of unease at the thought of seeing her father. She doesn’t know how any of them would be able to look him in th
e eye. He’d always creeped Hannah out, since they were kids, long before he did what he did to Felicity. She doesn’t relish the thought of spending an evening in his company. Felicity’s mother passed away when they were younger, but clearly, she’s going big with this birthday so perhaps she has invited extended relatives to come along. Hannah feels a pang when she thinks about Felicity’s mother, Diane – turning thirty without her must be painful. Perhaps that’s why Felicity has decided to make the most of it, surround herself with other people to make up for the one person she is lacking.
‘Another?’ The waiter is in front of her again, smiling, and Hannah is surprised to see that she’s finished her glass already. She wonders briefly if he’s used to this – the great British public downing booze before lunchtime, propping up the bar at all hours of the day.
‘I’m meeting some friends, so I’ll wait,’ she says, reluctantly, and as she says the words she realises how long it’s been since she really felt they were true. Since Max was born, the only people Hannah sees or speaks to are colleagues of Chris’s that he insists on inviting round, or her parents, or acquaintances from her work who text every now and again about nothing. None of them are her friends. None of them are the women who have known her since she was five years old, who have cried with her and held back her hair and slept in her bed with their arms around her waist.
Her real friends have always been the girls. And despite everything that happened, despite Felicity leaving, she wants them back. She wants that feeling of us back. The question is, do they feel the same?
‘Hannah!’
At the sound of her name, Hannah spins around on her stool, almost toppling off it in the process, and suddenly, there she is. Alice – her long dark hair swept up in a ponytail, her eyes bright and sparkling, a bright purple suitcase by her side.
For a second, they stare at each other, watched by the barman, and then Alice steps forward and wordlessly embraces Hannah, enveloping her in the piquant scent of her perfume and an overwhelming sense of familiarity.
‘It’s so good to see you,’ she says, and her voice sounds sincere, genuine. A lump rises in Hannah’s throat, and quickly she swallows it down, annoyed with herself and with the champagne. Alcohol makes her needlessly emotional, it always has, sometimes with catastrophic consequences. Chris always used to say he thought it was sweet, but she’s not sure now that he was telling the truth.
‘It’s good to see you too,’ Hannah says, sounding even to her own ears a little wooden, but Alice being Alice doesn’t seem to notice, she simply sits down on the stool next to her and orders two more glasses of champagne, pink this time.
Hannah watches her as she moves, adjusting herself on the stool, tightening her ponytail, fiddling with her bag as she hooks it underneath the bar. Alice – her Alice. Out of everyone, the pair of them were perhaps the closest – she’d be the one Hannah would text first, the one she’d call if she was sad, the one she’d rely on the most. Sometimes, Hannah thinks about what might’ve happened if she had told her the truth two years ago, instead of keeping it to herself – how the events of that evening might have played out differently. But it’s pointless to speculate; what’s done is done.
Alice has always been pretty, but somehow she looks even more so than Hannah remembers; there are no bags under her eyes and she looks healthy, fit, almost muscular. She doesn’t have children – at least, she didn’t two years ago, and when Hannah glances down at her finger she can’t see a ring so she and Tom obviously haven’t got married – if they’re still together, that is. It strikes her how little she knows about Alice’s life now, when once they knew every detail of each other’s days, lived in each other’s pockets.
How times change.
‘Funny how things change,’ Alice says, as though she has been reading Hannah’s mind, and Hannah sees that she is gesturing to the champagne glasses. ‘Time was these would’ve been shots, but there’s no way I could handle that now. And I’ve stopped smoking!’ She laughs. ‘I’m a changed woman, Hannah. I’m surprised you recognised me.’
‘God, shots – the thought makes my stomach heave.’ Hannah shudders, remembering their sixth-form days. Alice was always the biggest drinker; she’d drink the rest of them under the table, then bounce back the morning after, raring to go again. Her hangovers never seemed as bad as Hannah’s – she must have developed a tolerance for it. Hannah hasn’t had a shot since that night – even now, the thought of tequila makes her feel physically sick, conjures up images of her bare feet on tarmac, her head on Nate’s chest – and later vomit, acidic in her throat, splattering the bathroom floor back at home.
Their drinks arrive and Alice raises hers aloft.
‘To Felicity,’ she says, and the toast takes Hannah by surprise. ‘For bringing us back together. At last.’
Hannah nods, and echoes Alice because she doesn’t really know what else to do, and Alice takes a long sip, setting the glass back down on the bar top and smiling. Her face, when Hannah looks closely, seems almost triumphant.
‘So,’ she says, ‘you had a baby!’
Hannah thinks of the day in the hospital bed, Chris white-faced by her side, her grunting and groaning and pushing and that weird moment when she had looked around the room, past the doctor and the midwife, and thought of Alice. Her closest friend – not there at the birth of her child. Hannah didn’t text to tell her – Alice didn’t call to ask. Hannah had buried the sadness with an Instagram account and an NCT group and her husband, but it was still there. Hidden, but there. Like a shameful little secret: I miss you.
Alice is staring at her expectantly. It’s the first thing anyone will ever think about Hannah now. It is her status: mother. Wife.
But it’s easy, familiar territory, at least, and so she pulls out her phone, starts showing Alice photos of baby Max – of her and Chris leaving the hospital with him, her own expression pale and shell-shocked, of Max swaddled up in his cot, wearing a cute little duck’s outfit that Chris’s mother bought him even though Hannah had clearly said that she hated the kind of parents who dress their children up as animals. He stares back at her: her baby boy, and for a few seconds Hannah’s heart seems to contract.
Alice coos and ahhs and makes all the right noises, but Hannah can hear her own voice bouncing back at her and she knows she must sound boring. She wonders whether Alice wants children now – she didn’t use to, when they were younger, but things change. Hannah wonders whether she and Tom have talked about it, but she doesn’t feel as though now is the right moment to ask. Maybe later, once they’ve spent a bit more time together, got used to being around one another again. The barman has his back to them now; her talk of babies must bore him.
But gradually, as they drink their champagne and watch the flight time grow closer and closer, Hannah starts to feel her body relax. This is Alice, after all – Alice whose house she used to go to for fish and chips on a Friday night when they were still in school uniform, Alice who sat next to her in maths and helped her write notes to the boy she fancied, Alice who held her hand and listened to her cry when the first time she and Chris tried to get pregnant didn’t work out, before Hannah closed herself off and things got too painful and intense to share. There is nothing to be afraid of.
Is there?
It’s a while before they think to message Grace. It’s Alice who does – Hannah has got a bit swept up in the moment, reminiscing about the past, but Alice whips out her phone and squeals at the time.
‘Grace is cutting it a bit fine, isn’t she? Do you think she’s still coming?’
Hannah feels her heart give a little lurch. This holiday only works if the four of them are together, like pieces in a game. The players can’t be imbalanced.
‘I’ll text her,’ she says quickly, and taps out a message, orders an extra drink so that it’s ready and waiting for when Grace arrives. Best to start things off on the right foot. If she’s anything like Hannah, she’ll be feeling a bit on edge – and Grace has always been a bi
t of a panicker. She’s the one Hannah worries about the most – well, used to worry about anyway. Lately, she hasn’t felt as though she has the right. Or, to be totally frank, the inclination. It’s hard to open up to people who won’t open up to you.
‘God, the photos Felicity sent through looked amazing, didn’t they?’ Alice says dreamily, and Hannah nods, feels a shiver of excitement run up her spine as she thinks about the place they’re going to – the heat, the wide African plains, the beautiful skies.
‘I can’t wait for some sun,’ she tells Alice. ‘A proper break from it all.’
‘It’s so nice to see you, Han,’ Alice says suddenly, and she reaches out and grasps Hannah’s hand, holds it for a second in hers. Her palm is dry and warm, and the whorls of her skin feel familiar. Memories of the four of them in the attic at Felicity’s surface – they used to sit in a circle, holding hands, a stolen bottle of wine in the middle of their ring. Sometimes Felicity would light a candle, and in her mind’s eye Hannah can see the flicker of her gaze on them all, daring them on, controlling the game. If Hannah ever felt nervous, Alice would squeeze her hand.
Now, the tips of Alice’s nails graze against her wedding ring and she taps it, lightly, as though reminding Hannah that it’s there. Hannah and Chris had got married just before Max was born, in a small, private ceremony. The truth was, Hannah hadn’t been able to bear the thought of a big party without the girls there. So they invited hardly anyone, pretended it was what they wanted. But now, all this time later, Alice’s hand is tight on hers.
That’s how Grace finds them: locked together, holding hands, best friends all over again. For now, at least.
Alice
Alice doesn’t know what it is that makes her reach for Hannah’s hand, and after she has done so she feels embarrassed. But it’s nice, somehow, and when Grace appears Alice is disappointed to let go. Now that she is actually here, now that they’ve committed to this trip, Alice just wants to feel close to Hannah again, to all of them. When they were kids, they’d weave themselves brightly coloured friendship bracelets, lock their pinkie fingers together and swear to be best friends forever. If only it were that easy now.
The Wild Girls Page 4
