The Wild Girls

by Phoebe Morgan

  I look to my left, and see the swell of the river – surely, if I follow it for long enough I will come to a main road, to something or someone that can help me. I check Hannah’s phone – 13 per cent battery. There’s a new message, too, and at first I avert my eyes, wanting to respect her privacy even now, but it’s on the screen and I can’t help myself from reading. It’s from Chris: Got your message. Have you talked to them yet? Call me, Hannah, please. I’m worried.

  I stare at the words, confused. What was she going to talk to us about? Them can surely only mean us – Alice and me. Did Hannah know something more about why we’re here than she let on? I think of the fortune teller, the strange little notes. One of you knows why you’re here. But none of us gave up our secrets. And now two of us are dead.

  Part Two

  Chapter Fourteen

  Felicity

  I’ll always regret the night I introduced Nathaniel to the girls, because it was the night that our friendship imploded.

  Letting them meet him was my first big mistake.

  It was February, and London was cold. At night, I pushed my feet up against Nate’s, loving the way our toes nestled together like kindling in a fire. We’d only been together for two months, well, nine weeks, really, but already, I was in at the deep end. Sinking fast.

  He made me laugh, is what it was – he was clever and witty and when he looked at me it was as though he could see right through to my soul. You’re so dramatic, Felicity, my mother used to say before she died. I wonder what she’d have made of Nate – in my dreams, she loves him just as much as I do.

  It helped that he was beautiful – dark hair that curled around his ears, bright blue eyes that made me feel as though I was falling whenever I looked into them. Like staring at the sun; almost unbearably painful after a while. He was tall, classically handsome – like everyone I dated, I suppose you could say, but Nathaniel was different from the very beginning. He saw me, in a way that nobody had since my mother. Certainly not my father, who after my operation seemed to shrink further away from me, as if looking at me only served to amplify the gravity of what he had done. I longed for the days when he looked at me properly, when he pulled me close to him, told me I was special. But they were fading, and Nathaniel became the only one who could really see me for who I was.

  Or at least, that’s what I thought. We all see what we want to see, Felicity, I was told afterwards, but I didn’t find the phrase especially comforting.

  He had strong hands – he was a doctor, and I used to imagine how reassuring it must be for his patients to see him approaching, to feel one of those hands pressed against a hot, feverish forehead. I was almost jealous of them, when he told me about his day. I found myself wishing he’d do that to me, which sounds ridiculous, I know. I hate illness, have been terrified of it since it took my mother, so to wish it upon myself simply to be close to Nate was undoubtedly insane.

  The night we first met, just before Christmas, I knew I stood no chance – I’d found my version of perfection, and everyone else’s, if they were honest with themselves. Think about it – who doesn’t want a handsome, clever, funny doctor for a boyfriend? Anyone who says they don’t is lying, and believe me, I know a liar when I see one. Christmas is, I suppose, always a particularly funny time for me, because it’s when my mother died, so on the evening I met him you could say that I was almost looking for something to happen – something to distract me from memories. I know some people would use the word ‘vulnerable’, but that’s not the term I would choose.

  I didn’t introduce Nate to anyone for another week after we passed our two-month anniversary. The girls were getting desperate, clamouring to meet him, moaning how weird it was of me to keep him secret for so long when I usually introduced men to them after about an hour. I had to. They were my board of directors, my litmus test. If they didn’t like him, there was something wrong and he was out before he could protest – that was usually how it went. Grace, Alice and Hannah were my closest friends, the only people I trusted – and I relied on them to tell me when my judgement was off. Which, let’s be honest, it often was. I didn’t have a mother to warn me anymore, to try to stop me from making the same mistakes as she did, and so I relied on the three of them more than ever, I suppose. I trusted them.

  That’s the second mistake I made.

  So, I guess what I’m saying is, I did know why I was waiting to introduce them to Nathaniel – I simply couldn’t bear the idea of them finding fault with him. I’d never felt like this before, was scared by the depth of my feelings. Without anyone to pull me back, I absorbed myself in his world – his friends, his views, his way of life, and I knew that by the time he finally met my friends, it would be too late. I wouldn’t hear a word against him. Mistake number three.

  That final mistake: that was the one that broke us.

  Chapter Fifteen

  February, two years before Botswana

  Grace

  I’m applying lipstick in the mirror of the toilets in the Red Lion, peering at my reflection through the cracked screen. This place is becoming a bit of a dive, we all know it is, and yet we continue to come here, seeking out the ghosts of our youth in the sticky tables, the familiar bar staff and the memories. It’s where we always reconvene for moments that feel significant – where we huddled together, the four of us, before we went off to university, our last night of innocence before the madness of freshers’ week and the influx of new people, none of whom managed to dilute our friendship. It’s where Hannah had her first kiss, with Toby Davies back when we were fourteen, and where Alice smoked her first cigarette – one of many, as it turned out. It’s where we first got drunk, because it was the only place that would serve us, a Richmond institution that didn’t care too much about fake ID or school uniforms – the Red Lion only cared about money. And so we came, and kept coming, and now we come again, as twenty-eight-year-old women who really should know better.

  ‘Grace? What are you doing in there? Flick will be here any second!’ Alice bursts into the Ladies, trailing a cloud of perfume in her wake, the strong, memorable scent she always wears. She’s been drinking white wine, and her movements are loose, sloppy as she puts an arm around me, presses her face close to mine. Her cheeks are cold – we’re sitting outside, and the outdoor heaters are temperamental, to say the least. But Alice insists on it, so that she can smoke, and none of us argues with her. Besides, it’s quieter out there – we can hear each other speak, which is what Hannah said she wanted.

  ‘Han OK? Is Tom here yet?’ I ask, pressing my lips together carefully, hating the way the dry flakes of skin make me look old, older than the girl I feel inside. I tend not to wear lipstick that often anymore – I don’t like drawing attention to myself, but tonight I forced myself to be brave.

  ‘She’s fine, in a bit of a grump,’ Alice says, waving a hand airily, but I frown, not quite believing her. There is something strange about Hannah tonight; she’s barely drinking, and seems incredibly subdued given this is the night we’ve all been waiting for – the night we meet Felicity’s new man. Alice ignores the question about Tom, her boyfriend, as if I haven’t mentioned him at all.

  ‘OK,’ I say, ‘sorry, I’m ready. Let’s go back outside. You shouldn’t have just left Han on her own!’

  ‘I need a wee!’ Alice says, tipsily, and she goes into a cubicle, leaving me standing there. I laugh at the sound of her unbuttoning her jeans (‘God, I’m too fat for these!’ – she isn’t, she’s never been overweight) and tell her I’ll see her back outside in the pub garden.

  I say garden; it’s more of a courtyard, really – stone flags with a little cobbled section which hints at the history of the pub, the age of it. Built in the 1700s, the pub’s courtyard is an enclosed space, backing out onto the more modern car park, hardly glamorous but just round the corner from where we grew up and from where Hannah and Felicity still live. My parents have since moved away, over to Surrey, and I live further east, now, in Peckham, whilst Alice and
Tom live over in Hackney. It’s a trek to get across to Richmond, but Hannah has promised the three of us – me, Alice, and Tom if he turns up – can stay with her and Chris, sleep on the sofa and a double airbed. Already, she seems more grown up than the rest of us; always has, probably always will. I picture her and Chris in their cosy, adult life, with silver-framed pictures on the wall, and I cannot imagine myself ever getting to that stage. It’s taken me long enough to move on from what happened to me last year; fortnightly therapy on the NHS, sessions in which I try to feel whole again. I’ve never told my friends what happened, not after the way my parents reacted, and I’ve never so much as smiled at a guy since. Dating hasn’t exactly been top of my radar, so God alone knows how I’d be able to progress towards something more, something deeper.

  I find Hannah where we left her, sitting alone outside under the orange glow of one of the heaters, a red tartan blanket wrapped around her knees. That’s another good thing about coming to the Red Lion; they give you free blankets when it’s the wintertime, and they do unlimited Aperol Spritzes in the summer, heavy on the Aperol, less so on the spritz. It’s a nice place to be – it feels like coming home, without the presence of my parents. Nostalgia settles in my throat at the sight of Han, huddled up on her own, her bum probably growing cold and numb on the wooden seat, like mine always used to when we were teenagers.

  ‘No sign of Flick yet?’ I plonk myself down next to Hannah, reach for the gin and tonic I was drinking before I went to the bathroom – disappointingly, there’s not as much left as I thought. There’s no answer from Hannah and I nudge her gently with my elbow.

  ‘Han? You OK?’

  ‘Hmm?’

  She looks up at me, as though only just noticing that I’ve come back from the toilets, and I feel a flicker of alarm. There’s something off about her gaze, as though she’s not really with it, she’s lost in a world of her own.

  ‘Sorry, sorry,’ she says, ‘yeah, I’m fine, are you? Where’s Alice?’

  ‘She’s just in the loo,’ I say, picking up the edge of her blanket and pulling it gently my way so that it covers me too. It’s a chilly night out here, but there’s still something nice about the air – the freshness of the cold, and the gin is doing a good job of warming up my insides. I take another sip, the feel of it tangy on my tongue. They do all different flavours here – blackberry, lemon, even rhubarb. What will they think of next? I hear my mother say in my ear.

  ‘Right, right,’ Hannah says, and then, impatiently, ‘come on, Flick, where are you?’

  ‘She’ll be here any minute,’ I say, smiling at her. ‘What’s up with you tonight? Why don’t you have a drink?’

  ‘All right, then, I’ll get one,’ she says, suddenly as though making a split decision. ‘Watch my bag, will you? Back in a minute.’ She stands up, the blanket falling abruptly off her knees. I look up at her when she says, ‘D’you want anything?’ but it’s almost like an afterthought.

  ‘Another gin, please,’ I say, ‘just regular flavour. No need to push the boat out.’ I grin at her, trying to make her laugh, but it doesn’t work; she just spins on her heel and disappears through the back door of the pub. There’s definitely something up with her tonight – I resolve to ask her when she comes back out.

  I look around the courtyard, my breath misting the air as I exhale. I wonder what Felicity’s new boyfriend will be like – we’ve been waiting weeks to meet him. I’m happy for her – she sounded so excited on the phone earlier, giggling like she was twenty again. I haven’t heard her so happy in ages, not since her mum died. My own mother always says that Felicity needs someone to look after her, to take her under their wing – poor little motherless mite. I bite my tongue when she says that.

  Sometimes, no mother is better than a bad one. A mother like mine, who doesn’t believe her own daughter, is a mother not worth having.

  ‘Grace!’ And just like that, she is here, bursting through the doors of the pub and out into the courtyard, spilling light from inside along with her. Felicity’s hair is loose, flowing golden down her shoulders, and she’s wearing a white fur coat flecked with light brown. Briefly, she reminds me of an ice princess, or something out of Narnia. I half expect to see snow fall in her wake, for her to reach out and offer me dusty Turkish Delight.

  There’s a figure behind her, someone I can’t make out, and at first I think it’s Alice, finally back from the bathroom, but then Felicity turns and reaches out a hand, grabs the person behind her and thrusts him forward, into the light of the heaters where I’m sitting. I stand up, hastily putting my almost-empty glass of gin down.

  ‘This is Nathaniel,’ she tells me, beaming at me, her lips pink and glossy, her hand now on the small of her new boyfriend’s back. I feel a jolt at the name, but ignore it – it’s a common name, I’m just being silly.

  ‘Nathaniel,’ she says, ‘this is Grace, one of my best and oldest friends. I’m so happy you guys can finally meet!’

  His face is cast into the light; the bright blue eyes, the inky black of his hair, the sharp jut of his cheekbones, and I almost stumble backwards in shock. My breath catches in my throat and I feel dizzy, sick at the sight of his face after all this time in which I’ve tried my hardest to forget. Blood beats in my ears; my whole body feels like it’s pulsing.

  Not such a common name, after all.

  ‘What’s the matter, Grace? God, you look like you’ve seen a ghost,’ Felicity says, immediately concerned, but I can’t answer her; I sink back down onto the wooden pub bench, my legs shaking, and just for a second, I close my eyes. The small, smoky courtyard spins around me and I’m back there, with him, pain bursting through me, repeating a chant to myself: hold on, hold on, hold on.

  ‘Grace? Grace?’ Felicity is saying but I can’t answer her, I can’t speak, and I can’t look up at him, see the face I have tried to block out of my nightmares.

  This can’t be happening.

  Alice

  Alice is smoking another cigarette as she comes out of the Ladies, making her way through the pack, furious with Tom for not showing his face yet. He promised he’d be here by eight, but, surprise surprise, she is bottom of his priority list once again. She’s drunk too much already, she knows because she almost fell asleep on the toilet in there, but at least they’re staying over at Hannah’s tonight and she hasn’t got to trek all the way back to bloody Hackney.

  Were are you? she texts Tom, her fingers blurring stickily over the keypad, and she sends it before realising she’s spelled ‘where’ wrong. Ugh. He’ll know she’s pissed, now. Another reason to tell her off. Maybe she deserves it.

  Outside, the cold air hits her and for a moment Alice thinks it’s sobered her up. The courtyard seems to have got busier – a group of teenagers is clustered over in the corner, their laughter drifting towards her on the February night air – at least they’re far enough west that they can’t be anyone from the senior school – and a couple sit on one of the round tables, kissing intermittently, their fingers entwined. She feels a little pull in her stomach. Why can’t she and Tom be like that?

  ‘Alice!’ She turns to see Felicity waving at her – ah good, she’s here. Next to her is a tall guy, God, he’s attractive, the thought registers with Alice almost without her meaning it to. Dark hair, broad shoulders, a big smile that he’s currently beaming towards her. Trust Felicity to have found someone who looks like that. Alice pastes on her best smile and sashays over to them, ignoring the way her jeans are digging into her flesh, dropping her ciggie and grinding it out quickly with the heel of her boot. These little grey ones are new, and already rubbing her heels – bloody things. When will she learn not to wear new shoes on a night out before trialling them round the house first?

  ‘This is Nathaniel,’ Flick says, and he steps towards Alice, a hand outstretched.

  ‘Very formal,’ she giggles, thrusting her own hand out to meet his, stumbling slightly on her stupid heeled boots.

  ‘I’m Alice,’ she says, ‘Flick’
s oldest friend. It’s so nice to meet you – we’ve heard a lot about you.’

  ‘All good things, I hope? And please, call me Nate,’ Nathaniel says, which is a fairly standard response to be fair, but he’s got a lovely voice. His hand is warm and dry in hers, and Alice feels a flicker of disappointment when he lets go, which of course she quashes as quickly as it came. She’s just a bit drunk, that’s all. No big deal. She is used to herself by now.

  We all have our foibles.

  ‘All good things,’ Alice clarifies, smiling at Felicity who is hovering next to Nathaniel like an anxious bird. She’s never normally anxious, or at least if she is, she doesn’t let it show. She must really like him.

  ‘Nice coat, Flick,’ Alice says, nodding at Felicity’s furry new number, and she preens a bit, stroking it with her left hand whilst the other remains attached to Nathaniel – or should she say Nate.

  ‘Where are the others?’ Alice asks, peering behind them to the empty picnic bench which contains Grace and Hannah’s handbags, but no sign of the girls.

  ‘I think Hannah must be at the bar.’ Felicity shrugs. ‘And Grace went to the bathroom just now, said she wasn’t feeling well all of a sudden.’

  ‘Oh,’ Alice says, wrong-footed; she doesn’t want the night to end yet, Tom still hasn’t made an appearance, and besides, it’s only just gone eight fifteen. She’s enjoying herself too much for everyone to have to bail early because of Grace.