The Friend

by Dorothy Koomson

  July, 2001

  I had earned the Baton of Honour. Rather than leaving the course as Duke had been determined to make me do and had tried very hard to make happen, I had actually finished the police training course with the highest honour a cadet could receive. I’d had to force my face to set in a serious, worthy expression at the passing out parade because I’d been so desperate to smile. Grin. I could barely believe I’d achieved such an accolade. The excitement and, I’ll admit it, pride at having been adorned shone through me as I walked to the pub after waving my parents off at the train station.

  As soon as I opened the door to the Sunny Arms, the heat from the other officers – excitement, relief, pure joy from having done it – rolled over me like stepping off a plane in a tropical country. We had made it; we were on the way to becoming proper police officers.

  As I made my way through the crowd, searching for the people I’d become closest to on the course, I was aware of the sour grapes, the ‘she got it because she’s black, she’s female, wouldn’t be surprised if she was a lesbian too’ looks and whispers being aimed my way, and I ignored them. I knew how hard I’d worked, what I’d put up with; I knew I had more than earned the right to be on the course and that I had done enough to be awarded the Baton. I continued to gently push my way through the throng, stopping to smile and say thank you to those who were normal enough to congratulate me with a smile and a pat on the back. Between the gaps in the bodies collected in the bar, I saw Gareth and my stomach flipped.

  We had both circled the sticky topic of what would happen when we left. Yes, we’d lain together, naked and post-coital, talking about how we were going to help the good people, lock up the bad, weed out corruption wherever we saw it, but that was post-sex talk. It was talking while we were dressed and unbefuddled that caused us to grow shy and mute and to dance around each other. He’d broken first, though. Had asked if we could keep in touch, meet up and see where it took us. I’d said yes, of course, and now we were here, the end of the road, ready to go forth. I wanted to clink a glass with him to mark the end, start the future.

  My group of friends were standing in a slightly out-of-shape circle formation by the hollow of the unlit fireplace, pint glasses in hands, relaxed and relieved, euphoric and ecstatic. As I arrived at the edge of the group, I saw faces fall. It took less than a second to find out why: Duke. He was holding court, the alpha male at the centre of things, imparting his wit and wisdom in the form of a joke. It was this particular joke that made people’s faces fall.

  Everyone else’s faces fell, but his lit up. He held my eye and raised his voice as he continued to tell his ‘funny’ story that was designed to remind everyone how much he hated me and my ‘kind’.

  Heat. The heat was back. Not the sweaty, tropical heat that surrounded me. Not the heat that ignited whenever I was with Gareth. The heat of humiliation, the burning pain of listening to what Duke was saying and having no one step in. They all stared into their pints, stared at their feet, stared at anything other than me.

  When he was done, had paraded his ‘punchline’ and laughed at his own joke, loudly, heartily for an extended period, Duke raised his pint glass to his face and then spoke to me: ‘Didn’t you think that was funny, Cee-Dee?’ he asked. ‘Don’t be so sensitive, sweetheart. It was only a joke. You can take a joke, can’t you?’ Right beside him was Gareth. His eyes were on his feet, his head so low I could see the blond whorl of the crown of his head, his mouth so firmly shut it was hard to believe that I’d ever heard him speak. I glanced around the group of friends, all of them with their heads lowered and their mouths shut.

  I looked again at Gareth while Duke grinned and sipped his pint. I breathed in, as far as I could. Smiled at Duke with the same victorious smile he was aiming at me, and then walked away. I could feel the crowd closing up behind me, almost as though I had never been there. They’d forget about me soon enough, I realised. Even Gareth.

  9:25 a.m. ‘Cece, I really am sorry,’ says Gareth. ‘I have felt sick about it ever since. When I heard you’d left the force, I was devastated. Believe me, I haven’t done anything like that since. Not once. Any hint of that sort of racist crap, no matter who it’s by, and I speak up, speak out. I’ve got myself into a lot of bother over the years with it, I’ve been more or less told I haven’t been promoted as much because of it, that I’m not going to go any further than this, but I don’t ever back down.’

  ‘Good for you,’ I tell him. ‘But just so you know, you don’t get hero points for not ignoring racists because it’s not you who’s been targeted. Speaking up and not backing down is what all decent human beings do as standard.’

  He closes his eyes and screws up his mouth. He used to do that when he was trying not to say something. I used to suspect that he did that when he was trying to not confess that he’d fallen in love with me. But that could have been my utter naïvety and arrogance. I mean, no one stands there and lets someone they love be abused. ‘I know,’ he eventually says. ‘I thought you were made of stronger stuff though. I didn’t think you’d give it all up because of him.’

  ‘That’s just it, Gareth, I didn’t give it all up because of him. I could handle him and people like him. I left because of you. And all my other “friends” who listened to what he was saying and did nothing.’

  July, 2001

  I resigned the next day. It was a little more complicated than I thought it would be, but they didn’t really try to stop me. My commanding officer asked me why and I could have said: Yes, yes, me walking away from all that I’ve worked for the last four months could be seen as letting people like Duke ‘win’ but it’s not about that. Duke is Duke is Duke. People like him are a pound a dozen. There are vocal racists all around me. But those other people, the ones who looked at their feet and closed up their mouths? They were meant to be my friends. I had thought all this time that if he did in public what he’d been doing to me in private, everyone would berate him, defend me. But no, it wasn’t quite like that with my ‘friends’. If even one of them, just one of them, had said something – even a ‘shut up, mate’ would have done – I wouldn’t be resigning. I would stick around because I would believe that my friends would be there when I needed them. As it is, they all listened and said nothing. They didn’t laugh, no, but they didn’t say anything or walk away from him; they stood there and waited for me to leave.

  I could have also said to him: And I’m good at learning, sir. I was given the Baton because I excelled in academic achievement, so I know what could happen next. Those people, my friends, the ones who I would be relying on for backup, have shown me they’re not capable of it. So I don’t have to walk into an actual life-threatening situation and learn that lesson the hard way. So, I’m going to leave, not only because Duke is a vile little specimen, but because I saw very clearly how my ‘friends’ didn’t and probably never would back me up.

  I could have said all that to him. Instead I smiled sweetly (that’s kind of what he expected female officers to do when in his presence but not ‘out there’ amongst the public) and said, ‘I’ve realised that this isn’t the job for me after all, sir.’

  He stared at me with inquisitive grey-blue eyes. ‘Has something happened, Baswale? Something you’re too frightened to tell me about?’

  ‘No, sir. I’m not frightened of anything.’ The absolute truth.

  ‘I genuinely wish you’d change your mind, but you have to make the right decision for yourself.’

  ‘Thank you, sir,’ I replied.

  9:35 a.m. ‘You live in Brighton?’ I say to Gareth. I still have no idea what he wants.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Wife? Kids?’

  He shakes his head. ‘Married to the job, me. Think I always was.’ He takes his time to meet my eye. Heat. It radiates between us again. We stare at each other, almost like we’re back in that canteen all those years ago, staring and knowing we could be so good together. Staring and fantasising about what could happen.

  ‘It�
�s the job I wanted to talk to you about, actually,’ he eventually says. ‘I need your help.’

  ‘My help? I’m a data entry supervisor,’ I say to him. ‘How can I possibly help you?’

  ‘We both know you’re not a data entry supervisor,’ Gareth replies. ‘We both know that’s what you tell people as a cover for what you really do.’

  ‘You make me sound like a spy,’ I say. I talk plainly, simply, disguising my heart fluttering, trying not to let on that I’m panicked – if he knows what I really did in London, then he must know all about my daughter.

  He smiles. ‘Some people might say you are.’

  ‘Why have you been checking up on me?’ I ask. There is an edge to my voice now. He must know about Harmony – that Sol isn’t her biological father, that in the space on her original birth certificate under ‘Father’ it says: ‘Unknown’. I know who her father is, of course I do. But Gareth doesn’t.

  He sighs. ‘I haven’t been checking up on you as such. I saw you talking to someone the other day, and I had a bit of a shock, then I got a bit nostalgic, wanted to see what you were up to.’

  Who on Earth was I talking to that would make him reignite this acquaintance? If he just saw me in passing, then he’d maybe send an email, but to come here and start talking about help with his work … I barely know anyone down here. The only people he could have seen me talking to were … ‘Is this about Yvonne Whidmore?’

  He sits back and nods almost triumphantly. ‘You always were two steps ahead of the rest of us,’ he says.

  ‘So it is about her? Well, I don’t know why you’re asking me – I moved here after she was attacked. Never met her before.’

  ‘Yes, but you know her friends.’

  Maxie, Hazel and Anaya. ‘So?’

  ‘It’s a bit like you’ve taken her place in the group, actually.’

  ‘How can you know that unless you’ve …? You’ve been watching them? Why?’

  ‘Come on, Cece, you’re the smart one. Why do you think?’

  ‘You think one of them did it?’

  He says nothing, simply stares at me.

  ‘Really?’ I repeat: ‘Really?’ when he doesn’t reply. ‘Oh, please. I don’t believe that for one second. Have you actually properly met them? None of them would harm a fly. And I mean that literally – I’ve seen Anaya practically break her neck to free a fly rather than kill it.’

  ‘Cece, it’s true. One of those three women tried to kill Yvonne Whidmore. And I want you to help us find out which one.’

  October, 2001

  I sat on the bed of my little bedsit and stared at the white stick, sitting like a ticking bomb on the other side of the room. I couldn’t see its results window from here – my room wasn’t that small – but I didn’t really need to. I bunched my fingers together and pressed them firmly over my lips.

  I had a passenger on board.

  This little passenger was unexpected. I’d been sitting in the same position for over an hour and I still hadn’t worked out if said passenger was unwelcome as well as unexpected.

  I thought about my life: I had no proper job, having walked away from the one thing I’d wanted to do most of my life. In the stark light of day, the aftermath of a positive pregnancy test, it was clear I could be breathtakingly immature, selfish and reckless. All things that would need to change if I was going to become a mother. But, wow, I had a passenger on board. The idea of it was pretty darn amazing.

  9:45 a.m. ‘That would be no,’ I say to Gareth.

  ‘No? You are seriously saying no to helping us investigate this?’

  ‘Us? Oh, right. I get it, you spot a picture of me talking to three suspects in an investigation and you say in your best accent: “Don’t worry, lads and lasses, I’ll get her to help us. I’ll rock up, remind her of what we shared, apologise for letting her down, flash my accent at her, and then she’ll be putty in our hands. Putty, I tell you. Just leave it to me.” Is that the sort of thing you said to them?’ I’m being a little unfair – he hasn’t exactly flashed me his accent and he didn’t realise that his accent was one of the things I liked most about him.

  ‘No, but that’s what you’re going to think no matter what I say, isn’t it?’ Gareth replies.

  ‘Yeah, pretty much.’

  Gareth rubs at the centre of his forehead with his forefinger and studies me for a few moments. Slowly he runs his hand through his hair. ‘Cece, you should help us. It’s nothing to do with me; I’m just the person making contact, a familiar face, if you will. I can get you to talk to someone else if you’d prefer. But I think you should help us.’

  ‘Why would I?’

  ‘Because it’s the right thing to do.’

  ‘It’s the right thing to do to spy on my friends then sneak back and tell on them? To be disloyal and backstabbing? Not generally how I conduct friendships.’

  ‘I remember how important justice and doing the right thing were to you when we were training. And you say you haven’t changed so why wouldn’t you do this? I mean, someone tried to kill Yvonne Whidmore and they didn’t succeed. If she wakes up, they may try it again. What’s to say they won’t try and kill someone else? I can’t see how you’d live with yourself if you don’t help.’

  ‘I think you’re wrong. I’ve spent time with these women, I know them. None of them are capable of it.’

  ‘Wouldn’t you have said the same thing about me all those years ago? That I wasn’t capable of doing and saying nothing while someone was horrible to you?’

  I draw back, stunned. ‘Wow. I can’t believe you’ve used one of the worst experiences of my life against me like that. That takes a special kind of arseholery.’

  ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry. But doesn’t your upset at that kind of prove my point? You never really know how dangerous a person is, not even your friends.’

  ‘True enough,’ I concede. ‘But I’m not helping you.’

  ‘At least think about it.’

  ‘No.’ I push my coffee cup away, across the table, not quite impinging on his part of the table but close to it. A boundary I am erecting around my life. Of course I’m going to think about it. Not the helping him and his police buddies bit, but how can I not think about the accusation? The fact that they are so convinced about this they are following them, trying to recruit spies to help their cause, says a lot. I mean, these are the women who have welcomed me into their fold and made me one of their own, but the police think one of them could do something as extreme as nearly killing someone. Not even accidentally. With intent. That could, technically – well, not technically, that could actually put my family at risk.

  If I am honest, too, the way they have been behaving is really weird. They are all of them on edge. After the phone call business the other night, they kept exchanging looks, unspoken worries they thought I didn’t notice. If I look at the pattern of behaviour of my new friends, things only add up properly, make a full and complete pattern, if you place what Gareth has said at its centre. That then becomes the piece that every part of the pattern grows from.

  I could be friends with someone dangerous. But aren’t we all? Aren’t we all capable of being dangerous under a particular set of circumstances? If you are threatened, for instance. If someone is planning on hurting you or someone you love, wouldn’t that make you deadly? There’s a difference between reactive dangerous behaviour, when you’re trying to protect yourself or someone else, and planning it. Planning it and then doing it. Gareth hasn’t actually said which type of dangerous he thinks my new friends are.

  I slip my hands into the armholes of my leather jacket, appalled that this is now in my head. For the first time in what feels like years, I have friends who I haven’t met through work and who I talk to about things not related to children and school. For the first time in what feels like years, I have proper friends. Now I have to worry that one of them may be a killer. Thanks, Gareth.

  9:55 a.m. ‘So I hear you have a teenage daughter,’ Gareth says.

 
; I continue to shrug on my jacket and take care not to sit back, not to slump, not to tense. This is a man who is trained in interrogation techniques, who is trained to spot any change in demeanour that will give someone away. The whole time we have been talking, he has probably been studying my responses to the different types of questions: Does she hold her breath when she’s angry? Does she twirl her hair when she’s thinking? Does she sit back when she wants to distance herself from the truth? Does she look directly into my face when she wants to hurt me?

  I’ve been spectacularly stupid. Yes, he probably is trying to get me to help him with the Yvonne Whidmore case. But the chat beforehand, that was so he could relearn my ‘tells’. No one liked to play card games with Gareth at Hendon – he almost always won because he was so naturally good at reading people and using it against them.

  ‘What of it?’ I say, looking him directly in the eye.

  ‘How old is she again?’

  ‘I’m sure you wouldn’t be asking if you didn’t already know the answer to that question.’

  ‘All right. So this question I don’t know the answer to: is she?’

  I keep eye contact, necessary so he doesn’t make any assumptions about me, doesn’t get anything from any of my ‘tells’. ‘Is she my daughter who I’m not going to talk to you about? Yes.’

  Heat is creeping through my body, spreading out from the painful throbbing at the centre of my stomach; it pumps through my veins, causes sweat to break out over my top lip, my forehead. It speeds up my breathing, makes my heart skip beats in its race to keep me calm.

  ‘Is she my daughter?’ he asks.

  ‘No.’

  He takes a moment to allow my answer to settle, like shaken flour over a bread-kneading surface before he throws down the dough and starts to work at it. ‘I don’t believe you.’

  ‘I can’t do anything about that.’

  ‘The timings are too close.’

  ‘If you say so.’

  ‘No, I don’t say so – your daughter’s date of birth and the last time we were together say so. Unless you were sleeping with someone else at the same time.’