The Friend

by Dorothy Koomson

  ‘Is that a question?’

  How would I hold up under a real police interrogation? Obviously we learnt all about it in training, we did role play, we were fake criminals who were being interrogated, and we learnt how to get the answers, the truthful answers, but in the real thing, how would I stand up? Especially if I wasn’t telling the whole truth.

  ‘No, that wasn’t a question. This is: were you sleeping with someone else at the same time as you were sleeping with me?’

  I keep eye contact, keep my body in the exact same position as earlier. I mustn’t give anything away. He only needs to know what I tell him, nothing more. ‘No,’ I say.

  ‘So, I’ll ask you again: is she my daughter?’

  ‘My daughter is not your daughter.’

  ‘All right …’ Two spots of colour appear in his cheeks, betraying him, showing how frustrated he really is under his cool, rational exterior. I wonder if he ever loses it like this in real interrogation situations, or if it’s only reserved for the people he’s slept with. ‘Did I father your daughter? Was it my sperm that helped to create her?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I don’t believe you. Tell me who her father is and I’ll let this drop.’

  ‘If I haven’t told her, what makes you think I’m going to tell you, who has absolutely nothing to do with it? And,’ I twist my body out of the seat and stand up, ‘you’ll let this drop anyway. I’ve told you all you need to know. It’s not my problem if you don’t believe me.’

  ‘Cece,’ he says, his voice back to normal, out of interrogation mode. ‘I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have come on all heavy. Please, at least say you’ll think about what I asked you about helping us? Please?’

  I shake my head. I wonder if his gall, his blatant, in-your-face guts, is what has got him as far up the food chain as he has got. Despite what he says, he is a detective sergeant in CID. I’ve more than thought about Gareth over the years – I’ve kept an eye on him. Every so often I do a search, seeing where he has got to in life. I knew he was here in Brighton. And that was one of the reasons why I didn’t want to move here. I wasn’t sure it would be big enough for me not to run into him and start all the mess that would bring. ‘No, Gareth, I won’t think about it because I’m not going to do it. Have a nice life.’

  ‘See you later,’ he says. For a moment, I’m sure it sounds like Screw you later, like he used to say all those years ago.

  Part 5

  TUESDAY

  Anaya

  4:10 a.m.

  Can’t sleep. Feel so awful about everything. I thought it’d get easier but it’s not. Mx

  I feel dreadful, too. H x

  Did it even happen? I keep thinking it didn’t. A x

  Me too. It’s like it happened and I was just there watching it. M x

  I started it, do you think they’ll come down hardest on me? H xxx

  I shoved her too. A x

  And I ended it. M x Oh God, what did we do? Xxx

  Let’s just go to the police. H x

  I can’t. For other reasons, I just can’t. Believe me, I would if I could. M x

  Me too. If I could, I would … I hate this. I hate this so much. Look, I have to go. I can’t cope with this. I’m going to try to go back to sleep. Suggest you both do the same. A xx

  I know, you’re right. Night. H x

  I press the off button on my phone, wait for it to go dark in my office. I’m not going to sleep. How can I sleep? I just can’t talk about it any more. Especially if Hazel is going to start on again about going to the police. Slowly, I lift the lid of my laptop and log on. I’ll do some work. Take my mind off things. Sanj will be up soon to go to London and I can focus on getting him on the road. Then I’ll focus on getting the kids ready and on the road. Then I’ll go to yoga. That will take me up till ten o’clock? After that, I will come back and do some work. Focus on that, make some calls, drum up some new business. By then it will be pick-up time. If I do that, if I divide up my day, I’ll have less time to dwell, to worry, to fret, to make myself ill contemplating things that will most likely never happen.

  Maxie

  11 p.m. I stand in front of Ed, obscuring his view of the television. I want him to talk to me. Properly talk to me. I want a way to reach out to him and have him respond. I need to speak to someone and I can’t talk to Anaya or Hazel because things are already too fraught with them. I keep wanting to talk to Cece to hear what my secret sounds like out loud and to see what the reaction is from a normal person. I can’t do that, so Ed is the only person left. I need to speak to someone and that person is Ed. That’s what being married is meant to be about.

  ‘Max, I can’t see the TV,’ he says.

  ‘That’s the point,’ I reply.

  He stops trying to look through and around me and focuses on my face instead.

  ‘Hi,’ I say and smile.

  He looks suspicious, on edge. ‘Hi?’ he says cautiously. I’m glad the only light in the room comes from the flickering of the television so I can’t see all the expressions on his gorgeous face.

  I drop down to my knees so we’re closer in height. I rest my forearms on his thighs and I ignore the way he tenses, as if he’s repulsed by my touch. ‘How was your day?’ I ask him.

  Ed’s features are guarded. He doesn’t know what to do, how to react. ‘Fine, I suppose. How was your day?’

  ‘I missed you,’ I tell him. I did. I do. I miss the him that I met all those years ago. The him who I thought might one day kiss me. The him who might one day fall in love with me. My husband takes a deep breath in, releases it very slowly, measuredly. He’s trying to work out how to deal with me. I haven’t been like this with him before. I’m desperate, though. I’m desperate to connect with him and I’ll do it in any way I can.

  Nothing. He says nothing.

  I’m panicking now. I don’t know what to do but panic. There has to be a way to make this better. I know he still blames me after all this time, but I want him to forgive me. To love me. I reach for his belt, then his button, then his zip. He doesn’t move, doesn’t react, just continues to watch my face.

  ‘You don’t have to do this,’ he eventually says when he’s free and I’m about to lower my head. ‘I don’t expect any of this.’

  He gasps loudly, loses his fingers in my hair, sits back and lets me pleasure him. Of course I have to do this. I have to do this and everything else so that one day, he’ll forgive me.

  March, 2006

  ‘It pains me, really pains me to know that my affection for you is, at its heart, completely narcissistic,’ Bronwyn said to me.

  ‘I don’t understand.’ I was helping her to clear up after another of her fabulous dinner parties. We had all sat around the table, talking and drinking and eating excellent food, and I had felt like one of them. The other guests had all gone to top universities, they worked in amazing jobs and had breathtaking houses, but they hadn’t patronised me. I was a girl who worked as an au pair and babysitter to save up enough money to do a master’s degree, but they had talked to me like I was one of them, they’d discussed big theories and assumed I understood, they’d asked my opinion, they’d laughed at some of my jokes. They had acted like I was one of them and the effect it had had was a little like drinking too much – I’d spent a lot of time grinning to myself, feeling swirly headed and hoping that I didn’t say anything stupid.

  ‘I mean, I like you so much because you remind me of myself when I was your age, which makes me a borderline narcissist, I think.’

  ‘I think you need other traits for that to be true.’

  ‘I’m sure they’re there, you simply haven’t seen them yet,’ she said. ‘Which leads rather into something I wanted to talk to you about.’

  She set down the pile of plates she was stacking and then pulled out a seat, and indicated I should do the same. Ed stood in the doorway, watching us. I sat, feeling a sense of dread creeping up inside me.

  ‘I’m not sure if you know this, but we actually live in
a cottage up in Cumbria most of the time. We borrow this London place from our friends if we need to be down here. We’re heading back to Cumbria soon – I have a new book to work on for the next few months. Plus, there’s a lecture series I have to compile and I’ve been talking to a television production company about a few new ideas.’

  Gutted. Gutted. Dot. Com. ‘Oh, right,’ I said.

  The past few months had been fantastic. Almost surreal in how amazing they were. I’d learnt so much, felt so mature, and I didn’t want to think it would all be over when she left. I adored her. She was like the sun. I came alive around her; she brought out feelings and ideas in me that I didn’t know were possible. Every so often she would say something, lightly touch me, or glance at me in a particular way that would make me want to kiss her. And now she was leaving me, in dull, grey London, which had only become so bright and vibrant because of her.

  ‘Don’t sound so pleased for me, eh?’ she teased.

  ‘I am pleased for you,’ I said. ‘I’m also a bit sad – I’ll miss you.’

  ‘Not if you come with us you won’t.’

  ‘Pardon me?’

  ‘I need a research assistant for the lecture series and Ed would need lots of admin support, won’t you, Ed?’

  I turned to look at him and he pulled a smile that seemed tinged with sadness across his face. ‘Yes,’ he said.

  ‘So,’ Bronwyn continued, ‘you could be that. It’d be up to a year initially, possibly longer. We’d pay a decent wage and you could live with us – we’ve got a big old farmhouse that’s a bit in the middle of nowhere – or we could find you somewhere to stay in the nearest village and you could come over every day, if you think it’d be too weird living with and working for us. What do you say? Would you be possibly interested?’

  I wondered again if I was still asleep in the nursery, if I was about to wake up very suddenly with a bad taste in my mouth and Mrs Ledbetter telling me off for not waking up when the baby started crying. I waited a few minutes, allowed myself the time to slowly and carefully wake up, but nothing. I even closed my eyes and opened them, waiting for the moment when all of this would fall away and I would be an au pair, asleep on the job.

  As time ticked on and Bronwyn kept her gaze and smile on me, I accepted I was awake. This was happening. I had the chance of the most amazing adventure. I could save my money, go and do a master’s degree.

  ‘Can I think about it?’ I asked her.

  ‘Of course!’ she said with a grin. ‘But I think we’d have a lot of fun, the three of us. A lot of fun.’

  11:15 p.m. ‘I’m going to bed. Are you coming?’ I ask Ed.

  He won’t look at me. He can’t look at me. Whichever it is, he’s keeping his gaze on the television, the redness in his cheeks bright and alarming. He’s embarrassed at what I’ve just done to him, how much he enjoyed it when he wants to avoid me.

  ‘Soon,’ he says. ‘I’ll, erm, be up soon.’

  Tears are clouding up my eyes, tightening my throat. ‘OK. OK. Don’t be too long.’

  ‘I won’t.’

  He’s going to sleep on the sofa. I know that. He’ll sleep on the sofa, he’ll get up at five o’clock and he’ll go to work. He’ll leave me here alone with Frankie, when he knows all I want is to be with him, too.

  WEDNESDAY

  Hazel

  12:55 p.m. I stand in the kitchen because it’s easier to think about what to make for dinner. They were at Walter’s last night, which means when I collect them from school tonight I probably won’t get all their uniform back (even though he won’t contribute to the – astronomical – cost of it); they may have brushed their hair and washed their faces, if Camille stopped being eight and a half and became an adult to do it; and they’ll have had lunch at school because he won’t have made them packed lunches even though he refuses to pay for lunch. Breathe, Hazel, breathe. It’s all right. They enjoy their midweek time with him. Actually, they don’t always, but I tell myself that to make myself feel better for sometimes forcing them to go. Walter doesn’t realise that the contempt he has for me often spills over into contempt for them and they hate him for it. But I have to make them go because they do mostly enjoy their time with him. Also, Walter is very good at playing the victim. My real friends knew the truth, but while I was still reeling and crying and begging him to give me another chance, he was able to get out there with his story first.

  And people usually believe the first story they hear. In Walter’s case: nagging shrew of a wife who spent money like it was going out of fashion, who made him cheat, and who is now raking it in with maintenance while simultaneously blocking his access to the children. If only the people who believed him knew. If only they could read some of the texts he still sends; if only they could be a fly on the wall to hear some of the things he tells the kids. If only they could see how his nastiness still has them crying and tantrumming for hours after they come home to me because they have no other way to let out the negative emotions they’ve had when with him. If only. If only. If only. If only.

  I sometimes think I live with ‘if only’ embroidered into every element of my life.

  ‘Hello, gorgeous,’ Ciaran says as he comes up behind me. His warm arms slip around my waist and his face nestles against my neck, in that space that’s made for someone you love.

  October, 2016

  I read a book once that said women who sat alone at the bars in hotels were looking for ‘business’. Prostitutes, basically. At the time, I thought the book was over the top, that the person who wrote it had no clue. That women who sat alone in hotel bars weren’t all sex workers. But, it seemed that a lot of the men in this hotel had read the same book – they kept eyeing me up, raising an eye, tilting their heads suggestively. I stared through them, repulsed. I mean seriously, I was wearing my building society work uniform suit, I had a space where my name badge clipped on, I had on sensible shoes. What more did I have to do to tell all these losers that I wasn’t interested? Or working. Or whatever.

  I decided to finish the glass of wine sitting in front of me, and then go sit in my hotel room for the rest of the night. The room was so tiny, it felt like it was closing in on me and I couldn’t really breathe, which was why I’d decided to come and sit here. To (apparently) be ogled by men who should have known better.

  ‘Can I buy you a drink?’ a voice said beside me.

  I inhaled crossly, and sat up straight before I turned to the man who had spoken to me. Wow, he’s handsome – neatly cut brown hair, buttermilk-pale skin, eyes a sparkling blue. I was thrown for a minute, surprised that someone that good-looking was talking to me. Then I remembered why he was talking to me, why he was offering me a drink. ‘No!’ I replied sharply. ‘Thank you!’ I added because I had to. Even if he was a sleaze, it shouldn’t make me forget my manners. I tipped my nose in the air and turned back to the bar, and stared at the row of bottles lined up in front of the smoky mirror.

  ‘OK, sorry I asked. Didn’t meant to offend you,’ he said.

  I tipped my nose even higher, picked up my drink and sipped it. I wasn’t going to speak to him again. Men like him didn’t deserve to have decent people speak to them. He probably thought it was all right to do that sort of thing while away from home. And to other people it probably was. But not to me. Especially since it’d come out that all those cash withdrawals on the bank statements over the years hadn’t been signs that Walter was a spendthrift, but were actually evidence of Walter using the services of sex workers while away on business. Although, towards the end of our marriage, it hadn’t even been while he was away.

  ‘I don’t think you’re a hooker, by the way,’ the man said to me. He said this at a normal level so the barman heard and turned to look at him, then at me. The barman seemed surprised that it might have even occurred to him I was one, although I didn’t know whether to be offended by that or not. ‘I was just offering to buy you a drink. From one lonely business traveller to another.’

  ‘I’m not lonely,�
�� I said to him without turning in his direction. ‘I’m just trying to have a drink. I have a lot of reading to do for my course, and I just needed a drink and some fresher air before I headed back up. I don’t actually have time to be lonely.’ I was loving my new job in the building society down in George Street near our house. It was more than just the ten-minute commute from the school gates to work; it was the being among adults, being spoken to like a human being, having the freedom to spend money as I wanted to. When they’d suggested me going on a training course so I could maybe move up the ladder I’d jumped at the chance. I’d arranged it so the course fell on the night Walter usually had the children, and Yvonne was to collect them on the following night for a sleepover.

  ‘Why would you think I was a hooker?’ I said to the man beside me. ‘I don’t look like one. And it is 2016 – women are allowed to sit on their own in bars without a man, you know.’

  ‘I know that,’ he said. I could see in the reflection of the smoky bar mirror that he was smiling at me. ‘I also know that the high-class “business ladies”, as a Japanese friend of mine calls them, are always very good-looking, very confident and very well dressed.’ He looked around the room. ‘That’s probably why all the men keep staring at you. It’s not because they think you’re a “business” lady, but because they know you’re not. You have all those things – the looks, the confidence and the sense of style – but you’re so obviously not. And they haven’t got the guts to come talk to you.’

  My goodness, he was spinning me a line, but it was a good one. A 24-carat-gold one that made me feel warm and fluttery inside. I hadn’t felt like that in such a long time. It was such a good line, I gave my head a wobble (as Maxie often said), reminded myself that talk was cheap. One night away from my kids, wine, a compliment or two … it could lead anywhere. ‘Good line,’ I said without looking at him.