The Friend

by Dorothy Koomson

  ‘Why don’t you talk to me about my father?’ she asks. ‘Why won’t you tell me who he is?’

  ‘You’ve never asked. Not even when you were little. I just assumed because you didn’t ask you weren’t interested.’

  ‘I thought you’d tell me that Dad was my father and that I shouldn’t do anything to upset him.’

  ‘Me? You seriously thought I’d say that?’ I ask.

  She shakes her head. Her hair bounces as she moves. ‘No, suppose not. I thought he, you know, my father might have really hurt you and you probably didn’t want to talk about it.’

  ‘He didn’t. Hurt me, I mean. Gareth hurt me, really badly, but your father didn’t. I suppose you’re old enough to hear this now. We had a short thing, we had a laugh, but when I found out I was pregnant, we both knew it was going nowhere so we went our separate ways.’

  ‘How short?’ Harmony asks.

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘How short was the thing you had?’

  I sigh. How much honesty is required now? My pattern is being set, the new less-than-honest pattern is being created, and I do not want it to stick. I do not want it to intensify and concentrate, to turn me into the sort of person I used to spend my days exposing. I do not want to become a liar.

  ‘Very short.’

  ‘As in, like, a one-night stand?’

  My daughter’s eyes are the exact same colour as mine. I noticed that when she was born. I stared down into her eyes and realised that it was like looking into my own eyes. She stared back at me in what I knew was wonder; she was watching me with hope and our brilliant future together mapped out on every crease on her newborn face. And her eyes, they were curious and open, watching me as though she was relying on me to provide the answer to every question she had. I didn’t imagine in those moments that she would eventually be staring at me across our dining table, asking about the most contentious part of my sexual history because it was that particular part of my sexual history that created her.

  ‘Not quite,’ I reply.

  Her eyes widen. ‘You mean, it was only a couple of hours? Or an hour?’

  ‘No, no,’ I say quickly. ‘We spent a couple of days together. It was fun, our time together, he was a good laugh. When we made you it wasn’t planned, but it wasn’t awful – at all. He was a nice man. I liked being with him. He wasn’t anything like your dad, we weren’t great mates or destined to be the next great love story, but, you know, he was all right. More than all right, actually. If we’d met at different points in our lives, maybe we’d have got together properly, but I don’t know. What I do know is that he didn’t hurt me, he’s nothing like your dad, and you are very much your dad’s daughter.’

  Slowly, painstakingly slowly, Harmony’s body begins to unclench; the anger is starting to seep away. She isn’t completely relaxed because she still has questions. ‘If he was such a good guy, why didn’t he want anything to do with me? Or didn’t you tell him?’

  ‘I told him. He was such a laugh because he didn’t really take much seriously. And if there’s anything that needs to be taken seriously, I think, it’s having a baby. But he wasn’t capable of that. It wasn’t you he wanted nothing to do with. He didn’t want much to do with anything at that point. I’m not sure he would want much to do with anything right now.’

  ‘Have you looked him up?’ she asks.

  I haven’t. In some way, in that way humans can, I’ve convinced myself that I do not need to find him. ‘No, I haven’t. I probably should have, but I haven’t. I suppose I didn’t think I needed to because you’ve never really shown any interest in him. I should have, but I didn’t. I’m sorry.’

  Harmony sighs, then stares down at the tabletop. I know what she’s going to ask and I will want to say no. I will want to persuade her to rethink, but I can’t do that. It isn’t about me, or Sol, or anyone else. Harmony wants to know about her history, she wants to know about her biology. She has that right. She raises her gaze to me.

  ‘Will you help me find him?’ she asks.

  ‘Yes, sweetheart, if you want me to, I will,’ I reply. Of course, it is the last thing I want to do.

  5:50 a.m.

  I’ll help you if you agree to go away afterwards and leave us all alone.

  5:55 a.m.

  I can’t do that, Cece. She might be my daughter. G x

  5:56 a.m.

  I’ll help you if you agree to go away afterwards and leave us all alone.

  5:57 a.m.

  I can’t. G

  5:58 a.m.

  I’ll help you if you agree to go away afterwards and leave us all alone.

  5:59 a.m.

  Please, Cece.

  6 a.m.

  I’ll help you if you agree to go away afterwards and leave us all alone.

  6:10 a.m.

  All right.

  6:12 a.m.

  I have your word?

  6:13 a.m.

  Yes. When can I come over?

  6:14 a.m.

  I don’t need you to come over.

  6:15 a.m.

  You do, you need to know what we know.

  6:15 a.m.

  I don’t.

  6:16 a.m.

  Just tell me when.

  6:18 a.m.

  This week is half term. Come over at nine on the Tuesday after.

  6:19 a.m.

  Fine.

  Part 8

  MONDAY

  Hazel

  3 a.m.

  I’m sorry. I’m so sorry about the other week, Anaya. Truly. I’m just cracking up a little here. She was blackmailing you, wasn’t she? Please tell me. Let’s get together, you, me and Maxie. We can talk about it properly. But please, tell me if she was blackmailing you?!!! Hazel x

  May, 2017

  Yvonne had asked me to come over a little earlier for our meet-up that night. It was at her house, which meant we would be gourmet cooking. Or rather, gourmet drinking while Yvonne barked orders. I didn’t like to say – neither did the others – but Yvonne’s nights were the least fun. The drink wasn’t a nice accompaniment – it was a necessity to get through the night. I was never sure how Anaya managed it sober.

  Yvonne had too many rules, too much emphasis on getting the recipe right, too much need to be perfect. And I felt a terrible, awful friend every time I thought that. Of course I deserved to feel like that because that was what I was: a terrible, awful friend. I arrived at her house ten minutes before the others were due to turn up even though she’d said half an hour. I couldn’t face it. She wanted to talk to me about something, but as long as I’d known her, ‘talking’ with Yvonne meant ‘confront you about something’.

  Ciaran was in the process of moving here, so I wasn’t around as much. From the few moments I’d seen Anaya, dashing to and from the gates, I’d gleaned that she had apparently taken on her biggest job in years and was devoting every waking hour to it. And Maxie, who had always been the most elusive one of us, was working hard and was home-bound because recently Ed was often working away. That had meant many cancelled nights with Yvonne, and had probably caused her paranoia at missing out, about all of us meeting without her, to go through the roof. Yvonne didn’t seem to understand that things had changed; she was convinced it was part of a grander plan to blow her off.

  ‘This is not half an hour, Ms Lannon,’ she said in lieu of ‘hello’ when she opened the door. I stepped in and received her kiss on the cheek with a sinking feeling inside.

  ‘I know,’ I said. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were trying to avoid me,’ she said. She was smiling in a barely concealed crazed manner. I drew back a little inside.

  ‘I am not avoiding you, Vonny,’ I said. ‘I am just busy. Busy, busy, busy.’

  ‘Don’t “busy, busy” me,’ she said. She indicated to the kitchen and I walked ahead of her, rearranging my expression from one of frustration to one of remembered friendship, recalled love. ‘I’m busy, too, you know. Running the PC and being Year Two
class coordinator is not easy. But I still have time for you. I still have time to look out for you.’

  I had been settling my cloth bag of food on the floor so I could shed the ankle-length cardigan I wore as a coat, but those words made me stop. I glanced up at Yvonne, wary of what she was saying. ‘What does that mean?’ I asked her slowly and carefully.

  ‘I wanted to ease into this conversation, but since you’ve turned up late, I’m going to have to cut to the chase, aren’t I?’

  ‘I suppose so,’ I replied, still wary, still almost sick at the thought of what she had done.

  ‘What are you doing, Hazel?’ Yvonne asked. ‘You got a fantastic divorce settlement. You were able to buy your house outright and now you’ve remortgaged it for your boyfriend? A man you’ve known for less than a year?’

  ‘What the hell, Yvonne?’

  ‘Sweetheart—’

  ‘Don’t you fucking “sweetheart” me. This isn’t charming any more, Yvonne. This isn’t one of your annoying-but-cute little quirks, this is bullshit. It’s a complete and utter invasion of my privacy.’

  ‘My children stay over at your house; I have a right to know what sort of people they’re going to be around.’

  ‘You’ve been researching Ciaran? Are you fucking kidding me?’

  ‘Of course I’ve been researching him. I know you – I don’t know him. You don’t know him, for that matter. As evidenced by the fact you’ve just remortgaged a place you had outright. You had no debts before you met him and now you have a huge one.’

  I pushed my hands onto my face to stop myself from throwing them around her neck. ‘This is one step too far, Yvonne. I’ve put up with your total lack of boundaries over the years because I love you. You’re kind and generous and so giving, but there is a limit. You can go too far. And you have gone so past too far it’s not even in sight. I’m mortified that you’ve done this to him. To me. You know how happy I am with him. Have you seen me this happy in all the time I’ve known you? You know what that marriage and the divorce did to me. You were there, you saw it. You saw how it almost broke me and you do this? What if he finds out that you’ve been checking up on him? He’ll think I was in on it and he’ll be so hurt. He’ll probably dump me! Is that what you want? Is it?’ My heart was racing, panicking. It wasn’t there any more, it wasn’t there any more, but what if Yvonne had found his name? What if she’d found out?

  ‘No, of course not, but I don’t want you being taken for a ride, either, Hazel. You know nothing about him.’

  ‘I know everything about him. How he makes me feel, how good he is to my children, how he takes the time to listen to me. He’s moved his whole life and business from Durham to Brighton because he can’t bear to be apart from me. I have never been this happy, never. And you’re trying to mess it up for me.’

  ‘I’m not! I only want you to open your eyes. He is not the man you think he is.’

  ‘My eyes are wide open. And I can see now that you need me to be pathetic to give your life meaning, don’t you? I need to be available and pathetic and open to everything you tell me to do otherwise your life means nothing. Well, you can do that with Maxie and Anaya, because we are finished.’

  ‘Finished?’

  I could tell from the look on her face – the way it was open with shock – that this had never happened to her before. She had never been dumped by anybody. ‘I am not going to be your friend any more. This is one step too far.’

  ‘Hazel, I know everything about him.’

  I had been heading for the door. But I stopped. The fear of her knowing was like a spear through my heart. I wanted no one to know. I didn’t want to know. I loved Ciaran and knowing his secret, carrying his pain, was too much for me sometimes. For someone like Yvonne, she’d have no problem sharing that burden by telling people.

  I turned to look at her. My friend who had helped me through so many phases of my life.

  ‘Are you going to tell people?’

  I saw surprise flash across her face. It was brief but it was there. Maybe she didn’t actually know. Maybe it was all a bluff. It was too late now, though. I couldn’t risk calling her bluff; I couldn’t risk anything. She probably knew that.

  ‘No,’ Yvonne said sweetly. ‘Of course I’m not going to tell anyone.’ She came to me and placed her arm around me. ‘Hazel, you know I only want what is best for you. I’m not going to tell anyone. So no more talk about finishing with me and stuff like that. This is between you and me.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes, really. Come on, Hazel. You know that. We support each other, don’t we? Like, I know if there’s anything I need you to do for me, you’ll have my back. I mean, if I need your support against the other two, or for you to come to events you wouldn’t normally bother with, you’d come to support me, won’t you?’

  I swallowed hard. She had me. Yvonne had me. There was no need for it: I always supported her. I always went to her stupid events when I could get a babysitter; I usually stood up for her if the other two had an issue. There was no need for any of this.

  ‘Yes, Yvonne.’

  ‘Come on, let’s say no more about it.’ She took my bags off me and helped me off with my cardigan.

  Anaya and Maxie arrived a little while later. Anaya had obviously driven them over wearing her pink candy-striped apron, while Maxie had two bags in her hand – one had the green neck of a wine bottle poking out the top.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Maxie asked me when she saw my face.

  ‘Fine,’ I said and forced myself to smile.

  ‘Oh, she’s fine!’ Yvonne trilled. ‘Come, come, lots of cooking to do.’

  Both Anaya and Maxie studied me for long seconds but neither of them said anything. What, after all, was there to say?

  Anaya

  3 a.m.

  I’m sorry. I’m so sorry about the other week, Anaya. Truly. I’m just cracking up a little here. She was blackmailing you, wasn’t she? Please tell me. Let’s get together, you, me and Maxie. We can talk about it properly. But please, tell me if she was blackmailing you?!!! Hazel x

  It’s no comfort that Hazel still isn’t sleeping either. Because Hazel is bad enough as it is – without sleep she will get even more unstable. Not that I’m much better. I wonder what she and Maxie would say if they knew I’ve been seeing Cece without them. She’s just so uncomplicated and she doesn’t know. I think that’s the most appealing thing about her. She doesn’t know. Which means she can’t ask me questions like: was she blackmailing you? Of course she was. That’s what Yvonne did.

  April, 2017

  I’d see Yvonne at the gates, at drop-off, and she’d wave at me, give me a cheery good morning and then would go back to talking to one of her Parents’ Council friends or another mother from Scarlett’s year group, and pretend we were strangers. I started to wonder if she hadn’t used my parents’ name to search for me after all. If she’d stopped being Yvonne for a while and was back to behaving like the real friend I knew she could be.

  Yoga night gave me my answer. I was pushing aside the furniture in the back room and about to lay out the mats when there was the usual, quiet tap on the door. None of them came that early because they had children to put to bed and I had only just managed it. I thought for a minute or two as I hurried to the door that it would be a late delivery. But it was Yvonne. She was dressed up ready for yoga, but I could tell by the look on her face, the way she had set her lips, that she had other things on her mind.

  In a way, she’d done me a favour having tea with Sanjay’s mother. That night, when I’d spoken to Sanjay on the phone, I had laid it on the line. I had told him that his mother had gone too far entertaining people in our home when I wasn’t there, and by telling other people things about me. I’d told him that was the last time that would happen, and he had better tell his mother his schedule in detail so she would know not to come round if he wasn’t going to be there. He’d listened and agreed, and I’d known he was just doing the verbal equivalent of a
nodding dog to me and not really listening, but that was fine. I had been open, I had been clear; the next stage would shock him, but he couldn’t claim surprise because I had warned him.

  ‘You’re a bit early,’ I said to Yvonne. The first pricklings of fear crept up my neck, rushing towards my face. ‘I haven’t even finished moving the furniture.’

  ‘Oh, I didn’t think you’d mind,’ she said. ‘Do you want me to go away and come back in an hour?’

  ‘Of course not,’ I replied. ‘Come in. You can help me push back the furniture and lay out the mats.’

  Yvonne followed me down the hall to the back of the house, to the room beside the kitchen that was technically a conservatory but we’d made brick and solid with bi-fold glass doors and a glass roof about three years ago. I went to the armchair and began to slide it across the floor. Damn you, Sanjay, and your need for heavy furniture, I thought. I thought that every month when I did this.

  Yvonne stood in the doorway, her arms in her jogging top pockets, and her left ankle crossed over the right ankle, obviously not about to help at all. ‘I wanted to talk to you, actually,’ she said.