The Friend

by Dorothy Koomson

  I got pregnant so quickly. We were so happy. And then when I was six months pregnant, he confessed to me that his contract had actually ended a lot sooner than he expected and he was having a few financial problems. He hadn’t wanted to worry me because of being pregnant and I’d been so happy, but he said he was going to have to sell the little house he’d grown up in, even though he’d promised his mother when she was dying that he’d never sell because him and his two brothers had been born there.

  It was all so sad, but what could he do? I loved this man, truly loved him, so I said I’d cover his shortfall for him. He’d always paid me back before and it wasn’t like he was going to do a moonlight flit or anything, not when I was pregnant with his child. In all that time he’d been so good with Monica. He’d actually told her before it was certain that we were going to have a baby. But he was always so careful to make sure she wasn’t feeling left out with the baby. He wanted to reassure her that she would always be as important as the baby.

  And then, just before the baby was born, he told me that the job he’d been doing had come to an end and he wasn’t going to look for another job because he wanted to be at home with the baby, too. He didn’t think it was fair that I would get to see the baby all day every day while he was working hard to pay off our debts.

  That’s what he called them, “our debts”. I’d had to dip into my savings I’d had since before I was married to pay off his huge debts and suddenly he was making out that I had helped to run them up. The baby was due in three weeks and he wouldn’t work, wouldn’t do anything around the house, and all but stopped talking to Monica unless it was to shout at her for something. I was in such a state by this point. I suddenly found out about all this debt that I knew nothing about, some of it in my name, lots of it on my credit cards that I had no clue he knew the pin numbers to. I had no choice but to pay them off with some of an inheritance I’d got from my gran that I’d put aside for Monica’s college. I just didn’t want bailiffs turning up at the house when I was trying to take care of a newborn.

  When I went into labour, he insisted on coming to the hospital so my mum had to take care of Monica. And then he completely disappeared. He didn’t turn up until well after baby Kier was born. Of course, he insisted the baby was named after him, but he wasn’t actually there to see his son born and I never really found out where he was. He just kept telling me that it was in the past and we needed to focus on the present and the future.

  Everything got worse from then on in. Even though he wasn’t looking for a job because he wanted to spend time with the baby, he hardly even looked at him, didn’t change a nappy, didn’t offer to sterilise bottles, didn’t get up in the night, never even held him. And his going out, which he’d always done, was just constant now. It was like, now that he had me totally vulnerable and it’d be virtually impossible to leave him now we were living on my savings, the mask came off and he didn’t even bother to be nice.

  The calls from other women who’d found my number on his phone started, as well as the threatening letters demanding money for his debts. When I was broken, completely and utterly broken with pretty much no money to my name, he told me he was leaving. For a few minutes I was actually horrified, I couldn’t think how I would live without him because it’d be me on my own with a ten-month-old baby and a young teenager. I thought I couldn’t cope and I was still so in love with him. Then I realised that it was what needed to happen and I was so relieved. But he told me he’d only be able to afford to go if I gave him money. I told him I didn’t have any. And he reminded me that I had an investment account with money in that I could cash in. He knew everything about me. I realised then how much I’d been taken in. He knew exactly how much money I had and had worked over two years to take every single penny of it from me.

  I told him no. He wasn’t having that. If I gave that to him, I’d be destitute, I’d have absolutely no money left and no time to get a job. And he morphed into this monster, right before my very eyes. He hit me so hard he knocked me off my feet, and started screaming so loudly at me that he wanted ‘his’ money that the baby started crying. Thankfully Monica was at school, but he said he’d ask again, every day, until he got ‘his’ money.

  He truly believed that it was his, he was entitled to it, and I was keeping it from him. All the while he was talking, he was looking at the picture of Monica that used to sit on the telly. I’ve had to take it down now; every time I saw it there afterwards it reminded me of the cold way he stared at the picture, telling me I had to give him ‘his’ money. It took a bit of time to close the account and convince the manager that I didn’t mind the financial hit, and every single one of those days he would act all nice and calm until Monica was at school then he would … I can’t even think about it.

  I haven’t seen him since and it’s been about a year. And thank God. With the help of my parents I’ve managed to struggle on a bit, I’ve had to sell this house – I’ve this morning accepted an offer that is well below the asking price but it should at least clear the mortgage and give me a couple of thousand to pay back my parents, who he also borrowed money from. My car is being repossessed because I couldn’t keep up the payments on it. He convinced me we should get it as we’d need a bigger car for our family when I’d been happy in my little runaround. We’re going to have to move in with my parents for a bit. I have nothing, literally nothing. The bastard took everything, he even took the jewellery that one of my nans and a great-aunt left me.

  I didn’t go to the police because I was too embarrassed. And scared. He told me more than once that when people cross him he makes sure they’re never in any fit state to do that again. After that time he hit me and after the way he looked at Monica’s picture, I knew I couldn’t risk it. So when the police came about the next woman he’d moved on to, who wasn’t stupid enough to get pregnant and who had called them the very first time she found out he’d taken out debt in her name, I lied.

  It wasn’t easy. I was terrified of lying to the police, I’d never done anything like that in my life, but I was more terrified of the press finding out what a gullible idiot I’d been and it being all over the papers, and I was absolutely petrified of him coming after me. So yeah, I lied to them, I sat where you’re sitting now and told them that we’d been having problems for a while, then had a falling out and he moved on. They didn’t really believe me. They kept telling me they’d keep me safe, that I had nothing to be ashamed of, that if they got enough people together he’d go to prison for a very long time. But I was adamant, really definite with them that he’d done nothing like that to me.

  I’m still scared, you know, of him turning up one day and demanding access to his son. Everyone would say it’s his right, that he just wants to spend time with his son, and I’d be a complete bitch who is keeping him away from his child, but I know he’d only be after money. After I get back on my feet, I’m going to disappear, I think. My ex has lost interest in Monica anyway now that he doesn’t get the chance to use her to abuse me, so the first chance I get, I’m going to move to another place away from here so Kier can’t come back and get at me.

  When Lynne stopped talking, I hugged her as much as I could, because I couldn’t offer anything else. As I was leaving, she said to me: ‘I hope it works out for your friend. She won’t thank you for it, though. A couple of people tried to tell me when I was first with him that his stories didn’t add up, that he was dodgy with money and that I should watch my back. But I didn’t believe them. In fact, I cut them off because he told me they’d tried it on with him. All lies, obviously – he could tell who saw through him and had to get them out of my life. I have no friends left, thanks to him. So your friend, when you tell her, be prepared for her to react really badly. Really badly.’

  ‘Thank you. Thank you so much for your time … and the warning,’ I said.

  She nodded and stepped back, tugged her cardigan around her almost skeletal form and waited on the drive until I had pulled away. There was more. I
could tell there was more that she didn’t tell me, something so much worse than all of the other stuff. I was hoping I could talk to Hazel before she found out what it was.

  1:15 p.m. Ciaran stuck it out for over an hour. He made coffee, he brought biscuits, he sat on the other side of the room reading a paper, then flicking through channels and giving up on several shows and movies, then more coffee, more biscuits. Truth is, I understood how to knit purls within ten minutes, I understood how to do the raspberry formation of the purls, how they intricately bound together, within twenty minutes. I had more endurance than him, though, so after seventy minutes of him having to listen to me mess it up and Hazel very patiently point out what I was doing wrong, he said he was going for a quick jog.

  He has reappeared wearing some very expensive-looking running gear, the type that Sol has never been able to afford until he got this new job and became Mr Moneybags. Even then, I know he agonised about how much he was spending on clothes he was essentially going to be sweating into three times a week. Ciaran has an Apple watch on his wrist and Bose headphones snaking a white line from his watch to his ears. ‘Just going out for a quick run,’ he says again. His emphasis on ‘quick’ is telling me that I need to be gone by the time he comes back.

  ‘I can’t see this being quick, but I’m getting there,’ I say to him, waving the knitting needles – Hazel has replaced mine because they were unsuitable (‘crap’) – and the wool intertwined between them. ‘I am getting there, aren’t I, Haze?’ I implore, turning sad eyes on her.

  ‘Yes, I think so,’ she says, then pulls a ‘she’s so bad at this’ face at him when she thinks I’m not looking that makes him laugh, which he quickly turns into a cough.

  ‘See you,’ he calls at the front door.

  ‘Yeah,’ I respond. My face is a frown of concentration as I move the needles together, push a needle through, wind wool around it, then pull.

  ‘Love you, bye,’ Hazel says.

  When the door shuts behind him, I leave it a few minutes, carry on attempting to knit while Hazel watches me, just so he has time to stop standing on the other side of the door, which I’m 100 per cent sure he’s doing.

  Another ten minutes pass and I am as sure as I can be that he is gone. I stop mid-purl, sit back and then toss the knitting onto the kitchen table. It takes her seconds to put down her tangle of needles and cable needle and to sit back in her seat, too. ‘I can’t believe I fell for that. What do you really want?’

  ‘Are you trying for a baby?’ I ask her.

  ‘That’s none of your business,’ she replies.

  ‘No, it’s not. But … are you?’

  ‘I don’t believe this, you’re as bad as Yvonne. It’s absolutely none of your business.’

  ‘Are you?’

  She inhales, accepts that I’m going to keep asking until she answers. ‘No. Well, Ciaran thinks we should and he wants us to try, but I’m not sure. Not that it’s any of your business.’

  ‘I’m sorry to get all heavy there,’ I say to placate her. ‘One of the boys mentioned Camille said she was going to be getting a baby brother or sister, and I had to ask.’

  ‘Camille? How would she know?’

  ‘Maybe she overheard you talking?’

  Hazel stares through me, shakes her head. I’m pretty sure, like with Lynne Smythe’s daughter, Ciaran will have told her.

  ‘No matter. I was a bit surprised, since you’ve only just moved in with him, from what you’ve told me. I mean, what do you know about him, really?’

  ‘Are you going to tell me you’ve been checking up on him like Yvonne did?’

  ‘Look, Hazel, when I first met Sol, I was a single mother, like you, so I was super paranoid. He doesn’t know this, but I would do all sorts of searches on him, on every available search engine, every possible permutation of his name – and with a name like Solomon Solarin, you can imagine how many versions of his name there were out there. And this was all in the days of dial-up. But I did hours of picture searches, I looked for info about the city where he claimed to have lived, the jobs he’d allegedly had, the people he supposedly knew. Nothing he told me was a fact until I had verified it for myself. Yes, I showed a fundamental lack of trust in him right at the start of our relationship, but I had my daughter to think of and I wasn’t going to let just anyone into our lives without knowing as much as possible about him as I could. It could still have gone wrong, of course, but I would have done all I could to find out as much as I could about him before I exposed him to my child. Which is my point. How much do you know about Ciaran, Hazel?’

  That is an unfair question. I only found Lynne because I searched for so many, many variations on his name as well as doing an image search that linked him back to a very old photo of Lynne’s that she must have completely forgotten to remove from her Facebook page.

  ‘What is it with you people who can’t take others at face value? This is exactly what Yvonne did, and it destroyed our friendship. Why can’t you just leave us alone?’

  ‘Hazel, I’m only trying to find out what you know about him. And you’re right, it’s none of my business, but I am worried about you.’

  ‘Why? I barely know you. Why would you be worried about me?’

  ‘Because you look really stressed. In general. You’ve mentioned Yvonne several times. Did something happen with you and her about Ciaran?’

  ‘What happened was she did exactly what you’re doing. She couldn’t leave him alone. She was constantly prying into his background, trying to find out stuff. She said it was for me, because she was worried about me, but it was because Yvonne liked to have stuff on people. She liked to use it to get people to do what she wanted you to.’

  ‘But that’s only possible if you’ve got something to hide,’ I say calmly. ‘How can you have something to hide if you don’t know anything about his past?’

  ‘I KNOW WHAT I NEED TO!’ she screams at me. ‘I know everything I need to about him, all right? And don’t look at me like that. We all make mistakes.’

  ‘Mistakes? You call that a mistake?’

  ‘I knew people would react like this. He is only on the sex offenders’ register because he wanted to spare that girl the pain and trauma of court. He didn’t do it. She lied about her age – he didn’t know she was thirteen, but still he wanted to protect her. I think that’s a pretty decent thing. She almost ruined his life and he still thought of what was best for her.’

  What? What? WHAT?!

  ‘Excuse me?’ I say.

  Her eyes become like saucers with little spots of brown at their centre when she realises what she has done, what she has told me in a fit of outrage. The colour, which had risen like a crimson tidal wave up her pale neck, finding its whirlpool home in her cheeks, now recedes, drains clean away. ‘That wasn’t what you were talking about?’ she says.

  I can barely move as I shake my head. ‘No.’

  Her hands, lined and parched from spending so much time cleaning up and washing up, fly up to her face then press on her closed eyelids. Then she sits very, very still. Slowly she removes her hands, looks with concern out towards the hallway and the front door. ‘OK, look, you can’t tell anyone that.’

  My response is to stare at her like the crazy woman she is.

  ‘Promise me. Promise me you won’t tell anyone.’

  ‘I’m not promising you that. No way. Even if I did promise it’d be a complete and utter lie – I’ll tell whoever I think needs to know.’

  Hands back over closed eyes, anxious leg jiggling.

  ‘I mean seriously, Hazel, what the hell do you think you’re doing?’

  Hands away from eyes, clasped together in prayer. ‘He didn’t do it. If you knew him like I know him, you’d know there is no way on Earth he did it. I mean, it wasn’t like it went to court – he accepted a caution. They wouldn’t have left it at a caution if he actually did it, would they?’

  ‘What do you want me to say? “Yeah, you’re right, he seems like a decent bloke, crac
k on, Haze, crack on”? Like anyone in their right minds would say that.’

  She reaches out, covers my hands with hers. ‘I promise you, promise you, if I thought for one second he was guilty I would not let him near me or my children. It was a misunderstanding. He’s really not like that.’

  Her hands are light on mine; they feel fragile and she is trembling like a little bird, unsure of itself before it takes flight for the first time. I think about Lynne, about the thing she couldn’t tell me. About the shame that oozed out of her like an invisible but pungent slime. What did I just say to Hazel? What the hell do you think you’re doing? And what did she say to me? Promise me. Promise me you won’t tell anyone. The secret she cannot share. The shame she cannot risk anyone knowing. What kind of a mother allows her daughter to be in the same house as a sex offender? The kind of mother who would do anything, even lie to the police, to stop people finding out that she knowingly let a sex offender live under the same roof as her children. The kind who, once she saw his true side, would believe he would harm her child.

  ‘Have you actually seen sight of this conviction?’ I ask her.

  ‘No, but he didn’t do it. I promise you.’

  ‘Have you seen his name on the sex offenders’ register?’ I ask, even though I know it’s not technically called that. But only law people and the police use its proper title. ‘Because it will say what he’s on there for.’

  ‘No, it didn’t go to court so it was only on there for two years and now it’s been removed. Again, if he did it, he’d still be on there, wouldn’t he?’

  ‘What about a probation officer or anyone like that? Did you have a home visit from the police to check he is living here because there are children in the house? Did he have to register this address with the police when he moved in?’