The Friend

by Dorothy Koomson

  ‘What do we need you for?’ Hazel says.

  ‘You don’t. But you’re all here, I have coffee and tea, and I want you all to get your friendship back. I thought I’d found three women who I could be friends with and look at you … Please don’t make me go out there and make new friends. I haven’t got the strength, especially when I have three perfectly good mates here in this room.’

  Hazel

  18 August, 2017

  ‘What did he do?’

  When the phone rang, I knew I shouldn’t have picked it up. I just shouldn’t. No one called my landline except him, and that awful PPI lot. But I’m still a bit Pavlov’s dogs about phones: it rings, I answer it. More fool me. I heard Walter’s voice on the other end and my heart sank. It always did. I was tied to him for another fourteen years, at least, because I knew, as a person does, it would never be easy to make the children go to see him. And when they were old enough to start making their own choices about it, and having something more interesting on during contact times, it would be me running interference because I could not stand by and let him eviscerate them like he would.

  ‘What did he do?’ he repeated.

  ‘I’m busy, Walter,’ I said. ‘If you’ve got something to say, say it. If not, put it in an email. In fact, aren’t we only on email contact right now? Didn’t you say you don’t want to talk to me because I am impossible and stupid and you want my mad rantings in writing so the world can see how crazy and thick I truly am?’

  He paused, because while he’d never actually said any of that, that was clearly what he was thinking and he was worried that he’d shown his hand by ranting that at me. I’d been fine with email contact – it meant I didn’t have to get that stomach-churning pain that accompanied every conversation. And he was far too clever to put his bonkers requests and vicious lies into writing, so I didn’t have to put up as much with his himness. Honestly, my life had been a different proposition once he’d left, but it had taken meeting Ciaran to finally discover what good men were all about.

  ‘Hazel, I’m calling about the welfare of my children. I’ve come across some very disturbing information about that man you have moved into my house—’

  ‘It’s my house, Walter,’ I reminded him. ‘My house bought with my money. Nothing to do with you. You’ve never even stepped over the threshold – not for the want of trying.’

  ‘Stop trying to distract me from the fact that you’ve moved a criminal into my children’s home.’

  The world seemed to slow down for a moment, and I couldn’t speak. What did he know? How could he know?

  ‘I haven’t,’ I said with a sigh. ‘You’re the one with the conviction for drunk driving; you’re the criminal.’

  ‘More deflection, Hazel. Your friend Yvonne told me her suspicions about that criminal. It’s only a matter of time before we unearth his crime.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ I replied. I couldn’t breathe; my heart was racing at a hundred miles an hour in my chest. Yvonne. Fucking Yvonne. She had been bluffing me. ‘And I don’t want to know what you’re talking about. Yvonne is clearly wrong.’

  ‘I thought she was the best thing since sliced bread, Hazel dear? This is why I know she was right about this criminal. I know you have very questionable judgement when it comes to people.’

  ‘Walter! I didn’t realise you knew how terrible you were for me.’

  He was briefly taken aback. Then: ‘Hazel, Hazel, Hazel … If you only knew what your friends were really about. Do you remember that party that your friend Yvonne forced us to go to?’ he said. His voice was soft, silky, like warm honey. He was always dangerous when he lowered his voice like this.

  I didn’t reply to his question so he continued: ‘And remember how I got lost in the school, looking for the toilets? Well, I wasn’t exactly lost. I was in the headmistress’s office, showing Yvonne my etchings.’

  Lie. Absolute lie. Yvonne wouldn’t. She was a lot of things, but she wouldn’t. She just wouldn’t. Not at that time. We were proper friends then. She cared about me back then. ‘You are such a liar, Walter. Like Yvonne would ever sleep with you. She found you repulsive from day one.’

  ‘Ahhh, poor deluded Hazel. She didn’t sleep with me. She was very adept at fellatio, though. Don’t you remember the freshly applied lipstick when she came back? Don’t you remember how I needed a shower when we came in? Don’t you remember how angry she was when she found out I had left you for another woman? Didn’t that all smack of “woman scorned” and not simply “supportive friend”?’

  ‘You’re a liar,’ I repeated. And I knew he wasn’t. Of course she did it. I doubt it was more than once, but she did. Probably because she could. Because at the end of the day, that was why Yvonne did a lot of things – because she could. ‘Is this because Ciaran is younger than you and infinitely better in bed? Are you that jealous you’re going to make up ludicrous lies?’

  ‘You know I’m telling the truth,’ he said, but there was an uncertainty to his voice.

  ‘Yes, of course you are. What is it, don’t like the idea that I have sex five or six times a week now I’ve got someone I actually want to do it with?’ I replied. ‘Or the fact that when the kids go to you I’m not sat around on my own, but I can spend all day in bed with a fitter, younger man? It must hurt you so much to know that I’m not frigid or asexual after all, it’s just you’re terrible in bed. In other words, it’s not me, it’s actually y—’

  The dialing tone was a brief reward for finally giving Walter a taste of his own medicine. Very brief. Seconds later my mobile lit up:

  When I find out what your criminal has done, I will go for full custody of the children and win.

  Yvonne. She’d so done that all those years ago, and it made sense now, why Walter knew stuff he shouldn’t. She’d been talking to him all along. She’d been feeding him information. I’d thought it was the children, I’d thought they told him stuff about my life, and because I never wanted them to lie to either of us, I’d let it slide. But of course it was Yvonne. I pushed my mobile away across the kitchen worktop, waiting for it to go black again so it would blank out Walter’s message. Thank God I hadn’t told her everything when she bluffed me about Ciaran. Walter would fight me for the children. In some ways, I wouldn’t blame him, but I couldn’t be without my children. Yvonne had obviously still been digging for information and had come up with nothing; it wouldn’t surprise me if she’d told Walter so he would think about hiring a private detective to dig up dirt on my other half.

  It must hurt you so much to know that I’m not frigid or asexual after all, it’s just you’re terrible in bed. I shouldn’t have said that to him. If it hadn’t occurred to him before to find out all about Ciaran, and if Yvonne hadn’t already put the idea into his head, then he would now. He’d do anything to wipe that smug tone out of my voice.

  At that moment in time, I hated Yvonne. She was a back-stabbing, two-faced bitch. I was glad I was meeting the others later. I would tell them what she’d done, how she’d betrayed me, and that would encourage them to tell me what she’d done to them, too. Between us we could then come up with a strategy to deal with her.

  I had liked her so much; I’d thought she was the perfect friend. She had obviously liked the life I used to have and wanted that. When that life had come to an end, had she resented me for letting it all go, or for allowing it to go to someone else who wasn’t her? Had she thought she would get Walter another way? But I couldn’t believe she wanted Walter. I couldn’t believe some of that friendship stuff we’d done together wasn’t genuine. She’d seemed so hurt when we met up without her, like she wanted to be one of us. She became one of us. Had she been plotting against us all along because we met a couple of times without her, or was it feeling like the fourth wheel on a trike that had sent her over the edge?

  Whatever it was, Yvonne had stopped being my friend. She was now The Enemy. I listened to the kids and my partner going about their lives at the top of
the house, and I picked up my phone, put it down again, and instead poured myself a glass of water from the tap. I stood still and tried to do that yoga breathing that was meant to calm me down. I downed the water, I did some more breathing. But my rage wasn’t subsiding – it was growing and growing with every passing second.

  It was a good thing I wasn’t going to see Yvonne that night. Because I knew I would not be able to stop myself doing her some serious harm if I saw her lying, deceitful face ever again.

  Anaya

  18 August, 2017

  ‘Ah, if it isn’t my three favourite friends.’ I knew instantly that Yvonne was pissed as well as pissed off.

  Several times, especially over the last few weeks, I had been reminded of that conversation about turning into our mothers and how Yvonne had described hers. She’d said she was a vindictive alcoholic. Maybe it’d been a cry for help, a desperate plea from a desperate woman who wanted one of us, the only people she seemed to have stuck with consistently over the years, to help her. To stop her turning into a vindictive alcoholic. Maybe if we’d realised she needed help, we wouldn’t have met up at Maxie’s beach hut to discuss the situation that night, and instead, one of us would right then be sitting in her house, counselling her on how to be a better person.

  ‘What’s this? A mothers’ meeting without one of your friends? Surely you wouldn’t do that? Not to me.’

  We hadn’t got the table out; we hadn’t brought yoga mats or cocktails or even knitting. We’d just brought our blankets and our flasks. We certainly hadn’t got a chair out for Yvonne.

  ‘Oh, just piss off, Yvonne,’ Hazel said.

  All three of us looked at Hazel. She was the one who had championed Yvonne all along and she was the most placid person I’d met. Not laid-back like my amma – she simply didn’t seem to respond in the same way that most people I knew would. The crap she put up with from her ex-husband was unreal. Every time she’d put her foot down it was the result of Yvonne or, latterly, Ciaran having coached her to do it. But the worm had finally turned, it seemed.

  ‘What did you say to me?’ Yvonne asked quietly.

  ‘I said piss off. I’ve had enough of your passive-aggressive bullshit. All right?’ Yes, this was Hazel. ‘You want to know why we’re meeting tonight without you? Because we’re sick of you. You’re bitchy, you’re arrogant and you’re downright nasty. I know you’ve been talking to Walter behind my back. Probably fucking him as well, aren’t you? I know you told him that Ciaran has a criminal record when you know no such thing. Well, you know what? Piss off. I don’t care any more. Tell Walter what you want. At least I know he means me harm, unlike you, who’s been pretending to be my friend all these years.’

  ‘I am your friend,’ Yvonne replied. She appeared genuinely shocked by what Hazel had said.

  ‘Newsflash, as Camille would say,’ Hazel said. She used her thumbs to point at me and at Maxie. ‘I have friends; they are nothing like you. You wouldn’t know how to be a friend without wanting something in return if it bit you.’

  ‘How can you say that to me?’

  ‘How? How? Because you’re a fucking bitch.’ Hazel was out of control, I realised that then. Something had broken in her, and neither I nor Maxie had seen it. She’d been a bit crazed these last few weeks, but something had tipped her over the edge. The fact she had agreed to come and meet me and Maxie to talk about Yvonne should have been enough to tell me she was on the edge of the cliff face of sanity. She was now so far off the edge she was swimming out to sea. ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean that,’ she added. ‘I mean, you’re an inadequate, desperate, needy, nasty, friendless fucking bitch.’

  Yvonne leapt at Hazel, claws out, ready, I think, to scratch her eyes out. Really. I think she’d forgotten that no one actually does that, no one actually tries to claw the face off another person. Maxie was on her feet and positioned between the two of them before Yvonne got very far, I was a millisecond behind her, and we made a barrier between them. Yvonne bounced off Maxie, then she shoved me and I shoved her back, but that didn’t stop her. She simply came at us, harder than before. From the corner of my eye I saw Hazel was on her feet, and she must have caught a whiff of whatever crazy Yvonne was sniffing because her fingers were outstretched too and she was suddenly going for Yvonne in the slight gap between my and Maxie’s bodies.

  ‘What the—’ Maxie began as Hazel bodily pushed her aside and went for Yvonne.

  ‘I know what you did with Walter at that Preppy Christmas do!’ she screamed. ‘I knew there was something suspicious about the way you two disappeared. He told me you went down on him. He told me! He told me!’

  Maxie grabbed at Hazel, held her back; I tried to fend off Yvonne, but it was pointless, stupid. There was a full moon that night, which I think must have added to the craziness. I remember, at one point, almost leaving my body and watching us: four women, four friends, who were standing outside a beach hut, in one of the most beautiful places on Earth, grappling with each other – grappling, fighting, swearing, clawing. A mess of mothers; a foolishness of friends.

  I don’t know who or how, but one minute Yvonne was trying to fight Hazel, and then she was on the ground, half in and half out of the beach hut, her head having connected noisily with one of the large rocks that held open the beach hut door. We all stopped then, wide-eyed with horror at our behaviour.

  Yvonne was also wide-mouthed, screaming as she clutched at where she had banged her head. ‘Owwwwww!’ she wailed. ‘Owwwwwww!’ I wasn’t sure if she was really hurt or if she was acting up because her moans of pain didn’t seem real. But that was Yvonne – sometimes she didn’t seem real; her reactions were overblown and out of kilter.

  ‘Oh God, Yvonne, are you hurt?’ I said, and went to help her.

  ‘Get away from me,’ she screamed in response and started to kick out at me.

  I drew back, mortified and angry. How dare you? I thought. Who the hell do you think you are? But the worst thing I thought was: Hazel was right – you are friendless. And the worst thing I said was: ‘I think it’s best you leave now.’

  ‘Anaya’s right,’ Maxie said. ‘I think it’s time you left.’

  ‘Oh, it speaks,’ Yvonne said. ‘How’s your “son”, Maxie? Managed to make him look any more like you yet?’

  Frowning, I looked at Maxie, and found her glaring at Yvonne with a dangerous expression on her face. She didn’t look angry or anything that obvious, it was more a calm, cold detachment. ‘Get off my property, Yvonne,’ Maxie said, her voice the physical embodiment of the look on her face. Hazel must have heard the menace threaded into her tone, too, because she turned to look at Maxie as well.

  Still clutching her head, Yvonne began to laugh. ‘You’re all so funny!’ she screeched. ‘You all act like you’re best mates, but really? You’re all so fucking pathetic with your stupid secrets and lies. I bet none of you know what I know about all of you.’ She dissolved into a nasty laugh again, a kind of witch’s cackle that, I admit, made me want to go for her. I actually felt my fingers curl into my hands and I wanted to take a step forwards, another step forwards and then …

  ‘LEAVE! NOW!’ Maxie suddenly roared.

  It scared Yvonne enough to have her scrambling to her feet. When she was upright, she had the rock in her hand. ‘You don’t mind if I take this, do you?’ she said to Maxie. ‘Memento of our friendship and all?’

  I was about to snatch it off her, to remind her that I had found those rocks, I had painted and polished and inscribed them. I had made them for my three friends and she was certainly not one any more. But then I caught hold of myself. Not only was it petty, did I really want to be fighting with her again? Hadn’t the first time shocked me enough? Had I forgotten what had happened the last time I fought someone? If I was arrested, my caution would all come out and I’d be in a lot more trouble than either of these two. It would become a pattern of violent behaviour. Instead of fighting her, I turned my back on her. Hazel did the same. Maxie stood facing Yvonne, staring at her
until I heard her clicking away on her impossible shoes.

  We were all silent for a long time, stood in our places, trying to find our equilibrium, the balance to know what to do next.

  ‘I can’t leave it like this,’ Maxie said. ‘I’m going after her.’

  ‘NO!’ Hazel and I both shrieked and stood in her way.

  ‘Just leave her,’ Hazel said.

  ‘Please, no good will come of it. Just let her go,’ I said.

  She shook her head. ‘No. No. I’m not letting her get away with saying things like that. Before you know it, she’ll say something in front of her kids and it’ll get back to Frankie. No, I’m going after her and I’m going to make sure she doesn’t say that sort of thing again.’

  ‘Please don’t, Maxie. What happened here was bad enough. Don’t make it worse.’

  ‘Worse is letting her get away with it.’

  And then she was gone. She’d lost her blanket in the shoving thing anyway, and her flask had been kicked over. She took off, in the same direction as Yvonne. And I didn’t see her again that night.

  Hazel and I packed up, locked up, in total silence. I wanted to ask Hazel all sorts of things, but in the end we left Maxie’s stuff inside, locked up and then went our separate ways without even saying goodbye to each other.

  Maxie

  18 August, 2017

  Yes, I went after her.

  I left the other two to lock up the beach hut or to leave it open and let it be robbed and looted because I really didn’t care at that moment. I just wanted to grab Yvonne by the arm, swing her round to face me and tell her if she ever said anything like that again and it got within fifty feet of my son, I would kill her.