by Ruth Ware
‘No.’ Her polite smile slipped. ‘It’s really getting to me. He’s only just six months, and he’s been a bit unsettled since we started him on solids. I just … I know it’s lame, but I hate being away from him.’
‘I can imagine,’ I said sympathetically, though I couldn’t really. But I could relate to the longing for home, and that must be several times stronger with someone small and helpless waiting for your return. ‘What’s he like?’ I said, trying to cheer her up.
‘Oh, he’s lovely!’ Her smile came back, a bit more convincing this time, and she picked up her phone and began flicking through gallery shots. ‘Look, here’s a photo of him with his first tooth.’
I saw a blurred shot of a moon-faced child with no discernible teeth at all, but she flipped past it looking for something else. We went past one that looked like an explosion in a Colman’s mustard factory and she grimaced.
‘Oh God, sorry about that one.’
‘What was it?’
‘Ben with a massive poo that went right up to his hair! I took a pic to show Bill at work.’
‘Bill and Ben?’
‘I know,’ she gave a sheepish laugh. ‘We started calling him Ben in my tummy, as a joke, and somehow it stuck. I do feel a bit bad, but I figure, he’s not going to be paired up with his dad very often in life. Oh, look at this one – his first swim!’
This one was clearer – a shocked little face in a bright blue pool, the mouth an outraged red ‘Oh!’ of furious indignity.
‘He looks lovely,’ I said, trying not to sound wistful. God knows, I don’t want a baby, but there’s something about seeing someone else’s happy family unit that feels excluding, even when it’s not meant to be.
‘He is,’ Melanie said, her face soft. ‘I feel very blessed.’ She touched the cross at her neck, almost unconsciously, and then sighed. ‘I just wish there were reception here. I honestly thought I was ready to leave him, but now … two nights is too much. I keep thinking, what if something goes wrong and Bill can’t ring?’
‘He’s got the house phone number though, hasn’t he?’ I took a bite of toast and Marmite.
Melanie nodded. ‘Yes. In fact,’ she looked at the time on her phone again, ‘I said I’d phone him this morning. He was nervous about ringing early in case he woke everyone up. D’you mind if I …?’
‘Not at all,’ I said, and she got up, drained her cup, and put it on the counter. ‘Oh, by the way,’ I suddenly remembered as she headed towards the door, ‘I meant to ask, did you go out to the garage?’
‘No?’ She looked surprised, her voice framing the word as a question. ‘How come? Was it open?’
‘I don’t know, I didn’t try the door. But there were footsteps going out there.’
‘How odd. Wasn’t me.’
‘Bizarre.’ I took another bite and chewed thoughtfully. The footsteps were crisp, so they must have been made sometime after the snow had finished falling. ‘You don’t think …’ I said, then stopped.
‘What?’
I hadn’t thought through what I’d been about to say, and now, as I said the words, I felt an odd reluctance to voice them. ‘Well … I assumed it was someone coming from the house to the garage and back. But it could have been the other way round.’
‘What … like someone snooping round? Were there footsteps coming up to the garage?’
‘I didn’t see any. But the garage is so close to the wood, and I don’t think the tracks would show there – the snow’s too patchy and broken up.’
Plus, although I didn’t say it, if there’d been any tracks on the forest path my run had probably just effectively obliterated them.
‘Never mind,’ I said, picking up the tea determinedly. ‘This is silly. It was probably just Flo going out to get something.’
‘Yeah, you’re right,’ Melanie said.
She gave a shrug and left the room, and I heard the ‘ching’ of the receiver as she picked up the handset. But instead of the sound of the dial clicking around, I heard ‘ching, ching, ching’ and then a bang as the receiver was slammed down.
‘For crying out loud, the phone line’s down! Honestly, this is the last straw. What if something’s happened to Ben?’
‘Hang on.’ I put my plate in the dishwasher and followed her into the living room. ‘Let me try. Maybe it’s his number.’
‘It’s not his number.’ She handed me the receiver. ‘It’s dead. Listen.’
She was right. There was no dial tone, just an echoing empty line, and a faint sound of clicking.
‘It must be the snow.’ I thought of the branches in the forest, weighed down by their burden. ‘It must have brought down a tree branch and snapped the line. The engineers’ll get it back up I imagine, but—’
‘But when?’ Melanie said. Her face was pink and upset and there were tears in her eyes. ‘I didn’t want to make a big deal about this to Clare, but this was my first trip away and to be honest, I’m having a pretty shitty time. I know I’m supposed to be all like “Woo! Night out with the girls!” but I don’t want to do this any more – all this drinking and stupid pissing about. I don’t give a fuck who slept with who. I just want to go home and cuddle Ben. You want to know the real reason I woke up early? Because my tits were rock hard with milk and they were so painful they woke me up leaking all over the fucking bed.’ She was really crying now, her nose running. ‘I had to g-get up and pump into the sink. And now this is the l-last straw, I’ve got n-n-no idea if they’re OK. I don’t want to be here any more.’
I stared at her, biting my lip. Part of me wanted to hug her, the other part of me was recoiling from her tear-stained, snot-dripping face.
‘Hey,’ I said awkwardly. ‘Hey, look … if you’re having a shit time …’
But I stopped. She wasn’t listening. She was staring not at me, but out of the window at the snow-bound forest, turning something over in her mind, breathing slowly as her sobs subsided.
‘Melanie?’ I ventured at last.
She turned to look at me, and wiped her face on her dressing-gown sleeve. ‘I’m going to go,’ she said.
It was so sudden that I didn’t know what to say.
‘Flo will kill me, but I don’t care. Clare won’t mind. I don’t think she gave a toss about having a hen in the first place, it was all Flo’s weird obsession with being the world’s best friend. Do you think I can get my car down the drive?’
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘it’s only a dusting under the trees, but look, what about Tom? You gave him a lift, didn’t you?’
‘Only from Newcastle.’ She wiped her face again. She looked calmer now her mind was made up. ‘I’m sure Clare or Nina or someone will take him back. It’s not a big deal.’
‘I guess.’ I bit my lip, imagining Flo’s reaction to all this. ‘Look, are you sure you don’t want to give it a bit longer? They’ll get the phone line up soon, I’m sure.’
‘No. I’ve made up my mind, I’m going now. I mean, I’ll wait until Flo gets up, but I’m going up to pack now. Oh! What a relief.’ She was smiling suddenly, her face from cloud to sunshine in just a few moments, the dimples back in her cheeks. ‘Thanks for listening. I’m sorry I lost it a bit, but you’ve really straightened me out. I mean you’re right – if you’re having a shit time, what’s the point of being here? Clare wouldn’t want me to hang around feeling miserable.’
I watched her as she made her way slowly up the stairs, presumably to repack her stuff, and pondered her last words.
What was the point of being here? I realised, suddenly, that I hadn’t wanted her to go. Not because I liked her, or would miss her – I didn’t know her well enough for that, though she seemed perfectly nice – but because I’d had some fantasy of my own of escaping. And being one down would make it that much harder – there would be that small amount of extra pressure on the survivors to make up for Melanie’s absence.
And without a car, and without the alibi of a small baby, what reason could I possibly come up with that wouldn’t b
e construed as sour grapes over James, over the fact that the better woman had won and got my ex-boyfriend for herself?
I thought I had long since stopped giving a fuck what Clare Cavendish thought of me. I realised, as I walked slowly back to the kitchen, that I was wrong.
13
THIS IS HOW I met Clare. It was the first day at primary school, and I was sitting by myself at a desk and trying not to cry. Everyone else had gone to the school nursery and I hadn’t, and I didn’t know anyone. I was small and skinny with hard little braids that my mother knotted into the side of my scalp ‘to keep off the nits’.
I could read, but I didn’t want anyone to know. My mother had said that it would make me unpopular to look like Little Miss Know-It-All and that the teachers would tell me how to do it properly, not my made-up way.
So I was sitting alone as the other children paired up into tables and chatted away, and then Clare walked in. I had never seen anyone so beautiful. Her hair was long and loose, in defiance of the school rules, and it shone in the sunlight like a Pantene commercial. She looked around the room at the other children, one or two of whom were patting the chair beside them hopefully and saying, ‘Clare! Clare, sit with me!’
And she chose me.
I don’t know if you know what it’s like being chosen by someone like Clare. It’s as though a warm searchlight has picked you out and bathed you in its sunshine. You feel at once exposed, and flattered. Everyone looks at you, and you can see them wondering, why her?
Clare sat beside me, and I felt myself transforming from a nobody, into a someone. A someone people might actually want to talk to, be friends with.
She smiled, and I found myself smiling back.
‘Hello,’ she said. ‘I’m Clare Cavendish and my hair is so long I can sit on it. I’m going to be Mary in the school play.’
‘I’m—’ I tried to answer. ‘I’m L-Le—’
I’m Leonora, was what I was trying to say. But Clare only smiled.
‘Hi, Lee.’
‘Clare Cavendish.’ It was the class teacher, banging the rubber on the chalk board to get our attention. ‘Why is your hair not tied back?’
‘It gives me migraines.’ Clare turned her angelic, sunlit face towards the teacher. ‘My mum said I wasn’t to. I’ve got a note from the doctor.’
And that was Clare all over.
Was it really possible that she had a note from the doctor? Would any doctor in their right mind give a five-year-old a note allowing her to have loose hair?
But somehow it didn’t matter. Clare Cavendish had said it, and so it became true. She did become Mary in the school play. And I became Lee. Mousy, stammering Lee. Her best friend.
I never forgot Clare’s action that first day. She could have chosen anyone. She could have played the popularity card and sat with one of the girls with Barbie clips in their hair and Lelli Kelly shoes.
Instead she chose the one girl who was sitting silent, by herself, and she transformed me.
As Clare’s best friend I was always included in games, not condemned to wait, lonely but trying not to look it, at the side of the playground waiting for someone to ask me to play. I was invited to birthday parties because Clare wanted me there, and when it became known that Clare had come to my house for a playdate and had spoken approvingly of my swing and doll’s house, other girls began to accept my faltering invitations.
Five-year-olds can be incredibly cruel. They say things that no adult ever would – cutting comments about your looks, your family, the way you speak and smell, the clothes you wear. If someone spoke to you that way in an office they’d get the sack for workplace bullying, but at school it’s just the natural order of things. Every class has an unpopular scapegoat, the kid no one wants to sit with, the one blamed for everything and picked last in all the team games. And, perhaps just as inevitably, every class has a queen bee. If there was a queen bee in our class, then Clare was it, and without her friendship I might easily have become the scapegoat, sitting alone at that table for ever. Part of me, the frightened five-year-old inside my adult shell, will always be grateful for that.
Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t always easy being Clare’s friend. That searchlight beam of love and warmth could be withdrawn as quickly as it was bestowed. You might find yourself mocked and derided instead of defended. There were plenty of days I came home crying because of something Clare had said, or something Clare had done. But she was funny and generous, and her friendship was a lifeline I couldn’t do without, and somehow I always ended up forgiving her.
My mother, on the other hand, did not approve of Clare, for reasons I could never quite work out. It made no sense, because in many ways Clare resembled the daughter my mother was always trying to make me be – charming, loquacious, popular, not too academic. When secondary school came around my mother did not keep silent about her hopes that I would get into the local grammar and Clare would not. But she did. Clare was not a swot, no one could accuse her of that, but she was clever, and she could pull it out of the bag in exams.
Instead my mum went to the teacher and asked that we be put into different classes. So in lessons I found a new friend, a companion just as unlikely: spiky, amusing Nina with her skinny brown legs and large dark eyes. Nina was tall where I was short, she could run the 800 metres in 2 minutes 30, and she was funny, and not afraid of anyone. She was dangerous to be around, her sharp tongue making no distinction between friend and foe – you were as likely to be the butt of her wit as laughing at it. But I liked her. And in many ways, I felt safer with her than with Clare.
It made no difference, though. Outside lessons, Clare sought me out. We spent lunchtimes together. We bunked off and went to spend our allowance at Woolworths, on the CDs Clare liked and the sparkly nail polish we were forbidden to wear at school. We were caught only once, when we were fifteen. A heavy hand on the shoulder. Mr Bannington’s furious face looming over our shoulder. Threats of suspension, of telling our parents, of detention for the rest of our natural lives …
Clare just looked up at him, her blue eyes limpid with honesty. ‘I’m so sorry, Mr Bannington,’ she said, ‘but it’s Lee’s grandad’s birthday. You know, the one she lived with?’ She paused and gave him a significant look, inviting him to remember, to join the dots. ‘Lee was upset and couldn’t face lessons. I’m sorry if we did wrong.’
For a minute I gaped. Was it Grandad’s birthday? It was a year since he’d died. Had I really forgotten? Then sense returned, and with it anger. No, no of course it wasn’t. His birthday was in May. We were only in March.
Mr Bannington stood, chewing his moustache and frowning. Then he put his hand on my shoulder. ‘Well, under the circumstances … I cannot condone this, girls, if there were a fire alarm then lives could be put at risk looking for you. Do you understand? So please don’t make a habit of it. But under the circumstances, we will say no more about it. This once.’
‘I’m sorry, Mr Bannington.’ Clare’s head drooped, chastened, deflated. ‘I was just trying to be a good friend. It’s been hard for Lee, you know?’
And Mr Bannington coughed a choked-up cough, gave one short, sharp nod, turned on his heel and left.
I was so angry I couldn’t speak on the way back to school. How dare she. How dare she.
At the school gate she laid a hand on my shoulder. ‘Lee, look, I hope you don’t mind, I just couldn’t think what else to say. You know? I was the one that persuaded you to bunk, I thought it was my responsibility to get us out of the mess.’
My face was stiff. I tried to imagine what my mother would have said if I were suspended, and how Clare had got us both off the hook. I thought about May, and how I was going to have to go through the day – the real day – of my grandad’s birthday without mentioning that fact, or referring to it ever again.
‘Thanks,’ I said, in a hard, unnatural voice that did not stammer, that did not sound like me.
Clare only smiled, and I felt her sunshine warmth. ‘You’re welcom
e.’
And I felt myself thaw, and smile back, almost in spite of myself.
After all, Clare had only been trying to be a good friend.
‘No.’
‘Flo—’
‘You’re not leaving.’
Melanie stood for a moment in the middle of the kitchen, as if trying to think of something to say. At last she gave a snort of disbelieving laughter.
‘And yet apparently … I am.’ She slung her bag on her shoulder and tried to push past Flo towards the door.
‘No!’ Flo shouted. There was an edge of hysteria to her voice. ‘I won’t let you ruin it!’
‘Flo, stop being such a basket case!’ Melanie snapped back. ‘I know – I know this is important to you, but look at yourself! Clare doesn’t give a flying fuck whether I’m here or not. You’ve got this picture in your head of how things should be and you can’t force people to go along with it. Get a grip!’
‘You—’ Flo stabbed with her finger at Melanie ‘—you are a bad friend. And a bad person.’
‘I’m not a bad friend,’ Melanie sounded very tired all of a sudden. ‘I’m just a parent. My life doesn’t revolve around Clare bloody Cavendish. Now please, get out of my way.’
She pushed past Flo’s outstretched arms towards the hallway, and looked up.
‘Clare! You’re awake!’
‘What’s going on?’
Clare was coming down the stairs in a crumpled linen wrap. The sun was shining down from the window behind her head, illuminating her hair like a halo.
‘I heard shouting. What’s going on?’ she repeated.
‘I’m going.’ Melanie walked a few steps up, gave her a brisk kiss, and then hitched her bag further onto her shoulder. ‘I’m sorry – I shouldn’t have come. I wasn’t ready to leave Ben, and the situation with the phone is just making it worse—’
‘What situation with the phone?’
‘The landline’s down,’ Melanie said. ‘But it’s not that. Not really. I’m just … I want to be back home. I shouldn’t have come. You don’t mind, do you?’
