The Guilt Trip

by Sandie Jones

  ‘Kim,’ starts John, as if warning her not to pry.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know about that,’ says Ali, smiling. ‘I’m not quite ready for kids just yet.’

  ‘Wait, what?’ The words are out of Rachel’s mouth before she can stop them.

  Ali stares at Rachel with wide eyes and surreptitiously shakes her head. ‘We’ve got plenty of time,’ she says. ‘There’s no rush.’

  Rachel glares back, knowing that wasn’t the plan – at least it wasn’t last night, when Ali had professed to wanting children with Will immediately.

  Rachel wonders if Ali hasn’t got a bigger problem than what they’re all making allowances for. Perhaps her tendency to over-exaggerate and need to be at the centre of every story is just the tip of a far deeper psychological issue. This isn’t the first time Rachel has suspected her of lying, though it’s the first time she’s caught her red-handed, blatantly changing her tune, depending on who she’s talking to. Though she’s spoken with such conviction both times, that Rachel can’t tell which is the lie and which is the truth.

  ‘If you’ll just excuse me,’ says Rachel, unable to listen to whichever version this is for any longer. She gets up, not knowing where she’s going to head, but then she sees Jack leaning into Noah at the bar, jabbing a finger into his chest. Her heart quickens at the same rate as her feet.

  ‘Is everything okay?’ she asks falteringly, as she reaches them.

  Now she’s closer, she can see Jack’s features, twisted with anger.

  ‘What’s going on?’ she asks, as the tension in Jack’s shoulders dissipates and he takes a step back. But he doesn’t take his eyes off Noah.

  ‘You’d better watch yourself,’ says Jack, straightening his shirt, as if he’s been in a fight.

  Noah laughs and Rachel wishes he hadn’t. She almost looks out of one eye, expecting Jack to be launching himself at him.

  ‘I’m warning you,’ hisses Jack.

  ‘Jack!’ says Rachel, knowing she’s got the devil’s own job of engaging him. He’s far too drunk and far too angry. ‘Jack, why don’t you go and talk to Paige?’

  He looks around unsteadily.

  ‘She’s over there,’ says Rachel, as if she’s cajoling one child to go and play with another.

  He lurches off and Rachel lets out the breath she was holding in.

  ‘What the hell was that about?’ she says, turning to Noah.

  He shakes his head. ‘Your husband can be such a prize tosser when he wants to be.’

  ‘Is this over what happened earlier?’ she asks, not knowing which event she’s referring to. Selfishly, she hopes it’s the one in the sea rather than the conversation he’d probably overheard her and Jack having in their bedroom.

  ‘He’s still maintaining that he told me not to go towards the waves.’

  ‘O-kay,’ says Rachel carefully, not wanting to stoke this unpredictable situation any further.

  ‘And I know I’ve had a bump to the head, but I clearly heard him telling me to follow him.’

  ‘But it must have been incredibly noisy out there,’ says Rachel, trying to stay on neutral ground.

  ‘I know what I heard,’ says Noah. ‘He said, “Come on, this way.”’

  ‘But you must have known it looked dangerous,’ says Rachel. ‘If Jack told you to put your head in an oven, you wouldn’t do it, would you?’ Rachel attempts to laugh.

  ‘No, but I’d lost sight of Will, and in the absence of him telling me what I should be doing, Jack seemed the next safe bet.’

  ‘But maybe it was just a miscommunication,’ says Rachel. ‘Maybe he didn’t make himself clear and you didn’t hear him correctly. I’m sure he wouldn’t have taken you out there intentionally.’

  Noah goes to counter the argument, but seems to think better of it. Instead, he looks at her with soft eyes and smiles. ‘I hope you’re right,’ he says.

  In that moment, it’s as if a time machine has picked them both up and dropped them into 2002.

  Rachel can see him at the airport, standing under the departures board, begging her to go on the year-long trip they’d planned so meticulously.

  ‘What if this is our only chance?’ he’d said.

  ‘But what if I came with you and forever regretted not staying with Jack?’ she’d said.

  He’d kissed her in answer and for those few minutes she’d wondered how she could even question it.

  ‘I’ll wait for you,’ he said, when they eventually came up for air.

  ‘If we’re meant to be, we’ll find a way.’

  ‘I hope you’re right,’ he’d said.

  By the time she saw him again, she was married with a baby, and she’s spent the past twenty years convinced she’d done the right thing. Except now, with him looking at her as if he’s trying to read her mind, she wonders if she made the wrong decision after all.

  She shakes herself down as the unfamiliar, and wholly unwelcome, thoughts wrap themselves around her psyche. She tells herself that this is merely a knee-jerk reaction to seeing Noah unconscious on the beach today. That it’s natural to feel panicked and scared when faced with the prospect of losing the best friend she’s ever had. All those feelings are perfectly understandable. But what she hadn’t bargained for was the acute sense of grief she’d felt on realizing that they might never get ‘their chance’.

  ‘Could I get a gin and bitter lemon please?’ says an old woman coming up beside Rachel and breaking the spell she’s been momentarily under.

  Rachel smiles warmly and the woman smiles back, her eyes shining. ‘What a lovely do,’ she says.

  ‘Isn’t it?’ says Rachel. ‘If this is just the warm-up, I can’t wait to see what tomorrow brings.’

  The woman nods in agreement. ‘I’m Ali’s grandmother,’ she says. ‘Are you friends of hers?’

  ‘Well, yes, we are,’ says Rachel, nodding. ‘But we’re more from Will’s side.’

  ‘He seems a lovely boy,’ says the woman.

  ‘Oh, he is,’ says Rachel. ‘She’s got a good one there.’

  ‘He reminds me of my boy, looks-wise – when he was younger, of course.’ She laughs ruefully. ‘I call him my boy, but he’s almost sixty. How on earth I could possibly have a sixty-year-old son, I don’t know.’

  Rachel looks around the room of forty or so people, most of whom are now milling about, or have swapped seats, leaving glaring gaps in the carefully thought-out table plan.

  ‘Is he here?’ asks Rachel, looking for who she assumes is Maria’s brother.

  ‘Oh no,’ says the woman. ‘I’m Alison’s father’s mother, but since their divorce, it’s only me she stays in touch with. I’m afraid my son wasn’t the best role model. He drank too much, went out too much . . . he really put poor Maria through the wringer until, one day, she decided enough was enough.’

  ‘Oh right,’ says Rachel, making note of another part of Ali’s backstory that she’d omitted to reveal. ‘It’s interesting that Will reminds you of your son, then. They say that women often gravitate towards men like their father, even if it’s not a conscious decision.’

  The old woman smiles wryly. ‘Well, let’s just hope that he’s only similar in looks, and not personality. As ashamed as I am to admit it, I wouldn’t want Alison to end up with someone like my son.’

  Rachel smiles and puts a reassuring hand over the woman’s on the bar. ‘The only problem Ali will have is trying to keep up with Will’s wanderlust.’ And his desire for children, she thinks to herself.

  ‘His wanderlust?’ queries the woman in a high-pitched tone. ‘That doesn’t sound very conducive to a happily married life.’

  Noah laughs. ‘It’s not that kind of wander or lust. She just means he’s always got half an eye on taking off to explore the world. It’s how he’s always been, but now he’s got Ali, he’s got someone to do it with, if they both feel so inclined.’ He takes another large slug of his gin.

  ‘Oh, I see,’ says the woman, clearly relieved. ‘It’s all such a worry, isn’
t it? You think they’re hard work when they’re little, but that’s just the start of it. You worry even more when they grow up.’

  ‘That’s very true,’ says Rachel knowingly.

  ‘Do you have children, then?’

  Rachel nods. ‘Just the one, though he’s hardly a child. Like you say, I can’t quite believe I’ve got a nineteen-year-old.’

  ‘So, he’ll be going off to university, will he?’

  ‘He’s already gone, just over a month ago, and although we all felt he was ready, we miss him terribly.’

  ‘Ah, an empty nest,’ says the woman, looking at them both. ‘That must be hard.’

  Rachel offers a smile. ‘It takes some getting used to.’

  ‘Do you have a photo?’ asks the woman.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ says Rachel, taking her phone out of her clutch bag and flicking through to find a picture that shows Josh in all his handsomeness.

  The woman takes the phone in her hand, peering closely at the photo before looking between Rachel and Noah.

  ‘Well, there’s no mistaking who he takes after,’ says the woman, handing the phone back to Rachel and looking at Noah. ‘He’s the spitting image of you.’

  ‘Oh . . . oh . . . no,’ blurts out Rachel, feeling a heat creep around her neck. ‘We’re not together.’ She does a frantic backwards and forwards motion with her hand. ‘My husband’s over there.’ She points to where Jack is sitting next to Paige. ‘That’s Josh’s dad. We . . .’ She starts the flapping motion with her hand again. ‘We’re just good friends.’

  ‘Oh my goodness,’ chuckles the woman. ‘Well, so much for my powers of observation.’

  Noah’s mouth pulls back into a tight-lipped grin, but his eyes are alight with shock, burning a hole deep into Rachel. She shifts, uncomfortable under his intense stare, desperately looking for a distraction to ease the strained atmosphere.

  She goes to speak, though to say what, she doesn’t know, but her throat constricts and her mouth dries up instantaneously when she parts her lips. She wonders if her discomfort is obvious – how can it not be to Noah, who knows her better than most? But when she fleetingly glances at him, he looks at her as if she were a stranger.

  ‘If you’ll excuse me,’ he says, through gritted teeth.

  Rachel watches him, her heart pounding, as he weaves his way through the restaurant and out the door.

  ‘It’s been lovely meeting you,’ says Rachel to the old woman, who’s happily sipping her gin and bitter lemon.

  ‘You too, dear,’ she says. ‘See you for the big day tomorrow.’

  ‘Looking forward to it,’ says Rachel.

  Keeping one eye on Noah through the window, she scans the room for Jack and is relieved to see him sitting, deep in conversation, with Paige. Although that will no doubt do little to subdue his truculent mood, it gives Rachel time to pacify Noah, whose mindset worries her even more right now.

  She’s just about to reach for the door handle when a hand grabs her arm.

  ‘I’m glad I caught you,’ says Maria.

  Rachel smiles at Ali’s mother. ‘I’m sorry, I just need to . . .’ She tilts her head to where she can see Noah retreating into the darkness, his arms swinging by his sides.

  ‘Of course,’ says Maria, letting go.

  Rachel shifts from one foot to the other as she loses sight of Noah’s white shirt. ‘It’s okay,’ she says, forcing a smile. ‘It can wait.’

  Maria pats the stool next to her and as Rachel dutifully sits down, Maria picks up her hand and holds it tight.

  ‘Just in case I don’t get an opportunity to speak to you tomorrow, I wanted to thank you.’

  ‘Thank me?’ says Rachel in surprise. ‘What on earth for?’

  ‘For looking after Alison; for taking her under your wing and welcoming her into the family. She was beginning to think she’d never meet the right person and then when she did, she was nervous about ingratiating herself.’

  ‘Ali, nervous? I doubt that.’ Rachel’s head is so full of Noah, and fuzzy with alcohol, that she doesn’t know whether she’s said the words out loud or not.

  Maria smiles, suggesting that she might have done. ‘You see, Alison may come over as confident, but it’s just her way of coping.’

  ‘Coping?’ queries Rachel, not sure that she’s interested enough to care. She has a bigger problem to deal with.

  ‘It’s just that she’s been through a lot,’ Maria goes on. ‘And it’s all a bit of a front she hides behind.’

  That’s no excuse to be a pathological liar, Rachel wants to say. To tell your husband-to-be that you’re desperate to have children and then behind his back admit you’re not ready. To pretend that David Friedman was coming to your wedding, but had to cancel at the last minute.

  ‘She was bullied terribly when she was younger and she sometimes over-compensates,’ says Maria, as if in answer. ‘So, please don’t think that how she is on the outside is how she’s feeling on the inside. There’s a shy and timid girl in there, whose only wish is to be accepted for who she is.’

  There’s an unsettling feeling in the pit of Rachel’s stomach: is Maria as naive to Ali, and all that she’s capable of, as everyone else?

  She almost feels compelled to tell Maria how Ali behaves around Jack, in the hope that she’ll allay her concerns. But in light of how she’d greeted him, Rachel fears she’ll only stoke the fire instead of putting it out.

  ‘Why was she bullied?’ Rachel asks instead.

  ‘Oh, I’d rather not say,’ says Maria, suddenly flustered.

  Of all the scenarios that play out in Rachel’s head at that moment, she shocks herself when she settles on an inappropriate relationship with a teacher being the most likely. She can all too easily picture Ali flirting outrageously, encouraging a response and sharing all the sordid details – true or otherwise – with her peers. Rachel imagines it might have made her popular, for a brief moment in time, but as soon as the shit hit the fan, any friends she thought she had would have run for the mountains, slating her as they went.

  ‘We had to move schools three times, but the bullying just seemed to follow her wherever she went.’

  ‘That must have been very difficult,’ says Rachel, putting a hand on top of Maria’s.

  ‘It was.’ She sniffs. ‘But to see her now, as happy as she is, more than makes up for it.’

  ‘Will is a wonderful man,’ says Rachel. ‘She’s a lucky girl.’

  ‘And he’s a lucky man,’ says Maria, smiling wistfully. ‘I know she’ll make the most loyal and loving wife.’

  Rachel forces herself not to baulk. Clearly Maria doesn’t know her daughter quite as well as she thinks she does.

  11

  ‘Noah!’ Rachel calls out, as she tentatively edges towards the orange grove which she saw him disappear into. The citrus scent travels on the breeze, which, despite it having a nip to it, Rachel can barely feel as alcohol and adrenaline rush through her system. ‘Noah!’ she says again, her voice struggling to be heard over the chorus of cicadas singing in the trees overhead.

  The light is diminishing into nothing the further she goes, and she can feel the ground underneath her wedge heels change; they struggle to negotiate a bumpier surface – soil hardened by the sun. If she wants to avoid a broken ankle, she knows it would be unwise to go any further. ‘Noah!’ she calls out one more time.

  ‘He was just here,’ says a slurred voice, the owner of which is only visible by the burning ember of a cigarette end.

  ‘Ali?’ Rachel questions falteringly, playing for time to think of what logical reason she’s got to be out here looking for Noah rather than enjoying the party. ‘I was just . . .’ she starts, not really knowing where she’s going with it.

  Ali silently pulls on the cigarette, the orange glow lighting her face. ‘I’ve just seen him,’ she says as she exhales a straight line of smoke up towards the night sky. ‘He seems pretty shaken up.’

  Rachel feels a tug in her chest. ‘Oh, right. Did you see whe
re he went?’

  ‘Over there,’ says Ali, pointing to a white-walled two-storey building, set twenty metres or so away from the restaurant. ‘That’s Paulo’s place. I saw Noah heading around the far side.’

  ‘Oh, great,’ says Rachel awkwardly, turning to walk off. ‘It’s been a lovely dinner.’

  Ali doesn’t say another word, but Rachel can feel her eyes burning into her back as she hastily walks towards the soft lighting of a downstairs window. She briefly wonders who’s in there, watching television in a language she doesn’t understand, living a life so far removed from her own. Have they ever been to London? England, even? She finds it so hard to contemplate that so many other people are going about their everyday lives, without ever knowing that each other exists. A dog barks, bringing her back.

  ‘Noah!’ she says, a little more quietly this time. ‘Are you there?’

  She turns the corner to find him sitting on a plastic garden chair, with his head in his hands. Shadows are dancing all around him as the branches of the surrounding trees briefly let the moonlight filter in, before gently swaying and blocking it out again.

  ‘I . . . erm.’ Now she’s found him, she doesn’t know what to say.

  ‘What do you want?’ he says, in a voice so unlike his own that Rachel instantly regrets coming after him.

  ‘I just . . .’ she starts, before looking around to make sure no one else is there, least of all Ali, who she hopes is too drunk to even remember seeing her out here at all, let alone who she was looking for. ‘I just wanted to check that you’re okay.’

  He makes a derisory snort through his nose. ‘If you knew me at all, you’d know that I’m not.’

  She goes towards him. He needs to see her, to remember who he’s talking to. ‘Come on,’ she says, leaning down and taking his hands in hers. ‘Let’s not get all heavy. This is supposed to be a celebration.’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ he says sarcastically. ‘Let’s all watch another couple live a lie.’

  ‘And what is that supposed to mean?’ As soon as she says it, she wishes she hadn’t.