The Friends We Keep

by Jane Green

  Evvie unpacked, put her clothes away, sat on the bed, and texted Topher, but there was no response. She hovered over Maggie’s name, instantly guilty, ashamed of the secret she had kept, further ashamed at not being here for Ben’s funeral. She wanted to come, she planned to come, but her own devastation was too overwhelming. She wanted the closure but suspected her grief would reveal everything she had worked so hard to keep secret, and so she stayed away.

  She sent her condolences in a handwritten card that might have been from anyone. She wasn’t surprised when she heard nothing back. They had been friends a long time ago, so long ago that Evvie wasn’t sure they would have anything in common anymore, other than Jack, who Maggie must never know about. Every time she thought about it, she felt a wave of nausea, but it mingled with excitement at seeing Maggie again, and more, at the three of them being together again. There was no reason for Maggie to suspect anything, she kept telling herself, pushing the thought out of her mind.

  She phoned Jack, but he couldn’t talk; he was in a meeting about a new app his company was developing. So Evvie pulled on her boots and a jacket, wincing at how tight the jacket was, the sleeves now covering her arms like sausage casings, before taking the spare key, going downstairs, and slipping it back under the flowerpot.

  It was only as she left the flat that she realized how unsettled she felt. She loved flying into Heathrow, felt instantly at home, but Shepherd’s Bush wasn’t her neighborhood, the buildings weren’t familiar to her, and suddenly she felt that she had been wrong about England being a new home; maybe she wasn’t at home anywhere. Maybe, when you leave the country in which you were born and raised and try to make a home somewhere else, you can never go back. And if that new place wasn’t home . . . maybe the rest of her life would be spent drifting, trying to find a place that was her own; maybe she would never find a place to call home again. She shook her head to dislodge the thought, and walked up the street to find a decent cup of coffee.

  thirty-two

  - 2019 -

  Maggie felt a burst of what might be excitement, what might be nerves, as she drove up to the hotel in Kensington. Parking the car in the underground lot, she made her way up to the banquet hall.

  There were people everywhere, milling around the lobby, striding purposefully toward the lifts, and she searched their faces in the hopes of seeing someone familiar, but none of them looked like people she once knew.

  She hadn’t been out in months, and she was astonished at the noise, the people, the energy, and more, astonished that rather than scaring her, it was exhilarating. This was the first time since Ben died that she had felt alive.

  Signs were dotted around pointing the way to various events held in various conference rooms and ballrooms—clearly their reunion was not the only thing happening here tonight. She hesitated, suddenly wanting to turn around and run back to the door, drive home, and crawl into the safety of her bed, wondering why she was braving a reunion that suddenly seemed overwhelming to her.

  “Maggie?”

  She heard her name from across the lobby, and squinting through the hordes of people, she saw a figure so achingly familiar, a prick of tears came to her eyes. Tall, as vibrant as ever, heavier than she remembered, but the smile was still the same. She would know that smile anywhere. As she watched Evvie walk toward her, the weight, the wrinkles, the years dropped away, and it was Evvie, looking just as she always looked, standing right there.

  With a smile on her face, Maggie threw her arms around Evvie, squeezing hard, both of them pulling back to look at each other, both laughing, before hugging each other again.

  “Oh, Maggie,” Evvie said, and she was crying this time. “I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”

  Maggie knew she was sorry about Ben dying, about not showing up for his funeral, about losing touch; she was sorry for all of it but none of it mattered. What mattered was the overwhelming feeling of love she had for her old friend, and when they finally disengaged, they stood for a while, grinning at each other, each drinking the other in.

  “You look amazing!” Evvie laughed. “Look at you! You haven’t aged a year. How do you do that? How do you look so fantastic?”

  “Are you kidding?” burbled Maggie. “You’re the one who hasn’t aged. Your skin! You look twenty-five! I look terrible. Honestly, if you’d seen me this morning, I was an aging hag. I couldn’t inflict my gray hair on you lot so I dashed to the chemist and did a home dye job.”

  “First of all, my skin is only great because I’m enormous.”

  “Evvie!” Maggie’s face fell. “You’re not enormous. You’re beautiful. Are you really still hung up on your weight? We’re fifty. You need to get over it.”

  “Honey, it’s okay. I’m learning to deal with it, finally. As my mama always said, once you hit forty, you have to choose face or figure, and I guess I chose face. Secondly, no way that’s a home dye job! Really? It’s amazing. I can’t imagine you, or any of us, with gray hair. The only one of us I can see with gray hair is Topher, who would probably look even more handsome and distinguished.”

  “Topher! I’ve missed him so much. Do you see him often in New York? You must, you live so close to each other.”

  “I should but I don’t, which is awful. Somehow life just gets in the way.”

  “Oh, Evvie. I can’t believe we lost touch.” Maggie linked her arm through Evvie’s. “I can’t believe I lost touch with everyone. Seeing you makes me feel young again. I want to hear everything. What are you up to, how is your life . . . ? I know you went through a horrible divorce, but you must be doing okay now, you look so happy. Let’s go up and find the reunion. You can tell me all about it as we walk.”

  “There’s something I have to say to you first.” Evvie stopped and looked at Maggie. “I’m so sorry about Ben. I should have come to the funeral. I wanted to come but . . . There is no excuse. I am so sorry and more, sorry that I wasn’t there for you.” She blinked away unexpected tears.

  “Thank you,” said Maggie. “It means so much to me that you have said that. It was . . . complicated.” She stood still, wanting to tell Evvie about Ben. She hadn’t told anyone other than her mother, but she wanted to tell Evvie. And Topher. She didn’t want to keep his secrets anymore.

  “Complicated?”

  “It’s a long story and one I’m going to tell you, but not tonight. Let’s have this night and then I’ll give you the full story next time. Which means there’ll have to be a next time. Deal?”

  Evvie wanted to know now, but she knew Maggie well enough to know she wouldn’t be pushed.

  “Tell me all your news,” said Maggie, changing the subject. “Tell me about Jack!”

  “No! I want to hear your news first. Topher said you lived in Downton Abbey. Girl, how did you manage that?”

  “It’s not Downton Abbey.” Maggie rolled her eyes with a smile. “It is lovely, though, a very pretty manor house that is entirely too big for me. It was entirely too big for the two of us. If we had known that we wouldn’t have children, we would never have bought it, but I’m glad we did. We both fell completely in love with it as soon as we saw it. I think Ben could never believe that he could actually afford a house like that. It meant a lot to him . . .” She trailed off, a sudden image of Ben passed out in the hallway downstairs flashing in her mind.

  “Anyway.” Her voice was immediately, falsely, bright. “Tell me about your son. Do you have pictures?”

  Evvie paled. “I’m a terrible mother,” she lied. “Everyone always asks to see pictures and I’ve got nothing. I do have his baby picture as my screensaver, but that’s it.”

  “Let me at least see that.” Maggie held out her hand for the phone as Evvie handed it over, knowing that with his face half-turned into his blanket, he was unrecognizable. “Oh, he was adorable. What a cutie. How old is he now?”

  “Twenty-one, and entirely self-sufficient. He’s living i
n Oakland, just outside of San Francisco, working for a tech start-up. I can’t actually believe I have a grown son who fends for himself.”

  “Does he look like you? I bet he’s gorgeous.”

  Evvie smiled. “He is gorgeous, and he looks a little like me.” She didn’t say any more, couldn’t say any more.

  “Am I . . . allowed to ask about the father?” Maggie remembered Topher once saying that the father wasn’t involved, that he thought the father may not even have known that he had a son, and that Evvie never discussed it.

  “You can ask,” said Evvie, “but that doesn’t mean there’s anything to tell. It was a long time ago, and at the time I thought it was a terrible mistake and would ruin my life, except for the fact that of course Jack has been the best thing to ever happen to me.”

  “I hope I get to meet Jack one day,” said Maggie.

  “If you’re ever in San Francisco, I’ll make sure it happens!” Evvie lied.

  “How do you cope, with him being so far away? Haven’t you ever thought about moving there?”

  “I have. I think about it all the time, but the truth is, San Francisco isn’t my place. I spent some time in LA when I was young and I hated it. I can’t see myself on the West Coast, even though I miss Jack hugely. I keep hoping he’ll come back to the New York area, but I don’t think it’s likely. I have to let him go. I have to fight every day not to drive him mad with texting, or phoning, or going to see him. He was always my happy place, especially when I was married to Lance, and in some ways that wasn’t a great thing for him. It gave him too much responsibility. It’s better that he’s far away. He needs to find his feet, build a life without feeling like he has to look after his mother.”

  “It’s still so weird thinking of you as a mother,” said Maggie. “I still see you as a nineteen-year-old with furry slippers sipping giant mugs of hot chocolate and taking all those weird slimming pills.”

  “You knew about those?”

  “Of course I knew. We were worried as hell but figured you were old enough to look after yourself. Oh my lord, is that Topher?” Her face lit up as she called out his name, spying him at the front of the signing-in line.

  “Get over here!” He gestured for them to come to the front, his American accent even more distinct than it was all those years ago when he let his Anglophile tendencies get the better of him, adopting a slight mid-Atlantic drawl.

  “We can’t queue jump,” Maggie said, noting that everyone in front of them was turning to look at them.

  “Of course you can. Get your asses over here now.”

  “I can’t believe you just did that,” Maggie mouthed to Topher, following Evvie mutely to the front and pretending not to see people stare as Topher squeezed her arms and then flung his own around her.

  “I am capable of much, much worse,” he murmured in her ear, and she instantly forgave him. He hugged Evvie as they all signed their names in the book, then walked into the big room, heading straight for the bar, but pausing as Topher held them back.

  “God, this is all a bit sad,” said Topher, frowning at the lack of decoration, lack of . . . anything. There were a few groups of people standing around the edges of the room, picking at the buffet tables, with a small line developing at the bar. “Where are the balloons? Where are the streamers?”

  “Where do you think you are? The United States?” Evvie started to laugh. “The fact that there’s a reunion at all is a bit of a miracle. You didn’t expect them to spend proper money on it, did you?”

  “I did! God knows they’ve all seen enough American movies to know how it’s done. Balloons, streamers, and a live band.”

  “And punch!” Maggie laughed again. “Where’s the punch? They always have punch in those American films.”

  “I’m not seeing punch.” Topher eyed the bar. “I am seeing boxes of wine though. Urgh. This is all depressing.”

  “Hi!” A woman in a patterned lilac ball gown came over to them. “Oh my God! Look at you all! You all look amazing!”

  They all looked blankly at her, Evvie wondering if perhaps she might persuade the woman to hire her for a wardrobe makeover, because that ball gown looked like something out of 1986.

  “It’s me! Victoria Charles! We were roommates for about ten seconds!” She looked at Evvie, whose mouth opened.

  “Oh my God!” Topher’s face lit up. “Victoria! Look at you!” He gave her a hug. “Guys.” He turned to the others. “You remember Victoria! You loved cats, right?”

  “I did! I actually run a cat rescue now.”

  “I can’t believe you’re here,” said Evvie. “You look exactly the same.”

  “Victoria!” Maggie hugged her as Victoria beamed. “Look at you! That dress is spectacular!” she lied smoothly.

  Victoria giggled. “I couldn’t believe it still fit. I wore it to the graduation ball! Can you believe it? Good old Laura Ashley!”

  “I can’t believe it,” said Evvie, who, other than recalling her Catpuccino mug, had only one other vague recollection of a large, jolly girl who had drunk too much at the graduation ball, collapsing in a toilet stall, her lilac-patterned Laura Ashley skirts billowing out around her. “You kept it all these years!”

  “I never throw anything away,” Victoria said proudly. “You never know what comes in handy. I still have my cat posters from university in the downstairs loo! Not to mention my clothes. Who would ever have thought I could fit into this dress after all these years?”

  “You’ll be wearing it everywhere now,” said Topher. “It’s very in, the eighties retro thing.”

  Victoria’s face lit up. “That’s what I thought. It’s very Downton Abbey.”

  “Indeed,” said Topher. “Victoria, if you’ll excuse us, we have to go and find drinks.”

  “Make sure you come back and we get some proper chatting time! It was so great to see you.” Topher already had an arm around the waists of both Evvie and Maggie as he steered them away.

  “I hate to say this,” Maggie whispered as they walked off, “but who in the hell was that?”

  “You don’t want to remember,” said Topher, looking at Evvie. “Catpuccino anyone?”

  “Oh my God! That roommate! Now I remember!” Maggie began laughing, realizing with a start that she was feeling something she hadn’t felt in years. Happy.

  “Fuck, I think I hate reunions,” said Topher, looking around the room. “I mean, this is the only one I’ve ever been to. But this all feels desperately sad. I have a terrible memory, and nobody here looks the slightest bit familiar. And I don’t want to be accosted by any more people like that Catpuccino girl. Also, this swirly carpet is depressing me.”

  “Oh, stop,” said Evvie. “So it’s not the Four Seasons. Get over it. We don’t have to stay all night, but at least this got the three of us together. Let’s go find drinks.”

  “But that’s my point. Everyone else is irrelevant. We should go and find somewhere lovely to have drinks where we don’t have to make small talk with people we don’t remember.”

  “We can’t leave immediately. But I would be willing to leave in an hour,” Maggie demurred, ever the proper girl her mother raised.

  “How about half an hour?”

  “Forty-five minutes?” Maggie grinned. “I had forgotten how difficult you are.”

  “I’m not difficult, I’m wonderful. I just don’t see the point in making small talk with people I haven’t seen in thirty years. There’s a reason I haven’t seen them in thirty years.”

  “You’ve barely seen us in thirty years,” said Maggie.

  “That’s different,” Topher said. “And you know it.”

  “Let’s just make a little bit of small talk, and we’ll leave as soon as we can.”

  thirty-three

  - 2019 -

  Fifteen minutes later they were sitting in a tiny, candlelit bistro off Ke
nsington High Street. Wooden pews as seats and the dark lighting made it cozy, although, as Topher put it, “cozy in a very nineteen eighties kind of way.” They all declared it perfect, then, for their reunion night.

  “I couldn’t handle it,” said Maggie, after ordering a gin and tonic. “Other than you lot, I didn’t even remember anyone.”

  “I feel the same. Isn’t that awful? Although did you see Julian Maple?” Evvie asked.

  Maggie frowned. “Julian Maple who you had that terrible one-night stand with?”

  “Yes! Julian Maple who was ridiculously good-looking even though he was a bit of an ass.”

  “I didn’t see him,” said Maggie. “How did I miss him?”

  “You wouldn’t have recognized him. I did a double take when I saw his name tag.”

  “What does he look like?”

  “Nothing like he used to. Kind of doughy and dull.”

  “Everyone looked like that to me,” said Topher. “Is that awful? It just . . . God, it wasn’t exactly a glamorous reunion.”

  “It wasn’t exactly a glamorous university,” Evvie reminded them with a laugh. “Other than the English and drama departments, it was all a bit sad.”

  “The science department was good,” Maggie said quickly, and they all nodded, embarrassed, remembering Ben, before Maggie sighed. “But do we look like the rest of those people? Because the thing that horrified me most was that half of them looked my mother’s age. We don’t look like that, do we?”

  “I hope I don’t look like that,” said Topher. “Or my dermatologist is getting fired.”