Bad Friends (9 page)

An arm grabbed mine and pulled me back. Charlie – Charlie was holding me up now, and I clutched him as the car roared past. With a screech of tyres it took off round the corner. I
stared after it, Charlie’s signet ring biting into my naked arm. When he took his hand away, his fingerprints had stained my pale skin.

‘Bloody boy-racers,’ he swore. For once, his slicked-back grey hair was dishevelled, falling across his face. He pushed it back irritably as, dazed, I let him lead me to his silver Alfa. ‘Come on, I’ll take you home.’

‘I think – that car, it was driving straight at me.’

‘Don’t be so silly.’ He manoeuvred me down into the low seat. ‘You’re pissed. It was just some kid showing off.’

The lights of London slid by outside. Buckingham Palace was an oversized dolls’ house, the road around it a great red skating-rink, Big Ben as magical as ever beneath a silver moon. For a moment I imagined I was Peter Pan silhouetted against the clock-face, flying off into Neverland.

I heard my mobile ring in the depths of the bag at my feet, but by the time I’d hauled it out it had stopped and the screen just read ‘
one missed call
’.

And gradually, as my pounding heart slowed, I began to feel safe; like I was in a David Gray video, muffled from the cold, driving in a car so smooth it felt like floating in an armchair, anaesthetised from my own pain by alcohol – until suddenly I realised I was far from home. In Vauxhall, in fact – outside Charlie’s penthouse on the river.

‘I’ve had rather a lot to drink, darling, thinking about it.’ He smiled at me wolfishly and bleeped the security barrier with the control in one apparently steady hand. ‘I forgot you were staying out in the sticks. Come up for a snifter, and I’ll call you that cab.’

In the lift up to his penthouse, he moved a fraction nearer – or perhaps it was just the gentle bouncing of the shiny lift. I backed into the corner anyway, feigning interest in my appearance. My reflections in the many mirrors showed me rumpled and slitty-eyed from booze, and as the lift door pinged open I
rubbed a fuchsia kiss-mark from my cheek. Charlie stayed close by me as we walked into his flat, as if he was worried I’d make a sudden break for it.

I gazed around, intrigued. All this time I’d known him, and yet I’d never seen his lair. It was so very masculine, such an archetypal bachelor pad, that I nearly laughed out loud. He put some music on,
easy listening
I think they call it, and dimmed the lights. Above the living fire, two naked women rolled on the stone-coloured wall, wrapped tightly round each other. I tilted my head, trying to focus on the print. Perhaps they weren’t rolling: perhaps they were fighting instead.

‘Like it, darling?’ Charlie followed my gaze as he propelled me towards a squashy leather sofa where my bottom was distinctly lower than my knees. He poured me a large Cognac. ‘Your sort of thing, eh, Maggie?’

‘God, no.’ I took a slug of brandy and nearly choked. They definitely weren’t fighting, I realised from this angle. ‘I’m pretty straightforward really.’

‘Really?’ His hooded eyes were gleaming like a snake about to strike. ‘You can never tell, darling. I thought I had you sussed until the summer. I thought perhaps you were game-on after –’

I changed the subject quickly. ‘No tiger-skin rug then, eh, Charlie?’

‘What?’ He frowned.

‘Oh, nothing.’ The brandy burnt my throat. ‘Can you ring that cab please? I’m knackered.’

‘I already did, darling.’ Charlie sat right next to me, inching his arm behind my head so I had to lean forward not to touch him. I could smell his hair-oil as I edged away until I was rammed up against the sofa-arm.

‘Does Jeffrey Archer still live next door?’ I asked rather desperately.

He raised an eyebrow. ‘Fan of his?’

‘Hardly,’ I said indignantly. ‘Look, I think – if you just give me the number, I’ll call again. I really should be getting home now.’

But Charlie wasn’t listening; Charlie was preparing to pounce. Charlie, my supposed bloody mentor – who I’d worked with for years, who I’d never had to fend off before, despite his boringly lecherous ways. I’d never been his type – I wasn’t blonde or busty enough. Before I could move, he lunged; stuck his tongue into my mouth until I couldn’t breathe. It seemed to have a life of its own. I felt quite sick.

‘Charlie, for Christ’s sake! Get off!’ I managed to push him away, wiping my mouth frantically.

‘I thought you liked a bit of danger, darling.’ Entirely unperturbed, he pushed his hair back with the signet-ringed hand and topped up his brandy from the decanter on the coffee table. He didn’t spill a drop; nor did he replenish mine. ‘Don’t pretend you didn’t enjoy that, Maggie.’

I stared at him. Then I began to laugh. I laughed and laughed until I cried. And then when I cried, I found I couldn’t stop. My make-up dripped in black rivulets onto the cream leather, my nose began to run. Charlie shifted slightly in his seat. Then he stared out of the window at the lights of London, at the glitter of the night Thames and the majestic Tate Britain opposite, twiddling his ring.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said eventually, as I began to calm myself, fishing out a monogrammed hanky and offering it to me. ‘Perhaps that was rather crass. I must say, though,’ he patted my leg through the thin silk of my crumpled green dress, ‘I’ve never found you so attractive. You’ve got a kind of vulnerability these days that I’ve never noticed before’.

I blew my nose loudly. ‘That you thought you could exploit, you mean.’

‘Hardly, darling. I’m not a predator.’ He stood now and reached for the phone. ‘Where’s that bloody cab?’

Charlie didn’t say goodbye as I fled into the lift, and he banged the door shut so hard behind me that it rattled in its frame.

The next morning, feeling hungover and rather queasy, I took Digby to Greenwich Park in an attempt to clear away the cobwebs of the previous night. I tramped up the hill to the Observatory and then across the wild and matted grass to look down on the city, seriously worried about the implications of rebuffing Charlie, especially in the circumstances. I was distracted by the delighted squeaks of a tiny blond boy in an enormous green coat, kicking through the autumn leaves beneath the chestnut trees. The top layers of the pile were a gorgeous mixture of golds and reds, russet and shades of orange. But underneath, as Digby joined the toddler to scavenge there for treasure, there was just nasty rotting mulch. I called the dog away as the boy’s father scooped him up, and wandered home again.

Opening my father’s gate, I stopped in my tracks, confused. Had I got the wrong house? I stopped to listen, a sickening pain searing through my stomach.

For the first time in years, the piano was being played. My mother’s image twirled through my foggy head, and for a peculiar moment suspended in the midst of memory, I thought she might actually be in there.

I dropped the newspapers I’d just bought and flew up the path. Someone was playing the piano and my flesh was crawling with loneliness and need and the knowledge that no one was here to catch me any more, to salve the wounds.

I ran towards the music, gasping and breathless as I took the stairs two at a time to reach the fluid climbing notes, but when I flung the study door wide open, the room that no one ever visited, empty except for my mother’s piano looming large and obsolete, it was only Jenny sitting there, playing a jolly waltz. Jenny beamed up from the piano-stool, her fringe very shiny,
her rosy cheeks as round as apples – but when she saw my face, she trailed off.

‘I’m sorry, love,’ she said a little nervously, ‘you don’t mind, do you? You did say it was all right.’

But it wasn’t all right. Had I really said that?

‘It just – it seems like such a waste.’

It hadn’t been played for years; even I couldn’t bear to any more, although I had tried.

‘I couldn’t resist any more.’

I knew it would be wrong to yell
don’t touch
. I bit my lip hard. ‘You carry on.’ Managing a feeble smile, I shut the door carefully behind me. Alone on the landing I put my hand to my mouth and brought away blood. Bemused, I wiped it on my coat. Then I went to the kitchen to make some lunch. There was half a bottle of Shiraz open on the side. I shoved a pan of parsnip soup onto the hob and stood there clutching a glass of the dark red wine and I felt stupid and bereft again, like I had when I was thirteen. How stupid I was: I’d forgotten Jenny taught music, of course she did – that’s how she’d met my father, teaching at his school. Of course she’d bloody play. Although I put the radio on loudly to drown the music out, I could hear how out of tune my mother’s piano really was. As I slathered bread with thick yellow butter, I realised it was finally time to leave.

I took a deep breath and rang my ex-boyfriend.

My dad and Jenny came for Sunday lunch on the weekend I moved back into the flat in Borough Market. My dad said it was a sort of housewarming, but I knew really it was to check up on me, to make sure I was coping.

It felt extremely odd and rather uncomfortable to be there again, but I had little choice it seemed. Alex had just accepted a huge job in Glasgow, so our old flat above the cake shop in the market was sitting empty for the time being. I couldn’t afford to rent a new place as well as pay my half of the existing mortgage. In a series of terse and cursory emails and messages to one another, Alex and I eventually established I’d move back in alone while I worked out what to do next.

In an attempt to dispel the ghosts that had lingered since I’d arrived the previous night in a flurry of debris from the market’s busiest day, I put on a Beethoven violin concerto very loudly, made coffee strong enough to stand a spoon in and spent the morning cleaning the kitchen and conjuring up a lemon roast chicken with garlic potatoes, and a rhubarb crumble with homemade custard that even Nigel Slater would die for, whisking the eggs to within a second of perfection. Then I opened the wine ready for my dad’s arrival. I’d pulled out all the stops; I wanted to show Jenny there was no ill-feeling about the piano. I liked her a lot and, crucially, this time I didn’t want to be responsible for spoiling what might be my dad’s last chance of real happiness.

At the front door, Jenny presented me with a large cactus.

‘Oh, lovely.’ I hugged her, hoping fervently it wasn’t a symbol of something unspoken. ‘Thank you so much.’

‘You’re welcome.’ She smelled nice and homely; of shampoo and L’Air du Temps. Of motherly things. ‘It doesn’t need much looking after, that’s why I chose it.’ She was a little shy. ‘I thought it’d be perfect for you busy media types.’

‘So how do you feel about being back here?’ my dad asked later, polishing off the crumble as Jenny washed up.

‘It’s fine, Dad, really.’ I jumped up to collect the remaining plates. I couldn’t admit that the memories gouged agonisingly at my brain – that every time I moved across the room I saw Alex sprawled on the sofa sketching, his headphones on, winking at me as I happily threw together a bolognese or a chilli, humming to Mozart; that I felt his constant presence; that I waited for him to bound up the stairs with Digby snuffling at his heels and kiss me like he’d just remembered what living was all about. I couldn’t admit that some of the happiest days of my life had been spent here. I was desperately fighting the memories myself.

I fought a sudden rush of tears, keeping my head down as my father passed me his bowl. ‘I just need to get on with things now, don’t I? No looking back, that’s what you always say, isn’t it?’ My words were brittle and empty and I felt truly haunted actually – but my father’s look of apprehension faded.

‘That’s my girl.’ He patted my arm fondly just as I tripped over his chair-leg and dropped the crumble dish.

As I cleared up the shards of china, Jenny offered to take Digby out; she’d often walked him for me while I was recuperating. I hated this biting cold and I had work to do for next week’s shows so I accepted gladly. I suddenly felt exhausted and my leg hurt. I sank onto the sofa, closing my eyes, just for a moment …

I dreamed I was playing croquet with my mother on
Pendarlin’s lawn, and someone was hammering the hoops into the ground and urgently calling my name. I woke up with a start, my sweaty face stuck to the leather cushion I lay on. It took me a second to realise someone really was knocking and calling my name.

Hauling myself off the sofa, the phone began to ring. I picked it up, my eyes still half-shut. A click; a dialling tone. Gormless with sleep, I dropped the receiver back into the cradle and staggered towards the persistent hammering.

‘All right, I’m coming.’ I flung the door back in bad temper.

‘About time.’ Alex pushed past me into the flat.

‘Come in, why don’t you,’ I said to the empty street, to the glowering grey sky, to the single tree stripped naked by November’s chilly wind and the train clanking overhead. ‘I thought you were in Glasgow?’

‘Going back on Wednesday. Can I get a cup of coffee?’ He was already bounding up the stairs into the kitchen. ‘It’s bloody freezing out.’ He blew on his hands.

I followed him more slowly, still hampered by my foot. ‘Hung over?’ I was waspish because I didn’t know how else to be; fighting myself already.

‘Hung over?’ Alex actually grinned, his long eyes creasing up. I used to love the way they did that. Oh God. I was fighting the part of me that wanted to run across the kitchen and launch myself into his arms, to breathe in his familiar smell, the smell I couldn’t get enough of in the old days. And I despised myself; I held myself in check, telling myself firmly it was my mind just playing tricks.

‘No, I’m not hung over. I’m on the wagon.’

I stared at him without comprehension.

‘Yeah, it’s been about five months now.’ So very proud of himself. He ran a hand through his short scruffy hair.

‘Five months?’ I intoned dully. Five months ago I had nearly died. Five months ago we separated forever. Abstinence that he’d
refused for me, he’d managed in his new-won freedom. For a moment I didn’t trust myself to speak.

‘Yep.’ He leaned against the kitchen counter, crossing his trainered feet smugly. His sweatshirt was paint-spattered as ever and there was a big rip in the knee of his jeans. Alex’s clothes were always dilapidated. ‘Thought it was about time I got into this clean-living lark. Everyone else is.’ He eyed the empty wine bottles left over from lunch. ‘Well – nearly everyone. You’re not embracing it yourself, then, Mag?’

Since when had Alex become all smug? I caught sight of my sleep-creased face in the mirror behind him; it just made me more cross. Half-cut and crumpled, I felt at a disadvantage.

‘No, that’s right, Alex. Can’t live without a drop, me.’ I tried to keep my hand steady as I tipped instant coffee into a cup, absolutely awake and completely sober now.

‘Don’t you run to the real stuff? I’m sure I left some in the cupboard.’

‘How kind.’ Very deliberately I added water to the Nescafé and slopped it towards him along the counter, past the half-full coffeepot. ‘What do you want, Alex? My dad’ll be back soon.’

‘Great. It’d be nice to see Bill.’

‘I’m not sure Bill would agree.’ With a shudder I recalled the soggy heap I’d been upon leaving the hospital after my final operation, crying intermittently for a solid week, refusing to leave my old room, forcing the occasional slice of toast down to appease my anxious father. He’d held my hand, folding his awkward height to perch on the edge of the bed like he had when I was thirteen. He’d listened while I’d rambled on; when I’d sworn I’d never love another man again he’d promised that I would. He’d driven me back and forth to the flat to collect my things when I knew Alex wouldn’t be there. Patiently he’d accompanied me to the physio, taking time off to drop me there every other day for a month. My father had let me rant and rail
when I thought I’d never walk properly again, never walk without a limp.

‘No, well, perhaps not. Look, Maggie –’ Alex stopped. He was struggling with something now, the smug façade slipping until it eventually crumpled. He jangled his car keys from one finger, his nails chewed down to the quick as usual. ‘Maggie.’ His voice was very quiet now as he stared at his dirty old trainers.

My heart was thumping painfully in my chest.

‘This is really difficult.’

‘What is?’ I was impatient now.
Just get it over with
. ‘Don’t tell me. You’re marrying that girl.’

‘What girl?’ Alex frowned.

‘The anorexic blonde from Bel’s wedding.’

‘Serena?’ He grinned. ‘Are you mad? Why, would you come?’

His lack of sensitivity was no surprise. I ignored him.

‘No, Maggie, it’s just – I thought we should –’

He was interrupted by Digby, who flung himself at Alex like an animal possessed.

‘All right, Diggers!’

The show of mutual appreciation was so lavish I had to turn away. ‘Traitor,’ I muttered at the slavering dog, and began to scrub an already clean roasting-tin as if it were Alex’s head.

My father appeared in the doorway, lead in hand.

‘Ah,’ he said, rather pointlessly. ‘Alexander.’

‘Good to see you, sir.’ Alex sprang forward, hand extended.

Sir?
The creep.

‘I think – shall we leave you to it, Mag? Jenny was going to come up to say bye but I’ll intercept her – unless –’ My father looked at me closely. ‘Is that all right?’

I tried to smile. ‘It’s fine, Dad, really. Thanks so much for coming.’

My father kissed me, hugged me tight for a moment. If there was anything good to have come out of the past few months, it
was this new intimacy with him. It was an intimacy born late, but one that I’d waited a lifetime for, which I appreciated deeply now.

‘Ring me later?’

‘I will.’

‘Bye, Bill. Good to see you.’ Alex looked up from tickling Digby’s tummy.

‘Yes, well –’ My dad was so very British sometimes. ‘Likewise.’

As the front door closed, I turned back to Alex. ‘Leave that bloody dog alone, will you? You haven’t been the slightest bit interested in seeing him in the past five months so don’t bother now. Poor little thing. He’s forgotten what you look like.’

‘Obviously,’ said Alex dryly as Digby slobbered all over his face with great enthusiasm.

‘Yes, well. He’s not very bright.’ I slammed the tin into the drying-rack where it wobbled for a minute before falling onto my bare foot. ‘Ow!’ I bit back tears of pain and anger. ‘For God’s sake! Look, Alex, what exactly do you want?’ I kept my back to the room, desperately trying to collect myself.

Alex picked up the tin. ‘It’s just – well, we haven’t really spoken properly since your –’ His voice faltered.

‘Accident, Alex, is the word you’re looking for, I think.’

‘Yes, sorry. I know I’ve been a bit crap.’

‘A bit?’

‘Okay.’ He held his arms up in submission. ‘Very crap. But when you said you didn’t want to see me, I –’

‘You know why I said that.’ I frowned. ‘But you still could have come.’

‘I didn’t think –’ he faltered, ‘not after – I mean, when Bill –’

‘Whatever.’ I hated Alex’s half-truths with a vengeance. ‘It’s a bit late now.’

‘I’m so sorry. I just couldn’t face seeing you in the hospital.’ He took a look at my face. ‘Right. Well, also, I wanted you to know I’ve been trying to – you know – clean my act up.’

‘Great,’ I muttered ungraciously.

He gave up. ‘Okay. Right, well, let’s just sort the practical stuff out, shall we? Splitting bills and things.’

I stared out of the window into the dark, at the glimmer of the train-tracks disappearing into the gloom above us like snail trails.

‘And also, Maggie, I just wanted to know how much you –’ He ground to a halt again. It was most unlike him to be lost for words.

I looked around for my cigarettes. ‘What?’

‘How much you remember.’

‘How much I remember about
what
?’ I looked at Alex now, and he held my gaze for a moment before dropping his. His yellow eyes were tired and ringed with black; he’d always struggled with insomnia.

‘Of the accident, you mean?’ It made my heart beat faster just to think of it. ‘It’s all a bit fuzzy.’

I finally unearthed my fags from a pile of paperwork. My hand was trembling as I tried to light one.

‘Right. I’m sorry. I really meant, though, of what happened – before.’

I chewed my lip. One of these days I’d chew right through. It was all a blur, that day, the few weeks before, a muddy midnight-blue tangle of tears and recriminations and shouting at each other in desperation and fury and absolute sorrow. We’d been in Cornwall together, I knew that, trying to sort things out, trying to find a solution once and for all, and then – then I couldn’t remember much at all about before or after. Then I was on the coach to London. Alone. So much of that period was still shadowed that the doctors talked grandly of ‘traumatic amnesia’ – but I was sure, oh I knew I must have blocked it.

‘What happened with us, you mean?’ Perhaps the memories were necessarily vague – but I knew it was only a matter of time before they surfaced. ‘I’m still struggling to remember.’

‘I just wondered, you know, that night when – my mum’s birthday –’ He looked a bit sick.

‘Oh God, I still can’t see it clearly.’ I finally lit the cigarette. ‘I try and piece it together, but it’s all so bloody vague.’

Immediately before the accident was clear: a lot of swearing in a service-station car park just outside Bristol. Alex, covered in engine oil, kicking the driver’s door in fury. Yet another heated argument. Silent tears sliding unchecked in the darkness. A cab. Sitting alone in a fluorescent-lit coach station with orange plastic chairs. ‘I know we had a row and that’s why I got on the coach.’ I considered him for a moment, took a lungful of smoke. ‘I just can’t remember why we were there in the first place.’ I exhaled slowly.

Alex looked almost relieved for a second as he turned to put his coffee cup down. ‘Why are you smoking again, Maggie? I thought you’d given up.’

I shook my head impatiently. ‘Why do you want to know all this now, Alex? About the accident. Did you do something terrible before it?’

‘Don’t be stupid. I just wondered.’ He busied himself with Digby, clapping for the little dog to jump to his clicking fingers. He didn’t look at me. ‘I need to get on, actually. Can we talk about the flat now?’

‘What about it?’ I ground the fag out hard.

‘Well, Serena and I –’

‘Oh.’ The penny dropped with a great big clank, rolled around the floor between us. ‘Oh, of course.’ I clapped a hand to my head. ‘You want to move her in.’

‘Look, just forget about bloody Serena, will you? Living with her isn’t really working out.’

Did he read the relief in my eyes? I cast them down as he went on. ‘So I need to – I’m just thinking about the future. After Glasgow.’

The future. I’d never known Alex plan for anything other than
where he was drinking that evening. I thought of Serena; of Alex in his beautiful suit at Bel’s wedding – her glossy perfection set off by his rangy height. ‘You looked pretty loved-up to me the other week.’