Can We Still Be Friends (2 page)

Hanging in the air was the shared knowledge that it was Kendra
who was the more financially secure of the three, allowing her, Sal thought in her more uncharitable moments, to get involved in a load of goody-goody stuff. She remembered her first visit to Kendra’s home in west London. It was a huge house, with white walls dominated by large abstract canvases, parquet floors and tubular steel and leather furniture. Kendra’s mother, Marisa, was the least motherly person Sal had ever encountered. Extraordinarily tall, with the long pale face of a Modigliani, she wore her black hair scraped back, her full mouth outlined in a dark beige and dressed entirely in black.

‘Ah, Sal, we meet, finally,’ she had said. ‘I can’t stay and talk … But, darling, you know we are giving a dinner for Philip Roth tonight. You both might like to join us.’ Her voice was slow, a languid New England drawl. ‘I gather from Kendra that you are reading English and American literature – you would be interested in meeting him, I am sure. Any time after nine. And, Kendra:
tenue de ville.
’ She drew out the word ‘
ville
’ so that it sounded like ‘veal’, and with it left the room, and the two girls, standing in what Sal felt to be the emptiest space she had ever been in. She looked at her friend. ‘She means look smart,’ shrugged Kendra in explanation.

That had been early on in their university days and, as the terms passed, it emerged that Sal was one of the few people Kendra had allowed a glimpse of her family. It was not clear whether Kendra was embarrassed by the cool, moneyed chic of her circumstances or despised it, but her background was determinedly disguised. She lived on pulses blended into soups and curries, walked or cycled everywhere and adopted a simple uniform of loose shirts, jeans, combat pants or the occasional long skirt, ensuring her legs were never bare. Her hair was often tied up in a turban of raggedly dyed scarves. Sal, who liked to show off her lithe frame in body-hugging shapes – boob tubes, leggings, clinging jersey dresses – would tease Kendra fondly about her dress sense but, despite the differences, their loyalties ran deep, each discovering in the other missing aspects of their own personality.

University represented different freedoms for them. Sal’s yearning to escape the gentility of the quiet Cheltenham townhouse of her childhood had propelled her into achieving first-class exam results as an escape route. When the day of departure finally arrived, she left the bedroom where she had slept all her life torn apart like empty packaging. In her urgency to be off, she didn’t notice her mother glance at the wooden-framed photograph she left behind on the chest of drawers, of her parents with her and her brother as small children huddled beside a cotton windbreak on a beach. She felt no sadness as she closed the door and hauled her large suitcase down the narrow staircase, just the energy of anticipation.

Her mother had gathered cardboard boxes packed with an electric kettle, two mugs, a box of Duralex tumblers and a stack of Tupperware containers on the Formica-topped kitchen table.

‘Joy, we should be leaving shortly,’ her father, Maurice, shouted as he walked into the room, stooping through the door, glasses balanced on the balding dome of his head. ‘Salome, are you ready? I don’t want to be too late back, as I have a lecture to prepare for the morning.’

Her mother sat in the front seat of the ancient Vauxhall, and Sal was wedged in the back between her suitcase and bundles of bedding. It had been a golden early-autumn day, and the Cotswold stone villages they drove through on their journey were at their picture-postcard best. As her parents listened to Radio 4, exchanging the odd comment, Sal felt the coil of impatience tighten in her; she was eager to colonize a new world.

By mid-afternoon, Sal was alone in her small campus bedroom. ‘Call us soon’ were her mother’s last words before she and her husband departed along the dingy green internal corridor. Sal sensed the loss her mother was feeling at her daughter leaving home, her clipped tones bright but her eyes somewhat dimmer. She hid her guilt at not feeling one jot of sadness by brusquely urging them to leave. ‘You should go now. Dad, you won’t get that lecture done if you hang around here. I’m fine.’ She stood on her
toes to kiss him briefly on the cheek before giving her mother a forced hug.

Unpacking was far too dull an option for the first afternoon at university, and she wandered out of her room, looking into the shared kitchen at the end of the corridor. A boy was seated at the table, his mother handing him a mug, ‘Now you will remember to fill the kettle before you switch it on, won’t you, Dave? Dave, are you listening?’ Sal turned away and walked straight into a tall girl dragging a soft bag that had split open.

‘Sorry,’ she murmured, moving away, but then turned back to look at the stranger, who was now bending to stuff back in the clothes that were escaping.

‘Here you are,’ said Sal, handing her a T-shirt that was lying on the speckled linoleum.

‘Thanks. This bag split as soon as I got off the train. I’m Kendra.’

‘Sal … I’ll help. My parents drove me. I couldn’t stop them. Did yours come with you?’

‘No. They’re abroad.’ Sal heard a trace of an American accent in Kendra’s slow tones as they walked past the identical doors that lined the corridor. ‘I think this is my room.’ Together they lifted the broken bag and dumped it heavily on a narrow, single bed only fractionally larger than it.

‘Let’s go and explore. Leave the unpacking till later,’ suggested Sal. That had been four years ago, but that first meeting had set the tone for their relationship, Sal urging exploration and activity, Kendra a compliant, supportive companion.

For the rest of their last afternoon on the island the girls basked on the rocks like contented seals, watching their tans deepen, feeling the salt dry on their skins. By six o’clock, the small hamlet on the opposite side of the bay had come into clear view as the light changed and the sun moved behind the hill. The beach was emptying of noisy families.

It was Kendra’s favourite time of day there, when she was able to lie still and hear the noise of the water, spared the continuous
chatter and shrieks of the beach’s other inhabitants. She stood up and waded in, slowly feeling her way on the large flat stones underneath. Once the water was waist deep, she flung herself in, swimming with deep, strong strokes, out past the two anchored fishing boats beyond sight of the bay, her long hair glued to her back in rat’s tails. Then she stopped to tread water and look back, to Sal in her emerald bikini, now an almost indecipherable dot. Ahead of her stretched the darkening sea, to the horizon.

‘It’s lovely up here in the late afternoon,’ Joanna Mitchell announced as she and Annie clambered up the stepladder in the small hallway and through a trapdoor on to the decked roof terrace. From the steps below, Annie watched Joanna’s sheer nude tights and tight red skirt fill the space between the ceiling and the sky. ‘All I ask is that you don’t let the plants die – you can run a hose from the bathroom tap. See. Here is the end you shove through the window,’ said Joanna, leaning precariously over the small parapet.

One for Sal, thought Annie, then instantly corrected her assumption – or Kendra. Not her, at any rate.

Finding the flat, on the top floor of one of London’s terraced streets, was undoubtedly a piece of luck. Joanna had mentioned that she was looking for a flat-sitter when she had last had a coffee with Annie’s mother.

‘I know I could make good money renting it on the open market, but what would I do about darling Flick, who would hate the apartment in Spain?’ she had said to Letty. ‘I can’t bear to leave her, but it would still be better for her to be able to pad around her own home rather than having to think
dónde
the cat flap? Can Annie be trusted? She’s a sweetheart, I know, Letty, but I’m not keen on wild parties or such things. Now she’s working for that PR company, she’s probably got a taste for the good life.’

Once she’d been offered 23d Cranbourne Terrace, Annie swore there would be no such thing as parties, wild or not, and that she would nurture everything, including the miniature orange tree on the kitchen shelf above the sink. And of course Flick. A place of her
own would rescue her from the childlike state enforced by remaining in her mother’s comfortable yet stifling Hampshire farmhouse. How liberating to come home at night without having to tiptoe around the creaking boards on the stairs and in the upstairs hall (she knew the culprits intimately) and see the light in her mother’s room switch off as she walked past in acknowledgement of her safe return. When her father had died, nine years ago, Annie and her sister Beth had been left to look after their mother. But enough time had passed now, surely, for her to move on.

‘Now, I’ll lock all my linens and valuables in this cupboard here in the spare room – although I don’t imagine you will keep it spare. You’re welcome to use my bedroom for yourself so you can get a pal in to help with the rent. But only one. I only want two living here. And a girl, of course,’ said Joanna, giving her blonde perm a comforting pat as she and Annie continued their tour of the flat.

The rooms were wallpapered, the sitting room a cheerful stippled green, the bedrooms in smart stripes, while the floors were covered in smooth matting. It was orderly and attractive – like its owner, thought Annie. She imagined the boxy sofa covered in her faded Indian throw and could see the perfect spot for the rag rug she had in her room at home. It would be so easy to make the flat more her own. Joanna plumped up the small square silk cushions lined up on the sofa and walked over to tweak the yellow curtains that hung to the floor.

‘I love this place. It’s a wrench to leave it, but I’m sure you’ll be a great caretaker, Annie. Now, I warn you, the soundproofing is
non-existent.
The bedrooms might as well not have walls – which is no problem for me, all on my lonesome.’ She offered a small, neat smile. ‘You can hear Bob and Gina upstairs as if they were
literally
in the same room as you. They love to pop on their old records:
Oklahoma!
and
South Pacific
are particular favourites. Most odd. At times, they seem to be up all night.’

As Annie left the building, she was immediately immersed in the relentless stuff of city life: the piles of rubbish outside the small
local stores, the dusty display of the charity shop, the rich sickly smell from the kebab stand. Looking through the filthy window of Major Mini Cabs at the huddle of silent men waiting for a job that would allow them to move their illegally parked cars, she thought of Sal and Kendra. Weren’t they returning tomorrow from Corfu? It was a real shame that they all couldn’t live there, all three of them.

Yanni’s bar was situated just outside the busiest part of Kassiopi’s harbour. The smells of grilled meat and fish, oregano and rosemary, mixed with a tang from the sea, hung over the main drag, where couples strolled arm in arm, dodging the multitude of juddering, badly driven mopeds.

‘A couple of drinks, Ken, and then we’ll head back,’ promised Sal, threading her way through the tangle of tables to one near the darkened bar that had a good view of the harbour. ‘Metaxa for me,’ she said to the small, black-haired waitress scurrying between the tables so fast she barely stopped. She turned to Kendra. ‘And you?’

‘A retsina and a glass of water, please,’ she replied, looking at Sal in her red slashed-neck T-shirt, her thin brown arms protruding from its boxy shape, hair slicked back in a smooth cap. Kendra envied Sal her streamlined quality; she was always primed for action, lithe as a Siamese cat. She watched her light a cigarette, blowing the smoke in rings into the night.

‘It drives my dad mad when I do this,’ said Sal. ‘He always says, “Cigarettes are not a circus trick, Salome. But if you want to dig your own grave” dot dot dot … Always that “dot dot dot …” Funny, how nobody else calls me Salome. I think it was my mum’s one flamboyant gesture, calling me that, and now I’m always Sal.’

‘Well, since you never tell anyone you’re called Salome, how are they meant to know?’ responded Kendra, mildly irritated by Sal’s predictable show of self-obsession.

The irritation was lost on Sal, who continued, ‘She might as well have called me Sally. Well, thank God she didn’t. Living in Cheltenham was dull enough without being called Sally. I’ll get these,’ she volunteered as the waitress appeared with drinks on a metal tray.
‘Can you see my bag?’ Kendra rummaged on the floor for the two identical woven-cloth bags they had bought from a small stall earlier in the week, blue, with the traditional white key pattern edging them. She peered into each and handed Sal hers. Sal dug around for some notes. ‘There goes my last drachma. I’ll have to borrow off you tomorrow.’ Three boys were approaching. They stopped just before reaching the girls, their voices carrying in Greek, the shortest pushing the others in a bantering move. Two sat at an adjacent table while the third penetrated the dark hole of Yanni’s and returned with a backgammon set. Sal smiled at Kendra, raising an eyebrow and her glass. ‘To Greek nights,’ she toasted.

As the dusk was replaced with darkness, the town began to light up, candles twinkling on the hundreds of bar and restaurant tables that lined the quayside. Sal felt the familiar embracing warmth induced by ouzo, wine and rough brandy. The world was grand.

‘Lover’s leap?’ she asked, leaning over towards the backgammon players, questioning the red player on his brazen manoeuvres.

‘He’s brave,’ replied his friend, the fine gold chain and cross around his neck lying on his white T-shirt. His voice came as a surprise; it was heavily accented with American.

‘Oh, you’re a Yank, are you?’ Sal twisted her chair towards the table. ‘I had you down for Greeks.’

‘We’re all Greek guys,’ answered the boy playing black, looking up at Sal as he slid the counters crisply across the board. ‘We go to college in the States and we’re home for the holidays. Gotcha,’ he concluded triumphantly, lifting off the final counters. ‘Alexei –’ He gestured, introducing his opponent and finishing off his bottle of beer. Alexei waved at Sal and Kendra. ‘Marcus,’ he continued, ‘and I’m Kosti.’ He emphasized the first syllable. The clock in the bell tower chimed midnight as the music from the bars grew louder, drawing in the groups of people parading along the front. Sal was in her element. She toyed with the three boys like a skilled puppeteer. The two weeks’ holiday had given her a dark tan, making her unexpectedly pale-blue eyes more vivid.