Two Wrongs

by Rebecca Reid

  The panel at her meeting was made up of her academic tutor, a middle-aged woman who she had met a couple of times in the first weeks of term but hadn’t seen since, another slightly younger woman from the university who said she was ‘in HR’ and wore a necklace that looked as if it was made from pasta, and Jules, the graduate student from her halls who had moved her in on her first day.

  It seemed as if Zadie’s advice had worked. As she sat down in the chair, intimidatingly placed on the other side of the desk to the three older women, she watched the expressions of concern on their faces.

  ‘So, Chloe,’ said her tutor in a gentle voice, ‘tell me a bit about what’s been going on.’

  What was she supposed to say now? Zadie had coached her the night before. Say as little as possible, get them as worried as possible.

  ‘I’ve been having a hard time,’ she said slowly.

  ‘Okay. Can you tell us a little more about that?’

  ‘I’m not sleeping much.’ That was true. A few hours a night. Never before 2 a.m. ‘And then I don’t make it to my lectures because I’m so tired.’

  They all nodded. Good. This was going well.

  ‘Have you felt overwhelmed academically?’

  No. Not really. She’d dashed off most of the work that needed doing and handed it in; she was still just about passing. And the marks from the first year didn’t count towards her final degree grade anyway, so everyone said that going for anything over a pass mark was a waste of time.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘A bit.’

  They asked more questions. She answered as close to honestly as she could.

  ‘Our other worry,’ the tutor said, her voice even gentler now, ‘is that Jules says she doesn’t see you around the halls much any more.’

  What was she supposed to say to that?

  ‘I stay over with a friend sometimes,’ she ventured, once the silence had grown too loud to ignore.

  ‘A friend?’

  ‘A couple of friends. They live off campus. On Archer Crescent.’ She wasn’t sure why she was expecting them to look impressed; they were adults. They didn’t care about Archer Crescent.

  ‘And these friends, are they—’ Her tutor paused. ‘Do you feel safe with them?’

  Chloe felt stung. ‘Yes, of course I do.’

  ‘And is this a platonic friendship?’

  She mistook Chloe’s silence for her not knowing what ‘platonic’ meant. ‘I mean, is this a boyfriend?’

  ‘No. Just friends.’

  ‘It seems like you’re gone for weeks at a time,’ said Jules. ‘The girls on your corridor say that they barely see you any more.’

  ‘Well, maybe I don’t want to see them because they’re the kind of people who tell tales on other adults.’ Her voice was sharper than she had intended. ‘Sorry,’ she added, regaining control. She couldn’t lose their sympathy. She mustn’t screw this up.

  ‘Could you step outside please, Chloe?’

  Chloe stood in the draughty hallway, counting the wooden tiles on the floor and gently banging the toes of her trainers against the wall. There was an exam clock on the wall. She watched the third hand trace each number. How was it possible that she and Zadie could lose hours, sometimes even days, when they were partying but she had been standing here in this wood-panelled purgatory for four minutes and it felt like nine hours?

  Eventually, they called her back in.

  ‘We’ve had a chat, Chloe,’ said the tutor. ‘And we all agree that you’re clearly having a very difficult time. The first year of university can be difficult. There are so many different influences on you, so many choices to make.’

  Why was she going on like this? If she was going to say that she was being chucked out, then why couldn’t she hurry up and do it quickly?

  ‘We are all in agreement that you should be given another chance. So, you will do some additional essays during the holidays, in order to achieve a pass grade for the year. We would ask that, going forward, you try to spend more time in your own halls of residence, and that if you are struggling to keep up academically, you talk to us about it, rather than suffering in silence.’

  Zadie hugged her when she recounted the story later and pulled a bottle of champagne from the fridge. Chloe wasn’t sure she should be celebrating, but it felt churlish to refuse.

  ‘Is that the champagne from the cellar?’ asked Max, striding into the kitchen half an hour later.

  Zadie looked at the label. ‘Probably. I found it in the cellar.’

  ‘It was a present, for winning the finals last year.’

  ‘You’d better have a glass, then.’ She smiled, clearly refusing to apologize. Max shook his head. ‘Can’t you buy your own booze?’

  ‘Nope. Astrid and Bob have put me on short rations.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘There was a credit-card bill. It all sounds far worse than it is. Don’t be boring – there’s nothing worse than talking about money. What shall we do tonight?’

  ‘I’ve got a wild idea,’ said Max. ‘Why don’t we play a game?’

  Zadie looked pleased. ‘What kind of game?’

  ‘It’s called “I’ve got to get up at five tomorrow morning, so why don’t we watch an episode of Midsomer Murders and get an early night?”’

  Chloe got to her feet. ‘Actually, I’ve got a lecture first thing, and I don’t think I should push my luck.’

  ‘See? Chloe feels the same way.’

  Chloe picked up her bag and kissed Zadie on the cheek, an affectation she had copied originally but now seemed unable to avoid. She brushed her lips against Max’s cheek, too, still cold from outside. ‘It’s not that,’ she said as she left the room. ‘It’s just that I had this disciplinary thing earlier. If I don’t get my act together, then they’re going to chuck me out.’

  She paused in the hall, straining to hear what, if anything, Zadie was saying.

  ‘Stop pouting,’ Max said. ‘We’ve had what, ten, fifteen parties since the start of the year? You can handle one quiet night. What’s so wrong with spending a bit of time with me?’

  She didn’t catch what Zadie said in response.

  ‘Either you can spend an evening here without getting slaughtered and putting £20 notes up your nose, or you can go back to that nice room in halls that your parents are paying for.’

  Someone said something, but Chloe couldn’t work out which of them it was, and then a glass – several glasses – smashed on the ground. Chloe slipped out of the front door and gently pressed it closed, desperate to stay and find out what had happened but even more desperate not to get caught listening.

  20

  Now

  A buzzing noise from the other room caught Chloe’s attention. She padded through and picked her phone up. Lissy was calling her. Why? She hovered her finger over the button to accept the call, but before she could decide what to do it stopped ringing. The display showed three missed calls. She tried to remember how long it had been since they had spoken. A couple of weeks? Maybe more?

  Chloe’s chest tightened. Why had Lissy rung her so many times? Something must be wrong. Fumbling, she called her back. ‘Lissy? Are you okay?’

  ‘Fine,’ said Lissy, talking at a volume which suggested she was driving and the phone was on hands-free. ‘Just wondering whether you needed a lift, but you didn’t pick up so I had to leave. Are you getting a cab or taking the train?’

  Chloe searched her mind, trying to work out what Lissy was talking about. ‘Sorry,’ she said, pulling everything out of her handbag to try to find her diary. ‘You’re breaking up. Can you say that again?’

  Lissy repeated herself while Chloe tore through her diary and found the day. Fuck. Fucking fuck. She had absolutely sworn blind that she would meet Lissy in central London, to go for high tea with Claudia. They had booked it when Lissy was seven and a half months pregnant and told that she had to be on bed rest. She had been utterly furious to lose her independence and Chloe had spent dozens of afternoons in her bedroom,
planning all the things they would do when she got her freedom back. And they had booked this what felt like a lifetime ago, as something to look forward to. A treat.

  ‘I’m getting the train,’ she said, her voice too cheerful. ‘I’ll see you soon.’

  ‘Okay. Can’t wait! Claudia is wearing her first grown-up dress for the occasion and she’s dying to see you.’

  Claudia’s eyesight would only just be good enough by this point to see her if she was a metre or two away. But Chloe was in no position to correct Lissy. She hung up, frantically dialled for a cab and blanched at the figure they quoted. It was rush hour, and it was going to take forty-five minutes to get into central London, and cost a fortune. Never mind. She turned her attention to her appearance. The plan had been to wash her hair that morning. The roots were getting darker, which made it look even dirtier, and she had a spot on her chin. She swept her make-up off the dressing table into her handbag and pulled a pretty summer dress out of her wardrobe, jamming trainers on to her feet.

  The traffic moved so slowly that every three minutes Chloe thought about getting out and walking. She was late. The dashboard of the taxi viciously displayed the time, taunting her with every minute she was later and later. Lissy kept sending her messages. Their tea slot was only ninety minutes. The car crawled, her phone pinged and she vibrated with stress, and with anger at herself for being so stupid and at Lissy for being so obsessive. Why had they even booked this ruinously expensive tea? The hotel wouldn’t be baby friendly and it was going to be stupidly overpriced, plus they would be pushed out the second their slot finished. How could anyone want to be so tied to times? Zadie never had been. She had woken up when she felt like it, turned up to lectures if they sounded interesting, arrived whenever seemed right.

  Eventually, they reached the top of the road. Chloe abandoned the cab and legged it, realizing that the weather was actually freezing and the summer dress a huge mistake. She pushed her way through the huge wooden doors and saw Lissy sitting at the far end of the lobby. She waved, saturated with relief that she was only fifteen minutes late.

  ‘Madam?’ came a voice from behind her.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I’m afraid we have a dress code.’

  It was all Chloe could do not to scream. ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘Our dress code prohibits trainers.’

  Lissy had a spare pair of ballet pumps in her car, but by the time Chloe had got them and come back they had missed almost half of their time slot. The baby started to cry, Lissy’s single glass of champagne, the only one she could have, as she was driving, as she repeated four times, had gone flat and the entire afternoon was ruined.

  It started to rain on the drive home and Claudia finally fell asleep in the back.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Chloe said, watching the raindrops race down the car window.

  The road noise didn’t fill the silence.

  ‘I forgot that we were supposed to be meeting.’

  ‘Yes, I had worked that out,’ Lissy snapped.

  ‘I didn’t mean to.’

  ‘Obviously. You can’t forget something on purpose.’

  It struck Chloe that she wished you could forget things on purpose. That life would be far easier if you could.

  ‘Are you okay?’ Lissy softened. ‘I haven’t seen you like this since—’

  She needn’t have stopped. Chloe knew exactly what she meant. She hadn’t seen her like this since Zadie, since the days of sleeping until 3 p.m. and having a glass of red wine as the first beverage of the day, the days of absolutely promising to turn up to something and then remembering three days later that she hadn’t even texted her apologies when she forgot to go.

  ‘I’m okay,’ she said. It wasn’t true. She wasn’t okay. She felt dirty, no matter how many showers she had. She felt swollen, and on the edge of weeping at every moment. She looked at Lissy’s profile, her neat hair and the little gold necklace with Claudia’s birthstone in it. She had got prettier since university. Getting older suited her. She was far sexier in her mid-thirties than she had been in her late teens. Perhaps it was because she had so much more of a grasp of herself, of her life. Back then, she had allowed Chloe to get away with being such a terrible friend. She had never complained that Chloe was a complete flake, someone who viewed her as a back-up option. Or maybe she didn’t realize it at the time.

  Perhaps Lissy would know what to say. Perhaps it was unfair to assume she wouldn’t be able to help.

  ‘A friend of mine died recently. I’m just having a hard time with it.’

  Lissy’s concern was genuine and obvious. ‘Oh, Chlo, I’m so sorry, that’s awful. What happened?’

  ‘She killed herself.’

  ‘Fuck. That’s awful.’ Lissy took her hand off the steering wheel and placed it on Chloe’s forearm, a demonstration of real love, given that she was an obsessively by-the-book driver even before having Claudia in the car with her. ‘Were you close?’

  How was she supposed to answer that? What possible explanation could she give to explain that they had been closer than two people could ever usually be and yet hadn’t spoken for more than a decade? Her first instinct had been right. There was no point in trying to discuss this with Lissy. She was too normal ever to be able to understand.

  Lissy looked across at Chloe. Their eyes met. ‘Is there something else?’ Lissy asked, uncharacteristically astute.

  Chloe allowed herself a tiny moment to imagine telling Lissy everything, the relief that would come from completely unburdening herself. Then she pulled herself together. That wasn’t an option so there was no point fantasizing about it. ‘Rav and I are having a bit of a hard time, too,’ she said, knowing it would distract Lissy.

  Lissy’s face changed. She looked relieved that Chloe had given her a problem she was more equipped to deal with. ‘Why?’

  ‘Same old row,’ she said. ‘He wants to have children straight away. I’m not sure that I’m ready.’

  ‘You’re never ready,’ said Lissy, turning off a roundabout. ‘But you should do it. It’s the best thing that ever happened to me. You have no idea how selfish you are until you become a mother.’

  She had no right to be hurt by Lissy’s words, especially after how she had behaved that day. But they still stung. All that evening, as she cooked herself dinner, washed her hair and sat on the sofa thinking about the mess she had made, the words kept circling around in her head. You have no idea how selfish you are.

  21

  Then

  Chloe was frightened that her resolution would crumble, that she would find herself unable to resist going straight back to Max and Zadie’s. But to her own enormous surprise she didn’t. Instead she got up at seven thirty every morning, went to her lectures, washed her hair, ate in the common dining room, let Lissy tell her long stories about her new boyfriend, Guy, and allowed herself only little snatches of Zadie. A cup of coffee on the way back from a lecture, a chat on the phone while Chloe tidied her bedroom and Zadie luxuriated in the bath. A Saturday afternoon sitting outside in the spring sunshine pretending not to be cold. No parties. No sleepovers. And while she hated herself for it, she felt better. Her skin was less deathly, her body less weak.

  The sun was starting to set later and later. A four o’clock lecture would let out into light rather than dark. One day, Chloe wandered slowly along the tree-lined avenue where the English department was based and decided that she could permit herself a visit to Archer Crescent. Zadie had asked that morning whether she would come and spend the day with her. Chloe had dug deep and found the willpower to say no, to tell Zadie she had work to do but would come over later. There hadn’t been any answer, but that wasn’t surprising. Zadie was always sporadic in her communication.

  When she arrived, the front door was open, swinging in the wind. The door slammed against the frame and the force threatened to smash every tiny pane of coloured glass. ‘Zadie?’ Chloe called. The skin at the back of her neck prickled. Something wasn’t right. She took the st
airs two at a time, and when she reached the bedroom she found Zadie lying in the bed, wearing one of her silk nightdresses, her face and hair pressed into a pile of vomit. Chloe panicked. She pulled Zadie into a sitting position, praying that she would be breathing. Zadie’s eyes moved under her heavy lids. ‘Zadie? Zadie? What did you do? Should I call an ambulance? Should I call your parents?’

  Zadie shook her head. ‘Max,’ she murmured. Chloe dialled Max’s number, but the phone rang out. ‘He isn’t answering. Zadie, what happened? What did you do? I think I have to call an ambulance.’ Zadie shook her head again. ‘Max,’ she repeated.

  ‘You want me to call Max?’

  Zadie nodded, her head slopping forward as if it were too heavy for her neck.

  Chloe dialled Max again, and again he didn’t answer.

  ‘Zadie, I’m going to call Rav, okay? He plays rugby with Max. He’ll be able to get hold of him.’

  Zadie shook her head, a little more alert. ‘No.’

  ‘It’s okay,’ Chloe said, calling up the number. ‘I promise he won’t tell anybody.’