‘What was the real reason you came after me?’ Niamh asked.
Leo was about to reply when he felt a tap on his shoulder and the waiter from earlier handed him another Polaroid. This one was taken as he’d kissed her on the dance floor under a sky filled with stars. He wanted to keep it, to show it to a gaggle of kids in years to come, telling them about the night he asked their grandmother to stay with him for the rest of their days.
‘Niamh,’ he said, drawing her close and loving the way she tucked so neatly under his chin. He also loved the fact she always had oranges in her bag and knots in her hair. Just as he loved how she believed in him as no one else ever had before. ‘I need to ask you something.’
‘You smell like rainbows and leprechauns,’ she said with a giggle.
He couldn’t ask her when she was high, no matter how incredible she looked. There was time. There had to be more time, because without her, nothing made sense any more.
‘What’s the matter?’ she asked as she traced the line of his jaw with one finger.
Before he could offer up any kind of response, he saw her look beyond him, her features changing into a smile and then a frown at whoever was approaching.
‘When were you going to tell me?’
Leo turned around to see Erika striding across the quad, closely followed by Duncan. At the same time, Niamh leant into him and he instinctively put a protective arm around her.
‘What’s going on?’ Leo asked as he looked from Erika, all high colour and tight jaw, to Duncan, whose mouth was opening and closing like a goldfish, but no sound was coming out.
‘As if you didn’t know,’ Erika spat back.
‘No, I don’t. Niamh?’
‘Erika.’ Niamh reached out a hand to her friend, then thought better of it.
‘Don’t you Erika me,’ she said, poking Niamh in the shoulder over and over. ‘We made a plan. We were going to spend the summer together, but now it turns out you’d rather go with him instead.’ Erika glared at Leo, barely able to conceal her pain.
‘You told her?’ Niamh looked over at Duncan, whose only response was a vague grin.
‘Of course he did,’ Erika replied. ‘Unlike you. Instead of doing the decent thing, you’ve hidden away in Leo’s bed. I thought you were better than that.’
‘This has nothing to do with Leo,’ Niamh said as she shook her head and tried to bite back a little of her own anger.
‘Bullshit.’ Erika pushed Niamh and she stumbled backwards, hands outstretched in anticipation of a fall. ‘It has everything to do with him.’
‘Erika . . .’ Duncan found his voice, but visibly withdrew when she shot him a scathing look.
‘You barely know him,’ Erika said, pointing at Leo.
‘I know him well enough.’ Niamh felt a blush creeping up her neck and over her face.
‘Oh really?’ Erika replied with a snort. ‘At some point, he will find someone else. Boys like him can never stay faithful for long.’ There were tears in her eyes now, thin lines of black falling down her face and making her look like a beautiful clown.
‘Why can’t you just be happy for me?’
‘I am,’ Erika said, reaching for Niamh’s hand and turning it over to trace a finger over the lines on her palm. ‘All I’ve ever wanted is for you to be happy.’
Niamh looked down at their hands, wondering how many times Erika had done the same thing, like some kind of hypnosis whenever she wanted Niamh to stop being mad at her.
‘You know what,’ Niamh said in a whisper as she took her hand away. ‘I think you’re jealous.’
‘Of him?’ Erika scoffed as she darted a look over at Leo. ‘Oh, älskling, you and I both know I could do so much better.’
‘And what about Astrid?’ Niamh shot back. ‘You couldn’t be happy for her either.’
‘You told her?’ Erika said, staring at Duncan. Her voice was pitched and strange as she swiped at the tears that continued to fall. ‘You promised you wouldn’t tell.’
‘Of course he told me,’ Niamh said, her own voice laced through with sarcasm. ‘I know all about what you did to your so-called best friend.’
‘This has nothing to do with Astrid.’
‘Bullshit, it has everything to do with Astrid. Would you have even spoken to me that day if I didn’t remind you of her?’
Erika folded her arms across her chest and looked away. ‘I don’t know.’
‘I think you do. I think this whole time you’ve been trying to replace her with me.’
‘Niamh,’ Leo said as he took her hand and tried to steer her away. ‘I think maybe we should go.’
Niamh turned to look at him, at the open honesty of his beautiful face. He was the one person she’d never pretended with. Because no matter how much she adored Erika, a part of her always felt like she would never be enough.
‘Please, Niamh,’ Erika said, scrunching tight her eyes and dropping her head. ‘Don’t do this. You of all people know how much it hurts to lose someone.’
‘Yes, I do. But not as much as you asking me to choose between us and him.’
Erika’s face folded into a frown. ‘I never asked you to choose.’
‘Except you did.’ Niamh was crying now too, fat tears of frustration that mixed in with all the sadness. ‘Back in Sweden, when you said he had to be good enough for all three of us. But he never stood a chance, did he? Because nothing and nobody is ever good enough for you and your impossibly high standards.’
‘It’s such a fucking cliché,’ Erika said with a snarl. ‘You falling for the first guy you ever sleep with.’
‘Shut up,’ Niamh said, aware of both the blush creeping up her neck and the look of surprise Leo just gave her. ‘For once in your life just shut up and stop trying to control me.’
‘Control you? Älskling, all I have ever done is help you.’
‘Well, maybe I don’t want your help any more.’
‘You can’t just flick off a friendship like this.’ Erika was practically screaming now, waving her arms about like a woman possessed. ‘I have always been there for you, stuck up for you, paid for you. För Guds skull, Niamh, I even bailed you out when your parents refused to help.’
‘I said I would pay you back.’
‘How?’ Erika said with a small, deliberate laugh. ‘You turned down the one opportunity I gave you to actually make something of yourself. To finally fit in with the rest of us.’
‘And there it is,’ Niamh said, jabbing at the air between them with her finger. ‘You think money makes you better than me? Well guess what, all it does is make you a controlling, self-righteous bitch.’
Erika’s hand came out too quick for Niamh to duck out of the way, her palm landing sharp and hard on Niamh’s cheek.
‘You are nothing but a förrädisk tik. No wonder your mother didn’t want you.’
The weight of Erika’s words filtered into Niamh’s heart like a jagged knife: so much worse than being hit. All of the high was gone in an instant. Everything that was so very wonderful about that night was wiped away as the truth finally spilled.
‘How could you?’ Niamh whispered, but her words were filled with loathing. She took two steps back, then ran as far away as she could from the pain she had been afraid of all along.
‘Niamh, wait,’ Erika called after her, but Leo held her back.
‘I think you’ve both done enough.’ Leo gave the briefest of nods to Duncan as he set off at a jog in order to catch up with the girl he seemed to spend so much of his time running after.
He could picture them together, him and Niamh, when they were old and grey. They would sit in two ancient armchairs, arguing about the price of milk or if there could ever be a better sequel than The Empire Strikes Back. Then she would throw down her knitting or whack him with her slipper and storm off in frustration.
‘Niamh, wait,’ he said, echoing Erika’s own words as he saw Niamh passing through the door that led to Queen’s Lane. He had such a distinct sense of déjà vu, spiral
ling him back to that night when he’d followed her out of the bar, intrigued by the girl with a quirky sense of style and a mouth he was desperate to kiss.
‘What’s the point, Leo?’ She leant against the wall, looking back at him with tears running down her face. ‘She’s right.’
‘No, she’s not.’ Leo cupped her face in his hands and lifted her chin so that she had to meet his eye. ‘When are you going to realise that I love you, all of you, and it makes no fucking difference where you came from?’
‘It matters to me.’ Niamh tried to push him away, but she couldn’t bring herself to put any effort into it. Because if she pushed him away, there was always the risk he might not come back.
‘Why?’
‘Because she gave me away.’ The words came out in the middle of a sob and she clasped her hands over her mouth as if she could somehow put them back in again. For so long she had been cursed by the fact that she wasn’t important enough or good enough for her mother to want to fight for her. Erika and Duncan had slowly managed to change that, made her believe that she too had the right to be happy.
But now it had been broken by the one person who claimed to be on her side, no matter what.
‘She didn’t have a choice.’
‘You always have a choice.’
There was a certain bitterness hidden in her words, along with a huge dollop of sorrow and he didn’t know how to make it go away. He wanted to make it all go away, to burn her pain, erase it, let her see how incredible she really was.
‘Then let me make mine. I choose you, all of you, even the weirdly annoying bits.’
‘I’m not annoying.’
‘Even when you leave orange peel in the sink and squeeze the toothpaste from halfway down the tube?’
‘You’re the weird one for not liking oranges.’
He smiled as he wrapped her in his arms, inhaling her intoxicating scent and waiting for her to breathe, to let go.
‘I don’t care that you were a virgin.’
Niamh stilled against him, then gave a long, shaky sigh. ‘I cared. I cared too much about so many stupid things.’ Namely trying to change herself in order to fit in with people who, it turned out, didn’t actually care about her at all.
‘You should have told her.’
‘I know.’ But in turn, Leo should have told her about the night he bumped into Erika, when the two of them shared drinks and stories until late into the night.
‘Erika will forgive you. She just needs some time to realise you’re not going to leave her like Astrid did.’
Except Niamh couldn’t rid herself of the idea that Astrid wasn’t the only thing haunting her friend. Because she was fairly certain Astrid had never been a topic of conversation between her and Leo. Which meant someone else must have told him. Someone who was intoxicatingly beautiful and so very used to getting her own way.
What did Erika tell him? The truth or the lie? It hurt Niamh to think she might have told him everything about Astrid, no doubt as a way to make him feel sorry for her. It hurt even more to know that Erika was so very good at keeping secrets from the people she claimed to love the most.
ERIKA
CHEESECAKE
London, 1999
‘Farbror?’ I call out as I enter the hall. ‘De tar jag?’
‘Erika?’ comes the reply as a scruffy little terrier bounds up from the back of the house, weaving in between my legs, his little tail going ten to the dozen in excitement. ‘Är det du?’
A moment later Alex Lindberg comes out of the kitchen, wiping his hands on a tea towel with spectacles balanced on top of his head. He is dressed in linen trousers, a white shirt and a deep-purple cravat, which for him is rather casual – he has been known on occasion to lecture in a three-piece suit, complete with ivory-topped cane and a bowler hat. He holds his arms out to me and I’m grateful for the hug, breathing in his familiar musky scent.
‘Now, this is a surprise,’ he says. ‘I was starting to forget what you look like.’
‘Ha, ha,’ I say as I bend down to rub Paxman on his belly, making one of his back legs twitch in delight. I found him as I ran past the local newsagent one winter’s morning when a hand-written advert caught my eye. Paxman was the runt of the litter, with scruffy grey hair and one ear that was always a little floppy. But each morning without fail, a man and his dog now walk slowly around the park, watching the changing seasons and chatting to the people they meet along the way.
Buying him a puppy was a simple gesture, a small token of thanks for all he had done, but he deserves more than I’ve been giving.
‘Is everything OK?’ he asks as I hang my bag over the bannister, just as I have always done, and make my way to the kitchen.
‘I’m not really sure,’ I reply. Because ever since Hector made that comment about having a family of our own one day, I haven’t been able to get my mind to behave.
‘Vad pagar?’ Alex asks again, watching as I busy myself with tidying away some dishes from the draining board. I’m certain that he sees how skittish I am, on edge and unable to keep my hands still.
‘Ingenting,’ I reply, picking up a wine glass and polishing it with a cloth, only for him to snatch it away and put it on a shelf up high.
‘It’s clearly not nothing.’ He picks up the kettle and proceeds to fill it from the tap at the kitchen sink. ‘Go sit outside,’ he says with a nod of his head. ‘I’ll bring you out some tea and ostkaka.’
I do as I’m told, sitting on a curved wooden seat that’s tucked into the corner of the garden underneath a trailing wisteria. It always catches the afternoon sun, which is just starting to peep around the house, snaking its way across my bare toes and warming my skin.
‘Now,’ Alex says as he sets down a tray on the cast-iron table by the fence that also doubles up as a potting bench. ‘Tell me what’s really going on.’
‘I’ve met someone,’ I say as I take his offering of Swedish cheesecake and home-made strawberry jam. ‘And I think I need to tell him.’
Alex gives a slow nod of his head as he pours out two mugs of strong, black tea, adding milk to both and two cubes of sugar to his own. ‘I always said the time would come.’
‘I know.’ I take a bite of cheesecake, letting the softness melt inside my mouth.
‘If he’s worth it, it won’t matter what you did,’ Alex says as he sits next to me.
‘It will always matter.’
‘To you, yes. But you had your reasons, and if he loves you, he will understand.’
‘I guess.’
‘But if you tell him what really happened with Leo,’ Alex says as he relieves me of my empty plate, then cuts another slice, ‘you also have to tell Layla.’
I shove another forkful of cheesecake into my mouth in an attempt to quash the rising panic that I can feel stirring in my stomach. Telling Hector is one thing; showing the truth to someone who has seen me virtually every day for the past few years is another.
‘Älskling,’ Alex says as he cuts himself a small sliver of cheesecake, along with a healthy dollop of jam. ‘If you feel the need to divulge your secret, then who am I to stop you? But you may not be prepared for what happens next.’
That’s what I’m afraid of. If I tell the truth, will it set me on a course back to where it all began? Layla is way too nosey not to want to know it all, every tiny little detail about each and every one of them. She’d probably want to meet them too, track them down, cultivate some kind of grand reunion. Because she is so wonderfully optimistic about the world, simply because she’s never been broken.
‘I wish I could go back.’
‘Don’t we all,’ Alex says, resting his hand on my knee and giving it a pat. I lean into him, let him put his arm around my shoulder. It’s a relief to share my burden, to have at least one person with whom I can talk about anything at all. For so long I’ve been watching every word, carefully considering the knock-on effect of what I say as well as what I do. It’s exhausting, but I’ve always assumed it is bett
er than the alternative.
‘I’ll always be on your side, Erika,’ Alex says, kissing me gently on the forehead as he stands. ‘And this will always be your home. But you need to be sure, because you made that choice for a reason.’
I know all this. It’s why I haven’t ever come close to telling anyone before.
NIAMH
Pistanthrophobia (n.) – the fear of trusting people due to negative past experiences
Oxford, 1996
It was one of those crisp autumnal mornings when the sky was clear and bright and the leaves were just beginning to turn. Niamh was up at Stavvers, the ugly seventies blocks that housed third-year students who chose not to go down the private rental route. Or, in her case, if you had nowhere else to go.
Her record collection was already set out neatly on the top shelf of her bookcase, but her other belongings were still waiting to be unpacked. The thought of one more year, one final year, had filled her with an acute sense of trepidation for weeks, even more so now that she was actually back.
The original plan had been to share a dark-blue terraced house with Erika and Duncan. Niamh’s room was tucked into the eaves at the top of a narrow flight of stairs and had luminescent stars stuck to the ceiling. That plan had been ripped to pieces the moment Erika discovered that Niamh was going to spend the summer with Leo.
Instead of going to find Erika, instead of banging on the door and begging for forgiveness (which was exactly the kind of dramatic gesture Erika expected), Niamh had dug in her own heels and got on the Eurostar with Leo as planned. The entire journey had been spent penning a letter she knew she would never send. Every time she tried to explain what had happened, she would get angry with Erika for being complicit in creating the problem. After all, Niamh hadn’t asked her to apply for an internship on her behalf. But then she also realised that by going along with it, she had made her friend believe it was what she wanted too.
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