Her Closest Friend (ARC)

by Clare Boyd

  ‘Let’s just get home,’ I grumbled. She slipped her arm into mine and I left it there as we walked side by side.

  ‘I was so rude to those mums,’ she sniffed, hanging her head.

  ‘Why were you so rude?’

  ‘I don’t know. I’m not good with big groups of women. I hate the small talk.’

  ‘They’re nice women.’

  ‘Did you see the size of Meg’s ring? It was like a paperweight on her finger. The NHS can’t have paid for that.’

  I chuckled, in spite of my crossness. ‘Her husband’s a hedge fund manager.’

  ‘And what’s with Jo’s sense of humour failure?’

  ‘That cock and balls picture wasn’t that funny, Soph.’

  ‘They were all so grown-up.’

  I guffawed. ‘Is that so bad?’

  ‘Don’t you find them dull, though, Naomi?’ she said, bringing out a corked half-finished bottle of wine from her bag and taking a swig.

  ‘Did you nick that?’ I cried.

  She offered me a sip. ‘It was going to go to waste anyway.’

  I took the bottle and knocked some back. ‘They’re not dull. They’re just a bit straight.’

  ‘Isn’t that the same thing?’

  ‘No!’ I remonstrated, handing the bottle back.

  We traipsed along in the dark for a few more minutes before Sophie broke the silence.

  ‘I don’t know what I’d do without you, you know.’

  ‘You won’t ever have to find out, you old lush,’ I sighed.

  ‘I’m going to try to be less of a lush for a bit. I’m not sure divorce and alcohol abuse are a good mix.’

  I laughed. ‘Careful, you sounded a bit like a grown-up then,’ I teased.

  ‘Never!’ she shouted, laughing, and her voice echoed through the trees. Never, never, never!

  I added to the echo, screeching as loud as I could, ‘Never! NEVER!’

  She tugged me along, and I began running along at her side, sprinting, exhilarated, shouting into the trees. Sophie suggested a game of dare. Throwing my good sense aside, swigging some more wine, I ran into the road to touch the catseyes, giggling uncontrollably, and then tightrope-walked along the white lines. When I heard a car, I hurtled to the bank, panting and gasping, heart racing, liberated, embracing fatalism.

  Willingly, just for tonight, I fell back into the mess and the mischief with Sophie, unburdened by adult responsibilities and the tyranny of consequences. Tonight, Sophie brought me back to myself, allowed me to let go, go wild in the moment. Even though the moment was thoroughly naughty and entirely pointless.

  At home, Charlie waited. A stickler for the rules. The game of dare would be anathema to him. He did not like risk. This safe life of his, the one we led together, was good for me. But right now, I didn’t care what was good for me or what Charlie would think or what those mums tonight thought of Sophie’s behaviour. Right now, I was willing to die in the name of fun.

  Chapter Four

  ‘Morning,’ Adam said, shifting over to Sophie on her side of the bed.

  Sophie’s head was banging. Flashes of Naomi came back to her: of her collapsed over in fits of giggles, of her cheeky dimple, of their dangerous games, of their regression to adolescence. The innocence in Naomi’s face had been captivating. Her round cheeks, like a baby, unmarked by guilt or shame, had beamed bright and rosy from the centre of her buzz of ringlet curls, her guileless blue eyes pure and trustful.

  Sophie sat up and reached for her phone on the bedside table. ‘Where’s Dylan?’

  ‘We put him in the pull-out bed, remember?’

  ‘Oh.’ She clicked straight onto Naomi’s blog page to see the photographs from last night, but before the pages appeared, Adam snatched the phone and threw it onto the floor.

  ‘How’s your head?’

  ‘Give that back!’ she cried, straddling him across the duvet.

  Adam laughed and pulled her arm up and away from the floor. ‘Forget the phone.’

  His black hair was mussed up and his full lips were parted with a smile. There was still an edge of the tan left over from his trip to Portugal. She pictured the girl-woman stylist in her bikini, unbuttoning his shirt in an air-conditioned hotel room, and she had an urge to bite his cheek until it bled.

  ‘Want a rerun of last night?’ she asked.

  Last night, high and dazed from the antics with Naomi, Sophie’s long thighs had gripped Adam either side of his hips, controlled his enjoyment, worked hard to deliver his orgasm, calculated her own display of passion, faking her orgasm, reminding him of what he would be missing when he left her.

  ‘Yes, please,’ he murmured hungrily. His gaze swept down to where her cotton vest gaped, exposing her breast.

  She bent down to kiss him.

  ‘Why don’t we do this more often?’ he panted, rolling on top of her.

  The answer to his question was too blindingly obvious and irritating to answer. It had been easy to be loving towards him while she was drunk. This morning, with a pounding head, her ability to be affectionate and forgiving was more difficult.

  She pushed him off, changing her mind about sex. ‘I want to see if Naomi’s posted photos from last night.’

  ‘What? Seriously?’ he collapsed onto his back.

  ‘Phone, please.’

  He pressed the phone into her hand and sat up, pausing for a moment on the edge of the bed. His ribcage expanded to almost double its size. A large breath. She examined the moles on his back, and his muscles, and she mapped them, storing them in her mind, possessing them. She wanted to scrape her fingernails down his back, punish him for breaking them apart. Sighing heavily, he left the room.

  Puffing up her pillows behind her, she sat up and waited for the buffering on her phone to stop. She was curious about what Naomi might have uploaded. The evening was hazy. She wanted some gaps filled in. Her phone bars indicated there was no signal. The Wi-Fi reception would be better in the kitchen.

  ‘I’d love a coffee,’ she said, padding in to join Adam.

  Instead of wearing her towelling dressing gown, she wore a soft, oversized cardigan, leaving her legs and décolletage bare. She sat at the kitchen island, cradling her coffee and her phone, desperate to look online.

  Adam leant across the kitchen island on his elbows, close to her. ‘Did you sleep well?’

  ‘Like a baby,’ she smiled, raising her shoulders, vulnerable and childlike, locking eyes. His eyes were not to be trusted. They were frauds. She had to be wary. His feelings and needs were newly formed, heavily cloaked and difficult to predict.

  ‘You?’

  Dylan’s iPad game bleeped from upstairs in the galley room. Abandoning her phone, she reached for her iPad, whose cover was dotted in shiny Batman stickers. Idly, impatiently, she picked at the sharp corner of a Batman mask, waiting for the appropriate moment to flip the cover open.

  ‘Not great. You know, I haven’t managed to find anywhere to rent yet,’ he said.

  Biting her lip, she replied, ‘I think it would be weird if I helped you to do that.’

  ‘Ha. No. Sorry. I didn’t mean… But I don’t know whether the properties are unsuitable or whether I’m dragging my feet because I don’t want to do this.’

  Her heart leapt, but she shrugged. ‘Don’t stay here out of sympathy.’

  Before his announcement on Dylan’s birthday, it had been easy to imagine chucking out a cheating husband while it remained a theoretical idea. Now it was really happening to her, she felt needy and desperate. Her instinct was to brush his misdemeanour away at the mere hint of hope, as though his betrayal held no weight.

  ‘If I’m honest, Natalie is putting pressure on me.’

  And then the sound of that name sent a bolt of fury through her. ‘Fuck her,’ she said, under her breath, feeling the chill of the room run over her skin. ‘And fuck you,’ she hissed, keeping her tone low so that Dylan didn’t hear.

  He flinched, and stood straight.

  Sophie knew
that she had undone all of her good work. It was too late to put the words back. Her brain clattered against her skull and tears pushed behind her eyes.

  ‘I need some fresh air,’ she said, dropping her phone into her baggy pocket.

  ‘Don’t you dare go over to your grandad’s!’ he shouted.

  ‘You can’t tell me what to do!’

  He stood there, gaping at her, shaking his head. ‘Go on, then. Why should I even care any more?’

  Violence charged through her and she threw a fist into his upper arm.

  He pulled her, aggressively, tightly, into him. ‘Stop it, Sophie. Please. Stop it.’

  She let her limbs fall limp, and she stayed there in his arms.

  ‘Are you two fighting?’ Dylan asked, coming down the steps.

  ‘No. Come here, Dylan,’ Adam said.

  Dylan nestled between them, and Sophie wanted to stay there forever, just the three of them. A wind whipped through the house, the opened door banging. She thought of Deda across the drive hearing their fight.

  Dylan wriggled free and kicked the front door closed with a karate chop.

  She said to Adam, under her breath, ‘Sorry. For being so horrible.’

  Adam smoothed his hand down her arm. ‘Don’t be. I’ve caused this.’

  She shrugged. ‘I’ll make pancakes for you boys.’

  As she mixed the batter, she told them about her night out.

  ‘We tasted eight different wines, and some of the cheaper bottles were the nicest. I’ve got my notes somewhere.’

  The sheet of notepaper that Naomi had handed out was inside her bag. It was crumpled and she had to flatten it out to read it. When she saw her drawing of a cock and balls, heat crossed her cheeks.

  ‘Let’s see,’ Adam said.

  ‘Sorry, this isn’t it actually. I must have left it at the pub.’

  A vague memory of showing it to Jo came back to her in a hot flash.

  ‘Who was there, Mumma?’ Dylan asked.

  ‘I’ll show you,’ she said, pulling back the cover to her iPad. ‘Naomi will have posted some pictures on her blog. She always does it first thing. Let’s have a look, shall we?’

  She clicked onto Naomi’s blog page, Wine O’Clock, slightly nervous of how she would appear in the photographs, hoping they would be flattering, for Adam. She scrolled through to the Events tab. A flicker of shame flared briefly, somewhere deep inside her, but she could not work out where it had come from. The evening was blurred at the edges, and maybe in the middle, too.

  ‘Look, here are some,’ she said, propping it up, clicking on the first photograph of Cynthia and Jo, who were holding up their glasses to the light to check the colour; to the second photograph of Cynthia, Jo, Meg and Emma gargling; to the third, of Meg and Naomi laughing together, with olives on cocktails sticks, heads close; and on she clicked through to the sixth photograph of the group shot in front of the fire. Sophie could make out her hand, but Naomi had deliberately cut her out of the line-up. None of the photographs included her. It was as though she had been airbrushed out of the evening, as though she had never been there at all.

  She read through the article that Naomi had written, which was titled, ‘How to Host Your Own Wine-tasting’, but it did not mention any names.

  ‘Where are you, Mummy?’

  ‘She hasn’t included any of me!’ Sophie cried indignantly. ‘Can you believe it?’

  ‘She can’t have done it on purpose.’

  ‘Adam, it’s not like we were at some massive party. There were only seven of us.’

  ‘Maybe she thought you wouldn’t like being put on social media.’

  ‘But this isn’t social media. This is her blog,’ she said, checking Naomi’s Instagram page, noting the enormity of her ever-growing following of 5,324, noting her smiley profile picture, noting the absence of Sophie in her post about last night, noting the 356 likes it had received, within the hour.

  ‘The photos might have been crap of you. Double chins and red-eye,’ he teased.

  She thought about this, and decided that this was the most likely explanation. ‘Yes. The other women were rather glamorous. In that rich, polished way. Maybe I didn’t fit the image she wanted.’

  ‘That is not what I meant. You looked stunning last night.’

  Momentarily sidetracked by his compliment, she forgot her gripe and smiled. ‘Thanks.’

  ‘That lady isn’t glamorous,’ Dylan said wickedly, pointing at Jo, who had not worn make-up and had dressed in a plaid shirt.

  ‘Don’t be mean, Dylan,’ she scolded. ‘I’m going to check Facebook.’

  With a churning stomach, she logged on to Naomi’s page. Again, there were a series of photographs that did not include Sophie.

  ‘Unbelievable.’

  ‘Don’t read too much into it.’

  ‘It’s a strange thing to do.’

  ‘Very unlike her, I agree.’

  Sophie tried to recall details from last night. She remembered the walk home: the brightness of the headlights that had dazzled her. Now she saw them again, right in front of her, and she shivered, screwing her eyes tightly shut. In the winding darkness, anything could have happened. It brought back thoughts and impulses that had come to her in fleeting moments last night. Her inebriation had heightened them, dangerous and powerful. She hadn’t had the guts to play them out. Thank god, she thought, thank god.

  Thoughts like that had not come to her for many years. Not since she had met Adam.

  With a sting of panic, Sophie darted around to where Adam sat on the sofa and climbed onto his lap. She bent into his face, whispering, ‘Sorry for snapping. I’m so sorry. Do you forgive me?’

  You can’t leave me. Please don’t leave me.

  The mere possibility of being on her own again destabilised her, poked at her coping strategies, was changing her back. Bad feelings were resurfacing, resentment was coming in pulses through her, fear was building again. None of it was manageable. Please don’t leave me.

  ‘I can’t see the telly,’ he said, pressing the remote and looking round her shoulder.

  Her blood ran cold. She was in quicksand. Sinking. Suffocating.

  She hissed into his ear, ‘Go on. Leave me then, and watch what happens.’

  She pushed her bare feet into her boots and pulled her cardigan tightly around her, grabbing her phone, running out into the cold morning and across to her grandfather’s.

  ‘Are you awake, Deda?’

  ‘In here, child,’ he called from the sitting room.

  ‘I’ll get our drinks.’

  When she opened the fridge, she realised she had forgotten to make him more of her mince pasties. She cursed herself, furious that she had been too wrapped up in her own selfishness to forget him.

  She brought the vodka and the glasses through, shivering.

  Dedushka placed his book on the arm of his chair and took the vodka. ‘You’re distressed this morning, Sophia?’

  With one sip, she felt a little calmer. She glanced at the mantelpiece. Jesus in the triptych seemed that much sadder today.

  She took her phone out of her pocket. ‘Why is everyone being so mean to me, Deda?’

  ‘Adam the Pig, again?’

  ‘And Naomi.’

  ‘The wine-guzzler?’

  Sophie picked at the frayed hem of her cardigan. ‘That’s the one.’

  ‘What has she done?’ he scowled.

  ‘She thinks I’m too ugly and unsophisticated to be her friend.’

  ‘Then drop her like a hot pasty,’ he chuckled.

  ‘But I can’t do that.’

  ‘Tell her how you feel, then. Do you know how you feel?’

  She thought back to a conversation with Naomi’s mother, Marjorie, years ago, at Naomi and Charlie’s wedding. Marjorie had described, through dainty mouthfuls of cake, how bonny Naomi had been as a baby. She’d told Sophie about Naomi’s fat thighs and ringlets, and how she had smiled – with that same dimple in her right cheek – weeks before
the doctors thought it humanly possible. Eager for more insight, Sophie had grilled Marjorie for details of Naomi’s childhood. Marjorie had answered in a prattling way, but Sophie had sucked up her silly stories like a baby on her mother’s breast; going so far as to pretend that Marjorie was her own mother, basking in the praise and blushing at the embarrassments. It had fascinated Sophie to feel, almost first-hand, how much she loved her daughter. Traits that were formed in Marjorie’s womb had defined Naomi’s life from the moment she had drawn breath. As Marjorie had talked that day, her chubby hands had repeatedly snapped open her handbag to take out a hanky for Naomi’s father, who was old and never spoke, who had needed his eyes mopped every time Naomi swished past in her silk dress. The day’s floaty, flyaway mood – the marquee’s tent pegs popping out with every gust of wind, the paper napkins floating into the water, the billowing train of Naomi’s veil flying into a tree – held both their loss of Naomi and their happiness for her. This loss had stayed with Sophie. The loss that went with love.

  But Sophie’s own mother, Suzanne, had not lamented the loss of Sophie. She had not shown up to Sophie and Adam’s wedding to cry and fuss and twitter on about Sophie as a child. She had not shown up at all. And if she had, she might have enjoyed telling their guests that Sophie had cried non-stop with colic as a baby. She might have laughed about how ugly she had been, with no hair and covered in eczema. And it would be no surprise to Suzanne that Adam was leaving Sophie now, had she known. Sophie’s mistakes were the inevitable culmination of her imperfections: that bad-baby blood, those DNA failures, that fate.

  ‘How do you feel?’ Deda asked again.

  Tears sprang into Sophie’s eyes. ‘I feel rejected,’ she replied finally.

  Certainly, Naomi had never been rejected and abandoned. Naomi had been born with a brighter spirit, an extrovert, who liked people, who adapted to her environment better.

  ‘She’d never let you go if she knew what you did for her.’

  ‘It’s been too long now. She won’t thank me.’

  His milky eyes flicked in the direction of the garage. ‘You think she won’t thank you for giving her a life?’

  ‘How would I even begin to tell her?’

  ‘Do you have the cuttings still?’