The Perfect Friend

by Lorna Dounaeva

  Dylan backed away. “I’m not touching that stuff.”

  Drifting

  Queen Victoria was sitting on the chair beside the bed when I woke up. She did not look amused.

  “We need more blood,” she said, examining my arm.

  I tried to pull away as she poked and prodded my flesh. I was surprised she didn’t have someone to do it for her.

  I was so weak and hungry by now that I felt sick. I would have thrown up all over her, if I could have, but there was nothing in my stomach.

  “I brought you a cup of tea,” she said, with unexpected kindness.

  “But how can I drink, with my arms tied up?”

  She thought about this for a moment.

  “I will untie one,” she said. “Which are you, right or left handed?”

  “Right,” I lied.

  I could not describe the pleasure when she unbound my left hand. It took a few moments for the numbness to pass but then pins and needles ran up and down my hand like an army of tiny ants. It was a good feeling, like being reunited with an old friend. I instantly felt more human.

  Moments later, she returned with a steaming hot cup of tea. The mug had a picture of the royal wedding on it. I had a similar one in my kitchen at home, but mine had a chip in it. I clasped it fondly. My hand shook as I lifted it to my lips. Probably, it would have been wiser to throw it at her, but I might have missed, and this was the first drink I had been given since I had been kidnapped. I wasn’t going to waste it. Besides, I didn’t want to damage the mug. If she thought she was getting it back, she had another think coming.

  The Queen watched with interest as I sipped my tea, but she didn’t have any herself. That should have been the warning sign. The tea had a slightly odd taste to it, but I was so thirsty at that point that I would gladly have drunk pond water. Once I had finished, I lay back, exhausted. I felt the darkness take over and realised, too late, that she had drugged me again. All thoughts of kings and queens disappeared as I fell asleep.

  I was in my car, in the dream, driving round a series of hair-pin bends. The car didn’t have a brake pedal, only an accelerator, and I felt myself flying faster and faster. I clutched the wheel tight as I took a particularly precarious bend, but the car left the road, the wheels spinning furiously, as it plunged over the cliff into the ocean below. The car was plummeting down, down, down; then, it hit the water with a silent splash. It took every ounce of strength, but I managed to free myself, squeezing through the smallest of gaps in the sun roof. But it was only as I swam free from the wreckage that I realised how deep the water was. I didn’t know which direction to swim in. I wanted so much to live and I ached to see my family again, but my situation was completely and utterly hopeless. I had to let the water take me.

  Too Stupid to Live

  Yara twitched. She seemed anxious and Jock wished she would calm down. She was making him nervous, the way she paced up and down the room. He turned his attention to the computer and began the next chapter, but there was a problem. The incredible twist he had just come up with wasn’t going to work. His main character had discovered a mafia plot. The trouble was, the mafia were on to him and he needed to figure out how he was going to get the information to the police without getting himself killed.

  He stopped typing and stared at the keyboard. This was familiar territory. He had written himself into corners before, but usually he had the luxury of going back and putting it right. He would tweak something earlier in the story to give his hero a way out.

  “Don’t stop!” Yara shrieked, when she caught him. “You can’t stop! You’ve got to finish the book.”

  That was exactly it. There wasn’t time to go back and fix things. If he made the change he was thinking about, he would have to rewrite the first three chapters. How could he possibly do that, when he had just hours to complete the entire manuscript? He was going to have to come up with another solution. One he hadn’t yet thought of. He would be writing in the dark.

  Yara sighed as he continued to type. Perhaps she, too, was worried about the direction the story was going in. She was his biggest fan. If she didn’t think he could do it, then maybe she was right. He felt like he was riding a giant snowball down a hill. He didn’t know what would be at the bottom. He could only hope for a soft landing.

  Without a word, Yara got up and walked towards the bedroom, closing the door behind her. Was she going to bed? He wished he could do the same. It was dark outside and he longed to lie back and rest his head on the pillows.

  He shifted in his seat, but he couldn’t get too comfortable. For all he knew, she was still spying on him, waiting to see what he would do when he thought she wasn’t watching.

  Peering under the table, he could just make out the glassy edge of the paperweight. He bent down and grabbed it, sticking it in his pocket. It made a rather obvious bulge, but he hoped she wouldn’t notice. When the time came, his life might depend on this paperweight.

  He was on chapter seventeen by the time Yara emerged from the bedroom. She seemed a little calmer now, although she continued to walk up and down, never settling in one place for more than a few minutes. He printed off the chapters she had missed and she flipped through them without comment.

  “What do you think?”

  “I don’t know. It rather depends how it ends.”

  He turned back to his work and kept typing until he had finished another chapter. By then, his wrists ached so badly that he just had to take a break. His bladder was killing him, too.

  “I need to pee,” he stated.

  She eyed him with suspicion, as if he was making it up to thwart her.

  “I can do it here, or in the bathroom?”

  “The bathroom’s just opposite,” she said. “But no funny business.”

  She was right on his heels as he walked to the loo.

  “Leave the door open,” she commanded.

  “Don’t look,” he said. “I can’t pee if you look.”

  He peed for a long time, his eyes exploring the wall as he did. There was no window in the bathroom, and the cabinet was padlocked, presumably for his benefit. There were five little ducks sitting on the side of the tub, one behind the other. All the ducks in a row.

  As he zipped up his fly, he took one last look around for anything that might be useful. Kenneth’s shaving gel stood beside Yara’s face creams. There were washcloths and soaps and towels, and all the usual bits you’d find in a bathroom. He wondered if the electric toothbrush would be any good as a weapon. He almost reached for it, then changed his mind. It was a silly idea, but then, he had used up all his powers of creative thinking on his manuscript.

  Playing for time, he walked slowly towards the sink, wondering how long he could stand there, washing his hands before Yara sent him back to the computer. He rolled up his sleeves in readiness, then recoiled in horror. The sink was filled with bright red blood.

  He was rooted to the spot, unable to take his eyes off the lurid sight. Now that he had seen it, he couldn’t believe he hadn’t smelled blood the minute he walked in the room. The salty, metallic smell hit him in the face. Where was all this blood coming from?

  He walked back out to the lounge, feeling a little light-headed. Yara looked at him expectantly. She seemed very pleased with herself, as if she had done a good thing.

  “Whose blood is that in the bathroom?”

  “I can’t tell you that.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I want to feed your imagination. Think of it as a prop.”

  He narrowed his eyes. “Have you hurt someone?”

  She pressed her lips together. “I haven’t not hurt someone.”

  “Yara!”

  “Get back to work. I’m still waiting for my book.”

  “When did you say Kenneth is coming home?”

  “I told you, he’ll be here by ten.”

  “You haven’t had a fight, have you? You and Kenneth?”

  Yara narrowed her eyes. “My relationship is non
e of your business.”

  “No, of course not.”

  He glanced at the door, but Yara was moving towards him, and the determination in her eyes made him shudder.

  “You’ve got four hours to finish this. I think you’d better write, don’t you?”

  Jock faltered. If he were Dylan or Robbie, he would wrestle Yara to the ground, snatch the key off her and call 999. But she had already proved how strong she was, and he still felt as weak as if he had the flu. He didn’t want to risk getting into another fight with her. He didn’t want to end up getting hurt again. So, he slumped back down into his chair, and let his eyes drift back towards the screen. She coughed expectantly and his fingers automatically found the keys. He was powerless to do anything but write.

  His next sentence floated into his mind, and ideas tickled him like a feather. He still hadn’t worked out how his hero was going to escape the mafia, so he called in a new character, Yolande, and began to write from her point of view. Yolande was as wild and impulsive as Josh was stoic and reliable. She ought to shake things up a bit. She could even help to rescue Josh from the corner Jock had written him into, if she would just engage her brain for a minute. Jock could not make her do this. He had no more control over her than he did the wind. It was all he could do to get it all down. He finished the chapter and printed it off for Yara. Her eyes widened as she flipped through the pages, but still she did not comment.

  Jock was straight back to the keyboard. He enjoyed writing from Yolande’s perspective. She was a lot more…well, fun than Josh had been. She didn’t always do the right thing, and she didn’t worry about making mistakes, either. But as her world unfurled around him, he started to get a slight ache in his gut, and he wished she would pay attention to at least a few of the rules. It was unsettling, never knowing what she might do next, rather like the time he had attempted to ride a horse and it had suddenly galloped off, with him gripping on for dear life. There was no telling Yolande to slow down, or to stop and listen. Yolande did what she wanted, and god bless anyone who stepped in her path. Not that she was a mean character. She just had a habit of not looking before she leapt, and that habit got her into all manner of trouble.

  He enjoyed writing her story, but thus far, she seemed completely unconnected to the rest of the novel. It worried him deeply, because he badly needed her to rescue Josh. But Jock had lost track of him since he had begun writing about Yolande. He couldn’t even picture him anymore, the poor sod.

  “I think you’ve earnt another cup of tea,” Yara said.

  “Thank you.”

  He grimaced as Yolande wandered into an army barracks. Bloody hell, couldn’t she find somewhere safer to go? She was going to get herself blown up, if she wasn’t careful. She didn’t get any wiser as the chapter went on. By the end of it, she had been taken into custody by the army, and she still hadn’t got any closer to helping Josh escape the room. This was ridiculous. He had never known characters to behave so badly. Perhaps it was because he was writing under pressure.

  The cup of tea Yara had made him sat on the desk beside him. He picked it up and took a sip. Too bad he had let it get cold. He stretched out his arms and legs, ignoring Yara’s look of disproval.

  “Just a quick break,” he pleaded. “I’m on a roll now, honestly I am. But I feel like I need to come up for air.”

  She watched him in turbulent silence and he wondered what on earth was going on inside her mind. Perhaps he should get her talking? He didn’t really know much about her, beside the fact that she had moved in six months after him. Was it a coincidence that they lived in the same building, or had she moved in because of him? No, he checked himself. She couldn’t be that obsessed with him. Nobody was that obsessed. Not even his mum.

  He forced down the rest of his tea. He couldn’t stand it cold, but his throat was dry and he needed to keep his strength up. Yara had added a ton of sugar, and he suspected she had crushed in a caffeine pill or something, because he suddenly felt much more alert. He just hoped it wasn’t anything stronger. The closest he had ever come to taking drugs was that time when he had had a really bad cold and he had swallowed a couple of extra paracetamol. And then, he’d woken up in a cold sweat in the middle of the night, wondering if he should go to A&E.

  He was aware of Yara, sitting so close to him that her breath chilled his face. How was her breath so cold? It was like she was breathing ice all over him.

  “Does Kenneth go away often?” he asked, as casually as he could.

  She looked startled at this clumsy attempt at conversation. He didn’t think she was going to answer him, but after a minute, she did.

  “Every couple of months,” she said. “He has these meetings he has to attend in Dublin. You know, for work. I don’t want to tell him he can’t go. But I really wish he wouldn’t. I don’t feel right without him. I feel like a part of me is missing.”

  Yeah, your sanity.

  “That must be hard,” he said. “Me, l wouldn’t mind living on my own. Robbie drives me crazy some days, with his smelly socks and cheese.”

  “He doesn’t feed your soul,” she said, knowingly. “You need someone who understands you. Someone like me.”

  He swallowed. Much as he complained about Robbie, he liked his simplicity. There were never any games with Robbie. He told you what he thought of things straight up. He never had to worry that he had inadvertently said something to offend him. Nor did he try to control his life, unlike some people.

  He returned to his work in progress. The chapters became shorter and shorter as he shot through them, but if Yara noticed, she didn’t say anything. He approached those final chapters like an athlete approaching the finish line. Yolande had enlisted the military to help her. With the help of the army experts, she had been able to pinpoint Josh’s location.

  Jock felt a wave of vertigo as Yolande climbed into the chopper. Jock did not like flying, and never boarded a plane without first checking the weather to ensure that there was not going to be a storm. He could not think of anything more terrifying than bouncing around in a small metal machine, with nothing more than a hand rest to hold on to.

  Yolande had no such qualms. She clambered into the chopper, almost tumbling out because she refused to listen to the safety instructions. He wished she would hurry up and sit down.

  “Do up your bloody seatbelt!” he yelled out loud, but Yolande merely pretended to do so, and instead distracted everyone with her pointless questions. Did she really need to keep asking people about their star signs? How could that possibly help with anything? But Yolande had no respect for moving the story on. She did what the hell she pleased.

  Good Lord, she was the most irritating heroine he had ever written. Talk about too stupid to live! And now she was making googly eyes at one of the soldiers. For Pete’s sake, this was no time for romance. Josh was in danger! They needed to get to him before he… Oh no, the soldier was going to die, wasn’t he? Jock could feel in his stomach, like a sixth sense. He had, on occasion, had the same feeling before someone passed away in real life. Like his elderly grandmother and the chain-smoking idiot who worked at the post office.

  It was all too much. Jock zoned in on the helicopter and found it louder than any noise he had ever heard. So loud, in fact, that Yolande was forced to stop eyeing up the solider and instead noticed the landscape they were flying over. There were hundreds of chocolate box houses and fields of yellow and green. Everything looked so neat and tidy from the air.

  “Buckle up, we’re coming in to land,” someone said, and Yolande finally fastened her seatbelt. She hoped Josh appreciated all the effort she had gone to to save him. He would owe her a box of marzipan at the very least. She waited impatiently while the pilot flew twice around the landing site. It was a field the size of a football pitch but, apparently, he didn’t think there was room enough to land.

  Yolande looked down and saw the problem. A family was having a picnic down there. There were children and dogs running about, moving targets, and
they needed all of them to clear out of the way.

  “Move it!” she screamed. “Scram! Hop it!”

  But it was pointless to yell. No one below could hear her. The children looked up and waved, but they made no attempt to get out of the way. They would have to find somewhere else to land.

  “Print it off!” Yara demanded, as Jock completed the chapter. Jock did as he was told, but he was anxious to get back to it. How on earth was he supposed to end this damn thing, when Yolande was so damned annoying? Instantly, he pictured her donning a parachute and jumping out of the chopper, before the solders finished checking the safety equipment. Why couldn’t she wait a few more minutes, just to make sure her parachute was on right? A couple of the soldiers jumped after her. The one she liked grabbed her and pulled her close, saving her from a bad fall. If it weren’t for him, Jock dreaded to think what might have happened to her.

  “You can’t have the soldier save her!” Yara squealed with indignation.

  “But he just did!” Jock protested. “He had to, otherwise she would have been so badly hurt that she wouldn’t be able to save Josh.”

  “I don’t like it,” she said. But at least she didn’t make him rewrite it.

  He gritted his teeth as the next sentences came to him. He wished Yolande would be a bit less sassy, and a bit more sensible, but that wasn’t the way he heard her in his head. She was loud and opinionated and daring, rarely thinking things through before she did anything. How she had lasted this long was a mystery.

  “You can’t make her so stupid,” Yara complained, as she finished reading the chapter.

  “I can’t help it,” Jock said. “That’s how she behaves. She won’t listen to anybody.”

  Yara pouted. “Why is it always the female characters who do the stupid stuff? I don’t like that. Make her redeem herself.”

  He stared at her, wondering how she could be so crazy, and yet so right, at the same time.