by Ellie Eaton
“Afternoon, ladies,” he calls as he opens the door.
Tilting his head to one side, giving us a wink.
56
From the looks of it, St. Gertrude’s, our former boarding house, has been converted into a treatment facility, a halfway home. According to my mother the town is rife with addicts. I have no idea where she sources her information. Patients buzz in and out using a keypad, staring up into the eye of a security camera as they do. In what was once our rec room there is a woman in a purple medical tunic, holding a cup of tea. The upper windows all have bars.
“How depressing,” Skipper says, looking up at the ivy-clad walls.
We duck down the side of the building, next to what used to be a boiler room, pushing through the shrubbery and hawthorn, slipping on the red berries underfoot. Twigs snag my coat and claw my hair. Skipper stops abruptly so that, bent double over as we are, I almost run into her.
“Oh my god.” I hear Skipper gasp. “I don’t believe it.”
She pushes through the final web of foliage, and I come slithering out behind her into our old den like afterbirth.
“Look.”
Our sofa is still there, protected in part by the overhang from the boiler room roof. There are the same wide pub ashtrays, slime filled, piled with leaves and rank with stagnant water, a couple of crates. What might be the damp remains of a tie-dye sheet hangs from a branch, threadbare, mostly colorless.
“Henry Peck helped us drag this hideous thing in here.” Skipper kicks the sofa. She wipes the mud off her shoe.
“How is she?”
“Henry? Oh, she’s done very well. She married Freddie Brice. We took the boys shooting at their place in Scotland last year.”
I feel my skin prickle when she says this, something hot needling my chest, not immune it seems—despite all my protestations—to the sensation of being snubbed, uninvited, forgotten about.
“What about Dave?” I ask.
“Oh my god, didn’t you hear? Dave joined a cult. Seriously, she’s totally off the radar. She and Henry are barely speaking. Fell in with a weird crowd at university and that was that. It’s awfully sad. Apparently she’s given away her inheritance, absolutely everything, the London flat, all her clothes. Not a penny to her name. Literally sackcloth and ashes. Can you imagine?”
Of the twins I always liked Dave the best.
I offer Skipper the cigarette, but she waves it away and sits down on the sofa arm. She names all the other girls we went to school with, the living and the dead. Their husbands and babies, various cancer scares, a fatal riding accident, a particularly nasty divorce. Her anecdotes run on and on, seemingly endless. She has turned, I think, into a bore.
Inside the treatment center someone is singing to the radio. A bell rings, perhaps the same system used for our former morning wake-up call, and the music turns off. The building gives off the same faintly medicinal smell it always did. I strike a match and hold out the lit cigarette to Skipper. She looks over her shoulder suspiciously, waiting for someone to bust us.
“Oh, all right then. Sod it. Just a puff.”
She lets out a sigh of delight as she exhales. Two plumes waterfall from her nose.
“Divine.”
I stand with my arm wrapped around my middle for warmth. There is a long silence neither of us knows how to fill now that Skipper has finished her roll call. She shrugs and hands the cigarette back to me.
“That’s everyone, I think, the whole year.”
Can she really have forgotten or is she just being coy?
“Not quite.”
“Really?”
Skipper unzips her handbag and consults a small leather address book, skimming down the alphabet.
“Gerry,” I remind her. “Gerry Lake.”
Skipper’s finger freezes. She adjusts the scarf around her neck. Snaps shut the address book, drops it inside. The heel of her right foot taps.
“Oh, her. Well, she was always a bit of an odd bod, she never really made any effort to fit in. Not exactly PLU.”
People Like Us.
“God, do you remember that hideous sex talk her mother gave us?”
I nod. I remember.
“The bananas!” Skipper shrieks. “I thought Gerry was going to spew with embarrassment. Awful woman. Very nouveau.”
She is talking too fast, touching her neck, shoe clicking.
“Stepmother,” I remind Skipper. “Not mother.”
“Well, you’d know best.”
“What?”
“Nothing, forget it.”
Skipper seems uncomfortable, she still won’t say Gerry’s name, fiddling with her bag, incessantly checking her phone. Her foot starts tapping again.
“No, go on,” I say. “Please, I want to know.”
Memor amici.
Skipper gives me an odd look.
“You were rather touchy about Gerry, that’s all.”
In my pocket I can feel my phone vibrating. I ignore it.
“I was?”
“Well, I mean, Gerry was a complete drama queen,” Skipper goes on, trying to make me feel better. “The papers banged on about her wonderful skating career cut short, but who knows how talented she really was. I’m sure half of her stories weren’t true. She used to stamp her feet if she didn’t get her way. Terribly spoilt.”
Skipper hasn’t told me anything I don’t already know. The den is very quiet. Her heel dances on the ground.
“And she was such an attention seeker, always trying to show off about her so-called boyfriend. Bragging to you about the presents he’d given her. And remember how she wouldn’t join the dares that night? She was in a foul mood about losing some silly competition. Vile. Absolutely screaming the house down. Threatening you. I suppose we should never have stooped to her level, but gosh, all that fuss over some lucky charm.”
Skipper gives a nervous chortle.
“Honestly, we were sick to death of her.”
I look up quickly, and my fingers inside my pocket press against Gerry’s pin. Skipper’s hand goes to her throat, loosening her scarf. She seems to regret her choice of words.
“Oh, I didn’t mean it like that! I was talking about throwing her skates out of the window. Everyone knew her fall was an accident. It’s not our fault Gerry was such a pill.”
I stare at her, not saying anything.
“Come on. This is rather silly. Stop acting like you don’t know what I’m talking about. You were there, too.”
There it is, she finally admits it.
She lets out a short, dry laugh, rather like Gerry Lake.
“Please, it was your dormitory, after all,” Skipper protests. “Why else would we have gone back up there?”
“I don’t know,” I say honestly.
Why did we go back up there that night? Why didn’t we hide under the stage or behind the boiler room like everyone else?
The cigarette twitches in my fingers.
I remember the police sirens, the flashing lights, how we sprinted across the Circle, cloaks flapping. Had we looked up, we’d have seen Gerry, knees tucked under, small and feathered, perched on the window ledge.
“This is ridiculous.” Skipper sniggers nervously. “I’m starting to feel like I’m on trial.”
She sits primly on the edge of the sofa, legs pressed together, back rigid. Her cardigan is buttoned up to her neck. She is hugging her handbag tightly to her chest, like a pile of schoolbooks. Who would have believed twenty years ago that my best friend would grow up to be so dreary, dress like her mother?
“Accidents happen,” she mutters.
“Accident?”
Skipper’s eyes dart this way and that, around the den, down at the handbag, at my shoes and my hands, the cigarette butt crushed underfoot. I take my fist out of my pocket and she sees the rhinestone pin in my palm, the forget-me-not hearts, the fake sapphires. Her mouth turns into a wide O before she snaps it shut. She seems about to say something but changes her mind.
“
Oh, for goodness’ sake. It was such a long time ago, who even remembers? I’m sure if you asked the whole year, any one of us, we’d probably all have totally different stories about that night.”
“Like the poppers,” I point out.
“Exactly. No. Oh for god’s sake.”
Skipper stares at me. Her eyes are watery from the cold. Her nose red. She loosens her grip on her bag and sniffs.
“You haven’t changed a bit,” she says sourly.
My mobile begins to vibrate again in my pocket. The babysitter, I think. Or my mother. Rod and I have arranged to meet up for a late lunch with the others. She must be wondering where we both are. But when I take out my phone, I see Jürgen’s name.
I clasp my mobile, stare at the screen, unable to breathe.
“Sephine?” I hear Jürgen calling, his voice gravelly, distant sounding, but still, I could cry with relief. “Hallo? Sephine, can you hear me?”
“It’s my husband,” I explain quickly. “I have to take this.”
Skipper waves me away with her hand, sulking, throwing evil looks in my direction. My phone is at my ear, I’m scrambling to get out of the den, when Skipper begins muttering to herself.
“Ridiculous. I don’t know why you’re grilling me about any of this. For goodness’ sake, if you’re so obsessed, just ask her yourself.”
The ground turns to liquid under my feet.
“Sephine?”
My hand drops.
I turn around, claw back to her through the long grass and brambles.
“Sephine. Hallo, hallo?”
“Ask who?”
Skipper’s lips pinch together, her heel taps, her fingers clench the strap of her bag. I think I’m going to have to wring it out of her. But in the end she raises an eyebrow pointedly.
“Gerry, of course. Who else?”
57
In the end it isn’t hard to find her. Once I know what I’m looking for—a person, not a ghost—it doesn’t take long at all. A few calls, a stilted conversation with her stepmother, who, after some persuasion, agrees to pass on my details. Then, shortly after I return to Los Angeles, an email from Gerry herself.
We agree to meet at the airport. It is two weeks before Christmas and Gerry is flying home to England from a conference on the other side of the world. A layover of just a few hours. I have to go to New York to interview a young pop star, a girl I’d never paid much attention to until my editor gave me the job, after months of pestering him for work. I’ll take anything, I said, and he gave me the petulant teenager. I book my flight so it coincides with Gerry’s.
In our various emails back and forth, I offer to show Gerry something of my city if she’s able to land a few hours earlier. The Hollywood sign, the Observatory, a trip to the beach, the holiday ice rink even.
God no! Gerry writes back, naming a restaurant inside the airport. She has work to do before the long flight home. Some housekeeping to finish up before Christmas. Thanks to my repeated requests to meet in person without any explanation, I sense I have been sublimated to an item on Gerry’s checklist. An irritating task to complete, a chore.
I check in hours earlier than necessary, ride the shuttle to her terminal, take a seat in the restaurant. Not at the high counter of the bar, my preferred choice when traveling without Lena, but one of the tables nearer the concourse. A spot with enough space for a wheelchair to access. No unwieldy pot plants or book displays. Nothing to knock into. No tricky corners.
While I wait I try to distract myself with work, researching the pop star, her swift rise to fame, the predictable burnout, the reinvention. I order one item after another to keep the waitress happy. Coffees, a sandwich, then, eventually, gin and tonic. My eyes flit between my screen and the crowded concourse. As the time gets closer I take out a small blue box from my hand luggage and arrange it neatly beside my laptop.
When a woman at the bar takes off her glasses and raises a tentative hand, it takes me a while to realize it’s me she’s signaling. I look over my shoulder, then back down at my work.
The woman slips nimbly off her stool and walks over to my table.
“Hello there,” she says, as if she knows me. “I suppose we both had the same idea.”
The stranger gestures to her computer.
“My flight landed early. I thought I’d catch up on emails.”
Her hair is short, a neat bob. Chestnut brown. A minimal amount of makeup. No wheelchair, no limp, not even a cane. She wears jeans, a silk shirt, petite, but nowhere near as short as I remember. Not even close. This woman can’t possibly be Gerry. But before I can speak, she’s off again.
“I’ll get my stuff, wait a sec,” she says.
She weaves back through the busy restaurant and returns with a smart leather case in one hand, her glass of wine in the other. Slides into the chair across from me. In spite of enduring a fourteen-hour flight, her makeup is flawless, skin that’s velvety looking, her hair tucked neatly behind her ears, a perfectly placed beauty mark.
“So,” she says, pausing to take a sip of wine. “Lovely to see you again. Thanks for getting in touch. What a surprise.”
There must, I think, be some mistake.
“Gerry? Gerry Lake?”
“Yes, well, Clements now. I’m married.”
Dr. Geraldine Clements. Child psychologist, specialist in eating disorders and childhood trauma. Published author, a media spokesperson on anorexia in the prepubescent, sought-after presenter and keynote speaker. All facts I have mined from the biography page on the conference website. Dr. Clements herself has no Twitter page or Instagram feed, or any other online presence I could find, despite hours of searching.
“God, don’t you hate all that social media nonsense. I mean, who has time for Facebook? I literally have no idea.” Gerry shakes her head, bemused.
She’s not being facetious. This is a genuine question.
Her face is smooth, unwrinkled, strikingly youthful given that we are both nearing forty. The only imperfection I can see is a small scar, a red stripe running into her hairline above her ear. We used to, I remember, call Gerry Lake “baby cheeks,” suck our thumbs, push out our bottom lips in an attempt to rile her.
“So, how about you?” she asks after she’s described her conference, the title of her keynote speech alone running so long I forget where it started. “What are you up to these days?”
She tilts her head at the mess of scribbled notes and printouts on the table beside me. On the top sheet is an unflattering tabloid snap of the pop star. A disheveled-looking teenager, shielding her eyes from the lights of paparazzi. I stuff my notebook into my bag, conscious that Gerry herself was once front-page news.
“Not much,” I say and mention a few of the magazines I’ve worked for in the past.
The truth is that if Gerry’s googled me already—and why would she not—she’ll already know that there is nothing particularly meaningful about the kind of work I’ve done of late. Hotel reviews, top 10 lists, “must haves” for summer. Dull advertorials in airline magazines. Stories that you skim as you wait for the in-flight entertainment to start. There’s a slim chance, if she’s delved back far enough, she’s found my feature on the gymnastics scandal.
“Freelance. Sounds fun,” Gerry says diplomatically. “How fantastic to be able to work from home. On your own clock. I’m jealous.”
She is composed, eloquent, polite to the point of emotionless. Her accent sounds polished, almost plummy. No more dropped aitches and flattened vowels. These days she sounds more Divine than I do.
“I think I always imagined you’d end up in a suit,” Gerry says, leaning back in her chair and crossing her arms as she looks at me. “A barrister. Banking perhaps. Good on you. You have an actual life. Bravo.”
A backhanded compliment. I raise both eyebrows, neither agreeing nor disagreeing, and signal to the waitress for another gin and tonic.
“I barely see my children,” Gerry complains.
“Children?”
&nb
sp; It is my turn to be surprised.
“As good as. Stepchildren. Two girls. Seven and fourteen. I can bore you with photos if you like?”
I nod.
Gerry shows me pictures of her family—her wife, her children, even her dogs, grinning like maniacs at the camera—unequivocally proud.
“They’re Julie’s, from a previous relationship,” she explains. “It’s not as complicated as it might sound. I’ve known them since they were babies.”
I hand the phone back and ask her if she thinks they’ll have more.
Gerry grimaces—a white flash of canines—and for a moment she looks like an approximation of the girl I remember.
“Nappies, night feeds, god no. I can barely keep up with the girls’ lives as it is. And now we’ve got an adolescent in the house, bloody hell, that’s enough to put anyone off.” She rolls her eyes at the ceiling as we used to during Padre’s Sunday sermon. “Teenagers. God help us.”
I feel my face stiffen, and my thumbnail presses into the fleshy part of my palm. I am about to say something when the waitress delivers my drink. I try again, switching the conversation in a different direction.
“Do you still skate?” I ask.
In another world Gerry might have continued to compete, I think, gone on to be a professional, won medals.
She snorts.
“A lifetime of bunions and in-grown toenails. All that training. No thanks. I couldn’t wait to give it up.”
I look down, not sure what to say next.
“They turned the chapel into a dental surgery,” I offer.
“The what?” Gerry asks. “Oh, the school chapel. A dentist’s? How bizarre.”
For a moment I think of the clocks. The overture of bells, one after another, almost melodious. Our frantic scramble under pews, in the choir stalls, beneath the altar skirt, while Gerry slipped into a coma.
“And St. Gertrude’s is a rehab unit of sorts. For addicts.” I keep going, studying Gerry’s face for a reaction. Her expression remains the same, smiling politely, one leg crossed over the other, a casual raise of her eyebrows, untroubled.
“That seems apt,” she says.