by Lucy Dawson
All afternoon, every time I’d thought of Bailey, who until yesterday had been my boyfriend – who I could have called any time I liked – I’d felt myself collapse with pain and longing on the inside. But like some masochistic mixer, through my increasingly fuzzy haze I’d started to think guiltily about Tom, too. Had he felt like I felt now? Had he had to go to another country and act like everything was OK, be bright and cheery, start a new job in a city he didn’t know feeling like this? Oh poor, poor Tom.
It was a sloppy, curdled cocktail of guilt and heartbreak that I could barely stomach and, by eleven p.m., I’d been beyond reason and just felt very, very sad. I wanted Bailey and I missed Tom, too. It had seemed perfectly sensible to call him in America to apologise for breaking his heart.
He answered with a happy ‘Hello?’ It was like six months of not speaking had never happened. ‘Hi,’ I said in a whisper of a voice. ‘It’s me. Are you awake?’
‘Alice?’ He sounded very surprised, as well he might be, but not altogether displeased, which I took as a good sign – but then I was so hammered I would have taken a smack in the face with a road sign as encouragement.
‘I just wanted to say that I’m sorry,’ I slurred, as I wandered around Gretchen’s living room on her cordless phone. ‘So very, very sorry. Bailey dumped me, I thought you might like to know, and it’s not nice, is it? I felt bad, because you are a lovely person, Tom – lovely, kind and generous with a big heart. And I miss you very much. I’d like to hug you actually,’ and I started crying at that point. ‘You’re a good hugger.’
‘Alice, are you drunk?’ he said clearly.
‘Of course not,’ I said carefully, eyeing the almost empty schnapps bottle. ‘I know how I feel, because this is me talking. And not, I would like to tell you, the booze.’ I cleared my throat, aware that I was actually having a tiny problem speaking, and wobbled over to the sofa. ‘I’m fine. Really.’
Then I thought I heard a voice in the background. A female voice.
‘Alice, I can’t really talk to you now because I’m about to go out.’
I sat down suddenly. ‘With a girl?’ I asked, remembering Vic saying about him dating Americans.
‘Yes,’ he said uncomfortably. ‘A sort of Halloween party thing. I can call you in the morning my time if you think it would help?’
‘No, no,’ I said, shaking my head, suddenly feeling very sad and confused. Everything was all wrong. There was his oh-so-familiar voice, but he was in a room I’d never seen, in another country – with some other girl. ‘I’m, er, going out with Gretchen tomorrow night,’ I lied, suddenly wanting to prove I had a life too and wasn’t some raddled alcoholic saddo getting drunk alone on a fruit liqueur, ‘so I won’t be in.’ I felt tears well up in my eyes again and struggled to keep my voice under control. ‘It’s nice to talk to you again though. When you get back, do you think you might want to have a drink with me?’
‘Sure,’ he said awkwardly. ‘We can sort something.’
‘You can never have too many friends, eh?’ I tried a laugh, but it came out like more of a bleat.
He softened. ‘I wasn’t ever not your friend. I just needed time, that was all. Al, go to bed. And put a waste bin next to you, OK? Promise?’
The kind concern in his voice was enough to finish me off completely. ‘Will do. Bye then,’ I blurted, hanging up. I lifted my head tearfully and caught sight of my worse-forwear reflection in the window. I barely recognised myself. I simply didn’t know the desperate, inconsolable girl sitting alone in a vast empty room, staring back at me. That night I very firmly cried myself to sleep.
Thank God I had work to get up for the following morning. I found the peace and quiet of the empty studio – before the client arrived – calming, and for the millionth time thanked God I didn’t work in a busy, loud office where I had to appear sharp and dress to impress. Looking slightly dishevelled was part of the creative package and seemed almost expected by the clients. Luckily, the day’s job was an easy one – even feeling as crap as I did, it was impossible to mess up photos of nail varnish. Once we got started I became quickly absorbed by the curves of the bottles and the colours of the liquids. By the time my mobile rang in my pocket just after lunch, I was on track, focused – and would have ignored the call, except it was Gretchen.
‘Hi,’ she said sympathetically, sounding just like her old self. ‘I’m so sorry, I got back last night to find all your messages and by then it was too late to call you. So my stupid brother has made the classically stupid decision to let you slip through his fingers, has he?’
I exhaled, stepped away from the studio lights and the client, who was fiddling neurotically with one of the bottles again – even though I’d patiently asked her all morning not to touch the set-ups – and sat down on a chair right at the back of the studio so fast my hungover brain sloshed around in my head like dirty fish-tank water. ‘He told you,’ I said quickly. ‘What did he say?’
‘You must be feeling like shit,’ she said sympathetically. ‘I’m so sorry, Al.’
‘I’ve felt better,’ I wobbled, and then lowered my voice so that the client wouldn’t hear me. ‘And oh God, Gretch, you wouldn’t believe it. I called Tom and he was there with some girl in the background, just about to go on a date.’ I closed my eyes with the shame. ‘Oh, I really wish you were here!’
‘I will be in just four weeks. That’s all. Just hang on in there and I’ll look after you when I get back! We’ll go out and have some fun – some us time. Cheer you up.’
Her words were incredibly comforting, reminding me immediately of happier times. ‘And don’t worry about ringing Tom,’ she said. ‘We’ve all been there – get dumped, call the man that was always your safety net for a bit of reassurance, cry, etc., etc. It’s no big deal.’
Thank goodness for her and Vic.
I closed my eyes. ‘Do you think he got off the phone and said to her, “Sorry about that, that was my drunken English ex-girlfriend who cheated on me”?’
There was a pause, and then she said carefully, ‘No, he didn’t. He just said you were upset and a bit pissed. To be honest that’s why I didn’t call straight back, but I’m here now.’
At first I thought I’d heard wrong, then I wondered if I was still pissed.
I sat up a little straighter and then said, ‘What?’ stupidly, unable to take it in. ‘You were at Tom’s? What?’
‘Alice, whatever you do, don’t hang up,’ she said. ‘I want you to let me explain.’
‘What were you doing there?’ I said, utterly confused. ‘You don’t even know him! He said he was going on a date with some American girl.’
‘No, he didn’t say that. You assumed it,’ she said gently. She took a deep breath. ‘He was going out with me . . . well, is going out with me.’
I froze completely as everything carried on regardless. The client knocked over one of the bottles and nail varnish began to spill gloopily everywhere. The studio door opened and a delivery man came in carrying a parcel . . . everything normal. Except what Gretchen had just said.
She was what?
‘Alice –’ she began. But before she could say anything else, in complete shock, I fumbled with the phone while still holding it to my ear and cut her off. I stared at the wall in front of me.
Tom and Gretchen?
Going out with each other?
He’d met her twice. How was she at his flat?
I had a sudden violent picture of them in a glossy, spacious loft in Manhattan – Tom hanging up the phone on a drunken me, turning to a beautifully manicured Gretchen sitting on a sofa and saying sorrowfully, ‘Poor old Alice,’ but then holding out his hand to her and saying, ‘Shall we?’ Her standing and looking at him lovingly and him leaning in to kiss her . . .
I felt the stab of something so sharp slice through me, I gasped.
And oh God – I closed my eyes tight – I’d lied to him and said I was going out with her tonight to make it look like I had a life . . .
&n
bsp; And all the time, she’d been sat there with him.
Chapter Twenty-Three
By nine o’clock that night, back at the flat – her flat – I had a whole tape full of answerphone messages from Gretchen, alternating between imploring me to pick the phone up, to angrily insisting she’d done nothing wrong, to reminding me how important I was to her – after all, who’d fixed me up with her brother? Given me her flat to live in rent-free? The last one simply said she wanted to explain.
Before I’d had the chance to pull the phone out of the socket and throw it across the room, it rang again and I nearly snatched it up, only deciding not to right at the last minute. It wasn’t her voice that filled the flat after the bleep, however – it was Tom’s. I collapsed on to the sofa and stared at the phone as I listened to him calmly talking from the other side of the world.
‘Al, it’s me. I’m so sorry that Gretchen was placed in the impossible situation of deciding whether to tell you about us over the phone.’
About us? I let out a cry.
‘We had agreed Gretchen would tell you once we were back in the UK, but er . . . things don’t always pan out as you imagine and . . . Anyway, you’re Gretchen’s best friend – you’ve been through so much together and you not letting her explain all this is devastating her.’
My jaw fell open. Devastating her?
‘I hope you’ll agree to see her when we get back, give her the chance to talk it through so you can see that no one set out to hurt you. Call me if you want to talk, but I’ll understand if it’s not right now.’
‘Did you know? Did you know he was seeing her?’ I demanded, having called Vic the second he hung up.
‘Of course not!’ she said quickly. ‘Al, it’s not that I don’t want to discuss this with you, I do. But could I possibly call you back in just five minutes? It’s just Luc and I were just finishing a DVD when you rang and he wants to go off to bed—’
‘Oh I’m sorry,’ I said immediately. ‘I was just so shocked, and . . . I just needed to . . .’
I heard her take a breath. ‘Hey, don’t worry,’ she said. ‘It’s no problem. I can finish the movie up in a bit. Luc can watch it now and I’ll catch the end tomorrow or something.’
‘Can you even believe it?’ I said in disbelief. ‘First Bailey and now this?’
‘I know,’ she said, softening. ‘It must be horrible.’
‘How could she do this to me? You never, ever do anything with a friend’s significant ex – it’s an unwritten rule!’
‘I agree that it’s a fucking outrage after all you did for her,’ Vic said. ‘But please – I’m begging you not to rewrite history. For your own sanity you have to remember that you and Tom split up because of Bailey, not her . . . Both she and Tom were free agents, and they both thought you were seeing someone else. It’s not nice and I understand that it hurts, but would you be minding so much if you were still with Bailey and you’d found out about this? Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s perfectly natural to be a bit jealous, but—’
‘I’m not jealous!’ I interrupted. ‘I think it’s weird, it’s horrible. I’ve told her secrets, stuff about Tom – sexual stuff about him – and now she’s sleeping with him herself! And I did actually love Tom, OK so I wasn’t in love with him and I know I hurt him really badly, but you don’t just stop loving someone overnight. It’d be hard to get used to the idea that he had a full-on new girlfriend regardless of who she was – but it’s Gretchen? I mean, what the hell? How can I be friends with her now? How can we ever sit down and have one of those girlie chats about what’s annoying her about her boyfriend? We can’t, can we?’
‘Well, you couldn’t when you were dating her brother either,’ Vic said. ‘This is why . . .’
I knew she was about to have a big ‘I told you so’ moment, so I carried on regardless. ‘I told her when I liked Bailey, and when she flipped out at first, I just stepped back. She has categorically never said anything to me about Tom like that. Nothing! She didn’t even tell me she’d bumped into him!’ I sat down, my head spinning. It felt unreal, like a sick joke, and yet I’d heard the proof – from both of them.
Vic said nothing, just listened.
‘And what do you suppose they say to each other about me?’ I whispered. ‘What will he have told her and what will she have told him? Both of them know really personal stuff about me that I don’t want them sitting round and talking about . . . and do you think they both feel sorry for me that I just got dumped? I can’t handle them pitying me. I don’t want that!’
‘I’m sure they’re not saying anything, Al. You’re just having a really rough time and it’s making you think stuff that normally I know you wouldn’t,’ Vic tried to reassure me. ‘Tom is a good person, he’s not like that. To be fair, Al, he didn’t have to ring you to explain – lots of blokes wouldn’t have done.’
‘Because of what happened with Bailey?’ I said.
‘Well, partly, yes,’ she said awkwardly.
‘But I never wanted to tell Tom about him! I was going to do what you said – I was going to fib and protect him, if it hadn’t been for Gretchen opening her trap. She had no business even being there, she was supposed to be in hospital for fuck’s sake.’ And then just like that, a realisation struck me between the eyes. Literally like an iron girder had swung through the air, smacked me in the forehead and knocked me clean off my feet.
‘Oh my God, Vic. Do you think she meant to tell him?’
‘I don’t understand,’ Vic said, confused. ‘Meant to tell him what?’
‘That Bailey and I were “going out”. It very neatly split us up, didn’t it? And she’s now dating Tom. So obviously she finds him attractive.’
‘I don’t mean to be rude, but that’s rather stating the obvious, isn’t it?’
‘My point is, when did she start fancying him? When she first met him? While he was still my boyfriend?’
My mind started to race as Vic considered the implications of what I’d just said.
She hesitated. ‘It honestly sounds like they just met in America and it grew from there . . . I think maybe you need to—’
‘What, randomly, in a city of millions of people? What are the chances of that actually happening?’
I stared at the wall, on which there hung a large Warhol-style print of Gretchen, recreating the Monroe shots, head tipped back and laughing, all in various colours. It was like looking at a tile game and starting to slot the pieces into place to make one, crystal clear picture.
‘Out of the blue, she decides to do a course in New York, where she knows no one . . . but does know he’s there, because I told her? And bingo! They just happen to meet and fall for each other? In a city that big?’
‘Al,’ Vic was starting to sound worried, ‘you’ve had a shitty weekend and I get that you’re upset and searching for reasons and explanations, but that’s really fucked up. You’re saying she went out there on purpose like some heat-seeking missile? She’s not Glenn Close in whatsit – Fatal Attraction.’
‘Well, she’d just had a stay in a mental hospital,’ I said quickly.
‘Oh Alice!’ Vic said, horrified. ‘Come on! You’re bigger than that. I’m sure love and romance was the last thing on her mind. You said yourself she’d been really ill, done some horrendous stuff.’
‘Yes, she had! Like tell Tom on purpose about me and Bailey!’
‘What, so her illness was a handy excuse for her having put her foot in it?’ Vic asked sceptically, which hadn’t even occurred to me until then.
‘YES!’ I said. ‘Of course! You’re absolutely right!’
‘Sorry, but this is what’s actually crazy. Alice, please. You’re losing the plot, I wasn’t serious. No one could be that manipulative and calculating.’
‘I can’t believe this!’ I said, not listening. ‘I’ve got to go. I’ll call you back.’
‘Alice, do not call Tom—’ I heard her begin to say, but I clicked off and began to dial furiously.
Cha
pter Twenty-Four
‘So Gretchen fell for me in London, deliberately split us up and then followed me out to America?’ said Tom slowly, in complete disbelief. ‘Sorry, Alice, I don’t buy it – I’m not that good looking.’
I didn’t laugh. We’d been well into the phone row for twenty minutes, our past intimacy allowing us to believe it was acceptable to say exactly what was on our minds.
‘It’s ridiculous. I mean, come on!’ Tom said. ‘She and I,’ he continued uncomfortably, ‘really fought what was beginning between us . . .’
Clearly. They’d obviously fought really hard.
‘Neither of us saw it coming.’
‘Don’t!’ I said quickly. ‘I don’t want to know the details!’
‘We never wanted to hurt anyone, but you were with someone else, remember?’
‘Yeah, and look how you “accidentally” found out about that!’
I gasped as something else occurred to me: Gretchen being offhand and cross when I first said I liked Bailey, then suddenly swinging completely the other way and fixing us up. Had she pushed me together with Bailey just to get me out of the way?
‘And it was Gretchen who set me up with Bailey – did she tell you that?’
Tom ignored me. ‘Alice, me and Gretchen just happened. I was lonely out here, so was she. No one contrived to do anything deliberate at all – that’s an insane thing to suggest! You need to take a time-out.’ I couldn’t believe he was trying to calm me down. I wasn’t the loony! I looked at the prints of her on the wall again and had to restrain myself from throwing something at them.
‘You’ve hit it on the head,’ I responded, with all the ferocity of an electric shock. ‘It’s insane. Let’s all feel sorry for poor innocent Gretchen: “Oh, did I just say something I shouldn’t have? Wasn’t me! It was the drugs, or the mental illness, or the depression . . .” Bollocks! Being a manic depressive isn’t an excuse for bad behaviour. You can’t just do what you like and then turn round and say, “Whoops, didn’t mean to, that was the bad old naughty me!” She hides behind it when it suits her, so she can do exactly as she pleases – I just can’t believe I’ve not seen it until now!’