by Laura Marney
Laura Marney’s first novel, No Wonder I Take a Drink, was voted by the public in The List magazine poll as one of the Top 20 Scottish books of all time.
“At last, a funny novelist with guts.” – Henry Sutton, Mirror, on Nobody Loves a Ginger Baby
“Divine comedy… a joyous celebration of human imperfection” – Louise Welsh, author of The Cutting Room, on Only Strange People Go to Church
“A rollicking earthy humour.” – Zoe Strachan on No Wonder I Take a Drink
“Marney is a marvellous comic writer. Those postcards to Scotland are worth the read alone. She captures to a tee the innocence and vulnerability of a small-town girl while also showing the dark, knowing, manipulative side of human nature, spinning it all into a comic noir.” – Barcelona Review
“Bored of chick-lit? Well, the full-on-bitch-lit of My Best Friend Has Issues could be the answer! Small-town girl Alison’s new friend is… more dark and twisted than Barcelona’s back streets… Soon Alison finds herself caught in a sordid world where manipulation, theft and even murder are the norm. Darkly funny and even shocking at times, this is a holiday read that’ll snap you out fo your poolside doziness and have you shaking your head in disbelief. In a good way.” – Louise Christie, Heat
MY BEST FRIEND
HAS ISSUES
Laura Marney
For Barcelona and the two
most important men in my life:
David Ramos Fernandes
and Benjamin Marney
Contents
Praise
Title Page
Dedication
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Epilogue
Reading group questions
Why I Wrote My Best Friend…
Also by Laura Marney
About the Author
Acknowledgements
Copyright
Prologue
Now shush, come on, stop crying. Please? For me? You know how it upsets me. I told them, it’s not an option, never gonna happen. We told them absolutely not and that they must never bring it up again. I’m not gonna just stand here and let my oldest friend die, am I? I certainly am not! Come on honey, cheer up, huh? Why are you staring at me like that?
Chapter 1
What did I know about life? A wee heifer like me, a twenty-two-year-old no-mates stay-at-home from the rump end of Cumbernauld? What did I even know about sex? Never mind drugs, or violence, or murder.
After I’d been there a few days I sent a postcard with views of the city: Gaudi chimneys, weird modern sculptures, the Olympic stadium. Dear Lisa and Lauren, it said, Weather lovely. Recuperating nicely and working on tan. Had to buy new clothes (size twelve too big!). Enjoying sangria on La Rambla. Don’t know if you’d like it here. The hot weather would be a nightmare for your athlete’s foot and intimate itching – think of the thigh chafing! Nasty. Hasta la vista, Alison x x x
And then I went back to flat hunting.
I was a little anxious going into flats alone. For all I knew there could have been a psycho behind the door with a hessian sack and a packet of cable ties. The girl showing me the room was called Montse and looked about twenty-five. She was living there on her own with a baby. She spoke very little English but she was very accomplished at the word ‘no’. No boyfriends, no smoking, no alcohol, no eating – except in the kitchen, no staying out late, no TV after 8pm, it would wake the baby. This lecture was delivered in a whisper, the baby was sleeping.
It was a nice flat. The bedroom she offered was small but clean. Not luxurious but, unlike most of the other flats I’d seen, within my tight budget. It was clean. The fact that Montse didn’t speak much English could be a plus point. I’d learn Spanish quicker, I’d have to. At least to begin with, conversation would be limited. Apart from no telly after 8pm it would be the same as living with Mum.
The baby woke up and started wailing. Montse’s face changed to a martyred expression. Was she actually trying to imply that it was my fault her baby had woken up? She came back into the room with the crying infant in her arms, shaking it as if it was a piggy bank that she expected coins to fall out of, and repeated what she’d said, in case I didn’t get it the first time: no boyfriends, boyfrens, she pronounced it, and then again in Spanish just to be sure: hombres, no.
The old me would just have taken the room. But the new slimline me knew there was more to Barcelona than this. With this figure, in this city, I was planning on having plenty of boyfrens.
‘No thank you,’ I told Montse, although I knew she didn’t understand. ‘If I’d wanted to live like a nun, I’d have joined a convent.’
The next and final flat for the day was in Raval, a dodgy part of the city. I knew this because I was already staying in there in a cheap hostel. Raval was the immigrant part of town: poor, dirty and run-down. Nearly everyone I saw there wore Arab or Asian dress. The narrow lanes were choked with garbage. Short-skirted high-heeled girls stood on corners. Shifty looking men sat watching them as they sat on kitchen chairs parked on the pavement. There was nothing like this in Cumbernauld.
Despite the lax morals and hygiene of Raval, this next flat was the most expensive of all. I was hot and knackered and nearly didn’t go, but it was on the way back to the hostel. If I did move in there at least I wouldn’t have far to lug my rucksack. And, as I navigated my way through the dog-shitted streets, I remembered that the Internet advert for this place had sounded the most promising. For a start it had none of the weird syntax I now realised was Spanish poorly translated into English, ‘we look for ladies for to share apartament’ or ‘to wash the clothes no is problem’. This advert was obviously written by a native English speaker. ‘Room to let for girl/guy, whatever. I’m single again so this is back to being the party apartment. Let the partying begin!’ It wasn’t clear if the person placing the ad was a girl or a guy but it sounded fun. Even if I couldn’t afford the room, maybe I’d get invited to the parties. It would be a way to meet people and make friends, another thing I was determined to do.
It was a door entry system, upmarket for Raval. I pressed the buzzer for 4B and waited. Nobody answered. I checked the address and my watch, 1pm, right on time. I buzzed again, maybe he or she had been in the toilet. Still no answer. Perhaps they’d popped out for a minute. I waited ten minutes, leaning in
to the door to let people pass on the narrow pavement, and buzzed once more but nobody came.
They must have already let the room. Fair enough, but they should at least have the decency to tell me. What about the parties? They could still invite me. With the flat of my hand I pressed all the buzzers at once, pressing out an SOS dot dot dot dash dash dash dot dot dot.
Mayday.
It worked. At least three flats buzzed me in. Whether 4B was one of them I had no idea but I’d soon find out.
Inside the windowless stairwell I made for the light switch and pressed it but although I could hear the timer ticking, the light didn’t come on. There was no lift in the building either, that was unusual. I’d have to walk up but it wasn’t completely dark, I could see flights of stairs above me on the open staircase. I knew from my previous two days’ flat hunting that there would be a light switch on every floor.
Halfway up the first flight my foot skidded on what I thought must be a banana skin or dog poo. Surely people didn’t let their dogs shit inside the building? I looked down at my feet and it seemed I was standing in some kind of thick fluid that threatened to swamp my flip-flops. I curled my toes, lifted my foot and looked for somewhere dry to put it. There was nowhere, the next steps were covered in it too. I held on to the banister handrail as I made my way carefully up the stairs. It felt, through my thin rubber sole, like the liquid was viscous, like skidding on olive oil. I slipped and toppled forward, falling on to my hands and knees. For a moment the pain of absorbing the shock in my bones and the sting on my skin didn’t let me think about anything else. But when it did, when the sensation faded, there was a worse one. Now I knew what was dripping from my forearms and shins.
I scrambled to my feet and tried to clean it off in fast panicky swipes, as if I was trying to flick away a cockroach crawling on me: horrified to touch it but desperate to be rid of it. Then I noticed the boy.
He was lying at the bottom of the next flight of stairs. His head didn’t make sense. It was at a weird angle, his ear touching his shoulder. I tilted my ear towards my shoulder to see if it was possible but it wouldn’t reach. The stuff I’d skidded in was leaking from the boy.
From this side he was handsome with big, brown, surprised eyes and dark, curly hair but when I saw him straight on, the other side of his face looked as if someone had taken a sledgehammer to it. It was pulped mush, so battered it was difficult to make out his other eye. But it was there, almost buried in torn skin. Inside his crushed skull, his eye was intact.
It must have been shock, but at that moment the fact that he had two eyes was important to me. Like when a baby’s born and its fingers and toes are counted by the midwife. I didn’t touch him, thank God. Later I’d be thankful for that. I heard a door opening on the floor above. I panicked, I turned and fled down the stairs, out of the building and on to the street. Straight into a crowd of Asian men.
They stared at me. I looked down. In the glaring sunlight they could see my arms and legs splattered in bright blood. They were all talking, talking at me, asking questions, talking excitedly between themselves. I didn’t understand. Their voices got louder as they crowded around me, shouting, demanding. They were angry. I looked back and saw my flip-flop shoeprints, bloody and incriminating, lead out of the building and straight to me.
Chapter 2
I wanted to run but the men were crowded round me, jabbering at me in Spanish and some other language, maybe Arabic. They towered over me, I couldn’t see beyond them. Someone put a hand on my shoulder, a heavy hand, powerful enough to snap my skinny little body like a popadom. I felt warm breath on my neck. I don’t know when I started screaming, maybe it was when I saw the boy, but I now realised I wasn’t the only one screaming. Somewhere behind me there was another female voice shouting something in Spanish.
‘Dejala cabrones!’ and then, ‘Get away from her you fucking assholes!’
An American voice.
A tall thin girl rushed at the man who had his hand on me and delivered a swift kick to his balls. He doubled over, going down with his hands between his legs. And then I was running down an alleyway with her. The girl sprinted easily in her rope wedge high heels. Behind her I had an impression of thin bare shoulder blades flashing as she ran, long graceful legs covering the ground easily. My own short legs were no match; I couldn’t keep up with her. Then she slowed, turned and smiled. She extended her hand towards me. I didn’t know who she was, I’d never seen her before in my life, but she’d rescued me. She had appeared from nowhere, like some kind of angel of deliverance, and took me out of that hellish place.
Gratefully I put my hand in hers. Her swift pace carried me through busy side streets full of rubbish stacks, men in doorways, parked motorbikes, dog shit, toddlers, old women, more rubbish. I held tight to her hand as we ran. After a few lung-busting minutes I felt like my heart was going to explode out of my chest. I pulled on the girl’s hand like a brake. We stopped in a quiet lane. We leaned against old stone walls, our chests heaving. Through breathless gasps she asked me, ‘Are you okay?’
I nodded.
‘You sure? You’re covered in blood.’
She rummaged in her bag and pulled out paper handkerchiefs and put them in my hand.
I nodded again. ‘I’m fine, honestly.’
‘What the hell happened back there?’
‘I fell.’
‘You fell?’
‘On the stairs, they were slippy, I just slipped.’
I knew I probably wasn’t making sense. She took the hankies out of my hand and began wiping the blood from my arms and legs.
‘You have a cut under your knee and you’ve scratched both arms but it looks much worse than it is.’
‘I just slipped, it’s nothing,’ I said.
‘Jeez, you’re quite a bleeder. We need to clean out those lacerations.’
‘Are you a doctor?’
‘Me? Are you kidding?’ she laughed.
She didn’t look like a doctor. She had shoulder length blonde hair, pale skin and a wide, full-lipped mouth. She had US standard issue straight white teeth and was thin everywhere except for her large shapely breasts. She wasn’t exactly beautiful, her face was slightly too long, her mouth too big, but she looked healthy, abundantly healthy. An all-American girl. She looked like she could have been a cheerleader except that her supersized breasts gave her an un-American stoop. She was slightly hunched, curled up, like a new leaf that hasn’t fully opened yet.
‘I thought those guys were trying to murder you.’
‘No, I fell, that’s all.’
‘But you were screaming!’
‘I just got a fright. They saw me and crowded round, I couldn’t get away. I panicked, I’m really sorry.’
‘Hey, don’t be sorry. My bad, I kicked that poor guy’s balls,’ she laughed.
I laughed too.
‘He was probably just trying to help and I come along and smash his nuts. He won’t be having sex anytime soon.’
‘He’ll probably never have sex again. He’ll be a eunuch,’ I said.
‘Yeah but he’ll still have his tongue. He won’t be completely useless.’
She laughed again. She seemed to like this kind of talk.
‘Thanks very much for rescuing me.’
‘De nada,’ she said, waving her hand like she was swatting a fly, ‘I only hope the poor chump isn’t crippled for life. Listen, let’s go to a bar and wash up, you don’t want that getting infected.’
She took me into a dark underground bar. From outside it looked nothing but inside it was like the headquarters of a comic book villain. It was a huge cave, filled with noisy teenagers.
‘La Oveja Negra’ it said above the door, ‘The Black Sheep,’ she translated. ‘The washroom’s back here.’
The cuts on my arms and legs were minimal, scratches really, but I was worried. The dead boy’s blood had mingled with mine. With my health record that was the last thing I needed. She filled the sink with hot water and poured in
perfume from a bottle in her handbag. ‘The alcohol will kill the bugs,’ she told me.
‘Lovely smell,’ I said, wincing as she dabbed the solution on my arm.
‘Yeah, it’s Paris Hilton.’
I flinched. ‘Doesn’t that stuff cost a fortune?’
‘Hell no,’ she laughed, ‘and it makes a pretty good antiseptic.’
She must be loaded.
‘Come on,’ she said once I’d got cleaned up, ‘I could use a drink.’
She left me at the table while she went to the bar and ordered drinks in what sounded like fluent Spanish. She made out as if she didn’t know that the boys at the pool table were staring at her, or if she did she didn’t care. She brought back a tray with glasses of water, a jug of garnet-coloured sangria and a little plastic basket of popcorn.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said, ‘I don’t know your name.’
‘Chloe,’ she smiled, a big wide smile that took up most of her face. I was forced to admit that she was in fact lovely.
‘Thanks Chloe. I’m Alison.’
‘Nice to meet you. You’re English, right?’
‘No, Scottish.’
She made a face. ‘Sorry.’
‘It’s an easy mistake to make.’
‘I’m American,’ Chloe said. ‘You guessed, huh? I’ve lived in about ten countries but I’m from California. My mom lives there, I guess it’s home. Hollywood, Disneyland, all that shit. I’m sure you know what it’s like. You’ve probably been there.’
I shook my head.
‘Which part of Scotland are you from, Alison?’
‘Cumbernauld. It’s just a town, near Glasgow.’
Neither places seemed to register with her.
‘It’s quite near Edinburgh too.’
‘Yeah, Edinboro,’ she nodded, ‘I haven’t been to Scotland yet, but it’s on my list.’
‘Well when you go, stick to Edinburgh and maybe the Highlands, they’re the best bits. That’s usually what Americans do.’