My Best Friend Has Issues

by Laura Marney

  ‘What’s wrong?’ I spat at them, ‘Never seen a virgin before?’

  I turned and hobbled back towards the flat. The blood from my toe had stained the pink silk dressing gown and was already turning an ugly brown colour. Even without knowing about the money and the underwear, Chloe had every right to be angry with me. Now that she was back I’d have to start looking again for somewhere to live. I needed to pick up my stuff but first I’d have to face Chloe.

  Chapter 14

  I chapped Chloe’s door, an unobtrusive respectful chap, and waited. I wished I could limp off into the sunset and never have to face her.

  I chapped again, no response.

  I rattled the door harder. What was she doing in there? Everything I owned was in there: passport, clothes, money. Maybe she was going through my stuff.

  I was standing on one leg, bent over, holding my cut foot when she answered the door.

  ‘What the hell happened to you?’ she gasped.

  I’d tried to protect the pink dressing gown but the damage was already done. In this heat the blood had already dried to a crusty brown stain.

  ‘I’m so sorry, I cut my toe. I’m afraid your dressing gown got a bit dirty. I’ll clean it now. If I can just give it a good scrub it’ll be good as new.’

  ‘Come,’ she said, and walked into the bathroom. I followed, trying not to get blood on the floor. She plugged the bath and ran the hot water. Then without a word she walked out. I sat on the edge of the bath. The blood from my toe had thickened to a gloop that smeared the tiled floor. I had ruined everything. Chloe and I weren’t going to be friends now, we wouldn’t hang out and smoke dope on her roof terrace after all.

  She returned and tipped a big box of salt into the bath then left again. Salt would be good for getting the stain out the fabric. I needed to get the dressing gown off and into the bath before the bloodstain became fixed.

  Chloe came back and poured half a bottle of TCP into the bath water. Disinfecting her clothes after I’d worn them was an unnecessary precaution. I wasn’t diseased. On the other hand, it was blood. She probably thought, as she’d caught me, that a girl like me, a girl who honoured the old Scottish tradition of blowing all her brother’s friends, would be hoaching with pox and disease.

  ‘Take it off,’ said Chloe.

  I started to take off the dressing gown, remembering with shame the borrowed bra and pants underneath. From my position, sitting on the edge of the bath, I was having trouble getting it off without letting my toe touch the floor.

  Chloe helped me. With great care she lifted the dressing gown from my shoulders. This dressing gown must be worth a lot, antique silk or something. She held her forearm out for me to balance against while I lifted my bum. Gently she slid the gown from underneath me. When she had stripped me of it she rolled the expensive pink silk into a ball and, instead of dousing it in the disinfected water, threw it in a heap on the floor.

  ‘Come on,’ she said sternly, ‘you have to do it. It’ll sting but that’s good.’

  I was confused.

  ‘Alison, put your foot in the water.’

  Stupefied, I let her lift my leg and gently lower it into the bath.

  It did sting.

  ‘Ooow!’

  Chloe laughed.

  ‘That’s it, now move it around, you have to get the dirt out.’

  ‘But your dressing gown…’

  ‘We’ll get to that, for now just let the dirt soak out of your toe. I told you before, bugs here are different than the ones you have in Scotland. You could wind up with a serious infection. Either you’re extremely accident-prone or you’re on a mission to pick up every bug in Catalunya.’

  ‘I’m accident-prone.’

  ‘You know that’s psychological, don’t you?’

  ‘No, I didn’t.’

  ‘Yup, a clear indicator of self-esteem issues,’ she said cheerfully. ‘And, if you have an issue,’ she said, handing me the paper hankies, ‘then you need a tissue.’

  I was crying. I’d worn and trashed her clothes, starved and neglected her poor little dogs and yet she was washing my feet. It was all a bit biblical. I took the hanky and blew my nose.

  She lifted my leg from the water and dabbed my toe with a clean towel. It was still oozing blood, some of which went on the towel. Not wanting to contaminate anything else I tried to pull my leg away, but Chloe pressed down hard, the red stain blossoming on the towel.

  ‘At least I know now where the band aids are.’ She tore open the sticking plaster with her teeth and began dressing my toe.

  ‘You can put your own clothes on now. They should be dry by now.’

  ‘You hung up my clothes?’

  ‘All part of the service.’

  ‘Chloe, I’m sorry. I let you down.’

  ‘Oh yeah,’ she agreed.

  ‘You’ve been so good to me and I’ve made such a mess of everything…’

  ‘Blah blah blah. Hey, forget it.’

  ‘I was really looking forward to us being friends and I’m sorry I’ve messed it all up. I wish I could make it up to you.’

  I wanted to say more but there really was no more to say. Chloe had her head down but I could see a smile on her face as she gently wound the Elastoplast round my toe and lowered my foot to the floor.

  ‘Well, you could take me out to lunch.’

  I laughed. ‘Lunch? That’s it?’

  ‘Yeah, but not a sandwich, a good lunch. I know a place in the Born. It’s kinda formal though, we’d have to dress.’

  I knew from the guidebook that the Born was the posh end of town. Restaurants there weren’t going to be cheap and the word ‘formal’ was even more worrying.

  ‘Lunch, great!’ I said, smiling. ‘We could do that.’

  Chapter 15

  Chloe led me across Via Laietana into the Born. The buildings looked just as old and just as closely packed as in Gotic but there was a more muted atmosphere here as we passed the expensive-looking tapas bars and street cafés. I hadn’t seen this part of town yet and Chloe was enjoying being my tour guide.

  ‘And this is the other cathedral,’ she said and led me to the modern fire sculpture beside it.

  ‘It’s beautiful, what is it?’ I asked her.

  ‘It’s an eternal flame, Barcelona’s own memorial to Elvis Presley.’

  ‘Really?’

  The moment I said it I felt stupid.

  Chloe laughed. I laughed too, to cover my embarrassment.

  Five girls, teenagers, stood on the church steps singing some kind of sacred music. They looked like students and were all good-looking girls. They used a straw hat with a white ribbon around it to collect donations. A small crowd had gathered to listen to their voices blending into one.

  ‘Barcelona’s memorial to the Spice Girls,’ I said lamely.

  Chloe laughed again. ‘Ah, the Spice Girls, I loved them when I was a kid. Which one did you want to be? I always wanted to be…’

  We both said it at the same time.

  ‘Posh Spice.’

  And then we burst out laughing.

  We wove our way through the Born and came to a little restaurant which, with its ordinary appearance, gave me hope that it might charge ordinary prices. Despite having taken two hundred euros out of Chloe’s tin, if I was going to last here until September I was going to have to watch every centimo. When we got inside, the cheapest thing on the menu was a cubierto at five euros.

  ‘What’s a cubierto?’ I asked Chloe.

  ‘That’s the cover charge.’

  The place was crowded with heavy old-fashioned furniture that the waiters had to skitter around. It was busy but the atmosphere was quiet, reverential. Most of the customers were old. Heads down, they silently tucked in.

  ‘Jeez, it’s freezing in here,’ said Chloe, loud enough to be overheard. ‘Check me out: my nipples are sticking out like cigar butts.’

  The air conditioning was set low, probably to preserve the flaky old oil paintings on the walls or
perhaps the flaky old customers, but this was Chloe’s choice. I wasn’t going to criticise.

  A door from the kitchen swung open and a powerful smell of fish escaped.

  ‘This place does the best tuna,’ said Chloe enthusiastically, pronouncing it ‘toona’. ‘You have to try it.’

  I looked it up on the menu. Toona was thirty-five euros. Even if I ordered the cheapest thing on the menu, I reckoned I wouldn’t get out of here without spending at least fifty. The waiter was now hovering: simpering smile, cloth-draped arm.

  ‘Ensalada Verde, please,’ I said.

  It had the word ‘salad’ in the middle of it and at seventeen euros it was the cheapest thing on the menu.

  ‘Sure? The Ensalada de la Casa is fabulous.’

  ‘Eh…’

  I looked at the menu again, reconsidering my choice. Ensalada de la Casa was nineteen euros. I hesitated as though weighing it up.

  ‘Nah, I’ll stick with that.’

  ‘Okay, have it your way.’

  If I’d had it my way, we’d have gone to Burger King. The thought of it got my salivary glands going.

  ‘I’m totally gonna pig, I haven’t eaten in weeks. Bistec con salsa de Rocafort para mi, por favor,’ Chloe told the waiter.

  I couldn’t resist looking it up on the menu. Forty-two euros. Bloody hell.

  ‘Oh, and let’s have something fizzy to celebrate.’

  Before I could stop myself I’d screwed up my face and shook my head, no. But she didn’t see me and ordered anyway, Veuve Clicquot, eighty-two euros. I had to fight the impulse to scream.

  Once the bottle was open there was no use worrying about it. I’d have to pay for it now. When the waiter filled my glass I didn’t try to stop him.

  ‘Salud!’ burbled Chloe.

  ‘Cheers’ I sighed.

  Chloe’s food came out first and was a fat juicy steak. A ripe pungent smell rose from the thick creamy blue cheese sauce. Butter glazed baby potatoes and petit pois, tiny and delicate, made the steak look even bigger. Saliva flooded my mouth. I lifted my knife and fork as I saw the waiter approach our table with another plate, my ensalada verde, no doubt, I couldn’t wait.

  A bowl of wet lettuce.

  ‘Aw,’ said Chloe, breaking off from carving her steak. ‘They haven’t brought everything. Alison, what did you order?

  ‘Ensalada Verde,’ I said, polishing my knife and fork with my napkin.

  I could always get a BK later on La Rambla. No matter how little money I had left after Chloe’s extravagances, I was going to have one last Flame Grilled Whopper Meal before I was completely destitute.

  ‘Yeah, but what else? Didn’t you order the toona?’

  ‘No, no, just this. Salad does me. I’m not very hungry.’

  ‘You’re gonna sit there with a bowl of lettuce? You’re kidding me, right?’

  ‘No, no. I prefer a light lunch, especially lettuce. Very refreshing. D’you think they have mayonnaise?’

  Chloe hooted with laughter as I nibbled my lettuce. I had to laugh too. She was probably laughing at my eccentric Britishness. I was laughing at having got myself into such a ridiculous situation, again, and wondering if the ladies’ toilet had a window big enough to escape through.

  ‘Oh no you don’t, missy,’ she said, turning serious, ‘I see what’s happening here.’

  I put down my cutlery and made an apologetic face. The game was up, she had seen through me. Thank God for that, I thought, either we could halve the bill or do a runner. Do a runner was my preferred option. Chloe put down her steak knife. She leaned across the table and clasped both my hands and searched my face.

  ‘Alison, you don’t have to lose any more weight.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘You’re round and luscious and juicy and womanly and curvy and… womanly.’

  She said womanly twice but I let it go.

  ‘You’ve lost enough, no more dieting.’

  ‘I’m not dieting. I’ve never been on a diet in my life. I’ve lost weight recently, but how did you know?’

  Chloe smiled, she lifted my left hand in the air, like the referee with the winner in a boxing match and ran her fingers along a broken silvery line on the inside of my upper arm.

  ‘Stretch marks. I saw them when I was wiping the blood off you after you tripped.’

  I thought of Ewan kissing my arm last night. Kissing it better. He must have seen the snail trails up my arm twinkling in the moonlight. I pulled away from her and tugged down the short sleeves of my top.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Chloe quickly, ‘I didn’t mean to embarrass you. They’re hardly visible.’

  ‘You saw them.’

  ‘Yeah, but you have to know what to look for. Only another anorexic would notice.’

  ‘I’m not anorexic,’ I said.

  ‘Well I sure as hell am.’

  Chloe took my hand again and placed my fingers on the same stretch marks on her own arm.

  ‘Or I used to be. I was bulimic; I used to hide little bags of vomit everywhere around the house. I was really good at it, I had quite a talent.’

  This stopped the conversation for a moment and we returned to our plates: me, the womanly one, to my lettuce, and Chloe, the anorexic, to her cheese-lathered steak.

  ‘I was so thin my head was bigger than my ass.’

  ‘Well, it isn’t now,’ I said.

  I’d meant it kindly but Chloe shot me a worried look.

  ‘Not that your arse is big, it’s not.’ I tried to think of something positive to say. ‘But it’s bigger than your head, and a nicer shape.’

  ‘Shut up!’ she squealed in her Californian way. ‘My ass is getting bigger every day.’

  ‘No, but it’s… womanly.’

  I was afraid I’d overdone it and sounded insincere but Chloe laughed. Relieved that she could take a joke, I laughed too.

  ‘Yeah, I suppose. I’m in recovery now. What about you?’

  ‘I used to be fat. Huge.’

  ‘Yeah? How come?’

  ‘I don’t really know, maybe I wasn’t getting enough exercise. I didn’t go out much. I had the usual schoolgirl diet of no breakfast, chips and Coke for lunch and whatever Mum made for dinner. Plus the occasional treat of a crisps and fishfinger sandwich before Mum came home. After she came home I ate up all the leftover stock she brought from the bakery: custard tarts, jam doughnuts, whatever.’

  ‘That’s a typical schoolgirl diet?’

  ‘It is in Cumbernauld.’

  ‘No wonder you were huge.’

  ‘Yeah, I was eating too much, but honestly, I’m not bulimic. That’s just a waste of a good doughnut.’

  ‘So how comes you’re no longer huge?’

  ‘I caught glandular fever, really bad. I lost three stone; I was in hospital for months, expected to die. Most of my organs are scarred, probably permanently damaged. I’m only twenty-two but if I don’t choke on a coughing fit I’ll probably keel over with a heart attack. Heart attacks run in our family. Believe me, there’s enough serious things wrong with me.’

  ‘Anorexia is serious,’ Chloe snapped.

  ‘Sorry, I didn’t say it isn’t serious.’

  ‘You implied it. You said there are plenty of serious things wrong with me…’

  ‘Yes but I didn’t mean…’

  ‘Anorexia kills people. I’ve seen some of my friends die, horribly.’

  ‘Chloe, I’m sorry. I didn’t want to…’

  Unexpectedly, I started to cry.

  ‘Oh God, what is it now?’

  ‘I didn’t trip,’ I blurted. ‘Yesterday when you found me, there was a dead boy on the stairs. I fell in his blood.’

  I told her the whole story. She listened quietly. She reached across and held my hand again, using her napkin to wipe away my tears.

  ‘Oh my God,’ was all she said.

  She didn’t ask any questions or tell me I should report it to the police. She had the waiter bring us a bottle of brandy. She poured me one and put it i
n my hand.

  ‘I can’t pay for this,’ I said quietly, ‘I don’t think I have enough money.’

  I was tired of keeping up the pretence. If I could tell her about Bashed Head Boy I could tell her I was broke.

  ‘You’re broke? So that’s why you ordered lettuce! Here, gimme your plate.’

  I didn’t argue. She tipped the watery lettuce on to a side plate and scraped on to my plate all of her potatoes and peas and more than half her steak.

  ‘Eat.’

  I ate. By the third mouthful of steak and potatoes my tears had dried. I looked up and found Chloe watching me and smiling.

  ‘I didn’t bring enough money,’ I sighed. ‘It’s stupid but it’s as simple as that. My English teaching doesn’t start for another two months. I’ll have to go back.’

  ‘What do you mean? Go back where?’

  ‘To Scotland, just until my job starts.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No?’ I laughed, pretending not to understand.

  ‘No. You’ve had a terrible experience. You’re in no shape to leave town. You should stay here, stay with me at my place. I could use a room-mate, gets a bit lonely up there on my own.’

  ‘But Chloe,’ I said, putting up a half-hearted argument, ‘I couldn’t impose on you.’

  ‘It’s only two months; I think my allowance can cope. If not, I’ll ask my dad to give me more.’

  Or, I thought, she could spend some of the money she had stashed in the biscuit tin. I wondered if Chloe had thought of that. If she had, she wasn’t saying.

  Chapter 16

  In the restaurant Chloe hadn’t seemed that interested but on the way back to the flat she asked me questions about the dead boy. I thought I would, but I didn’t mind going over it again. It was good to get it out.

  The last time something bad happened, I didn’t tell anyone, I couldn’t. The educational psychologist said this was due to the trauma I’d suffered and that my reaction, a kind of lethargic acceptance of everything, was normal. I’d come out of it in my own time, she said, but I didn’t. Lethargic acceptance suited me; it made life easy, if uneventful. It wasn’t trauma that made me lethargic, it was secrecy.

  But this time I hadn’t kept it secret. I’d told Chloe and the sky didn’t fall in. It wasn’t healthy to keep secrets, they kept burning inside you. All these years I’d been slow cooking from the inside out.