Your Closest Friend

by Karen Perry

  Listen to me, already planning ahead. This is something new for me too, a reaction to the peace and joy I’ve been feeling since the offer was first made, the arrangements set in place. My happiness is occasionally corrupted by the worming thought that I should not get too comfortable here, but barely a week in and I’m way beyond that already.

  I stop at Valentina’s on Lavender Hill and buy diced beef, anchovies, bread, a bottle of Rioja. This last item is for the cooking, not for drinking, although I might have a little glass while I’m pulling it all together. At the cash register, I hand over two crisp twenties that Cara gave me for shopping, and as I wait for the change, my mind briefly darts to a time when I was a kid, shopping in the drugstore with Connie, the meaningful look she’d give me, picking up a lipstick or a mascara that she wanted me to lift. I had a blank, innocent face, easily forgotten, and I was good at it too, swift little fingers, done without fuss.

  I’m making a beef stew – one of Nigella Lawson’s recipes – something wholesome and nourishing. Last night, when she’d come in from work, Cara had looked pale and tired. As soon as Mabel came running at her, crying ‘Mummy!’ her face became animated, all smiles. But I’d caught the expression just before that – in the moment that she stepped into the hall, leaned back against the door and stared up at the skylight. Like she’d just stepped in from a storm. She hates the walk from the station to home, especially at night or in the early mornings when it’s still dark – the spooky rush through the railway underpass, the scrubby grass alongside the supermarkets strewn with litter, the shadows lurking in the disused playground of Lavender Gardens as she scurries past in the darkness. She’d hid it well for Mabel, for me too, I guess. Making happy noises about the smell of the lasagne cooking in the oven. But I could tell it was an act. Underneath she was troubled.

  ‘You know what you need?’ I’d said. ‘A glass of wine.’

  She shook her head, saying, ‘I really shouldn’t. It’s a school night.’

  Crazy, the rules these people make for themselves.

  ‘I won’t tell,’ I said, feeling her relent.

  ‘Alright, but only if you’ll join me.’

  So we sat at the table, the three of us, eating the food that I’d made, a bottle of smoky Rioja open between us. After I’d finished cleaning up and Cara had put Mabel to bed, I tipped a little more wine into my glass and settled on the couch in a warm, happy fug, watching the TV with the sound down, listening to the hum of Cara’s voice through the ceiling. She was on the phone in her bedroom, to Jeff, presumably. I couldn’t tell from her muffled tone whether she was happy or sad, but when she came back downstairs a little while later, she had that strained look again, like her mind was loaded down with worry.

  ‘Everything okay?’ I asked and she said yes, fine, then said something about a tooth that was giving her some trouble, her hand held against her jaw. But I caught the small, hard glance she gave the wine glass in my hand, noting the top-up with unspoken disapproval, her eyes flicking from there to my feet propped up on the edge of the ottoman, my flip-flops abandoned to the side of the rug. I could tell I’d overstepped the mark, caught the quicksilver thought crossing her mind that I was like a teenager slouching on her sofa, and so I sat up a little, withdrawing my feet and making a mental note to wait, in future, for her cue before replenishing my glass.

  ‘Listen,’ she said, ‘I know we agreed you’d stay for a month, but there’s been a slight change in plan.’

  Here it comes, I thought, my dismissal.

  But instead, she went on, ‘Jeff needs to stay in Germany a little longer than expected. I don’t suppose you’d mind staying on with us? Maybe even until Christmas?’

  Of course I agreed. Embarrassed myself with eagerness as I jumped to accept.

  ‘Thank you, Amy,’ she added, putting her hand to her head, fingertips touching her temple as if there was pain there. ‘I’d be lost without you.’

  Not long after that, she retired for the night, claiming exhaustion, while I sat there on the couch, polishing off my glass while watching The Deuce, a big warm feeling spreading through my insides.

  It’s Wednesday morning of my second week here, and I’ve dropped Mabel at school before coming home to the big, roomy apartment. Cara is at work and Jeff’s in Berlin, so it’s just me here alone in this vast space. There’s something delicious about the echoing silence as I pad from room to room, plumping pillows, straightening out towels on the rails in the bathroom, fantasizing that this place is my own. It gives me pleasure, this busy domesticity, like I’m watching myself in a play, performing the role of lady of the house, watering the pot plants. I touch these things as if they are mine, running my fingers along the mantelpiece of the redundant fireplace, cupping my hands around the carved wooden head of some African sculpture with drooping earlobes, a collar of beads winding around its neck. I’m tempted to pour myself a drink – a glass of ice-cold Chardonnay from the fridge, a finger of vodka with ice – but it’s not even midday and I’ve responsibilities now, so I make myself a coffee and drift through the rooms, clutching the mug to my chest.

  In all the days I’ve been alone here, I haven’t yet gone upstairs to Cara and Jeff’s bedroom. It seems off-limits. Private. Even though this has never been made explicit. I stand at the foot of the stairs that lead from the kitchen up to their private space. The quietness seems forbidding, but my curiosity is stronger. I put my coffee cup down on the table and then tiptoe up until I find myself in a lofty room decorated in the same tasteful tones as the rest of the apartment, the only jags of colour in the abstract art above the bed, and in the armchair and footstool in the corner. There’s an electric guitar propped against one wall – an old Gibson, that must be worth a mint – and I almost laugh, picturing Jeff balancing it on his knee, plucking at the strings with a plectrum, his public schoolboy fringe of hair flopping forward.

  I open Cara’s wardrobe and start trying on shoes. By happy coincidence, we are the same size, and I slip on a pair of Christian Louboutins and strut over to the bathroom then back again, amusing myself with a wiggle of the hips. Perching on the edge of the bed, I pull open the drawer on his side of the bed. There’s nothing of interest – some magazines of the financial variety and an inhaler, a foil-backed sheet of paracetamol, two of the blisters empty. Kicking off the shoes, and rolling over on to Cara’s side, I lie with my cheek on her pillow, breathing in the now-familiar smell of her shampoo, perusing the messier contents of her drawer – tubes of lipstick, moisturizer, a box of tissues, a pack of birth-control pills, a faded photograph of a smiling woman I guess is her mother. I stare at the photograph for a moment, struck by the thought that Cara never mentions her mother. Even when I opened up to her about my mom and all I’d been through, still she said nothing about her own.

  I put the photograph back and close the drawer. The bed is comfortable – not too hard and not too soft. I’m like frigging Goldilocks here, testing the mattress. I wonder if this is where Jeff slept with his first wife? Was this their marital bed? I think of the woman in the photograph, her arch smile, her perfect grooming. Who knew what pain she might have gone through in this room, as the disease ate away at her? And how must it have felt for him, taking Cara to bed here after all of that? Did they feel, in some way, watched?

  An image creeps into my mind of the two of them having sex, Jeff’s thin-lipped smile lowering to Cara’s breast, sucking in the hard nub of her nipple. A rogue thought that lingers and excites. I spend a breathless few minutes, rubbing at myself, holding that image in my mind, my face pressed into the pillow.

  Afterwards, I straighten out the bed and return the shoes to the wardrobe. I back out of the room slowly, my eyes scalding the surfaces for any stray evidence of my visit.

  When Cara comes through the door that night, the beef stew is ready, Mabel pink from her bath, and I’m folding laundry at the kitchen table, my face a perfect mask of innocence.

  The same thing happens on Thursday, and when Friday morning
comes, after the drop-off I don’t bother about the shopping. The lure of that bedroom is too strong. I get back to the flat, throw my stuff in the kitchen, and then I’m back upstairs, flinging open the wardrobe, trying on clothes, taking another turn on the bed. I’ve left my phone downstairs on the kitchen table and I’m vaguely aware of it ringing, but I’ve the iPod on, plugged into the speakers by the bed, and Nick Cave is crooning menacingly above a cheesy organ. It’s probably just Sean again, and I don’t feel the need to speak to him, not now that things have changed. So I let the phone ring out and reach into the wardrobe for another dress.

  Something happens to me when I’m alone in this room. It’s like I’m mooring myself to a world that’s unfamiliar and exciting, a world I want to greedily swallow. In these hours alone in this space, it’s hard to believe that barely three weeks ago I was bored and groundless. The clothes are spread around the room in disarray but I don’t care, consumed by this tremulous need to explore, like I’m nine years old once more, Connie and I dressing up in my mother’s clothes, Connie sipping beer she’d stolen from the fridge.

  I’ve chosen a kimono-style dress made of silk, a sleek image of a stork screen-printed along the side – it’s a piece of clothing I can’t imagine Cara ever wearing. She seems to live in a uniform of jeans and suit jackets, Gap T-shirts underneath. Half the clothes in her wardrobe sit on hangers wrapped in cellophane. There’s something forlorn about them, like orphaned children, so it feels like I’m doing this dress a favour when I push the plastic away and take the material in my hands. I’ve shed my clothes, my bra too, and the silk slipping over my naked flesh is like rippling water, cool and fresh and cleansing. I muss up my hair a little, and then, taking one of the lipstick tubes from Cara’s drawer, I coat my lips with scarlet, and step my feet into heeled ankle boots, little zippers at the back, fastening them tight. I take a couple of steps back to observe the full length of myself in the mirror. The dress is a little big on me, my body requiring some augmentation in the chest area in order to fill the fabric, and I pull at the neckline so that it scoops and plunges, the white skin between my breasts clearly visible. I’m imagining myself at a cocktail party downstairs in the living room, guests milling around, the occasional eye glancing over at the young woman in silk, murmured questions circling: Who is she? I pose and pout in front of the mirror, miming drinking from a champagne flute. And then a mischievous thought enters my head and I pretend that I’m leaning down to pluck a canapé from a tray on the ottoman: my dress sags open and some old crusty work colleague of Jeff’s snags an eyeful of my breast; and I’m actually doing this now, watching myself in the mirror, when the music snaps off, silence tearing through the room, and I swing around and see a person I have never met before standing there at the door.

  Her hair is long and dark, a sharp geometrical fringe cut high above thin eyebrows. She’s about my age, maybe a little younger, and she’s fixing me with a look of horrified fascination, like I’m some weird exhibit, a grotesque. My heart is fighting like crazy beneath the silk, and I can feel the nerves blotching my throat.

  The girl stands still for a moment. And then she removes the bag from her shoulder – a baby-blue leather tote – and drops it on the ground by her feet, not once taking her eyes off me.

  In a voice that comes out in a rasp of slow, disbelieving enquiry, she says, ‘Who the fuck are you?’

  9.

  Cara

  We’re in the meeting room talking through the briefs in the minutes before the show starts – it’s Friday, so we’re keeping it light: a comedian who’s flogging a book, and a model/actress with a new play opening in the West End. Katie has acted upon my suggestion and put together a small quiz, and she’s going through it now, fending off the grim march of negatives from Vic’s corner, when I notice a new hashtag in my Twitter account. Throughout the meeting my phone has been sporadically lighting up with news feeds, but this one catches my eye:

  #ParsonsGreenAttack

  Just as I’m picking it up to scroll down and investigate, I notice a flurry of activity on the office floor. It’s heading towards nine o’clock and the place has filled up considerably since I arrived a couple of hours ago, but now I can see a huddle forming underneath the flat-screen TV that’s broadcasting the news channel. Murmurs are filtering through into the meeting room.

  ‘Are you seeing this?’ Derek asks, his eyes pinned to his phone, and then he reads aloud. ‘ “Reports are coming in of an incident on a Tube train in west London. There are unconfirmed accounts of an explosion on the District Line at Parsons Green station. Eyewitnesses have spoken of a device detonating as the train left the station. As yet, there is no information regarding casualties. The station is being evacuated and emergency response units are at the scene.” ’

  ‘Fucking hell,’ Vic declares. ‘Not another one.’

  Derek is already moving far ahead of us, announcing we’ll have to change our plans, rethink our approach. ‘We’ll need to talk to senior management, get a steer from them as to how much airtime to devote to this terrorist attack –’

  Vic interjects, ‘The bloody show is becoming Let’s Talk Terrorism. For fuck’s sake, it’s supposed to be light entertainment! People want a break from this stuff – let’s give it to them. It’s Friday, after all!’

  They’re debating it now, the two of them, going back and forth, and I can see Katie looking at me. She’s expecting me to intervene, I can tell. Or perhaps she’s thinking what I’m thinking: that as the series producer, I’m the one who should be suggesting a rethink, I’m the one who should consult senior management. Derek is overstepping the mark and he knows it, but the truth is my breathing has quickened, my mouth dry. The skin of my face feels stretched taut over bones.

  ‘Are you alright?’ Katie mouths, so that the men aren’t aware.

  I nod my head briskly and, with an effort, take control of the situation. Somehow, I manage to get my head together enough to issue terse instructions to all of them, assigning tasks before we all disperse – Derek and Katie heading for the control room to meet the sound operator, Vic ducking out for a quick smoke before the show begins. I make a great effort to maintain a normal walking pace as I move through the office, and head towards the toilets.

  Once inside, I splash my face with cold water, then blot my skin dry with a paper towel. I sit in the cubicle for a full five minutes, waiting for my heart to stop thumping, for the sweat to stop oozing from my pores. Finn lives in Parsons Green.

  Eventually, I get it together enough to return to my desk, where I pick up the phone and, breaking my own rule, I call him.

  When there’s no answer, I send a WhatsApp.

  Heard about Parsons Green attack. R u ok?

  The show is about to begin, but Derek is in the seat this morning, so I stay at my desk and open up the web browser, fishing through the various news websites for information. On Facebook, I look for Finn’s profile in my Friends group, hopeful of a green spot next to his name, but there’s nothing. I try his number a few more times, leaving voicemails now. There’re no blue ticks to indicate he’s read my WhatsApp message, and so I send a text and an email too, trying to keep a tone of neutral enquiry, trying not to veer into hysteria.

  I make an effort to focus on my work, contacting my senior in head office, and getting the steer from him, before joining the others in the control room to say the word is we’ll go with our original plan, but to warn the guests lined up that they may be bumped at the last minute should any further serious developments occur. I think of the words I’ve just uttered. Serious developments. A thread of fear passes coldly through me. Let him be alright, a voice whispers in my head.

  Somehow, we get through the morning show without incident, and I’m just walking back to my desk, when the phone starts ringing. I break into a run.

  ‘Hello?’ I say, breathless with anticipation, and when I hear Jeff’s voice at the other end, I cannot hide from the stark feeling of disappointment that shoots right through
me.

  ‘I’m fine,’ I tell him. ‘We’re all fine,’ thinking he’s calling because of the attack.

  ‘Good,’ he says. ‘Thank God …’

  And then there’s a pause, and into this brief silence comes the understanding that he’s not ringing because of Parsons Green. He’s ringing over something else.

  ‘I was wondering,’ he begins, ‘is everything okay at home?’

  I’m briefly baffled by the question. Then I answer, ‘Yes. Why?’

  ‘Well, I just had this odd call from Olivia. She’s been round to the apartment, and bumped into Amy, and … I don’t know, she sounded a bit worked up about it.’

  As soon as he utters Olivia’s name, I feel myself hardening against the conversation. I make little effort to keep the chill from my voice as I say, ‘Really? What’s bothering her?’

  ‘She says she found Amy in our bedroom. She says Amy was trying on your clothes.’

  ‘What?’

  He gives a nervous laugh, and says, ‘Apparently. According to Olivia.’

  ‘Look, this is just a misunderstanding,’ I say, feeling an unwarranted rise in my temper. How easily his daughter gets under my skin.

  ‘Okay,’ Jeff says, reasonably, but I can hear him waiting for the explanation.

  ‘I asked Amy would she mind doing a little laundry for me. She was probably just putting my clothes away, that’s all.’

  ‘Why did you ask her to do laundry?’

  I am tempted to snap at him, Why should you care who does the laundry? It’s not like you do it! But I don’t Working hard to keep my voice level, I say, ‘I’m swamped in work this week. Everything was piling up. She offered and I accepted, that’s it.’