A river of ice trickled down my spine as she said this, and I had to pause with pushing the armchair because my body was suddenly rigid. ‘What about?’ I said and began pushing again. I had snacks to make, I couldn’t afford to slow down, no matter what Yvonne was about to say. I’d got there before her, of course. I’d searched for myself on the web and it had taken some doing, but I’d found Anaya Ranatunga eventually. The things I’d had to look at to get there, though … I’m not sure anyone sane would put themselves through all that willingly.
‘Well, you know that big investors’ ball at the Grand Hotel coming up next month? I’d really like to go to it. With Trevor, obviously. Trevor mentioned that it would do his career the world of good if he could speak to some of the investors and corporate reps that will be there.’
‘What’s that got to do with me?’
‘Well, Sanjay’s one of the main speakers, isn’t he? And you’ve been doing a lot of the marketing along with that big London firm – I know that’s why you’ve been so crazy busy recently, why you’ve had no time for me. I told Trevor you’d be able to get us a ticket. And a room to stay for the night so we wouldn’t have to worry about rolling in drunk and waking the kids.’
I raised myself up from my bent-over position, abandoned the chair where it stood. I threw my head back to stare up out of the glass roof. The sky was still blue, dulled a little by the lateness of the hour, and with the sun still not having completely set. I stared up, waiting for the sun to finally settle down for the night and the stars to begin their dance through the black sky. This room was almost as good as being at the beach hut. It was warmer, sure, and there were fewer midges blowing at you, and less wind worrying at you, but it was still inside. I liked to be outside. I liked to sit outside.
‘And what if I say I can’t get you a ticket because the event is sold out and all the rooms are allocated, to the point where Sanjay and I are coming home afterwards, as are all the other people who work for Sanjay?’
‘I’d say I’m sure you can find two more seats and one more room for a friend. A best friend at that. One who really needs her husband to get the promotion that will come from him making contact with some big-name potential clients. You’re a really good friend, Anaya, I know that you’ll do whatever you can to help out me and Trevor.’
I continued to stare at the sky and it slowly began to change, to become something different to what it had been mere minutes ago. Mere minutes ago, I had thought that Yvonne wasn’t capable of this, but that had changed. Yvonne was something completely different. I remember thinking that sometimes a friend had to call you out, hold up a mirror to show how you come across to others. Friends are there to tame your worst traits; they are there to support your better self. Or are they? Are they simply there to have good times with … and then to use when you have leverage and are desperate for something you can’t get on your own? Maybe I had put far too much stock in the concept of friendship and ignored the glaring reality of what it was like to have someone in your life that you call a friend who was toxic. Maybe I’d just ignored the fact that calling someone your friend is not going to inoculate you against their worst traits.
‘What if I say no, Yvonne?’ I lowered my gaze and levelled it at her. I wanted to see her face as she did this. ‘That much as I like you, much as I like Trevor, I’m not going to do this? I’m not going to put Sanjay’s business and reputation at risk by doing this?’
‘Do I really have to spell it out?’ she asked.
‘Yes, yes you do.’
‘God, Anaya, I can’t believe you’re making me do this. I didn’t want any of this unpleasantness, I only wanted you to help me out. Seeing as I’m your friend and everything. Look, since your mother-in-law didn’t know why you had a different name before you were married, I’m sure she and your husband don’t know that you were once a porn star. I don’t judge you for that, and some of those images were pretty extreme, so I think it’s quite nice of me to not judge you, by the way, but I think they might. I think they might want nothing to do with you. And if your children were to see those images …’
‘You’d really do that to get to go to a ball?’ I said to her.
Obviously, like most things, the internet was not all knowing, the internet had not given her the full picture. (Ha-ha.) She’d searched and searched and come across those pictures and thought she knew everything, or, at least, enough to get her what she wanted. It was enough, as well. I knew that no matter how I explained it, Sanjay wouldn’t understand and his mother would never let it go. This would be all she needed to get me into the life of servitude she believed I ought to be living. She wouldn’t want me to leave Sanjay, no, that would look bad to the outside world. Instead, I’d have to quit my job, come to her events, wear an Indian sari instead of a Sri Lankan one, become the dutiful and compliant daughter-in-law she’d hoped she’d get. It must have been awful for her to have three such wilful and – to me, anyway – lovely daughters. They’d gone along with arranged marriages but only to guys they’d actually been dating for a long time before the introductions had been officially made, and they didn’t base their lives around their family or their husbands’ families. I’m sure she’d thought that Sanjay, her only son, her last to settle down, would bring her someone to rule and control. Finding out about those photos would give her the daughter-in-law she craved.
‘Of course not!’ Yvonne said, genuinely shocked. ‘I only need you to get us into the ball this time. I really don’t think that is too big an ask. It’s nothing, really, when you think about how big a secret I would be keeping for you.’
‘So it wouldn’t be just this – there’d be other stuff you’d want “helping out with” as a friend,’ I stated.
‘Look, Trevor is great and he’s got so far with his career, but he’s kind of stalled. He’s always looking for new ways to get on but he’s too polite to actually do what’s needed to get ahead. I know Sanjay could really help him out. They like each other, don’t they? They’ve always got on at the various events over the years, haven’t they? He simply needs a helping hand, that’s all. He needs a hand and, with your help, I can provide that for him.’
‘You expect me to believe that this is all about helping Trevor and not even a little bit about you wanting to have me at your beck and call? Like pretty much everyone on the Parents’ Council and probably half the women in the playground if the way they look at you is any indicator?’
‘That is not nice,’ Yvonne replied. ‘That is not nice, Anaya, you really should think about being nicer to me. The snarky way you behave towards me sometimes is so uncalled for.’
‘You’re unhinged, you know that? Is this why you’ve got no friends? Because you’re low-level horrible to them for years and then when it looks like they’re about to ditch you, you pull out something to use over them?’
Yvonne flapped her arms up and down in exasperation. ‘How is any of that nice? Huh?’ She shook her head. ‘Well, I’m sure you’re just in shock, so we’ll say nothing more about this.’ She took her hands out of her pockets and came across the room, smiling as she walked. ‘This usually goes over here, right?’ She carefully nudged me aside, to place her hands on the armchair where mine had been. She started to push; not being as strong as me, it took her much more energy to move the chair. I could shove her right now, I thought. Shove her, make her fall against the fireplace, smack her head open and then plead innocence in all of it.
How dare you! I would scream at her while standing over her bleeding body. How dare you think you could do this to me and get away with it!
I stared at the back of her head, the way her blonde hair fell over the back of her skull and down over her shoulders. In the movies people always hit their heads at that point and were rendered unconscious. I could do that to her and I wouldn’t be in this situation any more.
I looked away; I was being ridiculous. Like I could ever be violent to another human being unless it was in self-defence. My eyes travelled back.
This would be self-defence, though. Just because her original attack hadn’t been physical, didn’t mean I didn’t need to defend myself.
Maxie arrived and as soon as she walked through the door, I flung my arms around her, clung to her, held on to her trying to draw on her strength, trying to erect a shield around myself against the ‘friend’ sitting in my glass-roofed room, sipping tea. I did the same to Hazel. And both of them stared long and hard at Yvonne, knowing that she was the reason behind it, but canny enough to know not to ask.
May, 2017
‘Anaya, this party is simply divine,’ Yvonne said to me.
I pulled one of those smiles across my face that I used to wear when I had worked for my particularly odious boss.
‘Thank you so much for inviting us,’ Trevor chimed in. ‘It was so kind of you. I couldn’t believe it when Yvonne said you’d insisted we come along.’ He leant in and lowered his voice. ‘This is something way beyond my league and the sort of thing I would normally never know was happening until I read about it in the business pages. Thank you.’
I was not at all surprised that this was all Yvonne’s doing and nothing at all to do with Trevor. He raised his glass to clink mine. I tipped my glass against his. She’d probably heard me talking about it, had seen the invites, had decided it was something she should be attending.
‘Thank you for coming along. I hope you enjoy the food and company and, of course, your room,’ I said to Trevor.
‘We will,’ Yvonne said, with a friendly smile – one that she used to give all those years ago when she had genuinely been my pal. She moved her glass towards mine to clink.
‘If you’ll excuse me, there are a few other people I must speak to,’ I said before walking away, leaving her glass untouched in a toast. I’d pay for that, but right then, I didn’t really care.
3:20 a.m. I need to tell someone. I need to tell Sanjay. But I need to tell someone everything before then. The first time I speak to Sanjay about this can’t be the first time those words come out of my mouth. Who am I going to speak to, though? Maxie? Hazel? Nope. Nope.
So many times I’ve gone to say something to Cece. Just to see what she’d say. And them I’m reminded of the pact I made. And the way that me telling would be the end of me and Hazel. I feel so trapped. Even more trapped than I was with Yvonne.
Maxie
3 a.m.
Was she blackmailing you? Let’s get together, you, me and Anaya. We can talk about it properly. But please, tell me if she was blackmailing you, too?
I’m not sure how much longer I can go on so little sleep. Hazel texting in the middle of the night doesn’t help. I’ve finally managed to pack all of it away into a little box and then one text from her opens it all up again. I’m fooling myself, I know that. It never really goes away, it never really stays wrapped up in that box. How can it when it’s been there for ten years? What I did. Everything that I did that led to this situation.
June, 2017
If it wasn’t for Anaya and Hazel, I would not have been here. The ‘Summer Fling’, the ball organised by the PC, was the last place I wanted to attend, especially when it was over with me and Yvonne. I really couldn’t look at her since that day in the playground a month earlier, when I’d been reminded of what she could be like. She was not a person I should be friends with. I’d done the hanging-around-with-the-mean-girls thing a long time ago. I had gone to the extreme of the mean-girl thing in my previous life. I wanted nothing to do with that again. Anaya had said there was no way she could get out of going. Hazel had begged, too, saying pretty much the same thing. The implication was clear: Yvonne was pressuring them to go and they wanted to invoke the unstated but very real ‘all for one’ element of our friendship.
So here I was. Dressed up, sitting at a table with my husband. I’d had to do a double take earlier when he walked into the bedroom dressed in a tuxedo. Then I’d gulped as desire flooded through me. He was rarely there at the moment for me to feel this way about him. He was travelling a lot; when he did work in Brighton he was out early, in late; and we rarely sat in the same room. When I’d mentioned this event to him on the phone, he’d said we should go.
‘Really?’ I’d replied.
‘Yeah, it’ll be fun. We don’t do enough together.’
I’d clung to that. Maybe he wanted us to have a proper relationship, start doing things together, stop talking like good mates and start being open and real with each other. And when he’d walked in dressed up and ready to go, I’d been bowled over by him.
He had paused in the doorway when he saw me, had run his gaze up and down my red ankle-length dress with its wide diamanté belt that sat low on my waist, and then had ended his look at my eyes. He’d moistened his lips and gone to say something but had stopped himself, adding another invisible brick to the wall of them that had been built between us over the years. ‘Ready?’ he’d said instead.
‘Yeah, ready,’ I’d replied.
We’d said goodbye to Frankie, who was being looked after by his former key worker from Preppy, and I’d tried really hard not to worry, not to be terrified that he wouldn’t be there when I got back.
Ed and I sat next to each other through dinner and laughed and joked like we usually did. But they were sitting with us, like they always did: the things we did not talk about. Anaya and Sanjay had disappeared, probably out on the dance floor, all over each other like they always were. Hazel was off with Ciaran, probably snogging him, since it was one of the few times they were out with each other. I’d even seen Yvonne’s toxic minion Teri smooching with her husband at a nearby table. I reached out for Ed’s hand – I wanted to connect to him, to be like the other couples around us – but then changed my mind, reached for my glass instead. The wine was easier. It wouldn’t pull away if I reached for it. It wouldn’t let me hold on to it for a certain amount of time and then move on.
I drained my wine, reached for the bottle to fill myself up again. I’d had far too many already, but not enough. I wasn’t drunk enough to be rude to Yvonne, which was the bar I’d set myself. The second I decided it would be a good idea to have it out with her would be the second I knew I had to stop drinking. She’d done the whole kissy-kissy-hello thing when we arrived. ‘Ed!’ she’d said, taking both his hands and leaning back slightly so he got a proper look at her in her skintight gold dress, slit up to her thigh. ‘How lovely to see you. I feel honoured that you could make it.’ Ed had tried to take his hands away, but Yvonne had hung on to him. She’d wanted me to know that she, mean girl, could have any man she wanted. She didn’t realise, obviously, that, like me, Ed knew all about mean girls. He’d lived with it longer than I had. Ed had tugged harder, taken his hands away, and it had been all he could do to stop himself wiping his hands over the front of his trousers to get her touch off him.
I’d watched her all night, circling, chatting to people, all the while watching us. She hadn’t got the response she’d wanted from Ed and I was sure she was waiting for another chance.
‘Do you want to dance?’
The man standing in front of me was the PE teacher. He was my age, we’d shared a couple of hellos at school sports days and matches, but he made me giggly because – as Anaya, Hazel and I agreed – he was a professional ‘good-looker’: he was excellent at being good-looking, expert at preening himself and filling his sports gear in the right places. We would all giggle when he went by and sometimes chatted about him when we were making cocktails at my house. Tonight I’d watched him dance with lots of the other mothers and was starting to feel offended that I wasn’t on his list of women to dance with. He’d done Hazel, he’d done Anaya, and Yvonne (twice). But not me, until now. I looked at Ed, to see if he minded, but he was inscrutable as always. A tiny spark of rage ignited in my chest. He’d looked at me like he wanted me earlier – not just sexually, but like his wife – and now he was acting as though he couldn’t care less.
‘Yes,’ I said. I put down my drink and slid my hand into his. ‘I would l
ike to dance.’
The music changed as we hit the dance floor – no more ‘Jump Around’, now it was Barry White. Mr Professional Good-Looker immediately stepped up: he came forwards, slipped his arm around my waist, took my other hand, and started a sort of waltz that needed him to keep his hand very low on my back and our bodies very close.
‘You’re a very good dancer, Frankie’s mum,’ Mr Professional Good-Looker PE Teacher said.
‘I bet you say that to all the mothers,’ I replied.
‘Yeah, I really do,’ he said. ‘It saves me time in remembering who I’ve said what to.’
I laughed, and he laughed. He held me a little tighter and I definitely felt his hand shift lower, to a fraction below my diamanté belt. He was pushing his luck, but I didn’t mind. The wine I’d drunk made me especially not mind. I stopped looking over his shoulder and chanced a look at his face. He stared back at me. And then my husband was standing beside us.
‘We’re going,’ Ed said.
Mr Professional Good-Looker immediately took his hands off me and stepped back. The place was packed; it looked like everyone had come with someone and was enjoying themselves, and PGL clearly didn’t want to become embroiled in something that could set tongues wagging. That was why he’d danced with so many women: he didn’t want to be seen to be favouring one woman. If someone’s husband objected, he wasn’t going to do anything but disappear. Which is what he did, straight away. He blended into the background, a chameleon that immediately vanished among the bodies on the dance floor. I was left with my husband and one of the world’s best singers crooning in baritone in the background.
‘We’re leaving,’ Ed repeated, loud enough, angry enough, for those around us to hear and to look at me.
‘Are we?’ I replied, I’d drunk enough to be quite keen on having a row. Maybe we’d even say those things we never said to each other.
‘We’re definitely leaving,’ he said.
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