The Friend

by Dorothy Koomson

  I kick aside the chairs and not even that noise stirs them. ‘Oscar, Ore,’ I call. ‘Boys, boys, wake up.’

  Before I can throw myself to my knees and touch them, Gareth is there, moving me aside and effectively blocking me from going any further. I know he’s trying to protect me, trying to stop me being the one to find out if they’re—

  He touches Ore first, obviously not knowing that Oscar is the older one. It’s Oscar who’s meant to be first. Then his fingers go to Oscar’s neck, checking his pulse.

  ‘We need another two ambulances,’ he tells the police officer beside me. He points to another male officer. ‘Come here,’ he orders. The officer sidesteps me to do as he’s told. ‘Pick him up,’ Gareth orders, indicating to Oscar. ‘Unzip his coat. Now hold him against your body, and put your coat around him, like this,’ he says, all the while doing the same with Ore. ‘That’s it, that’s it. You’re trying to warm him up using your body heat.’ He snatches the navy-blue woollen hat from his head and places it on Ore’s head before pulling up his hood again. ‘Cece, your hat,’ he says. Moving like a robot, I take off my hat and hand it to the man holding Oscar. The officer copies Gareth and returns to cradling my boy.

  ‘The rest of you, wrap your jackets around us,’ he orders the other officers in the pavilion. ‘We need to warm them up slowly.’ We all recoil as the overhead lights buzz then blink on.

  ‘They’re OK,’ Gareth tells me. ‘They’re just cold. Probably hypothermia from being out here so long, which is why they went to sleep. Clever boys, though, eh, trying to share heat by curling up together? But they’re OK.’ He holds his hand out to me. ‘Come. Come and wake them up.’

  ‘Oscar,’ I whisper to my little boy, pressing my lips on his cold cheek. ‘Ore,’ I whisper to my little boy, pressing my lips on his cold cheek. ‘Wake up, boys. Wake up now.’

  I stroke their faces in turn and try to ignore the stillness in their usually lively bodies, the unnatural chill in their normally warm brown skin.

  Part 15

  THURSDAY

  Cece

  9 p.m. Sol and Harmony come charging into the boys’ room in the A & E department of the children’s hospital. I am wearing a temporary bandage, and I have moments when I think I’m going to pass out despite the painkillers, but I’ve made it clear I am going nowhere away from the boys until Sol and Harmony arrive.

  Harmony throws herself at me, bumping my arm and detonating another round of pain explosions. ‘Pain, Harmony, pain, pain, pain,’ I gasp as I hold her close to me.

  ‘Oh, sorry,’ she says and shifts slightly, but doesn’t let me go. The fact I can hold her, albeit with one arm, feels like a miracle when not long ago I thought Mrs Carpenter was going to kill me. I bury my face in her hair and kiss the top of her head. ‘Are you all right, Mum?’ she asks. ‘Are you all right? Are you all right?’

  ‘Yes, yes, yes. I’m fine.’

  ‘Oh, Mum. Are you sure you’re all right? Are you sure?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What about those two?’ She drops me like a hot stone, and turns to her brothers. She leans into Ore’s bed and peers right at his face. Then she spins, does the same with Oscar. ‘Are they all right? When will they wake up? Is there any permanent damage?’ Her questions run one into another, as though this is all so exciting for her she doesn’t know how to slow herself down.

  ‘They’re fine. Mild hypothermia. They’d practically come round by the time the ambulances arrived. They’ve had a warm drink and they’re both exhausted so they’ve been allowed to go to sleep. No permanent damage. They’ll be discharged first thing in the morning.’

  ‘Mum, this is all too weird. You lot were like almost murdered by like a psycho headmistress. That is too weird. Even for this family.’

  ‘Can you stay here with the boys? I need to talk to your dad.’ I struggle to my feet and raise an eyebrow at Sol.

  ‘Oh, I think Dad wants to talk to you all right,’ Harmony says softly. ‘I think he has lots and lots of words he wants to use with you.’

  We’re the only ones in the small waiting room in this area and despite the door being shut, Sol still gives it a full three minutes before he speaks – I know because I count them out in my head. He’s probably been counting to a hundred and eighty, too, to calm himself down. ‘I don’t know if I should hug you or scream at you,’ he eventually says.

  ‘I think the result – pain – will be the same whichever you do.’

  ‘Man! Cece! Have you lost your mind?’ he says, his voice raised. ‘The whole drive over here, actually, when the policeman turned up and started to tell me what had been going on, I couldn’t get my head around the whole thing. I still can’t.’

  ‘Shhh,’ I reply. ‘Keep your voice down.’

  ‘No!’ he replies. ‘I think everyone here should know how catastrophically you’ve fucked up.’

  I blink at my husband. All right, enough, I decide. Enough now. ‘I want a divorce, Sol.’

  He lowers his voice then, the shock apparently robbing him of volume when he replies: ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘I’m talking about you and me not being married any more. I’m done. Finished.’

  ‘Excuse me? You have secret meetings with your ex. You endanger our children’s lives. And I’m the bad guy here? How does that work?’

  ‘You’re a liar and I don’t want to be married to you any more,’ I tell him.

  He almost leaps across the room to stand in front of me. His fingers poke into his own chest; his face is incredulous. ‘I’m a liar? I’m a liar?’ he says. ‘Are you having a laugh? I can’t believe you’re trying to twist this onto me.’

  ‘Patterns, Sol,’ I tell him. ‘Remember? I see things in patterns. Your pattern of behaviour since you came here to work is that you don’t really want to be married to me any more.’

  ‘That’s not true,’ he says, although he won’t make eye contact.

  ‘You’re lying again. What is it, Sol?’ I ask. ‘I see the pattern but I don’t see the why. I don’t think you’ve slept with someone else, yet, but it’s not long before you do. And you’ve been trying very hard sometimes to make that my fault. But what is it that’s driving this behaviour? Is it debt? Drugs? Gambling? Attempting to time travel? What?’

  Sol sighs and stares down at the ladybird rug we’re standing on. He prods at a black spot on the back of the ladybird with the toe of his shoe and takes a few deep breaths.

  ‘I, erm, look, I wanted to tell you, all right, but I didn’t know how.’

  ‘Well, you might as well tell me now because our marriage is over anyway.’

  ‘Don’t say that. All right, look … Not long after I got here, a bit before you arrived, I was offered another promotion, in another city.’

  ‘They wanted you to move?’

  He nods.

  ‘This was before we moved from London?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘So, when you were all “the Brighton office will shut down and all those people will lose their jobs if I don’t come down to save it”, it wasn’t a fair representation of the situation since they want you to move in less than a year?’

  ‘That’s not what I said.’

  ‘Oh please, that’s exactly what you said. You … We could have stayed in London, you could have properly commuted to Brighton so when they offered you another job, you could have commuted there. Oh, Sol. You are so lucky I love you despite not liking you right now cos … grrrr … And I never say grrrr …’

  ‘It’s not that simple,’ Sol cuts in. ‘They want me to go to Ontario.’

  ‘Canada?’

  ‘Yes. It’s a big deal. I’d be running a department twice the size of this one with a view to becoming second in command of the whole company. The CEO even flew over to see if they could change my mind. Every couple of weeks they offer a better package and, I don’t know, it makes me—’

  ‘Resentful that I’m holding you back.’

  ‘Not you.’

&nb
sp; ‘Yes, me. Me and a family that won’t want to move again. Bloody hell, Sol. Have you been behaving badly in the hopes that I’ll dump you so you can go off and follow your shining career without any guilt?’

  ‘No. Well, not really. I’d hate it if you dumped me. I panicked earlier when you mentioned divorce, I was truly terrified, and I thought I was going to throw up when you said it again. I don’t want to divorce you. I don’t want to live without any of you. And the stuff I was saying before? I’m sorry. I was jealous. I couldn’t handle the fact you’d met up with your ex and didn’t tell me. And then he helped to save our boys’ lives and he may or may not be Harmony’s father. How do I compete with that? I was jealous.’

  ‘How do you think I felt when I saw you and that woman in your office? You might as well have been shagging her on your desk, the atmosphere in there. It’s all right to fancy other people – I thought we always agreed that. But it’s not all right to cross boundary after boundary to the point where you’re about to start an affair – which is clearly what I saw in your office.’

  ‘Yeah, that was a bit out of order.’ He wobbles his head. ‘It was a lot out of order.’

  ‘Yeah, well, I was out of order helping the police behind your back. And I may have come close to crossing the line, too. But believe it or not, I was doing it so that he’d go away. He is not Harmony’s father – biological or otherwise – but it was the only way to get him to agree to stay out of our lives.’

  ‘I can believe that you’d do it for those reasons. Do you still have feelings for him?’

  I immediately think of Gareth’s face earlier. He stared at me as though he wanted to say a lot more than ‘Someone else will come and take your statement’ before he left. He stared at me as though he was thinking of reneging on our deal and sticking around to see if I had feelings for him, to see if he was Harmony’s father.

  ‘It’s all right to fancy other people,’ I reply to Sol. Saying yes would hurt him too much; saying no would be a lie. But I will have to tell him one day how close to the line I came.

  ‘Right.’ Sol looks away, jealousy stamped all over his face. ‘Right.’

  I could point out that he’s crossed so many lines with his crush, that he sees her every day – probably several times a day – but I don’t. It’d be point-scoring. Instead, I reach out and take his hand. Tug him towards me. ‘Let’s talk about the Canada thing,’ I say to him.

  ‘Seriously?’

  ‘Yes, seriously. I don’t want to move to Canada, and I told Harmony that I’d help her find her biological father—’

  ‘What?’

  ‘She wants me to help her find him. I said I would and I know you won’t mind because it’s her right to get to know him if she wants. But that aside, let’s have a proper discussion about Canada. You know, like two people who are married should do? Even if it means you go on your own for a while and we move back to London so it’s easier for me to work and have a support system. Let’s at least talk about it.’

  ‘Yes, let’s talk.’

  My husband steps forwards, and it feels like he’s taken that step that will bridge the gap that’s been forming between us these last few months. It feels like he has come back to me, finally. Finally. I’m not sure how I’ve lasted this long without him, how we’ve managed to function when we’ve been so fractured, but he’s back, we’re back. I close my eyes as he leans in to kiss me. Our lips meet and all sorts of memories from our history blossom in my mind, all sorts of desires uncurl in my heart.

  I pull back a fraction. ‘Sol?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Pain, pain, pain, pain.’

  FRIDAY

  Cece

  10:30 a.m. From the top of the hill where the children’s hospital is, I can see the sea. We stand at the top of the winding road that leads down to the main road, the boys each holding one of Harmony’s hands. She clings on to them like she is never going to let them go. Sol has his arm around my waist and we pause outside the hospital, looking out across the city.

  ‘This is like the end of a TV drama,’ Sol says.

  ‘Is it?’ I reply.

  ‘Yeah, you know, one of those ones where everyone gets to live happily ever after.’

  ‘Right. So it couldn’t be one of those walks that ends with us not having to walk miles and miles to where you parked the car?’

  ‘Yeah, none of them end like that.’

  MONDAY

  (TWO WEEKS LATER)

  Cece

  4:20 p.m. ‘Go on then, go be with your “peoples”,’ Sol tells me.

  ‘Look, is there any point in you doing the school run if you’re just going to sit in the car?’ I reply. ‘You go.’

  ‘Nope. You are not getting out of this, Cee. You’ve got to face them sometime – this is as good a time as any.’

  Today is the first day of the school reopening and the second to last week of term. They offered an abject apology as well as a refund of a term’s fees to all the parents who were prepared to stay, but not even that stopped the mass exodus of people from the school. We are still there because the boys begged us to leave them there. They were quite impressed that they’d been a part of a police investigation and that they were witnesses. They’d been gagging to go back to school so they could tell everyone how they’d been kidnapped by the head teacher.

  The deputy head teacher and most of the staff resigned with immediate effect, because they were horrified by what had been going on right under their noses.

  The school run this morning was odd. I saw Hazel, Anaya and Maxie, but from the safety of the car because Sol did the actual dropping off at the gate. And there were less than half the usual amount of children there. A lot of them, I suspected, were only there because their parents couldn’t take time off work so were waiting on places at other schools.

  The scariest part of all of it is that there is no evidence to charge Winifred Carpenter with the attempted murder of Yvonne Whidmore. It is all stuff she told me, with nothing that physically links her to the attack. Until Yvonne Whidmore wakes up, Mrs Carpenter is only being charged with grievous bodily harm (me) and false imprisonment (the boys).

  Trevor Whidmore came to see me a few days after we came home from the hospital. He wanted to apologise for calling me a horrible, horrible woman and for what his affair had led to. He seemed small and defeated and he confessed that he’d been horrified when he heard what Yvonne had been doing to her friends. ‘I’ve had to apologise to Anaya, Maxie and Hazel, too,’ he said. ‘This whole thing is an unholy mess. I don’t know what to do about Yvonne. A lot of this is my fault but she is certainly not the person I thought she was. But, then, I love her. I suppose I have to wait for her to wake up and see what happens next.’

  I’d listened but didn’t know what to say. Sol had hovered in the background, making it plain he wanted Trevor Whidmore to leave so I didn’t start to feel sorry for him. But I didn’t turf the poor man out. He was in such a state that I couldn’t. I listened, hugged him and told him I hoped things would work out. I hadn’t heard from Hazel, Anaya and Maxie and I stopped myself from asking Trevor Whidmore how they were.

  ‘You see the thing is, Sol, I’m not actually going to go out there,’ I tell my husband.

  ‘You get out of the car and go over there, or I start honking this horn and draw a lot of attention to us. Take your pick, Cee.’

  ‘Git.’

  ‘Beautiful.’

  They’re the first here, standing on the pavement outside the gates, waiting for their children, and I walk slowly across the road to go to stand on the other side of the gates, away from them.

  ‘I can’t believe what you’ll do to get out of knitting.’ Hazel.

  My face grows a smile before I turn to face her. Anaya and Maxie are with her too. I quail with the fear of what they might say to me.

  ‘Really, knitting’s not that bad, is it?’ Hazel adds.

  ‘No, no it’s not,’ I say.

  ‘Does it hurt?’ Anaya ask
s.

  ‘Yes. Especially when it comes up to my next lot of painkillers.’

  ‘Oh good,’ Maxie says. ‘I’d hate to think you got away with all of this unscathed.’

  I lower my head. ‘I’m sorry,’ I say. ‘I shouldn’t have kept what I was doing from you. I completely understand you all hating me.’

  ‘I don’t hate you,’ Anaya says. ‘I was pissed off when I found out but I don’t hate you. It was for the best. I was finally able to speak to my husband and tell him everything about me. And after that, I got to take back my house and my life from my mother-in-law.’

  ‘Same,’ Maxie adds. ‘I mean, not the mother-in-law bit. I quite like my mother-in-law. I mean the talking-to-my-husband bit. We were finally honest with each other and, you know, we’re going to start trying for another baby.’

  ‘Oh my God, that’s amazing!’ I say.

  ‘Thank you!’ she replies with a huge, face-splitting grin. ‘But don’t think I’m not pissed off with you. Because I am. In between all the love I have for you, I have a serious amount of pissed-offness in there as well.’

  ‘Well, I’m not pissed off with you,’ Hazel says.

  ‘Not even a little bit?’ I ask. I’m surprised, since she was the prickliest of them when I met them – the one least likely to want to be my friend, as I sometimes thought of her.

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘Hark at Saint Hazel over there,’ Maxie says. ‘It’s natural to be pissed off with someone who has, you know, pissed you off. You can still love them, you know.’

  ‘Why would I be pissed off with Cece when she was the one who found out that Ciaran Hamilton, aka Kier Hamill aka about a trillion other aliases, is a huge con man and psychopath who was using my identity to commit several acts of fraud including credit card theft, money laundering and deception?’

  ‘WHAT?’ Anaya and Maxie say at the same time.

  ‘Oh yeah,’ she says. She sounds confident and strong, but we can all see the strain around her eyes, the tension around her mouth. ‘The police came and arrested him today because the children are at school. They think he was working up to finding out my login details at work to try to defraud them, too. This is the man I had living with my children.’ She gulps and the flippant tone and expression slip for a moment. Then she’s back to where she was before. ‘He’s done it loads of times, apparently. Cece spoke to one of his past victims. After she did, the woman told all to the police. They were then able to track down some of his other victims and they still think there’s loads out there.’