Faking Friends

by Jane Fallon

  ‘I was thinking about calling their HR department,’ he says, brandishing a piece of toast. ‘Just to ask what it came down to. So, you know, I know what not to do next time.’

  My heart stops for a second. ‘I wouldn’t. It might make you seem a bit defensive. I’d just wait for them to realize they’ve made a terrible mistake hiring Dave. It’s bound to happen.’

  There’s a crash from another room. Jack looks momentarily startled.

  ‘What was that?’

  ‘No idea,’ he says, regaining his composure. ‘Oscar must have knocked something over.’

  ‘Give him a big kiss from me,’ I say, not letting him know that I don’t believe him for a second.

  ‘Will do,’ he says. I imagine he just wants to end the call and tell Mel she nearly gave the game away. ‘Sleep well.’

  On Tuesday night, I am strangled fourteen times, from three different camera angles, in a very smelly alley next door to the studios. I’m worn out with screaming and fighting off Ryan, the actor who, it turns out, is playing the killer. When the call sheet was issued I imagine a collective gasp went up among the cast and crew because Ryan’s character, Peterson, is the head of our fictional police precinct, boss of my fictional sister. You couldn’t make it up. Or rather you could, but why would you? Because he’s twice my size and not a little clumsy, I’m battered and bruised by the end, and several takes are ruined by him suddenly stepping out of character to say, ‘Oh God, I’m so sorry’ or ‘Did I hurt you? I hurt you, didn’t I?’ before doing it all over again.

  On Wednesday, I film a scene in a bar that immediately precedes my doomed walk home. And then all that’s left are two street shots in Midtown on Thursday night, following my journey from the exterior of the bar to the place where I’m dragged off the pavement and into the alley. Filming is a bit like assembling a jigsaw. Consecutive scenes are shot days and miles apart. You turn a corner on Forty-third Street in Manhattan and end up in an alleyway next to Silvercup Studios in Queens. You exit a bar that’s a permanent set in the studio and walk out on to Fifty-first Street. It’s a miracle anything ever cuts together but it somehow does, for the most part.

  When we finish on Thursday, at two in the morning, the first assistant shouts, ‘And that’s a wrap on the series for Amy!’ and everyone breaks out into applause, as is the custom whenever someone leaves the show. I stand there, embarrassed and tearful. Because it’s such a late finish, there is no celebratory drink or cake. I hug as many of the crew as I can, vowing to keep in touch, although we all know that never happens.

  Between filming and sleeping I carry on packing up my things, keeping only what I can cram into my two remaining cases. Later, I take all my half-drunk bottles of alcohol up to Mary, along with the contents of my freezer and some of my toiletries. She insists on taking me for dinner at our neighbourhood Italian on the Friday night – I have to leave for the airport at around three on the Saturday – and when I get there I’m so touched to see a bunch of our fellow actors, along with Morgan, one of the producers, Liam, and the costume designer, Linda, that I burst into tears. Something I seem to be doing a lot lately. They ply me with drink, insist that I’ll be missed, present me with a beautiful cashmere cardigan from Katherine, the star of the show, and a pair of the cutest PJs I’ve ever seen – pink gingham shorts with a white lace trim and a pink vest top – and a soft grey throw from the rest of them.

  ‘I told them we had to get you something you could fit in your case,’ Mary says as she hands them over.

  Then they all accompany me back to my apartment and Mary has to go up to hers to retrieve all the alcohol so we can have a final toast. It’s a perfect night and one that I know I’ll treasure.

  Once they’ve all gone, I stand at the window with all the lights out and savour my view for the last time.

  14

  Kat and Greg have offered to put me up for a couple more days while I try and get my new flat straight. Or, at least, while I attempt to decontaminate it just enough so that what’s left in there won’t kill me. I don’t want to take advantage, though, so, when I arrive at their place just after eight on Sunday morning, having tossed and turned in my uncomfortable aeroplane seat all night, and find Chris and Lewis sitting in their front room, I’m so grateful I almost forget how tired I am.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ I hug my brother and his other half in turn.

  ‘Chris and Lew have hired a van,’ Kat says, before either of them can get a word in. ‘They came up last night.’

  ‘What she said,’ Chris says, laughing.

  ‘How long are you here for?’

  ‘We have to go back this afternoon. We’re both working tomorrow. So we figured, shove as much stuff in the van as we can, do a couple of trips to the tip and then drive back.’

  ‘That’s …’ I start to say, and then I don’t manage to say any more because I break into noisy tears yet again. It’s so sweet of them to organize this behind my back, of Chris and Lew to give up their weekend, of Kat and Greg to put them up. Plus, I’m tired and clammy and befuddled from the overnight flight.

  ‘I told you she wouldn’t want to see us,’ Lew says, and that makes me laugh, so now there are tears and snot and God knows what else everywhere.

  Chris steers me to the sofa and Greg plonks a cup of tea in front of me. ‘Drink this, give us the keys and go to bed,’ he says. ‘We’ll get going. I doubt we’re going to be able to clear it all, but we can take the big stuff.’

  I stand up. Sit down again. Stand up. ‘No, I want to come. I can’t let you come all this way and then leave you to it.’

  It’s only then that I notice Kat is wearing dungarees and a polka-dotted scarf tied around her head with a big knot in the front. ‘Oh God, you look so cute!’ I say, and that starts me off all over again.

  ‘Well, now you can really see the mould,’ Lew says when we’ve filled the van for the first time. ‘So that’s nice.’ I’ve been to the café on the corner and bought coffees, although Chris insisted on paying.

  I always thought rooms were supposed to look bigger without clutter, but the living-room-stroke-kitchen almost seems smaller without the sofa, Formica-covered kitchen table, four rickety chairs and an upright cooker coated in God knows what – I made Chris and Greg put on some rubber gloves I’d cleverly thought to stuff in my bag at the last minute, promising Kat I’d replace them – before they touched it. Behind the cooker there was what can only be described as a slightly smaller model of the iceberg that sunk the Titanic made of grease. I can’t even look at it without heaving. I had thought about trying to save the fridge – I really can’t afford to buy a new one – but, when we opened it up it was such a mess of old food and rust I decided it would be too much of a health hazard even to think about cleaning it out. Also gone are an MDF cupboard, an ancient TV and its stand, an armchair and, finally, the carpet, which we rolled up, capturing all sorts of other detritus inside. I think it had a pattern on it. I couldn’t swear on it in court. It might just have been dirty.

  ‘Looks better already,’ Chris says, ever cheerful. Nobody has it in them to answer.

  The euphoric mood that overtook us all as we hurtled up the Finchley Road in the van – Kat, Greg and I bouncing around in the back, squealing at every bump – and which was still going strong as we parked up conveniently right outside, had dissipated as soon as I opened the door to the flat. The fusty, sulphury, mouldy smell was overwhelming. I imagine nice Fiona the agent must have got up there early and let some air in the other day, as it had definitely not been so bad then. Because the sun isn’t out today, the place looked dingy and dark. The fact that the windows have been practically rendered opaque by years of grime from the traffic outside didn’t help.

  ‘Right. Big stuff first. Come on.’ Kat had grabbed one end of the sofa, galvanizing us all into action as we stood there speechless, taking it in.

  Now we all stand around drinking our coffee because, even though we’re knackered, we’re all too scared to sit
on the floor. I’d love to be able to say we found a stunning wooden floor under the carpet, just waiting to be sanded back and polished up but, sadly, what we found were nailed down sheets of grubby hardboard, so that’s what I’m left with.

  Because only two people can fit in the van now it’s loaded, Lew and Greg head for the nearest tip, leaving the rest of us to start moving stuff around in the bedroom.

  ‘When are you moving in?’ Chris says as we flip the mattress on its side and attempt to shift it out into the hall, touching as little of it as we can. It weighs a ton.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I say. ‘I need to get a bed. But I don’t want to impose on Kat and Greg for any longer than I have to.’

  ‘You’re not imposing,’ Kat says. I’d almost forgotten she was there. All I can see is the knot of a polka-dot scarf above the rim of the mattress.

  By the time Lew and Greg get back, we’ve moved all the large items through to the hall and they’re stacked up in a line leading to the top of the stairs. Bed, wardrobe, chest of drawers, bedside table and another carpet. When the van is loaded, there’s still space so we all run up and down the stairs, picking up anything we can and throwing it in. By the time it’s full to the roof, the flat is still a long way off empty. I force the four of them to let me buy them a sandwich lunch (after we’ve all doused ourselves in the antibac hand gel Kat produces from the depths of her huge bag) and then Chris and Lew are on their way home via a second visit to the tip, leaving the three of us to stagger to the bus stop.

  ‘Have you got any idea how much I love the pair of you?’ I say as I hug them goodbye.

  ‘Looking good, babe.’

  We’re FaceTiming. I’ve decided I’m not going to be able to get away with pretending I don’t have enough reception for pictures every time, so today I organized a tiny area of Kat and Greg’s spare room so that it looks like my New York bedroom, if you don’t look very hard. It’s basically white pillows against a white wall, but I’ve added Mr T, my battered old teddy, who made the journey across the Atlantic both ways with me. (On the way out, Mel – who, by the way, has no sentimentality where possessions are concerned because, being the sole focus of her parents’ life, she basically got nice new things whenever she asked for them, which was often – had said, ‘You could fit another pair of jeans and a couple of tops in the space that thing is taking up in your case.’ She was helping me pack, and I was trying to keep a lid on my nervous excitement. Partly because I was scared I might bottle out at the last minute but also because I didn’t want to rub my good fortune in her face. She’d insisted on it just being me and her, a girls’ night in. Because she wanted to spend as much time with me as she could before I left. Or so I had thought. Maybe she just wanted to make sure I really did go.) I’ve also propped up a small cushion that Chris and Lew sent me for my birthday last year – with a cute London skyline embroidered in white on a pink background – which I always kept on my bed.

  The bed frame isn’t the same, of course, so before I call I make sure the pillows are propped up high behind me and, in any case, they aren’t a million miles apart, both pale wood, so if he does see a tiny bit I don’t think it’s a deal breaker. I have to keep the picture tight, obviously. If he suddenly asks me to pan round the room for some reason, I’m screwed.

  It’s eight in the morning in New York, lunchtime in London, so light in both places. Kat is so paranoid about me giving myself away that she’s set a small digital alarm clock to Eastern Time and propped up a big note behind it that says ‘USA’. I laughed at her when she did it but, actually, I’m so nervous I find myself looking across the room at it several times as we speak.

  Before I called I got back into my PJs – not the new ones, I thought I should go for something he’d recognize, so I went for the cute light grey T-shirt top with a pattern of orange and white foxes. For authenticity, I also put on the matching bottoms, not that he’ll see them. Thankfully, I hadn’t yet got round to putting any make-up on so I just rubbed a bit of mascara under my eyes as if I’d been sleeping (I always wake up with panda eyes. Mel, on the other hand has always been one of those women who wakes up fresh as a daisy, her pale complexion pristine), piled my hair up on top of my head and then pulled a few handfuls of it down again, and I was ready. Kat and Greg were both out at work so I knew I had the place to myself.

  I checked the picture as I waited for him to pick up. Me, pillows, Mr T’s right eye and ear, London skyline cushion nestled behind me. To say the whole thing was a palaver would be to do the word a disservice, but I’ve decided I need to do this only once or twice a week, and then he won’t question the times I claim to have bad reception and we have to make do with voice-only calls. And I texted him earlier to check he would be around, so I knew I hadn’t done all this for nothing. I’d replaced the US mobile the production company had kindly provided for me with another registered to Mary’s address before I left: I was terrified that, otherwise, the ringtone would give away the fact that I wasn’t in New York. It’s a stupid extra expense and one I’ll ditch as soon as all this is over.

  Jack is outside a café. He’s looks as if he’s pleased to see me but, thankfully, the warzone noise levels on the street mean we can’t talk about anything much beyond the ‘Are you okay?’s and ‘How’s work?’s.

  ‘Not going in till late today?’ he shouts as a bus rumbles past.

  I screw my face up. ‘Split day.’ He knows I hate those days that are neither day shoot or night shoot but somewhere in between, meaning you don’t get either a whole morning or a whole evening to yourself.

  ‘Bad luck.’

  There’s a hiatus where neither of us speaks. I wrack my brain for an interesting anecdote and come up pitifully short. It’s strange. I used to look forward to our conversations – however rushed, however banal, however frustrating because of bad reception or interruptions – all day. They were a tiny connection with my real life, the one I couldn’t wait to return to, eventually. Now I feel as if I’m talking to an acquaintance. And one I don’t even like that much. I can’t believe we ever had so little to say to one another.

  ‘I might get another hour’s sleep in before I get up.’

  ‘You do that, beautiful,’ he says, and I wait to see if the suggestive tone of his voice sparks anything in me. Nothing.

  ‘Oh,’ I say, before we hang up. I want to test his reaction. ‘Have you spoken to Mel? I haven’t heard from her for a few days.’

  I watch him closely to see if he gives anything away. Not a flicker. He’s missed his calling. There must be a way you can turn ‘highly skilled at lying’ into a career.

  ‘No. But then I rarely do. She’s probably busy at work, or getting the flat ready to sell. They’re putting it on the market this week, aren’t they?’

  Are they? I know that Sam wants her out, wants them to be able to split the profits and move on as soon as possible but, last time I spoke to her, she was holding out.

  ‘Are they? When did she tell you that?’

  And there it is. The tiniest flinch. ‘Must have been at the party. That was the last time I spoke to her.’

  ‘That’s odd, because I talk to her all the time, and she hasn’t said anything. Maybe you heard her wrong.’

  ‘Probably,’ he says, looking shifty. ‘I was probably too overexcited that you were home to listen properly.’

  I spend the afternoon trying and failing to find Mel’s flat for sale online.

  ‘I’ve got a great idea,’ I say to Kat when she gets home from showing a client round what, to all intents and purposes, sounds like an actual palace. I’ve spent the afternoon painting their bathroom walls as a surprise, because she had showed me the paint they’d bought weeks ago but hadn’t had the chance to use, and I thought I could at least try to repay them for their kindness. Luckily, it’s tiny. And more than half of it is tiled.

  ‘You are kidding,’ she says when I tell her what it is. I showed her the bathroom first as a softener and it worked, because she almost shed a
tear. With happiness, I should add. Not because my cutting in is so appalling.

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘Shit.’

  She looks confused. ‘Aren’t you just going to confront them both now you’ve got somewhere to move into?’

  I’ve been thinking about this a lot. Originally, all I wanted was somewhere to run to. I could drop my bomb and leave. Now, though, it doesn’t feel like enough. I can’t bear the thought of Mel looking at my life – jobless, boyfriendless, living in a dump – and feeling smug. As if she’s won.

  ‘Not yet. I need to sort myself out a bit more first. I don’t want to give her the satisfaction of thinking my life’s shit –’

  ‘Hardly …’ Kat interrupts. But I’m on a roll.

  ‘And if I can fuck her about a bit in the meantime …’

  Kat smiles. ‘Sounds good to me.’

  Which is how come we’re back outside the flat the next morning, hiding in the bushes in the park across the road, waiting for Jack and Mel to leave for work. I had to make Kat change before we left home because she was hardly going to blend into the foliage in her white-spotted skirt with a bright red bow in her black hair, looking for all the world like Minnie Mouse’s angry sister. So now she’s channelling Secret Squirrel in a chic brown mac with the collar turned up and sunglasses, and we’re trying to look inconspicuous drinking our takeaway coffees while lurking in the drizzle.

  We’ve been there for the best part of forty-five minutes, and I’m considering sitting down on the damp grass, my back is hurting so much, when we see the front door open. Kat digs her nails into my arm so hard I let out a yelp, and I see Melissa’s red head whip round like that girl in The Exorcist, but then Jack says something to her and her focus is back on him. I watch as they walk towards the Tube, him laughing at something she’s saying. If I didn’t know better, I’d say they made a good couple.

  We wait a few more minutes just to make sure neither of them suddenly remembers something they’ve forgotten. We’re about to cross the road when the front door opens again and my downstairs neighbours, Bev and Julian, emerge.