by Jane Fallon
‘Ta-dah!’ Simon reappears, brandishing a bottle of wine and two glasses in one hand and a damp J Cloth in the other. He proceeds to wipe the thick years of cobwebs off the chairs.
We sit down, heads up towards the sun like a pair of hothouse flowers.
‘I wish I’d discovered this sooner,’ I say.
A couple of days later we’re walking on Primrose Hill. Now my life is getting back on track, I’ve started to feel guilty that I haven’t told Simon the whole truth. I think, when we first met, I never imagined that this might be a relationship that would turn into something (not to mention the fact that I thought he’d run a mile if I tried to explain that I was technically still engaged to another man but holding off throwing the ring back in his face until I’d carried out some retribution, mostly on his mistress, my former best friend. That’s an episode of Jeremy Kyle right there. I wouldn’t have dated me). Now, though, there’s no denying we are a couple, albeit one still in the early stages. I could wait it out, play my big reveal to Jack and Mel once my new job has started and I’m living in a lovely new flat with, hopefully, a shiny new boyfriend on my arm, hope Simon never hears about it – and, being rational, why would he? But that doesn’t seem right. It doesn’t seem fair.
‘Can I tell you something?’ I say as we reach the summit, me a bit out of breath. I’ve decided I just have to do it, throw it out there and hope he doesn’t write me off as some kind of bunny-boiling loon. I don’t know why I picked today, but it feels like now or never.
He puts an arm around me and we head for an unoccupied bench. ‘Of course. Is everything okay?’
‘It is. Definitely.’ I sit down and swivel to face him. I want his full attention. He’s looking so concerned, I almost back out.
I exhale loudly. ‘Okay. This is going to sound crazy but bear with me …’
I start by reminding him about Mel and Jack. I want him to realize this is about so much more than a cheating boyfriend. I can see he wants me to cut to the chase but I need to make sure the groundwork is solid. I have to keep going, get to the end of my story. Then I babble on, about keeping what I discovered to myself, wanting to get back at them, to make them hurt like I did. This is the bit that makes me most uncomfortable. It’s the part that paints me in a bad light. So I gloss over the details of what I actually did – he can ask me later if he wants to – and get to the part about realizing I didn’t care any more, that the petty acts of revenge rang hollow because I’m not that kind of person.
He’s looking a bit confused, and who can blame him? ‘So you’ve told them now that you know?’
Here goes nothing. ‘No. Not yet …’
His eyebrows shoot up, giving away how much of a shock this is. I want to reach out a hand and stroke his face, but it doesn’t seem right. Now I’m in the middle of this, it’s clear to me that, more than anything, I don’t want this relationship to end. ‘Jack still thinks you’re engaged?’
‘Yes. Although how he thinks that when he’s doing what he’s doing –’
‘When were you planning on telling him?’
It’s a good question. I try to explain that I needed to get my life together first. That I didn’t want them – her, let’s be honest – to think I’m a loser with no work, living in a shitty, damp-infested flat in the middle of nowhere. That, way more than Jack’s, it’s Mel’s reaction that matters.
‘She’s always thought she was so superior to me,’ I say, realizing as I say it that I sound about fifteen years old. ‘She hates that I went into acting when she couldn’t get a break but, so long as I was struggling, getting bits and pieces here and there, just enough to keep me going, it was okay. Once I got the job on Murder in Manhattan, it was too much for her. I mean, what kind of friend resents your successes? I couldn’t bear for her to be gloating that it had all gone wrong. Not after everything else …’
‘I have to admit she sounds lovely,’ he says, and I see a glimmer of hope.
‘So as soon as I’m allowed to go public about my new job, then I’m going to hit them with it. And then that’s it. I’ll never have to see either of them again, and I don’t care. I really don’t. The best revenge is living well, and all that, remember?’
He leans back and looks out over the fields to the high-rises in the distance. I’ve always loved this view. Today, I’ve hardly even noticed it.
‘I know it’s fucked up –’
‘So, what, I’m just a part of the plan? You turn up with a new job, a new flat and a new boyfriend?’
‘No! You were a surprise. To me, I mean. I wasn’t looking … you’ve never been anything to do with this …’
‘I don’t know, Amy. It makes me uncomfortable.’
‘Please …’ I say. ‘It’s really important that you know I didn’t start seeing you as part of some plan …’
‘And you want us to carry on while Jack still thinks you’re with him? I don’t know …’
‘It’s just for two more weeks, max. Or I could tell them now – it just wouldn’t have the impact I wanted. In fact, why don’t I do that? Just get it over with …’
‘No. I can understand why it’s important to you to show that that you’ve moved on. That you can be successful without them in your life. I get that. I’m just not sure if I want to be a part of it …’
I blink back tears. I’ve brought this on myself, but all I want is for Simon to say we can try and get past it. I hadn’t realized until today how much I like him, how much I want to keep on seeing him. But I know I have to give him time to take it all in, so I keep quiet.
‘I just need to think it all through,’ he says, standing. ‘It’s a lot …’
‘I know.’
‘I’m going to walk back to the site. Are you okay to …?’
I nod.
‘I’ll call you soon,’ he says, leaning down and planting a kiss on the top of my head. I watch as he walks back down the hill.
I’m still sitting there, gazing off into the distance, thinking about how I’ve fucked the whole thing up, trying to summon the energy for the long journey home, when I’m vaguely aware of hearing my name. Something about the voice sounds familiar.
‘It is you, isn’t it?’
I look up, squinting. It takes me a moment to recognize the face. The shaggy hair has gone, replaced by a severe short cut, and the roundness of youth has given way to a square jaw, but the puppyish smile is exactly the same.
‘Tom?’
‘I recognized you from miles off,’ he says, out of breath. ‘But that’s probably because I saw you on the telly the other night. Congrats, by the way.’
‘I can’t believe it … how are you?’
‘May I?’ He indicates the bench and, when I nod, he sits down next to me. He’s wearing a suit, a stylish one, well fitted. His brown leather shoes gleam like a pair of mirrors.
‘I’m well.’ He indicates his suit. ‘Lawyer – can you tell?’ He pulls an apologetic face.
‘Around here?’
‘Marylebone. I just like to walk up here when I need to clear my head. How are you?’
‘I’m … well, you know what I’m doing by the sound of it …’
He nods. ‘I’ve seen you a few times in things. This one’s big, though, right?’
‘Best part I’ve had. Definitely …’ I tail off. I don’t want to go into the details. And, thankfully, he doesn’t ask.
‘Marvellous,’ he says, and I’m transported back twenty years to when that was his go-to word.
‘So … what have you been up to for the past twenty years?’ I say, and he laughs.
‘Oh, you know. Married. Divorced. Two kids.’
‘Lovely. The kids bit, I mean. How old?’
‘Twelve and ten. They live with their mum most of the time. But I’m just up the road so I see a lot of them. You?’
‘None of that. I would have loved to have had kids but, you know, the timing was never right. I almost got married but …’
‘Funny how you were the
only one who persevered. With the acting.’
‘Kieron’s a theatre director, isn’t he?’ I remember seeing his name once, about five years ago. He had some avant garde, experimental piece on at a festival somewhere.
‘On and off,’ Tom says. ‘He’s his own worst enemy, really. Refuses to do anything commercial.’
‘You’re still in touch?’
‘Of course.’
‘And Alistair?’
‘Works in publishing. Non-fiction. Married to Siggy, three boys.’
It feels almost unreal that my friends have had whole lives since I saw them last, which I know nothing about. ‘Great.’
I wonder if he’s waiting for me to ask about Pia, but I’m pretty confident he’ll know less than I do. She walked away from us all and never seemed to look back.
Tom stands up as quickly as he sat down. ‘Meeting at two,’ he says, looking at his watch. ‘Would you like to catch up sometime? Lunch or something?’
‘I’d love to,’ I say. Who can resist the chance to get an update on their old friends’ lives? Tom fishes in his inside pocket, brings out a card and hands it to me.
‘What’s your number?’
I tell him, he puts it into his phone and then he’s lolloping off down the hill. Despite how miserable I feel, I can’t help but smile as I watch him. From the back – if you substituted the suit for jeans and a baggy shirt and grew the hair – he looks exactly the same.
I tried to concentrate on work as I hurtled through my third year. We all did. Well, those of us who were still studying. But none of us was very enthusiastic. Kieron, who had graduated in the summer, had already started film school, and Alistair – like Kieron, a year ahead of me – was winging it. He had several family-friend connections in the industry and he was pretty confident he could at least get through a few doors and put himself in contention for things. Meanwhile, he was working in a fast-food restaurant and bringing home leftovers every night for the rest of us. Pia and Tom were both talking about trying to get into some kind of post-grad drama course. I couldn’t afford to study any more and I had zero influential family members so I was trying to formulate a plan that would enable me to carry on doing what I loved. I had no plan B. Nothing else that interested me.
I hadn’t seen Mel since the middle of the summer. She’d called me when she got back from her holiday and regaled me with stories about the horror of vacationing with your parents when all you wanted to do was go out and get wasted.
‘We should totally go away together next summer,’ she said, and I’d agreed, even though I knew that there was no way I would have the money or – if I was being totally honest with myself – the inclination. I was eager for my life to start. I didn’t want to waste weeks of it sitting on a beach feeling as if time was slipping away.
She didn’t bring up what had happened the last time we’d seen each other, and neither did I, although any mention by me of my housemates was met with a wall of stony indifference. We kept in touch mostly by email, hers full of stories of the triumphs she was having at Centre Stage, mine blandly describing a few anodyne events I thought wouldn’t piss her off.
So I was surprised but delighted when, just before Christmas, she announced that she was going to come up for the weekend. It coincided with a Saturday night when we were going to have a house party. To be fair, we had these quite regularly (mostly through laziness: why go out when you could make everyone come to you?), so it wasn’t a big deal. I figured she would get lost in the crowd; better that than a weekend of her pointedly avoiding spending any time with my other friends. And besides, I missed her. Of course, she could be maddening, but when she wasn’t around the world felt like a duller, more ordinary place. As if all the colour had been leached away.
She arrived on the Friday night, bearing four bottles of wine to contribute to our party supplies. I was thrilled to see she was on her best behaviour, making a real effort to talk to Pia in the kitchen, asking what she could do to help before tomorrow, offering to go and find some Christmas decorations and make a big, colourful display. This offer was accepted eagerly, which sorted out any doubt about how she and I could spend most of Saturday.
I had already decided we would go out for a drink on the Friday, just the two of us. I was anxious about her not wanting to spend too much time sitting around with my housemates. But she claimed tiredness and a desire to veg out so, after a while, we took one of the bottles of wine and two glasses up to my room.
‘Did Pia move out?’ she said, looking around.
‘Her and Alistair are a couple now, didn’t I tell you? So they’re sharing his room downstairs.’
‘Oh, yes. He’s nice but dim, right?’ She flopped down on Pia’s old bed, which was now dressed with cushions and a throw, while I fussed about with the wine.
I laughed, although her comment wasn’t at all fair. ‘Hardly dim, he’s heading for a 2:1.’
‘You know what I mean.’
‘He’s a sweetheart.’
‘God knows what they see in each other,’ she said. ‘I mean, she’s such a fucking know-all and he’s, well … I mean, he’s good-looking, but he’s so … what’s the word … parochial.’
‘Mel, we come from a village outside Maidenhead with one pub, one shop and a village hall. In what way are we not parochial?’
She laughed, throwing her head back in that way that I now realize was an affectation. ‘Parochial is an attitude.’
I wanted to change the subject away from Pia and Alistair before we would have to rehash Pia’s whole faux pas about Centre Stage. I knew Mel was still smarting from that, even though it had been months, and I didn’t want her to work herself back up into a cloud of righteous anger.
‘Oh, Chris is applying to King’s. Did I tell you? So if he gets in, he’ll be in London as well.’ Mel loves Chris. I think partly it’s because, when she first knew him, he was only eight and completely smitten by her. He used to pick flowers from our garden, tie them in a posy and present them to her as if he was about to ask her to be his prom date. And Mel has always loved to be worshipped.
‘I know,’ she said with a smile, Pia hopefully forgotten. ‘I bumped into him in the Cross Keys the other week. His exact words were, “I need to get out of this fucking shithole and into the real world.” ’
‘Ha!’
She topped up her wine and then leaned over and topped up mine, although I’d hardly made a dent in it. She, by contrast, had swigged the whole glass in record time.
‘I’m still intending to move up when I finish, obviously. I think … this is tricky … but I think I’ll have to leave Sylvia’s and get on the books of one of the big London agents. She’s been fantastic, but she doesn’t really know about big-league stuff.’
‘Mmm, you’re probably right.’ Now would have been the time to share my own anxiety about finding an agent. I knew from watching my fellow Dram Soc members over the past couple of years that the thing to do was to try and interest them in coming to see a final-year show. Easier said than done, of course, when they were going to be using what precious time they had to scout out the talent leaving all the prestigious drama schools. But one person had been picked up that way last year (though not Alistair), two the year before, so it wasn’t hopeless. Since Mel came to my first-year performance in The Deep Blue Sea, though, we had still never discussed my ambitions. As elephants in rooms go, this one was more like a woolly mammoth. I opted to let it go.
She stretched her long, jean-clad legs out in front of her. ‘I’ll probably try Fraser Michaels first,’ she said, mentioning one of the oldest and biggest. ‘Have you heard of them?’
Who hasn’t? ‘I think so,’ I said.
In typical Mel fashion, she suddenly sat up and changed tack. ‘You are coming home for Christmas, aren’t you?’
‘Of course. Not until Christmas Eve, though. I’m working.’
‘Thank God,’ she said dramatically. ‘You have no idea how shit it is without you around.’
&
nbsp; On Saturday, we hit the shops. That is to say, we went to Poundland. Mel had her credit card, which allowed her access to her mum and dad’s account, and was all for heading to the Harrods Christmas department, but I didn’t think expensive baubles would go down half so well as kitsch, and I managed to persuade her that we could have more fun with quantity, not quality. Over breakfast, she had been friendly with Pia and Alistair as they pottered around in a cloud of domestic bliss, making toast and tea. I could tell that Pia was terrified of saying the wrong thing again, but Mel seemed to be on a charm offensive and she made a real effort.
We came back with so much tinsel and bags full of paper chains and shiny stars and huge crêpe Santa masks that it took us the whole afternoon to decorate. You couldn’t walk two feet without something festive hitting you in the face. We found a radio station playing Christmas hits and cranked up the volume. By five o’clock, we were almost hysterical with anticipation, as if we were ten rather than twenty years old.
‘Fucking hell.’ I heard the front door close and, somewhere through the fog of silver and red, Kieron’s voice. ‘Santa came.’
‘Good, huh?’ I said, peering through two strands of angel hair.
‘Fab.’
He wrapped me up in a hug. Kieron was famed for his hugs. ‘Oh, hi, Mel.’
She gave him a mega-watt smile. ‘Hi. Happy Christmas.’
He leaned over and kissed her on the cheek. The front door opened again almost immediately and Alistair burst in, triumphantly holding aloft a bag of burgers and fries that had sat on the counter for more than their permitted time.
‘The hunter has brought the spoils!’ he shouted, to no one in particular. We always fell on him like a starving pack of wolves when he came home from a shift. Then he stopped in his tracks. ‘Jesus. It looks amazing in here.’
‘Let’s have a drink to celebrate before we start getting ready,’ I heard Pia say from the direction of the kitchen, although I couldn’t see her through the tinsel.