Keep Your Friends Close

by June Taylor

  Mel studied her. ‘Well maybe she’s been spying on you more than you think. She’s completely insane.’ She tapped her phone against her chin and then checked the time on it. ‘I really have to go,’ she announced, getting to her feet.

  ‘Go? Go where?’

  Karin stood up as Mel was looking in the mirror trying to tidy her appearance.

  ‘To work. Even with this shit happening, life has to carry on. Ugh, God.’ She drew breath. ‘It’s okay, I-I’ve calmed down now.’

  ‘But Louie might still be out there,’ said Karin, speaking to Mel’s reflection.

  ‘I’ll be in the car.’ Mel was unbolting the door now. ‘If I’m not back in a few hours, then I’ve been murdered. I’ll leave it up to you to decide what happens after that.’

  ‘Mel!’

  36

  Karin

  Karin opened her hand to look at the rainbow keyring again.

  For friendship.

  Some friend.

  It was twenty past midnight. She had been lying on her bed for nearly three hours, sweating, waiting, praying for Mel to come back, trying to convince herself that Louie had nothing to do with Will’s death. But how to explain the keyring? None of it made sense. She wrote countless messages to Louie, but didn’t send any of them. They helped to make the time pass quicker, that was all.

  Hearing the front door slam, Karin raced downstairs.

  ‘Mel? Mel, is that you?’

  She didn’t answer. Not even when Karin landed in the hallway.

  ‘Oh, thank goodness you’re safe. I’ve been so worried about you.’ She could tell that Mel was still angry. ‘Look, I’ll sort it, Mel, I promise. But after the launch, okay? Just a few more days. A lot of people are depending on me for that. I can’t let them down.’

  Mel pushed past to get upstairs, shedding clothes and removing earrings as she went. She stormed into her bedroom where she changed into her pyjamas. Karin had been following her and stood waiting for Mel to speak.

  Finally, she did.

  ‘So, are you going to tell Aaron, or what? He needs to know what’s going on. Don’t you think?’

  ‘Yeah, I will,’ Karin replied softly, hoping to take the edge off Mel’s tone. ‘But only after the launch.’

  She had already considered this. Telling Aaron would inevitably lead to more trouble, which, for the time being, she simply couldn’t deal with. In all honesty, Karin was now of the opinion that she would rather take the hit on the money. So far it had caused her no end of problems, and what was stopping her making her own way in life? She didn’t even need Birgitta’s money. Persuade Louie to leave her alone and the status quo could be restored. They could all carry on their lives in peace. In reality, though, she knew Aaron would have to know at some point and he was bound to say it was inconceivable to allow Louie just to walk off with nearly a million pounds.

  And what about Will’s death?

  Karin returned to her own room, got into bed, her mind still churning things over. Suddenly Mel burst in and started climbing in on the other side.

  ‘I’m sleeping with you tonight,’ she announced. ‘Crapping it, on my own.’

  ‘Oh! Okay,’ said Karin, making room. ‘But I really don’t think Louie will show her face again.’ She was glad of Mel’s company all the same.

  ‘How can you know that?’ said Mel, bouncing onto her side, with her back to Karin.

  ‘I know Louie.’

  ‘Well I just hope you’re right. Will’s dead, remember. I just wonder what she’ll do next.’

  Karin put the pillow over her ears to block out her mother’s screams. His legs swinging. Side to side. Like a human pendulum.

  Except this time, the face is not her stepdad’s.

  It’s Will’s.

  37

  Karin

  It surprised her how hard it was to let go of these letters, despite the pain they still caused. But they were the only things Karin had left of herself, and of her dad. Birgitta, too. Her entire past. As Leeds Parish Church came into view, she pulled over and put on her hazards. It was quiet here at this time in the morning, pre-rush hour, but traffic wardens might already be on the prowl and Karin still wanted to re-read a few of the letters before disposing of them in some random bin.

  It was important to face up to what she had done, one final time. Before destroying the evidence.

  Dear Mamma

  I know what I’m about to say will make you upset and angry, but I have to tell you the truth. (We both know we’ve never got on, but that’s not really the point.)

  So here goes.

  The thing is, I allowed you to misinterpret what I’d said because it was suddenly an easy way to get back at HIM. But there was nothing going on and he really wasn’t coming on to me. Only trying to comfort me when I was upset about my dad. I let you think the worst and I’m sorry for that now. Not that I don’t still resent him being in our house and taking Dad’s place. He isn’t my dad and never will be. So all of those things still apply, and I can never forgive you for marrying him so soon after Dad died. A complete stranger! Behind my back too. Or that you were seeing him when my dad was still alive. I know it’s been going on for years and you’re just too ashamed to admit it.

  I once asked my dad if he was happy. He told me that he was your worker bee, but that he couldn’t compete with all the other butterflies. I didn’t understand what he meant at the time. I think I do now.

  None of this takes away from the fact that I allowed you to think the worst and I admit it was stupid and immature of me. I’m seventeen, not a child, as you keep on reminding me. So I take full responsibility for my actions. He’s probably told you that I told him to ‘Go hang’, but he knows I didn’t mean that! I can’t believe I said that now. I was angry.

  I’m sorry, Mamma. I’m crying as I write this letter. Are you okay? I’m going to come home at the weekend to put things right and say sorry to both of you. You will have read this by then.

  Karin.

  P.S. I hope you can both find it in you to forgive me.

  Suddenly she was back there again. The day she returned home to try and put things right. But it was already too late when she arrived. The letter had never got there in time. For once her mother had believed Karin and challenged her stepfather about the so-called allegations.

  There was a hush about Birgitta, like she was in some kind of free-fall.

  ‘You didn’t get my letter?’ Karin asked, frantic, dumping her bag in the great hallway, striding after her. But if she had got the letter then she would know that she was intending to come home for the weekend.

  To put things right.

  Finally Birgitta stopped, turned round.

  ‘What exactly did it say in this letter?’

  Her voice was a Swedish winter with its brittle clarity; her words hung off branches like pointed icicles. She beckoned Karin with her finger, the naughty child again, into the vast kitchen. Shiny and sleek in its design, silver and grey; too perfect and unrealistically clean. As uninviting as the rest of the house. She stood over Karin with her arms folded and Karin knew the drill by now. Her chair scraped on the herringbone tiles, polished to spotlight precision, and she waited for the interrogation to begin.

  Her mother’s face was so close she could feel her breath against her cheek. ‘Did he ever lay a finger on you, Karin? Did he? I want the truth now.’ She spaced out her words like she was speaking to a foreigner. Yet Karin always regarded Birgitta as the foreigner. When she spoke to her in Swedish, Karin would only ever respond in English, just to annoy her.

  ‘I never said he did in the first place. You just took it that way.’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘All I said was that he gave me the creeps and I wasn’t comfortable around him.’

  ‘We both know what you were implying, Karin, and I believed you.’

  ‘Well that’s a first.’

  Her mother slapped her face so hard she knocked her to the floor.

  ‘What
have you done?’ she yelled. Her words sliced through the air, spinning towards their target.

  Karin stood up, holding onto her cheek. The inside of her mouth was sore where her teeth had cut into the flesh and she could taste blood. She whipped round to her mother and lashed out like she had never dared to before.

  ‘Well why didn’t you comfort me then? Why?’ Tears rolled down her cheeks, dripping off her chin. She swiped them away as fast as they came. ‘I just wanted you to hold me. I wanted you to tell me it was going to be okay. I just wanted you. Not HIM. YOU!’

  ‘You disgust me. You are not my daughter. My daughter would never make such accusations.’

  ‘I didn’t accuse him of anything. You did.’

  ‘You’re not a child, Karin. You’re seventeen. You know how the world works.’

  ‘You still don’t get it, do you? I am your fucking daughter and that’s the problem. I am. You made me into this.’ The sobs punctured her chest, her throat was raw from yelling. ‘I just wanted my dad back.’

  ‘How do you think he feels after what you accused him of? What else did you say to him?’

  What was the point of holding back when Karin had already told her the truth in a letter and apologized? It would arrive at some point; she had put a stamp on it and posted it through the slot.

  ‘I told him I wanted him dead and that he could “go fucking hang!”’

  Birgitta ran into the hallway calling his name. Her voice filled the whole house, flooding corridors, staircases, through doors never opened, into rooms never used. Karin ran into the garden. She thought she had a better idea of where to find him.

  The log cabin was hers really. Built for Karin, designed by Birgitta. It was her childhood hideaway, her teenage hangout. Karin made it very clear to him that it belonged to her, but she knew he still used it when she wasn’t there. Things were always out of place, cushions arranged differently, a chair at an odd angle. But maybe he sought the same peace in it as they all had? She couldn’t really blame him for that. It had been her dad’s sanctuary too.

  Karin pushed open the heavy wooden door, expecting to find him sitting there. She was intending to go in and apologize. Make friends. Tell him it was fine for him to use her log cabin whenever he liked, because she actually didn’t mind.

  But it was a different scene altogether. She hadn’t anticipated that she would be walking in on his execution.

  In all probability he would have done it anyway. His legs would have swung loose from those steps, even if she hadn’t done what she did. And the truth was, she did think about saving him, holding his legs while she called for her mother to come. That did cross her mind. It was just that, within that split second, he deserved only one thing.

  To die.

  ‘Stay right there, Karin!’ he yelled, as soon as she had begun to enter the cabin.

  His fingers were tucked into the rope around his neck and Karin knew that the second he took his feet off those steps it would suck all the air out of him, tying a knot in his lungs.

  ‘Look I didn’t mean for you to—’

  ‘This isn’t about you, Karin. I don’t blame you and I deserved it. You should know the truth.’

  He told her details of the affair, confirmed that it had gone on for years. That her dad was aware of it and had just tolerated it. He said they built up a friendship, became like brothers. He also told Karin how much he regretted that his own family had suffered because of it, his daughter especially. ‘But the thing I’m ashamed of most of all, Karin,’ he continued, ‘is watching your dad have a heart attack right in front of me, and doing nothing to save him. Nothing. I watched him die. Selfishly all I could see was the day I could finally marry your mother. It was too late to save him when the ambulance arrived. I’d already let him die. I’m so sorry.’

  A volcano erupts inside her.

  She hears her mother shouting as the door opens behind her. But still she races towards him and kicks those steps away with such force they fly across the cabin floor and bounce off the wall, clattering onto their side. Karin watches them go, as if some magic spell has transported them that has nothing to do with her.

  The metallic clanking sounds continue long after the steps have landed. Karin stares at them, mesmerized, as they lie perfectly still again.

  Meanwhile his legs are swinging.

  Side to side.

  A human pendulum.

  There is poetry in the movement and the sway of him holds her hypnotized. Until she is aware of her mother screaming to get him down.

  By then it’s all too late. And her mother has seen.

  Everything.

  They attempt to get him down but fail, and no amount of pleading is going to get Karin out of this. ‘But what he said to me was—’; ‘What he told me was—’; ‘The reason I got so angry was—’

  Birgitta refuses to listen.

  ‘Don’t you dare come up with any more of your made-up stories, Karin. That man is dead because you accused him of something he didn’t do. And I just witnessed what you did with my own eyes.’

  ‘No, Mamma. But that’s not why he did it. He told me that—’

  ‘Get out, Karin. GET. OUT.’

  It was thanks to her mother, however, that his death was recorded as suicide. She never said a word about Karin kicking the steps away. Not a word.

  The letter arrived eventually. Too late. Obviously. But Karin knew Birgitta had read it because it was returned to her, stuck down with Sellotape. All the others Karin had written before and after this event came back too. The ones written after were unopened:

  Return to Sender.

  She stopped writing altogether after Birgitta said she would call the police if she ever tried to contact her again.

  Karin’s fingers trembled as she fanned through these letters now, picking out words, sentences. Most of which her mother had never actually read.

  Dear Mamma

  I don’t know what to say. You must know I didn’t mean to ruin your life; but I realize this doesn’t change anything and I can’t bring him back.

  I’m so grateful that you are not going to say anything about kicking the steps away. I can’t expect you to believe me; but I wish you would reconsider your decision because your words: “You are no longer my daughter” are incredibly hurtful.

  It must have been awful to see him hanging there like that. All I’m trying to say is that I’ve always found it difficult to make you listen, to make you love me, when I know you work really hard and I’ve wasted your money at that school getting drunk and skipping lessons. But me and Dad never got any say in anything. Not ever. You trampled over his feelings as much as you trampled over mine and it’s screwed me up.

  The counsellor says I have to learn to accept so I have to accept that you are no longer my mamma. You never were a mother to me. That’s the problem.

  From Karin

  P.S. Elliott the accountant has been in touch about when I turn twenty-two. Or before, if I go to university. Thank you for being so generous, I’m sure it will last a lifetime but honestly I would rather come home and be with you than take this money. I hope one day you can forgive me. Somehow I know you won’t. It makes me sad to think that you probably won’t even read this letter and it will come straight back to me like all the others. I won’t write again if that’s what you really want.

  P.P.S. This could be the last time I call you mamma. That makes me sad. Does it you? No I didn’t think it would.

  Karin tore up the pages, as many as she could get through at once. There were so many of them it made her fingers sore. She got out of the car, hunching over to the litter bin outside the parish church clutching the remnants of her past in her T-shirt. A half-empty can of Coke was spilling its guts into the rest of the rubbish. She watched the words waterfall into it, soaked up by the Coke, turning them to pulp.

  She got back in the car and drove to work. With the letters destroyed she could remember the past however she liked now.

  Or forget it comp
letely.

  As Karin neared Ashby Road, however, she heard Louie’s words again: I have copies of the letters, Karin. It’s all in there, what you did. The police have only to contact your Swedish mamma and you’re done for…

  But had Louie really done that? It was yet another thing she wouldn’t have thought her capable of.

  And then she hears Birgitta saying: Yes, that IS the truth Your Honour. My daughter DID kill her stepfather. She accused him of TERRIBLE things, told him to GO HANG and then KICKED the steps from under him.

  38

  Louie

  Louie wasn’t afraid of that old bastard. He hadn’t got the measure of her at all. As ever, the old underestimate the wisdom of the young. They think they know it all just because they’re old.

  She was sitting by the window, keeping a lookout down at street level three floors below. At the same time, flicking through photos of Karin taken on her phone in Leeds, wanting to get the best possible light in which to view them. The one taken from the café window was her particular favourite, because Karin had been coming towards her and looked natural. She was frowning, but Louie liked that. It showed her vulnerability as well as her strength, and was also the first expression she had seen on Karin’s face the night she had saved her from drowning.

  Later, Louie would turn these images into paintings. It made her sad to think this was all she had to work from.

  For now.

  Suddenly a burst of Karin’s laughter filled the room. She was dancing across the floor. Badly. Karin had no sense of rhythm but she liked to dance because she knew it amused Louie. They were so happy together. Why did she go?

  One day, soon, Karin would understand that she hadn’t betrayed her. And never would. How could she betray the one she loved? But when she did come back, Louie wanted her complete trust again and for Karin to be sure that she loved her, that she had always truly loved Louie. Otherwise it was not worth having at all.

  When she saw a car she didn’t recognize pull up outside their building, she reached for the belt that was on the kitchen unit, constantly within grabbing distance, and put it round her waist. The knife was still in its horizontal sheath that was attached to the belt.