I didn’t do parties any more. Not since Alex; not since the summer. But your best friend doesn’t get married and go across the world to live every day. And I’d hidden away as long as I dared, concealed behind my injuries, wallowing in my pain and misery, trying not to remember things best forgotten. Now Charlie had started to lose patience; he was on the phone almost daily. If I didn’t go back to work soon, I’d have no job to go to – whatever deal we’d made.
The truth was, I had to start facing up to a whole load of things. How long could I stay in Greenwich, staring up at the ceiling of my father’s house, cocooned by his presence? What I really wanted to do was run away to Cornwall, take Digby and disappear to my haven at Pendarlin, but this was real life. I had to get on with living.
I was staring glumly at the peaked and shiny mountains of perfection in Bel’s wedding-cake book and realising I’d probably bitten off more than all the dried fruit I could ever chew with my rash offer, when the phone rang. I thought it might provide escape, but it was Charlie.
‘I need to see you,’ he purred.
‘I’m about to attempt Bel’s wedding cake,’ I demurred, but the slice of steel through his tone told me I had little choice.
‘Order yourself a car and meet me at the club at five,’ he said, and hung up before I could protest again. I had a quick slug of the cooking brandy and relinquished my still-pristine apron, admittedly with a flicker of relief.
It was already dark by the time my cab pulled up in Greek Street. As I hauled myself onto the pavement outside Soho House, a Lycra-clad courier whizzed by, frantically ringing his bell at a young girl stumbling, half-dressed, across the road. A man very much like a woman, resplendent in white fur, was redoing his cherry lipstick in the shop window next to me. Signing the driver’s docket, my crutch slipped from my grasp; the she-man bowed down to retrieve it for me. As I reached to take it, to thank him for his kindness, a huge silver four-by-four slowed behind him. For one tiny moment the tinted passenger window became transparent beneath the bright lights of the shops. A pale face, turning slowly, all ghostly behind the glass.
Alex. I thought that it was Alex.
I staggered. The she-man thrust the crutch into my outstretched hand – but she wasn’t quick enough. I’d lost my balance now, whacking my foot so hard against the kerb as I flailed that tears of pain sprang to my eyes. The she-man caught me before I fell. He smelled of something I recognised; something like my mother. Chanel. For one brief moment I relaxed against this stranger’s soft chest. It was the first time a man’s arms, any arms, in fact, had encircled me since my father’s anxious hug at the hospital, since my days of recovery, and I savoured the warmth. Then I remembered myself.
‘Thank you.’ I pulled away, embarrassed. He winked one beady spider-lashed eye at me. ‘Don’t mention it, ducks. I love a cuddle in the afternoon.’
By the time I found Charlie in the room they called The Library (no books that I could see, but a few very drunk actors attempting to read the over-priced wine list), I was thoroughly unnerved. With every hobble, Alex’s shadow stepped beside me, until I was almost pleased to see the very real Charlie. He was looking kinglike though hardly regal in a great leather armchair, his hooded eyes half-shut against the smoke from his inevitable cigar as he browsed through the latest issue of Broadcast. Only his man-tan gave him away. Just the wrong side of classy.
‘Fantastic pic, don’t you think, darling?’ He flicked open the industry paper to show off a photo of himself and Renee smiling sickeningly at one another.
‘DOUBLE-DECKER PAIR CELEBRATE RECOMMISSION OF RATINGS WINNER’, the headline declared.
‘It’d be funny if they found out her name was really Enid, wouldn’t it?’ I mused, reaching for the glass of Krug Charlie had just poured.
He frowned. ‘Would it?’
I met his eye. ‘I think so.’ Images of Alex still floated through my mind. I tried to concentrate. ‘So, what are we celebrating?’
‘I’d say that was obvious, darling, wouldn’t you?’ Charlie really was looking spectacularly orange today. He must have bumped up his shares in St Tropez. ‘So, when can we expect you in the office?’
‘Soon.’ I took such an enormous sip the bubbles shot straight up my nose.
‘Fantastic.’ He ran a hand through his hair, his signet ring glinting under the light. ‘How soon? It has been almost five months now, my darling.’
The champagne hit the spot. I forgot Alex for a moment; I smiled. ‘Oh, you know. Very soon.’
‘Soon enough for this?’ He flung a folder into my lap. Doing Me Wrong: You’re Dumped, heralded the title page.
‘What’s this?’
‘Fantastic idea, darling. You’ll love it. It can be your victorious return to form.’ He relit his cigar. ‘The idea is the opposite of the “Proposal on-air” show. This is the “You’re Dumped on-air” show.’
I stared at him. ‘You’re joking, right?’
He toasted me, then knocked the drink back in one and poured again. ‘Darling, I don’t joke, you know that. It’s a fantastic idea. If it takes off, it’ll be the talk of the town.’
‘Charlie, this is not what we agreed.’ An icy sweat broke out across my forehead; the champagne and cigar smoke combining to make me feel suddenly quite sick. ‘You said that if I –’
‘I know what I said, darling. But look, I’m sure it was one of your ideas anyway. From the summer. You knew the deal then.’
Confused, I stood up – rather too suddenly. Charlie caught my crutch neatly in his orange hand.
‘For God’s sake, Charlie.’ I grabbed it from him. ‘You’re completely reneging on –’
‘Such passion, darling.’ Charlie smirked. ‘That’s what I love about you. That’s why you’ve got to do this programme. Sit down, there’s a good girl.’
‘Charlie, I can’t do it. It’s utter crap. You know that.’
‘Just this once.’ His eyes were wolf-like now, slits behind the cloud of sweet and sickening smoke. ‘You still owe me.’
‘But it won’t be just this once. And I did the trauma show because I owed you.’
‘You did the trauma show because it gave you closure, darling. Remember?’
‘Did I?’ I gazed at him.
‘Absolutely. It was your idea to do it, my darling.’
‘Was it?’ Why did my brain ache so much every time I grappled with memories of recent events?
‘And you have my promise.’
‘I already had your promise, I’m sure.’ I glared at him.
‘Please do it, Maggie.’ He stopped smiling and checked his vulgar watch. ‘Or maybe we should talk about the show you really don’t want to do.’
I went limp with misery. ‘You can’t do this, Charlie.’
‘Can’t do what, darling? I’m just giving your career a little helping-hand. God knows you need it after your most recent fuck-up. Work with me, Maggie.’
‘You’re playing games,’ I whispered miserably.
His face was closing down. I tried a different tack, fighting to keep my voice level. ‘Look, I know I did something stupid’ (I just wished I could remember exactly what it was) ‘but it was only the one mistake, wasn’t it? You know you can rely on me.’
‘Perhaps I could – once.’ Charlie studied the end of his cigar intently. ‘But you let me down so badly.’
We gazed at one another, the memories I’d blotted out shifting slightly in the sands of time, reshaping, struggling to the surface. I could feel the anger driving through my bones. ‘But I’ve been waiting all this time for the True Lives docs –’
But Charlie had already switched off.
‘You know, you’re quite beautiful when you’re cross,’ he mused. ‘Though that mop needs a thoroughly good cut. Why don’t you get it seen to?’ His mobile rang. ‘John Frieda’s not bad.’ He stubbed out the cigar and picked something out of a back tooth, snapping open the phone.
Before I could respond, an obsequious waiter had ushered him
to the landing where it wasn’t quite so hallowed: media-whores milling, fat-cats in suits who spoke too loudly and under-dressed girls who simpered, fingers in ears against all the other loud and self-important chat.
Numbly I stared at Broadcast. I was sure Renee’s eye-bags had been doctored. Then Charlie was back, swinging his cashmere camel coat from the back of the chair, draping it over his shoulders like he was in The bloody Godfather. Well. He was a bloody hood, for all his supposed charm.
‘As soon as that cast is off, back in the office, okay, darling?’ It wasn’t an invitation. Charlie raised one perfectly manicured finger and slowly, slowly stroked my cheek. ‘You know I need you, Maggie. I miss you. You’re the best, despite your little balls-up. But it could be your final chance, darling. Crosswell would see to that in one fell swoop. You do remember Sam, don’t you? I’ll see you at work.’
When I dragged myself outside again, I searched for Alex everywhere – but there were just early revellers, beautiful toned gay men, excited theatre-goers. My ghost was gone.
Chapter Six
The day after my plaster-cast finally came off, Bel and Johnno got married. I’d never seen Bel looking quite so alive, as she stood smiling on the Registry steps on the Kings Road waiting to go in, clutching onto Johnno under a great scarlet umbrella like they’d never ever part, white velvet collar turned up high, setting off her blonde urchin cut and her beaming pixie face, a proper winter bride. And Johnno, oh God, he looked so proud, small and stocky but still towering over Bel’s birdlike form. Hannah stood tiny in sparkly white beside them, her patent shoes all shiny, holding her mother’s hand, beaming, the spit (thank the Lord) of Bel. I was overjoyed that Bel had finally recovered from the utter disaster of Hannah’s father: the hippy painter who had promised Bel the world and then vanished to Morocco with his other pregnant lover the week before Hannah was born. The father who’d never bothered to meet his adorable daughter.
I stood on the pavement, filming them with my little video camera – Bel’s parents and her brothers all cheering with joy. The way Bel looked at Johnno now was enough to give you hope.
The Christmas decorations were already up, although it was only November. The lampposts fizzed with electric blue stars and Hannah pointed a tiny hand and sang ‘Twinkle, twinkle, little Mummy’, and everybody laughed until Hannah went beet-red with excitement and overbalanced doing the deep curtsies she’d learned in ballet. And for a moment, for one long moment, I felt happy, happier than I’d been in such a long time.
I was just calling to Bel to describe how she felt on this auspicious day, in her last few moments before she become a Mrs for all time, when her face dropped visibly. Frowning, I lowered the camera. She was looking at something over my shoulder, and then she wrinkled her brow and Johnno looked in the same direction, then stooped and whispered in her ear. And then I felt them both gazing at me, and an icy claw crept down my back and I turned round quickly –
And there he was. Just standing there, just like that, as if everything was fine. He had both hands shoved deep in the pockets of an extremely smart dark suit, a suit he’d never have worn when he was with me, and for a moment he looked guarded – but then he caught my startled eye and slowly smiled. I felt a pain, like someone had just got hold of my heart and was slowly pulling the bleeding flesh out through my chest, as I stared at him. And then, as if in slow motion, I saw him put one long hand out behind him, and I saw a leather-gloved hand slip into his, and he pulled the owner, the girl who wore it, forwards.
A great gust of wind blew down the road. The trees leaned right over under the weight and the blue stars wobbled and Bel’s mother’s fussy pillbox hat went flying off; there was a big kerfuffle while Nigel ran to fetch it. My hair blew across my face and stuck to my lipsticked mouth, stuck fast, but I didn’t bother to remove it. I didn’t even care. How could he come here, here of all places, and, worst of all, bring this girl too?
He was still smiling, his short brown hair sticking up on end and his yellow eyes glinting with something I couldn’t quite read. Malice?
‘Hello Alex,’ I said quietly.
‘Maggie.’ He was ever so polite, of course he was. Charm the birds out of the trees, my Alex could, when he wanted to. ‘I’d like you to meet Serena.’
Serena was very thin and falsely blonde (how utterly predictable), and her expensive heels very high, though Alex still dwarfed both of us. She looked at me, looked me up and down, and then she smiled too, a slow smile, a smug smile, which spread across her chiselled face. I pulled my old red coat round me but still shivered in the wind. Graciously, the girl offered me her hand. Her gloves were so soft they felt like butter.
I stared blankly at this new pair. If Alex didn’t stop grinning like that I’d punch him right on the already skewed bridge of his once-broken nose. I clenched my fists. And then they moved off, towards the happy couple, the four of them all kissing and shaking hands, and I was left just standing there, a satellite on the windy pavement of Kings Road. Alone, despite a thousand strangers rushing by.
And all through Bel’s wedding in that little room, the room in muted tones that smelled of Bel’s red roses, I couldn’t concentrate, and when it was my time to read my bit out from The Prophet, the bit about ‘Love one another but make not a bond of love – Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls’, Bel’s mum had to nudge me to get up. And I tried not to let the strain show in my voice, or let my hands shake, and I stood very straight and tall – although my foot really hurt now and my heart truly ached – not looking at the row where Alex and Serena sat; and I tried to read the lines about love with sincerity, as if I hadn’t very nearly drowned in the bloody sea The Prophet was on about. As if I thought love could be a good thing, and was not likely to finish you off for all time.
Alex did at least have the good grace not to crash the wedding breakfast. He knew he’d done enough. He and Serena disappeared into the swirl of Christmas shoppers, big hand in buttery one, waving. I could sense he was elated in his shambolic one-off elegance, while I felt utterly bereft. Somehow I got through lunch – ate a bit of the duck pate starter, picked at the salmon main, managed, somehow, to down lots of the very good wine. I thought of Bel and how sad she’d been, on her own with Hannah, and how she’d turned her life around. A little drunk after all the speeches, I hugged her tighter than I’d ever done before.
‘I’m so happy for you, darling,’ I said, and her pointy little face was so soft with joy that I almost wept.
‘I’m so happy too,’ she whispered. ‘I can’t believe it really. I keep pinching myself.’
‘It does happen, you know, Bel. Good people do get what they deserve, sometimes.’
She squeezed my arm. ‘Yeah, well, your turn will come, I’m sure. I’m sure of it, my Maggie.’ She looked up at me, serious now. ‘I’m so sorry about Alex. He wasn’t invited, you know. I wouldn’t let Johnno, though he did want to.’
‘It’s okay, Bel. It’s hardly your fault that he turned up.’
‘Yeah, well, I wish he’d bloody stayed away. He knew it’d hurt you. God, after everything he –’
‘Don’t mention it, please,’ I said quickly. ‘It’s fine. I’ve got to get on with it sometime, haven’t I?’
She squeezed my arm again. ‘Oh God, Mag, I’m going to miss you.’
‘Oh Bel, don’t start that now. Let’s think of nice things.’ My sniff was barely audible. ‘You’re not going quite yet.’
‘And it’s not forever.’
‘It’d better bloody not be.’
‘And you’d better be at the party, okay?’
Hannah skipped up, her fairy wings iridescent in the candlelight. ‘Why are you crying, sillies?’ She observed me steadily. ‘You look like a panda, Auntie Maggie. Like what I saw in the zoo when Johnno took me. The fat one that was scratching her bottom.’ She slipped her hand in mine. ‘Don’t cry.’
‘I’m not. I’m laughing. I never cry.’
‘Why’s wate
r coming out of your eyes then?’
‘Oh, Hannah.’ I picked her up and gave her a squeeze. She smelled of biscuits and fresh laundry. ‘You don’t half ask a lot of questions for someone so small.’
Then I went home to my father’s house, alone. The phone was ringing as I unlocked the door, but by the time I reached it they’d rung off. And as my dad had gone to collect his girlfriend Jenny from the airport, I opened a bottle from his trusty Wine Club collection and drank myself to sleep.
Chapter Seven
BEFORE: JUNE
I had dreamed that I was dying, such a very vivid dream. When I woke, I wasn’t absolutely sure I hadn’t. A huge weight squatted on my stomach, face pulled back in a rictus grin, gurning down at me until, panicking, I pushed up through its mass. Rearing from the bed, my arms flailed like a sprinter’s tangled in the finish line; a great sob of terror scraping through my chest.
I wasn’t dead, apparently. Not unless heaven was an ice-cream-coloured curtain drawn round a narrow bed, or a glimpse of rain through a small window in a quietly rumbling room. A room that was grey and regular. A dormitory. A ward. Not unless the woman in blue with smiley eyes who stepped neatly to my side was some bizarre kind of angel in a nurse’s uniform.
‘You haven’t got a halo.’ I blinked at the nurse. ‘Have you?’
The woman leaned forward to hear me properly, but my voice was apparently stuck in my sore and tired throat. I tried to smile instead, but smiling seemed to hurt me even more. Tentatively I brought my hand up to touch my own face, my hand that felt freezing.
Bad Friends Page 5