I made Alex come with me to Cornwall; I said it was make or break, and of course he knew the truth. The night before we went, Bel turned up at ours when Alex was out and told me how worried she was and that I needed to sort it out – I was drinking too much and smoking again and why was I this thin, it wasn’t natural, and she loved Alex but the two of us were killing one another. And I defended him, saying he’d never laid a finger on me before, but really I knew we were in freefall over a deep chasm. We were never going to get back from there.
Stubbornly I told Bel to get out, she was no friend of mine, although deep down of course I knew she was, my very best friend, the only one brave enough to actually challenge me.
And despite sticking up for Alex, it was all spoiled, and although I knew I was complicit because I’d kissed Sam, I knew too that I would never have done it if things had been right between us. And although Alex tried to explain his loss of control as stress from work and having to stay up all night to get things done, and he swore he’d knock both the booze and the cocaine on the head – really soon – my trust in him was shattered. I felt sorry for him about Malcolm, I did, really – but hey, at least both his parents were alive and literally kicking. And I couldn’t forget because when I looked in the mirror I saw those marks around my neck. I suggested we have a week off the booze while we talked things through – but he point-blank refused.
In the cold light of a Cornish summer’s day I realised I couldn’t forget that violence; I couldn’t forgive the drinking any more.
One evening as we got into bed, Alex tried to kiss me but I pushed him away; I felt I didn’t know him any more. We lay side by sleepless side. The next night he moved into the spare room.
That last afternoon we drove from Pendarlin to the small hamlet of Port Quin down on the coast, Debussy’s Clair de Lune playing on the car radio, and I thought it had never sounded so sad. I dropped a pound in the honesty box, and then we walked up onto the headland and sat in the sun among the bracken and the pink-tipped heather, but we didn’t speak. Digby sniffed around joyously in search of rabbit-holes, and I stared out at the brilliant sky, at the tiny fishing boats and the buoys bobbing in the turquoise sea, and I knew that although I loved this man, Bel was right, he was so damaged I couldn’t save him on my own; I couldn’t bring him back.
And then Digby caught some kind of field-mouse. He was so proud, but it made me want to cry as its tiny feet flapped from the dog’s salivating mouth. I let Alex deal with the corpse.
In silence we packed up the cottage and the car and then we headed back to London. Somewhere along the way the car began to smoke and stutter and then the rain began and we argued until we both began to scream, and I told him he’d broken my heart, cliché or none, he’d stamped all over it with his big shambolic feet and it could have been so different but it wasn’t. And I told him I couldn’t see him any more, it was over – until he sorted himself out, at least – and he was so angry his bashed-up face was white with rage and he said fine, and I nearly said I didn’t mean it because I’d never loved a man the way I loved him – but then the AA man turned up and dropped me at the coach station because the car was fucked. The car had died just like our stupid love, and Alex wouldn’t look at me as the tow-truck pulled out again, he just glowered into space, although Digby panted happily through the windscreen at me as if he were just popping round the corner; and I climbed onto that packed coach in Bristol with a dead feeling in my heart and head. And then the coach took me to my terrible fate.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
My chin hit my chest and I jerked awake again. Two teacher’s ticks before my tired eyes; two hypnotic slashes that went back and forth, forth and back – although the rain had long since stopped. Turning the wipers off, I opened the window wide for a blast of night air, realising how fast I was approaching the spot. I pulled onto the hard shoulder.
The bitter wind whipped my short hair into peaks as I got out of the car. A supermarket juggernaut thundered by, sounding his horn, and I staggered in the wind-tunnel before wrapping my coat tight around me and stumbling up the bank in the dark.
Lest we forget: to the brave souls lost on that tragic night.
I stared and stared at the brassy memorial, at the shrivelled bouquets, at the single rose in a plastic case preserved chemically – but they meant nothing to me. I wasn’t the same person who’d been on that coach that night in such a very bad state. I wasn’t the person who’d spiralled into the breakdown last summer that Charlie had predicted, despite my very best efforts not to, while I was convalescing at my father’s. I wasn’t the same person who’d sobbed and sobbed about my mother and my boyfriend and the abyss of loneliness I floundered in, sobbing on the figurative shoulder of the therapist, a kindly older man with sad eyes and a cropped beard and a nose with a knobble on the end that quivered sometimes when he spoke. A man who my frantic father was paying to listen, to assure me that, no, I wasn’t mad; I was more than my mother’s daughter. That I would be all right, honestly, it might just take some time to recover from this trauma.
The truth was that I was still screaming in silent anguish, screaming into the yearning void my mother had left, and Alex’s last actions had finally released the pressure building since my teens.
The last time I’d seen him, the man with the knobbly nose had studied me hard. ‘And this boyfriend, this man with all the addictions. Why him, Maggie? Why did you pick him?’
I stared miserably out of the window, where a cloud shaped rather like my mother’s floppy wedding hat was scudding by. ‘He made me laugh,’ I ventured after some time.
‘And?’
‘And what?’ I sought for more. ‘Alex is very bright. And I loved his passion for life. He was passionate about everything.’ I corrected myself. ‘Is passionate, I mean.’ He wasn’t dead, after all.
‘And they are the only reasons?’
‘No,’ I said slowly, ‘I suppose not.’
‘So?’
‘So.’ I took a deep breath. ‘He needed me.’
There was a long pause. ‘And you wanted to be needed?’
Yes. I wanted to be needed.
And the man didn’t say it, but we both knew what he meant.
Like your mother hadn’t needed you.
‘Like my mother hadn’t,’ I whispered.
One day after that, my father collected the dog from Alex’s and took us both to Greenwich Park. ‘You know, Maggie,’ he said quietly, throwing a stick for the scruffy little terrier, ‘your mother loved you more than anything in the world.’
We stood next to one another on the hill that overlooked the far-off Thames, sparkling in the early-morning sun, the Queen’s House below us a pristine white against the green sweep of grass. The spire of Our Lady Star of the Sea spiked the Indian-summer sky. It reminded me of the first joke I ever told.
‘Why did the sky laugh, Mummy?’
‘Why, Mag?’
‘Because the trees tickled its tummy.’
And then I would slip my small hand proudly into my mother’s as she would laugh, laugh just like I thought the sky had. The way I thought she’d laugh with me forever.
‘I know she killed herself…’ My father’s voice quietened as it always did when he spoke those harsh words, and he paused. He threw the stick for Digby again. ‘But she was in a place she couldn’t get out of at that time. Couldn’t see out of. You were her life – absolutely. You do know that, don’t you?’
This time it was his hand I slipped mine into wordlessly.
Quite soon after that, I decided to call the therapy a day.
I shivered on the bank. Nor was I the person now whom Bel had visited almost every evening in the summer, the person lucky enough to have a friend as patient as her, a very, very good friend who listened as I said I was worried I had lost it. Lost my mind; lost everything.
‘Not me,’ she said brightly, ‘you can’t get rid of me that easily,’ and she painted my toenails scarlet and blue and brought
me pictures Hannah had painted of us on vivid yellow beaches with be-hatted suns smiling happily down.
No. I wasn’t that person: I was stronger than that shattered soul. Standing on the side of the bleak dark M4, I pulled my coat tighter round me now. It was time to step forward into something new; time to make peace with my old life and move on with dignity. I could not stay in this ugly place, in this graveyard of a life. I had to accept that Alex and I had long since been over; that though my foot would always be scarred from the crash, it would keep healing until the scar was very faint. That Seb was a nice, attractive man who I still couldn’t quite fathom, and that maybe he would be in my future, but that it wasn’t yet. That right now, I had to think alone and for myself. That, most importantly I still had my dad and Jenny and Gar and Digby, and Bel, despite her being so far away.
I was the person who had parked my car just off Sloane Square a couple of hours ago after leaving Seb in Battersea, and walked into the café with a name like a bird. The person who had ordered coffee and fizzy water and had sat waiting on the terrace.
And as she tripped gaily to the table, thinking this was a social meet, I was the person who looked at her intently and said, ‘So, Fay, what’s this all about?’
‘What do you mean, Maggie?’ she asked lightly, unwrapping her pink pashmina and ordering a white-wine spritzer from a drooling waiter. Such a girlish drink; so apt.
I lit a cigarette and inhaled hard. ‘Let’s cut the crap, shall we, Fay? Ever since I met you, you’ve been following me around. Were you in Battersea an hour or two ago?’
She winced as if I’d just poked her in the eye. ‘Battersea? No, why? What do you mean, following you?’
‘Oh, don’t be so obtuse.’
She stared at me, all hurt.
‘It means awkward,’ I said.
‘I know what it means, thank you, Maggie.’ Her little chin jutted into the air.
‘Look, Fay,’ I took it down a notch or two, ‘it’s just, ever since we met on the show –’
‘On the coach, really, Maggie.’
‘We didn’t, though, did we? I didn’t know you existed till I saw you sitting in that studio. And just because we were both on that sodding coach, and the stupid thing crashed, it doesn’t mean we are soul sisters now. Perhaps I did turn you over when you choked on your own blood, but I still can’t remember it. Even if your hair is like mine now, it doesn’t mean I’m looking for a new best friend.’ I ladled sugar into my coffee. Then some more. ‘Especially not one who’s decided to start seeing my ex.’
‘I’m not seeing him. I wouldn’t do that to you, Maggie.’
‘Why not?’ I snapped, grinding out my cigarette. ‘You don’t owe me anything, Fay. I don’t want to be horrible, but all I want is … all I ask is that you leave me alone. You’re freaking me out. All this turning up everywhere I go.’
‘Where? What do you mean?’
‘What do you mean where?’ I wailed. ‘For fuck’s sake, Fay. At parties, at my work, at my bloody flat the day it’s broken into. It’s a bit coincidental, isn’t it? And more than a bit bloody weird. Have you been stalking me? Do you hate me for some reason? Did you cut my picture out of all my family photos and leave them with my grandmother?’
‘No, of course not.’ She stared at me, wounded to the core. ‘Why would I? I love you.’
‘Oh my God,’ I moaned, slumping forward, my head in my hands now. ‘Please, Fay.’
‘Not love you like that.’ She patted my hand with her little paw. ‘Just in a caring way, silly. That’s what I’ve been learning with my Survivors’ group. Don’t blame, just forgive.’
‘Forgive?’
‘Not you. Just generally.’
‘Great. Well, you’ll forgive me then for asking you to stay the hell away from me.’ I took a massive swig of coffee and burnt my mouth. I was rarely this brutal with anyone but I’d reached my snapping point. I couldn’t look at her as I said, ‘And if you want to date Alex, that’s fine – but I don’t want to know about it, okay?’
‘I don’t want to date him. He’s very damaged, Maggie.’
‘You’re telling me.’
‘He’s still in love with you, I think.’
We gazed at one another.
‘Really?’ I said quietly, after some time.
‘Yes, really. You know, I don’t understand why you’re quite so angry.’
‘Don’t you?’ But I felt the fury ebb away now, wash up on the beach of my exhaustion like dirty old spume. I watched a middle-aged couple go through the doors, the drizzle that had just begun outside glittering on the woman’s cashmere scarf. Her companion was very attentive, taking her coat and carefully pressing it on the waiter before pulling out her chair and seating her like she was made of china.
‘I just feel so – well, kind of cornered right now,’ I said. ‘And very alone. And I probably need to be alone, to sort things out.’
‘You probably need some friends, you mean,’ Fay corrected me pertly.
‘I don’t. Not any new ones. Not right now. I’d only make bad friends, the state of mind I’m in.’
Fay stirred her drink with an efficient cocktail stick. ‘Fine.’ She licked the stick thoughtfully. ‘But if you change your mind, I’m here for you. You know that, don’t you? You changed my life.’
I looked out at the neon words above the Royal Court Theatre, at the hustle of people plunging into Sloane Square tube beneath the fizz of the Christmas lights, at the throng at the bar chattering like birds. Everyone was meeting someone; everyone was heading somewhere. Christmas parties were on the horizon, the buzz that December brings was vibrant in the air. There was no more lonely a time than this, I thought sadly. No time when it was more poignant to be lonely. Were they all wanted, all these strangers? Were they all welcomed?
I shook my head against my maudlin thoughts and dug some money from my bag. ‘Listen, can you settle up? I’ve got a long drive ahead of me, I should get going.’
‘Sure.’ Fay tried to give me back the ten-pound note, but I wouldn’t take it. ‘Off anywhere nice?’
I smiled at her wanly and stood. ‘I think so. I’ll see you around, okay?’
For a moment when I walked away, I thought she called something, but her voice was dragged into the busy night. I didn’t look back.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Did ghosts patrol this part of the road, the road I stood beside at midnight? Did they congregate here on the M4’s hard shoulder, swapping stories of their deaths in this freezing darkness?
Was that Fay lying there in a small heap; was that me being cut free from a jagged mass of deadly metal and pulled through a shattered window? Was that me lying beside Fay, who began to choke; did I turn her so she could breathe before I fell unconscious myself from the pain? Did the motorists directed on to the hard shoulder thank God it wasn’t them as they slowed to have a horrified peek at the limp huddles that were being hastily covered over? Was that the body of the Hobbit woman I had just stepped around, Northanger Abbey gripped in one pale and lifeless hand, her ever-moving lips stilled for good?
Was that the couple who had whispered in front of me entwined forever in a ghastly screaming death? The tall boy who had gone up to talk to his friends lying on his back near the central reservation, next to a stunned man who’d escaped without a scratch.
The boy who had opened his eyes and stood, slowly, slowly, and hobbled to the side of the road, blood in his eyes, blinking in the police’s floodlights. Who, after a while, let a paramedic wrap a blanket around his shoulders and then slumped on the grassy bank, staring at the mangled body of a piebald horse. Dead; dead just like the old lady whose white hair poked in tufts from beneath another blanket. Was that the old Maggie there? Had I left a piece of me forever in the terrible wreck?
I stared at the dark damp road and felt a hot tear trickle down my icy cheek, and I shivered properly now, trying to banish these dark thoughts from my exhausted head. After them chased confused images of Alex and
Fay together. I shut my mind down as best I could, and realised suddenly that I was freezing.
Climbing back in the car, I cuddled the dog until I started to get warm. Then I turned the radio on, the heating up, and drove on to the next service station, where I bought tea and chocolate and a copy of Vogue in Bel’s honour, and threw my fags away before travelling on to Cornwall. And it was only when I got to Pendarlin hours later in the pitch black that I actually exhaled.
In the morning the wind had settled and I awoke late to find a thin sprinkling of frost on the ground and the sun shining, albeit weakly. I made strong coffee, tuned the radio to Radio 3 and ate some cornflakes before letting Digby out.
I watched him chasing imaginary shadows and his tail, cutting zig-zags on the lawn, and I was really glad to see him free again. London life didn’t suit the poor old thing. Turning to go back in, I noticed with irritation the fresh tyre-tracks across the frosted grass. I wished the bloody postman wouldn’t always cut across the lawn. At the door I looked for letters, but when I bent to check there was just an old postcard from the gas company about reading the meter last week. I felt a fresh rush of unease, but I shook it off and went to get dressed.
Under a soft chalky sky so rich you could scoop it in your hands, I drove down tiny lanes to Pentire Point. The landscape rolled out before me with the barren majesty of December, sheep like so many balls of dirty cotton-wool dotting the fields. The headland was wreathed in sea-mist that smudged the hills and made them vague, but by the time I parked at the muddy farm it was finally clearing. Frost had hardened some of the ground I tramped across, but in parts the puddles were so deep I had to jump them, splashing through the water, skidding in the mud as brambles pulled at my legs. I trekked up and up the hill until I realised how hungry I was. A sudden surge of birds flapped like hope up into the air and I actually smiled.
Bad Friends Page 31