The Friendship Pact

by Alison James

  Lucy is about to point out that Marcus already knows Fiona and Robin but thinks better of it. ‘You’ll feel better once you’ve had a drink and something to eat,’ she soothes. ‘I’ve made braised lamb.’

  ‘I. Don’t. Want. Fucking. Lamb,’ Marcus roars. He stamps over to the oven, yanks open the door and pulls out the roasting tray, dropping it and its contents onto the floor. Boiling fat and roasting juices splash Lucy’s bare shins and leave a crime scene smear on the floor.

  ‘Marcus!’ Lucy stares at the lump of half-cooked meat, which looks oddly human as it rests against a chair leg. ‘What are you doing?’ She ignores the sting of the hot liquid and tries to wipe the smears from her skirt.

  He doesn’t move. ‘I would have thought that was bloody obvious. Even to you.’

  Lucy squats down and tries to replace the lamb joint in the roasting tray. It’s much hotter than she expected, and she burns the tips of her fingers. ‘For heaven’s sake, we’ve got people coming… please, let’s just—’

  But he’s got the bit between his teeth now. She recognises the escalation of his mood only too well. ‘How dare you hold a party without even telling me? I pay for all of this, you know!’

  Marcus grabs the edge of the tablecloth and yanks it off the table. Lucy has seen people do that as a party trick and the objects on top of the cloth mysteriously stay where they are. But that is not what happens now. The vases of flowers and glassware topple onto the tiled floor and shatter; the silverware skitters against the skirting board. And Lucy’s beloved Clarice Cliff butter dish, painted with a cheerful design of crocuses, smashes into several pieces, spilling out around the yellow splodge of butter. The dish belonged to her mother and was one of the few things in the house that pre-dated their marriage.

  ‘Oh no!’ Lucy drops to her knees and tries to rescue the dish, cutting her thumb on the sharp edge of the china.

  ‘We’re not having people for supper. Not if it’s not been put in the diary.’

  Marcus strolls to the fridge and opens a bottle of beer, tossing the cap in Lucy’s direction with a careless lob.

  ‘What am I supposed to tell people? They’ll be on their way over here by now.’ Lucy straightens up, still holding the debris of the broken butter dish in her hand. She extends the pieces to Marcus, her eyes swimming with tears. ‘And this belonged to my mum.’

  ‘Ah yes. Dear Felicity, the woman who made you into the overindulged child you are,’ snaps Marcus. ‘And I don’t care what you tell them, just get rid of them.’ He pushes roughly past his wife, and she loses her footing, knocking her hip painfully against the corner of the table.

  Lucy phones Jane’s mobile. She’s driving, so Robin picks up. She’s terribly sorry to cancel so late, Lucy mumbles, but she has just started vomiting. ‘A gastric flu bug,’ she lies. ‘There’s been a nasty one going round the hospital. Marcus must have brought it home with him.’

  ‘Poor you,’ Robin is all sympathy. ‘Don’t worry. We’ve got the babysitter anyway, so we’ll probably pop along to the Picturehouse and catch a movie. Something we rarely get chance to do, so it’ll be a bit of a treat to be honest.’

  ‘I’m so sorry.’

  ‘Don’t worry at all. Another time. You just rest up.’

  His kindness makes Lucy feel even worse, and the tears start to flow. In a croaky voice which probably makes her tale more plausible, she tells the same lie to Helen.

  ‘We’re just at the end of your road now actually,’ says Helen, who sounds mildly irritated. She has driven all the way from Crouch End, crossing most of London, so it’s hardly surprising. ‘We could call in and check up on you? I’ve got flowers for you anyway: you may as well have them to cheer you up.’

  Lucy closes her eyes, wondering if it is possible to feel any more wretched. ‘No, don’t do that; this bug is desperately contagious apparently. We’ll rearrange, I promise.’ She knows as she says this that it will never happen. She’s not going to risk going through this again. This is the end of her trying to promote Marcus to her friends, to sell the idea of the perfect marriage. She’ll just have to see them alone from now on. At least it means she won’t have to humiliate herself by arranging social events via Beryl.

  Beryl. Lucy wonders if she genuinely forgot to put the supper party in Marcus’s diary, or if she accidentally-on-purpose forgot. She wouldn’t put a spiteful act like that past the old shrew but resigns herself to the fact that she’ll never know.

  She can hear Marcus moving around in his study, putting on loud classical music. Shutting her out. Hobbling to the sink, she splashes cold water over her face and neck, attempting to wash away the tears. But they keep on coming. There’s a bruise on her hipbone, and the patch of skin on her leg that was scalded by the meat fat is red and blistered. She presses a damp cloth against it for a few moments, then limps across the room and sets about clearing up the shattered remains of her kitchen supper.

  Five

  July 1996

  It all begins to go wrong when Joanne Beckett’s mother takes it on herself to befriend Felicity Gibson.

  In the spring, Lucy’s parents cave in to years of cajoling and wheedling and buy a cocker spaniel puppy for her twelfth birthday. When the days grow longer, and Kibble the puppy has had his jabs, Felicity falls into the habit of walking him to meet Lucy after school, thereby combining the need to exercise the dog with supervision of her daughter. And Sally Beckett, the mother of a girl in Lucy and Adele’s class, makes a beeline for the creature, cooing loudly and petting him in an ostentatious manner.

  Although Lucy lacks the vocabulary to define the phenomenon, she’s a bright and sensitive child, and understands that by making a fuss of Kibble, Sally Beckett is social climbing; that she has taken in Felicity Gibson’s designer clothes and expensive blonde highlights, seen her top-of-the-range car and labelled her someone important, someone to get to know. Sally Beckett works part-time in a travel agency in Redgate and has a sunbed in her spare room, which she uses too much. Her hair is also bleached blonde, but it’s cheaply done, and her designer bag is a cheap copy from the market. She lives in a new executive home off the bypass but aspires to Haverleigh Park.

  Of course, Adele notices this too. There was no chance she wouldn’t. Her attitude to Lucy is entirely proprietorial.

  ‘You friends with that loser Joanne now?’ she asks huffily, after they’ve overheard Sally Beckett inviting Felicity to her house for ‘a coffee morning’ for at least the third time. Joanne Beckett is a drab, nondescript girl who wears her dull mousy hair pulled back into a ponytail. Like Lucy, she needs glasses, but hers have lenses so thick they make her look as though she’s staring even when she isn’t. She also has severe allergy problems, which give her an unfortunate tendency to breathe through her mouth.

  ‘No,’ says Lucy, truthfully. ‘No way.’ She has no interest whatsoever in Joanne, and is pretty sure her mother is only being polite when she chats to Sally Beckett. But despite these reassurances, Adele takes it on herself to start bullying Joanne with a thousand subtle cuts: directing mocking glances in her direction, muttering comments under her breath, excluding her from conversation. No doubt if they were in the thick of the school year, then the campaign would have had a chance to escalate, and parents or teachers might have stepped in to take action. And in turn maybe that would have prevented the disastrous events that followed. But the summer term is almost over and the year seven pupils are disbanding until September. The Gibsons will be spending the second half of August at an upmarket resort in Greece that provides a holiday club for pre-teens, while the Watts family are spending a week in a static caravan in Filey.

  July that year is baking hot. Sultry. Lucy mooches around the house, bored and restless. Occasionally, she puts on her swimsuit and joins her mother on a sun lounger in the garden, lying there until her fair skin is turning pink. Most of the time, she reads or sketches in the draught from the electric fan, essential in the hot attic storey of the house.

  After a week,
Adele arrives at the house on her bike and is admitted by Felicity with a frosty smile. She won’t go so far as to ban Adele from the house, but she never tries to encourage her.

  ‘Aw right, Luce?’ she says cheerfully. ‘Fancy a bike ride?’

  Sensing an outing, Kibble circles at her feet, yapping.

  ‘In this heat?’ Felicity frets. ‘I’m not sure that’s a good idea.’

  Adele shrugs, as though the temperature is irrelevant. Her own olive skin has darkened since school broke up, suggesting she has spent most of her time outside, probably riding her bike.

  ‘I want to go,’ Lucy says stubbornly.

  Shaking her head slightly, her mother fetches sunscreen from the kitchen table and rubs it onto Lucy’s forehead and bare arms. She’s still in her swimsuit, underneath her shorts and T-shirt. ‘Where will you go?’ Felicity asks. ‘I need to have some idea.’

  ‘Just around,’ Adele says innocently, but Lucy can tell from her lopsided smirk that she already has a destination in mind. ‘Have you ever been to Blackwater Pond?’ she asks as soon as their bikes are clear of the house.

  Lucy hasn’t, but she knows all about it. She and her parents have driven past the reservoir on the edge of Redgate Heath several times on their way to the bypass and Lucy has always craned her neck at the glimpses of the glassy-smooth water, ringed with trees.

  ‘Are we allowed?’ she asks, letting her legs dangle over the pedals momentarily to slow her bike’s progress. She’s aware of how feeble she sounds.

  ‘Course,’ says Adele with her usual insouciance.

  She seems quite happy to ignore the ‘NO SWIMMING’ sign on the fence at the edge of the water, as do all the other teenagers lured there by the siren call of cool water. Most of them splash carefully around the edges, with just one or two of the older boys striking out towards the centre of the reservoir. There’s a patch of scrubby sand that passes for a beach on the southern edge, and on the eastern perimeter a gnarled oak branch growing over a flat, rocky promontory is providing the ballast for a makeshift rope swing. The boys take it in turn to hang off the rope and swing out over the rippling depths before letting go and splashing into the deepest reaches of the water with shrieks of triumph. They jostle one another and play at waggling the rope within reach before snatching it away, like a toy dangled in front of a kitten. Lucy is far too timid to take a turn on the rope swing, but, of course, Adele does it, stubbornly ignoring the catcalls and jeering.

  The bottom of the reservoir is uneven and stony, and the water shockingly cold even with an air temperature of thirty degrees Celsius, but Lucy eventually swims gingerly around the edges. Adele abandons the rope swing to the adolescent boys and joins her in the shallows, splashing Lucy’s face and shoulders by smacking the flat of her hand on the smooth surface of the water. Lucy splashes her back, and the two of them are soon engaged in a battle to see who can drench the other the most, shrieking with laughter. Still giggling, Lucy hauls herself out of the pond, flinging herself onto the grass and feeling rivulets of water course down her neck as she squints up at the blazing ball of the sun. Her chest is heaving, but she is quite sure she has never felt more alive than she does at this moment. Adele flops down beside her, pulling a can of Coke from her bag and cracking it open.

  ‘Brilliant, isn’t it?’ she asks proudly.

  ‘Yes,’ Lucy nods. ‘It’s brilliant.’

  ‘Only I wouldn’t come here with just anyone. It’s only because you and me are best friends.’

  Lucy nods again. Despite their ‘pinky promise’ when Adele came to tea, she has been hesitant to give Adele that title in her own mind. But she supposes it’s true. She can’t imagine being here, doing this, with anyone else. She doesn’t have any other friends she would do this with, and laugh so hard with. So it must be true. The two of them are best friends.

  Adele takes the metal tab from the can and draws it swiftly against the inside of her left wrist, leaving a trail of tiny red dots. Before Lucy has time to react, she has done the same to Lucy’s own left wrist.

  ‘Owww!’ protests Lucy. She tries to yank her hand away, but Adele grabs it and presses their wrists together, smearing the two red trails into one.

  ‘It’s a blood oath,’ Adele says solemnly. ‘You know, like a pact.’ Then she holds the red drink can up against the scorching blue sky, as if in a toast. ‘Best friends forever.’

  After a couple of hours, hunger sends most of the swimmers off in search of food, and Adele announces that she has to go home and mind Tyler and Chelsee. Lucy cycles back to Haverleigh Park alone, her damp swimsuit making dark patches on her back and the seat of her shorts. She stashes her bike in the garage and tries to sneak upstairs unseen, but Kibble’s delighted yapping acts as an alarm, and Felicity intercepts her.

  ‘Goodness, darling, you’re soaking wet!’ She lifts a tendril of hair that clings to her daughter’s nape, then spots the bloody abrasion on her inner arm. ‘What on earth have you been up to?’

  ‘Swimming,’ says Lucy, lowering her eyes.

  ‘Where?’ Felicity demands and instantly narrows her eyes as a thought occurs to her. ‘Please don’t tell me you’ve been to the reservoir!’

  Lucy considers denying it, but only briefly. Above anything, she does not want to risk her mother instigating an awkward confrontation with the Watts family. So she feigns wide-eyed innocence, which leads to one of her parents’ earnest tag-team chats after supper that night; a tactic they employ when they’re worried about her.

  ‘Darling, there’s a reason water utility companies ban swimming in reservoirs,’ her father begins. ‘Tempting though it must seem in this weather, it’s very dangerous. The water’s icy cold, you can’t see what’s going on beneath the surface and there’s no lifeguard supervision.’

  ‘A boy drowned swimming there a couple of years ago,’ Felicity continues. ‘It was in the local paper.’

  ‘It’s just not safe, quite apart from the potential for toxic substances in the water,’ Jeffrey Gibson goes on. ‘So Mummy and I want you to promise you won’t go down there again.’

  ‘But Adele’s allowed to go,’ Lucy is aware she sounds sulky. ‘She can go where she likes.’

  ‘Yes, well,’ Felicity tightens her lips. ‘Every family’s different, and they would no doubt look on us as overprotective. But you’re still only twelve. Adele’s a teenager now, which is a big difference.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘You’re not to go again, Lucy. That’s the end of the matter.’

  Six

  On the evening after the failed supper party, Lucy is alone in the bedroom, engrossed in a Netflix documentary about the FBI when ‘Jane Standish calling’ appears on the screen of her mobile. She cuts the call, but thirty seconds later there it is again: Jane Standish calling.

  If Jane rings again, I’ll pick up, she decides. Otherwise I’ll text her tomorrow. The phone does ring again as the thought is running through her mind, so reluctantly she presses ‘Accept’.

  ‘Just calling to see if you’re any better.’

  ‘Better?’ Lucy momentarily forgets her excuse for the cancelled meal.

  ‘The gastric flu.’

  ‘Oh… yes. Much better, thanks. Still taking it easy, you know.’

  There is a long pause, which manages to communicate wordlessly that Jane does not believe the stomach bug lie. Then she asks, ‘Are you on your own now, Lucy?’

  ‘Yes. I’m just watching some random Netflix real-life crime stuff. Marcus is out doing an emergency case.’

  ‘I know it’s a bit late, but if you felt like coming over for a glass of wine and a slice of Molly’s leftover birthday cake, Robin and I would love to see you.’

  She wants to ply me with wine and then grill me about my marriage, Lucy thinks. And there is definitely a real temptation to go over to Clapham and spill her guts. But then Jane is friends with Fiona, and Fiona constantly has Marcus’s ear. It would probably cause more problems than it would solve.

  ‘Th
at’s a lovely offer, thank you, but I’m still a bit tired.’

  ‘Of course,’ Jane concedes. ‘These bugs can take it out of you. Your university term must be over soon – are you going to get away anywhere?’

  Lucy sighs. ‘Marcus is just too busy. They’ve lost a consultant from the team recently due to funding cuts, so he’s having to do the work of two surgeons.’

  ‘Well, maybe you could think about going away somewhere on your own? Clear your head. Get a fresh perspective on things. Do you have any friends you’ve been dying to visit?’

  ‘Maybe,’ says Lucy cautiously. ‘I’ll definitely give it some thought.’

  ‘Well, I just wanted to let you know that I’m here if you ever need someone to talk to.’

  After she has hung up, Lucy can’t settle. She goes down into the kitchen, makes a mug of tea and takes it out into the moonlit garden. Two fighting cats shatter the silence with their yowls and, somewhere nearby, a neighbour is holding a party. Faint bossa nova rhythms are punctuated by the rise and fall of laughter and animated conversation. Lucy thinks again of Marcus’s sabotage of her planned evening. And something Jane said over coffee comes back too: ‘You’re still young.’

  There is still time, she tells herself. There’s time for her to start again, but to do so she has to admit to herself that in marrying Marcus she made a mistake. And she has to leave.

  Back in the house, Lucy scrolls though her contacts until she reaches her father’s number. She realises, guiltily, that it’s at least a week since she’s spoken to him. And she hasn’t been down to Redgate for over a year. Marcus hates being a guest, preferring it if people visit them, so Jeffrey Gibson usually makes the trip to London. She’s about to press ‘Call’, but notices the time, and decides against it: phone calls after nine thirty make him anxious.

  A glance at her calendar also reminds her that Tom and Lydia are arriving for their regular bi-monthly visit in the morning. According to their normal routine, she will be devoting the weekend to her stepchildren. She is quite fond of them, even though Lydia can be entitled and Tom surly. But now that she has made her decision, she realises she can’t face even one more weekend of being belittled in front of them. Marcus constantly reminds her, and the children, that she is not their mother and has no real parenting experience of her own. Which in turn is a reminder, as sharp as a knife blade in her flesh, that she will never be a mother. At least, as long as she’s with Marcus she won’t.