My Best Friend's Girl

by Dorothy Koomson

  “Apart from that,” she said, a sly smile playing around her gray lips.

  “Well then, no.”

  “After I’m gone…” Del paused, took a deep breath. “I want you to adopt Tegan.”

  “What?”

  “I want…No, I need you to adopt Tegan after I die.”

  I could feel the frown creasing my forehead, and my face twisting itself into an Are you mad? look. But she stared back at me as if she expected an answer to what she’d just said.

  “You’re joking, right?”

  “Do I look like I’m joking?” she replied, exasperated. “If I was joking there’d be a punchline and it’d be funny. No, Kamryn, I’m not joking. I want you to adopt my daughter when I die.”

  “All right, Adele, if you’re serious, I’ll give you a serious answer. No. Absolutely no.”

  “You haven’t even thought about it.”

  “There’s nothing to think about. You’ve always known that I don’t want children. I told you enough times, I’m not having kids.”

  “I’m not asking you to have kids, just my one.” Del inhaled deeply, a move that seemed to take all her strength and added to her gray color. “I’ve done all the hard stuff, morning sickness, losing my figure, twenty-four hours in labor…You just have to look after her. Be her mother. Love her.”

  “Just” look after her. “Just” be her mother. Like that was easy. And anyway…“Del, we haven’t even spoken in two years and now you’re asking me to adopt a child? Can you see what’s wrong with this picture? Why I’m having problems with this?”

  “Tegan isn’t ‘a child,’” she snarled. Of all the outrageous things I’d said since I arrived, this was the one that got her goat; that made her so angry her steel-blue eyes seemed to pulsate with defiance. “She’s your godchild. You loved her once, I refuse to believe that’s changed.”

  I couldn’t argue with that. I had loved Tegan. I still loved Tegan.

  I glanced at the photo on the nightstand. It was in a plain glass frame, a big close-up picture of Tegan and Del. Tegan had her arms linked around her mum’s neck, holding her mum’s face as close as possible to hers. They were both grinning at the camera. Tegan was a miniature version of her mother in every respect except her nose. The shape of her nose she inherited from her father.

  “Kam, I still think of you as my best friend,” Del was saying. “And you’re the only person, the only person on earth I’d trust with my daughter.

  “She was like your child once. And I’m sorry to lay this on you but I don’t know how long I’ve got left, I can’t afford to mess about. If you don’t take her…What will happen to her? There’s no one else. There’s no one—” The whites of her eyes reddened and her chest started to heave.

  “I can’t even cry,” she whispered between heaves, “because I’m not producing enough tears.” Instead of crying, she started to choke, each cough convulsing her thinned body.

  I laid a hand on her forearm. “Please don’t,” I said, desperate to stop her. “I’ll think about it. But I’m not promising anything, all right?”

  Del kept inhaling deeply until she’d calmed down. “You’ll really think about it?” she said when she was calm enough to speak.

  “Yes. I’ll think about it.”

  “That’s all I ask, that you think about it.”

  “And I will. But only think.”

  “Thank you,” she whispered. “Thank you.”

  We lapsed into silence. I should be going. She’d done the deed, had asked the unthinkable of me, so what was there to do but for me to leave, retreat and think about it as I promised?

  “Kam,” she began. The way she said my name made me look at her and I knew instantly what she was going to say next. I didn’t want her to say it. I wanted her to leave it.

  “About what happened—”

  “Don’t,” I cut in, a warning note in my voice.

  “You never let me explain,” she pleaded.

  “Don’t,” I warned again.

  “Kam, listen to me. I didn’t…”

  “I SAID DON’T!” I shouted so suddenly and so brutally that I frightened myself. “I don’t want to think about it, I don’t want to hear about it, and I certainly don’t want to talk about it. It’s over with. Leave it.”

  It was a wound that hadn’t healed. She’d been picking at a superficial scab, one that skimmed the surface of an injury that was so deep even the slightest jolt would have it gushing blood again. But still, I shouldn’t have unleashed my anger like that. She was ill. She didn’t have the strength to fight back.

  “Just leave it,” I repeated in a calmer tone. “Please.”

  Del refocused her line of sight on the picture on her nightstand. She half smiled, but I could see the sadness tugging around her eyes. Tegan was everything to Adele. Everything. I could never fully understand that, I suppose. Tegan was important to me, but she seemed to be Adele’s reason for living. Everything she did, thought and said was about Tegan. Nothing and no one came before Adele’s child. The idea of leaving her must be more than she could bear. And how do you explain to a child that you’re leaving them? How do you tell your child you’re dying?

  “Where is she?” I asked in an attempt to diffuse the tension in the room and the guilt in my soul.

  She closed her eyes briefly, as though pained, before delivering her next bombshell in a quiet voice. “With my father and his wife.”

  My heart skipped a beat. Were things so bad she’d really left Tegan with them? “And how’s that been?” I asked diplomatically, instead of screaming, “Are you mad?” at her.

  “Awful,” Adele replied. Her eyes reddened again; she’d be crying if she could. “They don’t let me see her. Since I’ve been in here they’ve brought her to see me once. Once in four weeks. It’s too far, they say, so they only bring her when it’s convenient. I speak to her on the phone but it’s not the same.

  “I miss her so much. And I can tell every time I speak to her that she’s becoming more depressed. More withdrawn. She can’t understand why she can’t be with me now that I need her most. My father and his wife don’t want her there and she knows it. Kam, I want to be with my daughter. I’ve only got a little while and I want to spend it with her.” She looked at me, her steel-blue eyes beseeching me, asking me to solve this problem for her. “I just want to see her. Before, you know.”

  No, I don’t know. I’m still playing catch up, remember? I’m not on that page yet, Del, I silently replied. “Isn’t there anyone else she can stay with?” I asked. I knew she had no other family, but surely she had some other friends? Anyone but her father and stepmother.

  “No. When I first realized I was seriously sick, I wrote to you to ask if you could take care of Tegan for a while but you never replied.”

  “I never opened the letter,” I said honestly. I still had it, I’m sure. Shoved at the bottom of my knicker drawer like all the other correspondence from her—I was too indignant to open them but too cowardly to toss them out. They sat in the drawer, growing older and dustier, unopened and mostly ignored.

  “I guessed you didn’t. I tried a couple of other people, but they couldn’t take on such a big responsibility, so it had to be my father.” Del always called him that, “my father.” To his face she called him “Father.” Never did she call him “Dad” or “Daddy.” There was always a level of formality between them—even now, it seemed. “When we moved in he was so hard on Tegan, but I didn’t have the strength to fight him and his wife. If there was one thing I could do differently it’d be to take back what—”

  “Do they still live in the same place, down in Guildford?” I cut in. I wasn’t going to let her sneak up on that conversation again.

  She shook her head slightly. “Tegan got that stubbornness from you,” Del said. “She’s exactly like that, won’t do or talk about anything she doesn’t want to. I used to think she got it from me, but no, it’s clearly from you. But yes, they still live down in Guildford.”

&
nbsp; “OK.” I took a deep breath. Can’t believe I’m about to do this. “What if I go down and see her?”

  Del’s face brightened. “You’ll do that?”

  “I’m not saying I’ll adopt her or anything, I’ll just go see if she’s all right. OK? Just a visit.”

  “Thank you,” Del smiled. “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”

  “Will she even remember who I am?” I asked.

  “Course. She still draws you in pictures. Talks about you. And those anonymous cards and presents you send on her birthday and at Christmas, I always tell her they’re from you. She always asks when you’re going to come back from holiday.”

  “Holiday?”

  “You left so suddenly I told her you had to go on holiday for a long time. Because then she’d think you were coming back. Neither of us could’ve stood it if there wasn’t at least the hope that you’d come back,” she said. Her eyelids suddenly shut and stayed closed.

  Anxiety twisted my stomach as time ticked by but she didn’t open her eyes. The machines were still rhythmically bleeping so I knew she wasn’t…But what if this was the start of it? What if this was the decline into…

  Del’s eyelids crept apart until they were thin slits, her sallow skin was grayer than it had been when I arrived. I was tiring her out. I should go. But I didn’t want to. I wanted to stay with her. Be with her. Just in case…I wanted to sit here all day. All night. Forever.

  “I’d better go,” I said, forcing myself not to be so silly. I couldn’t do anything here. I’d do more good by bringing news of her baby. “If I’m going to see Tegan today I’d better be making tracks.” I stood up, hoisted my bag onto my shoulder.

  “Give her my love.” Del’s voice was as weak as tissue paper. “Tell her Mummy loves her.”

  “I will,” I said. “Course I will.”

  I paused at the doorway, waiting for Del’s reply. I got nothing. I turned to her and saw from the slow rise and fall of her chest that she was asleep. I watched her sleep for a few moments, fancying myself as some kind of guardian angel, watching over her, keeping her safe. Again I told myself off for being silly, then I walked out of the room. Walked out of the room, out of the hospital and into the nearest pub.

  chapter 3

  Adele and I had known each other for nearly half of our lives—fourteen of our thirty-two years. We’d met in the first year at Leeds University, when we were assigned to work on an English assignment together.

  I’d internally groaned when I heard that I was going to be studying with Adele Hamilton-Mackenzie. At eighteen I was a staunch working-class citizen and now I was being forced to team up with someone who was clearly from a well-to-do family, what with her having a double-barreled surname and everything. She turned her blond head and sought out Kamryn Matika across the class. She smiled and dipped her head at me, I did the same before she turned back to the front. God, I thought bitterly, she’s bound to think the world revolves around her. And she’ll try to order me about. No doubt about it, I’m cursed. And that curse involves me working with some silly slapper with an accent.

  At the end of the class, I gathered up my books and pens, planning to make the quickest getaway known to womankind, but as I straightened up from stuffing my belongings into my cloth rucksack, ready to hightail it out of the lecture hall, I was confronted by a slender eighteen-year-old who was dressed like a fifty-year-old in a blue polo neck and blue polyester slacks. I was taken aback by how quickly she’d appeared in front of me; it was almost as if she’d popped out of thin air.

  She grinned at me with straight white teeth, and tossed her mass of silky blond hair.

  “Hi, I’m Adele,” she said, her voice bright and lively. She’s perky as well as posh, can my life get any worse? I thought. “How about we nab a coffee and talk about the assignment.” It wasn’t a question, more a vague order.

  “I think we should go away and think about it and meet up in a few days,” I replied through a teeth-clenchingly fake smile. No one ordered me about—vaguely or otherwise. Besides, which eighteen-year-old in her right mind actually worked on a project on the day they’d been given it? Not me, certainly.

  In response, Adele’s poise disintegrated until her shoulders were hunched forward and her gaze was fixed desolately on the parquet floor. She wasn’t as self-assured as she acted, and I wasn’t as brazen and hard-faced as I pretended. I might start off giving that impression, might act cold and unapproachable, but I always let myself down when my conscience kicked in—I had no bitch follow-through.

  “Not a fan of coffee to be honest,” I said, trying to sound friendly. “How about we go get a drink in the college bar instead?”

  “If you’re sure?” she replied cautiously.

  “Yup,” I muttered, feeling suitably manipulated, “I’m sure.”

  “What kind of a name is Kamryn, anyway?” Adele asked me without shame.

  “A made-up one,” was my terse reply. I’d spotted her student union card when she’d been hunting for change in her purse earlier and knew for a fact that I was sharing valuable drinking and conversation time with Lucinda-Jayne Adele Hamilton-Mackenzie. So, her asking about my moniker when she was Girly Two-Hyphen Name was an audacious step too far.

  “It’s not a spelling mistake? Your name is Kamryn. K-A-M-R-Y-N,” she spelled it out. “Not C-A-M-E-R-O-N, Cameron like the boy’s name?”

  “Actually, it is. I thought it’d be fun to pretend it was spelled differently. I love people asking me about it. You’re so wise, you caught me out. You’re clearly Miss Marple’s clever younger sister.”

  Adele raised her left eyebrow slightly and twisted her lip-glossed mouth into a wry smile. “You’re not very friendly, are you?” she commented.

  “I guess not,” I agreed. It’d taken her four drinks to discover I wasn’t the sharing kind. Far too many people opened their hearts and lives at the drop of a hat, as far as I was concerned. Why give someone that power over you? Why endow them with the ability to hurt you that much? Let someone in and you were asking for an emotional kicking someday.

  “At least you know it,” she said, and knocked back half her Malibu and Coke in one dainty, ladylike gulp. “But despite that, I like you.”

  “I’m honored.”

  “No, I am.” She placed a slender hand above her left breast. “I truly am.”

  She stared at me with such a friendly, open expression that I couldn’t help but bite the proffered bait. “Why’s that, then?” I asked.

  “You’re lovely.” She even sounded truthful. “I haven’t met many lovely people in my life. So, when I do, I feel honored. When I first saw you across that classroom I got an instant feeling of how lovely you are. You pretend you’re all prickly but underneath, not even that far underneath, you’re simply gorgeous.”

  “Are you a lesbian or something?” I asked brusquely.

  “No, I’m not,” she laughed. “But if I was, I’d definitely fancy you.”

  “I wouldn’t blame you,” I lied. Not even short, fat, ugly men fancied me. And I couldn’t blame them: I wore baggy clothes to hide my weight; I had never applied makeup to my dry, spotty skin; I only tamed the mass of frizz masquerading as my hair by plaiting it into shoulder-length black extensions. I had no illusions at all that I was beautiful, pretty or even able to attract the right sort of attention from men. Especially when on top of the paucity in the looks area, I was lacking the je ne sais quoi that attracted men to ugly girls: I wasn’t funny, wasn’t friendly and wasn’t going to use sex to get attention. In short, the Wicked Witch of the West probably saw more duvet action than me.

  “You’re so full of shit,” Adele laughed. (Shit sounded odd, wrong, coming out of her mouth. From me, with my London accent, swearing sounded like any other word unless you emphasized it. From Adele’s posh mouth it sounded like a mini rebellion. She spoke like she should be saying “phooey!” or “sugar!” instead of “shit.”) “You don’t believe that for a second,” she continued. “That’s why you
’re so prickly. You think people don’t like you, so you exude the impression that you don’t care what others think. I’ve seen your type before. I’d say you were bullied at school by boys. And you were probably bullied because you’re different from other people. And unlikely to change to fit in.”

  I recoiled from her. How did she know that? How? Is everything that had happened written on my face? Were the taunts, notes, phone calls, scrawls on walls all there, plain for any passing posh princess to see? What would I do if it was? College, two hundred miles from where anyone knew me, had been my escape. My getaway. My chance to leave all those hideous years behind and reinvent myself. Was it all a waste of time? Did I have “misfit” imprinted on my forehead?

  I forced a smile so Adele wouldn’t know how close to the bone her words had sliced.

  To my smile she said, “One of my friends from school was like you. Bullied to the point where she had no confidence in herself at all and shut out all her friends because she didn’t think she could trust them. Actually, she wasn’t really a friend. I don’t have that many friends if I’m honest.”

  “Well, you’re bound not to if you keep saying things like that,” I sniped.

  “I was simply saying,” she protested.

  “Yeah, well, maybe you shouldn’t be ‘simply saying,’ especially when you know nothing about me. And what makes you such an expert when you’ve clearly come from a perfect life with rich parents who could send you to all the best private schools?” I was being a bitch and I didn’t care. I wanted her to back the hell off. “Huh? What makes you such an expert on crap lives?”

  She picked up her drink, slowly swirled it around, making the melting ice cubes bump together. She looked at me for a long while, then stared down into her drink. “My mother died not long after I was born because of complications from childbirth. My father never wanted children, as he told me almost every day of my life, and he blamed me for my mother’s death. He wanted nothing to do with me. I spent a lot of time with a childminder until my father married again. His wife is not my biggest fan and she’s never made a secret of it.” Adele looked up at me, smiled. “I don’t have many friends because I’m too much, I try too hard, that’s what my last best friend told me. I try too hard, which makes me hard work. But I can’t help it. I don’t know how not to be who I am. I’ve spent so much time with people who don’t like me, I try to avoid upsetting them. I do know a bit about crap lives. Mine’s not as bad as some but it’s certainly not perfect.”