My Best Friend's Girl

by Dorothy Koomson

  Nate didn’t say anything as he held me together. He’d never had to do this with me before. I was the strong one with Nate and me. He looked after me, sorted my life out, made the most amazing love to me—and I wasn’t just talking sex. He gave me the kind of confidence I never thought I’d have. But when a crisis hit, it was me who sorted it out. Me who found a practical solution. Nate and I balanced each other out, and although he got to parts of me no one else had, he’d never had to deal with Kamryn in tears. Kamryn in breakdown.

  “Babe,” he whispered in my ear as I cried, as everything I’d been feeling for weeks came gushing out in a tidal wave of emotion. I couldn’t hold it back any longer and all of it came out. “It’s OK,” Nate reassured. “It’s OK.”

  Eventually the tears stopped and I was dry crying, my body the only thing quivering. Then, my body stopped shaking and I stood empty, drained, in Nate’s strong arms.

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered, so tired I could hardly form words. “I didn’t mean to do that.” I mustered enough strength to push him away and rubbed at my red eyes, embarrassed at myself. I did know why I’d broken down like that. It’d been a long time coming but I didn’t know why it’d been with him. If it’d been with anyone it should have been with Luke.

  “It’s all right,” Nate said, concern on his face and in his voice. “You can talk to me any time.” He came toward me, as though to hold me again, but I stepped out of reach, put my hands up to stop him. To halt this.

  “Nate, this is so fucked up. I can’t be breaking down in front of you. I’ve got a boyfriend, who I love. He’s the one I should be crying with, not you. I just wanted to know why, that’s all. I didn’t mean to do this. I don’t know why I did. You were there, I suppose.”

  “Don’t push me away,” he pleaded.

  “You are away, Nate. The sooner we both get used to that, the better.” Even I lurched inside at the coldness in my voice.

  He nodded slightly, abject misery on his face as he turned away.

  “I’m sorry,” I blurted at him. I couldn’t let him go like that. What if it was the last time I saw him? What if it was like Adele all over again? “I didn’t mean to say that. I’m sorry, OK? I’m sorry for saying that. I’m sorry for hitting you. And for shoving you. I’m sorry for all of it. I’m sorry.”

  He stopped opening his car door, rotated on the spot toward me. “I’m sorry too. I never said that but I am. I’m sorry for what I did. For breaking up our relationship. For wrecking your friendship with Adele. For hurting you so badly. I’m truly sorry.”

  I nodded. Nate had aged since the last time I saw him. Time had become ingrained in his face. He was weary. His eyes were bloodshot, his mouth, the beautiful mouth with which he’d asked me to repeat my marriage proposal, was pressed into a grim line.

  “I’ll talk to you soon,” I said.

  “Yeah,” he replied. His car started as I opened the main front door.

  Upstairs, I quietly opened the front door to my flat. I didn’t even notice that the lounge light was off. I hung my coat up on the rack and kicked off Luke’s shoes. Barefoot, I crept into the bedroom.

  I jumped when I found Luke, fully dressed in jeans and his thick-knit blue sweater, sitting on the bed. The room was dark but he looked as though he’d been waiting for me to return so he could leave. I noticed his feet were covered in his socks but no shoes; he’d been unable to go because I’d been wearing his trainers.

  “I saw Nate outside,” Luke stated quietly. “What’s going on?” His face was angry but also afraid, if he’d been watching from the window, then he’d probably seen Nate holding me, stroking my hair as he comforted me. Luke probably thought Nate and I were about to get back together. Nothing could be further from the truth. I moved slowly toward my bed and climbed onto it, lay down, curled up in the fetal position.

  “Give us a cuddle,” I asked.

  Luke hesitated, then did as I asked, curled up around me. I relaxed against him, he was warm and comforting after the cold and brutalness of the outside. I covered his hands with mine and my fingers began to thaw.

  “What’s going on?” he murmured, anxiety in his voice.

  In short bursts, I told him.

  “i’m not precious, i’m tegan”

  chapter 38

  Mummy Ryn,” Tegan said quietly. So quietly that I wouldn’t have heard it if I hadn’t been waiting for it.

  I knew what she was going to say because over the past couple of weeks Tegan had changed. She had become restless. It took her nearly an hour to settle at night; she’d often come into my room in the middle of the night, and would go back to her bed only if I sat with her until she fell asleep again. Her appetite had halved, she’d retreated into quietness, and she’d taken to drawing pictures of a woman who could only have been her mother, but if I asked who was in the picture she’d shrug and whisper, “Don’t know.” I knew what she was thinking because I was thinking it too. I too had become edgy and restless—my insomnia had gone from chronic to critical, I got at most four hours of sleep a night—during the day I could barely summon the energy to open my e-mails and I didn’t return any of Nate’s e-mails and calls.

  “Yes, Tiga?” I replied.

  She lay stretched out on the floor in front of the television, coloring in a picture of Luke at work. She put down her blue marker, with which she was filling in the body of Luke’s shirt, and regarded me with caution. Her pink lips were twisted in thought and her eyes slightly narrowed as she tucked a lock of blond hair behind her ear. She didn’t say anything, just looked at me. I patted my lap to get her to clamber up.

  “You know it’s Christmas?” she said cautiously as she settled in my lap. I linked my arms around her body and nodded. Christmas was in just under three weeks; she’d finish school in five days and would go to the Kayes’ house during the day. It was Christmas outside and in the flat—we had a small tree that lived next to the TV where the beanbag had once been, decorations were up, lights were in the window, cards sat on every flat surface, every day Tegan opened the chocolate advent calendar that Luke had bought—but inside us the festive spirit was absent. Where Christmas excitement should be was an ache. Memories. We hadn’t discussed what we were doing on the big day yet, and every time Luke tried to bring it up, I changed the subject, or said I hadn’t had time to think about whether we were going to London to be with my folks or not. Christmas in London wasn’t an option—I was simply putting him off until Tegan and I could talk properly. We hadn’t been able to do that until now, when Luke was in New York for a week on business. I’d decided to leave the start of the conversation to Tegan, to wait and see if she’d properly remembered or if I was worrying about nothing.

  “Yes, sweetheart, I know it’s Christmas soon,” I replied.

  “It’s…” Her voice died in her dry throat.

  “It’s your mummy’s birthday,” I finished for her.

  She nodded.

  “I know,” I said. Adele’s birthday was Christmas Day. When Tegan was very young we’d have a double celebration—Adele’s birthday in the morning, then lunch would be Christmas, and then after Tegan had gone to bed it’d be Adele’s birthday again, and me, Nate and Adele would drink ourselves stupid.

  “Do they have birthdays in heaven?” she asked.

  “Erm…Maybe,” I replied carefully. “I don’t see why not.”

  “If I sent her a card, would she get it?”

  “I don’t think so,” I replied gently.

  Tegan curled up against my torso, buried her head against my chest. Her shoulders started to shake, and then her whole body. Her sobs slowly became audible. She hadn’t cried in front of me since her mum died, since that day in the hotel. I didn’t know this would be the thing that would set her off, that revealed the rivers of pain that flowed through her.

  “I’m sorry, sweetie, but we’ll think of another way to let her know that we’re thinking of her, OK?”

  Tegan slipped off my lap, ran out of the room. After a f
ew minutes of controlling myself, I got up, followed Tegan to her bedroom.

  On her blue and white duvet, Tegan was a pink and purple crescent shape that shook with long, keening cries. Tears streamed down her face, and her little hands kept wiping them away. Beside her on her pillow she’d placed the picture of her and Adele that usually sat on top of her television.

  “Tiga…” I began, then realized I didn’t know what to say. I sat on the bed beside her, rubbed her back. I stared at the picture of Adele, at the woman who grinned happily beside her daughter. I’d almost forgotten that’s what she looked like.

  “Why isn’t my mummy coming back?” Tegan asked through her hiccuppy sobs. “Was I a bad girl?”

  “No, sweetheart,” I said. “Your mummy was just ill.”

  “You were ill,” she said.

  “I know, but I was a different kind of ill. Your mummy was very, very ill and she couldn’t get better. She wanted to be here, but she was too sick.”

  “I want her to come back,” she insisted.

  “So do I.” A thought blossomed in my mind. “Tiga, have you been thinking that your mummy is coming back?”

  “Yes,” she whispered. She nodded her head, hiccupped a few more tears. “She might not like heaven and come back. She might like Leeds more.”

  Adele and I did a great job of explaining death to her, didn’t we? “I’m sorry, baby, your mummy isn’t coming back. Not ever.”

  The gulps and their accompanying wail increased in volume and distress. It tore through me because I knew how she felt. I knew how that realization, the final acceptance that you weren’t going to see that person again, was like a sword through your heart. I scooped Tegan into my arms, held her warm body close to me. A memory began to glint in my mind, then slowly solidified, became a hard shaft of light among my memories: Tegan was a month old. Adele had asked me to watch her daughter while she took a shower. I perched on the bed, in Adele’s bedroom, staring at the blue and white crib. Tegan was still pink and wrinkly with the finest covering of fair hair on her blotchy head. She’d stirred the second her mother shut the bathroom door, almost as though she knew Mummy was more than a foot away. The shower came on and Tegan woke up and let forth the loudest cry I’d ever heard. I’d frozen for a moment, convinced she would stop, but no, the gaping hole of her mouth showed no sign of abating, her eyes were squeezed shut and her face was filling with red from the wailing. I reached into the crib, pulled back the blankets and picked her up. She was incredibly light. I’d held her in the month since she’d been born but I kept forgetting how light she was. I rearranged the squalling bundle in my arms and rocked her, hushing her, willing her to understand that her mum would be back soon and she could get fed some more if she wanted. By the time a wet-haired Adele returned, Tegan had stopped her howling and was moving her lips at me, her unfocused eyes staring up at me as though I was about to reveal the secrets of the universe to her. “Tell me again how you don’t want kids,” Adele whispered as she came back to the bed, lay down and tried to get a little sleep.

  “I rocked you like this when you were born,” I said into Tegan’s hair. “You were so funny-looking when you were born, when you were a little baby. I thought, Gosh, have they given us the right baby at the hospital? She’s real funny-looking. But then you smiled, and you looked just like your mummy, just as pretty as your mummy, and I knew you had to be hers. Ours. Because you were mine too, you know? You were my little Tiga. Even when I was away for all that time I thought of you. I had your picture in my purse and when people said, ‘Who’s that?’ I’d say, ‘That’s my little Tiga.’

  “I’m sorry your mummy’s not here, Tiga. I wish she was. Every day I wish she was and I know it’s going to be hard to get used to. Why don’t we call Christmas Day Adele Day? Adele was your mummy’s name, you know that, don’t you?”

  “Yes,” she whispered.

  “OK, we’ll have Adele Day. We’ll make special Adele Day cards and send them to everyone we know. And we can draw pictures of her and I’ll show you some of the pictures in my photo albums. We can even make a special Bung It for our tea. Hmmm? What do you say?”

  “Is Luke going to come?” She’d stopped crying, that was something.

  “No. It’ll just be me and you. No boys allowed!”

  “What about Mr. Nate?” she asked.

  “Yuck! No! He’s a boy! No boys allowed! And, just so we don’t miss out on Christmas, we can have it the next day. And open our presents then.”

  “Luke can come to that one, can’t he?” Tegan asked.

  “If you want him to,” I said.

  “I do. And Mr. Nate.”

  “Really? Why?” That was something I never thought I’d hear her say. He was nice to her, the three or four times she’d seen him since their first meeting, but he wasn’t Luke. And each time he’d dropped by, it’d been for ten minutes at the most. Why would she want to spend such an important day with him?

  “You like him,” she said simply, sniffling back tears.

  “But he doesn’t have to come to our Christmas Day if you don’t like him.” There was a note of panic in my voice. I hadn’t seen him since our confrontation in the street a fortnight ago. I hadn’t spoken to him or returned his e-mails—I’d been actively avoiding him. Luke sure as hell wouldn’t want him around, either.

  “I do like him. He’s funny.” That surprised me even more. What had he done to make her say he was funny?

  “All right, I’ll see if he can come. He might not be free, though, so we mustn’t be upset if he can’t make it.”

  I cuddled her closer, inhaling her smell of cinnamon and cherries from the bubble bath Luke had bought her. I didn’t like to see Tegan upset. I didn’t like to know she was hurting. Of course she was hurting, but life was easier if I pretended that Tegan didn’t understand what was going on.

  “It’s all right to cry, you know,” I said. I’d stopped her doing that. Not intentionally, but I’d felt better when she did stop. It might not be pleasant for the listener, it might disempower and unsettle the witness to a breakdown, but crying was good. Crying was an acceptable outlet, even if it made you feel raw and empty inside, it was still better than that buildup of resentment that grew from not letting your emotions out. I didn’t want Tegan to grow up angry and bitter because she’d been denied the opportunity to express her grief. “If you feel sad about your mummy or you miss her, you can cry any time you want. You can talk about her any time you want to as well.” I stroked the long, fine waves of her hair. “It’s all right to miss your mummy, you know, I do understand, and anything you want to say, I will listen.”

  “I’m going to sleep now,” she mumbled.

  “OK, precious.”

  She shook her head, and gave a glum giggle. “I’m not precious, I’m Tegan.”

  A joke she and her mother had. “Are you sure now? I could have sworn you were called Precious.”

  “No, my name’s Tegan.”

  “OK, Tegan, you go to sleep. I’ll sit here for a while, if you don’t mind, and then I’ll go make us some lunch.”

  “OK.” She crawled out of my lap and under her covers, lay facing away from me. I went to the window and pulled her blue curtains across to darken the room from the midday light. I sat on the floor by the bed, watching her sleep, like I did sometimes in the middle of the night. She took karate lessons, she’d joined the soccer team, she spoke to Luke and me like she was an adult, but I kept forgetting she was fragile. Poor fragile Tegan. My poor, poor baby.

  “What and what?” was Luke’s reply when I told him the plan for Christmas Day and Boxing Day. We hadn’t seen him in the two days since he’d returned from America because he’d been to London for meetings about New York. I’d been dreading telling him and decided away from Tegan was the best plan, which meant doing the deed at work.

  He stood over my desk, arms folded, imposing in his charcoal-gray suit, white shirt and blue tie. I was always amazed that despite the hours he worked and despite spe
nding time at our place, he still managed to maintain his gym-made body. My head moved up slowly to Luke’s face, and when I met his eyes my fears of visual contact were realized—the unusual hazel color of his eyes added a flintlike quality to the stare that burned accusation and displeasure at me. He wasn’t simply upset he was deeply aggrieved—his jaw began a slow grinding motion.

  “I don’t get to spend Christmas Day with you two, but I do get to spend Boxing Day with your ex?” Luke said when I didn’t reply. He looked over his shoulder at the glass walls of my office, then up at the ceiling, before sweeping his unimpressed gaze back to me. “Am I on a hidden camera show? Because that’s the only way this can be happening.”

  “I have to do this for Tegan. It has to be just us on Christmas Day. And she’s the one who suggested Nate come on Boxing Day, not me.”