No, We Can't Be Friends: A totally perfect romantic comedy

by Sophie Ranald

  I could go to Bianca’s. No, I couldn’t. There was no way – no fucking way, even if there’d been a zombie apocalypse and hers was the last safe refuge in London – I was going to ask my former friend for help. I’d take the zombies, no problem. Shambling around, undead, with sightless eyes and my insides hanging out of a gaping wound was a small price to pay for not having to do that.

  The Premier Inn it was, then. I took out my phone and swiped the map app to life. But just as I did so, it began to vibrate and trill in my hand. Fearing that it might be Myles, calling me when I was at such a weak point that it would take just a few kind words to make me drive straight back to the house and say I was sorry, I almost flung the phone away from me.

  But then I saw that it wasn’t Myles’s number – it was an unfamiliar landline. We didn’t have a landline in the house and never had.

  ‘Hello? Sloane Cassidy speaking.’

  ‘Sloane? It’s Vivienne Sterling. I’m most awfully sorry to bother you at this time of night, but I’m in rather a fix and I didn’t know who else to ask for help.’

  ‘Vivienne? Are you all right? Where are you?’

  Horrible images flashed through my mind, and I felt my mouth go dry with fear. Was she drunk, lost somewhere, not knowing how to get home? Had she had some kind of medical emergency – fallen down the stairs or had a seizure or something? Had she been mugged or burgled or worse?

  ‘I’ve been awfully stupid,’ she said. She didn’t sound drunk – not paralytic, anyway. But it was hard to tell; her voice was honed by years of coaching and even when she was utterly hammered, she managed to speak quite clearly.

  ‘What’s happened? It’s okay, you can tell me, and I’ll do whatever I can to help.’

  What exactly that would be, I had no idea. Of all the problems that faced Vivienne, I was possibly the least well-placed person in the world to help her deal with them. However, it looked like I was the only one awake in London on that Monday night, so I guessed I would have to do whatever I could.

  ‘It’s just… I’ve locked myself out of my house.’

  ‘You what?’

  The absurdity of the situation wasn’t lost on me. Here were Vivienne and I both, out on the street with nowhere to go. Of course, I was there through my own choice and she apparently wasn’t, but still – there it was. In spite of myself, I realised I was on the verge of giggling.

  ‘I went to put the milk bottles out. I keep forgetting when the milkman’s coming, and I’ve started to accumulate a bit of a mountain of them. So I put my watch on the wrong wrist, like my mother always used to when she needed to remember something, and it worked. But I forgot to pick up my keys. I’m such a fool, darling, but here I am. I’m in a call box down the road in my nightie, and I don’t know what to do.’

  ‘Okay. Hang in there, Vivienne – I’ll be right there.’

  I wasn’t right there, of course. I drove carefully but quickly, and all the same it took me the best part of an hour to get there. But at last, I arrived in the dark, silent street, parked and got out. A fox trotted across the road and disappeared into a garden. A freight train clattered along the railway tracks, the sound carrying in the cold air. There was no other sound, and no sign of Vivienne.

  ‘Hello?’ I called softly.

  ‘Sloane! Oh my God, darling, I’m so glad you’re here.’

  Vivienne emerged from behind the magnolia tree in her front garden. She’d been hiding there, I realised, and I could see why. She was wearing a skimpy, thigh-length, lacy garment that I guess you’d describe as a negligee, or possibly a peignoir. It was bright, flamingo pink. On her feet were feathered mules.

  She was shivering violently. Typical Vivienne, glamorous even when she’s putting out milk bottles, I thought, once more fighting the urge to break into giggles, knowing that if I did I wouldn’t be able to stop. I realised I was very, very tired.

  ‘I came as fast as I could,’ I said. ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘Just utterly mortified. And terribly cold. Did I get you out of bed? I’m ever, ever so sorry.’

  ‘It’s okay. I was up anyway. Late night.’

  She raised her eyebrows. ‘I see.’

  She had it all wrong, of course; I hadn’t been having a wild night out on the tiles. But I wasn’t about to explain that – I needed to find a way to get Vivienne into her house.

  Together, we approached the front door. Pointlessly, I reached out and gave it a push with my hand, but it didn’t budge.

  ‘It’s a Yale lock,’ Vivienne said. ‘I don’t suppose you know how to open it using a credit card? Isn’t that what burglars do in books?’

  ‘I haven’t got a clue. But I’ll give it a go. Come, wait in the car, I’ll turn the engine on so the heater works.’

  I installed her in the passenger seat then hurried back to the house. I rummaged in my purse and found my Amex card. I suspected that this attempt would be futile, and I was right. After five minutes of poking at the latch with the sliver of plastic, I’d achieved the sum total of fuck all.

  ‘This isn’t going to work. We should call a locksmith,’ I reported back to Vivienne after a few fruitless minutes.

  Vivienne looked alarmed. ‘At this time of night? It’ll cost hundreds of pounds.’

  I nodded. ‘Yeah, it will. They see you’re desperate and they charge whatever the hell they feel like, unfortunately.’

  ‘Surely there’s another way.’

  ‘We could break a window, I guess. But that’ll cost even more, getting a glazier in tomorrow to repair it. And you don’t want to spend the night with a smashed-in window, do you?’

  Vivienne shook her head. ‘The bedroom window’s open, though.’

  I looked up. Sure enough, the sash window on the first floor was open a good eighteen inches – there was plenty of room to climb through it. Only problem was, it was ten feet above my head, and my rock-climbing skills were even more lacking than my ability to break into a house using a credit card.

  ‘We’d need a ladder,’ I pointed out unnecessarily. ‘I don’t suppose you’ve got one?’

  ‘I’ve got a small one that I use to prune high branches in the garden. But I have no idea whether it’s tall enough, and anyway it’s in the shed.’

  And the shed was in the back garden, which was behind the high fences of at least four neighbouring houses. I looked down at my pencil skirt and high-heeled court shoes. There was no way I was going to go scrambling over walls dressed like this.

  ‘I honestly don’t know what to do. We can’t get to your ladder; we can’t get to your window. I reckon a locksmith is the only answer.’

  ‘Oh, darling.’ Vivienne looked like she was about to cry. ‘Are you sure? I’m so sorry, this is entirely my own stupid fault and I feel so bad for dragging you all the way here when I could have called someone myself. But if there’s any possible way…’

  I sighed. ‘Let me go round and have a look. You wait here.’

  I walked to the end of the row of terraced houses and around the corner. The end house had a high brick wall around its garden, and, looking over, I could just see the equally high fences of the adjoining properties in the darkness. There was no way in hell, pencil skirt or no pencil skirt, that I’d be able to climb them without risking a broken ankle.

  I retraced my steps and met Vivienne’s hopeful gaze with a shake of my head. ‘I’m sorry, but it’s just not going to happen.’

  I took out my phone and began googling.

  ‘Locks R Us. Twenty-four-seven service, covers the whole of London. Shall I give them a call?’

  Vivienne nodded reluctantly. I tapped the link on my phone and heard the number ringing and ringing. Finally, it stopped and a recorded message informed me that there was no one available to take my call right now but that if I left a message they would get back to me as soon as they could.

  ‘Fucking useless,’ I muttered. ‘Twenty-four-seven my arse. I’ll try the next one down.’

  But just as I was tapping on the
number, we heard a sound in the still night. It started off as a soft mewling, but soon became a full-on shriek.

  ‘That’s next door’s baby,’ Vivienne said. ‘Poor Carlos. They say she’s having a growth spurt, and with Melanie working night-shifts it’s a nightmare for him.’

  Above us, a light came on and I looked up to see a young man standing in the window, holding a baby. He was shirtless and handsome, with pecs to die for and even a six-pack. He looked like the cover of one of those hot dad romance novels. But right now, it wasn’t his body I was interested in, ripped or not.

  ‘If he’s awake anyway, we can ask him to let us in and go through the back of their house. I can probably climb over one fence. There’s just no way I could do a whole load of them.’

  ‘Could you, darling?’ Vivienne brightened. ‘In fact, the back door may well be open. I was sitting out in the garden earlier and I always forget to lock it. You could just walk in – there’d be no need for the ladder at all.’

  But, in fact, there was no need for me to climb over the fence at all. As soon as Carlos opened the door to our tentative knock and we explained the situation, he sprang into full-on hero mode, barely even registering a flicker of surprise at Vivienne’s choice of nightwear. He passed me the baby, now contentedly sucking at her bottle, disappeared into his house and, seconds later, Vivienne’s front door swung open. Carlos was made of strong stuff – he didn’t even look as if the state of the house had jolted him.

  ‘Oh thank you, darling, thank you ever so much. You’re so kind.’

  ‘Don’t mention it.’ He took his daughter back from me and dropped a kiss on her head, and I felt myself go a bit melty inside. Oh my God. In a few months, that could be me.

  ‘I don’t suppose a drop of sherry would quite be appropriate,’ Vivienne said. ‘But if I pop the kettle on, would either of you like a cup of tea?’

  ‘I need to get this little one back to bed,’ Carlos said. We thanked him a few more times and he disappeared back into his own house.

  I thought about summoning a cab and finding somewhere to spend the night, and a fresh wave of exhaustion washed over me. Sitting in Vivienne’s house drinking tea was preferable to that – practically anything was.

  ‘I’d love a cup of tea, Vivienne, if it’s not too much trouble.’

  ‘It’s no trouble at all.’

  I followed her through the front door and stopped dead, as shocked and bewildered as I’d been the first time I saw the house, but for entirely different reasons.

  The hallway was spotless. The cobwebs were gone; the floorboards had been cleaned and possibly freshly sanded – they were a rich shade of honey. A smell of some sort of aromatherapy room fragrance filled the air, like when you walk into a swanky spa a for a treatment. Vivienne carried on through to the kitchen, like all this was perfectly normal, and I followed her, gazing around in amazement.

  Everything was immaculate. All the papers had been cleaned off the dining table, and its mahogany top had been polished to a rich sheen. The kitchen floor tiles sparkled; someone must have got down on hands and knees and scrubbed the grout with bleach and a toothbrush. The walls had been freshly painted a shade of pale mint green. There was a jug of peonies on the table and a row of herbs in brightly glazed clay pots on the windowsill.

  I said nothing about the transformation – I couldn’t think of a way to do so without seeming to judge the state of squalor the house had been in before. And Vivienne didn’t mention it, either – she just flicked on the kettle and reached up to a shelf for a gleaming copper tin labelled ‘Tea’.

  ‘Well, that was quite a drama,’ she said. ‘As it’s so late, may I offer you a bed for the night? I mean, of course, if you’d rather get home…’

  She couldn’t have known it, but she was offering me an absolute lifeline.

  ‘Are you sure? That would be really helpful, actually. You see, I… Well, to be perfectly honest with you…’

  I stood there, grasping for the right words to explain what I’d done. But I felt the threat of tears looming larger and larger, and I felt something else, too.

  I said, ‘Sorry, do you mind if I use your bathroom?’ And before she could reply, I dashed upstairs as fast as I could, clutching my handbag.

  I just made it to the toilet in time. Cramps were gripping my abdomen like hot pincers, and as I sat down I felt a hot gush from inside me. Blood started to flow like a tap had been turned on inside me.

  My period had only been a week or so late. I hadn’t even taken a pregnancy test. I couldn’t put a name to what was happening to me – if it had been a pregnancy, it had been the merest flicker of one, so small and fragile it could have ended at any time. Or maybe it wasn’t even that; maybe it was just a late period, delayed by all the stress and turmoil of my life. But none of that really mattered.

  It was still a death.

  Right there in that sparkling-clean bathroom, my dream of having a child with Myles died, and with it, the last remaining flicker of hope or desire to save my marriage died, too.

  Twenty-Five

  The first thing I noticed when I woke up in Vivienne’s spare bedroom was the smell of roses. There were five of them, overblown blooms in shades of pink and coral, in a little cut-glass vase on the table next to the bed, and their scent had passed into my dreams, in which I’d been walking through a garden in summer, the sun hot on my back, searching for something or someone I couldn’t find.

  Sitting up, pushing the marshmallow-soft pillows up behind me, I tried to gather my thoughts, but the dream, the almost hungover feeling that came from having had eight hours of uninterrupted sleep, and my total uncertainty about what on earth I was going to do next had left me feeling dazed and bewildered.

  First things first. I called the office and told Rosie that I wasn’t feeling great but would be in as soon as I could. I checked my calendar and confirmed that I had no meetings that needed to be cancelled – or that I’d missed, thanks to my shameless lie-in. And then I turned to my missed calls.

  Eight of them were from Myles.

  The time had come, I realised, for me to return to the house. I had nowhere else to go; I’d literally run out of road. I’d go home, shower and change my clothes. Next, in my makeshift office in our spare bedroom, I’d deal with whatever work issues were most urgent. And then… Actually, I had no idea what I’d do then. I felt as if my life had shifted into a different gear, or like some kind of autopilot had been switched on, like I wasn’t in control any more, and even if I was, whatever system navigated me through my days had failed and I was drifting on a course whose destination I didn’t know.

  There was a tap on the door and Vivienne came in with a tray.

  ‘Good morning, darling. How are you feeling? I brought you some coffee and a glass of water, and I can get some breakfast on the go as soon as you like, if you’re hungry. I hope you don’t mind but I popped your clothes in the washing machine – they’re just in the dryer now so they’ll be ready for you to put on once you’re up. I did everything on a delicates cycle, don’t worry.’

  She reached over and touched my shoulder, just lightly, and I knew that she was thinking about something other than whether my tights might shrink. I felt again the closeness we’d shared when she told me about the daughter she had lost, and it brought a massive lump to my throat. Looking down, I realised I was wearing a pair of mushroom-coloured silk pyjamas that she’d lent me, and I remembered how she’d sat with me on the couch for a couple of hours the previous night, pouring endless cups of tea while I told her the whole story of what had happened with Myles, and the baby we weren’t going to have.

  ‘Thank you. Honestly, I can’t thank you enough. You’ve been so kind.’

  She waved a hand. Her nails had been manicured, I noticed, and were painted a bang-on-trend shade of lime green. Her feet were bare, and I could see her toes had had the same treatment. She was wearing skinny jeans and a white linen shirt. Even her face looked different – softer, somehow, like
she’d put on a bit of weight or maybe had some work done by someone with a seriously subtle hand.

  All our talk the previous night had been about my woes, so I hadn’t asked her what had brought about the transformation of her house and herself; no doubt she would tell me when she was good and ready.

  ‘I’ll just leave this here.’ She moved the flowers and slid the tray onto the table next to me. ‘There’s a new toothbrush for you in the bathroom, and clean towels on the rail. Take your time – I’ll be out in the garden potting up my gazanias. The poor things need a bit of TLC or they won’t survive the winter.’

  She swished out, and I pushed myself up on the pillows and tasted my coffee. It was good stuff – one of the changes Vivienne had made to her house had evidently been investing in a top-end espresso machine. There was even a little jug of milk and a bowl of sugar lumps on the tray.

  While I sipped, I turned back to my phone and listened to the message Myles had left – just the one, in spite of all the times he’d called me.

  ‘Sloane, it’s me. I just wanted to let you know I’ve got an estate agent coming to value the house this afternoon. He’ll be there at twelve. I thought you’d want to know and possibly be there if you can. Right, I’ll see you later, I hope. Hope you’re okay.’

  I swung my feet out of bed, onto the deep pile of the carpet, which looked like it had been newly laid. It was ten o’clock now – if I hurried, I’d make it home in time.

  Home. Except it wasn’t, really, not any more. Nowhere was.

  But if I was to move on to the next stage of my life – whatever that would be – I had to confront this situation, deal with it like a grown-up and try to find solutions.

  Just before eleven, having showered, dressed, refused Vivienne’s offer of breakfast and thanked her profusely for her hospitality, I pulled up outside the house. My usual parking spot was occupied by a bright blue Beetle emblazoned with a logo: ‘Walkerson’s – Your local property specialist’.