Meredith reeled. Amy had been all over her in Thailand, desperate for her attention, but things had changed even more than Meredith realised. Is this how Olivia felt, watching Amy catch up in confidence, status and savoir-faire and then one day having to acknowledge that Amy had surpassed her in all these things? And Amy assumed she was a lesbian and had now placed her in that box. Meredith didn’t care whether she was or not. She could choose who she was as and when she felt, but now Amy had categorised her like a bug on a pin. Meredith felt her cheeks redden but she regained her composure.
‘Same as you, Amy. I keep it casual. Life is for living.’
Amy rolled a cigarette and asked if Meredith wanted one. She declined, even though she would have liked one. She didn’t want Amy to know anything more about her, anything that could be seen as a weakness, right now.
‘This place is so boring. You know right, all these Soho Houses, so similar, all these boutique, Instagrammable hotels, Jesus, they make me puke. You must know some cool places living here?’
Meredith thought of the little Chinese bar near Estació de França where she could get a one-euro beer but she didn’t think Amy had this in mind. She wanted to avoid anywhere people might know her and call her Meredith. She was just on the cusp of mentioning a bar in Gràcia where tourists didn’t often go, but which was full of the same hipster international crowd as surrounded Amy, when Richard said from somewhere behind her, ‘Nancy took me to this amazing bar. It was full of Catalans drinking and plotting. What was it called Nance? The Blue Bedroom?’
‘La Alcoba Azul,’ said Meredith, itching to punch Richard, as the last thing she wanted was to take this group to one of her secret places.
‘Oh my God, that sounds right what we need. Get away from all these fucking tourists and their constant posting.’
‘Leave it to the professionals,’ muttered Olivia.
Amy either didn’t hear or pretended that she hadn’t.
Meredith smiled. Sure, she could take them there.
Twenty minutes later, after navigating the labyrinth of narrow alleys of the Barri Gòtic, they squeezed themselves into La Alcoba Azul.
The narrow bar, no wider than ten feet, was packed, as it always was at this hour, whatever the night, and full of the usual assortment of anonymous lone drinkers, groups of Catalan separatists and a single tourist looking uncomfortable. They formed a dense mass of alcoholic humanity, laughing, carousing and living, into which Meredith, Olivia, Richard, Dylan, Adam and assorted hangers-on squeezed, despite it looking, as it always did, that it couldn’t cope with one more person entering.
Meredith shouted across an order to Jordi and told him to send the bill to the short guiri with the expensive glasses. He replied, ‘The one who looks like a gone-to-seed Tom Cruise?’ Meredith looked and now she noticed Adam did bear a resemblance to the actor.
She turned and found herself face-to-face with Olivia. She could see Amy and the others at the far end of the bar already talking with a couple of the local independentistas who had taken to using the bar as a place to plot and scheme their next moves against the Madrid regime. Meredith always steered clear of them: they were magnets for the Mossos. And to her mind, there was nothing more corrupt than idealism.
‘Richard tells me that he saw you selling wine to tourists? How did you get involved in that? I seem to recall you were a law student when we met.’
‘Thinking of going to law school’ was a phrase that had tripped off Meredith’s tongue for many years in answer to the question ‘What do you do?’ as people never bothered with any tricky follow-up questions to such a mundane reply. But she had neither the means nor the inclination to join that profession. She smiled at Olivia. ‘I wanted to do something a little less dishonest.’
Olivia was close to Meredith, the bodies all around them, pressing in, but at the same time oblivious in their loud Catalan conversations. ‘God, yeah I know what you mean. And I guess you’re a little too old to be a student anymore.’
Meredith laughed. It sounded genuine. It had taken many years before it sounded genuine to her as well, but now, she could not distinguish between the sound of her fake laugh and her genuine laugh. ‘Gee, I’m only 28, but I guess that would still make me a mature student.’ She was thirty-two and she smiled at Olivia.
Olivia frowned. ‘So, you were only eighteen when we met in Thailand?’
She knew she looked at least five years younger than her real age but she wondered why she had felt the need to knock off all those years. The important thing was being below thirty. She wished she had told Olivia she was twenty-nine. She started to smile again at Olivia.
‘You smile a lot, Nancy.’
Meredith caught a half-smile from turning into a full smile. What did Olivia know? ‘Guess I’m just friendly. I like to put people at ease. It’s nice to be nice.’ She had seen this written on a T-shirt worn by a tourist surrounded by a large group of friends. She had tried using it on Spider, who sub-let his room to her, a few times. He had just laughed at her.
Now Olivia looked at her as though she had said something strange and pressed closer. ‘I googled you when you were talking with Amy. Standard issue people check. I literally couldn’t find a single thing about you. No Facebook profile, no Twitter, nothing on Google. Do you know how hard it is to have nothing on the web at all like that? I’ve never heard of that outside a spy movie.’
Olivia was staring at her with an intensity that made Meredith look away. Towards the rear of the bar, she could see Amy was huddled in deep conversations with the more good-looking of the independentistas. Meredith didn’t recognise them but she wanted more than anything else to go and join Amy, become her friend and to get away from Olivia and her questions.
‘I’ve never been very active on social media.’ She controlled the incipient smile but kept her tone friendly. ‘I’ve always been more of a book girl.’
‘Sure, I get it. But nothing, nothing at all. Do you know how hard that is? Where are you, Nancy? It’s like you’ve never existed.’
Meredith shrugged. ‘The truth is, I had all my information removed. Here in Europe, we can do that. I had to.’
Olivia toyed with the cocktail stick that held the olive in her vermouth. ‘Why?’
This was intolerable and for a moment Meredith thought about walking out. After all, the road to monetising Amy wasn’t clear and Olivia’s intrusive questioning made Meredith want to throw her drink, a gin and tonic, in Olivia’s face. Maybe even follow up with the glass or perhaps a kiss.
‘A couple of years after I met you guys, I ended up moving to Australia. I met this guy, Barry. He was lovely, a tree surgeon, and we hit it off, even got a place together but then–’ Meredith let her voice catch. ‘He started hitting me and it got pretty bad. The usual story, I’m ashamed to say. I tried to leave him but he always promised me he would change, that he loved me. God, I feel stupid saying this, but I believed him. Well, until he put me in hospital with three broken ribs and a fractured eye socket. After that, I walked out. I took everything but when he got out of prison, he started following me online so I disappeared, physically and digitally.’
Meredith surprised herself when a tear welled up in her right eye. This was a skill she didn’t know she had. Nothing pleased her more than evidence of improvement.
The tear did it. Olivia put out a hand and took hold of Meredith’s wrist. She leaned close in. ‘That happened to me too. My ex-husband. Jesus, I married my abuser.’ Olivia fixed her with a stare. ‘You have to remember it’s not your fault.’
Meredith wanted to laugh and although she resisted she still couldn’t stop herself smiling. What a stroke of luck. She never would have had Olivia as the type who would let herself be dominated but there it was, and perhaps that explained Olivia’s relationship with Amy too. She talked the tough talk but in reality, she was a beta type all along. This will make things easier, thought Meredith.
‘And sorry for what I said about your smile. It’s beautiful, it
really is, but ever since Amy jumped the million-followers barrier, we’ve had all sorts of people coming out of the woodwork trying to use her.’
‘I would never do that, Olivia. I’m not even sure what that means. As you have noticed, I don’t really do social media.’
Olivia smiled back. ‘I know, and I’m sorry for being such a bitch. Come on, let’s join the others.’
They pushed through the crowd. Meredith was used to the closeness of people and the need to thrust through regardless of who was in your way. It was what you had to do to make progress in a Barcelona bar but Olivia was full of sorrys and excuse me’s as though these magic words would clear the way. Meredith kept on moving and in her wake, Olivia followed until they reached the back of the bar.
Adam was on his mobile phone and Richard and Dylan were talking to one of the independentistas.
‘Where’s Amy?’ said Olivia.
Richard pointed at the tar-stained door that led to the alley at the back of the bar. ‘She’s gone for a cigarette with that guy, Freddie was it?’
The Spanish guy he was talking with laughed. ‘Ferran. It’s Catalan.’
‘I might join her. Want one?’ said Olivia.
Meredith didn’t want to smoke but for a bonding ritual she was prepared to give away a few minutes of her life and it would be a relief to leave the cloying heat of the bar.
They stepped outside into the dark alley. The glow of Dylan’s cigarette tip made it look like he was on standby waiting for Amy to activate him. It was cooler out here, but not by much. The remains of the day’s blistering city heat still hung heavy.
‘Where’s Amy?’ said Olivia.
Meredith looked down the alleyway. It was empty. Amy had gone.
5
They had ghosted her. After the night out at La Alcoba Azul she hadn’t heard anything more from The Squad. Now, a week later, and after sending two texts to Richard, without receiving a reply, she had given up on them.
They clearly had seen her as nothing more than a passing interest, a local trinket to be examined and then discarded. It had left Meredith feeling rejected and, worse, it had made her realise how shabby and worthless her life was compared to theirs.
She awoke to the sound of Spider shouting about a wet towel. This was something that Meredith had noticed in the various shared houses, hostels and squats that had formed the bulk of her living accommodation over the last ten years. The more progressive, alternative or different the lifestyle a person claimed to follow, the more likely it was that they were super possessive regarding bourgeois comforts. If you want to see vicious, watch two hippies argue over the last kumquat in the bowl.
She rolled over and put back one of her wax earplugs that had come loose in the night. With it back in, she could sleep a little longer. Meredith had drunk too much the night before. She had made the mistake of joining Spider, Inga and the others in enjoying a couple of litres of Don Simón wine, the kind that came in cartons and cost one euro.
She had done that a lot this week and she was aware that it was because of The Squad’s loss of interest in her. The glimpse into their lives had made it inevitable that she would compare it with her own and there was no doubt that her life was but a pale shadow. And so she had drunk to block out the feelings of envy and worthlessness, even to the extent of joining Spider and her other housemates in their boring drinking and smoking sessions during which they talked endlessly and incoherently about the details of their squalid lives and the shows they were watching on Netflix. This only had the consequence of intensifying her feelings of inadequacy. No one was interested in her life, especially herself.
She had analysed the night out with The Squad and couldn’t work out why they had just dropped her. After they returned to the bar following a perfunctory search for Amy, who had seemingly gone off for a night of Catalan relaxation with Ferran, she had spent the rest of the night consoling Dylan. They tried to convince him that Ferran was merely showing Amy some of the barrio’s magnificent Gothic architecture. It had taken a lot of booze but eventually it had worked and by the time they left the bar at 4am he had seemed accepting of this ludicrous version of events. More importantly, they had stumbled out into the early morning and parted with warm words about meeting up and spending more time together in Barcelona. Dylan and Richard had hugged her and even Olivia had said they would be sure to be in touch. But since that night Meredith hadn’t heard anything from any of them. She had been ghosted.
Meredith had also lost her job. The day after the night at La Alcoba Azul she had slept in all day until late afternoon and when she had eventually wandered down Plaça del Pi to see if Alfonso wanted some assistance in selling wine, he had told her to get fucked because he had needed her that morning.
The Amy experiment had been a disaster and it was due to her own inability to connect with people. Her father had been right – she was just a twisted, weird little kid with no friends and it would always be the case. It was with this thought that she drifted back off to sleep in the warm cocoon of her bedroom which was throbbing with the accumulated summer heat.
At first, she ignored her phone but when it rang for the third time in succession, she was surprised to see it was an English number, so she answered it.
‘Are you dressed?’ It was Olivia and she sounded as sharp as ever. The hard edges of composed professionalism, which Meredith had managed to round off with alcohol and her story about being beaten up by her Australian boyfriend, were back.
Meredith found her tone grating but she focussed on the person she wanted to be, which was calm and helpful, as she guessed that if Olivia was calling her, there might still be something to be gained from the situation. This time she wouldn’t fuck it up, she would be more vigilant in what she said and how she acted. She would be normal and they would like her, she would make sure of it. The contrast between Amy and Olivia’s life in Soho House versus her existence in this dump listening to stoners arguing over wet towels was uppermost in her mind.
‘Morning, Olivia, how are you?’ She could hear traffic noise in the background.
‘You live in Gràcia. Is that how you say it?’
Meredith had a bad feeling about where Olivia was heading. She sat up in bed. The heat made it feel like pushing against an invisible curtain. There was, of course, no air conditioning in this flat, not like the ice-cold luxury of Soho House. She recalled telling Olivia that she lived in the cool, bohemian area of Gràcia rather than the truth which was that she lived in a seedy apartment in the Raval, a much less salubrious part of town.
‘Yeah, where are you, Olivia?’
‘I’m on my way, in a taxi. I’ll be there in ten minutes. What’s your address?’
Meredith stood up and looked around, locating any clothing that wasn’t crumpled or dirty.
She gave Olivia an address of a swanky apartment block in Vila de Gràcia and told her she would meet her outside.
‘I’ll be there in ten minutes. We’ve got a big problem.’
As soon as she hung up Meredith started working her way through the piles of clothes like a scavenger on the city dump. Once she was dressed, she ran to the Drassanes metro station and hopped on the train to Gràcia with Olivia’s ‘We’ve’ still fresh in her mind.
Twenty-five minutes later she strode up to the apartment block address she had given to Olivia. Olivia was standing outside smoking and looking cross. Meredith sipped from a cup of takeaway coffee. ‘Hey Olivia, sorry, I just popped out to the local coffee shop, I needed this.’ She held up the polystyrene cup of cheap coffee she had bought from the local supermarket by the Fontana metro. ‘They make an amazing matcha latte, you should try one.’
Olivia looked up at the lavish balconies festooned with drooping palms. ‘Matcha, yeah can’t stand it myself, but it photographs nicely for Instagram. Nice place, by the way. Which one is yours? You forgot to give me the number of the apartment and I’ve been buzzing them all. Does everybody in this country sleep in all morning? Your neighbours
will hate you, by the way.’
Meredith noticed that Olivia looked bright and clean, was wearing a white blouse and tan skirt that looked box fresh, and Dior sunglasses. Meredith couldn’t help contrasting this with her own hastily-put-together ensemble of creased Uniqlo T-shirt and denim shorts, which had been the only things she could find that were not stained or dirty. To any casual observer, it would look like it was Olivia who was the native to the city and not Meredith.
Meredith held up her Styrofoam cup. ‘I can’t start the day without a good cup of matcha.’
Olivia eyed the Styrofoam cup with what appeared to be loathing. ‘You should buy a reusable cup; those things are lethal to the planet. Amy promotes a good brand of them. You should check them out.’
Meredith smiled and was immediately self-conscious, recalling Olivia’s comments about her smiling a lot from their night out a week ago. ‘Biodegradable,’ she shot back, which was almost certainly untrue.
‘No such thing. But listen, we need to talk. Get in.’
In the back of the taxi, Olivia checked her mobile phone and began. ‘So, we are on a tight schedule here in Barcelona. We have several shoots lined up and of course, we need to produce content for the ’Gram posts. Everything was booked months ago and now we are all just sitting there twiddling our thumbs whilst we wait to produce content that just isn’t there. Adam is tearing his hair out, I’ve literally never seen him so angry and Dylan… well Dylan, we put him on an electric scooter and sent him out into the city. It’s best that he’s out of the way. I swear he’s so dense light bends around him.’
Olivia smoothed her skirt with an elegantly-manicured hand and turned to Meredith.
Meredith marvelled at what wealth could bring – the clothes, the phone and the assurance that anything could be achieved was insulation against the real world. Meredith wanted that more than anything.
‘So, what do you think?’
‘About what? Sorry, this is about Amy, yeah?’
How to Kill Your Friends Page 4