by Beth O'Leary
Addie snorts with laughter and someone behind us shushes her; I tug on her hand and we make our way down the row with a chorus of excuse me, so sorry, excuse me. We fall out of the theatre, still hand in hand, and I do my best impression of the Queen of Navarre’s lengthy death and it makes Addie laugh so much she cries splodgy droplets of grey mascara on the soft, freckled skin below her eyes.
‘I need a pint,’ she says, wiping her cheeks.
I resist the urge to google the best bar in the area, and instead let her pull me into the darkly lit, sticky-floored pub on the street corner; she manages to nab us a table with Deb-like proficiency, getting to the chair just before a suited banker type and his date.
We drink too much too quickly, giddy on our escape from the Queen of Navarre’s clutches. I get up to go to the loo and everything shifts to the left a little; I have to put a hand out to steady myself on the table.
When I get back a guy is leaning over my seat, talking to Addie. He has a shaved head and a beard, and you can see the muscles clearly bunched beneath the fabric of his blue T-shirt. I can tell he fancies her. His body language says it all, and she looks so beautiful, dressed in cool grey silk with those gumball-bright bracelets working their way up her forearms.
‘All right?’ I say. I’m attempting to sound gruff; it comes out croaky. I’m drunker than I should be, and the sight of this man leaning over Addie, her dark hair falling over her shoulders like ink snaking through water . . . it kicks the fear back into gear with a suddenness that makes me wonder whether I ever truly relaxed.
‘Dyl,’ Addie says, smiling. ‘Tamal here has already introduced me to his mother! What do you think of that, hmm?’
She’s just teasing me. I think, on some level, I must know this. But as I register the elderly lady standing behind Tamal – he’s asking if they can have our table so she can sit down – all I hear is the criticism. I’m angry, and again, on some level I do know that the anger is self-directed: I absolutely ought to have introduced Addie to my parents by now. But I haven’t seen either of them since they cut me off, and I still haven’t told Addie about that.
‘Well, you’ll be going home with Tamal, then, will you?’ I say.
Everyone’s shocked faces bring me back to reality. Christ, what a hideous thing to have said. I genuinely have no idea where it came from, and then a thought hits me like a punch in the gut: it’s just the sort of thing my father would say.
Addie gets up quietly, with a smile for Tamal and his elderly mother, and walks away. I assume she’ll wait for me outside the pub, but no, she’s not there; maybe she’ll be at the station; surely she’ll meet me in Chichester so we can share a cab home. But she doesn’t even come home. She goes back to her parents’ house.
I’m beside myself; I go to Marcus’s house at two in the morning, gambling that he’ll be awake and alone and have the patience to listen to me talk about quite how profoundly I dislike myself. He answers the door in his boxers, and I notice how thin he’s becoming – his ribs are pale shadows beneath his skin and there are indents at his hips like thumbprints.
‘Have you left her?’ he asks.
I think he was asleep; his voice is slurred, his eyes a little glazed.
‘I fucked up,’ I say, ‘and she just walked away. I don’t know if she’s coming back.’
Marcus closes his eyes for a moment. ‘Come in,’ he says, stepping aside. The house smells stale and fuggy; the scent reminds me of those months when we lived together at the log cabin. The place has been exquisitely furnished, and I wonder if India had a hand in it, though Marcus hasn’t spoken about his stepmother for months.
‘What if she leaves me?’ I say. I sound pitiful. ‘What if I screw up so badly I drive her to someone else?’
‘Then you’ll know I was right,’ Marcus says heavily, leaning back against the fridge, closing his eyes again. ‘And you’ll come here, and we’ll get drunk, and things will go back to how they should be at last.’
Addie
We keep arguing. It’s like we’re either completely happy or fighting about something totally stupid. There’s no middle ground with me and Dylan.
For our anniversary in July, Dylan takes me to the poshest restaurant in Chichester. He’s got a job tutoring some super rich Russian kids – they give him hundreds of pounds as a birthday gift. I buy him a cafetière, which sits on our sideboard at home, looking a bit shit in comparison.
The restaurant is intimidatingly quiet. The food’s tiny and every course seems to involve a foam.
‘Mmm, delicious foam, said nobody ever,’ I say, swirling my fork through a particularly large green bubble of it.
Dylan snorts into his glass of water. ‘It’s haute cuisine, darling,’ he says, putting on his poshest voice. His natural voice, really. I hear it when he’s on the phone to his mum. Who I have still not met. Another simmering not-yet-argument. My parents offered him the option of moving into their home back in January, that’s how well they know him, and I’ve still not even spoken to his mum and dad.
‘How’s your, err, quaffled tripe?’
Dylan laughs so hard he nearly sprays me with water. I start giggling too, checking the other tables to make sure nobody’s staring. The restaurant is full of sixty-year-old men with attractive women in their forties. So clichéd. I do a scan of the tables: affair, third marriage, affair, escort, that one’s going to kill him in his sleep for the life insurance pay-out . . .
‘It’s griddled duck’s liver,’ Dylan corrects me, clearing his throat. His eyes flash with laughter. ‘And you are a philistine.’
‘Is that on the dessert menu?’
He smiles, a wicked slow smile that nobody gets to see but me. ‘I hope so.’
His phone beeps. I raise my eyebrows. We said no phones.
‘Sorry!’ He wriggles it out of his trouser pocket. ‘I’ll turn it off.’ He checks the screen and his face freezes.
‘All OK?’ I say.
‘I . . .’ He clicks through to read a full message.
I watch him, a forkful of grilled lettuce halfway to my mouth.
‘Marcus is . . . he sounds like he’s in trouble.’
My heart sinks. Marcus. Of course. He knows it’s our anniversary. What else would he do but get himself into some sort of trouble?
‘What’s happened?’ I ask, trying to keep my voice neutral.
Dylan’s shoulders are tensed. ‘He’s been drinking too much.’
I know this. We’ve talked about it a lot. Since moving to that weird jacuzzi house on the edge of Chichester, Marcus has spiralled. More drugs, more alcohol, more blackouts. Even Cherry’s worried about him, and Cherry is pretty relaxed when it comes to personal crises. She needs rescuing from drug-fuelled house parties now and then, but lately Marcus needs rescuing from roadside ditches.
‘I think he’s really drunk.’
I wait for Dylan to show me the message. He doesn’t.
‘OK? And you think he’s in trouble?’
‘It’s hard to understand the message,’ he says, frowning. Still not showing me.
My phone beeps. I wince. Clearly I’ve not put mine on silent either. But Dylan doesn’t even notice.
I’mon to you xx
From Marcus. I go cold.
‘What the hell is this?’ I show Dylan the message, and as I hold it out, the phone buzzes again in my hand.
Dylan sees the next message before I do. As I turn the phone back towards me I feel him watching me, the way he sometimes does. A little warily. Like he thinks I’m someone else pretending to be Addie.
Ive seen you with him. don’t think ii wont tell Dylan.
What the fuck?
‘I have no idea what he’s on about,’ I say immediately, looking up at Dylan. ‘But you’re right. He’s clearly drunk. This message is so . . . creepy.’
‘I’m going to go a
nd get him,’ Dylan says, moving his napkin from his lap to the table.
‘What? Now?’
He hasn’t even finished his scrambled chicken entrails, or whatever.
‘Yeah, now,’ Dylan says shortly, already scraping back his chair. The beautiful women all look first. Alert to drama.
‘But . . .’
‘I’ll see you back at home.’
I have to put the meal on my credit card. Dylan ordered some stupidly expensive bottle of wine and even though we didn’t get as far as pudding, the bill is over a hundred and fifty pounds. Seeing the number makes my eyes sting with panicked tears. I can’t stand to see the rest of Dylan’s plateful going to waste, so I eat the scraps of his bullshit foamy dinner on my own and drink the wine. It’s all totally humiliating.
When I get home, Dylan’s on the sofa. He’s slumped and soft-eyed but I’m raging.
‘Sorry,’ he begins.
‘What for? The fact you ditched me at our anniversary dinner or that I just bankrupted myself to pay for it?’
‘Oh, shit,’ he says after a moment. ‘I didn’t think about . . .’
‘Of course you didn’t. Your precious Marcus was in trouble, wasn’t he?’ I move past as he tries to intercept me. ‘No, no,’ I say, and brush past him up the stairs.
‘Addie, come on, let’s talk,’ he says, as he always does. But I know the best way to punish him, now. He hates my silence.
‘I’m going to bed. Alone,’ I say. ‘You can sleep on the sofa. Or with Marcus. Whichever you prefer.’
When I come down in the morning he isn’t on the sofa. He isn’t anywhere. I sit down in the space where he was last night and try to remember to breathe. He’s left me. He’s gone, because I said that thing about sleeping with Marcus, or because I told him I wouldn’t talk, or because I’m the sort of girlfriend who gets angry when he goes to help his friend.
But – ugh. What about all the other times I said it was fine? When we went for a weekend away in the Cotswolds and he left early for Marcus. When he didn’t even make it to my sister’s birthday party because Marcus passed out somewhere. When I asked for a cosy night in and he said, Sorry, Marcus really wants some quality time.
It’s crossed my mind that Marcus might love Dylan. But he’s only ever shown an interest in women, and there’s nothing sexual in how he looks at Dyl. They’re just . . . bonded in some way I can’t understand.
The door clicks open and I sit up fast.
‘Dylan?’
‘Hey,’ he says quietly. He drops his keys in the hall and takes his shoes off. The sounds are so familiar I can tell exactly what he’s doing from the sofa.
‘Where did you go?’
‘I went to stay with Marcus.’
I swallow. ‘Oh.’
‘You said I could.’
‘You don’t need my permission, Dylan.’
‘It doesn’t feel that way, sometimes.’
He comes into the room. He’s wearing one of Marcus’s jumpers, a vintage one, patterned in olive-green diamonds. His hair is mussed and there are bags under his eyes.
‘I’m sorry.’ I hug myself. ‘I hate that. I never want to make you feel like you can’t do anything. I just . . . I think he calls on you a lot.’ And at very interesting times, I want to say. Like whenever you’re doing something important with me.
‘That’s what friends do, Ads. Come on. What would you do if it was Cherry? Or Deb?’
It wouldn’t be Cherry or Deb. They would never expect this of me. And, frankly, if they sent a text like that to Dyl, I’d be pretty pissed off with them.
‘I just think Marcus clearly doesn’t like us being together,’ I say, standing up, moving towards him.
It takes effort doing even that. I want to walk away, that’s my instinct. I want to take the power back.
‘And I sometimes feel like he’s trying to sabotage things between us.’
Dylan shakes his head impatiently. ‘Marcus said you’d say that.’
He takes a step back.
‘He said it’s not healthy, that you won’t let me see my best friend.’
‘I don’t not let you see him,’ I say. I’m stood still on the rug, Dylan out of reach again. ‘In fact, I am always letting you see him. Name a time when I’ve said you can’t.’
Dylan looks so lost. ‘What do you want me to say, Addie? That I’ll stop being friends with him?’
‘No! No.’ Although, actually, I wouldn’t mind. ‘I just want you to notice that he seems really set against me in a way that – that often causes these sorts of conversations. When we argue, it always seems to be about Marcus.’
‘And that’s his fault?’
‘You think it’s mine?’
Dylan sighs, looking up at the ceiling. ‘I don’t know. I feel totally confused. I can’t seem to get my head straight. I love you both, and you’re both telling me opposite things.’
He looks so distressed my heart melts. Taking those steps between us doesn’t feel so hard, all of a sudden. I move towards him and pull him in for a hug, ignoring the fact that his hands stay in his pockets.
‘I’ll try harder,’ I say. ‘I’ll try harder with Marcus, if that’s what you want me to do.’
NOW
Dylan
‘A traitor in our midst,’ Marcus says. He’s prowling around the Budget Travel family room, checking the windows as if we’re in a le Carré novel.
‘So we have no reason to believe Rodney is dangerous?’ I ask. This feels like an important question which has yet to be taken seriously. Marcus loves intrigue; the Gilbert sisters take such news in their stride. I am the only person who would quite like to know if Cherry’s stalker is going to kill anyone.
‘Nah,’ Deb says. She’s freshly showered and looking significantly less bedraggled. ‘Come on. It’s Rodney.’
There’s a knock at the door of our dysfunctional family room.
We all look at each other.
‘Is that – what if that’s him?’ Addie whispers.
‘That’s a good thing,’ Deb points out. ‘We want him back. We need our car, for starters.’
‘Hello?’ calls a voice.
We all exchange glances again. The need for immediate action has rendered us all totally useless.
‘Well? Is it him?’ Marcus says, full volume.
Everyone hisses at him to shut up. The fact is, I’m not completely certain whether that’s Rodney – I’m not sure I could identify him by voice alone, which is a little damning. Did any of us listen to Rodney at all during the last eighteen hours?
‘Hi, guys? It’s Rodney?’
‘At least that clears that up,’ says Deb, getting up to let him in.
We all sit up a bit straighter as Rodney enters – we’re trying to look ‘normal’, I suppose, though judging by Rodney’s puzzled expression we’re not doing an especially good job of it.
‘Everything all right?’ he asks. He has a sleeping bag under his arm and the car keys in his other hand.
‘Absolutely fine,’ Addie says, rallying. ‘Chuck me the car keys, would you, Rodney?’
Rodney obliges. It is such a poor throw Addie has to lunge across the bed to catch it with her good hand, and she grimaces in pain as the movement jolts her bad wrist. Marcus snorts with laughter at Rodney’s shoddy throw, then seems to remember that Rodney is a potentially dangerous individual, and much more interesting than he’d first assumed, and stops snorting.
‘So,’ Rodney says, rubbing his hands together, ‘Addie and Deb in the double, Marcus and Dylan on the singles, me on the floor?’
‘That’s right,’ I say. ‘We’ll set you up at the bottom of our beds, Rodney.’
‘There’s more space here,’ he says, pointing to the floor at the end of the double bed.
Addie shoots me a pleading look. There’s some
thing so beautiful about the silent conversation that follows – not for its subject, of course, but for its familiarity, the easy way we can slip back into each other’s language. Get him as far away from me as possible, she’s saying. Already on it, I reply.
‘Let’s give the ladies their privacy,’ I say. ‘If it’s too much of a squeeze for you, I’ll take the sleeping bag, and you can have the bed.’
Marcus looks at me as if he thinks I may have gone temporarily insane, but I’m relying on Rodney’s gallantry here.
‘Oh, of course, the ladies should have their space!’ he says, horrified. ‘Gosh, yes! And don’t you be giving up the bed, Dylan.’
Marcus gives me an impressed nod, but it’s Addie’s tiny smile that makes my heart beat with something embarrassingly close to pride.
Deb yawns. ‘Well, it’s after ten, which is two hours later than my preferred bedtime these days, and I’m due a Skype with my baby early tomorrow, which is literally all I can think about right now . . . so you all need to get out of my bed.’
‘We’re going to bed at ten?’ Marcus says, regarding me with bewilderment; I wonder when he last went to sleep before midnight.
I contemplate humouring him and going back to the bar, but frankly I don’t want to.
‘Yeah, we are,’ I say, picking up my bag and heading down towards the other end of the room, where the single beds are set out with the cot. ‘If you want to stay up, take a key.’ And then, on reflection: ‘And don’t do anything stupid.’
There is a wounded silence.
‘Mate. You’ve changed,’ Marcus says.
I should bloody well hope so.
I lie on my side, the polyester duvet pulled up to my chin. I can just make out Marcus in the darkness; for all his protestations about our early night, he falls asleep with enviable ease. He is now breathing heavily a couple of feet away from me, grainy and grey in the dim light creeping between curtains that don’t quite meet in the middle. Rodney is snoring in the way that my uncle Terry snores: very loudly, pig-like, almost grunting. It’s quite reassuring. At least if he’s snoring then I know he’s asleep, instead of standing over me with a knife.