by Perks, Heidi
With Anna at the bar, the other women’s voices have dropped a note and Grace struggles to hear what is being said from the other side of the table. She edges her chair a little closer, if only to remind them she’s still here, and as she does so Caitlyn turns to her with a pitying smile.
It isn’t hard to see which way the evening is heading, with all of them diving into their drinks like they don’t have to get up for a school run in the morning. Anna had told her it was ‘just a few’ before school broke up for Christmas, but for all Grace knows, this is the way their nights always end up.
Now the women are discussing a holiday the four of them had been on back in May. A weekend in Majorca without their families. ‘Do you remember that waiter?’ Nancy is laughing. ‘He couldn’t keep his hands off you, Rach.’ At the bar Anna turns round as she waits for the wine, laughing too.
Grace smiles, though of course it’s one more conversation she can’t join in. She leans back in her chair as her thoughts turn briefly to Matilda and the sitter she’d hurriedly found through the babysitting service she’d signed up to at the start of term but had barely used. She wonders if she should call to check on them. Matilda’s behaviour had been challenging tonight and Grace thinks some of it is because she hasn’t made any noticeable friendships. All Grace wants is for her daughter to have one special friend like she’d had in Anna.
She has so many memories of her own that she wishes she could share tonight with her friend. Grace has tried to remind Anna of them, but in recent weeks Anna has clammed up on her, shut her down. Maybe Grace was also hoping that by joining the group tonight she would have a better chance of talking to her and reliving moments from their past, the way you do when you are out drinking.
She remembers the two of them circling around the monorail at the motor museum when they were young, laughing, refusing to get off it as Grace’s parents waited below, calling them down, horrified when the train started again and they were still on it. They must have completed at least six loops, or at least that is how it felt back then. ‘Can you believe you are eight today?’ Anna had kept giggling.
Grace wants to share this happy memory with Anna when she comes back to the table, but as soon as her friend plonks the bottle of wine down, Rachel stands and links an arm through hers.
‘Where are they going?’ Grace asks when they have walked away.
‘Probably for a cigarette.’ Caitlyn turns up her nose in disgust.
‘A cigarette?’ Grace breaks off before insisting that Anna doesn’t smoke, because clearly she now does, and yet it is something else that Grace didn’t know. Anna’s father’s constant smoking was supposed to have put her off for good. It had been deterrent enough for Grace, and she didn’t have to live in the cloud of smoke that clung to the living-room ceiling day in and day out.
‘You didn’t know she smoked?’ Nancy says to Grace. She isn’t laughing but her eyes are lit up and dancing like they have been all evening. Like she is goading her.
‘I thought she’d given up,’ Grace lies, and reaches for the old bottle of wine, tipping a generous amount into her glass.
‘You may as well finish that,’ Nancy says, raising her eyes at the near-empty bottle. Grace stares back at her and does as she is told, pouring out the rest of the wine, though she isn’t sure how she’ll finish it. Already she’s beginning to get that sharp tang in her mouth, and she knows that all she really wants is to switch to water soon, even though she’ll clearly be on her own. Nancy grins and turns away, and Grace feels the unsettling churn in her stomach. She’d like to say she has no idea what Anna sees in Nancy, but because she knows her friend so well, she can imagine how easily she’d have been drawn into the other woman’s web, unable to see what Grace sees: that Nancy is manipulative and has some hold over her. But then this isn’t the first time Anna has let herself be taken in by a friend.
‘No, she hasn’t given up smoking,’ Caitlyn is saying. ‘In fact, if anything I’d say she’s doing it even more at the moment, wouldn’t you?’
Nancy shrugs.
‘What about her husband?’ Grace asks. She isn’t sure why she is so uptight about the idea of Anna smoking.
‘What about him?’ Nancy asks.
Grace hesitates. ‘Does he smoke?’
Nancy laughs. ‘What is this?’ she says. ‘Why the third degree? You sound worried about it.’
‘I’m not worried,’ Grace mutters as Anna and Rachel return to the table. ‘It doesn’t matter.’ Only for some reason it does, it grates on her. Perhaps it is because she can picture the Anna she used to know so clearly and this new, grown-up version is nothing like her. When something taints your past memories, Grace realises, it has a nasty habit of knocking everything off-kilter, making you question things.
She wants Nancy to drop the subject of cigarettes, but instead she pulls out a chair for Anna, who obediently sits, and smiles as she says, ‘Grace doesn’t like the thought of you smoking. Maybe she has a point?’ She places a hand on Anna’s arm and starts rubbing it gently.
‘Yes, she probably does,’ Anna says blankly, and as she takes off her red coat, her cheeks flush with what could be the coldness of the air, or with what Grace suspects could be embarrassment.
Grace draws her gaze away from Nancy’s hand on her old friend’s arm. Nancy has managed to make her feel like an overbearing parent, and all of a sudden she realises that this is exactly how she always feels when she is with them. Like a motherly figure, hovering over these women who act like children, the way they plait each other’s hair and link arms and save seats.
Grace takes another gulp of her wine, ignoring its bitterness, as she considers her options. She could leave now and go home, but she wants to spend time with Anna, and if this is the only way she’s able to see much of her old friend then she mustn’t let the others spoil it.
Nancy is now regaling them with another story from Majorca. Inwardly Grace sighs, grasping the glass of wine between her fingers, tipping it back and forth, just so she has something to do. ‘Sounds like fun,’ Grace says when Nancy finishes the story and the laughter dies down.
‘It was.’ Anna puts her glass down on the table, her smile slipping. ‘Sorry, Grace, this isn’t fair on you when you weren’t there.’
‘Not at all.’ Grace waves a hand in an attempt to make out she isn’t bothered.
‘We went there together one year, didn’t we?’ Anna says suddenly, and Grace’s mind shoots back to the year they were fourteen when her parents had invited Anna on their week-long holiday to Alcudia in the summer holidays. ‘Do you remember, Grace?’
‘Of course I do.’ Grace smiles. She remembers how Anna’s father had enthusiastically accepted the offer, it was likely the only holiday Anna would have, and how excited Grace was that she wouldn’t be alone that year. That she would have Anna with her in the villa and they could spend their days in the pool and the evenings outside restaurants eying up Spanish waiters, begging her parents to allow them to go out on their own.
If they were on their own she would ask her friend why she has brought up that particular memory because the holiday didn’t pan out as they’d expected. Anna is holding her gaze and in turn Grace finds herself holding her breath, and in that moment she is certain that something is troubling Anna, and she desperately wants her friend to confide in her.
But the moment is gone in a flash when Rachel pipes up, ‘I keep forgetting how far back you two go.’
Grace nods. That is probably because it is rarely brought up, in spite of the many, many stories of their childhood that Grace could talk about for hours. ‘Anna practically lived with my family for twelve years,’ she says.
‘Really?’ Rachel looks surprised. ‘I mean, I knew you were close but …’ She trails off.
As close as sisters. Grace’s mum cared as much for Anna as she did for Grace. She can picture as clear as day her and Anna sat on the footstool in the living room when they are about seven, watching intently as her mum showed them how to
knit their first scarves. And how one summer, maybe two years later, they built a camp in the garden and insisted on sleeping in it for a week. Sometimes, especially in those earlier years, Grace used to forget that Anna even had a home to go back to, a dad who might have been waiting for her.
‘But you haven’t seen each other since you went to Australia, have you?’ Rachel finishes.
‘No. We haven’t,’ Grace says. Though not for lack of trying when she was first there, but then lives and careers, husbands and families took over, and in the end they never did meet up again.
‘And Anna says you weren’t even in touch for a couple of years before you came back?’
Grace shakes her head. This is also true, bar the odd Facebook comment, but she knows that doesn’t cut it as proper contact.
Then, as if losing interest, Rachel starts chattering on about something else and, as it always does, the conversation continues to wrap around the four friends’ recent past, their plans for the next day, for the weeks ahead.
‘I’m going for shots,’ Anna suddenly announces to whooping from Rachel, and mock groans from Nancy and Caitlyn. Her mood keeps flipping, from sombre and withdrawn to playful, verging on a threat of danger, at times like she is trying to assert some control. Grace can’t quite fathom what is going on. The Anna she knew was always so constant and easy-going, which makes her behaviour seem more worrying than maybe it should.
‘I’ll help you,’ Grace says, and follows her friend to the bar, so that she can tell Anna she won’t join in a round of tequila. ‘Is everything all right?’ Grace asks when they’re alone.
‘Of course.’ Anna turns away swiftly as a barman appears. ‘Four tequilas,’ she orders. Anna doesn’t even try to persuade Grace to join them, which somehow makes her feel even more excluded, and if she didn’t hate the taste of tequila so much she would have changed her mind for the hell of it.
Grace hesitates and then says, ‘It’s just you seem a little …’ She pauses, because she doesn’t really know how her friend seems this evening.
‘I seem a little what, Grace?’ Anna says, as she presses her card against the machine.
Her coldness slaps Grace and she finds herself recoiling. Anna had been so excited to see her when she’d first arrived back in August, but now there is a creeping distance between them and Grace isn’t sure why, or how to stop it. She looks at the woman in front of her, and right now it is like looking at a stranger. Anna Robinson isn’t Anna Fallow any more, the girl she once knew better than anyone. But surely there are some friendships that are worth salvaging? How can Anna walk away from the close bond they’d once shared?
‘A little unhappy,’ Grace says at last. She isn’t entirely sure that is the right word for it, but she doesn’t know what is.
‘You don’t have to worry about me any more, Grace,’ Anna replies, and as she smiles her eyebrows peak.
Grace takes in the smile, the way it doesn’t quite ring true. As her eyes scan Anna’s face she wonders what is hiding behind the front that her friend seems to be putting on tonight.
Only, of course, she still worries about her. She always will, because years ago, taking care of Anna was intrinsic to their friendship. She can picture the young Anna who sat in a pair of borrowed pyjamas on a school night once again, waiting for her dad to finish work and come to pick her up from Grace’s parents’. You don’t spend twelve years so closely knitted to someone and stop caring just like that.
Grace changes the subject. ‘I can’t believe we’re back here again.’ She nods at the table in the corner, desperate to open up a conversation about old times and to reach the Anna she was once so close to. ‘How many times did we sit there and drink?’ A memory pops into her head. ‘Do you remember Christopher Smart?’
Anna’s face softens. Christopher Smart was an oddball who had some kind of crush on Anna, and they would always end an evening in tears of laughter whenever he had followed Anna around the pub.
Grace waits for her friend to smile and join in the memory, but instead Anna says, ‘Will you just stop with the reminiscing, Grace? What is it you can’t let go of? Why do you think we need to keep living in the past?’
‘Let go of?’ Grace asks, her mouth agape. ‘It’s memories, our childhood.’
‘It’s our past,’ Anna replies bluntly. ‘What matters now is the present. I’m sorry if you’re not happy with yours, Grace, but I am with mine.’ Anna scoops up two glasses of tequila and returns to the table, where she sits down, leaving Grace staring behind her. Her hands feel numb as they hang loosely by her sides. Tears threaten to prick her eyes, but she doesn’t know what is causing them. Whether it’s that she isn’t happy with her life or that Anna is pointing it out to her so callously. Or maybe it’s that Grace doesn’t believe Anna is happy herself right now.
Anna always did go on the defensive when really she was crying out for help inside. Even on the nights when her dad didn’t turn up at school she would make excuses for him, refuse to accept that his work at the factory was a priority, but Grace always saw the sadness behind her eyes.
Grace picks up the other two glasses and takes them to the table. There is no point in saying anything in front of the others.
Over the next hour or so, the mood within the group seems to change. Nancy and Anna have scuttled off into a corner, their conversation seemingly heated as Anna gestures animatedly with her arms. When they return to the table Nancy’s face is blank, her lips pursed, but soon the chatter is picked up and more wine is drunk and nothing is made of the blip in their evening.
By eleven Grace is ready to go home, but it’s apparent that if she leaves now she’ll be on her own.
Rachel has created her own makeshift dance floor beside the table and the pub has emptied save for a group of three in the far corner, who keep looking in Rachel’s direction as she waves her arms in the air in time to a beat that seems purely in her head. At one point she meanders around the bar and turns up the volume on the music. The nearest barman, young with a shaved head, looks in her direction but doesn’t say anything.
Grace watches Anna retreat further into herself. She sees past Anna’s disguise of loudly spoken words and overly exaggerated laughter, sees the way her eyes flicker towards Grace every so often. There is something she is holding back for sure.
So when Anna slides off her chair and heads for the toilets, Grace follows her.
Anna is swaying in front of the mirror, a lip gloss in one hand that she isn’t applying. ‘Nancy has a hold on you,’ Grace tells her. She hadn’t intended to say as much, but two and a half hours of watching Nancy dominate Anna’s attention have taken its toll. She fears for her friend; she does, because she knows Anna too well. She knows what she can be like, and Grace needs to say something.
‘What?’ Anna splutters, seemingly incredulous. Her reaction leads Grace to believe that she can’t see it.
‘Nancy controls you,’ Grace says a little softer.
‘You’re kidding me, right?’
Grace bites her lip. She can see the conversation going only one way, but now she has said something she can’t take it back. ‘No. I’m not kidding. I just see the way she is with you. With all of you,’ she adds, gesturing back to the bar.
‘It’s been bloody apparent from the start that you don’t like each other,’ Anna spits. ‘Have you ever stopped to think how hard that is for me? Always trying to keep everyone happy?’ She slips to the side and grabs the sink to steady herself.
Despite knowing Nancy doesn’t like her, it still cuts Grace to hear it said.
‘It’s been awful,’ Anna is saying. ‘I shouldn’t have to choose. I want to be with my friends, Grace,’ she says, ‘and yet I always feel like I have to come and talk to you.’
As soon as the words are out Grace notices the way Anna’s eyes widen, her mouth parting. Grace thinks, and hopes, that it is because she wants to grab the words back. But they have been said now, and it is too late. Their punch is almost palpable. She can fe
el the burn in her chest.
She can almost see the pictures of twelve years of their childhood breaking in the air, tiny pieces scattering like confetti. Memories that have been so precious to Grace suddenly feel as though they mean nothing to Anna, and this is something she can’t get her head around.
Grace should turn away and walk out of the toilets, but she can’t bring herself to because, despite the words Anna has spoken, she is here. Right now Grace has her friend to herself. Besides, Anna has been drinking, and Grace is certain there is something else going on. All these years on she still can’t walk away from her. They might not share the same bloodlines but they were as good as sisters once.
‘I’m worried about you,’ Grace says. ‘And you must know why.’
Anna shakes her head, eyes staring, watching her carefully, surely knowing what she means but probably willing her not to say it.
‘Because I’ve seen it before, haven’t I, Anna? This isn’t the first time I’ve picked up the pieces.’
After that, the evening turns even more sour. Grace’s words have had the opposite of their intended effect on Anna, who sidles up to Nancy, hanging her head on her shoulder as they giggle conspiratorially over something.
But later Grace notices fractures within the group. There are hushed words between two of them about something that happened at Anna’s husband Ben’s fortieth party a month or so ago, a dinner the four women attended with their husbands. Caitlyn was in tears though none of them mentioned this in front of her. And then, maybe not long before she leaves, Nancy’s attitude shifts and Anna no longer paws at any one of her three friends. She is withdrawing from all of them.
Grace speaks to Anna alone only one more time. Another snatched conversation before she leaves. It is nearly midnight and she has no choice but to go because she has told the babysitter she will be back before twelve thirty. She calls a taxi, the behaviour of the others confirming what she already knows, that they aren’t yet ready to leave.