The Friend: An emotional psychological thriller with a twist

by Teresa Driscoll

  ‘I am not eating an ostrich, Helen.’

  CHAPTER 25

  BEFORE

  Emma was staring at a photograph of France. Theo beaming in front of yachts on the marina about fifteen minutes from her mother’s home.

  The photograph was on a noticeboard in the kitchen. It was fixed by a magnetic star, and Emma glanced from the yellow of the star to the brown of the boarding at the window. Nathan had arranged for someone to come and fix it properly soon. Some odd-jobber he knew from the pub.

  Thinking of Nathan triggered a familiar contradiction in Emma. He was getting a little too clingy. It was a cycle she was all too used to. He kept telling her how unusual she was. How healthy and refreshing he found it that she was so laid-back around Theo – not overprotective and fussy-fussy like so many mothers. I mean it. You are not like other women at all, Emma . . .

  Just as she was getting a little bored, in bed and out of it, so he was keener by the day – on the phone to her all the time . . .

  It was Nathan who shared all the latest rumours on the Tedbury grapevine; he was livid the police were digging not only into her finances but seemingly interested in her time in France too. His tone was of outrage – what is this, a bloody police state? – and Emma had been careful not to give away the panic this had stirred in her, instead pacifying Nathan’s curiosity about France as she had Sophie’s, by sharing the headlines only. Her mother’s cancer. Their troubled relationship.

  Emma reached forward and took down the picture. Since the playgroup fiasco and the row over the picture on her phone, Theo had said not a single word to her. In fact, he wasn’t saying anything to anyone, bar Ben – and then only the odd word occasionally. The silent treatment.

  Emma was quite happy to sit this out, but other people were making the most godawful fuss. Nathan was all for calling in a doctor, which was quite obviously out of the question.

  Forms. Questions.

  No.

  Emma examined the photograph in her hand more closely. She remembered very clearly the day she had taken it for Theo. He had been insistent that he wanted the boat with the yellow and white sails in the centre of the picture, and in the end she had capitulated, for people were watching. A little group of tourists, waiting to take their own pictures. The boat was Theo’s favourite because the owner had tied a small teddy bear as a lucky mascot to the steering wheel, which was just visible through the glass window at the front. Theo liked to think it was the bear who sailed the boat.

  She and Theo had walked down to the marina every day after lunch while the nurse was overseeing her mother’s afternoon sleep. Emma recalled the flutter of panic she’d felt on arrival in France – assuming sole charge of Theo after eighteen months with Nanny Lucy.

  She remembered too the greater surge of panic when she first found out about her mother’s cancer. It was a friend of her mother’s who had called her in Manchester. God knows how she found the number. Among her mother’s things?

  Stuff the past, Emma. You get yourself over to France before it’s too late. You hear me? She’s got no one else now and you two have things to resolve.

  Emma had not seen her mother since her grandmother’s funeral, when they had stood defiantly as far apart as possible outside the tiny church in Kent, as a small gathering of local farm labourers and a dozen or so Gypsies smoked and chatted as they awaited the arrival of the hearse.

  Emma had arranged it all specifically to spite her mother, including a huge display of apples in a wicker basket on the coffin – the gesture evoking smiles and tears from those who had known her grandmother’s love of the Kent orchards, but a small shaking of the head from her mother, as if in exasperation at this final finger to convention.

  The story which shaped their conflict was as well documented as it was disputed. Emma favoured her grandmother’s version, not least because she felt more naturally in tune with her anarchic attitude to life.

  Growing up, Emma had been given only a brushstroke precis of the rift that was her unusual family history. Her mother Claire’s version told of a harsh and difficult early childhood as part of a traditional group of Romany travellers. Emma’s grandmother Dotia was painted as the villain – a stubborn and blinkered Gypsy, too nervous of outside influence to allow her daughter to attend school.

  Emma’s mother told how she’d begged to go to school, sick of the teasing from ‘gorgios’ – non-Gypsy children – over her illiteracy. She told one story of standing outside a local sweet shop, waiting for it to open, as a gaggle of small boys roared with laughter at her – only later learning that there was an enormous ‘Closed Today’ sign right in front of her.

  Claire claimed her relationship with her own mother had imploded when her father died in a road accident. Along with several other Gypsy families, they continued to tour farms in Kent for seasonal work, but despite repeated visits to the sites by local authority representatives, she was not allowed to go to school.

  The work, though back-breaking, was enjoyed by Dotia, who had a particular affinity with the orchards and was able to name every apple variety they came across. But Emma’s mother hated it.

  Claire’s version of her history was this: during one season in Mid Kent, she struck up a close friendship with the farmer’s daughter, an only child called Lily who was secretly helping her with her reading. As the adults turned their attention to the hops, Claire begged to be allowed to go to school with Lily. After a series of terrible arguments, Dotia reluctantly agreed, firmly expecting the novelty to be short-lived. It was not. When the travellers packed up to move back to Essex for the winter, Claire refused to go. Physically carted off by two of her uncles, she remained defiant, and within twenty-four hours had run away back to the farm. This cycle was repeated twice until the farmer’s family intervened – offering to allow Claire to board over the winter so that she could continue her schooling with Lily.

  This compromise was where the story broke in two. Claire claimed her mother never came back for her, that the Ashford family allowed her to grow up on the farm, never formally adopting her but quietly allowing the situation to continue beneath the radar of social services. She worked hard, won a place at university and a job in the city, where she met her future husband Alan, Emma’s father.

  At first he was very successful and the marriage was happy. But when gambling became his weakness, Claire, remembering the poverty of her childhood, hired lawyers to freeze their accounts and filed for divorce. With the settlement, she and Emma lived irritably in Surrey – Emma blaming her mother for their diminished financial circumstances.

  On moving later to France, Claire at first chose a chic resort in the south, within striking distance of Cannes. Emma left home as young as she dared for art college, and visited rarely. When her mother moved then to the north of France, finding the south too hot and expensive, Emma was persuaded to help her move. It was during this sorting of belongings that she came across a box of letters.

  The shoebox was pink, and inside were more than two dozen envelopes, some unopened. A few were addressed to ‘Sabina’, care of a farm in Kent; others to Claire at her first flat in London. It took Emma a time to realise that Sabina must have been her mother’s original Romany name.

  The letters were all from Claire’s mother Dotia – sad and persistent pleas, dictated to a friend whose handwriting was childlike and difficult to read.

  I am writing again on behalf of your mother, whose heart is breaking. Please Sabina, will you just agree to meet her.

  Emma hid the box in her room, delighted at the fresh ammunition against her mother. From the letters, which included some forwarded by the farming couple who had taken Claire in, it became clear that Dotia had returned many times begging her daughter to respect her heritage and rejoin her on the road. Claire, as she by then preferred to be called, not only refused to spend the holidays with her mother as originally agreed, but eventually refused all contact. The farming family clearly attempted to mediate, but Claire was having none of it
– loving her new and more comfortable life and wanting no part of her old one.

  Dotia’s letters mentioned the farm work dwindling. Hard times. Emma had no way of knowing if her grandmother was even still alive, but the letters were clearly something which she could use. At breakfast she had confronted her mother by simply placing the box on the table.

  I thought you said your mother turned her back on you.

  There was a long pause in which Claire appeared visibly shaken. She stood then as if to leave the room, but Emma grabbed her arm, gripping the flesh so tightly that the tip of each of Emma’s nails turned white.

  So you lied. Mummy dearest who has always accused me of being the born liar in the family. What a bloody joke. All these years you say I’m the black sheep, the so-called nightmare daughter, and look at you.

  Get off me. You’re hurting me.

  Oh, please. Spare me the drama. Emma’s eyes were fixed on the white of her nails as she squeezed tighter. Tighter.

  I mean it. Please. You’re really hurting me, Emma . . .

  It took Emma just two weeks to trace Dotia. A little googling led her to a smallholding in north Kent, where two old caravans were pitched in a field alongside a barn under conversion. She went out of mischief mostly, and a determination to wind up her mother further. But Dotia intrigued her, and Emma was impressed by her grandmother’s lack of both sentiment and surprise when she found her. There was just a long holding of eye contact and a nod from her as if this were something she had foreseen.

  Granny Apple, as she would very quickly become known to Emma, was evidently unwell, but despite this was brimming with stories and an engaging passion for her culture. Emma visited regularly, staying at a bed and breakfast just a few miles from the site. On long walks, often early in the morning, she would learn of the Romany ways. And history.

  The artist, bohemian and rebel in Emma loved it all. The folklore. The tarot, the tea leaves – and yes, the finger to convention. So that when, two years on, she found that she was not only pregnant but too late for an abortion, she knew precisely where to turn.

  From the very start Granny Apple not only adored Theo but had a special way with him. Emma took to leaving the baby regularly with her grandmother – sometimes for up to two weeks at a time. Dotia would chastise her but Emma could always charm Granny Apple into forgiving her.

  Look, I’m sorry I couldn’t get a message to you but something came up. And it’s just you’re so very good with him. He adores you . . .

  Emma hoped this arrangement would continue, but her grandmother’s health suffered badly from her lifestyle. She became stubborn and refused to move on with other families in her community. Diabetes was diagnosed but went largely untreated due to Granny Apple’s suspicion of local doctors. Emma, worried at the prospect of losing her babysitter, did her best to intervene but appointments were always conveniently ‘forgotten’, so that when news came that Dotia had suffered a fatal diabetic coma, her body lying in the cold caravan undetected for forty-eight hours, Emma was devastated.

  So what, precisely, was she supposed to do about Theo now?

  There was the sense of a draught from the boarded window, and Emma, folding the photograph of the boats into her pocket, checked first her watch and then her reflection in the mirror on the opposite wall.

  It was not her fault, the way things were working out. All of this was her mother’s doing. Emma looked into her own eyes and felt the familiar tightening in her chest as she recalled the latest phone call from the lawyer.

  If things did not go forward in Tedbury as she had hoped? Well, she would not be to blame.

  TODAY – 7.05 P.M.

  ‘Any other children or just the one?’ The doctor is leaning forward, repeating the question, his wife still away at the buffet.

  I turn from the blur of fields passing the train window to answer him finally, calming my voice. ‘Just the one.’

  He smiles, and I turn away again because I do not want him to read too much from my expression, for I am thinking again about the nub of it all, of how much I enjoyed watching them together over the summer. Ben and Theo. How much easier it felt for Ben to have young company both at home and on outings.

  There was one morning when Emma phoned with this terrible migraine and I took Theo for the whole day. The boys set up a camp under Ben’s platform bed, with pillows and sleeping bags and a picnic lunch; later, I took them to the zoo. It was a shock to learn that Theo had never been to a zoo. He was a little nervous at first but then amazed at everything, especially the monkeys and also, to my surprise, the desert area. I bought them a toy monkey each from the gift shop as a reward for being so good – a black-and-white one for Theo and a marmalade-coloured one for Ben. Back home, I thought he might be fretting about getting back to his mother, maybe worrying about her too.

  And now I feel a frown as I remember something really strange that he said. I asked him where he would go on an outing if he were able to choose anywhere at all. He said Krypton, which made me smile – Theo always so obsessed with Superman. But next he said something really odd.

  ‘I want to go to Krypton so we can fix my mummy.’

  ‘What? Her headache, you mean. You mustn’t worry about that, Theo. It will be gone soon, I promise.’

  ‘No. I don’t mean the headache,’ and he looked right into my face as if I was supposed to understand something important. He kept very still for a moment like a statue, and then he leaned forward, even closer to my face, and really widened his eyes as if asking me something. Yes. It was as if it were some special moment between us which I was supposed to understand, but the truth is I just didn’t know what the hell he meant or what I was supposed to say.

  So I just smiled, which I think was entirely the wrong response because he looked really sad suddenly before running off back to the little camp under Ben’s bed.

  CHAPTER 26

  BEFORE

  Mark knew that he drove too fast. He was driving too fast now. Don’t drive too fast, Sophie said each week on the phone as he confirmed that he was setting out for Devon.

  Driving fast was not just a necessary evil in this nigh-ridiculous geographical trap – you live where? people still gasped – but a pleasure which allowed the space for thinking and planning. Also, the opportunity to play the music he loved (and Sophie hated) at a volume which, along with his speed, she would consider irresponsible.

  He had done a lot of driving this week – hence also thinking. Mark found himself squeezing the steering wheel as he conjured the most recent photograph of Gill and Antony featured in the local paper, his knuckles whitening. He thought next of the latest news from Malcolm about the money. Not enough, Malcolm. Not enough.

  OK, so he would have to fudge it. He had found two Surrey properties, available to let but with the option to buy down the line. Perfect.

  Mark glanced first at his watch and then at the passenger seat, where the estate agent’s particulars lay fanned out so he could read each of the addresses. He would use the satnav to save time later but had arranged to briefly visit his mother first. This was one of the few advantages of his divided life – being able to make additional family visits without the strain of Sophie’s involvement.

  Mark was close to his mother, and since his father’s death liked to keep a regular eye on things. Sophie, to her credit, had always made an effort with his family, but there was a sad undercurrent of friction since her period of depression which no amount of time would heal. Mark’s mother, to his horror, had taken a dated and, to be frank, uncharitable approach to her daughter-in-law’s condition – coming from a generation expected to ‘get a grip’. Mark had tried very hard to soften her attitude once Sophie’s depression was finally diagnosed. But his mother saw only the strain on her son during the terrible weeks when Mark was trying to run a business, parent a baby and care for a wife who walked in the shadows of life.

  It’s not Sophie’s fault, Mum. It’s an illness.

  Yes, well. It’s never ea
sy with a new baby. In my day we just had to get on with it . . .

  Despite all those past and terrible tensions, Mark loved his mother very much and could not deny the surge of pleasure these lone trips to his childhood home stirred in him, especially since his grandmother had now moved in with his mother. A thin, muscular woman with a mass of thick white hair and surprisingly good skin, she was as eccentric as she was endearing in her blissful ignorance of her declining mental prowess. Dementia had rendered her a bittersweet mix of sharp wit and intelligent observation on any subject from decades earlier, with a contrasting and often comic chaos in trying to deal with anything concerning the past five minutes.

  Mark turned on to the street with the familiar and lovely ache of recognition. It was something Sophie, whose childhood had been so much more fragmented geographically and emotionally, had never quite understood. For Mark, driving past the newsagents on the corner evoked not just the memory but the actual scent of lemon sherbets and liquorice shoelaces.

  The front gardens of the terraced homes had been open plan when he was a kid, and Mark and his friends would play football across the lawns, some of the mothers emerging to shake their fists and warn them off the grass. Most of the red-brick properties had long been sold to their tenants, who had years back advertised their new status by building proud little walls around their front gardens, with gates and chains or fancy wrought-iron railings.

  Mark looked now along the row and remembered the day his own father, sleeves rolled up and red-faced with sweat, had toiled over the pile of bricks, which had been discounted at the builder’s yard and sadly never quite matched the house. It had been Mark’s job that day to check each row with the spirit level, smiling with a thumbs-up to his father as the yellow fluid settled between the lines.

  What was so sweet and touching was how proud his mother remained of her little palace. The windows always polished to a shine. The net curtains regularly soaked in brightener, and an interior which smelled always of bleach and baking and beeswax polish.