The Best of Friends

by Alex Day

  But Charlie vetoed the expedition on the grounds of expense, our lack of any mode of independent transport, and the fact that the weather forecast was bad.

  ‘What’s the point of spending all that money just to sit in the hotel room and watch the rain pour down?’ he asked plaintively, like a small child wondering why he has to go to school.

  The three weeks of my stay seemed to pass so slowly. Charlie was out of sorts throughout, as if his displacement to another part of Europe made him mildly allergic to the presence of anything British. Namely, me.

  But as soon as I left, I easily persuaded myself that it had all been nothing, just Charlie’s stress at having to integrate someone from one part of his life with people from another. He found transitions difficult, was always grumpy when going to sleep or waking up, just like babies often are. I clung to the fact that, once he came home, everything would be OK, everything would return to normal.

  The Finchley Road flat was no more; I’d moved back into halls, not wanting to be there unless Charlie was and anyway, without us as a couple living in one room, I couldn’t really afford the rent. My heart was set on getting a flat together for our final year, just the two of us, where we could do what we liked when we liked. Walk around naked. Make love on the sofa or the kitchen table. Have a coffee table strewn with important and erudite books that we would actually read rather than just watch Ptolemy roll joints on. Hope for the future kept me going through that lonely year.

  Those hopes were dashed in the cruellest, most heartless way.

  I watch Naomi now, as she chops and dices and tastes, and wonder whether she really has designs on Dan. It’s more and more apparent to me that, even if she does, Naomi is not Charlotte’s main problem and neither, I don’t think, is Dan. She wants to hang onto him, of course she does. Women generally do, from habit if nothing else – though in Charlotte’s case, I imagine that it’s the lifestyle he offers her that plays the biggest part in her tenacity. What can she possibly see in handsome, charming, multi-millionaire Dan, I ask myself ironically.

  That being said, the truth is that if Dan is going to walk off into the sunset with a trollop from his sports club, Charlotte might learn the hard way that there’s not much she’s going to be able to do to stop it. You can’t make someone love you; you can’t make them stay if they are determined to go. That’s just the way it is sometimes.

  I picture Charlotte in Corsica now, imagine those long, dreamy, sun-filled days, the photos from her drawing room coming to life before my eyes. The stunning view from the terrace, the blue sea dotted with white-sailed yachts, the cloudless sky, the town basking dreamily in the midday sun, its ancient houses clinging to the hillside that plunges down towards the harbour. And all around, the sensuous scent of lavender, basil, and mint suffusing the air. She’s lucky. At least she has that place, that beauty.

  And then the picture mutates and it’s not Charlotte in my mind’s eye anymore, but me, climbing the steep steps from the beach, laughing, a flowing white kaftan billowing out around my tanned legs. Dan heaves into view, leaping the treads two at a time, revealing how fit he is. Entering the house, we make our way to the bedroom – to what must be our bedroom, because we proceed there quite naturally together – and as soon as the door is shut Dan pins me to the wall and is kissing me whilst deftly pulling at my clothes, releasing my breasts from my bikini, lifting my dress—

  Shock brings me to my senses. The vision fades and recedes and I’m back in the cafe, clearing tables of soiled cutlery and ringing up prices on the till. I can feel myself blushing like a love-struck teenager and have no idea what on earth I’m doing thinking such things.

  ‘Morning!’

  I jump out of my skin at the greeting and my heart hammers against my chest.

  It’s Dan.

  I’m sure he can read my mind and see what I’ve been dreaming about. My flush deepens.

  ‘How are you? Enjoying summer?’

  ‘Oh, sure,’ I reply, fighting hard to regain my composure, forcing the heightened colour to drain from my cheeks. ‘All good and the boys are with their dad so I’m young, free, and single for a while!’ I laugh to show I mean it ironically. ‘Sort of, anyway,’ I add, just in case there’s any doubt.

  Dan nods distractedly. ‘I’m jealous,’ he says.

  I raise my eyebrows questioningly. ‘Of me?’ I can’t keep the surprise and bewilderment out of my voice. I can’t imagine what about me Dan could possibly be jealous of.

  ‘Oh no, not you,’ he replies, hastily.

  I am suitably crushed, my stupidity revealed.

  ‘I meant your husband,’ Dan continues. This is equally mystifying. Justin is divorced and single, not to mention being bankrupt – not a condition that usually inspires envy.

  ‘Oh,’ I gulp, inadequately.

  ‘Yes,’ Dan muses, seemingly lost in thought. ‘I sometimes wish I’d made more time for my sons, gone off on adventures with them, you know, with nothing but a torch, a bit of tarpaulin and our own wits to guard against the elements, wild camping, sharpening sticks with a penknife, hunting and shooting and fishing …’ His voice trails off as the fantasy grows.

  ‘Well,’ I stutter, not sure how to respond. ‘I mean, I guess it sounds nice … daring and testing and all that man stuff – but personally I’d say that a luxury villa in Corsica would be a much more preferable option.’

  Dan smiles and looks suddenly more relaxed. ‘Yes, you’re right,’ he agrees, ‘I’ve provided them with everything money can buy. They want for nothing. I shouldn’t feel guilty. It’s just that … well, Charlotte monopolises them so much, she excludes me all the time – she always has – until I feel that I’m not necessary to their happiness, that all I need to do is provide the money and that’s my job done.’

  He looks so sad and woebegone that I can hardly bear it, and I’m also taken aback by these revelations and the confidences they contain. It’s more than he’s ever divulged to me before. Really, Charlotte has no business making him feel bad when he does so much. Earns so much.

  ‘I think you’re being far too hard on yourself,’ I say. ‘After all, we all have our faults.’ I desperately want to lighten the mood, to make Dan feel better. ‘Me more than most, I’m sure,’ I add, in a feeble attempt to do just this.

  Dan smiles, humouring me. ‘I doubt it,’ he laughs. And then, with a voice that exudes finality, ‘enough already with the soul-searching! Charlotte’s ensconced for the duration with the boys in that luxury Corsican villa you mentioned and yours are out of your hair.’ His grin widens. ‘You should enjoy a bit of downtime, cut loose. Do the sort of things two children in the house prevent you from doing.’

  I’m silent for a moment, my earlier daydream flashing through my mind again before I manage to banish it once more. Obviously he doesn’t mean to be suggestive, any more than he did when he made the comment about my athleticism when he was mending the tap. Men are like that; they don’t load everything with dual meanings like women do.

  But then he obviously does realise that his comment is open to misinterpretation because he hastily adds, ‘As in, play lots of tennis without worrying about getting back to cook the dinner.’

  He plops himself into a chair and scans the menu purposefully, for what reason I cannot imagine because he must know if off by heart and always orders the same thing according to what time of day it is. I’m relieved, in any case, for a break from the intensity. But as I wait for him to make his order, my mind wanders again, to his strong and dextrous hands, to his athleticism that belies his age, to that gorgeous crinkly smile that he seems to be bestowing on me more and more frequently these days.

  ‘Sit down, why don’t you?’ he says, gesturing to the chair opposite his and then around the almost empty cafe. He’s right; it’s really quiet just now but it will fill up soon. Everything is happening a little later during the summer holidays – morning visitors at nine-thirty or ten instead of eight, lunch at two or three instead of one.

 
; I sit.

  ‘How’s Charlotte getting on over there, anyway?’ I ask.

  ‘She’s fine,’ Dan replies, shortly. ‘I think they’ve been keeping themselves fairly quiet, not too much of a social whirl. It always takes Charlotte a while to recuperate once she’s there, catch up on sleep and rest, et cetera, et cetera.’

  I smile and nod understandingly. There’s a lot to do, running a house the size of hers, organising the daily housekeeper. And of course families are full on, even when half the children are away at boarding school and there’s an au pair to take care of the remainder. I’m so glad she’s getting the chance to recharge her batteries.

  I leave a short pause before responding.

  ‘She still seems very anxious about something,’ I say calmly, smoothing down the pages of my order pad. ‘You mentioned it to me before, and I hadn’t really noticed it myself at that stage. But since then, well, I’ve started to get the same feeling as you. I don’t want to pry or interfere but something’s definitely getting to her and, um …’ I hesitate and glance around the cafe, checking Naomi is out of sight before meeting Dan’s gaze head on and continuing, ‘I’m wondering if she’s in some kind of trouble.’

  Dan’s face loses its habitual charming openness as his expression turns quickly to one of surprise and then hastily masked annoyance.

  ‘I don’t know what that could be,’ he states firmly, shaking his head in denial. ‘I can’t for the life of me think of anything. What kind of trouble could she be in?’

  I shake my head as I reply. ‘Maybe it’s just the suspicious mind that living with Justin gave me,’ I muse sagely, ‘the knowledge I gained from that of how people you think you know so well can be so good at covering things up, but how, afterwards, you always realise that there were signs.’

  Now Dan looks alarmed.

  ‘Do you think she’s betraying me?’

  The speed and frankness with which he says the words stuns me into a momentary silence. It seems the lack of trust between these two is mutual.

  ‘Oh no, no!’ I reply with a smile. ‘Of course not, nothing like that. What I mean is, she just seems to have something on her mind that’s really bothering her. But having said that, I don’t have any evidence …’ I pause for a moment then continue, emphatically, ‘I shouldn’t have said anything.’

  ‘She has ample opportunity though, doesn’t she,’ ponders Dan aloud, as if he hasn’t heard what I’ve just said. ‘All the hours I’m working late, all my trips abroad.’

  It crosses my mind that this says more about the accuser than the accused. On the other hand, there’s such a lack of nurture in the way Charlotte so often talks about Dan that maybe he is just jumping to a logical conclusion.

  I place my hands firmly on the table and take a deep breath. ‘She’s away now for another six weeks or so and presumably out of the way of temptation – although I suppose the French do have a reputation … but no. Let’s not even go there. And as for anything back here, I’m sure that there’s nothing going on, no one you should know about. Absolutely sure of it.’ I pause. ‘There’s definitely something, though. Something’s not right.’

  My mind’s turning it all over again, probing anything and everything that could be at the bottom of Charlotte’s distress. She drinks a lot – I’ve noticed that on frequent occasions. She’s even alluded to the fact that I can put it away; the accuser and the accused, again. I wonder if she could have got into trouble because of alcohol, or clandestinely joined AA or something. But it doesn’t really make sense; being an alcoholic is hard to conceal from people you live with, especially over a prolonged period of time.

  And I’m not convinced that that’s shameful enough to hide; these days, it’s practically mainstream, as well as being so much better understood. If her problem were drink, I can’t see why she wouldn’t be able to share it with her husband at least, even if no one else. And Dan is clearly as clueless as to what is going on as I am. Another possibility is drugs but again, surely there would be times when she was out of it, when it was obvious that she’d been taking something. And she looks so fit and healthy that I can’t believe it’s that either.

  I consider what other addictions Charlotte could be suffering from. Maybe she’s a compulsive shopper, racking up thousands on credit cards. She does have a never-ending supply of new clothes, all designer brands. I’ve never seen her wear the same thing twice. Her jewellery collection could fill the front window of Asprey’s. And the house is full of the latest gadgets and gizmos – matching Smeg toasters and juicers and what have you, two different Kitchen Aids, three coffee makers. All her back-to-the-earth foraging could just be a cover for what she’s got herself into: consumerism on steroids.

  Dan’s face is still creased in concentration. ‘I think it’s me,’ he blurts out. ‘It’s not that she’s seeing anyone else, just that she doesn’t love me anymore.’

  His tone is so woeful, his face so crunched up with anxiety, that my heart goes out to him. Being unwanted is the worst feeling of all. What’s most hurtful is when it’s cumulative. When there have been numerous opportunities to see that one is surplus to requirements, but one hasn’t picked up on them – and the guilty party hasn’t had the guts or, probably even worse, cared enough to come clean.

  When Charlie returned from Marseille, we got that dream flat together, just the two of us. Of course the reality was far more prosaic: a basement in West Hampstead with the usual problems of damp on the walls and mould on the bathroom tiles, but to me it was perfect. I found it, I decorated it with love and care, arranging the furniture, hanging the curtains, revelling in the joy of creating a little nest for him and me. And then, just before his finals and my third-year exams of my four-year course, she came to stay.

  Josephine.

  Uninvited – by me, at least – but she was never the kind of girl who would let manners get in the way of anything she did. She didn’t know the meaning of the word. She invaded my home and immediately I knew it was the beginning of the end. When I came back from uni early one day to find them having sex in my bed, between my treasured antique linen sheets that I’d purchased in the flea market on that ill-fated visit to Marseille, I both couldn’t believe it and knew I’d been expecting it. I felt violated, as if I’d been physically assaulted. Even thinking about it now, after all these years, makes my stomach turn over in fear and pain.

  It induced a kind of madness in me, a madness that haunts me to this day. As my plan for revenge fomented in my mind, it grew and burgeoned until I no longer controlled it and it burst forth, taking everyone by surprise – including myself.

  If only it hadn’t led to me taking the catastrophic actions that had robbed me of getting my degree, of forging my own career, then maybe things would be different now. But I was young, and foolish, and as the judge said, I suffered for it. It doesn’t seem fair that I should have to bear the consequences for the rest of my life.

  Everything I did was the result of betrayal.

  ‘I know what it’s like to be unsure of someone,’ I mutter quietly. Don’t mention Charlie, my rational self is hissing at me. Nobody knows, and it needs to stay where it is – consigned to history. Stick to Justin. He is much safer territory.

  ‘When Justin’s business was going down the pan and everything was falling apart, if I’m honest with myself I knew things weren’t right. But I pushed those doubts away because I didn’t want to deal with them, to find they were true. In retrospect, that was such a stupid thing to do because if I’d known, if I’d faced up to it and confronted Justin, I – we – might have been able to mitigate it, prevent the worst of the fallout. And then it wouldn’t have been such a terrible jolt when it all came crashing down.’

  Dan shakes his head again, at my catastrophe rather than a potential one of his own this time. ‘I’m sorry you had to go through so much.’

  He reaches his hand across the table and clasps mine in a grip that is strong and cool and reassuring. I feel immediately self-conscious.
I look around me; a sudden influx of customers has filled the room and they’re all glancing across at me, waiting for me to arrive by their sides and take their orders like a little elf wielding magic. God, it would be nice not to have to do this job. For a brief moment, I’m filled with real envy of Charlotte: of her lifestyle, of long holidays in sunny places and a bank balance that never has numbers in red.

  But I need to get back to work.

  I turn to go but Dan is still holding my hand. His fingers tease along mine as I release my hand.

  ‘Susannah,’ he says.

  I halt and turn back toward him.

  ‘That match we’ve booked Friday evening, are you free for dinner after? I’d like to thank you for being such a good listener. And … perhaps we can have a bit more of a think about Charlotte, about what might be wrong.’

  I’m completely taken aback, but at the same time honoured to be asked, to be confided in, and I beam back at him like an awkward teenager. An evening out! An evening of not eating a lonely slice of cheese on toast in a cold, empty house.

  ‘The Thai place along the high street is really not bad at all, if you like that sort of thing,’ he suggests.

  ‘I love it!’ I reply. ‘That would be fantastic, thank you.’

  Chapter 23

  Susannah

  I’m on my way out to meet Dan for our match when my laptop starts buzzing on the kitchen table. It’s a Skype call from Charlotte so of course I put down my racket and my bag and connect; I’m desperate to hear all her news, how she’s getting on, and what she and the boys have been up to. As soon as her image comes onto the screen I see the difference in her. The fact that she looks fantastic is nothing new – she always does – but there’s something more to her radiance today. Her tan sets off her brown eyes and her brunette hair is even more glossy and glistening than usual. But more than both those things is that she looks relaxed in a way I’ve never seen in her before, as if a weight has been lifted off her shoulders. I’ve heard it said that Corsica is a magical place and now I see its sorcery for myself.