The Best of Friends

by Alex Day

  My torment didn’t stop with me finding him and Josephine in bed together, with having to move out of my home – oh no, it didn’t stop there. Hurt piled on hurt like the continuous dumping of rubbish in a landfill site, one truckload of trash upon another.

  I managed to find lodgings with a couple of girls from my course, Debs and Simone, who were sweet and kind and full of fascinated, prurient disgust about the way I had been treated. I couldn’t face ever setting foot in the basement again so I wrote a letter to Charlie asking him to pack everything up and they went to collect it for me. Which was nice of them.

  When they returned in a taxi (that I paid for; Charlie offered no help of any kind, neither emotional nor financial) loaded down with bags of stuff, so familiar and yet now utterly alien, I wanted to burn the lot of it. Its association with Charlie caused it to be shorn of any pleasure I might once have felt in it. Everything felt tainted, even my clothes, which I’m sure in reality she wouldn’t touch with a bargepole. But just the thought of my things being in the same space as her sickened me.

  Simone and Debs helped me to unpack. They were so kind. So thoughtful. They persuaded me that I couldn’t afford to purchase a whole new wardrobe so I needed to keep all the clothes and accessories they had rescued for me, however much I hated the thought. As they talked in soothing, encouraging tones they pulled things out of the bags one by one: jeans, skirts, jumpers, belts. Seeing my apparel like this made me realise how mundane it was, how staid and boring.

  Josephine clad herself – minimally – in tiny white leather miniskirts with fishnet stockings and sky-high stilettos, accessorised by exquisite handbags big enough only to hold a mascara and credit card. I wore paisley-print midi-skirts with wool tights and Doc Martens and carried a satchel. It was hardly surprising it was her who Charlie preferred. It was as the truth of this fact was dawning on me like the proverbial penny dropping from a great height that I noticed that Debs and Simone had fallen suddenly silent.

  Lifting my eyes from the pile they’d built on my bed, I saw them both staring dumbfounded at the item Simone was holding, her arm outstretched as if trying to keep it as far away from herself as possible in case it bit her.

  My eyes slowly tracked the length of her arm. From her splayed fingers dangled a pair of impossibly delectable French knickers, made of shiny and opulent black silk and trimmed with lace.

  ‘Ooh la la, Susie, what have we ’ere?’ laughed Simone, speaking with an exaggerated French accent. ‘Where on earth did you get zese beauties? They must have cost a fortune.’

  As she spoke, Debs reached out to fondle the fabric, so lustrous and delicate it demanded to be felt.

  ‘Wow!’ Her voice was a stage whisper, as if the knickers might be offended by too loud a noise. ‘These are so gorgeous. Who would have thought you were hiding such garments under those prim A-line skirts and blouses?’

  They both fell about laughing. This was the 1990s. As already noted during my sojourn in France, in the UK sexy underwear was polyester Ann Summers; everyone else wore sensible and practical cotton briefs from M&S. I looked on, stunned. Eventually, my lack of reaction of any kind caused them to abruptly shut up.

  ‘What’s the mat—’ began Simone, before petering out in a red flush of embarrassment. ‘Oh, oh, I see, I get it … sorry. Really sorry.’

  The knickers had dropped from her hand during the fit of hysterics and now lay on the floor in a crumpled heap. Neither of them seemed to want to touch them.

  I picked them up and screwed them into a tight ball in my fist. They scrunched up to nothing. It was what I wanted to do to her, to that bitch Josephine, and to Charlie, too, despite how much my heart still ached for him. One of them – perhaps both, conspiring together, determined to inflict maximum hurt on me – had planted them amongst my stuff. They couldn’t have known that Debs and Simone would be assisting me and would see them, too.

  No, this pain was intended all for me.

  I felt myself collapse then, from the inside out, slowly falling like the Jenga tower when the crucial brick is removed, sinking down and down to end up in a jumbled, chaotic heap, in my hand still clenched the interloper’s knickers.

  Unlike Josephine, I have the capacity to feel guilt, remorse, regret. And for Charlotte, I do. The justification for my actions is that I thought Dan was serious. I thought he meant it. I thought he and Charlotte were over and there was nothing more to it than waiting for her to overcome the denials and accept the inevitable. Now, with a distance of over twenty years and my experience of being the other woman, I suddenly understand that this is probably exactly how Josephine saw things.

  Oh, the irony. The terrible, truthful, irony of that.

  The boys return from their holiday, brimming with health, tanned and fit after their wholesome, outdoors-in-all-weathers holiday, both an inch or so taller and more tousle-haired than ever. I try to focus on them, my children, keeping at the forefront of my mind how much they love me and depend on me, how much they need me. Their presence is a balm that almost – but not quite – makes up for the hurt and loneliness.

  I can’t completely let go, can’t lose my mind the way I did after Charlie’s betrayal. The repercussions for Jamie and Luke if I trod that path again are too terrible to contemplate. Not just the legal and judicial consequences but the ramifications of all the publicity, too. A blonde in a scandal always attracts attention like crows to carrion; perhaps less when she’s forty than when she’s twenty, but attention nevertheless. The gutter press is no different now to what it was then, when the tabloids went wild for my story.

  The story of how I poisoned Charlie and Josephine.

  Chapter 27

  Susannah

  A flu virus seized hold of me, all those years ago, in my weakened state of not eating, not exercising, not working; heartbreak is a physical as much as an emotional ailment. The saintly Simone took my temperature and it was as she held the thermometer up to the light to read the mercury that the idea occurred to me. Perhaps it was the fever causing me to hallucinate. But whatever it was, the notion took root and, as I gradually recovered, began to shape up as an actual plan, a mission that, once accomplished, would cause Charlie and Josephine to suffer in the same way as they had inflicted such suffering on me.

  There were any number of pharmacies dotted around the streets of London, more than one could ever imagine and I visited many of them and in each one, purchased a thermometer. Over time, I accumulated lots of them. They were inexpensive, just a few pounds each for the basic model. Whilst on my shopping spree, going from store to store to avoid suspicion, it was impossible to avoid the Valentine’s displays, the serried ranks of chocolate boxes, of hearts and flowers and teddy bears. Each one made my eyes brim with tears; no celebrations for me this year, no declarations of undying love, no partner at all. Equal measures of hatred, despair and hopelessness engulfed me.

  At Deb and Simone’s flat, which I still could not think of as home, though I’d been there for over a month by then, I spread the carefully collected thermometers out on my bed and counted them. There were enough. Next to them, I placed the expensive box of designer chocolates I’d also purchased. It was closed with a cardboard sleeve and tied with a silky red ribbon, adding to the luxury it exuded. I sat and looked at my goodies for a long time, only clearing them away when I heard one of the girls’ keys in the front door.

  Next day, my headache and my tiredness laid me low once more. It was Sunday; no need to get up so I didn’t. As I lay in bed, feeling the chill dankness of a February day emanate through the glass windowpane, I found it hard to think of any reason to get up ever again.

  Opening the drawer of my bedside table to retrieve paracetamol, I heard the chink and clink of the thermometers as they moved around within the plastic bag in which I’d concealed them. Also in the drawer were the French knickers. They were no longer the tight ball I had stashed there; it had gradually unfurled as I imagined Charlie and Josephine’s liaison – I couldn’t bring myself t
o call it love, or even a relationship – had done during those sultry days in the Marseille apartment, and ever since they threw me out. Somehow, though I despised the knickers’ slutty beauty, I couldn’t bring myself to throw them away.

  Perhaps having them there was the reminder I needed that I had revenge to exact for a wound inflicted. This mission was the boost that gave me the impetus to get me through the day, the plan that galvanised me into action.

  The plan that would bring retribution.

  It had to be perfectly executed if it was going to achieve what I needed it to. The first part of it demanded that I was alone in the flat to make the phone call and of course it had to be a weekday. Finally, on a Wednesday afternoon, I had my opportunity.

  My hands shook as I lifted the receiver and dialled the number. The nervous sweat on my fingers left damp patches on the plastic and caused them to slip. As the ringing tone began, I swallowed hard and took a deep breath; I was really going to do this.

  When the call connected, there was a small delay before I heard the voice of the call handler. Pretending to be our course director, a Professor of Pharmacology, one of the few females in such a prestigious role in the whole country, was easy. Nobody whose job it was just to answer the phone in a poison-control unit would know what she really sounded like. It only took a few minutes to get the information I needed, which I noted down carefully on the notepad in front of me. I thought I had recovered my composure after the initial terror, but as I tried to write, the pen slid in my fingers, making my writing erratic and untidy – though still perfectly legible.

  I asked the call handler to repeat back her words, to make double sure I had recorded them correctly. She did so, speaking slowly and clearly as she had presumably been trained to do.

  Satisfied, I coolly thanked her and rang off. I checked back what she had told me; it was entirely consistent with what I had understood from my toxicology books and the lectures that had formed part of my course. The satisfying snap of the elastic band as it fastened the notebook closed was the perfect end to the day.

  The 14th of February, Saint Valentine’s Day, dawned bright and clear, the day for lovers everywhere, the time to declare your feelings and, if you’re a man, buy two dozen red supermarket carnations for your partner. One dozen if you’re a cheapskate.

  It was the day that I’d been dreading because of all the reminders of what Charlie and I had had together and what I’d lost. What he now shared with that strumpet Josephine. But now it was here, there was a fizz of excitement deep within my bowels, a steeliness to my nerves and a steadiness to my intent. It was time for me to get my own back.

  It was harder than I imagined to break the first thermometer. I tried firmly rapping it as you would an egg on the side of the metal bowl but nothing happened. Smashing it against the rim didn’t work either and nor did trying to snap it. In the end, I put some newspaper on the floor to protect the carpet – I needed to be mindful of my deposit – and stepped on the slim glass tube. A splintering sound told me I’d succeeded.

  Hastily snatching the thermometer up, I poured the liquid mercury into the bowl where it slid and rolled in a small, perfectly formed silver-white sphere. The syringe hoovered it up but it barely filled the receptacle – only 0.5g. I broke another, and then another.

  My mouth and nose felt sweaty under the mask that I’d taken the trouble to bring from my placement in the hospital pharmacy. As a vapour, broken down into individual atoms, mercury absorbs into the lungs where its poisonous effects are quickly felt. I needed to be careful that I didn’t contaminate myself in the process of what I wanted to achieve.

  Obviously, I didn’t tell anyone what I was planning, or afterwards what I had done. I was naive enough to think that I’d covered all my tracks, that no one would ever be able to point the finger at me.

  I truly believed I’d committed the perfect crime.

  Chapter 28

  Susannah

  The questioning didn’t take long.

  I thought I’d be at the police station for ages but I think the officers felt sorry for me; I was so obviously a fish out of water in a cell or an interview room. They weren’t in any case in any doubt as to the culprit. I didn’t even really care by that point. I just wanted the whole business over with.

  Already, I could hardly remember injecting the chocolates, those perfect, shiny brown spheres that resembled the carapaces of cockroaches, with the mercury from the thermometers, wrapping them back up and delivering them to the flat, addressed to that French floozy Josephine. It was as if it were something I’d seen in a movie, not something I’d done myself, lived in my own real life.

  Josephine had come home and found the chocolates on the doorstep. Thinking they were a gift from Charlie, she’d immediately opened them and taken one. She might have been skinny but she was bloody greedy. But in the end she’d eaten just the one, only one measly little chocolate. And not even eaten it really as, not liking the taste, she’d spat it out. I’d thought that the strong cherry brandy flavour I’d chosen would have masked the contamination, but it seemed not.

  When Charlie came home he’d examined the box and found the mercury oozing out of the holes made by the syringe; he’d called the police and immediately implicated me.

  Attempted murder.

  That’s what Charlie wanted me to be charged with. But of course it wasn’t that. The mercury, even if they’d eaten all the chocolates, every last one, would at worst have given them stomach pains and vomiting; in solid form it passes through the intestines so nicely that, in Victorian times, it was used to treat constipation. And anyway, I had proof that I’d checked that they wouldn’t die – my call to the poison unit had been recorded. Later, this last simple action was to prove vital in court.

  But the truth is that I never wanted to kill Charlie and his French tart. I just wanted them to feel the pain that I had felt, experience the agony they had put me through. To teach them a lesson. That’s what I told the police, and they believed me.

  I was charged with attempting to harm and released on police bail. The trial would not take place for a few months. In theory, I was free to continue with my life, innocent until proven guilty. But no one would want their medicines dispensed by a pharmacist who’d tampered with toxins, and the university made it clear that I wasn’t welcome on their course anymore. Rather than suffer the ignominy of being unceremoniously thrown out, I left. All that work, all those hours of study, all the money I’d spent on books and materials and living in London.

  All gone.

  My parents were incandescent with rage. They chastised me endlessly, over the phone and in person when they drove up to accompany me to my first bail appointment at the police station. It was a nightmare and, to make matters worse, my own brothers regarded me with barely disguised contempt, and treated me as if I were a stranger, a cuckoo in the nest, unrecognisable as their own sibling.

  I couldn’t get work whilst I was waiting for the case to go to court; I had no one to ask for a reference and anyway, I would have had to explain to any potential employer that at some point I’d need a period of time off to go to the Old Bailey and defend myself against a poisoning charge, which is clearly not a request on which most employers would look favourably. So, when the end of the month came and the next rent was due, I moved out of the flat for good. Simone and Debs were glad to see me go, of course – too kind to actually insist on it but nevertheless relieved and grateful that my lack of money meant that they didn’t have to actively chuck me out. Simone was an evangelical Christian; I wondered what all her God-bothering friends would make of me. Not a lot, it was fairly safe to assume.

  Like most people, I’d never been in trouble with the law before. I hadn’t even indulged in the shoplifting from The Body Shop in which all the other girls in my class at school had participated. Too scared of getting caught, too intimidated by the prospect of my parents’ wrath if I were found out. But now I understood just how awful it is to have the prospect of a c
ustodial sentence and a criminal record hanging over you. It sapped all my energy, removing all desire to achieve anything. There seemed no point when, at some unspecified time in the near future, I might be heading for prison, might be locked up and deprived of my freedom.

  The next few months were the worst of my life and there were times when I wasn’t sure that I could cope, that I felt myself begin to go under. To cap it all off, an acquaintance, on a visit home to her folks, came to see me and informed me that Charlie and Josephine had got married. A shotgun wedding because she was pregnant.

  There were so many reasons why this news flattened me. Not least because, when it came out in court – as it inevitably would – that the only person who had put one of the chocolates in her mouth was expecting a child, was that very moment forming and creating a new life – well, that was surely going to be the kiss of death to my defence.

  That’s when I gave up.

  I can’t give up now though. I’ve got the boys to think of.

  Charlotte and Dan are due back at the end of the week. I lie in bed at night, wondering what will happen when Charlotte finds out. Because she will find out. Wives always do. The truth will out, one way or another.

  Dan seems to think he’s infallible, that he can breeze through life doing exactly what he wants and escaping the consequences and after all, as Charlotte has told me, he’s got away with it before. But this is so close to home, his wife’s best friend.

  That surely changes everything.

  Chapter 29

  Charlotte