Chapter Forty-Three
Forty-three
It’s not hard to find Serena’s number. It’s in my call list, and she was tenacious about trying to get in touch before she ambushed me on the street.
All I have to do is scroll back a few weeks to find it.
I’m conscious, as I tap the message out, that I’m going to have to do a significant amount of groveling.
I allowed the mask to slip too much during our last encounter.
I’ll have to find a way of spinning it to work in my favor.
The one thing I cling to is Serena’s obvious revulsion toward Jack. If she dislikes him that much, I’m hopeful she won’t think twice about spilling his secrets.
Now I just need to find a way to draw her in.
Hi Serena, it’s Iris. We met the other day on the street. I know you probably don’t want to hear from me, but there are some things I want to discuss with you. Could you give me a ring at some point? Or come over? It’s just…I’m finding things with Jack quite tricky at the moment. Thanks, I x
There is a long, long wait until three dots start bouncing at the bottom of the screen. They stop, start again, stop. And then the message comes through. Short, to the point. Not at all warranting the length of time she took to tap it out.
I’ll be there in 10.
This doesn’t give me much time to prepare. I can’t come across as I did the other day. Clearly, Serena still harbors complex emotions around Alice’s death, and that tends to come from a place of love. I would know. It seems, with her, I’ll have to align myself with Alice again.
She turns up bang on time. She looks more collected this time—the smear of red lipstick less angry—though her mouth is still set into a hard line. I meet her at the door with a flurry of gratitude, a slightly nervous smile pinned to my face.
“Thank you so much for coming,” I say as I usher her into the house.
Before I close the door, I check both ways up and down the street.
Just in case Jack is lurking somewhere. When I turn round, I see Serena has clocked the action.
Her face is softer, a small crease between her brows. I take her through to the kitchen.
Serena knows her way around this house. I have to stop myself from bristling as—in the kitchen—she takes over, flicking on the kettle, taking two mugs from the cupboard. I take a few deep breaths and seat myself at the breakfast bar as she fusses around.
“It’s really kind of you to come,” I say as she pours the water into the mugs.
She turns, gives me a long, searching look. “I nearly didn’t.”
A straight talker. That bodes well.
“Well, I’m grateful you did. I didn’t have anyone else to turn to and things have been so…odd recently.”
She doesn’t respond—doesn’t ask how, or why—just gives a small, jerky nod as though this confirms some internal suspicion of hers.
When she sets the tea down in front of me, she takes a moment to arrange herself on the chair, then fixes me with a piercing look. I hunch my shoulders—a far cry from the woman she met on the street the other day.
Just as I intended, this seems to thaw her slightly. She releases a long sigh. “I’m not entirely surprised you called. Martha mentioned things have become quite bad.”
I send a silent prayer of thanks to Martha as I give a tiny nod.
“Did you tell him we ran into each other the other day?” she asks.
“Yes. He told me you were his ex.”
She looks first surprised, then sickened. “What? Even for him, that’s quite low. I’m not into men, but if I were, I still wouldn’t go near him even if we were the last two people on Earth.”
This is good. She hates him, and that is exactly what I was counting on. People are far more likely to reveal secrets about those they dislike. Just look at what I told Dad about Marcie.
“I’m sorry for the way I acted. When we bumped into each other. I was way out of line. He’d been feeding me all these lies. I thought you were…bad news. I see now that I was wrong, but it still doesn’t excuse the things I said.”
She nods again—the same jerky movement. “I could see you were well wrapped up in him. He’s good at doing that to people.” She gives a mirthless laugh, then breaks off as she eyes me. “I still can’t believe he’s dressing you up in her clothes. I knew he was psychotic, but fuck.”
I need to feed into her revulsion, befriend her. Suggest we have a common goal. “I hate it. He lays them out every morning. Gets so, so angry if I say I don’t want to wear them.”
Another firm jerk of her head that suggests she has been expecting this, too.
“How did you know Alice?” Timid, tremulous.
She takes a deep breath, closes her eyes for a second. “I am—I was—Alice’s best friend,” she says. “I asked Martha to get your number. When I heard he’d moved some other woman in…God, I was so angry. I was a bit hotheaded that day. I should’ve been more understanding. I’m sorry, too.”
“It’s fine,” I say quickly. “You were defending your friend.”
“The reason I wanted to speak to you was to tell you what sort of man you’re living with. You need all the facts. But I’ll leave you to make your own decision. I just ask that you listen.”
“Of course,” I say, and my heart starts to pump with excitement. This is it.
Like she has been waiting a lifetime for this moment, Serena plunges straight into the story.
She tells me that she met Alice at a bar, on the first night of their freshers’ week at uni. They were both nervous, both out of their depth, and they gravitated toward each other.
“We got chatting. She was just impossible not to like, you know? I couldn’t believe that anyone could be that nice, but she genuinely was. Didn’t have a bad word to say about anyone.”
I stop myself from rolling my eyes. Call me skeptical, but I simply do not believe that anyone could actually be that nice. I wonder what was going on underneath that perfect smoke screen. What dark thoughts she was harboring, roiling just beneath her surface.
“But that quality made her trust people too easily,” Serena continues.
“We were friends all the way through uni, and I mean best friends. We were so close then. I helped her through everything: bad breakups, bad flatmates. We both moved to London after we graduated, and, not long after, she met Jack. And everything changed.” She sighs.
“Notwithstanding the fact he was a mess—clearly into some quite heavy stuff—he was awful at the dinner where she introduced me to him. It was just the three of us, but he kept making these inside jokes that only the two of them would understand. It sounds ridiculous, but I felt really left out.
“Then Alice helped him get sober, and if anything he got worse. He acted like he couldn’t give less of a shit about her wider circle.
He never asked any questions about me, always acted like he thought he was too good for us.
I didn’t know whether to tell her or not.
She was so obviously in love with him, but he was just wrong for her. ” She wipes a tear away.
“I wish I had said something now. I don’t know if it would have made a difference, but at least I could say I tried.
Anyway, I started to see less of her. At first, she just canceled on small things, like drinks or a film.
But then she canceled on my birthday. I asked her about it.
I told her I felt she was avoiding me. Do you know what she said? ”
Serena laughs bitterly.
“She said, ‘Jack doesn’t feel very comfortable around you. He doesn’t feel that you like him very much.
’ I’m not going to lie, I was pissed off that she was throwing away a friendship that she’d had for nearly five years for a man she’d known for six months.
We stopped speaking so much after that. Whenever I did see them, Jack would make this point of saying how everyone he knew was impressed by her…
. Like she was some trophy to show off or something. It was bizarre.”
She takes another breath.
“About a year later, he proposed, and she said yes. Do you know how I found out? Fucking Instagram,” she spits.
“I thought the friendship was well and truly over, but she invited me to her engagement drinks. That was something at least. But it was then that she told me that Jack wanted to keep the wedding ‘in the family,’ so she’d asked his cousin to be the maid of honor. She said she hoped I didn’t mind.
“I couldn’t really say anything, could I?
A few months went by, and I saw basically nothing of her.
It was at the hen party that I noticed she had a bruise on her arm.
I asked her about it, and she went red and snapped at me to mind my own business.
It was the most venomous thing I think I’d ever heard come out of her mouth.
“Anyway, they got married, obviously,” Serena continues, “and at the wedding both of them basically ignored me. I’m not trying to make this about me, I’m really not, but we were so close, and now she was acting like we were distant acquaintances.
” She clears her throat again and presses her lips together.
“There was one moment, during the wedding, where it felt like everything was normal again. We were all quite pissed, and she came over and hugged me, and we danced together. Jack must have seen us, because within two minutes he was between us, dragging her away from me. And he just had this look in his eyes as he pulled her away, you know. It was almost mocking. Like he’d got the prize, and he knew there was nothing I could do about it.
“After they got married, I just got on with my life. I stopped hearing from her entirely, and I stopped trying to get in contact with her. And then, out of the blue, about two years into the marriage, she called me hysterically crying down the phone. I’m talking like sobbing.
I’m not going to lie, I was angry. There’d been some huge changes in my life—I’d come out, and she didn’t even know about it—but I obviously didn’t like to hear her upset.
She told me that she’d been diagnosed with breast cancer.