Chapter 12
TWELVE
Reese
I know there is an appropriate way to respond to Victoria’s message telling me she just quit her job.
I know I should ask her exactly what happened and if she can fix it or if she has another job lined up.
Telling her to meet me so that I can console her and agree she made the right decision would usually be exactly what I would do.
And that’s what I should do, I know that.
She needs me and I need to be a good friend.
But then I start to wonder why she has done something so stupid when she is currently the breadwinner of her family.
My mind goes back to the photo and Nick lying about having seen her and I can’t help but think that maybe she felt she could quit her job because she had a back-up plan and her back-up plan is my husband.
Don’t panic first and think later, I hear her saying.
That’s a phrase I have heard regularly from her for the last twenty years whenever I did allow myself to spiral into worry.
But what if this time I really do need to panic?
What if Camilla saying that the truth about my life is that it’s built on a lie, is her referring to my life now, rather than what happened sixteen years ago? This thought makes me feel sick and I know that no matter how much I want to be supportive, I just can’t do that right now.
Really need a debrief. Okay if I come over? she messages and I realise she thinks I’m home with Max. It is not okay. I don’t want to see her.
So, after some time, instead of expressing sympathy or responding to her and inviting her over, I send a different message to Victoria.
Remember Ben?
Of course she remembers Ben. He nearly ended our friendship. It’s a stupid question, a stupid message that immediately makes me feel guilty but I just couldn’t help myself.
Once I get off the train at my station, I decide to treat myself to some time in my local coffee shop.
I usually pick up a coffee before I get on the train but today, I go into the café to sit down.
It’s mostly empty because the parents who come in after school drop-off are gone and it’s too early for the lunchtime crowd.
I like this coffee shop because it’s small with large windows that look out onto the street.
I order myself an iced mocha with extra cream because, why not? And then I grab a table by the window, enjoying the weak winter light from the morning sun and the quiet of the suburban street.
While I wait for my drink, I take a minute to really hate myself for sending that message to Victoria. It was unkind, and I try so hard to be kind.
And then I hate myself for feeling guilty. But then, I feel guilty about everything all the time. It’s why I let people push me around and always have done.
At forty, I know this about myself. I came from privilege and I was gifted with good looks and an easy life and it has made me feel like I owe the world.
The fact that I was adopted has never bothered me.
My parents always told me the truth and they always told me that they chose me and that I am deeply loved and wanted.
After my sister was born, they suffered from secondary infertility and doctors could not figure out why.
After six years of trying, which made my dad more depressed than ever because he blamed himself even as my mother was blaming herself, they gave up and adopted me.
And I had the best childhood, despite my father’s dark moods and, sometimes, days in bed.
My sister and I have always been close and although I hate the fact that she lives in another state, we talk all the time.
I think for a moment about messaging Jordan and telling her what’s happening but I don’t know how to explain it all to her.
She’s ten years older than I am and when everything happened with Camilla, she was already living in another state.
She’s a no-nonsense sort of person and she would never believe the things I did sixteen years ago.
I don’t want her to think badly of me. I hate it when anyone thinks badly of me.
I should be doing good things in the world, making a difference in a good way.
I’ve always felt like I won the lottery in terms of a childhood and that makes me feel sorry for everyone else. I lost my father when I was only twenty-four and that has been a pain I will never forget, but my mother is strong and fierce and has loved me and her grandchildren enough for ten people.
Sometimes I do wonder if my constant giving in and giving up on things that are important to me makes me a worse person rather than a better person. Because I resent it a lot of the time. That’s a secret I only admit to myself.
Nick is a great husband, but he’s also someone who likes to run his life according to his plan and if me or the kids interfere with that, he gets upset. Not in any major way, but I still find myself apologising, like this morning when I asked him to give up his squash game.
But I needed to see Victoria and that should have been enough, even if I didn’t explain that to him. My own life matters too. Now, I’m not sure if I ever want to see Victoria again.
What happened between Victoria and Ben was seventeen years ago. She apologised and we sorted it all out but that picture of her hugging my husband has brought it all back.
Can I trust Victoria? Can I trust Nick?
I’m startled out of my thoughts when the waitress puts my drink down in front of me.
‘Thank you so much,’ I say, far too enthusiastically and she gives me a look like I’m strange.
The drink is delicious, creamy and sweet.
I never allow myself treats like this because I work hard to keep in shape, to stay looking like I did at twenty-nine, before children, before marriage.
But what good has it done if my husband is sleeping with my best friend?
A shiver of disgust runs through me as I picture them together.
It can’t be true. I can’t bear for it to be true.
I can ask Victoria or Nick but would either of them tell me the truth?
My mind circles back to Ben, who was gorgeous with shaggy blond hair and blue eyes and wide shoulders.
When Victoria spent a year in the UK, I would email her every week, long rambling emails about my life and what was happening. She always replied but her replies were shorter and mostly filled with advice for me.
Most of the emails I sent contained two themes. How much I hated Camilla living with me and how in love I was with Ben, my other room-mate. Victoria’s advice was always the same: Kick out Camilla and tell Ben how you feel. Jump his bones. The man probably likes you just as much.
It took me months to get rid of Camilla and I never found the courage to tell Ben how I felt, although I showed him. I cooked for him and did his laundry and let him borrow my car. ‘Doormat,’ I mutter out loud and then look around, glad the café is empty except for an elderly couple and me.
Asking Camilla to leave was one of the hardest things I have ever done.
It took me weeks to get up the courage once I made the decision and I remember writing down what I was going to say to her and then editing it and memorising it.
And then, in one awful night, she brought a man home, spilled wine on my sofa and broke my grandmother’s vase before having loud sex in her bedroom and then showing him out at 3 a.m., slamming the door behind him.
All my neatly rehearsed words went out the window and only hours later, I just told her to leave.
I was nauseous for days after she left, and guilty.
Guilty, guilty, guilty, look at you with your steady diet of feeling bad.
By the time Victoria came back from the UK, I was just glad it was over and that she was moving in with me and Ben.
And everything was great at first. The three of us got along really well and Victoria was an easy room-mate because she did mostly clean up after herself and if I asked her to do something she usually did.
But then. I take another sip of my drink as I remember the Sunday night I returned from a weekend away with a friend from my course.
I walked in loaded with delicious delicacies to share with Victoria and Ben because we stayed in a little country town and went to the local food markets.
‘You won’t believe the things I found,’ I said, unloading bags onto the kitchen counter.
‘There’s a beautiful ricotta cheese for you, Victoria, and some home-made honey from a guy who has ten beehives on his property and hand-made chocolates for you, Ben,’ I gushed as I looked at them, delighted to share my treats with them.
They had both stood up as I walked in and I assumed that was to greet me but then Victoria sat down at the small kitchen counter and picked up the jar of golden-brown honey.
‘This looks amazing,’ she said. ‘Doesn’t it look good, Ben?
’ she asked him, showing him the jar, and I caught a look between the two of them, something deeply intimate, and I knew what had happened.
You can tell when two people have had sex. There is something between them, an invisible tether, and I saw it and felt a pain in my chest, a hard squeezing of my heart.
‘Anyway, I’m exhausted and I need to lie down so I’ll see you two later,’ I hurriedly babbled, just needing to get away from them. I left everything on the counter and went to my bedroom.
Victoria must have realised that I had understood what had happened because an hour later, she knocked on my door. ‘Hey, just wanted to check on you,’ she called. ‘I’ve put everything away, thanks so much. It was all delicious.’ I couldn’t answer her so I just pretended to be asleep.
I was heartbroken. I spent days pretending I didn’t see it, didn’t notice the little touches in the kitchen and the way they looked at each other, didn’t hear the giggling at night and hear the opening and closing of bedroom doors as they snuck around.
She knew it was wrong. They both did or they would have just told me.
I let it go on for a few days before I couldn’t take it anymore.
‘You’re sleeping with Ben,’ I said to Victoria.
It was the following Sunday morning and Ben had gone surfing.
She and I were drinking coffee and eating the croissants I had gotten up early to get fresh from the bakery near my apartment.
Despite the way I was feeling, I couldn’t stop myself from doing nice things for Ben and Victoria.
Victoria coughed as a bite of her croissant turned out to be more than she could swallow. She picked up her cup of coffee and took a sip, cleared her throat. ‘I never meant for it to happen. We were drunk and then…’
‘And then what?’ I asked. I was angry but mostly at myself for being upset. Was I in love with Ben? Probably not, but I was really infatuated with him, and that should have been enough for him to be off-limits to Victoria.
‘It just happened and… I told him it has to stop and I don’t even, I mean we don’t even like each other as people and—’
‘And it wasn’t enough that I liked him,’ I remember saying as my eyes filled with tears. ‘That wasn’t enough of a reason for you to stay away?’
Victoria stood up and came over to me, enclosing me in a hug even though I didn’t want to be near her.
‘I’m so sorry. I’m a shitty friend and I told him last night it was over and I don’t blame you if you hate me because I suck, I really do.’
‘You do,’ I agreed and I allowed myself some tears.
‘But you need to know that he’s like, really, really dumb.
’ She said this with an eye-roll and a smile.
‘I don’t know if you’ve ever had a conversation about anything deeper than general stuff but he thinks that North America and South America are the same country, just different parts, and he believes that paying taxes are a waste of time so he just doesn’t do it.
’ She raised her eyebrows at me and I had to laugh because she looked so funny.
I knew Ben wasn’t the brightest but I still liked him.
I had lived with him for nearly two years and I really, really liked him.
He was friendly and sweet and I could talk to him for hours.
I was more than hurt. Victoria walked on eggshells for weeks after that, continually trying to find ways to apologise, like making me dinner and cleaning the apartment.
And then one day, I got home from seeing my parents and Ben wasn’t there. And he wasn’t there the next day or the next.
His bedroom door was closed and I finally got up the courage to knock and then open it, only to find it empty. He had taken most of his clothes but he had also left a lot of stuff in the room.
I waited for him to come back for months and when he never did, I was able to move on from what had happened between him and Victoria.
I remember asking her if she had heard from him and she told me she hadn’t. I wonder now if that was true.
It’s a long time ago and I got over it but if she was willing to betray me at twenty-three, would she do the same at forty?
I finish my drink, realising I have been here a long time. As I stand to leave, there’s a ping on my phone. My heart sinks when I see it’s from Camilla.
Wouldn’t have picked you for someone who indulges in such a calorie heavy drink. You’ve kept yourself in really good shape. Shame your husband doesn’t appreciate it.
The air is immediately too warm and I feel myself flush. She’s watching me.
My head swings wildly around the café and then I search the street outside but no one is there.
I haven’t been paying attention to the few people who have walked past. But she was obviously one of them.
Why is she watching me? That’s stalking and I need to talk to the police.
But then I’ll have to show them the picture and the messages and explain what happened and there’s no way I want to do that.
They’ll probably tell me I’m being ridiculous.
Police don’t do anything unless you’re physically threatened anyway.
Leaving the café, I go to where my car is parked, checking around me constantly. Where is she? Does she know where I live? Where the kids go to school? Exactly how much does Camilla know about my life? And what is she going to do with that information?