Chapter Thirteen
The fact it took me four attempts to parallel park in her street indicated just how nervous I was because I was usually pretty good at parking in tight spaces.
I could feel a vague tremor in my fingers as I switched off the engine.
The spot I’d found was only a short distance down the road from the three-bedroom semi that Mel and Steve called home.
Her car was in the driveway, and I gave a sigh of relief as I climbed out of my own and reached for the items on the back seat. I’d taken a chance that Mel’s work schedule was the same and that she still worked from home on Fridays. I’d taken an even greater chance that she’d be willing to see me.
I’d decided to leave it four weeks before contacting Mel again – I’d lasted just over three.
Maybe I’d caught her when she was still jet-lagged from her return from New York.
Or maybe she was simply a much nicer person than me – which was probably closer to the truth.
For whatever reason, when I’d messaged to say I’d really like to see her again, she hadn’t told me no.
Admittedly, she hadn’t said yes either. But that was how I chose to interpret her somewhat lukewarm reply of ‘Sometime soon, perhaps.’
What was the worst she could do, I wondered, as I adjusted the cumbersome object in my arms to get a better hold?
Slam the door in your face? Throw a bucket of water on you from an upstairs window?
Simply not answer the door? There were no end of possibilities, none of which I liked.
This was Mel, for God’s sake. She was my person, and I was hers. Or at least I used to be.
The container I was carrying was heavy and digging painfully into the flesh of my forearms. Perhaps I should have gone with a bouquet of flowers after all. There’d certainly been plenty to choose from in the florists that morning.
‘Hi, Ellie,’ Beth, the shop’s owner, had said with a welcoming smile. ‘Another client arrangement?’ Her pen had been poised, waiting for the details and a delivery address.
‘Actually, I’m looking for something different today. Something that says I’m sorry.’ That was when I’d spotted the ceramic pot standing in the corner of Crazy Daisy.
‘What kind of plant is that?’ I’d asked, already sure I knew the answer.
‘It’s an olive tree.’
I’d smiled and reached for my purse.
‘Perfect. I’ll take it. Can you tie a fancy ribbon around it?’
Repositioning the tree in my arms as I walked towards my friend’s front door, I wasn’t holding out an olive branch . . . I was extending the whole damn tree. I just hoped it was enough for Mel to forgive me for being a truly awful and neglectful friend.
I rang the doorbell and resisted the impulse to duck back out of range of the wall-mounted camera so she couldn’t see who was there. She took a worryingly long time answering. Long enough for me to wonder if I should have tied a white flag to the olive tree instead of a big old red ribbon.
I’d been straining my ears for the sound of footsteps on the wooden boards of her hallway, but Mel was barefoot when she answered the door, catching me by surprise when it suddenly swung open.
The first emotion that hit me was a wave of love for my old friend.
How could I not have realised how much I’d missed her until that very second when she was standing there in front of me?
The second emotion came fast on the heels of the first: shock.
She looked different. Mel had always had the kind of curves that filled a pair of skinny jeans far better than mine ever did and boobs that made me feel like I’d only just graduated from a training bra.
But today she looked so much thinner, and not in the way you did after a healthier eating regime.
She looked gaunt and tired. It’s probably just jet lag, I told myself, even though I was already afraid it was something way worse than the results of an exhausting trip.
Her hair had escaped from its usual crocodile clip restraint and the wild curls were taking advantage of the freedom by swamping her face.
They made her cheekbones look even more prominent and her eyes appear enormous.
Although, to be fair, finding me on her doorstep for the first time in goodness-only-knows-how-long might have been another reason for that.
‘Ellie,’ she said. Despite straining my ears for a clue, I couldn’t decipher how she felt about this ambush from the way she said my name.
‘Hello, Mel,’ I said. Feeling suddenly shy in front of the person who knows you better than anyone else in the world is both a lonely and a terrifying experience.
Guilt pierced me like a poisoned dart. I had squandered something precious. What right did I have to think some stupid olive tree gift was all it would take to make things right again?
‘I’m sorry for dropping in unannounced like this,’ I began, intending to tag on the lie but I was in the area. So, I was almost as surprised as I imagine she was when my voice cracked. ‘ . . . but I was so scared to call first in case you wouldn’t agree to see me.’
I followed her down the hallway and into her bright, friendly, chaotic kitchen that was bathed in late-morning sunlight.
I’d clearly interrupted her workday, for her laptop was open on the kitchen table and was surrounded by a sea of paperwork and pamphlets.
Mel worked for a charity who redistributed unused food from supermarkets to shelters and the homeless.
Even the career she’d chosen illustrated exactly why everyone who met Mel immediately fell in love with her.
She was a good person, who worked hard to make life better for people in need.
What did my choice of job, with its veneer of perfectly staged homes and aspirational lifestyles, say about me?
‘So, is that tree for me, or is it just something you carry around with you these days?’
She had done it again, made me laugh even when I was on the cliff edge of crying. No one did that better than her.
She plucked up a box of tissues from a nearby countertop and plonked them down on the table in front of me.
‘Just in cases,’ she said, quoting a line from one of our favourite films, and for some stupid reason that made me want to cry even more, remembering all the late-night popcorn and movie sessions we’d shared.
Pulling out a chair painted in a particularly cheerful shade of buttercup yellow, she motioned for me to sit.
I made use of both the seat and the box of Kleenex while Mel scooped up the papers strewn across the table into a haphazard bundle that immediately made me want to volunteer to sort them out. Sensibly, I quashed the impulse.
Mel had taken the olive tree from my arms and set it down in the corner of her delightfully messy kitchen beside a jumbled heap of shoes. The pile was topped with a pair of fluorescent green Crocs that I bet Mel wore even when she wasn’t gardening. They were very her.
Our taste in clothes had always been very different.
She was boho through and through, favouring long flowing skirts and floaty tops.
She wore a collection of silver rings on every finger and so many bangles on her slender wrists I used to wonder how she found the strength to lift her arms. She wasn’t wearing any today, which was just as well because her wrists looked too thin and her forearms too delicate to bear their weight.
The fear that she was sick, seriously sick, muscled its way back into my head, despite Jackson’s assurance that illness wasn’t the issue.
‘I was just about to make a coffee. Do you want one?’
‘Yes please,’ I said, looking around the kitchen I could remember so well, even though I couldn’t remember when I’d last been here.
I waited until she’d brought the coffees over to the table, along with a jar of honey, the same brand she’d always used in drinks instead of refined sugar.
She spooned a sizeable amount into her mug and then cocked her head on one side in a question that I answered with a nod.
The taste of it took me back to countless nights spent in either her room or mine, cramming for tests or exams, moaning about boys, or binge-watching box sets of the Gilmore Girls, a series I’d enjoyed with a bewildered fascination.
Were there really mothers and daughters who got on that well?
I gave a small sigh as I remembered how Mel had always said the show reminded her of her own mum, who’d passed away when she was only a teenager.
The fear that something was really wrong with my friend was like a whole herd of elephants in the room. They might trample me to death for interfering, but there was no way I could ignore them.
‘How are you, Mel?’
‘I’m fine.’
I shook my head. ‘No, you’re not.’
It was a tricky card to have laid so early in the game. It could have seen me back outside her front door in a heartbeat. But that wasn’t her.
‘Okay. Well, I’m pretty pissed off with you. Is that better? Is that what you wanted to hear?’
I gave a helpless shrug. ‘I think it’s more honest than “fine”. Pissed off I can deal with. Pissed off I deserve. Because I’ve been a bad friend.’
‘Yes, you have.’
I swallowed uncomfortably, every word of the speech I’d carefully prepared fleeing from my brain.
‘What are you doing here, Ellie?’ She looked pointedly at the watch on her slender wrist. ‘Shouldn’t you be at work?’
I shook my head. ‘Some things are more important than work.’
Her eyebrows rose. ‘Easy to say; harder to prove.’
I flinched like a boxer taking a blow in the ring. I’d been expecting this. I was prepared for it to be way harder than just buying coffee and cake had been. Mel wasn’t Jackson and she had clearly taken my abandonment much harder than he had.
‘So where exactly have you been for the last nine months or so?’
I gave a helpless shrug. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to answer, it was just that a great deal of that time period was still a hazy mystery.