Chapter 36
THIRTY-SIX
I looked at the three faces sitting with me around the table at the Prince Rupert. Actually, thanks to a mirror on the wall next to me, I could see my own face, too, and it bore the same expression as the others’ – unsmiling, wary, a bit sad. If I looked the other way, I could see a slice of green space, lit by the lowering sun – the football pitch where our men had played all those years ago.
It was almost two decades since we’d first drunk in that pub, and the first time we’d returned to it for ages – the Prince Rupert, as I remembered now we were actually there, had never been the most salubrious of places, which was why (once we’d dropped any remaining pretence of actually watching our menfolk play football on Wednesday evenings) we’d made the decision to decamp to other, nicer venues.
But now, here we were again, at my instigation – in fact, my insistence.
I couldn’t help thinking of that first night – how we’d abandoned the rainy, freezing football pitch in search of warmth and alcohol, none of us with high expectations of how the evening would unfold. And how, in the end, we had found so much more. How, from more or less the first drink, the first shared laugh, the first tentatively offered confidence, we’d been friends.
I thought of all the monthly get-togethers, bright beads on the intertwined chains of our lives. Everything we’d been through: the births of Clara, Meredith and Toby; Abbie’s wedding and mine; new jobs and new homes and new cats; and, of course, our shared grief over losing Andy. The stream of our daily chats with requests for support with everything from a domestic squabble to a broken Hoover, trivial speculation about whether metallic jeans would still be around next season or were a waste of fifty quid and made your legs look like leftover sausages wrapped in foil.
I imagined it all falling silent: no more ‘Good morning’s, no more ‘Night all, love you’, just a blank screen.
Tumbleweed.
Kate had her phone on the table in front of her, and occasionally glanced down at it impatiently, as if she had better things to do and places she’d rather be. Abbie’s mouth was turned down at the corners like a sad emoji, her shoulders slumped as mournfully as they’d been at Andy’s funeral. Rowan looked close to tears. And I – my reflection in the foxed surface of the mirror told me – looked like I was sitting face to face with an interview panel, rather than my closest friends in the world.
We’ve had a good innings , I told myself. Nothing lasts forever. At least you’ve tried.
But I didn’t want to be philosophical about it. I didn’t want to accept that people change, friends move on, life comes at you fast. I wanted to fight with everything I had for the survival of us as a unit, for what I knew the Girlfriends’ Club had meant to us all.
‘Shall I get a round in?’ Abbie asked, smiling hesitantly. ‘What did we drink that first time, mulled wine?’
‘They won’t be serving it now,’ Kate pointed out. ‘It was November then and it’s summer now.’
‘Mulled wine’s pretty gross anyway,’ Rowan said. ‘And it’s even grosser when it’s cooling so you have to drink it really quick.’
‘And then you end up puking up your mini stollen bites all over Father Christmas’s boots,’ I agreed.
They all looked at me, their faces still. Shit , I thought, that one didn’t land. Tough crowd.
Even the way we were sitting felt alien. Usually, we’d be leaning forward across the table, our elbows propped on its surface, our faces so close I’d notice if one of my friends was wearing new perfume or had had her eyebrows reshaped. Today, we were upright in our chairs, our hands in our laps, like board members negotiating a hostile takeover.
Always the peacemaker, Abbie tried again. ‘They’ve got Pimm’s. It might be drinkable.’
‘So long as we get them to make it with soda water instead of lemonade,’ Kate agreed reluctantly.
‘And slosh in some extra gin,’ suggested Rowan. ‘I think we all need it.’
‘I’m on it.’ Relieved that the ice was, if not broken, at least perhaps beginning to crack, I hurried to the bar. I strained to hear their voices behind me but there was nothing – no hum of chatter, no bursts of laughter, no snap of a camera as someone took a group selfie. A few minutes later, I returned with a tray holding a jug, four glasses and two packets of pork scratchings.
‘I see they still haven’t raised their bar snack game here,’ Kate observed, carefully pouring the amber liquid into our glasses, slices of cucumber and strawberry splashing after it.
‘I guess it’s better than a Scotch egg with extra salmonella.’ Rowan ripped open the bags of snacks and pushed them to the centre of the table, but no one ate.
‘Well, cheers, I guess.’ Abbie reached out across the table and we all followed suit, the rims of our glasses clinking together in a ritual as old as our friendship. I wondered if I’d ever hear that sound again without longing for these women.
‘Cheers,’ Rowan, Kate and I echoed.
I cleared my throat, feeling that job-interview feeling twist my stomach. ‘Thanks for coming, guys. I know it’s a pain. But I think we’ve all got things to say to each other.’
Kate’s face was still and wary again. ‘Right. Why don’t you go first?’
No, you go first. Or Ro, or Abs. Don’t make me do it. But I had to – this had been my idea after all. In a sense, I’d started it.
I said, ‘So, first off. Patch and I are splitting up.’
My friends’ – or former friends’ – faces segued from expressionless to sad.
Rowan reached out and touched my hand, just a brush of a fingertip like she was scared I’d burn her – or contaminate her. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘So am I,’ said Kate.
‘Are you okay?’ Abbie asked.
‘Yes,’ I said slowly. ‘Well, no. Not really. But I will be eventually.’
‘What happened?’ Rowan asked. ‘I mean, you said you’d decided that the other stuff – the stuff with Zara – didn’t matter.’
‘I had. And it felt like the right decision at the time, even though I know you guys didn’t agree with it.’
‘It wasn’t about that,’ began Rowan. ‘It was?—’
I held up my hand. ‘Let me finish. I know how things started with Patch and me wasn’t right. I know it wasn’t fair to Zara. I can see that now – I guess I could see it all along. I was selfish and so was he. If there’d been a way to make that not have happened, believe me, I’d have done it. But there wasn’t. And with the kids and everything – why uproot their lives because of a shit thing their mum and dad did years ago?’
Slowly, I saw Rowan nod, then Kate and Abbie follow suit.
‘But then there was another thing.’ I paused, the pain still too fresh for me to get the words out easily. ‘You all remember what happened at Abbie’s wedding?’
‘When Matt forgot the words to his speech?’ Abbie asked, smiling. I saw her smile mirrored on Kate and Rowan’s faces, and felt it on my own.
‘Who could forget that?’ I said. ‘It was the best bit, right? But no. After that. When Zara turned up and nicked your bouquet.’
‘She really lost it, didn’t she?’ Rowan shook her head. ‘What came over her?’
‘She felt like I’d taken what was hers by right,’ I explained. ‘So she was going to take – something. I don’t know what she actually meant with the bouquet. Maybe she didn’t know herself. But after that, when Patch went outside to talk to her and we went up to your room, Ro?—’
‘Oh my God,’ Rowan whispered. ‘Don’t tell me she and Patch…?’
I nodded miserably. ‘That night and a few times after. She says she’s got texts from him to prove it, and photos, but I didn’t need to see them, because he says it’s true.’
‘Oh, Naomi.’ Abbie reached over and squeezed my hand. ‘That’s awful.’
‘Yeah, it’s not great. But it’s also not everything. I know cheating’s meant to be the ultimate deal-breaker, the thing you can’t get past. But it isn’t always. I think I could have moved past it. But it made me realise things about Patch and about me – about where things had got to in my life.’
‘Go on,’ Rowan said.
‘I realised I’d lost me.’ I shrugged. I didn’t know how to find the words, but I hoped that the knowledge and understanding my friends had formed of me over the years would be enough for them to interpret what I meant. ‘I’d let my life become all about being Patch’s wife and the kids’ mum and there was nothing left for me any more. I guess I gave myself permission to be more selfish. More like Zara. So I decided I had to leave.’
‘You don’t want to be like Zara.’ Kate’s face was pale with shock.
‘Not in every way – of course not. But one thing she does is fight for what she wants. She wanted to – to take revenge on me, I guess, for what happened all those years ago. And she did.’
‘What are you talking about, exactly?’ Rowan picked up her glass, touched it to her lips and then put it down again. She looked like Toby with his puzzle toy, putting a shape in the wrong hole at first, then trying another and another, knowing eventually he would get it right.
I took a deep breath. Telling them about Patch was the easy part – I’d already figured it out in my own head; I knew what to believe and what not to. But this was different.
‘She told me she’d always felt on the sidelines of the group. Which she was, of course, because of not being here all the time. But it was like she was holding up a mirror to me and making me feel that way too. She made me doubt our friendship.’
I saw understanding gradually dawn on their faces.
‘And then when I decided to try and make a go of things with Patch, even after I knew how things were when he and I first got together, I felt like you were all judging me. I felt like if you could, you’d take her side over mine.’
I stopped, looking around at them. Kate’s hands were wrapped tightly around her glass, her knuckles white. Rowan was biting her lip. Abbie was fiddling with her hair, winding a strand round and round her finger then letting it go and starting again.
‘It sounds so petty, doesn’t it?’ I went on. ‘It’s like we learned how to do friendship when we were teenage girls and never really figured out a different way.’
My words fell into silence. I could hear a beep from the card reader at the bar, the whoosh and clunk of the toilet door opening and closing, the hum of traffic on the road outside. But my friends made no sound – I couldn’t even hear them breathing.
Then Kate said, ‘I know what you mean, actually. Because I felt the same way.’
‘About something Zara said to you?’ Abbie asked softly.
Kate nodded.
‘What was it?’ I asked, although I already knew.
Kate cleared her throat, hesitated, then the words came out in a rush. ‘She told me that she felt responsible for Andy’s addiction, and his death. Because of how they used to party together when he visited her in Paris. And I do, too – I always have, no matter how much everyone tells me it’s not my fault. And she made me think that you guys felt the same, and blamed me for it.’
‘But you know we don’t!’ Rowan’s voice was high, almost pleading.
‘Why wouldn’t you?’ Kate asked. ‘Come on. If I hadn’t had that relationship with him and kept it a secret for so long, and let him stay with me when he was using, and all that stuff. If I hadn’t done that, he might still be alive. I thought that, deep down, and there was no reason to believe you guys wouldn’t think it too.’
‘Oh my God,’ Rowan said. ‘That’s so cruel. And so not true.’
‘I told you it wasn’t true,’ Abbie said, her voice thin and small. ‘But I don’t think you believed me.’
Kate said slowly, ‘I did and I didn’t. I didn’t really believe you’d say something like that about me to Zara, of all people. But you see, I’ve always blamed myself for it. And Zara must have guessed that. She knew the seed was there so she poured a load of shit on it and then it grew.’
‘You mustn’t blame yourself,’ Abbie protested. ‘You know it’s not your fault. You were the best friend Andy could have possibly had.’
There were tears in Kate’s eyes. Abbie pulled a pack of tissues from her bag and passed one to Kate, then blew her own nose. I could see – as if it was a physical thing – the wall between them beginning to come down.
‘Rowan,’ I said. ‘She told you something about me, too, didn’t she?’
I felt as if I was cross-examining a witness in court – the role I’d dreamed of. It wasn’t nearly so much fun as I’d thought it would be.
‘I…’ Rowan began, a dark flush creeping up her cheeks. ‘Yes, she did. It’s too horrible, I can’t say it.’
I looked at her and waited, and after a few seconds she went on. ‘Years ago, Zara told me she was abused when she was a teenager, by a boyfriend of her mother’s.’
I could almost hear the thought rippling around the table – Zara told us all lots of things . But no one spoke.
‘I know what you’re thinking,’ Rowan went on. ‘But the way she talked about it – it was so vivid, so awful. It’s stayed with me. So when I told her about Alex and me getting together, the best thing that’s happened to me in ages, and she asked me to remind her how old Clara is, it all came back to me.’
She stopped, and we sat there for a moment, waiting, until Kate said, ‘Go on, Ro. We’re listening.’
‘Of course, I didn’t think Alex would be capable of anything remotely like that. But it made me feel guilty about what I could have exposed Clara to, you know, if Alex wasn’t a good person. And then Zara said that you – Naomi – you’d said you wondered about Alex being… you know. Safe. Around Clara. And whether he was actually only with me because of her. And suddenly it wasn’t about me trusting Alex any more, it was about me trusting you.’
‘And that’s why you were being so cold towards me,’ I said. ‘I don’t blame you, but God, it hurt.’
‘Of course it did.’ Abbie’s voice was so soft I could barely hear her. ‘I know just how much.’
We all turned to look at her, slowly, like if we were too hasty she would take fright and run away. I reached a hand out across the table towards her, but I didn’t touch her; I just waited for her to speak.
Abbie – the kindest and gentlest of us all. She’d been through so much, so recently, and it had almost broken her.
‘Zara told me she can’t have children,’ Abbie said, her words coming out on a long sigh of breath. ‘She said she was in Poland at the beginning of the pandemic, and lockdown happened and she had to stay there. She found out she was pregnant while she was there and of course abortion isn’t legal, so she had to find someone who’d help her.’
Kate and Rowan’s faces bore the same look of blank disbelief I knew mine did. Here it was – another of Zara’s stories, carefully calculated to have the maximum impact on its audience. I felt a surge of anger – we should have known not to believe her, but we had. We all had, because she knew exactly how to draw us in.
‘She haemorrhaged and nearly died,’ Abbie continued, ‘and when they got her to hospital they had to take her uterus out, she said. She was crying when she told me. So of course I told her about Matt and me, and how we went through infertility treatment but it didn’t work. And then she said it was a relief for her, in a way, because she’d have been a terrible mother.’
‘I’ll drink to that,’ Rowan said darkly, and I felt another, almost imperceptible lightening of the mood around the table – as if, once we were able to laugh about this, we’d be able to laugh at absolutely anything that ever happened to us in the future.
Abbie went on, ‘I told her Matt and I have made peace with it now. And it’s true, we have. It’s been a relief in a way. But she told me that Kate had said – that you’d said, Kate – that you were relieved too, because you thought if I had a baby we wouldn’t be able to be friends in the same way if we weren’t the only ones in the group without children any more.’
‘I never said that,’ Kate burst out furiously. ‘I promise I never did. But I…’
‘You thought it,’ Abbie whispered.
Reluctantly, Kate nodded. ‘I’m sorry. Long ago, I did think that. But once I knew what you and Matt were going through, it didn’t matter any more. I just wanted you to be happy.’
‘It’s okay.’ Abbie managed a smile. ‘The only thing that would have made it not okay is if we weren’t friends any more.’
‘Don’t you see,’ Rowan asked, ‘what she tried to do? She tried to split Naomi and Patch up, all those years ago. And then when that didn’t work, she came for us, as friends, to try and destroy what we have together.’
‘And it’s working,’ Kate said sadly.
I nodded slowly before saying, ‘The question is, are we going to let it?’
I’d barely noticed that, outside, clouds had formed and it had been raining – one of those summer showers that catches you unawares, making you pack up your picnic and run for the car or dash into Boots and buy an emergency umbrella. But now the rain had stopped and the clouds had parted. A shaft of bright sunlight spilled through the window, reflecting off the varnished table so it was almost too bright to look at.
‘No way,’ Abbie said fiercely.
‘No,’ Kate echoed.
‘Hell to the no,’ Rowan almost shouted.
A few minutes before, I hadn’t been able to hear my friends’ breath breaking through the oppressive silence. But now I could – an audible sigh, a shared release of tension from us all. I felt relief so heady and intense it was like being drunk.
‘You know what,’ Rowan said, ‘I think we need another jug of that Pimm’s.’
‘I’ll get it.’ I jumped to my feet and hurried over to the bar. The surly, tattooed landlady stopped wiping its surface and looked at me curiously, and I realised I’d practically skipped across the pub, like I’d just been proposed to or something.
‘Same again, please.’ I beamed at her. ‘Pimm’s with soda water, not lemonade, and plenty of extra gin. And two packets of pork scratchings.’
My mood must have been infectious, because she actually cracked a smile when she pushed the jug across to me.
‘Thank you so much.’ I tapped my phone on the card reader and heard its familiar beep.
And then a new notification caught my eye and all my elation melted away.