Chapter 6
SIX
NINETEEN YEARS AGO
Camilla
I’m late getting to the restaurant, my whole body covered in sweat because of the scorching day, and when I peek through the window to see if Reese and Victoria have arrived, I spot them at a table, their heads close together as Reese talks.
They are my best friends. I think they are my best friends.
Perhaps, if I’m truthful, they are my only friends.
At the party we met at we exchanged numbers but I prepared myself to never hear from either of them again.
I thought it was just one of those drunken evenings that I would one day think back on and wonder what happened to the two girls I played one truth, one lie with.
No one was more surprised than me when the next day Reese called and thanked me again for saving her from Brian. ‘Do you want to meet for coffee?’ she asked. ‘I’ll call Victoria and invite her as well.’
Coffee turned into dinner and things just grew from there. I went from friendless to having my own little group.
We’re very different people but it just felt like something clicked between the three of us. Telling each other one truth and one lie on that first night turned us from strangers into friends almost instantly.
We seem to have kept that level of honesty with each other as time has gone on.
I have explained what it’s like to watch my mother disappear into herself more and more with each passing year, and what Coach, my stepfather, is really like. I know so much about them as well.
I know that Reese feels like she has to be a perpetual cheerleader for everyone because her father suffers from bouts of depression and all her life she’s been told, ‘Only you can cheer him up, Reese.’ I know that Victoria feels the shadow of her brother behind her in everything she does and that she feels like she has to be outstanding at everything so that she makes up for the fact that he’s not here.
She believes her parents would still be together if he hadn’t died.
They don’t know everything about me because I have tried to keep the more jaded, cynical parts of myself hidden. I like having friends, after all.
We’ve been meeting once or twice a month for over a year now.
I speak to Reese more than I speak to Victoria because when Victoria and I do speak on the phone, I always get the feeling that she is distracted and thinking about something else.
She never seems overly happy to hear from me but Reese always greets me with a cheery, ‘Hi, I was just thinking about you.’
But now, as I stand in the blazing sun, I wonder how often they speak to each other without me.
A friendship group of three is hard to navigate.
We’re twenty-one and I think we’ve figured it out but as I watch Reese throw her head back and laugh along with Victoria, I wonder about that. Are they meeting without me?
You’re being silly and jealous, I tell myself as I push the door to the restaurant open and walk inside, the sweat immediately drying on my body as the air-conditioned air wraps itself around me.
Each time we meet at a restaurant we take turns choosing the place.
Today it’s been Victoria’s turn and she has, predictably, chosen an Italian restaurant.
The air is filled with the smell of garlic and soft-baked bread and I feel myself salivate.
I have to be careful with money, now that I no longer live at home.
I’m in a share house with five other people, all of whom, it must be said, irritate me in different ways.
There are two boys who don’t clean up after themselves in the bathroom or the kitchen, and three girls who have loud conversations at all hours of the night, as though they don’t need sleep to function the next day.
I have to work all the hours I can at my crappy job in a shoe store.
My grades are slipping a little, but anything is better than living with Coach and my mother.
I won’t be in the share house forever. That’s what I keep reminding myself.
‘Camilla, over here,’ Reese calls as she spots me and I weave my way around the small tables and chairs until I get to them.
‘Sorry, I’m late,’ I say as I drop into a chair. ‘I missed the bus.’ I didn’t miss the bus. I didn’t have the money to top up my bus pass.
‘That’s fine,’ says Reese, flapping her hand. ‘Let’s get something to eat, I’m starving and today is my treat because I have excellent news.’
Reese often treats us. She has a part-time job as a nanny but she doesn’t really need the money. Her grandmother left her and her sister a huge chunk of money each in a trust fund when she died. I’m grateful for the free food but I also find it condescending and annoying.
‘Okay then, you have to go first, one truth and one lie and let us guess what the good news is,’ I say, grabbing the filled glass of water in front of me and drinking it down.
‘Okay,’ says Reese, who looks cool and more beautiful than ever in sleeveless dress covered in pink flowers.
Victoria is dressed like I am in shorts and a T-shirt.
Her fine black hair is pulled into a messy ponytail and I’m conscious that in a moment of despair over how I looked, I cut my long blonde hair off, desperate to just change something, and now I look like a pinch-faced little boy.
‘I met the man I know I’m going to marry.
‘I bought a three-bedroom apartment with my inheritance and I’m looking for two room-mates.’
She sits back in her chair and claps her hands. ‘Okay, come on, guess.’
I wonder when Reese will start sounding like an adult, instead of a child, when she will lose the innocence that seems to be part of her personality, despite her father’s issues.
Reese is always falling in and out of love.
She has declared she’s found the man she’s going to marry three times already since I’ve known her and they’ve never worked out.
She’s desperate to get married and create a family.
In a few frank conversations I’ve had with Victoria, we’ve agreed that, even though she says she has no interest in her biological family, Reese feels like something is missing.
Her parents adore her but I think she wants to start her own family so that she gets to leave any questions she has over adoption behind her.
If she had actually found the man she was going to marry, she wouldn’t just state it so simply.
She would be gushing and glowing. I instantly know what the truth is.
‘As it happens,’ I say, ‘I really hate my room-mates.’
‘Yes, yes.’ Reese laughs because I’ve correctly guessed that she has bought herself an apartment at the tender age of twenty-one. It’s so out of the realm of possibility for me that I can’t even muster any thoughts around how incredibly unfair it is.
‘Well done,’ says Victoria. ‘A property owner at twenty-one, that’s incredible.
’ But she doesn’t sound enthused. In fact, she sounds like she’s said this to Reese many times already so I know that she already knew the truth and so what exactly is the point of this game if they’re talking to each other enough to know everything going on in each other’s lives?
Maybe it’s for you because they are not talking to you that much.
‘Well, my dad has helped me with everything and I think he’s really enjoyed doing it,’ says Reese. ‘But I need two other people to make the mortgage, which is still quite a lot.’
I nod and smile but Victoria doesn’t say she will be moving in as well. Instead, she says, ‘My turn. I’m spending the whole of my final year at university in the UK on an exchange programme that I got a scholarship for.
‘I’ve met the man I’m going to marry.’
Before we can answer the waitress comes over and stands purposefully by our table, waiting for us to order. We decide on two pizzas, garlic bread and a large salad.
I can’t quite figure out what is Victoria’s truth.
She’s never had a steady boyfriend so it’s possible that when she finds someone, it will be her forever someone because she’s very fussy and perfectly happy to be alone.
But when I try to figure out how I’m feeling about what she’s said, I realise I’m feeling jealous.
And I would never feel jealous over a man because from what I’ve seen, they’re more trouble than they’re worth.
I like sex but commitment seems like a bad deal for the woman and a bonus for the man.
I have no desire to tie myself into the kind of relationship my mother has and I think all marriages end up like that.
I know my jealousy is nothing to do with a man.
Victoria is studying English but loves writing and has dreams of being a published author, but really, who doesn’t.
‘A whole year in the UK,’ I say. ‘Lucky you.’ I lift my glass to toast her good fortune and then realise that it’s empty so I just look stupid.
‘Well done, you clever thing,’ says Reese, wrapping her arm around Victoria’s shoulder and pulling her close.
‘I knew you would get that scholarship.’ I feel it again, the certainty that they are much closer to each other than they are to me.
I am technically part of the little friendship group but I don’t think it would make much difference to them if I wasn’t here.
And I hate feeling like that. The waitress comes over and refills my glass and I take a gulp, letting the icy water push my jealousy back down into my stomach so I don’t say anything stupid.
‘Your turn, Camilla,’ says Victoria as another waitress puts down the salad and garlic bread on our table.
I nod, leaning forward and grabbing a slice of the bread, cramming a bite into my mouth.
I haven’t eaten today because one of the boys in the house ate my yoghurt for breakfast. This is not how I imagined spending my twenties.
I’ll get to Cambridge one day, I know I will.
I’ve had to extend my degree another year so I can work as well.
But nothing is going to stop me from getting what I want.
Except money, but I’ll get my own scholarship.
I’m sure of it. I swallow my bite of bread as Reese and Victoria both grab a piece of garlic bread, waiting for my response.
‘My mum and Coach have decided to become foster parents.
‘I had sex for the first time and it was… awful.’
Victoria helps herself to some salad and then creates a bite of food with a little bit of everything, folding the lettuce neatly over the tomato.
She stares at me while she chews and I can almost see her mind working.
I’ve been having sex since I was sixteen and she knows that. I haven’t even tried to hide the lie.
‘Maybe your mother will be a better foster mother than she is a mother,’ she finally says.
Both she and Reese know that my anger at my mother is a deep well from which I can always draw.
I call her when I have to, but every time I hear her voice I feel bitterness rise inside me.
And if Coach says something in the background, it makes me want to vomit.
My mother and stepfather know how much I resent them both so they’re starting again. Arseholes.
‘Yes,’ agrees Reese. ‘I mean hopefully, but how do you feel about it? I’m sure it’s… like it’s not a good thing but… maybe it will make your mum, I don’t know, stand up for herself more?’
‘Maybe,’ I say with a shrug of my shoulders.
‘I see them so rarely that I think it’s just as easy to put it out of my mind as think about it.
’ That’s a lie but it’s not part of the game so I don’t need to confess it.
It’s pretty much all I can think about in between hating my job and where I live.
How dare they do this. It makes me furious.
My mother was so excited to tell me the news, babbling about painting the bedrooms – one of which I still thought was mine – and watching more children grow up.
But when I said, ‘Do you think that’s a good idea?
’ she got all weepy and started talking about how she didn’t know what she’d done wrong as a mother to make me such an unkind person.
We were having dinner for the first time in a month and Coach shook his head and said, ‘And on that note, Camilla, perhaps it’s time for you to go.
’ I hadn’t even finished my food but I got up and left, hating them both even more than usual.
I dislike them both so much sometimes, I almost can’t believe it’s possible to feel that way about other people.
They hate me just as much. My own mother hates me.
It’s a concept that I keep trying to get my head around but I can’t quite manage it.
If she never saw me again, she would be just fine.
And my biological father must feel the same way or he would have reached out at some point. He never has.
Truthfully, I only go to my mother’s house or call because when I see her, my mother always secretly presses a wad of money into my hand when she says goodbye.
And I need that money. I’m pretty sure that’s over though, what with the brand-new child or children who will soon arrive to brighten up her life.
‘Let’s leave my awful parental figures out of any other conversation,’ I say. ‘Tell us about the apartment, Reese.’
Reese launches into an exhaustive description of the fabulous apartment she’s bought, detailing the cute kitchen and the large airy bedrooms. I hope that whatever she asks for in rent will be something I can afford on my shoe store salary.
And I also hope that if I do get to live with her, some of her sunny disposition and belief that life is incredibly fabulous will rub off on me.
I concentrate on that as I eat enough pizza to keep me full until tomorrow.
By the end of the lunch, I’m feeling a lot better and more hopeful for the future and I’m really glad I have these two people in my life.
Things are only going to get better for me. That’s what I keep telling myself.