Chapter 22
TWENTY-TWO
SIXTEEN YEARS AGO
Camilla
I stare at my phone, willing a message from Victoria or Reese to appear.
I have been waiting in this bar, nursing a glass of acidic white wine for half an hour.
At least five different groups of people have passed me and looked meaningfully at the table for three that I snagged as I got here.
One girl even leaned down and said, ‘Um, you know there are single seats at the bar.’
‘I’m waiting for my friends,’ I hissed at her and she offered me a small smile that conveyed she didn’t believe me at all.
Where are they? I have sent both of them a friendly, non-judgemental text message, Hey, just checking we were meant to meet up at The Sailor tonight at 6? But neither of them has replied.
Now, I text Sophie.
I’ve been waiting for half an hour and neither of those bitches has turned up.
Leave!
I chuckle at that reply. I knew she would say that.
No one is more surprised than me at my friendship with my adopted sister.
She’s just turned sixteen and is definitely an old soul.
When I’m speaking to her, I don’t feel like I’m talking to a child but to another adult, one who is even older than I am.
I’ll give them ten more minutes.
Doormat!
I laugh again as I imagine her in her bedroom, the bedroom that used to be mine.
It has a pink princess canopy bed which she loathes but she is not allowed to say that.
‘Mum looks so sad whenever I criticise anything and then she says, “I’m trying so hard to make you happy,” and I feel like a piece of shit. ’
The adopting of two new daughters to improve on her previous screw-up of a daughter is not without its issues for my mother and I am glad to hear about them every time Sophie and I speak.
Sophie also has strong opinions on my friendship with Reese and Victoria.
‘You’re hoping to get back to the glory days of when you first met them and you think their fabulous lives will rub off on you,’ she said when I was explaining that whenever I go out with them I leave feeling awful about myself, so I don’t know why I keep doing it.
She has been actively encouraging me to let go of Reese and Victoria. ‘Move on,’ she keeps saying but I don’t want to, not yet.
You still alone, she messages a minute later.
Yes, why?
I have something to tell you and u r going to be mad at me.
***
You know that guy I was seeing? Chad?
You mentioned him, yeah. But you said it was just a fling.
I’m pregnant.
***
I regret that reply as soon as I send it because she doesn’t need to cop shit from me. She must be freaking out.
Sorry. But, God, you must be…
I’m totally screwed. If Coach and Mum find out, they will boot me out or they’ll make me have the baby. I can’t have a baby.
Of course not. You can get it sorted. It’s not illegal to have a termination.
I know but I’m on their Medicare card. I have to pay private fees so they can’t be involved.
Shit. Shit. Shit.
I need close to 2 thousand. Do you have it? I’ll pay you back out of my money from the ice-cream store.
I laugh out loud, leading to some strange looks from the guys sitting at the next table. Where am I going to get that kind of money? I have no money, like literally no money at all.
She’s come to me with this and she’s trusted me and I don’t want her to feel alone and powerless.
We’ll figure it out. I’ll get the money and come with you. Don’t worry.
I send the message and look up from my phone, panic at how I’m going to get the money already twisting inside me. And then Reese appears from behind a pillar.
‘Sorry, sorry,’ she says as she throws herself down into a chair opposite me.
‘I was talking to Lawrence and he…’ She flaps her hand and I nod, accepting her apology even though I’m irritated.
‘Where’s Victoria?’ I ask and Reese shakes her head.
‘She’s not coming. Her mum is having some kind of procedure in the morning and she has to take her to the hospital at six a.m. She didn’t want to be out late.’
She could have just replied to my text message.
‘Right. Is her mum okay?’
‘Yes, fine, fine.’ Reese waves her hand. ‘Let me get a drink, what do you want?’
‘Oh, um, vodka soda,’ I tell her, grateful that she’s going to pay.
I really can’t afford to be out drinking.
I actually can’t afford to be out at all.
But the three of us have made a lot of plans that have had to be cancelled.
Reese is always busy with her fiancé, Lawrence, and Victoria is working crazy hours in her job so that she can get the promotion she wants.
I am also working all the time just so that I can cover my rent in the shitty house where I live with awful housemates.
Every time I walk into a filthy bathroom or find that one of my housemates has eaten something I specifically made for myself and labelled, I think longingly of Reese’s neat clean apartment where I had peace and quiet. And then I kind of hate Reese and Victoria just a little more.
I should stop seeing them. It’s not good for me and it doesn’t make me a better person.
Every time I hear about something good happening in their lives, I feel a dark-green snake of envy slither through my body.
If I didn’t see them, I wouldn’t know. But somehow, I can’t seem to just end the friendship.
Reese returns quickly with our drinks because even though the bar is heaving with people, the barman probably spotted her in the crowd and immediately served her.
Being in love, getting proposed to and planning a wedding has only added to Reese’s beauty.
She seems to glide through a room filled with people, everyone parting to give her space and heads turning as she moves.
‘Thanks,’ I say, taking my drink from her and setting it down on the timber table. I gulp down the last of my cheap white wine, feeling the acid hit my stomach as I swallow my ungenerous thoughts.
‘So how are the wedding plans going?’ I ask Reese because the wedding plans are all she wants to discuss.
I have no idea why she wants to get married so young but I guess that Lawrence Holmes the Third is a great catch.
His family money means that he has never really had to work a day in his life, although he is finishing up a law degree after he spent a couple of years backpacking around the world, just, as he says, ‘getting to experience different cultures’.
The entire trip was funded by his parents who thought it was a really good idea for him to have some fun before he started studying law.
‘So good,’ says Reese as she takes a gulp of her glass of white wine, probably a glass of the most expensive stuff they have here.
‘The cake is going to be absolutely divine because I’ve asked for it to be chocolate ganache with a layer of raspberry in between each of the tiers and it’s going to be so beautiful because it’s decorated with fresh flowers.
And I tried on my dress for the last time and I’m so, so happy with it because I lost a couple of kilos so it hangs perfectly.
’ She sips her drink and looks around the bar.
Reese has not asked me to be a bridesmaid.
I understand why she hasn’t. Victoria is, obviously, her maid of honour along with her sister, Jordan.
And then she has three young cousins as bridesmaids.
There was no room for me in the little clique of very important people in Reese’s life but I keep reminding myself that I should be grateful just to be invited, just to be back in Reese’s life after the way things ended when I moved out of her apartment.
I have been saving like mad so that I can buy her a wedding present that I won’t feel embarrassed by, even though she told me that all she wanted was for me to be there.
Such a lovely generous thing to say and so fucking condescending that I had to literally bite my tongue so I didn’t say anything ugly.
All my saving attempts have resulted in not very much money at all because life is very, very expensive.
I’m still trying to get into a master’s degree, while Reese and Victoria have full-time jobs and lives.
They make me feel like a child when I’m around them, like someone who still doesn’t live in the real world.
And yet for some bizarre reason, I keep trying to get back to the way things were.
Whenever I see Reese, Victoria is always there and I can almost see her guarding her friend against anything I might say or do, so this is actually the first time I have been alone with Reese since we started talking again nearly a year ago.
I don’t think Reese is nearly as weak as Victoria seems to think she is.
‘That’s great,’ I say, filling my voice with enthusiasm for all the fabulous things going on in her life.
I sit back in my chair, prepared for a long discussion on seating charts and flower arrangements.
But when Reese looks back at me, she blinks quickly and I can see that she’s blinking away tears. So, not so good after all.
‘Hey,’ I say, leaning over the table to touch her arm. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘Oh it’s…’ She takes another large sip of her drink. ‘Nothing… nothing, just, you know… wedding stress.’
‘Really?’ I ask because I can tell that’s bullshit. Reese has been planning her wedding in her head since she was about twelve years old, according to her. She has loved every minute of it.
‘I’m just being silly,’ she says with a shrug of her shoulders.
‘Well… what are you being silly about?’
‘Just…’ Reese sighs and buys some time by taking another sip of her drink. I wait, knowing that she wants to talk and liking that Victoria is not here to stop her talking to me.