The Friend Read online

  ‘Nope, no such worries here,’ Maxie said. She was much more comfortable with her knitting needles now. She held them like a pro, and she could even do it with the fluorescent pink gloves, from which I’d watched her brutally cut off the fingers. ‘I love the very bones of my mother. She’s proper strict, a real no-nonsense Yorkshirewoman. If I turn out like her, no problem.’

  ‘I have turned into my mother,’ Hazel said. ‘It’s spooky. I mean, Mum’s husband, my dad, ran off with another woman, too. And although he kept going on about how the other woman was better and prettier and amazing at blow jobs – yes, he said that more than once in front of me – he still spent a lot of time trying to make Mum’s life hell, trying to screw her financially, and using us children to get back at her. I swear, I am my mother. And you know, I’m all right. So no, I don’t worry about it. And if I did, it’s too late, cos tah-dah!’ Hazel didn’t even have to think while she was knitting, she moved her needles together as if it was an automatic function to her, like breathing.

  ‘You’re so lucky,’ Yvonne said. ‘I live in fear of becoming my mother.’ She was another accomplished knitter. I was always a bit curious about how she managed to be so perfect at everything – she looked amazing, she could knit, she could sew, she could make cocktails, she knew how to get herself into perfect yoga asanas. ‘She’s nuts, by the way. And not in an endearing-middle-class-English-lady-who’s-a-bit-batty-but-harmless way; she’s pretty much a psycho. Everyone loves her and she loves everyone until she doesn’t, which is when she sets out to destroy that person. She drinks all the time, she’s always slagging my dad off for his multiple affairs, but has had just as many. I mean, she’s toxic. I spend my life trying to make sure I don’t turn into her. Thankfully, seeing as I have friends whereas she’s always had acquaintances, I think I’m safe. For now.’

  They all looked at me, wanting to know what my mother was like, but after Yvonne’s confession, I felt bad talking about my amma. ‘I’d love to turn into my mother,’ I confessed. ‘She’s one of the coolest, most amazing people I’ve ever met – present company included. No offence. She was always so laid-back when I was growing up but in a way where she tried to let you make your own decisions while guiding you to do the right thing. If you chose to do the wrong thing, she’d try to get you to change your mind, but ultimately, she knew she couldn’t stop you. It was so hard for her. I mean, when Arjun or Priya make mistakes, it takes all my strength not to lose the plot; imagine watching all four of your children do some pretty terrible things and letting them get it wrong but being there for them.’ I shook my head. ‘I don’t know how she didn’t go completely insane, to be honest.’

  ‘What terrible things did you do?’ Yvonne asked.

  Her question niggled me. The frequency with which she was doing things like that – jumping on a small portion of something someone said and then trying to find out more so she could play detective – was alarming. And annoying. And worrying. ‘Thankfully, Yvonne, ya’ll never know.’ I grinned at her to take the edge off my rebuke. ‘But I suppose the thing I love most about my mother is that she taught me to pray.’

  ‘She taught you to pray?’ Yvonne was pissed off that I hadn’t spilled my secrets, I could tell by the clipped off edges of her words. ‘Don’t you just like slap your hands together, at a push get on your knees, open your mouth and words come out?’

  Maxie and Hazel bristled at the same time. They also didn’t like this side of Yvonne that seemed to come out the second things didn’t go her way.

  ‘No need for the snarkiness, Yvonne,’ I replied. The others left it; I always challenged her because, well, being friends with someone requires you sometimes to tell them when they are out of line. ‘By praying, I mean the type of praying that uses your body, mind and soul. When you do it right, or even when you don’t do it right, it’s a way of using the whole of who you are in worship.’

  They all looked at me blankly.

  ‘For pity’s sake. Yoga. My mum taught me how to do yoga. Because, of course, you all knew that yoga started off as a system of worship, didn’t you?’

  More blank expressions. ‘Oh, please, you lot. Why do you think I get that woman who has an emphasis on meditation as well as the asanas to come out to teach us yoga?’

  ‘Because you’re so rich even King Midas feels poor next to you?’ Maxie said.

  ‘Cheeky mare,’ I said to Maxie as we all laughed. ‘No, it’s because when we do the yoga with her, she’s trying to get us to connect with our inner selves, to find our calm centre. She’s as close to using yoga to pray as I can find around these parts. But obviously I don’t know which religion you lot are so I wouldn’t push that on you, but yoga is all about connecting with your centre. If you use that time to meditate on your version of God, all the better.’

  ‘You’re actually quite a deep person, aren’t you?’ Hazel said. ‘I mean, I knew that, but wow, you really take it to another level.’

  ‘She certainly does,’ Yvonne mumbled. She lifted her white plastic flask cup to her lips and sipped as she said that.

  ‘Look, I have to confess,’ Maxie said suddenly. ‘When we’re meant to be meditating and all that, usually, I’m trying as hard as I can to not fall asleep. I mean, come on, lying there, all chilled out, no worries about suddenly hearing “MMUMMM!”, it’s like a non-stop train to Snoresville.’

  ‘Yeah, me too,’ Hazel said. ‘It’s the best time because I get to stop and not think, so obviously I want to fall asleep. And I can’t. So I start writing shopping lists and to-do lists and going through the kids’ timetables to stop myself falling asleep.’

  ‘Me three,’ Yvonne said.

  I stared at each and every one of them with my mouth wide open in shock. All that time, all that time, and they’d not—‘Ya’ll a pack of bitches,’ I said and laughed because it was hilarious. I’d thought I was enriching their souls and, really, I was giving them a chance to have a lie-down.

  They all started to laugh too.

  ‘You should have told me. We could do something else, you know.’

  ‘I don’t want to do something else,’ Hazel and Maxie said at the same time. They looked at each other and went, ‘Jinx!’ like they were their children.

  ‘I love doing the yoga,’ Maxie said. ‘I’m not kidding, I love it, and I like the meditation part, but I didn’t want you to think I was getting some big spiritual kick out of it when I wasn’t.’

  ‘And me,’ Hazel added. ‘But I do love it. It’s the only chance I get to lie down without the worry of someone coming to disturb me. And hey, I need that time. But you know, now you’ve told us all this stuff, I’m going to tune into it better.’

  ‘Exactly,’ Maxie said, using her free knitting needle to point at Hazel. ‘And hey, it might get me to relax some more if I try to tune in. And if it’ll help me relax properly, I’m there. I am so there next time.’

  We all looked at Yvonne. She took her time moving the cup away from her mouth and then slowly licking her pink lips. ‘I don’t love it love it, but, you know, it’s fun. And if the others want to still do it, then I’ll keep doing it too.’ She smiled at us, a bright, happy grin.

  I couldn’t challenge her on that because she hadn’t technically said anything to take issue with, but we all knew she was being a bitch. And we all knew that Yvonne could do that really quickly when she was pissed off about something. The rest of us were just a bit short; Yvonne seemed to go in for the hurt if she perceived you had in any way slighted her.

  ‘Why do you look so sad when you’re talking about your mum?’ Maxie asked me, to cover over Yvonne’s bitch moment – or ‘B-mo’ as I called her flashes of bitchiness. ‘Is she still alive?’

  ‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘I guess it makes me sad that I let her down and I guess I don’t see her as much as I’d like because I always get this sense of quiet disappointment from her. She’s never said anything or been anything but supportive, but I suppose because I feel it for myself, I kind of expect her t
o feel it too, which makes me retreat from her.’

  ‘But would you feel the same way if Priya or Arjun did what you did?’ Yvonne asked. I looked at her, shocked that she had asked something insightful when she’d been having a ‘B-mo’ seconds ago.

  ‘No,’ I replied. ‘I suppose I wouldn’t.’

  ‘Then aren’t you doing her a huge disservice by keeping yourself from her for something you imagine she feels? I mean, you talk about her being really cool, so why are you punishing her?’

  ‘I never really thought about it like that,’ I confessed. I was punishing my amma for what I did.

  ‘Well, maybe you should,’ she said gently. ‘I’d really hate to think of how your mum feels.’ This was the real Yvonne. I was never sure why the other one came out sometimes, but I liked someone who thought about other people, who gave them something to think about. That was why we didn’t just cut her off or cut her out when she had her ‘B-mos’.

  ‘You know, you’re right, Yvonne. Thank you.’

  ‘No problem,’ she replied with a genuine smile. ‘No problem at all.’

  11:10 p.m.

  Not too bad. The two new boys in Year 3 walked past and played with Frankie. Was fun, actually. She’s called Cece, the mother. Frankie loves her twins. Sleep tight. M xxx

  It feels odd, deleting this message. It’s so innocuous. But that’s what we agreed. So I text her back a line of xxxxs and then hit delete.

  MONDAY

  Hazel

  9:30 p.m.

  Hazel, I’m really confused. Why are you ignoring me? Ignoring the girls? You and Yvonne have been friends for years and it’s been four weeks but you haven’t even been to see her. What’s going on? Why haven’t I heard a thing from you? Did something bad happen between you and Yvonne that night? Tell me what’s going on, please? Trevor

  I don’t need to read his message more than once to have it seared into my brain. I delete it like I’ve been deleting Anaya’s and Maxie’s messages. I start to hyperventilate like I do whenever I think about that night with Yvonne.

  TUESDAY

  Cece

  9.15 a.m. And breathe, and relax and breathe and move.

  The yoga teacher’s voice glides smoothly through my mind. I don’t think I’ve ever had a yoga lesson where I’ve actually relaxed and breathed and moved and relaxed and moved. Those yoga lessons I have been to in the past, there’s always been a bit of me that is frantically trying to organise things, trying to find the best way to make the jigsaw puzzle that is family life – every piece needing to be in its right place or the whole thing doesn’t function – work that bit smoother. Today, I have no such thoughts. I stand, lie, balance and allow myself to simply ‘be’ in a room with six other women.

  I finally get it, too. What all the fuss is about. I finally understand the urge to yoge, what it can do for you if you do it properly. If you dare to concentrate. Or if, like me, you have the chance to tune out everything else and tune into what your body is being asked to do and finding a way to do it.

  10:15 a.m. I am standing patiently, because that’s what I do now I am not in any great rush, in a queue at Milk ’n’ Cookees, waiting for a hot drink. I was going to go for a coffee, as usual, but I won’t undo all that good, breathe-and-relax work by sprinkling molecules of caffeine into my bloodstream. I will take my herbal tea, and walk along the seafront, continue the theme of connecting with myself and allowing myself to just ‘be’. Yes, yes, there are a thousand other things I could just ‘be’ doing at home, but they don’t seem important right now.

  Out in the fresh air, I take a sip of my lemon and ginger tea and I don’t gag. Well, I do, but I tell myself I don’t. I am at one with myself and with nature. I will drink this tea and I will enjoy it. All right, I will drink it. Coming towards me from the direction of the yoga class I recently left is a woman who was in the class with me. She could have been teaching it though, the way her muscles seemed to bend without much effort. She has reams of thick, black hair that she has secured up in a neat bun, beautifully smooth skin and a perfectly shaped body. She is dressed in über-expensive gym gear. I noticed that when I kept sneaking looks at her, trying to work out where I’d seen her before. It could only have been from the school, I decided in the end. Or from our road. But then, the labels of her clothes, the very neat manicure, suggested she lived somewhere with a lot more commas in the price of the house than ours. I smile at her and she smiles back, the same ‘where do I know you from?’ expression in her eyes.

  ‘Plummer Prep,’ she says, suddenly. ‘I’ve seen you at Plummer Prep. Haven’t I?’

  ‘You have,’ I say. ‘My two boys have just started there.’

  ‘Oscar and Ore?’ she says as though she knows them. I know what that usually means: they’ve made an impression, and probably not a good one. Although they both know to incur the wrath of Mum and Dad, which you are risking if you misbehave at school, you must do something pretty spectacular to make it worthwhile.

  ‘Erm, yes.’

  ‘Oh, they’re lovely boys. I go in to read with the children once a week and I’ve read with both of them. Beautiful manners, the pair of them, and amazing reading.’

  ‘I’m very pleased – and relieved – to hear that.’

  ‘I’m Anaya,’ she says and holds out the hand not curled around her yoga mat.

  ‘Cece,’ I reply.

  ‘Cece? You’ve just appeared on our instant messaging group, haven’t you?’ she says. ‘All the pieces are coming together now. Maxie mentioned she’d run into you on the beach the other day.’

  ‘You know Maxie?’ I ask. Which means she must have known her – Yvonne Whidmore.

  ‘Yes, quite well. Her, me and another mother, Hazel, we used to go down to Maxie’s beach hut for our nights out, which sounds more debauched than it actually was, especially since I don’t drink.’

  ‘Some of my most debauched nights have happened without the excuse of drink,’ I say.

  Anaya grins at me. I like her. There is something open and relaxed about her. ‘Sorry, am I holding you up getting a coffee?’ I say to her. Her eyes widen in alarm, and then dart around, checking who might have heard.

  ‘Shhhh,’ she hushes. ‘Don’t be shouting that around. As far as the world knows, I go to the gym three times a week, I do yoga four times a week, I juice a farmyard full of vegetables every day, and I don’t drink alcohol, I don’t have a sneaky cigarette or five and I certainly don’t drink coffee. All right?’

  ‘All right,’ I say carefully.

  ‘Oh, lighten up,’ she says, bursting into a huge laugh. ‘People see me in my gym gear and they make up all these ridiculous stories about me. Yes, I do go to the gym a lot, but that’s because I like to exercise. That’s having spent most of my twenties doing anything but going to the gym. When I hit thirty a switch flicked in my head and I couldn’t get enough of the gym and exercising in general. I am a total gym bunny now and to most people that must mean I spend my life spreading all that Earth mother stuff.’

  ‘Right,’ I say.

  ‘I sound completely crazy to you, don’t I?’ she says with a wrinkle of her pretty nose.

  ‘Not completely crazy,’ I reply. ‘Only a little.’ I raise my hand, move my forefinger and thumb close together. ‘A tiny little.’

  Another huge grin. ‘I really like you,’ she says with a laugh. ‘And just for that, I’m going to do you the huge favour of making you ditch whatever it is you’ve got in your hand and buy you a real coffee.’

  ‘No, no, this tea is the best thing to drink right now. I’m sure that’s what the yoga teacher said.’

  ‘I won’t hear of it,’ she says and snatches the cup out of my hand. ‘I really won’t. Life is too short to drink tea if you want coffee.’ With that she suddenly becomes still, her whole being transported to somewhere else in her head, it seems. Yvonne Whidmore, probably. Maybe she said those words to her and now that her life hangs in the balance, Anaya is remembering and wishing she’d done more to make
sure Yvonne did enjoy those times that led up to that moment.

  ‘Who says I don’t want this tea?’ I interrupt. She looks like she is spiralling down into something dreadful, she is remembering something that will be her undoing. My words bring her out of the stupor and she refocuses on me.

  ‘Hmmm?’ she asks, confused.

  ‘Who said I don’t want that tea?’ I repeat.

  ‘You did,’ she responds with her upbeat voice back in place, her smile fixed on her mouth, her endearing wrinkling back on her nose. ‘I saw your face when you took a sip – it was not what you wanted at all.’

  ‘True, but I could learn to like it.’

  ‘I doubt it. I come from a land where we know how to make proper tea and this herbal “tea” that’s made with a bag crap should be banned.’

  ‘You could have a point,’ I say.

  She dumps my cup on one of the small black metal tables outside Milk ’n’ Cookees and then moves forward to push open the glass rectangle of the door. ‘Come on, have a real coffee on me. It’s my way of saying welcome to the neighbourhood.’

  FRIDAY

  Hazel

  8:55 p.m. I’m slamming things around my kitchen. It’s not subtle, and I know all of them sitting in the living room can hear me, but I don’t care. I DON’T CARE!

  I opened the door five minutes ago and there was Maxie. There was Anaya. And there was this woman I had seen all week at the gates but had never spoken to AT MY HOUSE! When Maxie had suggested that we try to get back to normal, that Ed was back for a stretch of time so she could come over for knitting, and then Anaya had said she was free, I’d thought, finally, finally we’re going to move forward. We’re going to put Yvonne behind us. I’d even bought a bunch of pre-mixed frozen margaritas and had downloaded some of that yoga music Anaya likes as a nod to the things we all did together. I knew Maxie would be horrified by the idea of pre-mixed cocktails and it’d be the wrong type of music, but they wouldn’t say anything because they’re my friends and they’d know I’d tried. But no, it wasn’t a getting-back-to-normal experience – they brought someone else with them. I open the cupboard with the tinned goods and slam it shut again.