The Friend Page 6

  ‘Tell me you’re at least still on the Pill,’ Yvonne said.

  I glanced down. How could I tell her that we were back where we’d been twenty-two months ago, with him having convinced me to stop taking the Pill while we talked about having another?

  Yvonne’s face softened, she softened. Slowly she reached out and covered my hand with hers. Her touch was steadying, calming. She’d not touched me like that before and I realised how I missed touches like this. I had no friends to touch me, soothe me; Walter only touched me as a precursor to sex. ‘Hazel …’ She stopped speaking, shook her head. Her eyes misted up. ‘Does he force you, you know, to do it?’

  ‘Of course not,’ I replied. Because it wasn’t how she made it sound.

  ‘OK … is your “yes” actually an “all right” so you don’t have to accept it’s the R-word when he does it anyway?’

  That was more like it. But I couldn’t admit that to her. Or to anyone. ‘I love him,’ I said instead. ‘We’ve been together since uni and he’s all I know. And I love him.’

  Yvonne curled her hand around mine and nodded understandingly. ‘You mustn’t have another baby with him if it’s not what you want.’

  ‘It’s fine, we’re still using condoms.’

  Yvonne pointedly looked over at Calvin, even though I’d never said anything to her about how he came to be here. ‘OK, look, I’m going to help you,’ she stated.

  ‘How?’

  She smiled at me in the same way she’d smiled at me the first time I met her. ‘Oh, Hazel, in many, many ways.’

  6:10 p.m. I can’t eat. I haven’t eaten properly in weeks. Even before that night with Yvonne. I was so wound up, stressed, anxious. I was on a knife-edge, I knew that. That’s why I should have walked away that night. I should have walked away.

  Forcefully, I rip my mind away from thinking about that. I look at the faces of my children, laughing and relaxed. I’m here to see that. I need to focus on that. I need to focus on that as much as I possibly can. Because you never know when it’s all going to be taken away.

  Maxie

  11:25 p.m. I wanted to tell Ed about to seeing Trevor, today. About how he looked at me, how he looked at Hazel, about how Anaya said he’d looked at her. I wanted him to understand, to sympathise.

  I’m in bed waiting for him now. When he came in earlier, he had dinner with me and Frankie, we all chatted and laughed and ate together. We watched the end of Frankie’s DVD on this very bed and when Frankie eventually went to sleep, Ed smiled at me, that friendly, affable smile you shoot to vague acquaintances, carried Frankie to bed, then went downstairs.

  Not tonight, I thought. Tonight I need to talk. We need to be open, honest and united with this. So I followed him downstairs to find he’d opened his one bottle of beer and was flicking through the channels. There were many channels to go through, and methodical, logical man that he has been for as long as I have known him, he was clicking on them all one by one. That sort of thing drove me insane because it was such a waste of time, but I couldn’t bring that up with him. There’s lots of stuff I can and do bring up with him, but for some reason, things like that, which mention something that drives me to distraction, are off-limits.

  ‘Hi,’ I said and flopped down onto the sofa next to him.

  He grinned at me again, genuine affection in his eyes, and then patted the hand that was nearest him, like an owner quieting his pet. That was it. The sheer soul-mangling humiliation of being petted by the man you’ve been married to for seven years was too much for me. I choked back a sob, and I knew he heard it because he stiffened in the seconds after it left my mouth, braced himself for what I might say, but he didn’t even move in my direction.

  Here I am, instead, waiting for him to come up here. So I can try again. So I can find my voice and tell him what happened today. He’s waiting, I know, for me to go to sleep so he can avoid me. So we can avoid all those unspoken conversations that are piled up between us like invisible bricks.

  March, 2005

  ‘Knock, knock,’ a voice said softly as someone opened the door to the nursery.

  I sat in the rocking chair with the brakes applied, reading by a tiny nightlight. My eyes were heavy and tired; the temperature of the room was perfect for a sleeping baby, and perfect for me to want to curl up and nap, too. I couldn’t, of course, not when I was working. I’d got this job as an au pair because it was the perfect way to make money, have somewhere to live and have time to study. The family I was working for treated me as though I was a servant, and expected me to do much more than was in the contract, but it was fine. The older child was fun, and the baby was calm as well as cute. Tonight was a dinner party at their grand London house and I had decided to settle myself in the baby’s room so if she woke I would be right there to resettle her, and not disturb the people downstairs.

  I lay down my book and stood up, ready to redirect the person who’d entered to the toilet or downstairs.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ the woman whispered. ‘I couldn’t resist coming to look at the baby. You don’t mind, do you?’

  I gawped at her. My eyes were properly out on stalks as I stared at her masses of corkscrew curls and perfectly made-up eyes, and small, pink rosebud lips. My gaze then skittered over to the cover of the book I’d just put down. It was her. Bronwyn Sloane. The woman whose book I was reading. She was standing in the doorway, letting all the heat out, and the light in. The baby was sensitive to even the smallest of changes in her environment – she liked a continuous equilibrium to sleep so was likely to wake up any second.

  Not completely believing what I was doing, I indicated for her to come in, to shut the light out, to let the warmth take over again. She grinned at me. Bronwyn Sloane smiled at me as she came in. ‘Love babies,’ she whispered. She theatrically crept across the room to stand beside the cot. She smiled down at Marilyn, who was flat on her back, her arms thrown up on either side of her head.

  ‘Oh, but she’s beautiful,’ Bronwyn said. ‘And, obviously, that is not the only way she’ll be judged in later life as I’m sure she’ll be clever, ambitious and talented, too.’ She was gently laughing at herself because the books she wrote often focused on how people usually judged her on how she looked. I couldn’t help myself staring. This woman was brilliant. Funny, insightful, cutting, and she let any unfair criticism wash over her in a dignified manner. And she was talking to me like I was someone she knew.

  ‘Is she a good baby?’ she asked and looked at me. I jumped a little, because I’d been staring so intently at her.

  ‘Yes,’ I whispered back.

  ‘Awww,’ she cooed in reply. ‘I’m Bronwyn,’ she said to me.

  ‘Erm, erm, Maxie,’ I replied, having forgotten for a sec who I was. ‘I’m Maxie.’

  ‘Pleased to meet you, Maxie.’ Her eyes scanned the room, as though she’d never seen a nursery before, and then they alighted on her book on the floor by my seat. ‘Oh, I see you’re a reader.’ She looked amused. ‘What do you think? Too pretentious? Full of obvious crap that anyone could have thought of? A load of old narcissistic nonsense?’ Clearly she had read the same reviews I had.

  ‘No, not at all,’ I gushed. ‘I think it’s brilliant. Your best yet, actually.’

  ‘Is the correct answer.’ She bobbed down, her bag falling off her shoulder, and picked up the book. When she stood up again, she hooked the bag back into place. She looked at where I had splayed the book open. ‘I know really I shouldn’t ask, but what’s your favourite bit so far?’

  ‘Erm … Probably the bit where all those people kept touching your hair. And you told them to stop and that your hair isn’t a toy and if people kept touching you, you’d do them for assault since assault is actually touching someone against their will. I love it because the amount of times, being mixed race, people have put their hands on my hair as though it’s their right to touch me because they’re curious …’

  ‘Urgh! Don’t get me started on the people who think you should be somehow grat
eful that they’re interested in you,’ she whispered back. ‘I like you, Maxie.’ She grinned, seemed to look me over again and then looked at the baby. ‘I could talk to you all night, but I should be getting back to the dinner party.’

  I nodded, smiled. I’d be texting all my friends the second she left and letting them know I’d bonded with a genuine celebrity over the hair thing even though she was white.

  From her bag, Bronwyn Sloane got out her flashy mobile phone. ‘What’s your number?’ she asked.

  ‘My number?’ I replied.

  ‘I’d like your number. I’d like to see you again. Not like that – I know how that sounded and I know what people say about me despite all the stuff I write about my sex life with men, and my husband, but I didn’t mean it like that. I think you’re interesting. I’d like to go for a coffee sometime.’

  ‘Me?’ I pointed to myself.

  She giggled. ‘Yes. You. I know if I give you my number you won’t call me because you’ll think I wasn’t serious. So I’d like your number, and I’ll call you and we can meet up. If you’d be interested, at all?’

  Of course I’d be interested. I slowly read out my number and watched her type it into her phone. I was going to wake up in a minute. I’d obviously dozed off while reading Bronwyn Sloane’s book and had imagined the whole thing. She grinned at me one last time, then waved at me, blew a kiss to the baby and then off she went, creeping over the soft-pile carpet, slowly shutting the door behind her.

  I sat back in the chair, closed my eyes and then waited for myself to wake up. A few minutes later there was another knock on the door before it was pushed open. This time it was a man. He had unruly brown hair and was dressed in a tight-fitting royal-blue suit with a pencil tie. He crept in, shut the door behind him. ‘Hi,’ he whispered as he crept over to the cot.

  ‘Hi,’ I replied.

  ‘Bronwyn sent me up. She said I had to come and meet her new friend Maxie and to see the most gorgeous baby. Not in that order, I don’t think.’

  He was talking to me but staring at the baby. He turned to me, did the smallest of double-takes and then stuck out his hand. ‘You must be Maxie,’ he said, holding out his hand.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Hello, Maxie, I’m Bronwyn’s other half, Ed.’

  11:55 p.m. Moonlight is dancing into our bedroom from the open curtains, but it’s not quite the full moon. I remember Frankie once asking me if there was only a proper full moon once a year because that was the time it took for the Earth to go around the sun and we could only see the moon at certain points. I’d stared at him for a second, not understanding the question because I wasn’t sure four-year-olds were meant to know that much about astronomy. And then I’d been taken aback because what he said reminded me of what my relationship with his father was like – I only got to see the proper full him about once a year, when he seemed to relax and remember how to be with me.

  I feel Ed’s presence in the room before I see him. He’s walked quietly – probably crept – upstairs so as not to wake me and when I haven’t moved, he’s obviously felt it safe to walk into the room. I listen to the rustle of him unbuttoning his shirt, the soft thud of it hitting the laundry basket, then him undoing his belt, holding on to it to stop it jangling, the quiet tug of undoing his trouser buttons. I roll over then, look at him.

  He stands at the foot of the bed, and pauses in pulling down his trousers when he sees I’m awake. We stare at each other across the divide. I know what will happen next: he will do up his trousers, grab his shirt and leave. He’ll go and sit downstairs until the small hours, or he’ll sleep on the sofa. He rarely sleeps in the spare room because he doesn’t want Frankie to know, doesn’t want me to know, either, I suppose, that he doesn’t want to be around me for too long.

  Slowly I move back the covers, show him that I’m naked, that there is a space on my side of the bed that he can slip into. In the dancing moonlight, which I know he likes, I watch his chest lift and then fall as he inhales deeply and then exhales just as deeply. He’s torn. Usually he’s able to walk away, but it’s been a while. More than a few weeks have passed since we’ve … And I know he wants to. Wants me, probably. Only probably, because I can never be certain it’s me and not simply sex that he wants. He inhales and exhales again, then finishes taking his clothes off. His desire, his want, has overridden his need to not be around me.

  He takes my nipple in his mouth first of all and my body responds by pushing itself towards him, begging for more. He moves to the other breast and his fingers slip between my legs. We revel in the closeness, the familiarity, the openness of foreplay with each other. He becomes more forceful, his fingers moving fast and hard, his lips covering my body in hot, passionate kisses. Suddenly he pulls his fingers away, holds himself over me, staring down at me, asking if I’m ready for him to enter me. I stare back, begging him to bring us together. He registers my need, my desperation for him, and sits back to open the bedside table and pull out a condom. Always. Always.

  I try not to mind, to tell myself it’s for the best that he always uses one, but I always have to sneak into the bathroom later, to bite into the soft, fleshy part of my forearm and stop myself crying at the fact that my husband always needs protection to have sex with me.

  Ed pushes inside me, keeping me engaged with eye contact. I want him to lower his head, to kiss me. If he has to wear a condom, fine, but for once I want him to kiss me, to act like we’re a real couple. But he doesn’t, he never has – he probably never will.

  We move together, we groan together and we orgasm together, and when he rolls off me, and we stare at the ceiling, our breathing slowing down together. Our bodies can do that: make love, be in harmony, find mutual pleasure together – it’s everything else about us that doesn’t completely work.

  Does it bother you that the only time our lips have met in a kiss is the minute after we were pronounced husband and wife and we needed our marriage to look real, at least in the photos? Do you wish it was different? After seven years of marriage, do you wish you could allow yourself to forget why you had to marry me, and just kiss me?

  He gets up and heads for the bathroom to sort himself out. I wish you’d kiss me. I wish, just for once, you’d kiss me.

  TUESDAY

  Anaya

  1:15 p.m. When I return from yoga, the deadlock is thrown and the alarm is silent as I push open the front door. Any other person, who knows their children are at school and their husband is at least sixty miles away, would be panicking right now. They’d be backing out carefully, they’d be reaching into their pockets for their mobiles and hoping their keyboard doesn’t give them away as they carefully dial 999. Me? I feel a gut-wrench, not of terror but of irritation. I have an intruder in my house, but my husband gave her the key and she feels entitled to come and go in my home as she pleases.

  September, 2004

  ‘You’re a mystery, Ans. Such a beautiful mystery.’

  I sat astride Sanjay, looking down at him, listening to the words he said to me every time we got together. If we went for a coffee, to a bar, to a restaurant, or if we spent the afternoon at his house making love, he’d say it. He ran his hands down over my bare shoulders, over my chest, onto my breasts, where they stayed.

  At first I’d liked the idea of being mysterious and beautiful – the heroine heroes go insane for in books and movies. The compliment had started to wear a little thin now, six months later. Now, it felt like part of the big act that was Sanjay Kohli. I’d begun to suspect that he spent all his time acting, holding himself back, hiding his true nature because he didn’t think the real him was good enough to be seen.

  ‘There is no mystery or depth to me,’ I said to him. I was tired of it now. He’d called me a year after we met because he’d been poached by another firm and I – miracles of miracles – had managed to hang on to my job. We’d started as a mutual crush so I’d expected a bit of reservation with each other, but after six months I thought we’d both have been able to relax.
But no, I couldn’t relax because he seemed to be constantly doing the emotional equivalent of sucking in his stomach whenever he was with me.

  He ran his fingers over my body and the tingles raced through me, igniting the fire deep inside, between my legs. I rocked against him in response, felt him go hard and waited for him to start again. ‘Oh, there is so much depth there,’ he said. ‘So much mysterious depth.’

  I rolled my eyes, climbed off him, and lay back on the bed. I tugged the white sheet up over my breasts, then stared at the ceiling. It was a very nice ceiling as ceilings went, I’d been seeing it for many months and I would have liked to keep on seeing it – since it was obviously more real than the man I was actually seeing. ‘I don’t think we should see each other any more,’ I said to him. I was testing it out for size, and, yup, it felt right. It was the right thing to do.

  ‘What?’ he said. He’d been confused when I had climbed off him; now he was shocked. ‘What do you mean?’

  He had a beautiful house in Brixton, the sort of place you walked past and knew you would never afford to live in. I’d expected someone with his reputation and wealth to go for a Thames-side apartment or a loft in east London, but no, he’d apparently grown up around Brixton and wanted to stay close to his roots. Obviously modern Brixton wasn’t the Brixton he’d grown up in; he often spoke about how the soul was being systematically ripped out of the place he loved. He adored its imperfections, its crazy shops under and around the arches, the characters who hung out by the Tube station, the mini dramas played out on the streets every day. He’d talk about Brixton, the things he got up to – the feuds, the loves, the schemes – growing up there with such warmth and passion that I knew he had it in him. I knew there was more to him than the man who was always emotionally holding in his stomach. But I never got it. Six months and I never got the real him unless he was talking about ‘his’ south London home.

  ‘I mean, I can’t be doing with this any more. You never relax with me. You act like I’m some precious, delicate goddess that you have to be careful how you touch and speak to and I can’t be doing with it any more.’