Friends Like Us Page 2

  ‘Not for a long time,’ said Melissa. ‘Not for ages. Years. D’you think she still works there?’

  ‘I don’t know… we can ask.’ Steph was looking normal, again, almost relieved. She glanced over at her. ‘It’s good to see you, Mel.’

  ‘It’s good to see you too.’ It was, it really was. ‘So how is everyone? Rick? Rachel?’

  She waited for Steph to say that they were fine, everything was wonderful, Rick grand, work going well, and Rachel was brilliant, or what mothers usually say about their lovely children. But instead there was silence. Melissa looked over and saw tears rolling down Steph’s face.

  ‘Steph?’ she asked.

  ‘Don’t mind me. Must be shock. God, accidents always take it out of you.’ She wiped her eyes with the sleeve of her cashmere cardigan. ‘Stephanie!’ said Steph to herself. ‘Stop crying!’ She tried to laugh. ‘I think I just need a cup of tea. Six sugars. That kind of thing. They’re fine, though, Rick and Rachel, before you worry. Both hale and hearty.’

  Melissa was suddenly aware that something was wrong with Steph and after having to deal with her own mother all her life, she was highly sensitised to other people’s moods, their inner feelings. It’s partly what made her such a good journalist but also it made life difficult because you couldn’t shake others off, their emotions were always so tangible to Melissa.

  ‘By the way, you make it sound like you have lots of accidents,’ said Melissa, trying to make her laugh, bring some light into the car again and give her space to recover herself.

  They parked in the car park and began to walk to A&E.

  ‘I feel silly now,’ said Melissa. ‘I’m sure I’m all right. No brain damage.’ She was looking carefully at Steph, who still hadn’t really stopped crying, her eyes still filling up with tears. What was wrong with her? ‘Well, apart from the usual.’ But Steph didn’t seem to be listening, she was miles away.

  They went straight to reception and found two seats in the waiting area.

  ‘Steph,’ said Melissa. ‘I’m so sorry to have caused all this trouble. You know, the accident. And now I’m taking up all your time, having to sit here for hours…’

  ‘But Melissa,’ said Steph, still tearful, ‘I’ve nothing else to be doing… and I’ve thought about contacting you so many times over the last ten years… or however long it’s been… and then it gets too long and then you feel awkward and then you don’t think that the person would want to see you and then you literally bump into me. If I was a cosmic person, which as you know I’m not, but if I was, then I would say that you were meant to crash into me.’

  ‘Or maybe it was just an accident.’

  ‘Or maybe it was just an accident. A lucky accident.’

  They grinned at each other and Steph took a huge breath. ‘Right, I think I’m myself again. Let’s see if I can get a cup of tea for us out of the machine. Keep your expectations low.’ They sat together, comfortably, chatting away, drinking tea, and it could have been ten years ago, twenty years ago, that old easiness between them had returned. It had just been dormant, ready to spring into life again.

  Back home, later that evening, concussion dealt with by machine-tea, Melissa dialled Cormac, her go-to person, her fail-safe, never-let-you-down, best friend.

  ‘Busy?’ she said, trying not to sound plaintive. ‘Fancy some company?’

  ‘Who are you suggesting?’ He sounded suspicious. ‘Myself and Rolo are about to sit down to watch Supervet. So, it’d better be good.’ Rolo was his spaniel; bouncier than a squash ball and sweeter, believed Melissa, than an actual Rolo.

  ‘Me?’ she said.

  ‘Really?’ Cormac sounded exaggeratedly surprised. ‘I thought you and Basil were currently shagging on the top of the Eiffel Tower.’ He paused. ‘You’re not, are you?’

  Basil was his deliberately-wrong name for Alistair. He always did this with all of Melissa’s flings, pretended not to know their name.

  ‘Alistair.’ They had been through this routine many times since Melissa began seeing the afore-mentioned. ‘And no, we are not currently shagging up the Eiffel Tower.’ This time it was Melissa who paused. ‘It’s too cold.’

  ‘Amateurs,’ said Cormac. ‘Why do I keep forgetting his name? Maybe it’s because he is just so forgettable.’

  ‘Anyway, we’re not seeing each other anymore,’ she said airily.

  ‘Come round,’ he said, suddenly. ‘Kettle is going on now and I am tearing open the Mr Kiplings with my teeth.’ There was a rustling sound and the phone went dead.

  2

  Steph

  They had been in the same class since they were twelve… and as the rest of the girls formed twosomes, threesomes, and foursomes, they too found their own group. They complemented each other, they were all easy to be with and there were never the fallings-out, the promiscuity that infected the others in their year. They were all only children, as well, which gave them a different feeling, they needed each other; in a way, they were surrogate sisters.

  Steph was always quietly sure of herself. Life, she believed was going to be all right. Her own parents were normal, which is more than she would have said at the time for most of the girls at the Abbey. Nuala and Joe, her parents, never let her down, did anything embarrassing, were just perpetually loving and permanently kind. She knew, even then, how lucky she was.

  For Eilis, it had been different, not so easy. Her mother was ill while they were at school, for all of their teenage years, she was dying, Eilis her carer. Eilis was quiet, hard-working and never quite let on how difficult it was for her watching her mother fading away. Steph always believed that she and Melissa gave Eilis her few chances to be a normal teenager.

  And Melissa? Who knew what had been going on there, at Beach Court, but it was obvious that Melissa just wanted to get away from it as much as possible, hiding it all with her cleverness and her wit.

  Eilis hadn’t been on duty that evening they had turned up in A&E, but they scribbled a note, making the woman, Theresa, behind the desk, give it to her.

  ‘Tell her it’s us,’ said Melissa, who was acting almost giddy after the accident. ‘I think sense has either been knocked in or out of me.’

  It was another doctor who checked Melissa out, performing all the tests: the biro-following trick, the walking in a straight line, touching her nose with her finger. Steph and Melissa were nearly in hysterics by the end and Steph had (almost) been sorry when Melissa was pronounced perfectly well and they would go their separate ways again.

  But the Beetle hadn’t fared quite so well. Steph called the garage and was told it would have to stay in for a whole week. Steph said her insurance would cover it.

  ‘Isn’t that illegal?’ asked Melissa. ‘Lying about whose fault the accident was.’

  ‘But perhaps it was me,’ insisted Steph. ‘I was on my phone, I wasn’t concentrating, you know, stopping and starting in the traffic. Let me, please Melissa?’ she said. ‘Rick’s just had some obscene bonus. Divorce. It’s very lucrative.’

  ‘Lawyers…’ Melissa shook her head.

  ‘I know… I know…’ said Steph. ‘It’s not like they are saving lives…’

  ‘Just tidying them up,’ said Melissa.

  ‘Life’s great de-clutterers, lawyers.’ Steph shrugged. ‘So, as a result, I can pay. And I would like to, please?’

  She always felt a bit guilty about Rick’s money, his obscene pay-check which she felt she didn’t deserve. She wanted to earn her own money, not spend his. They weren’t a team, he wasn’t earning on behalf of them, and if she felt she could pay for Melissa, it made her feel a bit better about it all, at least the money was helping someone else. It also explained the large cheques Steph wrote to various homeless charities and women’s refuges.

  She was thinking about Melissa, the following day, when she was tidying up, putting things back in their rightful places, cushions, remotes, glasses, mugs, books. The detritus of a home. But it wasn’t really a home, was it? Not for her. Hopefully
, it was for Rachel, but not for Steph. A home is somewhere you feel safe, but Steph was living with a bully, a man who was quick to anger and who wasn’t afraid to push her around. Literally.

  When she was pregnant with Rachel, he grabbed her arm behind her back. She’d been reading a pregnancy book at the time and was engrossed in thoughts of maternal love and wondering how to get babies to sleep and hadn’t heard what he had said. So, when she felt him twist her arm, she was too surprised and shocked to react and it was over so quickly that the next morning, she wondered if it had actually happened. Although, he brought her breakfast in bed… which was quite unlike him.

  ‘Bit drunk last night,’ he said, standing there, in the doorway, tray in both hands. She wondered if he was trying to apologize.

  If only she had done something about it then, gone to her parents, refused to live with someone like that. So she had often thought over the years, in a way, she was to blame. There was nothing stopping her from leaving, really, was there? But she had chosen not to, and now this was the bed she had made for herself, her own doing and therefore she couldn’t complain.

  And this is how she lived her life: walking on broken glass.

  Even with Rachel, she couldn’t say the right thing any longer. Everything caused Rachel, who was now sixteen-going-on-stroppy, to bite her head off. And there was nothing left that she was good at, nothing. Once she might have thought she was a good mother, but that talent had fallen by the wayside. And she used to be a good friend, was she able to at least be that?

  But having seen Melissa again, she felt a lift in her heart. Normally, she felt so leaden, so weighed down, as though there was an actual physical pressure on her shoulders, but today she walked a little taller, a little brighter, feeling, weirdly, a little less alone. Steph felt good; she could almost remember the person she once was, the person she was before she met Rick, before she got married. Almost.

  Her parents made marriage look so easy, they were a real team. Nuala was the ideas-person, the one holding the reins, and Joe was happy to be along for the ride, one which had now lasted forty-three years.

  Whatever Nuala pursued, Joe would be there, her cheerful companion in life, and now on all the retiree trips they seemed to go on – to gardens across the country with the ‘Grey Green-fingers’, to France for the ‘Francophiles over Fifty’ group and to the mountains, on the first Sunday of every month, with the Wicklow Wanderers.

  Behind every great woman was a man like Joe. It was he who made sure that the book for Nuala’s reading group was put aside for her in the library. It was he who took the Dart into town to buy the Prussian Blue from the art shop now she had taken up oil painting. And, even now, he made her a cup of tea, put two shortbreads on a saucer and a flower plucked freshly from the garden into a vase and carried them to her at seven a.m. (He’d only ever missed one day that Steph could remember – when Nuala had gone into hospital to have her gall bladder removed. That day, instead, he had made a flask and transported the entire ritual.)

  Steph never failed to marvel at how two people could be so right for each other, and silently and lovingly cursed them for making it look so easy, especially when it was so hard for Steph and Rick.

  Rick loved Rachel, of course he did, but it was obvious he no longer loved Steph. If he ever did. And she hadn’t loved him for years, there was something mean about him, a darkness and a rage, which made life a daily trial.

  He had always done exactly what he wanted. He worked, he drank, he socialised, he womanised. And she had long suspected that something was going on with Miriam, her next-door neighbour and (former) friend. Miriam was always friendly, always flirtatious, but then, imperceptibly, something changed. There were the little things, like quick glances between Miriam and Rick, or sometimes it was the fact that they didn’t look at each other at all. And suddenly it was all rather perceptible.

  She had no proof, nothing. Except she knew it. If she accused him, he would only call her mad and she would look such a fool. But she knew it, she did! Being the weak person she thought she was though, Steph continued socializing with Miriam and her husband, Hugh, smiling when required, and running the house and looking after Rachel. Inside, she was wallowing in failure instead of going mad and all-Edward Scissorhandsy on his suits. And while Rick sprang up the career ladder, Steph felt she had nothing to show for her life. She used to be ambitious, the girl most likely, until life upended everything and she had achieved absolutely nothing.

  And why, oh why, did she have to lose it in front of Melissa yesterday? She normally kept all her feelings buttoned up, but it was just seeing Melissa again, just being around her and remembering the girls they used to be, and the tears just came and wouldn’t stop. And Melissa was her usual brilliant self, allowing her to cry and being utterly normal and unfreaked out about it.

  And what about Eilis? Would she get the note, would she call? Steph had left both their mobile numbers, asking if Eilis would meet them next week. There was something Steph was hoping to rope Melissa and Eilis into and it was something that might bond them together again.

  One of the old nuns at school had called her name when she was dropping Rachel off at school earlier. Sister Attracta, unbelievably still alive and now some kind of honorary nun, wafted around the Abbey looking increasingly wizened but rejuvenated by her the task of organizing each year’s reunion. ‘Stephanie Sheridan,’ she’d called, using Steph’s maiden name (another thing, apart from her independence, that she shouldn’t have relinquished). ‘I wonder, my dear, if you would like to help with this year’s reunion. It is your twentieth.’

  Normally, Steph would have run a mile from such an event, but Sister Attracta had ways of making you agree. The big night wasn’t until December and was to be held in the Shelbourne Hotel, which was a far cry from their leaving do which was held in the school hall, draughty and miserable, with the nuns beadily managing the consumption of orange squash. Steph remembered having a bottle of vodka confiscated and so the orange squash had remained unadulterated.

  Would Steph be able to look after all the invitations? asked Sister Attracta in a tone that would not countenance a negative response. All she had to do was track down each of the one hundred or so girls in their year and invite them to revisit their school days and their past.

  Steph immediately thought of Melissa and Eilis. She would if they would. She was going to ask them when they met next week, and this, she had begun to think, begun to hope, was a way of them being the way they were, the three of them against the world, a gang. She hoped they would say yes, she didn’t know what she would do if they didn’t want things to be the same. She hadn’t realized how much she had missed them, and she hadn’t realized how much she needed them.

  Tidying some newspapers, she found Rick’s mobile, left over from last night. She was amazed he would leave this hanging around. He normally had the thing permanently in his hand or pocket. Quickly, she dropped it on to the rug and, aided by a sharp kick, its new home was among the dark and the dust. Steph had been engaging in this subtle form of domestic terrorism for quite some time now. It was strangely satisfying.

  And then, she spotted Rick’s keys on the hall table. Would hiding them be too much? Probably. Don’t push it, Steph, she thought. Keys could be tucked behind a cushion or slipped into a drawer another day. The phone was enough for now and she didn’t want Rick suspecting he was living with a domestic terrorist, he might get angry and that really defeated the feeling of satisfaction.

  She looked at herself in the mirror. This is me, she thought. I’m thirty-eight and what do I have to show for nearly four decades on this planet? What exactly have I done? Except turn into a wreaker of domestic acts of terror. The temptation to cackle maniacally was overwhelming. The secret, she realized, was staying on the right side of madness. But she was like a beginner, wobbling on the tightrope.

  She heard a beep from his phone from beneath the sofa. She paused, in mid-air, and suddenly she knew she had to see what that text w
as. Normally, she would never check his messages but she was feeling slightly reckless, the old Steph wouldn’t have been afraid of anything and after seeing Melissa again, she could feel something of her younger and more daring self stir.

  She fished it out and looked at the screen. Immediately, she wished her younger self had stayed where she was.

  Missing you.

  And the name of the sender? Angeline. His junior from work.

  She scrolled back from the text and read as many as she could, her heart beating wildly, trying to take it all in.

  They went back months and months as far as she could tell. Texts from Angeline saying she missed him, texts from Rick saying he wanted her. Arrangements to meet, times and venues, hotel rooms, bars and restaurants, passion, sex, desire. It was all there, an affair in text form.

  If she was a braver woman, she thought, she would smash Rick’s collection of horrible crystal whiskey glasses or flush his phone down the toilet. But she wasn’t brave, not anymore, she was scared of what he would do. Even if she held the moral high ground she never, never, had the upper hand. He was always in charge and in control.

  And Steph had met Angeline… how old could she be? Not thirty, anyway. Could she be mid-twenties? Twenty-five? What an utter bastard Rick was.

  Managing to keep her anger on simmer, she dropped the phone back under the sofa. And, suddenly, she thought of something else, something else she needed to know. On the sideboard, in the hall, were letters from the credit card company. Normally, she left them to Rick, but this time she opened the envelope and scanned the rows and rows of transactions.

  She spotted her own transactions: Rachel’s new school coat, Steph’s facial, paying for Melissa’s car. And then something caught her eye.

  Netaporter – €365.

  She had often looked at the website, imagining outfits she might wear if she had dates to go on or weekends away. But her life never demanded a cocktail dress, and she had no idea that Rick had heard of the website. He certainly didn’t buy her anything expensive and glamorous. Rick had never bought her anything like that. It was dated last month. And then more, a few days later, all in London. Selfridges. And the Wolseley, a Claridges bar bill and a room in The Connaught. They came to thousands and thousands of pounds. And she remembered that one of the texts specifically mentioned the bar in Claridges.