Bad Friends (33 page)

‘I understand that, Fay,’ I said quietly. ‘I do, really.’

‘But I do think Troy really fell for you, Maggie.’ She was trying to be generous. ‘The only other time I spoke to him he told me he’d met someone really special, and I believed him. I was kind of relieved, but it still hurt.’ She looked at me now. ‘I just didn’t realise it was you.’

And this was where my mind hit a wall. The sheer intimacy I’d shared with Seb, the sex, the eventual protestation of love.
The fact that all those terrible things he’d done, he’d done after we’d been to bed together. He’d crept downstairs and painted abuse on the wall, he’d crept out and slashed his own tyres. He’d texted me even when we were at dinner together; he’d smashed up my flat and then casually joined me at Heathrow for a weekend in Cornwall. And he must have planted the phone in the box of stuff I’d returned to Alex, trying to frame him.

His malice had wrapped its insidious tendrils around almost every bit of my life, crept into everything and pulled at it until my very stability was shaken to its foundations. And the worst thing was, I couldn’t help but feel it was all my own stupid fault.

I’d known better than to get involved again when I was so down, so precariously near rock-bottom. I’d ignored my instincts, just refilled my glass time and time again and grasped onto Seb in a drunken haze as a welcome distraction. And I – and this is what I struggled with most – I’d found him very attractive and utterly convincing.

‘How could he have loved me?’ I mumbled. ‘He hated me so much.’

Fay looked out at the darkening sky. A flurry of raindrops hit the window in a sudden squall. ‘You know, right at the end I managed to get him to counselling. The therapist warned me he might be suffering from some kind of disorder – that he had a mother fixation – and she thought he needed proper help. But he refused to go back. I wish now – I should have insisted.’

‘It was his responsibility, Fay,’ I said quietly. ‘Not yours.’

We sat in silence for a while, both of us caught up in our own thoughts of this man who’d gone so mad. Eventually there was a gentle knock and a pink-cheeked Jenny popped her damp head round the door.

‘We’re back,’ she said cheerfully. ‘I could eat a horse! All those hills. Need anything, girls?’

‘I’d better go, actually,’ Fay said, standing. ‘I’ve got to get back to London tonight.’

For a moment we gazed at each other. I stuck my hand out to shake hers, and then she bent to kiss my cheek, and on impulse I threw my arms around her neck.

‘Thanks so much, Fay,’ I muttered into the side of her head, my mouth muffled by her curls – and I meant it with sincerity. ‘I owe you – well, I just owe you, don’t I?’

‘Don’t be silly. You’d have done the same.’

Would I?

Fay stepped out of my embrace with a beatific smile, and buttoned her coat. ‘That’s what friends are for. Keep in touch, okay?’

I think we both knew I wouldn’t. She moved toward the door.

‘Fay –’ My voice sounded like it was stretched over cheese-wire, but I had to know.

She turned, her hand poised to open the door.

‘So in the end,’ I said as diffidently as I could manage, ‘there’s a strange symmetry to it all, isn’t there?’

‘What do you mean?’ Her brow wrinkled delicately under her dark fringe.

‘Well, me and mad Seb. You and – you and Alex.’

Fay stared at me. ‘What do you mean, me and Alex? You’ve got it all wrong, Maggie. Honestly, you really are quite silly. It’s you he wants, not me.’

‘Narcissistic Personality Disorder,’ Sally said neatly, popping another of my grapes into her generous mouth, before offering me the bunch rather belatedly.

I shook my head. ‘Sorry, what?’

‘We did a show on it, don’t you remember?
Narcissists – men
who love themselves too much
. That very good-looking surfer type was on it. We paid him five hundred pounds to appear – I remember because Charlie went mad. He had anger management issues too, I seem to recall.’ She ate another grape. ‘The surfer, not Charlie.’

‘He wasn’t a surfer, though, was he?’ I said mournfully. ‘He was a window-cleaner from Dagenham. Called Keith.’

‘No, that’s true. But he looked like a surfer. And he had delusions of grandeur too.’

I thought of Seb’s driver, the Armani, the restaurant and the expensive hotel. I’d never questioned any of it; it went hand in hand with what I believed he was. But I realised now I’d never even seen where he lived. I thought I had recognised him from a TV drama; it was only now I realised it was from the hospital, after the crash. He’d come to see Fay – the young bloke in the beanie, dropping his phone at my feet.

I thought miserably of all the shows I’d produced brimful of cod-psychology and people who weren’t entirely what they seemed. Of how someone like Seb, already hovering on the edge,
might easily have been pushed over by a power-hungry presenter like Renee Owens.

‘Seb needed help,’ I said quietly. ‘Not to get involved with a pisshead on the rebound. He had a terrible relationship with his mother, apparently. I think she – there was some kind of abuse, Fay said. It all stemmed from there, I guess.’ I contemplated the shrivelled grape-stalks Sally had left. I thought about that final phone call, telling him not to come down to Pendarlin. ‘Perhaps – perhaps if I hadn’t rejected him, it would have been okay.’ Then I thought about the texts, the flowers, the smashed-up flat, the way he’d tried to convince me that I was mad. I looked at Sally. ‘It wouldn’t, though, would it?’

‘No, Maggie.’ She shook her head sorrowfully and chucked the remains of the grapes in the bin. ‘I don’t think it would.’

The day I had my stitches removed, I returned to Pendarlin with my father. He hurried inside the cottage to fetch some things I needed, and I averted my gaze from the scarred tree Seb’s car had hit. Then I gritted my teeth and walked to the end of the orchard to see Digby’s grave. Alex had planted a small pink azalea on the mound, which amazed me. He’d scratched out an epitaph on an old piece of slate and stuck it in the ground behind the just-flowering shrub.

Dearest Digby, 2001–2007
Died in heroic action saving his beloved mistress.
Much missed by all those who loved him,
especially Maggie and Alex.
May you burrow down many holes in heaven
.

Hot tears sprang sharply to my eyes. I stood and gazed until my father appeared behind me and put an arm round my shoulders. ‘Come on, old thing. Let’s get you home,’ he said, and for once I was happy to leave. Deep down I think I knew it would
be all right one day, that I would come back to Pendarlin in the end, the good history would win out. My mother and Gar and a hundred happy childhood memories would emerge from beneath the thunder clouds again. But right now I needed distance from the place.

In London I went back to the flat above the cake-shop, but I couldn’t settle. Alex had apparently taken it off the market, and until I decided what to do next, I was glad – although I knew I wouldn’t stay there for long. I visited Gar every day and she was as quiet and lost in her own world as ever, if a little more frail. She’d developed a bad cough and I sensed Susan was trying to warn me that it might not be long before my grandmother gave up the fight.

Bel kept ringing me, harassing me about Australia. Charlie kept ringing me, offering me work. I hid away again, alone, trying to decide what to do with the rest of my life. I’d have to decide soon because my small savings account was almost empty. I attended my appointments at Guy’s Hospital religiously and walked by the high grey Thames in the mornings before the banks got busy with tourists, down to Shakespeare’s old Globe and the Tate and back again, missing Digby desperately. I found myself yearning to take up running again, enviously watching the sweating joggers pounding past me into the distance while I was still grounded. ‘When you’re fit,’ said the fresh-faced young physio, manipulating my damaged leg, ‘don’t rush. It won’t help.’

I arrived back from Gar’s one evening just before Christmas to be intercepted in front of the flat by a fur-swathed Mrs Forlani, emerging dramatically from the festive crowd.

‘
Bellissima
, your lovely boyfriend, he left this for you.’ She nudged me playfully. ‘He is so tall, no? I think that is so handsome in a man. Correct, you know. Me, I never like the short men. I say to Matteo when we marry, you must grow a few
inches.’ Her parcels nearly went flying as she gave a theatrical shrug. ‘But he never do.’

‘Right.’ I took the packages she was brandishing at me, lost for words. ‘Goodness. Thank you.’

‘I put a small Panettone for you.’ She tapped the shiny pink box on top. ‘For Christmas. Come and have a glass of Spumante with us, please, before we fly home,
si, bella
?’

‘I will. I promise.’

Upstairs in the flat I sat alone in the gloom, the lights from the busy street flickering across the freshly painted whiteness of the walls, the jolly sound of carol singers outside the pub making my heart ache. I opened the box tied with red satin ribbon. Inside was a stack of new sheet music, a postcard of Mozart’s piano and a small carved wooden dog. And a hand-drawn Christmas card of a snow-covered cottage with a big tree outside: Pendarlin. It made my tummy hurt.

I spent a quiet Christmas with Dad and Jenny, Gar nodding off in an armchair with a glass of sherry beside her that she never touched. I felt out of place, missing Cornwall, out of sorts and unfortunately no longer out of my head since I’d curbed my drinking.

Usually I cooked the Christmas dinner but this year Jenny did it because she was so keen, though we all lived to regret it. The sprouts were bullet-like and the turkey resembled a piece of old carpet, the bread sauce was inedible and the roast potatoes burned to a crisp. When I nearly cracked my tooth on the salt spoon in the plum pudding and Jenny looked aghast, I laughed.

‘Oh dear. I wondered where that had got to! Still, you’ve got the pound as well.’ She slipped a coin onto my plate. ‘That’s lucky, eh, Maggie?’ She didn’t say I needed it, but I imagined that’s what we all thought.

In the evening my dad and Jenny played Scrabble while I curled up in front of the fire, wishing Digby was here to keep my feet warm.
Dangerous Liaisons
was on BBC2, Michelle Pfeiffer being all winsome and chaste under the dastardly Vicomte Sébastien de Valmont’s scrutiny. Listlessly I reached for the Quality Street.

‘It’s beyond my control,’ Valmont said, his lips very red against his pale powdered face. A shiver went down my spine. Where had I heard that recently? Valmont said it again. ‘It’s beyond my control.’

I changed the channel before Sébastien killed Michelle by breaking her heart in two.

‘You’re late.’ The woman with complicated highlights tapped something into her computer. ‘And you’ve changed your hair,’ she noted accusingly, handing back my passport. Her voice was rather whiny and nasal.

‘Er, yes.’ Self-conscious now, I pushed my mop behind my ears. ‘A few times since that photo, actually. I needed a – a change, you know.’

Streaky looked entirely disinterested. ‘As I said, you’re late. There’s not –’ dramatic pause, ‘no, not a single seat left.’

I stared at her aghast. She was so orange, she reminded me of Charlie. ‘The traffic was terrible. We got stuck on the M25. There must be one seat, surely. I –’

‘Always allow plenty of time, we do say.’ The crown of her head was like a map of spaghetti junction in different blondes as she looked down at her screen.

‘So what does that mean, then – no seats?’ I asked nervously. She didn’t answer, her cerise talons tapping again. I watched the glamorous young couple at the First Class desk kissing, her fluffy cream jumper leaving hairs over his black T-shirted chest as she gazed at him adoringly. I couldn’t bear it if I fell at this last hurdle. Escape was on the horizon; they couldn’t stop me now.

‘It means,’ Streaky sniffed with disapproval, ‘it means, fortunately for you, you’ll be seated in Business.’

‘Business?’ I repeated foolishly. Oh, the joy. ‘It must be a sign.’

She eyed me suspiciously.

‘You know, like a good omen. I’m due a bit of luck.’

Streaky sniffed again as I gathered up my bits. ‘You’re lucky to get on this flight, that’s all I know. Gate fifty-eight. Closes in ten minutes.’

The girl at First Class played coquettishly with her gold earring as her man shouldered the heavy Vuitton bags. I tried not to notice that I was practically the only person in the whole airport alone.

The traffic-jam had made us so late that I’d insisted my father drop me outside.

‘I’m not going forever,’ I assured myself as much as him. I thought about the last time I was at Heathrow, sad about Bel but expectant about Seb, waiting in the car park with a growing sense of excitement. Seb, who’d based most of his love-making on film quotes he’d stolen; who’d named himself after John Malkovich’s ruthless lover from
Dangerous Liaisons
, I’d finally realised on Christmas night. With a shiver I remembered the ‘
lick every inch of you
’ line – it had turned out to be from
The
Long Good Friday
. I suppose Seb had warned me he was a film buff.

Stamping my feet against the cold and the memories, waiting for my dad to open the boot and immersed in banishing Seb’s ghost, I missed the florist’s van pulling off a few cars in front.

‘I’ll be back in a month or two for the trial.’ I hugged my bereft father tight. ‘As soon as the date comes through.’

‘You take care out there, Maggie.’ He kissed my forehead. ‘Be sensible, all right?’

‘Dad, I’m thirty, not thirteen.’

‘You’ll always be thirteen to me, lovie.’

I refused to cry; I’d never stop. I kissed his cheek; he smelled like my childhood and I savoured it for the last time in a while. ‘I love you, Dad,’ I muttered. ‘And you’ll let me know about Gar, won’t you?’

‘Of course I will. Here, let me.’ He swung the suitcase onto the trolley. ‘Try not to worry about her. She’s at peace at last, I think.’

The New Year had dawned truly freezing, a throwback to the winters of my childhood. I hated January with a vengeance; it spoke of bare cold earth and no hope, the festivities over and no colour in the sky. The wind whisking round the eaves whispered of my mother’s depression, always at its worst during this bleak point of the year.

I had enrolled on a music therapy course – I’d truly finished with TV – and then Gar had slipped into a coma, and they couldn’t say how long she might have left. I held her soft, frail hand and watched her sleeping; imagined her dreaming of my twinkly-eyed grandfather, of my mother and her brother Harry running on the Cornish beaches as children, kite-flying at Daymer Bay, scrabbling down to mussel-gather at Epphaven. Of Pendarlin at dusk, the smoke from the chimney curling up to the sky like a child’s painting. Of baking fruitcake and whipping up lemon meringue pie for Sunday lunch, and letting me scrape the bowl clean.

I kissed Gar’s soft face and I cried and cried. I said goodbye forever, for she was gone now, and then I booked my ticket to Australia.

By the time I got to the gate it was almost deserted, the tunnel empty apart from a flash of a little pink wheelie-case whisking round the corner to the plane. I had to wait while the greasy girl at the barrier laboriously checked my boarding-card, and by the time I turned left on the plane, I felt hot and self-conscious; like the whole crew were waiting for me.

But once I was ensconced in the enormous seat, I started to relax, though I did look rather nervously for the kissing couple from check-in – I wasn’t sure I could endure twenty-four hours of snogging. Thankfully they were out of sight.

A sudden squall of rain hit the window. It was dark now, the lights of the airport orange and glaring as we began to taxi for take-off. The runway gleamed slick and wet as I looked down from my lofty height, and then the rather gorgeous air-steward called Dylan arrived back with a glass of champagne.

‘The only way to take off, my lovely.’ He smiled and plonked it into my hand. ‘See you in the air!’

I didn’t have time to say I didn’t drink. I clutched the glass as we got up speed, feeling a rush of adrenaline as the great plane thundered down the runway. The bubbles in the champagne shot up to the surface and I thought about the past six months, about Seb, and Alex, who hadn’t been in touch since Christmas. I stretched my bad ankle out and contemplated the fact that however well I healed, I’d always be scarred, inside and out. I’d never be quite the same again.

With a rattle and a sigh we were airborne. I watched England fall away behind us, butterflies in my tummy as the lights faded to blackness. Soon I’d sleep – but right now, I needed the loo.

Walking back down the aisle, I got confused and went the wrong way into Economy. And then –

My heart banged.

She was leaning down in her seat changing her shoes, a small pink suitcase on wheels on the chair beside her. I couldn’t believe it; she couldn’t be here. I took a small step towards her; and then I stopped. My heart was hammering like it hadn’t in months, the adrenaline rising until I had a sour taste in my mouth.

‘Fay?’ I said tremulously.

She looked up, holding one baby-blue cashmere sock.

It wasn’t Fay. The woman was older, more haggard, smaller even than Fay. Half-Chinese, perhaps. They just had the same hair.

I smiled a shaky smile. ‘Sorry. I was – I thought you were someone else.’

The woman smiled back. I turned and hurried down the aisle
in the right direction. My palms had gone clammy the minute I’d spotted her; I wiped them on my jeans. Over the seat-backs I realised someone was now reaching down into my place.

‘Excuse me,’ I huffed, reaching my row, ‘that’s my seat.’

The steward turned from placing an enormous bunch of pink flowers on my chair. ‘This is for you too, you lucky thing,’ he winked, handing me an envelope. ‘I do love an intrigue – and I adore wild roses!
So
romantic.’

I recognised the handwriting, and my heart sped up again. As I read the letter slowly, I half-smiled.

Alex doing yoga? I laughed despite myself.

The plane bumped through some turbulence and the engines went into full throttle and pushed us on, thrusting us forward until we passed through the cloud, until we emerged on the other side and continued our smooth path again.

I looked out of the window, and it was absolutely dark now, only the lights of a tiny far-off plane visible from here, and, as we turned, one solitary distant star.

For the first time in many months, I felt calm, sealed safe inside. Finally I was mistress of my own destiny, finally I felt serene. I closed my eyes and saw Bel and Hannah hand in hand, standing in the Arrivals Hall in Sydney, tanned and happy, waiting
for me. I saw myself smiling, dashing towards the arms of my oldest friends – my good friends, my very good friends.

I looked at that small star again, and then I slid down into my seat, pulling the shutter closed against the darkness of the night.

For the first time in such a very long time, I was ready to begin again.