Bad Friends (5 page)

The day after my plaster-cast finally came off, Bel and Johnno got married. I’d never seen Bel looking quite so alive, as she stood smiling on the Registry steps on the Kings Road waiting to go in, clutching onto Johnno under a great scarlet umbrella like they’d never ever part, white velvet collar turned up high, setting off her blonde urchin cut and her beaming pixie face, a proper winter bride. And Johnno, oh God, he looked so proud, small and stocky but still towering over Bel’s birdlike form. Hannah stood tiny in sparkly white beside them, her patent shoes all shiny, holding her mother’s hand, beaming, the spit (thank the Lord) of Bel. I was overjoyed that Bel had finally recovered from the utter disaster of Hannah’s father: the hippy painter who had promised Bel the world and then vanished to Morocco with his other pregnant lover the week before Hannah was born. The father who’d never bothered to meet his adorable daughter.

I stood on the pavement, filming them with my little video camera – Bel’s parents and her brothers all cheering with joy. The way Bel looked at Johnno now was enough to give you hope.

The Christmas decorations were already up, although it was only November. The lampposts fizzed with electric blue stars and Hannah pointed a tiny hand and sang ‘Twinkle, twinkle, little Mummy’, and everybody laughed until Hannah went beet-red with excitement and overbalanced doing the deep curtsies
she’d learned in ballet. And for a moment, for one long moment, I felt happy, happier than I’d been in such a long time.

I was just calling to Bel to describe how she felt on this auspicious day, in her last few moments before she become a Mrs for all time, when her face dropped visibly. Frowning, I lowered the camera. She was looking at something over my shoulder, and then she wrinkled her brow and Johnno looked in the same direction, then stooped and whispered in her ear. And then I felt them both gazing at me, and an icy claw crept down my back and I turned round quickly –

And there he was. Just standing there, just like that, as if everything was fine. He had both hands shoved deep in the pockets of an extremely smart dark suit, a suit he’d never have worn when he was with me, and for a moment he looked guarded – but then he caught my startled eye and slowly smiled. I felt a pain, like someone had just got hold of my heart and was slowly pulling the bleeding flesh out through my chest, as I stared at him. And then, as if in slow motion, I saw him put one long hand out behind him, and I saw a leather-gloved hand slip into his, and he pulled the owner, the girl who wore it, forwards.

A great gust of wind blew down the road. The trees leaned right over under the weight and the blue stars wobbled and Bel’s mother’s fussy pillbox hat went flying off; there was a big kerfuffle while Nigel ran to fetch it. My hair blew across my face and stuck to my lipsticked mouth, stuck fast, but I didn’t bother to remove it. I didn’t even care. How could he come here, here of all places, and, worst of all, bring this girl too?

He was still smiling, his short brown hair sticking up on end and his yellow eyes glinting with something I couldn’t quite read. Malice?

‘Hello Alex,’ I said quietly.

‘Maggie.’ He was ever so polite, of course he was. Charm the birds out of the trees, my Alex could, when he wanted to. ‘I’d like you to meet Serena.’

Serena was very thin and falsely blonde (how utterly predictable), and her expensive heels very high, though Alex still dwarfed both of us. She looked at me, looked me up and down, and then she smiled too, a slow smile, a smug smile, which spread across her chiselled face. I pulled my old red coat round me but still shivered in the wind. Graciously, the girl offered me her hand. Her gloves were so soft they felt like butter.

I stared blankly at this new pair. If Alex didn’t stop grinning like that I’d punch him right on the already skewed bridge of his once-broken nose. I clenched my fists. And then they moved off, towards the happy couple, the four of them all kissing and shaking hands, and I was left just standing there, a satellite on the windy pavement of Kings Road. Alone, despite a thousand strangers rushing by.

And all through Bel’s wedding in that little room, the room in muted tones that smelled of Bel’s red roses, I couldn’t concentrate, and when it was my time to read my bit out from The Prophet, the bit about ‘
Love one another but make not a bond of
love – Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your
souls
’, Bel’s mum had to nudge me to get up. And I tried not to let the strain show in my voice, or let my hands shake, and I stood very straight and tall – although my foot really hurt now and my heart truly ached – not looking at the row where Alex and Serena sat; and I tried to read the lines about love with sincerity, as if I hadn’t very nearly drowned in the bloody sea
The Prophet
was on about. As if I thought love could be a good thing, and was not likely to finish you off for all time.

Alex did at least have the good grace not to crash the wedding breakfast. He knew he’d done enough. He and Serena disappeared into the swirl of Christmas shoppers, big hand in buttery one, waving. I could sense he was elated in his shambolic one-off elegance, while I felt utterly bereft. Somehow I got through lunch – ate a bit of the duck pate starter, picked at the salmon
main, managed, somehow, to down lots of the very good wine. I thought of Bel and how sad she’d been, on her own with Hannah, and how she’d turned her life around. A little drunk after all the speeches, I hugged her tighter than I’d ever done before.

‘I’m so happy for you, darling,’ I said, and her pointy little face was so soft with joy that I almost wept.

‘I’m so happy too,’ she whispered. ‘I can’t believe it really. I keep pinching myself.’

‘It does happen, you know, Bel. Good people do get what they deserve, sometimes.’

She squeezed my arm. ‘Yeah, well, your turn will come, I’m sure. I’m sure of it, my Maggie.’ She looked up at me, serious now. ‘I’m so sorry about Alex. He wasn’t invited, you know. I wouldn’t let Johnno, though he did want to.’

‘It’s okay, Bel. It’s hardly your fault that he turned up.’

‘Yeah, well, I wish he’d bloody stayed away. He knew it’d hurt you. God, after everything he –’

‘Don’t mention it, please,’ I said quickly. ‘It’s fine. I’ve got to get on with it sometime, haven’t I?’

She squeezed my arm again. ‘Oh God, Mag, I’m going to miss you.’

‘Oh Bel, don’t start that now. Let’s think of nice things.’ My sniff was barely audible. ‘You’re not going quite yet.’

‘And it’s not forever.’

‘It’d better bloody not be.’

‘And you’d better be at the party, okay?’

Hannah skipped up, her fairy wings iridescent in the candlelight. ‘Why are you crying, sillies?’ She observed me steadily. ‘You look like a panda, Auntie Maggie. Like what I saw in the zoo when Johnno took me. The fat one that was scratching her bottom.’ She slipped her hand in mine. ‘Don’t cry.’

‘I’m not. I’m laughing. I never cry.’

‘Why’s water coming out of your eyes then?’

‘Oh, Hannah.’ I picked her up and gave her a squeeze. She smelled of biscuits and fresh laundry. ‘You don’t half ask a lot of questions for someone so small.’

Then I went home to my father’s house, alone. The phone was ringing as I unlocked the door, but by the time I reached it they’d rung off. And as my dad had gone to collect his girlfriend Jenny from the airport, I opened a bottle from his trusty Wine Club collection and drank myself to sleep.

BEFORE: JUNE

I had dreamed that I was dying, such a very vivid dream. When I woke, I wasn’t absolutely sure I hadn’t. A huge weight squatted on my stomach, face pulled back in a rictus grin, gurning down at me until, panicking, I pushed up through its mass. Rearing from the bed, my arms flailed like a sprinter’s tangled in the finish line; a great sob of terror scraping through my chest.

I wasn’t dead, apparently. Not unless heaven was an ice-cream-coloured curtain drawn round a narrow bed, or a glimpse of rain through a small window in a quietly rumbling room. A room that was grey and regular. A dormitory. A ward. Not unless the woman in blue with smiley eyes who stepped neatly to my side was some bizarre kind of angel in a nurse’s uniform.

‘You haven’t got a halo.’ I blinked at the nurse. ‘Have you?’

The woman leaned forward to hear me properly, but my voice was apparently stuck in my sore and tired throat. I tried to smile instead, but smiling seemed to hurt me even more. Tentatively I brought my hand up to touch my own face, my hand that felt freezing.

‘Your lip’s been stitched.’

She caught my hand and moved it gently down. The nurse’s skin was beautiful, dark and creamy like a pint of newly pulled
Guinness. I had the impulse to stroke her arm, but before I could she tucked my hand beneath the sheet. And I winced at the touch. My body ached; I was realising slowly that every part of me was tender, every part felt bruised and sore.

‘Only a few stitches, though.’

I thought the nurse might have said something next about being right as rain in no time, right as the rain I could see falling in vertical lines through that little window. Rain was never really right, though, was it, not unless you gardened like my father and – I had a revelation.

‘Have I gone mad?’ I enquired politely. ‘Is this the loony bin?’ This time the nurse caught my words.

‘Not mad, no, Maggie. You’ve had an accident. You’re in hospital.’

‘Accident?’

‘Just slip your sleeve up so I can take your blood pressure. Can you tell me how you feel now?’ she asked me kindly, but actually I couldn’t, because I didn’t know. I gazed at her blankly. Well, I did know I felt calm. Calm, but sort of bewildered.

‘You’re in shock, dear. And the doctor’s given you something to monitor the pain.’ The nurse tightened the band round my arm until it pinched. ‘Morphine.’

‘Ouch. I can’t seem to –’ I gazed at the nurse again. ‘I can’t think what happened. It’s funny, though. Was there –’ I stopped again.

‘What?’ the nurse prompted. ‘What do you think, Maggie?’

‘I keep thinking about a horse. Did I – did I fall off a horse?’ But I didn’t remember being on a horse yesterday. I could vaguely remember a riding lesson from years ago, somewhere in the countryside; remembered my mother waving gaily from the gate of the school. It must have been a long time ago. I remembered that my hat had been too big, that it used to rattle down over my eyes as I bobbed along until I was pink and out of breath and couldn’t see anything – not my mother, not the waving –
only my own small hands beneath me, clutching the pony’s mane as valiantly I tried to retain control.

‘There was – I think there might have been a horse.’ The nurse seemed alarmed suddenly. She paused for a moment, thinking. ‘You were on –’

The consultant arrived at the foot of the bed with a flick of his pristine white coat. He was very tall and he had a face rather like an eagle, I thought. Yes, an eagle. His nose was a downward curve, like a cruel beak. He glanced at the chart at the foot of my bed, then at me.

‘Ms Warren.’

‘Yes.’

‘Feeling better?’

Better than what?

‘I’m not – I don’t know really.’

‘Vitals all fine, sir.’ The nurse peeled the band off my arm and popped something bleeping in my ear.

‘Good, good.’ He inspected my lip. ‘Nice job with the sutures. Bruising?’

‘All external, apparently.’ The nurse took the bleeping thing out.

‘It’s just –’ I cut in.

‘What?’ The doctor seemed impatient, ready to move on to the next bed. The one with the curtains right round it. Tight around it.

‘I can’t remember what happened. Why I’m here.’

The consultant shot the nurse a look. The nurse looked down at her sensible shoes.

‘Does anyone know that I’m here?’ I thought of Alex. I sat up in bed again. ‘I must let my boyfriend know.’

‘I’ll get the list.’ The nurse seemed grateful for an excuse to move down the ward. There was a sudden commotion from the bed next door, the bed that I couldn’t see. Someone was crying, racked with terrible sobs. The noise made my blood freeze.

‘I think I might like to get up,’ I began, but the consultant was already swishing through those curtains. I knew I couldn’t stay here, not next to that wall of sound, that ascending wail. I tried to collect my thoughts. I’d go and find a phone, ring Alex to come and fetch me. Gingerly I swung my legs down to the cold floor. A pain like a cold sharp blade shot up through my left foot but I tried to ignore it. I must escape those sobs.

I managed to limp as far as the first double-doors before I thought the pain might actually make me sick. The nice nurse caught up with me as I leaned on the wall in agony, sat me on a furry old chair by the door and held my hand, just for a minute. A middle-aged couple rushed through the doors, the frizzy-haired woman pressing a tissue to her mouth to stop the tears, followed by a younger man, beanie hat pulled down against the weather, all glittery with silver raindrops. He dropped his phone as he passed; it clattered to the ground near my feet.

‘Sorry,’ he muttered, sweeping it up again. He saw the nurse. ‘We’re looking for my girlfriend? She was on the coach.’

‘Go to the desk.’ The nurse pointed back the way they’d come. ‘They’ve got the list.’

He rushed back through the doors without any more ado, the couple following behind. An old woman in the bed opposite started to groan. Oh God.

‘I need to ring my boyfriend,’ I whispered when I’d recovered enough to talk. ‘He’ll be so worried. I never stay out all night.’ Did I?

‘Go back to bed. I’ll bring you the phone.’ But then the nurse looked up the ward, at the other nurses flying back and forth between those pastel curtains and then at the crash-cart that came slamming through the doors, and she changed her mind. She wheeled the phone to me where I sat. And I tried very hard not to look at that bed, and concentrated on making the phone call.

It took me three attempts to remember my home number.
First I got the voicemail for some curry-house in Dalston; then some very disgruntled old man whom I’d obviously just woken up.

‘Sorry.’ I thumped the receiver down again in frustration; glanced up at the clock on the wall. It was ridiculously early.

‘Eight-nine-eight,’ I muttered to myself. ‘Nine-eight-nine.’ For God’s sake! How could I not remember? I made a third attempt. Somehow, somewhere in the depths of last night’s accident, I’d wiped out my home number. I’d wiped out my home.

Of course, he didn’t answer. Alex hardly ever answered the phone, even at the best of times. Now it was so early he’d be asleep. Or – I steadied that thought to a shuddering halt. He was asleep. He slept so very deeply once he’d actually dropped off. I’d ring back in half an hour. He’d be getting up then; getting up for work, not knowing anything was wrong. Maybe a little concerned, of course, but –

I replaced the phone carefully on the stand and smoothed my hospital gown down over my knees. I really did feel rather peculiar. And I was freezing now.

When I finally went back to my bed, the next-door one was empty, the wail silenced. The small nurse stripping it wouldn’t catch my eye; her jaw was set grimly. I started to shiver, my teeth chattering in my head. The nice nurse came back with her list. She looked at me; she seemed a little worried.

‘I’ll bring you some sweet tea. The sugar’ll do you good. The police are here now. They’ll explain things to you.’

As she adjusted my pillow, I caught the typed heading on the paper. ‘
SURVIVORS
’, its bold black letters stated unequivocally. My bowels clenched in a strange involuntary movement. How could I be on a list? I made lists, that’s what I did, compiled lists of people, and attached those lists to a clipboard, clasped the clipboard protectively to my chest so that no one but me could consult it, and then checked people off that list. I ticked the names off as they arrived, fretted when they didn’t, shepherded
them around the warren of corridors at the studios, and primed them on what to say down in the dressing-rooms. I couldn’t be on a list; I didn’t want to be on a list. I wanted to get the hell off the list and out of here. I wanted Alex to come and get me the hell out of here.

On my fourth try, Alex answered.

‘Thank God.’ I started to cry with relief. Once I started, I found I couldn’t stop.

‘What?’

‘Thank God you’re there.’

He was groggy, uncommunicative. He was always terrible in the morning. ‘Why are you crying?’

‘Sorry.’ I breathed deeply to quieten my sobs. ‘I’m okay, don’t worry.’ I stifled another sob. ‘Can you come and get me?’

‘What time is it?’

He was probably hung over.

‘I don’t know. It’s early. I’m in the hospital.’

Probably hung over? There was no probably about it. There never was these days.

‘Come and get me, Alex, please.’

‘Are you fucking joking?’

My brain couldn’t compute this. ‘What? What do you mean?’

‘Why should I come and get you?’

‘Because I’ve – there’s been an accident.’

‘Oh really?’

I stopped crying. The shock stopped me crying. For some reason he thought I was lying.

‘Alex,’ I whispered.

‘Yes?’

‘Why are you being like this? I – I need you. I’m in the hospital.’

There was a pause. I could feel him struggling with something. ‘Yeah, well.’ His voice had thickened. I heard him take a deep breath in. ‘Bad luck, Maggie.’

There was a click. My boyfriend had apparently hung up.

In the end, my father came to fetch me. I sat numb in my hospital bed, racking my brain, over and over, and as soon as my father arrived I was out of that bed. God, I would have run down the corridor if I could have. The wheelchair the nice nurse wanted me to use loomed black and heavy by my bed, but I couldn’t bear it. Instead I clutched my father’s arm like I’d never let it go.

‘Please, Daddy, get me out of here,’ I whispered. I hadn’t called him Daddy since I was thirteen. And he understood my desperation, my fear of such institutions; he probably shared it with me, in fact, but he hid it well. He pulled me nearer to his red anorak that rustled so, that smelled of fresh air and bonfires. He stroked my hair, just once.

‘Chin up, hey, Mag,’ he said and his eyes were both sorry and kind. And then he put me in his car and took me back to his house – because though I just couldn’t remember, I apparently no longer had a home.