Best of Friends (38 page)

“Sorry, Lizzie,” he said, his eyes glittering with unshed tears. “I’m better off on my own right now.”

She’d felt helpless in the face of his pain.

“If you’re broke, then go to London to see Joe,” said Clare in exasperation. “You can get a cheap flight and, staying with Joe, you won’t have any hotel bills.”

It wasn’t a bad idea, Lizzie decided.

“Well?” demanded her boss.

“OK,” said Lizzie. “I’ll phone him.”

Joe was delighted with the idea and even offered to book the flights over the Internet. An hour after the suggestion had been made, Lizzie found herself in the strange position of having plans for the following weekend.

“See?” said Clare, when she heard it was all set up. “I’m a holistic doctor—I deal with every aspect of your life.”

It was a quiet morning in the surgery and once all the filing, letters and chasing-up of test results was done, Lizzie made herself a cup of tea and unwrapped a chocolate biscuit from the luxury selection in the tiny kitchenette. She riffled through the magazines in the waiting room to see if there was anything new there. Clare’s grown-up daughters gave their mother their old magazines for the surgery, so there were always plenty of fun-filled bright articles about how to clamber to the top of the career ladder, how to create a perfect capsule wardrobe, and how to seduce your man by taking him away for a sexy weekend.

Whizzing over an article on very intimate plastic surgery (Honestly, thought Lizzie, wincing, think of the pain. And whoever looks down there anyway?), she came to a double-page spread on “Things to Do Before You’re Thirty”—“Things Every Woman Should Have on Her Wish List,” cooed the drop headline.

Nibbling her biscuit to make it last longer, Lizzie began to read, half expecting it to be full of things she’d done, along with a scattering of wild things nobody in their right mind would want to attempt.

She was experienced, a woman who’d been through life and seen it all. Surely she’d be able to tick off lots of the sensible options on the list.

But “get married, have kids and live in the same home for twenty-eight years” wasn’t anywhere on the page. The further down the list she read, the more demoralized Lizzie felt.

• Start an investment portfolio.
  
• Buy yourself a decent piece of jewellery.
  Did a fake Moulin Rouge choker she’d got in Topshop count?
  
• Go on holiday on your own and enjoy it.
  
• Try an adventure sport—mountaineering, skydiving, scuba diving.
  
• Stop talking about learning a foreign language and actually do it.
  
• Do something for charity.
  Rattling tins for the children’s hospital counted, didn’t it?
  
• Plan your career properly with professional advice.
  
• Tell your boss what you really think of him or her.
  
• Dance with somebody who knows how—ballroom, Latin, the choice is up to you.
  
• Own a car you’ve bought for reasons you don’t have to explain to anyone.
  
• Make friends with your parents.
  Well, she’d done that. Not that they’d ever fallen out in the first place, Lord rest them.
  
• Throw out all your self-help books.
  
• Stop binge drinking—stick to 14 units per week total and don’t have it all in one night.
  
• Get regular health checks—don’t let silent diseases like chlamydia ruin your fertility.
  
• Spend an afternoon walking slowly round the Louvre.
  
• Learn how to use power tools so you can be your own DIY man.
  
• Flirt with a stranger just for the fun of it.
  

Lizzie remembered lists from her youth when convincing the barman in an over-23s club to serve you a vodka and orange or having sex with a man you had no intention of marrying were considered the wildest things possible. Nobody had ever told Lizzie to buy jewellery for herself. Hell, no. Besotted boyfriends bought girls jewellery then, after being dragged past the shop endlessly and having the piece in question pointed out so they couldn’t get it wrong. Any woman would have been ashamed to admit that she’d bought her own bracelet or ring.

Ballroom dancing was seen as boring as hell, the sort of thing everyone’s parents had done in the fifties. Nobody could afford a car, although Lizzie remembered longing for a Volkswagen Beetle. And why would anyone go on holiday on their own when they had girlfriends to go with?

She shut the magazine with a resounding slap and picked up the morning newspaper. At least that could contain nothing to reproach her about wasting her life. Then she thought about Sally and felt the wave of sadness wash over her again. Sally hadn’t wasted one second of her life and where had it got her? Lizzie went back to the magazine, ripped out the page and stowed it in her handbag.

The last time Lizzie had been in London to visit Joe, she’d been with Debra. It had been a short, frantic trip, with her daughter keen to see everything and to do it at breakneck speed. Lizzie, who remembered the buzz of visiting the city for the first time when she’d been nineteen, had been willing to rush around with Debra.

Now she was there by herself. Rattling along on the Piccadilly Line with her small suitcase squashed between her knees, Lizzie felt that old buzz of adventure. She was living that “Things to Do Before You’re Thirty” list, she thought happily to herself. She was going on holiday on her own—well,
almost
on her own. Visiting Joe meant she’d be with people she knew—he lived near his long-term girlfriend, Nina—but she’d travelled on her own and that was the big thing, wasn’t it? There was nobody to say, “I’ll mind the tickets and the passports, you’re not to worry about them,” nobody to stand with the bags while she rushed into the shop to buy a last-minute magazine for the plane. But she’d done it.

She’d smiled breezily at the airport security men in Heathrow, marched purposefully to baggage collection as if she did it every week, and had made her way safely to the tube station. This travelling solo was a breeze.

At Green Park she switched to the Victoria Line, joining the throngs of people swarming towards the northbound platform. And when she got off at Highbury and Islington, she didn’t feel even a mild sense of panic when she didn’t spot Joe instantly. He’d explained he might not be able to leave work in time and Lizzie had confidently said she’d just hop into a taxi to his flat, and could he hide a key under a flowerpot or something?

Pulling her case with determination, she headed for the Way Out signs. It might be nice to be at Joe’s on her own. She could unpack, have a sit down and a cup of tea, perhaps pop out to the shop round the corner and buy a cake. Joe had never lost his fondness for sticky chocolate cake, which, once upon a time, Lizzie used to bake for him. It was years since she’d baked, she thought, panting as she hauled the case through the ticket barriers. She might get the ingredients in the shop and make one because Joe would surely never have flour or cocoa powder …

“Lizzie, Lizzie,” squealed a female voice.

Lizzie gazed about anxiously. Nobody could be calling her. It must be another Lizzie they wanted. But there, standing to the right of the barriers, her blonde curls shaking with the ferocity of her frantic waving, was Nina. Slender as a reed in a navy pinstripe skirt suit with T-bar shoes that matched the glossy red of her lipstick, Nina’s narrow face was wreathed in a giant smile. Lizzie felt a rush of warmth for her. She didn’t know Nina very well but had always thought her sweet, and she seemed genuinely fond of Joe. The only pity was that Nina had never come with Joe to Dunmore for a visit, so Lizzie felt she hadn’t got to know her very well. That would change, Lizzie decided. There was nothing to stop her flying over to London more often.

“Hello, welcome.” Nina hugged Lizzie quickly and immediately launched into an explanation of how she’d hoped to meet Lizzie at Heathrow itself, but work had been manic and she hadn’t been able to get away. Nina worked in a small art gallery off Cork Street, where her hours were anything but regular.

“I was so worried when I got here because I thought I might have missed you,” Nina added, trying to take over the wheeling of Lizzie’s case.

“I’m fine,” Lizzie said, holding on, embarrassed at anyone having to feel the weight of it. Capsule holiday wardrobes had never been her forte.

“No, I insist.” Nina grabbed it from her effortlessly. All that shifting of canvases had given her surprising muscles for one so slim. “Joe was worried you’d get anxious when he wasn’t here and I said I could leave work early, so we thought it would be better if I picked you up. I know you haven’t been to London for a while and we’d hate you to get lost and be wandering round not knowing where to turn.”

“I know how to get to Joe’s flat,” Lizzie said mildly as they waited for a taxi. “And my mobile phone works here, so if the worst came to the worst, I could always phone Joe.”

“I know.” A canary-yellow cab pulled up and Nina opened the door for Lizzie, helping her in like a dowager duchess with a leg in plaster. “But it’s not home, is it?” Having dragged Lizzie’s suitcase in, Nina settled into the seat beside her. “We all get a little nervous when we’re away from home and there are young thugs around who prey on tourists. And it’s not just visitors. An old age pensioner was mugged in full daylight down the road here the other day. Joe and I would never forgive ourselves if that happened to you, Lizzie.”

All this was said in a kind tone that wasn’t meant to hurt Lizzie in any way. But it did. It was clear to her that she was now cast in the role of aged parent. Lizzie felt herself to be a healthy woman in her prime, but in Nina’s eyes she was on the slippery slope to Zimmer frames, stair lifts and not being able to work her mobile phone, while fit young thugs ran off with her handbag. It was a depressing picture—even more depressing to imagine that perhaps Joe shared this image of her.

“We’ve got lots of plans for your stay,” Nina went on, “although we thought you wouldn’t want to do anything tonight because you’d be tired.”

Lizzie tried to protest that she wasn’t tired at all but it didn’t seem to work. Nina, though kindness itself, refused to see that a short flight from Cork airport and a tube journey from Heathrow weren’t quite the same thing as scaling the Himalayas, despite the novelty of doing it alone.

To get Nina off the subject of exhaustion in the elderly, Lizzie asked her about work and they spent the rest of the short taxi ride with Nina animatedly talking about new acquisitions and the figurative artist whose exhibition they were working on for next month.

At Joe’s flat, the pampering continued. Nina insisted on hauling the suitcase up the stairs and even put it on the tiny single bed in the spare room “in case you hurt your back lifting it.”

Lizzie, who hated unpacking, waited until Nina had left the room, then stuck the case back on the floor, opened it and took out her toilet bag and books. She’d take clothes out as she needed them. That way, she never really had to unpack, and she wouldn’t have to feel guilty going through the endless unnecessary garments she’d brought.

“I’ve made tea.” Nina was bustling round the modern cube of a kitchen and she pulled out a stool for Lizzie. “You sit there and have a rest. I was sorry to hear about your friend,” she added.

Lizzie sighed. “She was so young. It’s hard to deal with the death of a young person, isn’t it?”

Nina nodded but Lizzie could see that she was preoccupied.

Lizzie remembered when she was twenty-six and it had seemed as if death was something that happened to other people.

A china cup and saucer were produced from somewhere.

“I didn’t think Joe owned saucers,” Lizzie said in amusement, admiring the violet-patterned china.

Nina beamed. “I knew you’d prefer a saucer,” she said. “My mum is just the same.”

Since Nina was the youngest of five and her mother was in her sixties, Lizzie didn’t feel too cheered up by this information. But still, Nina was just trying to be sweet.

They drank tea and ate ginger biscuits, chatting idly. Three years ago, on Lizzie’s last visit to Joe, he’d just started seeing Nina and Lizzie had been delighted to meet her. Nina wasn’t anything like the wildly arty girls with piercings and strange hair colours that Joe had favoured when he lived at home. Instead, she had a degree in fine art, wore beautiful fitted clothes, drank Earl Grey with lemon and had just taken out a mortgage on a flat in Archway. She and Joe made such a perfect couple that Lizzie kept expecting them to move in together but Joe, in an unguarded moment, said he thought it was a mistake to rush into such a big decision.

“I’m only twenty-six, Mum,” he’d said, “too young to settle down. Nina and I like the freedom of living apart.”

Joe arrived home from work at seven, bearing a huge Indian meal from Marks and Spencer, with strawberries and vanilla ice cream for dessert.

“Lentil dhal and veggie pakoras,” drooled Lizzie as she took each fresh treasure from the bags. “Balti chicken … fantastic. I love Indian food.”

“I know,” beamed Joe.

Dinner was wonderful, lubricated by Tiger beer, which Lizzie had never tried. She’d never drink wine with Indian food again, she said when they all sat back in their chairs and surveyed the commando raid that was the remains of their dinner.

“I wish I knew how to cook like that,” she sighed after she’d turned down Nina’s offer of another cup of tea.

“You could take an Indian cookery course,” Joe said enthusiastically. “Wouldn’t that be great? It would get you out of the house and you’d have fun.”

Lizzie blinked. “I do get out of the house,” she said in surprise.

“But you know, out to meet people,” Joe added.

Lizzie was diverted by the sight of Nina kicking Joe on the shin, in an unmistakable “
shut up,
you’ve-said-enough” gesture.

“We’ve got a lovely surprise planned,” Nina said, holding Joe’s hand tightly. “We’d both love you to meet my mum. We’re taking you both out to dinner tomorrow night.”