Friends to Die For (4 page)

Sometimes he wondered how he managed to keep his dark secret from the Sunday Club. It certainly took a lot of work. Over the years, he had developed protecting his privacy into a fine art,
evolving into a brilliant ‘make-up’ artist: tall tales emerged from him like water gushing from a bottomless well, all in the name of entertainment. So far as the others were concerned,
he was perpetually caught up in the social whirl, forever on the verge of moving into a new flat, or staying with unspecified friends while he looked for somewhere new. He envied Ari, who was quite
open about his living arrangements and didn’t seem bothered when the gang kidded him about still living with his mum. But then, why should it bother him? Ari was much younger than Alfonso and
actually had his own apartment in his parents’ large and rather grand London house.

Tonight, Alfonso found he could not be bothered to come up with an entertaining diversion. And so he told the truth.

‘Getting my job at the Vine,’ he said.

‘Oh, so so boring, darling,’ said Marlena.

‘Yeah, well, I haven’t led the life you have.’

‘Is that a veiled insult or a tragic complaint?’

‘Both, probably. Anyway, it did change my life. I found out how much fun being a waiter could be. Before that, I was at the Reform Club. God knows how I ended up there, so bloody stuffy.
Now I’m pouring water for Madonna.’

‘Thrilling,’ interjected George. ‘Come on, Marlena. Brighten things up. Let’s hear yours.’

‘I suppose it was crashing my motorbike, if I were to tell the truth,’ responded the older woman, surprising herself.

That had indeed been a life-changing moment, but not something she’d talked about nor even thought about for many years. Marlena had led a roller-coaster of an existence with many
life-changing moments to choose from. A good number of those were best forgotten, but there were also plenty she liked to remember, and surely everyone had secrets? Marlena was not a woman who
dwelled on the past, who allowed herself regrets. The only reason her motorbike accident had come into her mind so vividly was because of a TV documentary she had watched the previous evening.
She’d been kept awake half the night by troubling dreams of the incident and its consequences. Not that she had any intention of sharing that with her friends.

‘Crashing your motorbike?’ queried Greg. ‘You had a motorbike?’

‘I certainly did. A Triumph Norton. I’d had it sprayed shocking pink.’

‘Good God, when was that?’ asked Karen.

‘Oh, back in the Dark Ages, darling. It must be thirty-odd years since I got rid of it.’

‘But why?’

‘Finally grew up, I suppose. Realized it was too dangerous. I always rode too fast – but then, that was the whole point of it really.’

‘I thought you thrived on danger, darling,’ remarked Alfonso.

‘There’s danger, and then there’s danger,’ replied Marlena enigmatically.

‘How did crashing your bike change your life?’ persisted Karen.

‘I was on my way to visit my sister in Scotland – hadn’t seen her for years, we’d been brought up apart. Then fate intervened and I never made it . . .’

Marlena seemed lost in memories until Alfonso’s voice brought her back to earth.

‘Were you badly hurt?’

‘Not really. Barely at all, in fact.’ Marlena paused and looked down at the table. ‘It was life-changing because it confronted me with reality and marked the end of a lot of
silly dreams I suddenly knew I was never going to realize . . .’

She stopped again abruptly. There was silence around the table, unbroken until she chided the others: ‘Oh come on. You’ve got better things to do than listen to an old woman like me
make a fool of herself. Ari, what about you? It must be your turn. I’m sure I jumped my place.’

Ari looked blank.

‘I don’t think I’ve had a life-changing moment,’ he said.

The truth of it hit him as he spoke. Sometimes Ari’s entire existence seemed empty to him, which was perhaps why he was inclined to fill the hours with alcohol and cocaine. He made himself
sip his second large Hendricks slowly. Sunday Club was a low-key evening out for Ari, but, as with George, it had become a curiously important fixture in his life. It was one of the few occasions
when he tried to stay moderately sober, in order that his behaviour would not attract attention, so that he could at least appear to fit in with the others. Ari had many acquaintances and
hangers-on, but few friends. He considered the regular Sunday group to be the nearest he had to friends. Not that he could face them without a pre-supper line or two before leaving home. Indeed, he
couldn’t imagine being out and about without that.

‘Maybe that’s what’s wrong in my life,’ Ari continued. ‘Nothing has ever changed really. I even live at home. Can’t match my dad, that’s probably my
problem. Dad came over with my grandmother in 1972, refugees from Idi Amin’s Uganda. He built his business from scratch, starting with a street stall then a corner shop. Now he trades all
over the world. He just assumed that I would go into the business with him, so that’s what I’ve done, more or less. ’

‘Where was his shop?’ asked Greg.

‘Wanstead, first of many.’

‘He must have been some man to have turned that into what he’s got now.’

Ari nodded. ‘He was only seventeen when they arrived,’ he said. ‘And he did it all on his own; my gran never learned to speak English and my grandfather was already dead. I
haven’t a clue how he did it. Beyond me, I’m afraid.’

He took a big drink of his Hendricks, and allowed the strangely aromatic gin to drown his brief moment of introspection.

‘So there you are, I’m just a spoiled rich boy.’

‘Yep,’ said Greg.

‘We love you, though,’ said Karen.

‘And I’d hardly describe your living arrangements as classic shacked-up-with-mum-and-dad,’ said Bob. ‘You’ve got an apartment bigger than most people’s
houses. That potted palm I got for you looked so bloody lost in it, I had to go back and get you a bigger one.’

‘Bigger the pad, better the party,’ said Ari.

‘Thought you’d been banned from all of that since your arrest,’ murmured Alfonso.

‘It was only the tiny weeniest itsy bitsy soupçon of coke,’ said Ari.

‘Ummm, and when are you getting some more?’ asked George.

‘I didn’t hear that,’ said Michelle.

‘You haven’t shared your life-changing moment, Michelle,’ said Alfonso. ‘You’ve told us what it wasn’t, but not what it is. Come on, let’s have
it.’

Michelle made herself smile. Though Bob wasn’t aware of it, the two of them had something in common that Sunday. For both it was an anniversary connected to someone who’d caused them
much unhappiness. In Bob’s case the birthday of the son he felt he had lost, in Michelle’s the anniversary of her marriage to the man who had abandoned her. They’d married young,
and it would have been their tenth, known as the tin anniversary – which Michelle thought rather appropriate as tin was cheap and buckled easily under pressure. Like Bob, she was feeling
uncharacteristically maudlin that evening. She’d thought she was over the hurt, but days like this reminded her that the pain was still with her, as it would be, she sometimes believed, for
as long as she lived.

‘We might not be allowed to have meeting our partner as our answer, but leaving them ought to count,’ she growled. ‘Or in my case, being left by the fucker.’

‘Oh God,’ said George. ‘We are a cheery bloody lot tonight, aren’t we?’

‘Fair enough, Michelle,’ said Karen, ignoring him. ‘We all know how much it changed your life when your Phil walked out on you. New job, new town, new friends – not so
much a change of life as a brand-new one, eh?’

‘Too fucking right,’ muttered Michelle through gritted teeth.

‘Oh, come on, it’s not all bad, is it?’

‘No,’ said Michelle. She paused for a moment, thinking things through. ‘No, of course it’s not,’ she continued. ‘And working for the Met does kind of beat
being a Dorset plod. Or it would, if I wasn’t stuck in effing Traffic.’

She spat out the last sentence, but then lapsed into maudlin again: ‘It would have been nice to have been able to make a choice, that’s all.’

‘You did: you chose to come to London,’ said Karen.

‘Maybe. But I didn’t have much choice about leaving the town I’d lived in all my life and the force I’d joined when I was eighteen, did I? My bloody ex not only moved in
with his girlfriend at the end of the same street, he worked in the same bloody office as me. I could see his effing desk from mine. If I hadn’t moved away, I might have damned well killed
him.’ She paused. ‘Or her – smug bitch.’

‘Surely not? And you sworn to uphold the law and all.’ Marlena, full of mock severity, peered at Michelle over the rim of her half-moon spectacles.

‘I dunno,’ responded Michelle. ‘I’d definitely have gone barking mad.’

‘No danger of that now though,’ said Marlena, dry as dust. ‘You’ve certainly found sanity with us.’

Michelle managed a small smile again. ‘Would have been different if my dad was still alive,’ she said. ‘He’d have beaten the hell out of Phil.’

‘Bit of a bruiser, your old man then?’ enquired Greg.

‘You might say that,’ responded Karen. ‘He was a DI in the Met. Old style. Detective Inspector Dave English. Nobody messed with my dad, I can tell you.’

‘Crikey,’ said George. ‘Come on, Karen. Give us yours.’

Karen didn’t hesitate. She was perhaps the most straightforward of the group. She certainly appeared to be. And, after a couple of drinks, totally caught up in the question game,
she’d more or less forgotten all about that silly lurking embarrassment concerning George. Her family was her entire world, she told herself, and always had been. She glanced across the table
at George. Apart from that brief exchange upon her arrival he had taken little notice of her. There was no reason why he should, of course, and it would have embarrassed her further if he had. She
still couldn’t believe what she’d done. And if George hadn’t kept his head, it would have been even worse.

‘Having my children,’ she said. ‘My family. It’s all that matters to me. You see, when I was a kid things were pretty bad. Me mum was always great, but . . .’

‘But what, Karen darling?’ asked Marlena.

Karen glanced at Greg.

He took her hand. ‘Karen’s dad went to prison when she was four. He was a drinker, killed a man in a fight. Got himself sent down and ended up dying in jail. That’s why I gotta
be a good boy, eh, baby?’

‘You better had.’

‘That’s quite a story,’ said Ari. He looked around the table. ‘Any of you lot know that before?’ he asked.

They all shook their heads.

‘I try not to think about it,’ said Karen. ‘It was just Greg being so soft that got me going . . .’

‘Hey, Michelle,’ said George. ‘Maybe your old man was the one who arrested Karen’s old man.’

‘That isn’t funny, George,’ said Marlena.

‘It’s OK,’ said Karen. ‘I grew up with my dad inside. It can’t hurt me any more. Like I said, my children changed everything for me. I think any mother would say
the same. One minute you’re a selfish cow thinking only of yourself and your own problems, and the next you have these little people with your face and you realize you’d sacrifice
anything for . . .’

Karen stopped, aware of Michelle’s eyes boring into her.

Abruptly the young policewoman rose from the table.

‘Must go to the Ladies,’ she said.

Her head was down as she hurried away, the high heels she liked to wear when she was out of uniform tap-tapping on the wooden floor. Karen thought she saw her shoulders begin to shake. Michelle
had never made any secret of her deep-seated desire to be a mother, and how that unfulfilled longing had been her greatest regret when her marriage ended. But the woman was young enough not to be
worrying about her biological clock for some years, and bright and attractive enough to surely be able to find the right man sooner or later. All the same, Karen kicked herself for being so
tactless.

Though the men around the table did not appear to have noticed anything amiss, it hadn’t escaped Marlena’s observant gaze.

‘Well done, old girl,’ she murmured softly to Karen.

‘Oh fuck,’ said Karen.

I made my excuses as we left the restaurant, needing to be on my own. Fast. Not only that, I needed to be out in the open, to get some air into my lungs, to let myself be
swallowed up by the sounds and smells of the night.

I hurried down Wellington Street and across the Strand towards Waterloo Bridge where I took the steps to the left, by Somerset House, leading down to the Embankment. The city was quiet,
peaceful even, or maybe it just seemed that way compared to what was raging inside my head.

I crossed over to the riverside and leaned over the river wall near Temple Pier. It was spring high tide, and I could see the Thames lapping against the tall stone balustrades. A police
barge went by, travelling at speed, sending up a sizeable wave in its wake. Water splashed against the wall and a drop or two hit my face. My skin felt so hot I was almost surprised it didn’t
turn to steam on contact.

I stayed there, hoping for another splash to cool me down, but it didn’t come. Eventually I pulled myself away and sat on a bench under a plane tree. It was the last Sunday in February
and the branches were bare, but it seemed darker and more secluded there under the tree’s spreading arms. I felt in some way shielded, protected.

It wasn’t a cold night. If anything, it was quite warm, one of those spells of good weather in what had been a bitter winter. I’d hoped the air would be cold enough to cool my
burning skin. But it would have to have been well below zero to do that.

I sat there for ages, trying to get things straight in my head, to make some sense of the thoughts racing round my brain.

There could be no doubt, could there? Had I misunderstood? Was it possible that this was sheer coincidence, totally unconnected to anything in my past? Was I trying to make a connection
where none existed?

I don’t know how long I sat there, going over those words again and again. The more I thought about it, the more certain I was that, far from misunderstanding, I had finally
understood.