River Deep (42 page)

‘Ouch,’ she said out loud. Imagine the humiliation. The ringing of her mobile startled her as it always seemed to these days, and she reached into her pocket fully expecting it to be Sarah calling to lambaste her. But the display read ‘Home’, which meant her old home, Christian’s flat. She’d never got round to changing it. How did he get there so quickly? He must have really floored the car.

‘I told you to speak to her!’ she exclaimed as she pressed the receiver button. It was one thing being all magnanimous about him going off with Louise but another thing entirely if he expected her to step in as relationship counsellor.

‘Hi, Maggie,’ Louise said. Maggie paused in confusion. Oh flip, she thought, Louise must still be at the flat and Christian’s gone chasing all the way to London after her. She must want to talk to Carmen about Christian. Never mind, she’d just talk to her for a bit now. Calm her down and then phone Christian’s mobile and tell him to turn round.

‘Hi! Louise, sorry about that, I was just telling my brother to get a move on with … er … something. So how are you?’

Louise laughed, and Maggie decided she was a little drunk.

‘Well, Maggie, it started out pretty shit, but it’s getting better the more of this bottle of wine I drink. So is he with you?’

Maggie furrowed her brow. It had been a long day and a difficult one, but the sense that something was very, very wrong was gradually beginning to dawn on her.

‘Is who with me?’ she asked.

Louise clicked her tongue loudly. ‘Jesus, considering what a siren you must be, you’re a bit slow on the uptake, aren’t you? Is Christian with you,
Maggie
?’

It finally clicked. Louise had not been calling Maggie Carmen. Louise was calling her Maggie. Louise knew, and Louise was seriously pissed off.

‘Oh shit,’ Maggie said. ‘No, he’s not here, because he’s––’

‘Good.’ There was a pause and Maggie heard Louise swallow loudly. ‘Because I want you to come over here now, OK? I think we’ve got one or two things to talk about, don’t you?’

Maggie felt her stomach twist and contort with dread.

‘Look, Louise, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I really am. I know I’ve been a cow, and I promise you I never meant for it to get so out of hand, but, well, if you just wait to speak to Christian then …’

‘YOU WILL GET OVER HERE NOW!’ Louise shouted, and Maggie backed away from her own phone before taking a deep breath. Finally all of her cows or crows or whatever the fuck they were were coming home to roost. There was nothing else for it but to face the music. Just hopefully not in person.

‘Look, Louise, I’m sorry, but I really don’t know what good it will do if I come over there now. Because Christian and I have talked things over and he is trying––’

‘I’ll tell you what good it will do, shall I, Maggie? It’ll give you the chance to apologise to me before these twenty paracetamol and half a bottle of wine that I’ve had kick in and I’m dead.’

Maggie felt all the breath get sucked out of her lungs.

‘What?’ she managed to say.

‘You heard me. You’ve taken my boyfriend, you’ve probably taken my job. You’ve abused my trust, and when I thought you were a friend, my only friend in this fucking hideous world, you were lying to me, using me to get him back. Destroying me. Well, congratulations. I’m finishing the job off for you. You’ve won.’

Maggie gripped the edge of the kitchen table. Oh shit. Louise was serious.

‘Louise.’ Maggie tried to stay calm. ‘Louise please, just put the phone down and call an ambulance.’

‘Are you coming?’ Louise replied.

Maggie watched her knuckles blanch and whiten as her grip increased its pressure.

‘Louise, you don’t need to do this. Christian still loves you, he still wants you. He’s just left here to find you! Please just call an ambulance now.’

‘No. You get here now. I want to talk to
you
.’

The line went dead, and when Maggie called it back it was engaged. ‘Fuck, fuck, fuck!’ she said as she grabbed her bag. ‘You stupid fucking bitch, Maggie!’ She whirled out of the kitchen, knocking the chair over as she did, and ran through the old bar and into the pool room bar.

‘Jim!’ She grabbed her brother’s am. ‘Have you been drinking tonight?’ Jim raised both his hands and shook his head.

‘No, gov, honest!’ He looked at Sheila rolling his eyes.

‘Good. I need you to drive me over to Christian’s flat.’

Jim looked at her as if she’d finally lost the plot.

‘What? He was just here. What happened anyway, did you guys get it back on?’ he said, pouring a pint for Falcon.

‘No! No, it’s not to see him.’ Maggie spoke in an urgent whisper. ‘It’s for his new girlfriend. She thinks we’re getting back together, but we’re not. He loves her, not me, and I love …’ Maggie glanced at Falcon, who was clearly listening in. ‘I care about someone else. And now she’s decided to take a lot of pills and it’s all my fault. I have to get there.’

Jim set the pint down and took her by the shoulders.

‘Maggie, are you sure? She sounds a bit crazy, don’t you think? I mean, why would she phone up Chris’s ex to have a go at you and blame you? She doesn’t even know you …’

Maggie shook him off and headed for the door.

‘Look, it’s a long story all right, but it
is
my fault. I have to go. Are you driving me or not?’

Jim looked at Sheila, who nodded and picked up his car keys.

‘All right,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘All right, I’m coming.’

Maggie left Jim waiting in the car as she dug into the bottom of her bag and found the flat key that she had never got around to giving back. She took the beige carpeted stairs up to the apartment two at a time, almost tripping over the potted palm that stood to the left of the flat’s front door. She knocked on the flat door but then let herself in anyway. She didn’t have time to wait – for all she knew Louise could be unconscious by now.

She wasn’t, though. She was sitting on the sofa in white linen pyjamas, her feet up, a glass of wine in her hand. She looked serene, Maggie thought, for someone suicidal – although bitterly, icy cold in her demeanour. Maggie cringed inwardly. She had done this. She had made this happen. She had started something that maybe she couldn’t stop, that maybe could end as badly as anything could end, and all because of her own ridiculous idiocy over what had turned out to be a pointless obsession.

‘You came, then,’ Louise said with a brittle smile. ‘Do sit down.’

Maggie sat opposite her, leaning forward in her desperation to make things right again.

‘Look, Louise, you’ve got this all wrong. Christian came round to see me today, yes, but it was clear he was crazy about you, madly in love with you. He thought that by getting back with me he’d be doing the right thing, but I told him that you
were
the right thing for him …’

Louise lifted an eyebrow and sipped her wine.

‘I don’t believe you,’ she said finally. ‘I think you’re just saying that so I’ll go to the hospital and you’ll be off the hook. And if that’s true, then why did you do it,
Carmen
? Why
did
you pretend to be someone else? To be a friend? If you never wanted him back, why did you try and mess up my life? You could have just turned up for a good old-fashioned cat fight and sorted it all out fair and square.’

Maggie picked up an empty blisterpack of pills that had been lying on the coffee table and looked at it. She just couldn’t believe what was happening.

‘When did you take these?’ she asked instead of answering Louise. There’d be time to explain later, but not now.

‘About half an hour ago,’ Louise said, her eyes fixed on Maggie’s face, clearly determined not to be deterred or distracted. ‘So tell me why you did it.’

Maggie shook her head, screaming inwardly with frustration.

‘Louise, please, my brother’s downstairs. We could get you to the hospital in ten minutes,
please
! This is all wrong – you’ve got it all wrong! He loves
you
! Please. You’re so young, you don’t need to do this, even if Christian had left you, which he hasn’t – look at you, you’re stunning and talented. You shouldn’t throw your life away over a man, or over a stupid desperate old cow like me! I know you want to punish me, I know I deserve it, but what about Christian, what about your mum and dad? They don’t, do they? They don’t deserve it?’

Maggie thought she saw something waver in Louise’s determination and she pressed on.

‘Look, let me get you some salt water to drink, make yourself sick. You know it can damage your liver if you leave it too long. Please let’s just get you to hospital now and we can talk later. You can shout at me, call me all the names you want and I won’t say anything, just so long as I know you’re going to be OK. Please?’

But Louise’s mouth was set in a brutally firm line.

‘No,’ she said with a shrug. ‘Not until you’ve told me why you did it.’

Maggie shook her head in desperation, trying to form a single succinct sentence out of the weeks and weeks of chaos that had brought her to this moment.

‘OK!’ she snapped. ‘I was hurt, OK? I was hurt and I couldn’t believe he had left me. I didn’t really think he meant it. I couldn’t see past what I thought was a perfect relationship. And I wanted to see you, see what you were like, because I thought you couldn’t be good enough for him. And I thought that once I’d seen you I’d know how to beat you. Then … well, then I did see you, and you’re … you. You’re incredible, and I think I knew then that I was never going to get him back, but I just couldn’t admit it. I needed to hope that I would, because otherwise I couldn’t see how I was going to carry on.’

Maggie held out her hands in a gesture of exasperation.

‘It seems so ridiculous now, but then, in the middle of it all, it made perfect sense. I did something stupid. It wasn’t meant to go so far, Louise, it just happened. And I didn’t mean for it to carry on, but I was starting to really like you, and I’d more or less decided that I should just give up anyway when Christian took me out for dinner and …’

Louise sat up abruptly. ‘He took you out for dinner? I knew it! When?’ she asked, narrowing her eyes.

‘The night he didn’t come home,’ Maggie said guiltily before adding hurriedly, ‘but he wasn’t with me that night, he really wasn’t, not all of it, I mean. He really didn’t know what he wanted and then, after he went away with you, I thought that, well – that was it. The best girl won. You won. And I was OK. Then he showed up this evening. But Louise – he came into my kitchen telling me he wanted me back whilst waxing lyrical about his new girlfriend – you. I knew then that I’d been beaten fair and square. I know that there’s no going back. He loves you, Louise. I’m not just saying that – the man loves you. Passionately, madly.’

Although he might not know how much of a mentalist you are, Maggie added to herself, admittedly unfairly. After all, this was all her fault in the first place.

‘And he’s a good man,’ she continued. ‘A stupid one when it comes to knowing what he wants, admittedly, but a good one. He loves
you
. And you love him enough to do this! Don’t throw your health, your life, away over nothing.’

Maggie paused, trying to read something, anything in Louise’s face, but it remained impassive.

‘Please let’s get you to the hospital?’

‘He really does love me?’ Louise said, reclining on to the sofa and pressing her palm to her forehead. ‘Really?’

‘Yes! Yes, he really does! Now can we go?’ Maggie asked her hopefully.

Louise shook her head. ‘That doesn’t change what you did to me. Just because it didn’t work, it doesn’t make what you did any better.’ She shut her eyes and flung her arms above her head dramatically. ‘No, I think I’ve had enough of everything! Of you and your lies, of Christian! It will take me months to get over this, months!’

Maggie frowned. ‘It won’t,’ she said. ‘You’ll be dead.’

‘Yes, that’s what I meant,’ Louise replied. ‘If I stayed
alive
it would takes months. AND I CAN’T STAND IT!’

‘But why would you say it at all?’ Maggie asked, the wheels of her mind slowly clicking into place.

Louise opened her eyes and sat up.

‘Oh for fuck’s sake, Maggie,’ she said with exasperation. ‘I’m supposed to be dying here, give me a break! It’s probably the pills going to my brain!’ she said distractedly, but somehow the tension in the room was diffusing second by second.

Maggie picked up the empty pack of pills again, turning it over and over again in her fingers.

‘OK, I’ve had enough,’ she said briskly. ‘I’m going downstairs to get my brother and I’m going to get you in that car to take you to the hospital where they can give you charcoal to swallow and pump your stomach and give you all sorts of other drugs and pray that you haven’t fucked yourself up for good, because I’m not sitting around here watching you die. OK?’

Louise set her wine glass down on the glass coffee table and refilled it.

‘What I mean is,’ Maggie repeated with emphasis, ‘is that I’m not sitting here watching you die, am I, Louise?’

Louise pressed her lips together in resolute silence.

‘Louise!’ Maggie yelled at her. ‘What’s going on?’

‘OK! I didn’t take any pills, OK?’ Louise said airily. ‘All right? I made it up. I thought you deserved it.’ She pointed the wine bottle at an empty glass. ‘Do you want one?’

Maggie opened and closed her mouth several times before managing to speak. Although she had started to suspect as much, she was still reeling from the shock of what she thought had been happening, added into the realisation of what really had been going on. Revenge, plain and simple, and served perfectly chilled.

‘What?’ she said pronouncing the ‘h’ as a mark of her disbelief.

‘Well, I wondered how
you’d
like to be messed with for a change. How’d it feel, honey? It’s a fucker, isn’t it? Fancy a paracetamol? I’ve got twenty right here in my pocket.’ Louise dug into her pyjama pocket and held out a handful of the white pills.

Maggie struggled to find the words. ‘You sick bloody insane flipping nutter!’ she said at last, in much less obscene language than she felt the occasion merited.