The Best of Friends Read online

  But I couldn’t help it, I can hear my inner self bleating to me, to whoever might listen. Yes I could, I retort, furious with myself for my weakness, my lack of self-control. I could have filled the idle hours with baking or crochet or doing charitable works, like normal people do. Like good people do.

  But I didn’t.

  Twenty minutes pass, then thirty, before I manage to haul myself upright. The bell hasn’t rung again. I don’t know if the man has gone; I daren’t look in the direction of the door. I retreat, heart banging against my chest, to the back of the house where its huge antiquity and grand history means there is a second staircase, for the servants of yore. I go down that and into the kitchen where I make myself a strong coffee with a nip of something for my nerves before I realise that I’ve got to get out of here.

  I run the few short steps between the back door and the car and then, just before I jump inside, I remember that it’s out of petrol. Completely out. To the point where I only just made it home yesterday. I meant to text Dan to ask him to do something about it, bring some petrol home in a jerry can 70s-style, or get the garage to come round. Whatever is necessary. But I forgot. I stand, frozen, suddenly and terrifyingly incapable of moving. I don’t want to go back into the house, where I’ll have to check every door and every window one hundred times and even then won’t feel safe. But I can’t take the car.

  Blindly, like a fugitive, I put my head down against an imaginary wind and slink around the corner of the house. I race across the circular gravel driveway where the ornamental cherry stands proudly as if there’s nothing at all to worry about. I reach the side gate, wrest it open and head out onto the green. At least there are people here, not just me, all alone. I look around me. Actually, there aren’t any people. On the main road through the village on the other side of the grass a few cars pass, but that’s it. I walk, as fast as I can, in the direction of your house, seeking sanctuary. Sanity. Self-preservation.

  I’ve just started to breathe more easily when I hear footsteps behind me. It’s hardly possible for me to speed up because I’m going so hurriedly already, but I try to, heedless of how obvious it makes my fear to my pursuer. It must be him, the man in the hat. The shadow figure. I’m so frightened that I can’t work out if the breathing I can hear is mine or his.

  I feel sick.

  The hand on my shoulder makes me jump out of my skin. I let out an involuntary scream, high-pitched and animalistic. Why the fuck did I come out when I knew the man in the hat was prowling?

  ‘Charlotte! Goodness me you’re jumpy! Whatever’s the matter?’

  Miriam. Not him. Just dear, sweet, innocent, irritating Miriam.

  I’m weak and floppy with relief that quickly turns to anger at her scaring me like this, and then contrition as I silently acknowledge that it’s not her fault.

  I shake my head. ‘I’m fine,’ I say, curtly. ‘But as you can see I’m in a bit of a hurry.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she responds, ‘I came to see you about the foraging club. I called round at the house but there was no answer so I assumed you were out and about somewhere.’

  ‘I was,’ I reply, curtly. ‘I’m out and about here, on the village green.’ It dawns on me, now my heart has stopped racing and my brain clicked into gear, that she’s dressed all in black, including her deeply unflattering black bobble hat. There was no stranger at the door. It was just Miriam. I take a long, deep breath. I’m becoming paranoid, unhinged. I’ve got to stop overreacting like this.

  ‘I just wanted to …’ Miriam starts but quickly tails off as I give her a dismissive wave and start walking again. I need to get away from her, from her tattling and prattling.

  ‘I’ll ring you about the foraging,’ I call back to her over my shoulder. I’m going at such a pace she trails in my wake and I soon leave her far behind, a shadow figure on the green, staring uncomprehendingly after me. I can’t worry about her. I’ve got enough on my plate. She’ll get over it; she always does. Her adulation of me never fails. I clench my fists and force myself not to be cross with her for frightening me so badly. She doesn’t know that callers to the house give me the heebie-jeebies. Why should she? I should just be grateful it wasn’t who I feared it might be.

  ‘No!’

  I realise that I have cried out audibly into the quietude of the mid-morning village. The first sign of madness is talking to yourself, or is that the last? In any case, what really matters is that it wasn’t who I feared this time. But next?

  I arrive at your house, panting and sweating, partly from the rapid walk and partly from the icy fear that trickles through my veins and, these days, never, ever, completely leaves me. I take a moment on the doorstep to calm myself before lifting the knocker and hammering loudly.

  Your door opens to a flurry of white that rises up from the uneven wooden floorboards. You let me in and, like Hansel and Gretel with their breadcrumbs, we follow the trail along the hallway to the kitchen. In your sink sits a sheaf of elderflower, creamy blossoms spreading themselves assiduously across every surface.

  Ostensibly, I’ve come to offer you congratulations; fortunately, my brain wasn’t so addled on the way here that I failed to muster a reason for dropping in like this. You messaged me a couple of days ago to tell me that you’ve got the job as deputy manager at the tennis club cafe. This is news that’s worth celebrating. Having a bit more cash will make life so much easier for you. Plus you’ll be happier with a focus, a job to give meaning and structure to your days.

  I wish I could tell you the real reason why I’m here. But of course I can’t.

  ‘Been out foraging solo?’ I ask you, determinedly focusing on the here and now rather than the perils of the past – and future.

  I’m surprised, as even though you’ve expressed interest in the group, you haven’t actually attended a get-together yet. And I wasn’t aware that you knew anything about what to gather or how to make things with it. You seem altogether too citified, too pristine, to have ever gleaned that sort of information.

  ‘Oh no,’ you scoff, confirming my surmises. ‘I don’t know the first thing about it, and there’s been so much rain recently. I’ll definitely be a fair-weather forager.’

  I might have guessed as much. My own interest in the club is all to do with that need to play a part that was so overwhelming when I first arrived in the village, having secured my ideal house, my ideal life. Being some kind of earth mother, tapping nature’s bounty for sustenance, was an idea that held so much romance I simply couldn’t resist. Plus it would set me up as an innovator, bringing fresh initiatives to the somewhat benighted locals. After all, it’s not just Eva Peron’s prerogative to want to be adored. And actually, the more I foraged and the more I learnt, the more I got into it and now I love it.

  And though I clearly don’t need free food, I do need a foil for all the nefariousness of my past, not to mention the excesses of life with Dan.

  You fill the kettle, only just managing to get it under the tap as there are so many elderflower stalks in the way.

  ‘Miriam dropped by earlier,’ you continue, ‘and gave me all this.’ You indicate with a flick of your head towards the frothy mass. ‘She says she’s going to come back later and show me how to make elderflower cordial – she’s convinced the boys will love it. I didn’t like to tell her that Lucozade Sport is more their thing.’

  I raise my eyebrows in sympathy. I’ve spent what feels like half a lifetime convincing my boys of the benefits of wholesome fruit drinks rather than the mass-produced fizzy products of multi-national corporations. It’s not easy.

  I wonder if Miriam had been on her way back here when I saw her just now. My behaviour will probably have well and truly put her off. She’ll have seen where I was headed and decided to keep a wide berth. For your sake, I hope she makes it at some point or you’ll have to get rid of this lot some other way.

  ‘I’m loving the idea of it for the cafe, though,’ you continue, oblivious to my distraction. ‘I think there’d b
e huge potential for introducing foraged and homemade items onto the menu. It’s so on trend right now. I’m definitely going to talk to Naomi about it.’

  The kettle boils and you make coffee. I can’t stand instant coffee but I don’t refuse. It’s funny how these conventions of manners never get left behind, isn’t it? I think about all the countries I’ve lived in, all the cultures I’ve been part of, and try to find one where it would be acceptable to say, ‘No thanks, I don’t like your coffee’, and I can’t think of one. So I guess we humans are more alike than we sometimes think.

  ‘Well done for getting the job,’ I say, and take a quick sip before putting the mug back down on the table. I should ask you to be my spy, my secret agent keeping watch on Naomi but I don’t want to be too obvious. I decide to wait for you to offer, but you don’t.

  ‘Thanks,’ you say instead. ‘I’m really looking forward to it. Just …’

  ‘Just what?’

  You grimace self-deprecatingly. ‘I bigged up my experience in customer service etc from running my gift shop – but I kind of left out the fact that it was well over a decade ago.’

  ‘So?’ I don’t know what you’re worried about. Surely anyone can sling a cup of tea and a slice of cake on a table, or add up the takings at the end of the day, can’t they? What qualification or evidence of recent experience would one need for that?

  ‘Well,’ you reply, and shrug defeatedly, ‘the thing is that Naomi didn’t ask for a CV but if she does … I’m not quite sure what I’ll give her.’

  I emit a short laugh. ‘I really don’t think you should worry about Naomi’s judgement. I should imagine she’s just pleased to have been able to recruit someone as amazing as you.’ I take another, very small, sip of coffee. ‘You know, Susannah, the thing about most women around here – and sorry to say it, but it is a woman’s kind of job – is that they don’t need to work. Or rather, if they do need or want to work, they already have a career, and if they don’t, it’s probably because they’ve got no intention or need of getting one.’

  I don’t want a job. But I need one desperately. I’ve got to pay the debt off somehow. They’ll be chasing me every second of every day until I do. Whilst I owe them, I’ll never be free of them. Giving them more money seems the best – the only way – to free myself of the continual terror I’m living in. I can’t get any more from Dan – he’s so generous in the amount he transfers into my account every month as it is. I have to dress exclusively in designer labels to justify what he gives me, so I shop on eBay and have parcels delivered to a PO Box address. Most of my ‘hobbies’ are fictitious, just an excuse for asking for more cash. I’ve done it all – yoga, reiki, life drawing … You name it, I’ve pretended to have an expensive obsession with it. Dressage was the most ridiculous one but nevertheless, Dan didn’t question it, didn’t bat an eyelid, just wrote the cheques. Believed me when I said I had to give up because of my knees.

  It’s deceitful, I know, and wrong, I’m sure. But what options do I have? If Dan knew what I’d done, the lies I’ve told, the secrets I’ve kept, the trouble I’ve got into … he’d never forgive me. And despite all his flaws – and hell, we’ve all got flaws, haven’t we? – he is my husband; we are committed to each other by our marriage vows. I do love him still, though it’s hard to remember that sometimes, through all the guilt and despair and the pretending. The pretending is the worst of it all. It’s doing my head in, as the children would say.

  They don’t mess around, these people. Back in Hong Kong – our second sojourn there – things went rapidly downhill. I got my fix by joining gatherings communicated only by untraceable phone messages and word of mouth. Remember, this is before the internet kicked in and changed everything forever. Back then, you had to take part for real; there was no online option that enables a distance to be kept between participants.

  For me, I think it was partly the thrill of the subversive that constantly garnered my enthusiasm and spurred me on, the addiction to breaking the rules, to stepping outside the cloying prison of the expat world into something so much grittier, earthier, more raw. Of rubbing shoulders with gangsters, criminals, the population of an underworld that people like me normally only ever see in the movies. It’s amazing the resources you can find within yourself, the things you do that you could never imagine, when you are in the grip of a passion.

  But one day I’d no way to pay. I’d maxed out my credit card, spent all my cash. The cigarette burn was only a small one. I managed to cover it up; Dan never noticed it. It was meant to be discreet. A warning. And it worked. I didn’t participate without sufficient funds again. Not until right at the end, anyway.

  By that time, it was out of control. The leeches can spot when the flesh is weak, when it will be easily punctured and bled dry. And that’s what they did. We left just before it all blew up. They only let me out because I said I was pregnant. I begged for more time to pay for the sake of my fictitious unborn child, swore on my existing children’s lives that I would.

  Sometimes I’m not sure if the worst thing is the deed itself, or the person it makes you become.

  So my immediate problem is that I need money and I can’t ask Dan for any more. Recently, I’ve been putting my hopes in my talent for photography. I’m going to write a book about foraging, a glossy, illustrated volume that will grace coffee tables across the land.

  How ridiculous is that? How unlikely that I’ll ever make a bean?

  They say hope springs eternal and that’s never been truer than right here, right now. Which is more absurd, the hope that I’ll get the money from somewhere or the hope that they won’t find me before I have?

  Even if the caller today wasn’t them but stupid Miriam, they still know where I go and follow me when I leave the house. I’m sure they do. I have a constant feeling of being watched, spied upon, studied. I see the black car everywhere, cruising along the streets, cool as you like. Sometimes it drives me crazy, sometimes to despair. I know they’re waiting for me to put a foot wrong, to make a mistake. To miss a payment again.

  If I told you, you’d probably say, ‘go to the police’, or ‘tell Dan, it’s always best to be honest’. But I can’t. If I tell the police, they’ll know immediately and that will be the end of me. The UK forces of law and order are hardly going to give me twenty-four-hour protection, are they?

  At that thought I instinctively look around me. It’s insane. The only window faces onto your enclosed backyard. It’s bleak and bare outside, nothing and no one in sight.

  I’ve put into Dan’s mind that my low mood is due to worrying about growing old, being past my sell-by-date. Everything in Dan’s world can be fixed by throwing money at it, and ageing is no exception. The cash he gives me for Botox and fillers is the only cash I actually spend as I say I do, because it would be impossible to take such large sums and then explain away a face that is still covered in wrinkles.

  Maybe that’s the solution, it occurs to me now. Plastic surgery, giving myself a new face and a new identity, like they do for people who turn in South American drug barons or Mafia bosses. But I’m not sure even that would put off those who are after me. They’re cleverer than that, and a whole lot more determined.

  They say someone’s past always catches up with them. But I’m sprinting like the wind to outrun mine.

  Chapter 16

  Susannah

  The time had to come and now it’s here: I’m out on my first forage. There’s a fresh breeze in the air that blows away the cobwebs and invigorates the blood, and I have to say that I actually feel really, genuinely, positively enthusiastic about being here, not to mention about my new life in the country in general. I’ve got a job, a friend, a fascinating hobby to participate in – it’s all a bit too good to be true. I stop myself there. This is a theme in my life and I’m not going to jinx my current happiness with thoughts of what’s gone wrong in the past.

  Instead, I look around me, taking in the bucolic surroundings, the silvery leaves of oaks and s
ycamores rippling in the wind. Behind them is a bank that drops precipitously down to a babbling brook that could have come straight out of child’s picture book. Although, somewhat marring the idyll is the rather incongruous form of Miriam, floundering at the water’s edge, clutching at a clump of some kind of plant life.

  ‘Now, let’s see what we’ve got here!’

  Her voice wafts up towards me as she pulls and tugs at various strands of greenery. She gave me a lecture on how important plant identification is when we were making the cordial and now is obviously time for the practical.

  ‘This is my secret spot of chickweed!’ she calls. ‘Quite rare down here in the south, much more common in Scotland.’

  She plucks a bunch of the plant that looks, from my perspective, identical to cow parsley.

  ‘Come on, dear, what’s the hold-up?’ she barks at me as I teeter on the brink of the bank. ‘I need you to get really close, so that you can make a positive identification on your own.’

  ‘Right,’ I reply, glancing down at my pristine tennis shoes. With a pang of regret, I register that they’re not going to stay that way for long. I shouldn’t have worn them but I don’t really have anything else; I didn’t have the kind of footwear in London that easily lends itself to mucking around in water-logged ditches. I can’t for a moment imagine why that is, I think, uttering an internal ironic laugh. And I haven’t bought anything new for months, not even a pair of wellies, though I can see now that this is something I definitely need to invest in.

  Slithering down to where Miriam is waiting, I catch sight of Charlotte. She’s busy selecting tender young dandelion leaves to make a salad. I’m eager to get some of those for myself; consulting the internet, I’ve discovered that they are far more nutritious than lettuce. No wonder rabbits are so healthy. I remember as a child spending hours collecting for my pet bunny, whom I had named Roberta, and enjoying watching her guzzle through a pile of greenery as big as she was. It had never occurred to me that humans could eat them and if I’d suggested such a thing to Marjorie, she’d probably have fainted in horror.