My work clothes look out of place among the short skirts and shiny shirts. And I realise I’m not part of this now. Jonny and I go to pubs. We talk. You tease me about it, Clara. You say I act like I’m middle-aged and I can’t have fun any more but that’s not true. Jonny and I are happy in each other’s company, we don’t need anything else. It’s the way
we
used to be, Clara.
I see Cantina Latina across the road from the Sea Life Centre, next to a fish and chip shop. As I approach I notice two bouncers, like fat bald pillars on either side of the door.
‘Evening,’ says the shorter of the two with a gold-tooth smile. He pulls the door open and I am inside.
The air is liquid. Sticky. It runs down my back, seeps into my pores. The change, from outside to in, is so sudden it sends me swimming. I try concentrating to steady myself but my eyes can’t hold on to anything. The room is a sea of blue and pink and green lanterns and fairy lights which nod in and out of focus. I reach for the nearest table to steady myself. I know you won’t leave me here with the two of them. But still, I want to turn round, go to your flat and drag you off your sick bed, just to be sure. The only thing that stops me is my bladder, which is ready to burst. And in the toilets, waiting for the two-at-a-time girls to come out and reapply their lip gloss, I give myself a talking-to.
She’ll come, she wouldn’t dare not turn up. Have a drink. Relax
. That’s what you always said wasn’t it? ‘Relax, Rachel.’ So I take your advice.
I’m waiting at the bar. There is no queue to speak of, more of a mob shouting to be served. I can feel the mass of a belly against my back, soft and wide. It pushes and jostles me and it has a voice which shouts above my head, ‘Becks, mate,’ to the barman, who is busy with someone else and doesn’t even look up. The voice tries again, this time louder, angrier. Then the shout stops and is replaced by a yelp not unlike a dog’s. The heel of one of my Louboutins has found its way on to a foot and is grinding down. It must be his. You told me I was mad to pay that much for them. I always knew they were worth the money. The barman looks and me and then to the guy behind me and I wink.
‘A peach Bellini, please.’
‘Happy hour finishes in –’ he looks to the clock above the bar – ‘in two minutes. You want two of those?’ The barman’s hair is not unlike a cloud around his head, thick and long and bouffant with curls.
‘It would be rude not to.’ I smile. The voice behind has started shouting again. I think he will miss happy hour. I think he knows it.
I take my Bellinis and move down the bar away from the crowds. I drain the first glass in minutes and wait for the alcohol to soften my edges. It does, quickly. I breathe. Deep. My shoulders sag, the tension in my head is released by degrees. I look around, my eyes seeking you out at tables, in dark corners of the room. I look to the door. I think I see your shape coming through it countless times only to realise it is someone else.
I’m trying to call you again when I’m interrupted by a voice so loud it reaches above the music and thunders across the room. All of a sudden I’m back at St Gregory’s and the same voice, powering across the school yard, makes me small. I look around again and see her and suddenly I am glad I came. Sarah Pitts, the prettiest girl in the school, has moved a few dress sizes in the wrong direction. I laugh to myself, remembering how she used to swear blind ice cream had no calories in it because it melts. If I’m honest it looks like someone has taken her old school face, pumped it up with a balloon and covered it in thick, orange make-up. Her bobbed hair is bottle-blond and ends abruptly at her jawline. ‘Ghosty’ she used to call me and told everyone you could see through my skin to my blue veins. Oh I remember that now and I’m smiling inside. I’m smiling inside and out.
‘Oh my God, Rachel, it’s you.’ She gives me a prod. ‘We’ve seen you on TV so much, and now you’re here. We couldn’t believe it was really you when we saw you, you looked nothing like you used to. You’re so polished these days and you are TINY, isn’t she Debs, how did you lose all that weight? I need some tips,’ she says and with her thumb and her index finger she pinches a roll of fat on her stomach to prove her point. I remember how that felt, the desire to be thin. Now we have swapped places.
Sarah doesn’t stop talking but I notice Debs is looking down at the floor refusing to make eye contact with me. My shoulders stiffen again. I am the one supposed to be here under duress, am I not? I don’t dwell on it though because Sarah pulls me towards her in an awkward embrace, burying my face in her neck. She smells of 1991. Calvin Klein Eternity. I am left thinking (with even more satisfaction) that she hasn’t come very far at all.
‘How do you do it? Standing up there every night on the TV in front of millions of people? So professional. I could never do that. Does someone tell you what to say? Or do you think of it all yourself?’ She doesn’t pause for breath. But her eyes are flitting about, she can’t hold eye contact for more than a second. I think she must be nervous. My job has elevated me in her eyes. I’m worth talking to now. She removes her pink coat and scarf to reveal a purple top which isn’t up to the job of containing her enormous boobs.
‘I wish someone did tell me what to say, it might make more sense,’ I laugh, surprised to find myself enjoying her attention. It seems the schoolgirl in me still wants to be liked. ‘I can’t get through to Clara,’ I add.
Her eyes dart towards Debbie, who is looking around the bar, and then she laughs, a forced, jangling laugh.
‘Scared to be all alone with us?’ She nudges me. ‘She’ll be here, trust me. At least now we get to pump you for gossip about her new man.’
Something catches in my throat, a bubble from the champagne, or maybe it’s Debbie’s perfume. Whatever it is, it brings on a cough. ‘Come on, let’s sit down and you can tell us all about him,’ Sarah says.
A waiter leads us through the crowds to the darker part of the bar. His orange shirt is unbuttoned revealing a tuft of hair on his olive chest. The dress policy for staff, I note, is to wear as little as possible. He sits us at a table with tea lights which illuminate Sarah’s and Debbie’s faces in a ghoulish glow. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.
‘To old friends,’ Sarah says once we are seated. She chinks my glass first then Debbie’s like she’s been practising it.
‘To old friends,’ I repeat, and I look towards the door again but there is no sign of you.
‘He’s probably the one she told me about a few weeks ago, I don’t think she’s that serious about him,’ I say.
It’s a bluff, Clara, as you know, because you haven’t told me anything about a new man in your life. I’m not angry though, just surprised and a little bit embarrassed because they expect me to know everything about you. We’re so close we’re almost the same person, that’s what they think.
‘I doubt that’s true.’ The voice is quieter, an octave higher than Sarah’s, unpunctuated by laughter. It is the first time Debbie has spoken. There is a smugness running through her words. I look at her properly for the first time. She is smaller than I remember, thin and bony next to Sarah’s girth. Her mousy hair is cut in a crop. Too severe. And her eyes look like the lights have gone out. I’m willing to bet Debbie’s life so far hasn’t been all she hoped for.
‘She’s really into this bloke. I think he’s married or something, maybe she didn’t want you to know, maybe she doesn’t tell you everything after all,’ she says.
The tone is the verbal equivalent of her sticking her tongue out at me and the child in me wants to stick mine out at her. I don’t, of course. To be honest, I feel sorry for her, the way she is trying to intimidate me, unaware that she doesn’t hold that power any more. She fixes me with her eyes and I notice they have little specks of orange at their centre, like pools of fire. I don’t blink. Debbie doesn’t like me even after all these years. I shouldn’t care but I do. I smile. The challenge of winning her over is too much to resist.
‘You could be right,’ I say.
‘Well, we all change don’t we, Rachel,’ Sarah is giggling again, ‘and Clara was away for so long? Was it five years?’ Sarah asks.
‘Seven,’ I say. And I wonder how much you’ve told her. What gaps you’ve left in your story. ‘She was away for seven years. It’s been hard for her, her dad dying and then adjusting to life here again. Mind you, a few more weekends like the last one will put a smile back on her face.’
Debbie and Sarah look at each other and then back at me and cackle in unison. I detect a crack in the ice; it is thawing. ‘It was a hoot,’ Sarah says. ‘Clara is so funny, she completely cracks me up. Don’t you think, Rachel?’
‘Oh God, you don’t have to tell me. Can you remember that home economics teacher … what was her name?’
‘Mrs Glass,’ Debbie says.
‘Yes, Mrs Glass,’ I say, ‘the one with a lisp. Well, Clara is so good with accents and ripping people off, she had her down to a T. She used to creep up behind me and holler in her Mrs Glass voice and scare the life out of me.’
Sarah has to swallow her drink quickly before she spits it out. ‘Ah, you can laugh about it now,’ I say. ‘At the time she used to make me go dizzy with the giggles. I couldn’t stop and Mrs Glass would be saying, “Rachel, stop laughing this instant or I’ll throw you out,” and that would make me laugh even more. No wonder I always burnt my soufflé.’
I think back to those days, to what we shared, Clara. I had none of your natural timing but God, did I work hard to please you. Did you ever realise that? Those moments when I’d make you giggle or smile, or the ones where I’d do something funny and you’d pat me on the back and say, ‘That’s why I love you Rachel,’ they were my proudest times because it made me believe our friendship was equal. Your laughter was like a drug, you see. It boosted and bolstered me, made me feel strong. I’d have done anything to hear it again and again and again.
I think Sarah may be drunk or at least well on her way because her words are coming more slowly now and when she speaks her eyes look at me rather than darting around.
‘I mean, Rachel … and don’t take this the wrong way, but at school you two were so close nobody else could get near you. Joined at the bloody hip. It seemed a bit, oh God, I don’t know what the word is … dense, no, intense, that’s it,’ she says.
Intense is not a word I thought Sarah would use but I run it through my head, against my checklist of memories. I think it just about sums us up.
‘What you’re really trying to say is you thought we were weird.’ My laugh permits them to do the same.
‘Well I wouldn’t go that far,’ Sarah says smiling and showing the dimples in her cheeks. ‘OK, maybe weirdly close.’
‘It’s all right, I get it. It must have seemed a bit odd from the outside but we just clicked,’ I say. ‘I felt like I’d met her before, like we were supposed to be friends.’ I pause and then bang the table. ‘God, would you listen to me, I’ve gone all Mills & Boon.’
It was true though, even then we knew that what we had was a rare thing, something special to cling to. We were two missing pieces of a puzzle.
I watch Sarah laugh, listening as she talks and talks and talks. Now that she is in her stride I realise that she must have been as wary of me as I was of her though I’m not sure why. I don’t bite.
As she talks I watch the door for you and I lose count of how many times I check my phone or search the room for your face. I can’t understand why you wouldn’t call or pick up your phone. I wonder if it’s your idea of a practical joke, to make me suffer a night with them. Well come and see me now, Clara – I’m not so stuck up after all. I can get along with anyone just as easily as you can.
We drain the endless jugs of orange/red summer-afternoon cocktails the waiters bring us. The alcohol smoothes me out, soothes me, and I reach a point where I surrender to the evening and soak up the gossip about people from school, who’s had four kids by different fathers, who’s going bald, who got rich. Even Debbie seems to have thawed. Only when the pink and orange and green lanterns on the tables merge into a kaleidoscope of colour do I get up to go.
‘No way,’ Sarah is looking at her watch, ‘you can’t.’ I am surprised by the strength of her grip. Maybe she sees my surprise because it loosens. ‘I mean it’s only ten o’clock, Clara promised us she would be here. Don’t you need to wait for her?’ I am aware that I am being moved towards the stairs and a basement I didn’t know existed.
‘Come on, we haven’t even had a boogie yet.’
Before I know it we are in the bowels of the building where the ceilings are too low and the bass is so loud it vibrates through my throat.
‘Get this down you.’ It is Debbie, who has returned from the bar. She hands me a shot glass, standing over me as if she expects me to throw it into the yucca plant next to us. So I do as I’m told and down it. Tequila. I gag as it hits the back of my throat. It tastes of teenage Friday nights and sends flames burning through my body. I’d like to sit down, to find somewhere to close my eyes, but I’m dragged on to the dance floor where Beyoncé is playing and Sarah and Debbie are moving their hips and waving their arms. My legs seem to be moving so I go with it for I don’t know how long, until they give up on me, and I give up on the night. And give up on you.
Sarah tries to persuade me to stay but it is half-hearted this time. ‘I don’t know what’s happened to Clara,’ she slurs.
‘Neither do I, but I’m sure I’ll find out. I’m supposed to be staying with her.’ I am putting my coat on, buttoning up for the cold outside.
‘Tell her to call me,’ she says, holding an imaginary phone to her ear. Her feet are struggling to hold up the weight of her body. ‘And let’s do this again.’ She gives me a kiss of lemons and tequila.
Outside I smell the sea. There is cold and salt in the air. I call you again and when you don’t answer I walk along the seafront to buy some chips from the blue-and-white café, just like we used to. All the chairs are on the table, bar one where a teenage couple are sitting holding hands, nuzzling into each other, eyes droopy from a night’s drinking. The guy serving is not much older than them. I can’t imagine he has a girlfriend. His skin is pockmarked and little whiteheads have erupted over his face. It’s not his fault, I know, but it’s not what you want to see when you’re about to eat. I try to order without looking at him too much, though I’m careful to make sure his hands don’t touch my chips. After I pay I take them outside and sit on a bench where the winds are fierce and sobering. I stay there until my fingers begin to hurt with cold and get up, putting my gloves on and pulling my scarf tight around me. I’ve only taken a few steps when I notice a guy on the next bench down, a dog, a sleeping bag and a can of Carlsberg for company. His shoes are worn, his hair grey and matted. I can’t put an age on him; he could be sixty or much younger. He could be old enough to be my father, I think, and then remember I don’t know how old my father is, or whether he is still alive. A sadness takes hold of me. In my bag I feel for my wallet. There are two twenty-pound notes left. I pull one out and clear my throat so he knows I’m there. He looks up and I hand it to him then carry on walking. I’m a few paces away when he realises what I’ve given him and he shouts out loud against the wind, ‘God bless you.’ I raise my hand in the air to wave but I don’t look back.