My Best Friend's Girl (10 page)

Next.

I wish I was a better person, could face this head-on, seize the day, seize the rest of my life. Embrace the idea of taking on a child. Del did it. When she’d found out she was pregnant she’d been shocked, of course, and had wailed about not being able to do it, but a few days later she’d accepted the reality, had obviously thought it through and decided she could do it. And she did it. Brilliantly. I’d thought it through, looked into the future, and all I could see were bleak times. Hardship. Sacrifice. Years and years of being responsible for someone else.

I was the woman who sometimes ate a bar of chocolate for dinner. The woman who was dreading going home because my flat was a mess. I’d left in a rush all those weeks ago, expecting to go back the next day. Meaning there were clothes everywhere, receipts and papers and magazines and cards and partially unwrapped birthday presents littering my bedroom and lounge floors. New types of mold growing in my fridge, if not on the worktops. Lightbulbs had probably blown. On top of that, a hundred and one things would have to change about my life so that I could slot Tegan into it. So that I could make her a new home.

Let’s not forget Tegan wasn’t talking to me. There’d be the two of us in a house of silence. Mum had suggested that I leave Tegan in London for a few days while I arranged everything back in Leeds. But no. Even if she didn’t fall apart at the idea of me not being around, I couldn’t do without her. She was the last connection I had to Adele and I needed to hold on to that link whether it was communicating with me or not.

Footsteps on the wood floor made me straighten up and quickly wipe tears from my eyes. Clearing my throat, I inhaled, scrabbling to re-create the serenity I’d been projecting for the past few days. Everyone thought I was being strong, that I was brave and undaunted; the reality was Kamryn Matika was faking it. I’d painted on this attitude and everyone in the vicinity had fallen for it. I pulled back my shoulders and straightened my back, another deep inhalation stroked more calm into my muscles.

I jumped slightly as a hand slipped into mine. I looked down at the hand, small, perfectly formed, surprisingly cold. They were chubby, pink fingers that I’d marveled at when she was born. I’d stared at them, amazed that even though she was hours old her hands looked as though she’d lived fifty years—they had wrinkles at the knuckles and creases on her palms, just like adult hands.

My eyes moved from Tegan’s hand to her face. She was looking up at me, her blond bunches hanging backward as she tipped her head right back. Her big blue eyes were fixed on me. I tried to smile at her as she studied me. She opened her mouth, licked her dry lips, then she spoke, her voice small and wavering as each word came out. “Are you my new mummy?”

I nodded. “Yes, sweetheart, I am.”

“double-promise for ever and ever, amen?”

chapter 12

W
hat do you think of your new home?” I asked Tegan.

She was sitting at the very center of my cream sofa, wearing a denim dress with a white T-shirt under it. The bruises on her arms had faded away now so she could wear short-sleeved tops without being self-conscious, and without my wanting to cry at what she’d been through. Tegan’s blond hair was in bunches, and she was clutching a rag doll called Meg she’d had since she was a year old. Meg had black wool hair, an orange face and body, big brown eyes surrounded by spiky eyelashes, and a navy blue dress. Meg’s hair was also in bunches secured by elastic bands.

“It smells,” Tegan replied honestly.

The girl on the sofa was right. My flat reeked of fish and the other rubbish from the bin, which, day after day, had been breaking down into their odorous parts as though resentful at having been neglected for the six weeks I had been in London. From the doorway I surveyed the room. The place seemed to have grown messier: papers and magazines littered the floor, an upturned shoe in the corner, post that I hadn’t finished opening on my birthday perched precariously on the arm of the sofa.

“Apart from the smell,” I said to Tegan, pushing the chaos and its resulting shame to the back of my mind.

Tegan’s face asked me if I was mad. How could she imagine something that was there not being there? That was like asking her to fly to the moon.

“Hang on,” I said. I left the living room, clambered over our bags that littered the long narrow corridor and entered the kitchen. I recoiled at the stench—it was so overpowering it could strip paint off walls, and the air above the trash area shimmered in the August heat.

Holding my breath I took the rubbish to the black wheelie bin outside, then returned to wash my hands in the bathroom. Another finger of shame needled me as I noticed the toothpaste spots on the sink taps and the dental floss stuck to the side of the basin. This messiness had to stop, I realized, as I dried my hands on the white hand towel. Now that there was someone else to consider, tidiness had to become a habit rather than a rare occurrence; I had to learn to be fastidiously neat, repeat the mantra “A place for everything and everything in its place” until it became as much a part of my life as brushing my teeth. I returned to the kitchen and opened the big sash window, letting in the heavy, windless air. The smell would soon disperse, the normal smells of a house would be restored.

On the sofa, Tegan was doing that thing she did so well—sitting still and silent. Waiting. Waiting for me to take the lead, to tell her what came next. The tragic part being I really didn’t know. I hadn’t worked it all out. Life had become a list of events I had to get through: identifying the body, the funeral, collecting Adele’s belongings, moving back to Leeds. One step at a time until the last thing on the list was crossed off. And here we were, in Leeds. That also meant the plan had stopped. I didn’t know what came next. Life, yes. But how?

“This will be your room,” I told Tegan.

She glanced down at the sofa then back up at me.
What are you talking about?
her expression said.

“We’ll take out the sofa, put it in the smelly kitchen. Except I’m hoping it won’t be smelly by then. We’ll get you a bed, you can have a telly. Not this telly, because it’s far too big, we’ll put that in the kitchen too. No, we’ll get you a small telly, and a video player so you can watch your videos and things. And we can paint the walls whatever color you like. I’m sorry, you can’t have wallpaper because it’ll end in tears—when I was little, my mum and my dad almost got divorced over wallpapering…” Tegan watched me as I rambled. “Anyway, you decide on the color, but only on a color you can live with for a long time, not a scary one that will give you nightmares. Not that I’m saying you’re not allowed to have nightmares, I just don’t want to do anything that will encourage them.

“Anyway, back to your room. Yeah, we can paint the walls, I’ll get you a rug or something because this laminate flooring, although it looks very nice, is pretty cold in the mornings. I’ll take out the desk, put that in my bedroom, it should fit in there. And we’ll use the kitchen as a living room as well as a kitchen. It’s big enough, thankfully. Does that sound all right to you?”

Tegan stared at me.

“Am I talking too fast?”

She squeezed up her nose and mouth and nodded, her bunches bouncing as she confirmed that I was a gabbling fool.

I exhaled deeply, plonked myself down beside her on the sofa. “Sorry,” I said. “I just want you to…” That sounded like I was putting pressure on her. Saying that if she didn’t feel instantly at home, she’d be wrong. She’d upset me. “Sorry,” I repeated although she didn’t know why I was apologizing.

We’d taken the train to Leeds this morning. My parents had offered to drive us up here but I’d said no. I wanted a clean break from London, for us to start as we were going to go on—just the two of us. “It’ll be easier all round if we get the train,” I’d said. “You can come and visit another time.” I’d hired a man with a van who had set off before us with Adele’s boxes, our biggest bags and everything else we couldn’t carry. The boxes were currently piled up in the communal hallway downstairs, awaiting a place in the flat. My flat had seemed huge two years ago when I moved in, but I had accumulated a lot of possessions: books, CDs, videos, DVDs, magazines, electrical equipment, knickknacks I wouldn’t be parted from, so now space was going to be an issue. I would have to find a place for the few possessions Adele had left behind. When I’d arrived at the storage facility, I’d been horrified that her unit was the smallest they had, and even then her ten boxes hadn’t made a dent in the space. Her whole life, her thirty-two years, had fit into ten boxes. Most of the ten boxes contained things she wanted me to pass on to Tegan. Adele had never been a hoarder, never accumulated knickknacks or keepsakes, and she made sure she didn’t take up any more room than necessary now that she was gone. Well, as gone as she could be. I had her ashes in one of my bags. I wasn’t going to scatter them; I’d have them buried near us so Tegan and I had somewhere to go if we wanted to lay flowers or visit her.

“I like the windows,” Tegan commented quietly. I’d been blessed not only with large rooms in my flat but also with six-foot-high sash windows in my bedroom and the kitchen, and two large windows in what was going to be Tegan’s room. They were gorgeous…But were they a potential danger?

Stop worrying,
I warned myself. Tegan had managed not to fall out of any windows so far, why would she start now?

“Thank you,” I replied. “I like the windows too. Listen, we need some food and some other bits like a new toothbrush, shampoo and stuff for you, so how about we go shopping? How does that sound?”

“I like that idea,” Tegan said in her small voice.

“You’re not tired from all the traveling?” We’d been in the flat only a few minutes but I wanted to get moving. Constant motion stopped me from thinking about how things could go wrong, what we’d lost, what this situation truly meant.

“No.” She smiled. “I’m not tired.”

“Well that’s just what I wanted to hear.”

Conspiracy. There was some kind of conspiracy.

A shampoo conspiracy. Who knew you could get so much shampoo?

I’d been up and down the aisles of the supermarket, looking for shampoo for Tegan’s hair, and discovered there was a lot of the stuff. Since I got my shampoo from the salon where I had my hair straightened every six weeks, I never went down these aisles—I never needed to know what types of shampoo there were out there for white hair. And how it related to a small white girl’s hair. Scanning the shelves, I’d noticed most of the bottles with their fancy names that I remembered from television adverts were for adults. They had ceramides and fruit oils and other things I knew nothing of. Would they be good for a child’s locks? In the hotel I’d just used the small bottles the cleaner left every morning, but I wasn’t sure if that was a good practice long-term. And my shampoo probably wasn’t good for Tegan’s hair. When we lived together, Adele often swiped my shampoo if she ran out, but that wasn’t that often. And Adele’s hair was curly and strong, it needed lots of moisturizing she told me. Tegan’s hair was bone straight, each strand fine and fragile, like delicate silk threads. I didn’t want to damage it, to replace the mane of silk threads with a bird’s nest of strawlike locks.

Why didn’t Adele tell me about things like this?
I thought, anxiety clawing at me. Was this the thing that was going to crack my veneer of calm? Not the funeral, not receiving the urn of Adele’s ashes, but the inability to find the right shampoo.

It wasn’t simply shampoo, though, it represented much more. How little I knew of my young charge. She had likes and dislikes that I hadn’t a clue about. Television shows she didn’t want to miss, others she could go the rest of her life without seeing. Food she was allergic to, others that she wouldn’t eat because she simply didn’t like them. Events and phrases that would cause her temper to flare. Products that were good for her hair. Tegan was a universe of thoughts, emotions, needs and wants that I had no access to.

I leaned against the shopping cart, visually ransacking the shelves for something that would do, each second that passed stoking the fires of insecurity inside me. “Do you remember which shampoo you used to use?” I asked Tegan, who was standing beside me, holding on to Meg. She looked up at me and shook her head.

How can this be so hard?
I asked myself.
It’s only shampoo
. It’s literally shampoo. I should just pick one and be done with it. But I wouldn’t just pick one for me. It had taken me years to find the right one for me, I should afford Tegan the same respect.
Get a grip, Matika, it’s only shampoo,
I intervened with myself.

From the corner of my eye I saw a supermarket helper approaching. She was younger than me, didn’t look as though she had children, but her straight hair was a similar shade of pale gold blond to Tegan’s. She might be able to give me some pointers. “Excuse me,” I said, stepping into her path.

Her small brown eyes remained unfriendly despite the smile she spread on her face as she asked, “Yes, madam?”

“I was wondering if you could help me? I’m trying to find the best shampoo for a child’s hair.” I indicated Tegan, who dutifully smiled at her. “I was wondering if you could tell me which is the best one?”

“Oh, um…” the woman began, turning to the shelves.

Before she could finish her reply a voice cut in, “Don’t you know?”

We looked to the source of the voice and a motherly woman, about forty, with a round body, dressed in a blouse and a flowery skirt was staring at us.

“Sorry, were you talking to me?” I asked.

“Yes. Don’t you know which shampoo you should be buying?”

What’s it to you?
I thought. “Erm, I’ve never bought it before,” I replied, trying to restrain myself from being out and out rude. I turned back to the supermarket helper, shutting the interloper out of the conversation.

“Why didn’t you ask your employer before you came out?” the woman continued.

I ignored her for a moment, then what she said filtered into my mind. I spun back to her. “Why would I ask a marketing director about children’s shampoo?” I asked with a frown.

“Her parents will obviously know what shampoo they use.”

Oh, it was suddenly clear: a black woman with a small white girl could only mean that I was staff; an au pair.
Do I look like an au pair?
I glanced down at myself: I was wearing baggy navy blue jeans, a red top that had cutaway sleeves and a slashed neck, black trainers, and on my back was a black leather rucksack. If you didn’t know me, you wouldn’t look at me and think I was a successful thirty-two-year-old national marketing manager, that was true. However, no one who looked at me would think I had the temperament to be a nanny. More than a few people had told me that I had a standoffish air about me, that friendliness wasn’t what they thought of when I came to mind. Who would
pay
me to look after their child? And, anyway, why couldn’t I be her parent? Why did this woman look at me and instantly think employee? I could be Tegan’s stepmother, for all she knew.

“Well, her parents don’t,” I said through tight lips. The supermarket helper sidled away, perhaps to get security in case things got physical, but probably because she didn’t want to be caught in the crossfire if we did start chucking bottles at each other.

“Where are her parents?” the woman asked, as though she fully expected me to spontaneously confess that I had snatched the child beside me.

“What’s it to you?” I asked calmly, although a rivulet of indignant venom ran through the words.

“What are you doing with that child?”

“If you must know,” I snapped, “she’s my child. I’m her parent.”

“You?”

“Yes, me.”

“Do her parents know you’re trying to pretend she’s your daughter?” The woman raised her voice, drawing attention to us. Other shoppers instantly tuned in, keeping up the pretense of looking at diapers, cotton wool, baby food and feeding bottles while keeping a close eye on us.

“I’m not pretending anything,” I hissed.

“Then what
are
you doing?” she said, just as loudly.

What am I doing? I’m struggling to deal with all this, is what I’m doing. I’m doing my best not to break down in tears because I can’t find the right shampoo. I’m just about managing to stop myself from opening a bottle of vodka every night and drinking until my best friend is alive again, my fiancé isn’t a cheat and I’m still living in London being regional marketing manager of the company I’ve given seven years of my life to.

Tegan tugged on my jeans just above the knee until I looked down at her.

“I like this one,” she said, holding a bottle of shampoo in a bright orange container up to me. I hadn’t even noticed she’d wandered away. I took the container and, aware that everyone down the aisle was watching me, took my time in reading the label. I wasn’t really taking in the words, wasn’t reading the ingredients, I simply wasn’t going to be intimidated. No one was going to make me run and hide, no matter how much I wanted to. I grinned down at Tegan who, surprisingly, smiled back up at me, before I dropped the shampoo into the shopping cart.