My Best Friend's Girl (9 page)

Then came the tears for what had happened to Tegan. I could’ve saved her from all that pain, all that violence, if I’d opened just one of Del’s letters. Every bruise and mark and welt on Tegan’s thin little body was scarred on my soul. I’d fought those tears when I first bathed her because I had to be strong, I had to hold it all together. Now, though, every ounce of strength was gone and all that was left was a big pool of sobbing.

I didn’t feel better. Each sob didn’t release pain, it brought more of it. More of the things I’d hidden from, had pushed away, pushed down, pushed behind me were cascading out in an embarrassing mess. Mess. I was making a mess. And I couldn’t stop.

Tegan was still asleep.

She’d hardly stirred in an hour and I’d had to stare hard at her chest several times to check that she was still breathing. She was so peaceful in sleep, probably the calmest she’d been since we’d got here.

I’d been lying next to her for what felt like an eternity. I didn’t want to wake her. If I woke her, I had to tell her. I had to let her know, and that was going to be…I didn’t know how I was going to do it.

I’d calmed down. I wasn’t calm, just
calmer,
no longer hysterical. I hadn’t realized until I started crying how unbalanced I’d felt, how I’d spent two years on the edge of hysteria, always wanting to let it out but unsure if I started if I’d be able to stop. Now I’d stemmed the flow of tears, had washed my face, had bathed my eyes in enough cold water to take away the redness and puffiness.

Tegan opened her eyes suddenly, making me jump. She always did that. She could be fast asleep then her blue eyes would be open and staring intently at you.

“Why are your eyes red?” she asked. So much for taking away the redness with cold water.

I brushed her hair off her forehead, exposing the soft white skin on her forehead.

“I’ve been crying,” I replied.

“Why?” she asked, tilting her head deeper into the pillow.

“I’m sad.”

“Why?”

I inhaled deeply, felt the tightness of emotion compressing my lungs. “I’m sad because of your mummy.”

“Mummy?” Tegan sat up. “Are we going to see Mummy today?”

I shook my head. “No, sweetie,” I said.

“I want to see Mummy.”

My jaw trembled as I watched the little girl with disheveled hair and creased pajamas who sat asking me with big confused eyes why I was keeping her mother from her.

“Tiga, when your mummy said you were going to live with me, where did she say she’d be?”

“In heaven with Jesus and the angels,” Tegan replied. Just like that. As though heaven was only around the corner, and Jesus and the angels could be found hanging out in the local park.

“Did she say why?”

“Because she was ill and Jesus and the angels would look after her.”

“I’m sorry, sweetie, your mummy’s gone to be with Jesus and the angels.”

Tegan shook her head. “No, she hasn’t. She’s in the hospital.”

“She was yesterday. But today she’s gone to heaven.”

“When is she coming back?”

“I’m sorry, Tiga, she’s not coming back.”

“I DON’T BELIEVE YOU!” Tegan shouted and I recoiled at the volume of her voice. She scrambled out from under the covers and leapt off the bed. “I don’t believe you. I want to see my mummy. I want to see my mummy.”

“I’m sorry, you can’t,” I said quietly.

“I want my mummy,” she screamed. “I want to see my mummy!”

I sat on the bed, frozen as Tegan stood in the middle of the floor, her pajamas hanging off her thin body, flinging her arms up and down and stamping her feet, screaming.

I didn’t know what to do. Try to hold her? Leave her to scream it out? Run away and hide? That was the strongest urge: to bury my face in the pillow, to cover my ears and wait for all of this to go away. I didn’t know what else to do. Nancy had offered to stay while I told Tegan but I’d said no, she’d done enough already, I couldn’t impose upon her anymore. Now I wished she had stayed. She would have known what to do.

I kept repeating that I was sorry but Tegan didn’t hear me. She just screamed and screamed, stamping her feet and flailing her arms about. On and on. “I WANT MY MUMMY, I WANT MY MUMMY, I WANT MY MUMMY, I WANT MY MUMMY.”

Trampling clothes and papers and other items littering the floor, I crossed the room to her.

“I WANT MY MUMMY, I WANT MY MUMMY, I WANT MY MUMMY, I WANT MY MUMMY.”

I slipped my arms around her even though she fought me, hit out with her tiny fists, each of them connecting with my body but not hurting.

“I WANT MY MUMMY, I WANT MY MUMMY, I WANT MY MUMMY, I WANT MY MUMMY.”

She bucked and twisted, as wild and vicious as a cornered animal, still screaming, but I held on to her until her rage subsided and she went limp in my arms—her head flopped onto my left biceps, finally exhausted from crying and yelling and begging for her mother.

“You’ve still got me,” I said, holding her close and gently stroking her back.

“Don’t want you,” she whispered in a tiny, hoarse voice,

“want my mummy.”

chapter 10

T
he handle to the door of my former bedroom turned and the door slowly opened. I watched as more of the corridor of my parents’ house came into view and Tegan stepped in. She was dressed in a calf-length, black satin dress with a full skirt, embroidered bodice and long sleeves that my mum had bought her. She had shiny black patent shoes on her feet and white socks that ended mid-calf. Mum had also tied black ribbons into the twin bunches in Tegan’s hair. The black was tragically striking against her whey-colored skin and pale gold hair, it brought out the dark strands of color in her royal blue eyes, gave her a regal air. Her beauty brought a lump to my throat instead of a smile to my lips because she wasn’t going to wow people at a party but was attending her mother’s funeral.

Since we didn’t need to be in town anymore, the day after Adele…the day after it happened, Tegan and I packed up and moved to my parents’ house in Ealing, the outskirts of west London. The plan was to return to Leeds a few days after the funeral. After today.

Tegan had reverted to the fearful silence that had shrouded her when I’d taken her from Guildford. This silence, however, was splintered with sadness and the worry of what would happen to her now; what she would do without her mum.

Despite not speaking to me, I always had to be in her sight and if I left her company for too long, she’d seek me out, apprehension smudged onto her face, until she could touch me. A brush of her short fingers on the back of my hand, a slight stroke of my hair, a nudge against my abdomen, just to make sure I was real. Solid. There. I’d find her sitting outside the bathroom if I went for a shower. The day I nipped down the road for a bottle of water and to make some calls, I’d returned to find her sitting beside the front door, clutching her knees to her chest, her eyes like two chips of dark sapphire on a snow plain as they stared into the distance. She’d curled her arms around my thigh and rested her head against it when I walked in, and I accepted that I couldn’t leave her alone again.

We slept in the same bed. If we were watching TV she’d climb into my lap, put her arms around me and rest her head against my chest; she’d often fall asleep like that. We were virtually inseparable. The silent duo, because I didn’t feel much like speaking either. My usual way for dealing with things was sleeping, and right now all I felt like doing was escaping into another realm, especially when I was arranging a funeral. A funeral for my best friend. For the woman I couldn’t remember saying a proper goodbye to. Every time I thought of that, my stomach would clench in on itself until it was a tight, solid ball of pain. I didn’t get to say goodbye. I couldn’t remember the last expression on her face—did she smile? Did I smile at her? When I’d looked at Adele in the hospital, I didn’t see the ill person; she was transformed into a cream-skinned, curly blond stunner with steel-blue eyes and a killer smile. Had I seen that smile before I left? I couldn’t remember. I couldn’t hold on to the image of her because I’d not been seeing Adele as she was, but simply a memory of the woman she used to be.

In the here and now, Tegan stood in the corner of the room, leaning her right shoulder against the wall, staring at me, waiting for me to finish getting ready. My dress wasn’t anywhere near as beautiful as hers—it was a simple, straight, ankle-skimming linen creation with a V-neck and short sleeves that I’d grabbed in a dash to Ealing Shopping Center. I hadn’t brought enough clothes with me for a long spell in London and I certainly hadn’t been prepared for a funeral.

“I like your dress,” I said to her.

Tegan said nothing, although her impassive blue eyes remained on me.

“And I like your hair bunches. My mum used to put my hair in bunches too. But I had three—two at the front, one at the back.”

Her eyes never left my face.

“I used to have different colored ribbons tied to each bunch. So did my sister, you know, Sheridan. My mum would plait them and then tie a ribbon around them. Remember how I used to plait your hair?”

Nothing. Her blue eyes watched me but her mouth didn’t move to reply.

I looked down at my shiny black shoes, trying to control the expression on my face. It was hard enough coping with everything else, and the funeral would be a nightmare, but it’d be a million times worse if Tegan continued her campaign of silence against me.

It wasn’t her fault, though. She didn’t know how else to be. What do you do when you’re five years old and your mother dies? And in her place is a strange woman who you haven’t seen in two years, claiming she’ll take care of you?

I stood, painting a smile on my face as I reached my full height. “What do you think of my dress?” I asked.

Her eyes roamed from my face to my feet, then back up to my face, but didn’t betray her thoughts, and since this question required more than a nod for an answer, she didn’t tell me what she thought.

“Do you like it?” I rephrased.

She nodded and turned the corners of her mouth up, nearly managing a smile. I almost wrapped her in my arms as a thank you for acknowledging me, for taking this small but significant step on our road back to verbal communication.

“It’s not as pretty as yours,” I stated.

The corners of Tegan’s mouth returned to a flatline but I remembered the twitch of her lips when she smiled at me. That would keep me going for a couple of hours. “OK, I’m ready, finally. Let’s go.”

chapter 11

Adele Brannon

(formerly Lucinda-Jayne Hamilton-Mackenzie)

died recently after a valiant battle with leukemia.

She is survived by her daughter, Tegan Brannon.

The funeral will be held on July 31, at 4 p.m.

St. Agnes’s Church, Ealing.

I
n the gray brick Catholic church Tegan sat motionless and impassive beside me, watching the people who stood in the pulpit, talking about her mother. I wasn’t sure she knew what was going on—I’d explained that a funeral was where you said goodbye to someone who’d died, but like everything I’d said to her since her cry in the hotel room, she’d given no sign of understanding what I was talking about. Nevertheless, now she was silent and still, as though she sensed the gravity of the occasion.

I, on the other hand, couldn’t, wouldn’t sit still. My body, hot and coated with a film of sweat under the black linen dress and matching jacket, wouldn’t stop fidgeting. The wooden pew beneath me, smoothed shiny by hundreds if not thousands of bums over the years, was unsuited to long periods of sitting, but even if it had been a comfy armchair, I wouldn’t have sat still. To sit still would be to agree with what had happened. I would be telling the world that I approved of Adele being taken away from us. That this dying business and the accompanying funeral were acceptable to me.

The church vibrated with the presence of hundreds of people.
Hundreds
. Hundreds of them had come to pay their last respects—Adele had thought she’d be lucky if enough people to make a football team turned up.

“I tell you, leukemia sure helps you find out who your friends are,” she’d said with her characteristic laugh. Her humor had stayed at the edge of the gallows in those last few days. Always saying things that only the terminally ill were allowed to get away with. I usually laughed, but some of the things Adele came out with horrified even me. “I don’t blame people for not coming to visit, though. Who wants to sit in a hospital room and be reminded of death?” she’d continued. “Besides, how do you react when you find out someone you vaguely know is knocking on heaven’s door? You can’t mourn them when you don’t know them, can you? And what do you say when you visit? ‘Sorry we didn’t get to know you, now it’s too late’?”

“Suppose,” I’d mumbled, eager to change the subject; desperate to stop her using the D word.

“One of my biggest regrets is that I don’t know that many people. I wish I’d made the effort to touch more lives.”

She had touched lives, I wish she’d known that. The church was filled to capacity, with two rows of people standing at the back. People did care and did remember; they had dusted off their black suits, black dresses, black skirts and tops and, like a steady stream of mournful ravens, had flocked to St. Agnes’s. I’d contacted only a couple of the places where Del worked, put notices in her local paper, another in a couple of the media trade magazines, and one on our university’s website. Word of mouth must have done the rest.

My whole family was here, even my older brother who lived and worked in Japan and hadn’t known Del that well had flown in for it. And my sister’s family had driven down from Manchester to be here. Nancy, Adele’s nurse, had come and brought her husband.

Adele’s father wasn’t there. Wasn’t there, didn’t want to be there, hadn’t even sent flowers. He didn’t care. That was the stark reality of it. Of all the things from the past few weeks, his reaction had caused me a disproportionate amount of hurt.

I’d rung Mr. Hamilton-Mackenzie to tell him what happened on the day Adele died, and after a long silence he’d said, “Thank you for letting me know.” He hadn’t asked about Tegan, hadn’t shouted about my raid on their home and I guessed it was the shock. His only child had died and it had shaken him in the same way it had me; had reminded him that he hadn’t seen her in the weeks before her death and now he’d never get the chance.

“I’ll let you know about the funeral arrangements,” I’d said and he thanked me again before hanging up.

A week later, three days ago, I called him again.

“Kamryn,” he’d said warmly when he answered the phone, “how are you?”

I’d been thrown; thought for a moment I’d dialed the wrong number. “As fine as can be expected in these circumstances,” I said cautiously.

I heard something catch in his voice as he said, “I know. I’m still coming to terms with this myself.”

“I’m calling about the funeral,” I said, the evil thoughts I’d had about him melting away like ice left out in the noonday sun. I was right, death had made him accept that he loved his daughter; he was going to redeem himself.

“The funeral, ah, yes.”

“It’s on Friday. I’ve done almost everything that Del couldn’t do herself…”

“Del?” he interjected, his voice stern.

“I mean Lucinda-Jayne. She made most of the arrangements with the undertaker—she wanted to be cremated—and I’ve sorted out the details. But if you want to add any readings or hymns let me know and we can work it out.”

Silence. I fancied I could hear him pulling himself together, trying to suppress the tears in his voice, trying not to fall apart before he could tell me what he wanted. “I won’t be attending. Neither my wife nor I will be attending.”

“Why?” rose up in my throat as a protest, but I stopped myself in time. This was why Del was always broken up after every phone call. Why every time she spoke to him she believed he might have changed, because he knew how to lure you in, to con you into thinking you were conversing with a decent person.

I took a deep breath. “OK,” I exhaled. I had no strength to argue with him, nor even to talk to him. What was there to say to this man? Was I meant to beg him to come to his own daughter’s funeral?

He had no idea how difficult the preceding week had been. That one of my many tasks was identifying Adele’s body. I hadn’t flinched in the morgue when I was asked to confirm that the person lying motionless in front of me was the woman who used to throw her head back and laugh; the friend who had once rugby-tackled me for the last packet of crisps in our flat; the girl who’d often be found adjusting her bra straps, fiddling with the top button of her jeans, rebuckling her belt, twisting her hair round her fingers while she grinned.

The person in front of me was lifeless. No expression on her pale gray face. Her lips were pressed together, her eyes closed, her hair nothing but thin blond wisps on her head. I’d stared at her, lying on a hospital trolley, serene and delicate.
Will she be cold if I touch her?
I wondered. Would she be as cold and fragile as she seemed? Because that’s what she looked like, frozen and frail, not at all like my friend.

No,
I’d almost said to the hospital official,
that isn’t Lucinda-Jayne Adele Hamilton-Mackenzie. And she isn’t Adele Brannon. And she certainly isn’t Del. That person isn’t anyone I know.

I’d done that. The first dead body I’d ever seen was of my best friend. Did Mr. Hamilton-Mackenzie think after that I could find it in me to beg him to come to his daughter’s funeral when I’d done something so devastating?

“It’s not right that I should have to bury another member of my family,” he said in a voice designed to break the heart of anyone who didn’t know how many times he’d put Adele in the hospital. “I buried her mother. Isn’t that enough? Haven’t I done enough?” He paused to swallow a couple of audible and expertly pitched sobs. “Lucinda-Jayne was the last of my family and I can’t say goodbye. You understand, don’t you, Kamryn? Don’t you?”

“What about Tegan?” I replied, my voice as even as a sheet of glass. “Isn’t your granddaughter a member of your family?”

He paused. The pause elongated itself into silence, which became a yawning chasm of arrogant righteousness: he was right and nothing would make him think otherwise, not even something as glaringly obvious as the truth.

“Goodbye,” I eventually stated, and hung up. That was it. The end. He’d never challenge me if I tried to adopt Tegan. He’d never try to get in touch and, while I was relieved and grateful, that was when the sadness had started to stab at me.
Why didn’t he love his child?
I found myself asking.
How could anyone not love their child? You might not like them all the time, but when they died
…

I slipped an arm around Tegan’s shoulders and pulled her toward me as a sudden need to remind her that I was there for her seized me. I held her to my body hoping I could transmit how much I cared about her through the closeness of our touch. She didn’t react, not even to resist, she sat still and silent.

I refocused on the priest, listening to his speech about life and death, and Adele. He hadn’t known my friend, he was repeating what I’d written for him. But he went beyond what I’d noted, he talked about the warmth he felt when he spoke to those who knew Adele. How wonderful a friend she must have been because so many people had traveled from all over the country to pay their last respects. He moved on to explain about her being a mother, saying how a parent would always want to live to see her child grow up, but he was sure that Adele’s daughter, Tegan, would be in good hands.

I wouldn’t count on it, mate,
I thought before I could stop myself. That would have made Adele laugh. “Trust you,” she’d have guffawed, “only you would think like that at my funeral.”

The final prayers were said, the final hymn sung. I got up with the rest of the congregation and turned to follow the four men—two of them my brothers—who picked up the oak coffin with its brass plaque declaring ADELE BRANNON, hoisted it on to their shoulders and began carrying it out of the church.

I tore my eyes away, couldn’t look, it didn’t seem real. Adele in a box. Adele not walking and talking. Gone. Instead, I cast my line of sight to the back of the church, away from the faces of people seated around me. I couldn’t make eye contact with any of these people and hold it together. If I saw even one teared-up face, I’d lose it. All the hurt I’d pushed down and away since I’d cried in the hotel corridor would come spewing out and I wouldn’t be able to contain it.

The doors at the back of the church were opened and suddenly it was summer again, hot and bright; the bleak winter of the funeral melting away as light was shed on the dark atmosphere inside. As I gathered my mind together, searching between the black suits for something to focus on, I saw him. His tall frame dressed in a black suit with a black shirt and tie, his grief-bleached skin, his agonized features, his softly spiked brown hair. I gasped, my body momentarily rigid with shock.

I craned forward, squinted to get a better look before he disappeared out of the doors. It was him. It was definitely him.

Nate.

There was a small service at the crematorium that only my family came to. Words were spoken that I didn’t hear. Slowly the box was pulled away from us, pulled away behind the heavy black curtain, disappearing inch by inch until all that was left were the black curtains swishing together.

It was over. I looked up at the funeral director who’d made it happen.
Do it again. Please, do it again.
I pleaded with my eyes.
I wasn’t ready. Please rewind so I can pay attention this time.
I’d stepped out of my body for a moment, and now she was gone. I bit my lower lip and didn’t move out of my seat as everyone filed out. Once I was alone—Tegan had gone with my mum and dad—I stepped out of the pew and stood in front of the curtain, where she’d disappeared.

A million thoughts were speeding through my mind, each leaving a burning groove where it ran. Adele. Tegan. Work. Heaven. Death. Life. Leukemia. Hotels. Nate.

I was ashamed to admit I’d been thinking about Nate.

What was he doing there? He was at a friend’s funeral. How did he know she was gone? He probably saw the notices in the trade press—he was a radio producer. Every question had an obvious answer. It hadn’t occurred to me that he’d turn up. What did it mean? Did it mean anything? Was he in love with her? But they both said it was just the once. And I’d assumed they hadn’t seen each other in the two years since I’d left them.

I’ll never know for sure, of course. Never find out what really went on…
What was wrong with me? Why was I thinking about this stuff? I should be thinking about Del. But Nate kept wrestling his way into my mind.

I could remember the last time I saw Nate more clearly than the last time I saw Del. I remember the silence with Nate. How he’d stared at me with haunted eyes as I walked out of the door. I’d been expecting everything to end with a fight but it was depressingly quiet. And slow. I always thought if you found out you’d been cheated on, had been cuckolded, that you’d want to lash out, but I hadn’t. It wasn’t in me. I’d walked out of our flat the day I collected my belongings, knowing it was the last time I’d see him, so I’d looked back to take in his unshaven chin, unwashed hair and sleep-deprived eyes. I listened to him say, “Don’t go,” then I walked out.

I had no grand finale with Adele, no curtain call or fade to black. It was another day, another goodbye. Another entry on the list of “see ya laters” we’d uttered to each other over the years. I’d wracked my brain and still I couldn’t remember what I’d said to her. Did I say goodbye? Did I hug her? Did I say the very disposable “see ya then?” I couldn’t remember and it was breaking my heart. I knew I didn’t have much time left with her, so why didn’t I take in every detail? Why didn’t I hang on to every second?

The ball of pain in my stomach contracted suddenly, as though an iron fist had been driven deep into the area below my solar plexus. I doubled over, clutching my stomach, trying to hold myself together.
How would I have said goodbye if I knew that was the last time I would see her?
I don’t know. I would have looked at her, I know that. Had I anyway? Did I turn around and look at her?
I can’t remember
. I could summon up the look of her from years ago—from college, from after college, from our working years, but not from just a week ago.

Nate. I was thinking about Nate too, because I didn’t want to think about what came next.