Her Closest Friend (ARC) Read online

  ‘Do you know her?’

  Now I was confused. ‘Know who?’

  ‘The woman he’s been sleeping with,’ she whispered, her eyes watering.

  ‘What?’ I gasped, looking over my shoulder briefly. This was not what Charlie had told me about Adam. I dropped my voice. ‘I didn’t know anything about that. Are you serious? There’s another woman?’

  ‘She’s that young stylist he’s worked with on a few trips recently.’

  ‘On that job in Spain?’

  ‘That’s it.’

  ‘I swear I didn’t know. Charlie only told me that Adam was unhappy, and he’d asked him if he knew anyone with a flat in London to rent.’

  Sophie’s face crumpled, and she stifled a sob behind her hand, ‘Apparently, he’s in love with her.’ Her tears splashed straight into the sink.

  I wrapped my arm around her shoulder, smelling that familiar musty tang of incense in her hair, feeling protective and full of hate towards this young stylist. As I thought about what Sophie faced now, I feared for her. Deep down, she still loved Adam, in spite of how challenging their marriage had been recently. I imagined she might unravel without him. The terrible burden of responsibility hit me. Twelve years ago, Adam had taken her off my hands, supported her and looked after her, for better and for worse, and now he was abandoning her. She would be untethered.

  ‘What am I going to do, Naomi?’ she asked, begging me for help.

  Guilt tumbled into my heart. Everything I had felt grateful for earlier had been a lucky throw of the dice. It seemed I had too much, while Sophie’s life was about to fall apart.

  ‘It’s going to be okay,’ I soothed, feeling that it wasn’t.

  ‘Maybe it’s just a midlife crisis,’ she added, under her breath.

  ‘It must be. He loves you. You’re beautiful and gorgeous and lovely in every way.’ I gave her hand a squeeze. ‘I’m here for you, don’t worry. You’re not on your own, okay?’

  Sophie’s future spread out before me like a burnt-to-nothing dystopian landscape. The here-and-now became brittle, ready to disintegrate. If she suffered, I would – more. Every happy twist in my life would become a twist of unhappiness in hers. I couldn’t be content, I couldn’t be still, I couldn’t press the slow motion button unless I knew Sophie was happy. We were interlocked, like fingers holding hands; her needs were mine and mine were hers. It had always been the same.

  I resolved to do everything in my power as her friend to help her through this. I would prioritise her and step in as her support, as I had done many times in the past, as she had done for me. That’s what best friends are for.

  Chapter Two

  At the window, Sophie rolled the focus rings of her binoculars, watching Naomi and her family trudge away through the snow, fearing, as always – somewhat illogically – that it might be the last time she saw her.

  Their snow clothes were matching, in navy blue. They were a close unit, an amorphous mass of love, walking side by side, hand in hand.

  Sophie picked Naomi out, training the lenses on her, getting glimpses of her dimpled smile and full cheeks and spring of blonde curls as she turned her head every which way. Her small, bright eyes were darting about, checking her girls were safe, perhaps; her hands were jammed in her pockets, probably fiddling around with some trinket of Izzy or Diana’s left there. Her thoughts would be about others. About Sophie and Adam’s troubles.

  As Sophie studied her, she imagined she was making upbeat suggestions to Charlie about how to solve the problem of Sophie and Adam. ‘She should tidy that house, for starters!’ ‘And make sure Dylan sleeps in his own bed!’ ‘They should definitely move into the cottage!’ As though she knew better. Positivity and optimism came easily to Naomi. The thought of her do-gooding chatter provoked a stab of anger. Sophie changed her mind about her lines of dialogue, and imagined her making crude, sexually explicit suggestions to Charlie. It gave Sophie a much-needed laugh.

  She replaced the binoculars behind the line of cacti, holding on to the pretty images of her friend in her mind. Her fingers brushed over the tips of her arid pot plants. Some spines were left in her skin. Enjoying the prickles of pain, she plucked them out and mulled over the authenticity of Naomi’s promise to love and support her now that Adam was leaving, sceptical that she had been ignorant about Adam’s affair. Neither was she wholly convinced by Adam’s declaration of love for this stylist woman. None of it rang true. She wasn’t sure anyone was saying what they really meant.

  ‘Adam?’ Sophie called out to him in the galley.

  Upstairs, in the galley office, Adam was sitting at his computer, ignoring her. She hoped that he was regretting his ill-timed confession as he moped at his screen, editing photographs from his latest shoots. She did not like to think that he might be emailing the stylist woman, looking online at rentals in London, wishing he could be with her, longing to be rid of this life with Sophie. Her insides twisted. He said he would stay until he had found somewhere suitable to live. She was no longer the focus of his love. It was unbelievable. Shocking even, like a blow to the head.

  ‘Adam!’ she bellowed.

  Still no reply.

  ‘Dylan, will you tell your dad that I’m just going over to Grandad’s?’ Sophie said.

  Dylan, who was engrossed in a film on the television, nose to screen, did not reply. She felt invisible, worthless to them both. But her son’s white-haired beauty struck her down, as it did every time she looked at him, and she forgave him in a way she would never forgive Adam. Before she put her boots on to go out, Sophie covered Dylan with kisses, aggressively demanding his love, overwhelmed, smothered, suffocated by a cloying, desperate, almost edible adoration for him.

  ‘Get off, Mum!’ he cried.

  She laughed at Dylan and then, to Adam, she mumbled scornfully, ‘Bye, Adam!’

  As she was closing the door, Adam piped up. ‘Sophie?’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘You’re not going out, are you?’

  He still cared? She could climb the steps to him, rest a cup of tea by his hand, sit on his lap, become his beautiful distraction again. Change the course of today. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.

  ‘I’m popping over to Grandad’s. Dylan’s pie will be ready in ten minutes. Don’t forget the peas.’

  ‘For fuck’s sake,’ he hissed.

  ‘You can’t handle taking the peas out of the freezer on your own?’ she said, darting outside into the cold, too rapidly to hear his retaliation.

  She crunched across the snowy drive into her grandfather’s cottage, pulling her coat collar up, stewing about Adam, looking forward to some wisdom and advice from a real man, who would never lie to her.

  ‘Hi Deda!’

  She slammed the door, which would wake him up if he was snoozing. The snow from her boots melted into a damp patch by the door and she padded into his kitchen in her socks.

  ‘The usual?’ she shouted through, twirling the duster around the glasses and plates on the shelf, spraying the bleach cleaner and rubbing away the grime.

  ‘Yes, Sophia!’

  His bottle of vodka and their two special tumblers were there, as always, in the right-hand cupboard next to the teabags. In her grandfather’s eyes, vodka was no different to tea.

  She checked in the fridge for his meat pasties. There was one left. Sophie sliced it in half and resolved to make some more for him later.

  The glasses rattled on the melamine tray as she brought them through.

  As always, he sat there in his winged chair, clean shirt, brown trousers, a paperback resting on the arm.

  Sophie kissed his bare, liver-spotted head, turned the lamp on and drew the curtains closed. The room was cold. She turned up the bar heater in the fireplace.

  ‘I must have nodded off,’ he said, as though this were a surprise. ‘Thank you,’ he said, taking the glass she handed him.

  His nose stretched as wide as his moustache when he smiled, either side of which there were grooves as deep
as crevasses. Underneath the untrimmed mass of eyebrow hair, Sophie could see that the shine in his eyes was still there. Every day, she looked for it.

  She pulled the stool close to his slippers and tapped the top of her glass with his. The warm liquid stung her throat, but soothed her mind. If the whole world, and all its ills, had melted away around her while she sat with her Dedushka, eating meat pasties and drinking vodka, she would not have cared.

  ‘Did Dylan have a good birthday party?’

  ‘Wonderful. I made Medovik, and we danced and sang. We missed you.’

  ‘You look so pale.’

  ‘I had some bad news today.’

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘Adam wants to leave us.’

  Dedushka leant forward and screwed up his eyes. ‘Why, my Sophia?’

  ‘He is in love with someone else.’

  ‘A man?’

  Sophie laughed. ‘No. Not a man, Deda.’

  ‘You never know these days. He has long hair like a girl.’

  ‘She’s not pretty. I don’t know why he wants her and not me.’

  She had looked up the stylist woman, Natalie, on her Instagram page. Or was she a girl? A girl-woman, whose body was exposed regularly in her Instagram posts, with her large hips and flat chest. She was no beauty. And Sophie wondered if it would have been easier if she had been. What man could resist a young, beautiful woman? Of course he would stray! But Natalie was plain and dull, judging from her posts: a photograph of her manicured wonky toes against a backdrop of a white, sandy beach; a series of selfies of her dull outfits in front of a mirror; a black Labrador running through the snow. Yawn. Yawn. Yawn.

  Yet, Sophie had been gripped by her. Gripped by the concept of Adam’s love for her. Their relationship lurked in an alternate universe to the one Sophie and Adam had shared together for twelve years. She seemed to have that undefinable quality that men fell for, that marriageable ordinariness – or was it safeness? – that Naomi certainly had, that Sophie did not. Marriage had not suited Sophie. Their chaotic, last-minute wedding day in Marylebone register office had been their first mistake. Even then, she had known it, having forced the event, wanting to get married before Naomi, who had recently said ‘yes’ to Charlie’s proposal. When Naomi, as Sophie’s maid of honour, had stood next to Sophie in front of the registrar, Sophie remembered feeling like an impostor bride in her white trouser suit. In her mind, Naomi had been the real bride.

  ‘Boff!’ Deda raised his hands, spilling his drink. ‘He’s a pig.’

  ‘I have not been very nice to him.’

  ‘You are always nice.’

  ‘He thinks I’ve given up.’

  ‘He likes to tell you what is wrong with you.’

  ‘And maybe he’s right.’

  ‘Do you love him?’

  Before Dylan had been born, before she had known how far love could take her, Sophie had loved Adam. Over the years, that love seemed to have been usurped by need. Needing Adam, as she did now, felt like the nasty cousin of true love. It was an impoverished form of love, leaving her vulnerable and unequal. She needed him to tell her she was more beautiful than any other woman; she needed him to pay the bills. She needed him to quell her paranoia; she needed him to share the school run. She needed him to satiate her in bed; she needed him to fix the shower curtain. She needed him, and she resented that need.

  Perhaps this need of hers was where it had gone wrong between them. Perhaps this was why he had fallen for another woman, who wanted him more than Sophie did.

  ‘I don’t cook for him any more.’

  ‘You cook the best piroshki I ever tasted! Better than Baba. Shhh, but don’t tell her I said it.’ He put his hands together in prayer and looked to his small gold triptych of Jesus on the narrow inglenook mantel. He looked back at Sophie. ‘Do you love him?’ he repeated.

  ‘I’m not surprised he doesn’t love me any more. Look at me.’

  ‘Golden sunlight,’ he said, reaching to stroke his fingers through her straggles, which reached her waist. He pinched her chin. ‘But you’re skin and bone, just like Suzanne.’

  Sophie picked at her nail varnish. ‘I don’t want to be like her.’

  ‘You’re stubborn like her, Sophia. Don’t be stubborn. If you love Adam, you have to fight for him.’

  ‘I wish I was more like Naomi,’ she sulked. ‘If I was more like her, this would never be happening to me.’

  He clicked his tongue and grabbed both her knees, squeezing them, his soft face close to hers. ‘If only she knew what you’d done for her…’

  The shot glass paused at her lips. She looked hard into her grandfather’s eyes.

  ‘She can never know,’ she replied firmly. She did not like to feel angry with her grandfather.

  He sat back. ‘Do you want to be alone, like me?’

  ‘Naomi will always be there for me.’

  ‘Okay, Sophia. But I remind you of one thing, for your own good. If you tell her, the bond will be like this,’ he said, interlocking his fingers and tugging at them to show its strength.

  Sophie stood and kissed his hands. ‘I love you. But I know what’s best. I’ll leave you to read now.’

  ‘Don’t forget to check on the car.’

  ‘Tonight?’

  ‘Yes. Tonight. It’s important.’

  ‘Okay, Deda,’ she sighed.

  * * *

  Outside, the stars had come out and the trees were frozen solid like sculptures. Her nerves were frayed. She was shaken by her grandfather’s advice. It spread through her mind like a crack in ice as she made her way out to the garage, which was a purpose-built, single-storey brick outbuilding a foot away from the cottage. In the absence of outdoor lighting, she had to feel her way along the bumped stucco frontage of the cottage, past the low, peeling windowsills, careful not to trip on overgrown weeds as she crossed the path that separated the two buildings. She would then trail her fingers along the red corrugated garage door, to the huge rhododendron bush that hugged its outer side wall, around which she would step cautiously, missing old bricks and debris, to reach the far side door, which was locked and heavy. It made an almighty noise as she opened it.

  The reek of petrol and damp clogged her lungs. The button of her coat sleeve caught on a hook, where her grandfather’s leather tool belt hung. It wasn’t this that stopped her in her tracks. It was the car, whose lines and shine sent a tingle of fear down her spine.

  This beauty, this feat of design, this blue Alfa Romeo Giulia 1967 1300 ti had provided the happiest and the saddest days of her life, and friendship with Naomi. Her grandfather had insisted she see it tonight to reinforce his point, to remind her of what she had hidden from Naomi. In this dark garage, the secrets of that one night, of a terrible accident many years ago, loomed large.

  She reached in through the wound-down window to touch the elegant Bakelite steering wheel and brush her hand over the black wind-pressed vinyl seats.

  The gap between the walls and the car was narrow, through which she edged to the workbench at the back to click on the metal lamp and find a cloth.

  The smell of the chamois leather brought her right back to that night. She blinked and coughed the memories away.

  Focusing her mind on the task at hand, she began rubbing at the top left of the windscreen, her fingers slipping across where the dent had been, shivering as though she had touched an old scar. Round and round in circles she moved over the same spot, wiping away the dirt, wiping away the worst of its history, moving systematically around its panels and across its small triangle sticker logo. The ritual made her tearful.

  As a young girl, years before her grandfather had given it to her, she had dreamt of owning the car. She had admired his knowledge of its inner workings as he tinkered with it; his alone time, man and machine. When she asked him if she could learn, he had thrown an oily cloth at her and said, ‘Mechanics is a dirty business, Sophia,’ and he had ordered her to polish the bodywork. ‘You make it look pretty,’ he had said. But
he should have taken the time to show her how to fix its broken parts. If he had, she would never have been forced to involve him in that night.

  The workbench remained as organised as it had been when she was younger, crowded with pots of useless gadgets, tools and paraphernalia: old AA batteries, snags of rope, masking tape and junk. One of the pots was crammed with used toothbrushes. She took one, returned to the car and began rubbing at the crevices and hard-to-reach places, wanting to make sure it was spotless.

  Lingering forever was the worry that a tiny remnant of its paint had been found at the accident scene; that there had been a witness who had spotted the car; that the investigation had been extended; that a search for an Alfa Romeo had been carried out; that an officer from the Devon and Cornwall police had logged a number plate or description into a system late one night in the summer of 1999. That one day, the Automatic Number Plate Recognition system would pick up on its registration and the police would haul Sophie and Naomi in for questioning. All scenarios were possible, though many years had passed, and all of them she still feared.

  To clean the back bumper, she needed the torch. She popped open the boot, where she kept it, and gasped when she saw what was inside. There was a neat line of cuddly toys under a blanket, where Dylan had left them. Her son’s innocent play was out of place in this dark space, and she scooped up the panda and giraffe and teddy bear and hugged them to her. They provided comfort. She slammed the boot down, leaving the torch inside, finished with her cleaning for today.

  The car was her past. It was dormant. It gathered no new memories behind the garage door, which had been stuck closed for many years. She could never drive it. She could never get rid of it. She could never sell it. It was a secret that she would continue to keep well hidden. She would shine up the paintwork, turn the engine over regularly, keep it alive, prevent the rust; wipe the slate clean, over and over again. She was accustomed to the sense of loneliness that came with the job. Dragging Naomi into this, as she had been forced to do with Deda, would be a problem doubled rather than halved. To hold Naomi close, she did not need Deda’s tactics. Protecting her was more important. It was Sophie’s way of being the best friend Naomi could ever wish for.