Her Closest Friend (ARC) Read online

  Chapter Three

  A text pinged through from Sophie:

  Running a bit late. Dylan’s being a nightmare. He won’t go to sleep. What time are the others arriving? Sx

  I typed back:

  Not until 8.30. We’ll be okay. See you in a bit. Nx

  I groaned and took my coat off, already regretting my invite to Sophie. The pads of my fingers hit the table, tapping, unsettled, the beat of an unknown tune. Harley jumped up onto my lap and stared right at me, making me smile. He seemed to have picked up on my frustration with Sophie. I had put a huge amount of effort into the organisation of this wine-tasting event and I did not want her to ruin it. There seemed to be more at stake when the attendees were friends, rather than clients.

  After a reassuring scratch behind Harley’s ear and a kiss into his soft black curls, he jumped down.

  ‘What’s up?’ Charlie asked, as though talking for Harley.

  ‘Sophie’s going to be late.’

  ‘I’m sure the pub has taken care of everything.’

  ‘I hope so.’

  Charlie chopped a lime in half on the big wooden chopping board. Behind his tortoiseshell glasses, his eyes were not sparkly or bright like the lime, but certain and focused like a calm British sea. And his distinguished grey hair, which had been prematurely grey ever since I had known him, gave the impression he could be the grown-up for both of us. How I wished I could stay at home with him tonight, curled up on the sofa with Harley at my feet.

  ‘She might bail entirely if Dylan’s playing up,’ I sighed, remembering the countless times she had done this before.

  ‘She’s probably singing “Moonlight” to him in full costume while he plays Nintendo under the covers,’ he teased, dumping the ice cubes into the gin and splashing in a dash of Angostura bitters.

  ‘Stop it, Charlie,’ I chided, putting my hands in my pockets to cease the tapping. ‘Be kind. She’s going through so much right now because of that prat. I really don’t know what his problem is.’

  ‘Being married to Sophie?’ he mumbled, rattling the ice cubes in his drink.

  ‘That’s not fair,’ I said defensively.

  When I had first met Sophie, she had been dragging a large, old-fashioned suitcase down the hall.

  The latch broke and a whole jumble sale of clothes and random objects exploded out onto the floor. I rushed to the girl’s aid, gathering up some of her clothes, including three oversized plastic sunflowers, a wind-up radio and a dog-eared copy of Lolita.

  She laughed when I handed her the plastic flowers. I felt parochial and intimidated by her. And desperately self-conscious of my chubby cheeks and unruly frizz of hair.

  ‘I’ve brought these flowers, but I’ve probably forgotten my toothbrush!’

  Everything about Sophie was just how I had imagined the perfect university friend should be. Interesting and eccentric – a little odd, perhaps – so different to the friends I had left behind in Dedham, who had been well brought-up and rather safe, like me.

  ‘They’re pretty.’

  Then I picked up the Nabokov and gave it back to her.

  ‘Have you read it?’ she asked me.

  ‘No,’ I replied, feeling ignorant.

  ‘You must. It’s just such a headfuck. I’m obsessed. I’ve read it dozens of times. Read it. Let me know what you think.’

  ‘Oh, no, it’s yours, I couldn’t…’ I stuttered, but I kept hold of it, while staring in awe at her bright red lips and pale eyes, at the two ethereal curtains of white-blonde hair.

  ‘What room are you in?’

  I pointed to the room behind us. ‘149.’

  ‘I’m just down there. 154. Drop it back whenever.’

  Her long pale legs dragged her clumpy cowboy boots along the floor like a child in her mother’s too-big heels. At her door, she turned round and waved, coquettishly, perhaps knowing her appeal, perhaps guessing I would continue to watch her.

  As soon as I closed the door to my room, I lay on my bed and started reading Lolita. An hour later, I felt sticky and sickened, and couldn’t read on about Humbert Humbert’s craven desires, and I wondered what it was about this book that Sophie was obsessed by. I feared that she might, at some point in her past, have been a little Lolita, which made me want to help her. It seemed to balance us out somehow.

  ‘Maybe we can take advantage of her lateness,’ Charlie grinned, pinging one of my curls.

  ‘She’ll be here any minute,’ I said. Harley trotted from me to Charlie and back again, and barked at me. I smiled down at his upturned nose and watery eyes, and stroked him. It’s okay. I’m okay. You crazy dog.

  ‘Go on. Let’s have a quickie,’ Charlie cajoled.

  ‘There’s not time.’ I prized Charlie’s glass out of his hand and took a sip.

  The doorbell rang and Harley barked at me. Before he scrambled for the door, I pulled him up onto my lap, one last time, and cuddled him goodbye.

  ‘See, Harley? No harm done. She’s barely even late.’

  I pecked Charlie on the cheek and went outside to Sophie’s car, an ancient Saab hatchback. She didn’t drive her grandfather’s Alfa Giulia any more. At university, she had driven me everywhere in that car, to the beach or the pub or to the cliffs. It was a completely different experience to driving a modern car. I had loved it. I had loved those days. Until it had gone wrong.

  ‘Hi! You made good time.’

  I moved two empty smoothie bottles from the passenger seat and sat in.

  ‘Adam said he’d take over, for once, while I got ready.’

  She looked beautiful in a bohemian dashiki-print kaftan, which she had probably picked up in a charity shop or from a market stall for two pounds. Her make-up was a perfect balance of pale eyes and dark lips, and her white-blonde hair was tousled, celestial, falling from a centre parting either side of her face. I hoped Adam had appreciated her tonight, but I doubted it.

  ‘You look gorgeous,’ I said.

  ‘You look nice, too,’ Sophie said, glancing me up and down stiffly, appraising my crispy curls, overdone eyeliner and boring black dress. ‘But then you always do,’ she added, sounding sour. Sophie had the knack of making a compliment sound like an insult, but I had got used to her tone over the years. She meant kindness, she just didn’t know how to convey it properly.

  ‘I love this,’ I said, plucking her sleeve.

  ‘I feel quite hideous in it.’

  ‘That’s ridiculous.’

  I couldn’t tell her she looked beautiful again. It would sound insincere. She wouldn’t believe me anyway, so I left it and wound the window down a crack. The smell of stale crisps and wet rug and old incense made me want to keep it open, even though it was zero degrees outside. Patches of snow left over from last week dotted the roadside as we drove.

  ‘What sparkling did you bring?’

  ‘I didn’t know we had to bring wine.’

  ‘I said in the email. Everyone is bringing a bottle, and I assigned you a sparkling. I’ve paid corkage.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘No problem, I’ll buy you one at the pub.’

  ‘This will be fun,’ Sophie said. Her hands were planted at ten to two on the steering wheel and her head remained stiff on her shoulders, facing forward. I imagined she was a ball of tension inside the shell of this dreamy, floaty vision.

  ‘Don’t be nervous.’

  ‘I never go to these things usually.’

  ‘These things?’

  ‘School mum things. If they’re anything like the mums at Dylan’s school, I’m sure they’ll hate me.’

  ‘Of course they won’t! They’re really nice, I promise.’

  ‘That’s why I’m driving. So I don’t drink too much and make a fool of myself.’

  ‘You won’t. Wine-tasting isn’t about getting pissed. Or it shouldn’t be, anyway. It’ll be fun.’

  ‘Adam was in a mood about me leaving.’

  ‘Has he found anywhere to live yet?’

  ‘He says it
’s hard finding an affordable two-bedroom in London. He might look for somewhere more local.’

  ‘That would be better for Dylan.’

  ‘We haven’t told Dylan yet.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘I want to wait.’

  ‘Until?’

  ‘Until it’s final.’

  ‘Is Adam giving you the impression he’s not serious about leaving?’

  If he was in any way keeping the hope alive for Sophie, he was only prolonging the agony for her. He had told Charlie, categorically, that he was desperately unhappy and could barely stand being around her. Her denial worried me.

  ‘Maybe,’ she said, cryptically.

  She was quiet for the rest of the journey, which suggested she might have been cross with me for questioning her about it. Sometimes I couldn’t tell what she was thinking.

  When we parked up, she reapplied her lipstick and offered some to me.

  ‘Your lips are looking a bit pale, my love. Best brighten yourself up a bit,’ she had said, smiling.

  ‘Okay, now you’ve had a sniff, take a sip and swill it around in your mouth, and see if you can take in a little bit of air at the same time, like this,’ I suggested to the group, pursing my lips, leaving a little hole.

  Sophie laughed the loudest and tried to make a face like a fish. Wine dribbled out of the corners of her mouth and down her chin, like Dracula.

  ‘You’re supposed to spit it out, not dribble it out!’ I laughed, looking around me at the group of fellow mothers from school – Jo, Megan, Cynthia, Kathy and Emma – whose smiles were wide and whose cheeks were bright. They swilled the wine, laughed and gossiped. So far, the evening had been a success. The worry was Sophie. Her eyelids were drooping and her conversation had turned into a slurry monologue about Dylan’s eczema.

  Knowing how Sophie could behave when she drank too much, I sped up proceedings, handing out a sheet of notepaper and a branded pencil to each friend.

  ‘This red was an Old World Pinot Noir. Thank you for bringing this, Jo. It’s really useful to write down what you like and dislike, so you can keep the list in your bag for next time you’re in Tesco, baffled by the bank of bottles.’

  A rare moment of silence fell on the room as we sipped the wine and wrote down our thoughts.

  ‘This is what I think of that one, I’m afraid!’ Sophie boomed, snorting, showing Jo her drawing of a cartoon cock and balls.

  Jo’s smile was more of a grimace. She was the kind of woman who held exclusive book clubs at her house, where they dissected 1970s trash literature with intellectual wit and irony. A cock and balls wasn’t going to cut it.

  ‘The next red we’re tasting is Meg’s,’ I said, moving on quickly, pouring small amounts into the line-up of clean glasses. ‘An Australian Shiraz from Aldi.’

  ‘Meg! How did you cope with Aldi?’ Sophie sneered, swirling her wine until it sloshed over the rim.

  ‘What do you mean?’ Meg asked innocently.

  ‘I imagine you’d come out in a rash in any supermarket other than Waitrose,’ Sophie sniggered rudely.

  ‘I shop anywhere where there’s booze,’ Meg quipped, tugging at her short crop of hair, winking at Sophie, who guffawed at her, plainly unconvinced. The fingers on my right hand pounded my left palm under the table. I imagined that the patients Meg treated on the NHS cardiothoracic ward where she worked as a surgeon wouldn’t have cared where she shopped.

  To distract everyone, I kept up the momentum of the tasting.

  But Sophie was no longer pretending to spit it out, and during the gargling and assessing of the remaining bottles – the Médoc, a cheap champagne and two rosés, one from New Zealand and the other from Provence – she managed to insult everyone at the event with her petty prejudices and chippy jibes.

  ‘Would it be okay if I took some photographs for my blog?’ I asked them, to end the evening with some kind of cohesion.

  Everyone agreed, gathering together, linking arms, relaxing into it.

  As soon as I brought the phone up to my face, Sophie began an infuriating campaign of photobombing, pulling silly faces or finger-swearing over their heads, stumbling around, prodding people in the ribs. The tension of Sophie’s antics showed in all of their photo smiles.

  ‘Are we allowed to vet these before they’re posted?’ Meg asked, once I had finished.

  ‘I promise to be kind. No double chins or cross eyes. Let’s take just one more in front of the fire with our wine glasses,’ I said.

  Sophie pushed Meg out of the way, and Meg almost fell back into the fire.

  ‘That was a close one!’ Meg said, holding her hands up at Sophie.

  ‘Sorreee, Miss Waitrose,’ Sophie mumbled.

  Mortified, I apologised to Meg and faced up to the fact that the evening had been a disaster. Feeling a flush of exasperation and embarrassment, I took myself off to the toilets to calm down and call a taxi. Every single cab firm in the local area was fully booked or off-duty.

  ‘Anyone got any space in their car?’ I asked, returning to the table.

  ‘We ordered a people carrier between us,’ Emma replied. ‘There’ll be one space, though.’

  ‘You take it, Sophie,’ I offered.

  ‘No way. I’m staying right by your side, Mrs Wilson,’ she said, making an army salute and clicking her heels together.

  I cringed, feeling deeply uncomfortable.

  ‘We’ll walk,’ I suggested. ‘I’m in flats and Sophie’s got boots in the back of her car.’

  The other women protested. ‘You can’t walk! It’s miles away! No way! Why don’t you call Charlie?’

  ‘I’m fine to drive,’ Sophie slurred.

  Ignoring her, I said to the others, ‘It’ll take us forty minutes, tops, to walk. You guys get home. We’re fine.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Are you going to be okay?’

  ‘We might need a bit of fresh air,’ I said, raising an eyebrow at Sophie. ‘We’ll be fine, won’t we, Soph?’

  Out of nowhere, Sophie’s mood turned on me. She rolled her eyes and drawled, ‘Oh, yes, of course we’ll be fine. Perfect Naomi is always fine, isn’t she? Perfect, pretty Naomi with her perfect little life.’

  ‘Sophie,’ I chided, reddening.

  ‘But I do love you,’ she cried, hugging me around the neck, throttling me. ‘You’re my forever friend in all the world! We’re friends forever, did you know? Known each other since we were eighteen years old. Twenty-three years!’

  Seething inside, I heard Charlie’s criticisms about Sophie ringing in my ears. The other five women stared at us, with tight smiles, probably wondering how we had stayed friends for that long. As was I.

  ‘Come on, Soph, let’s get going.’

  Her arm fell over my shoulders, unsteadying me as we walked to the car, waving goodbye to the others as they climbed into the taxi.

  I rummaged in her car boot for two matching wellies.

  ‘Let go,’ I said, removing her arm, shoving the boots at her, but she refused to take them.

  ‘What’s wrong now?’

  ‘I don’t want to walk on the road.’

  ‘We don’t have much choice.’

  ‘Can’t you drive my car?’

  ‘No, Sophie. I’m not insured. We know from experience that it’s not worth the risk.’

  Sophie eyed her. ‘Do we?’

  I glared at her, loath to say it out loud.

  ‘Okay then,’ she sulked, pulling on the boots.

  We set off, hugging the bank, trudging in silence.

  I was cold to the bone, exhausted, and I raged internally at Sophie, whom I walked behind, to keep an eye on her.

  As usual, I was rallying around her, editing my life to suit hers. She was a bottomless pit of emotional need. The more I gave, the more she needed. We were hopelessly entangled. Every single positive step I made in life had its reverse effect on her. At university, if I achieved an A for an essay, it undermined Sophie’s B. If I made a new friend, she thought I
liked her less. If a boy fancied me, it meant the boy didn’t fancy Sophie. And it had worked in reverse, too. Whenever my life had taken a turn for the worse, Sophie’s mood would improve: if I failed an exam, we could commiserate together. If I was dumped by a boy, I was more available to her. If I was let down by a friend, she could say I told you so.

  It had been all about Sophie. It was still all about Sophie.

  Left and right she wove on the road, mumbling pitifully to herself. A sorry sight. My sympathy began to fight its way through my anger. If Charlie had slept with another woman, I might be in a similar state. None of the other women tonight would have understood that.

  The branches of the wintery trees were lit up by approaching headlights. The noise of an engine grew louder. Without warning, Sophie darted into the centre of the lane and stood with her arms wide. Her bright, patterned sleeves were like flags, as she howled over the noise of the oncoming vehicle. From around the bend, the car appeared, shooting towards us, the glare bigger and brighter with every second. My heart thundered as I ran out in front of the car and grabbed her, pulling her into the bank. We both fell onto icy snow and wet grass, yelping as the car roared past.

  Sophie began to laugh.

  ‘What the hell are you laughing at?’ I screamed, brushing the clumps of cold mud from my trembling legs.

  She laughed so hard, she could hardly speak. Her light hair was splayed across the bank, almost as white as the snow. ‘It almost hit me!’ she gasped.

  ‘Get up! Come on! Please,’ I begged, a desperate edge to my voice. She pulled herself up to sitting and grabbed her handbag.

  ‘Are you crying?’

  ‘No, I’m not crying,’ I snapped, walking on ahead.

  ‘I’ve made you cry,’ she said, suddenly beside me. ‘What are you crying about?’

  ‘I’m not crying.’

  I walked on ahead, tightening my jaw, spitting my words out. ‘You scared me,’ I fumed.

  ‘Sorry,’ she whimpered.