The drive down to her parents’ house in Dorset was a slow one. For three hours Sasha drove behind Volvos filled with kids waving from the rear window, and elderly drivers in the left hand lane of the M3. She had lunch at Blandford Forum and arrived mid-afternoon.
Gilbert and Anna Waresley were in the garden dead-heading roses, both wearing ridiculous hats.
“Hello darling! Was the traffic ghastly?”
Sasha knew that meant her mother thought she was late. She nodded, not wanting to mention the hangover she was still nursing, and succumbed to her mother’s thin arms, almost choking from a liberal dose of Christian Dior’s Dolce Vita. Her father waited his turn.
“Hello Sash. Look at you.” Dressed in gardening clothes which wouldn’t look out of a place on a Guy Fawkes dummy, he beamed at her. Any interruption was welcome. Her father detested gardening as much as her mother loved it, but like everything since their retirement, they did it together. “Come on, it must be five o’clock somewhere. Let’s have a drink.”
They went through to the conservatory at the back where tea was usually served. Gilbert, however, was having none of it and poured gin and tonics, generous on the gin.
“You’re a sight for sore eyes.”
“How are things at uni, darling?” Anna arranged her features into a face that appeared interested but Sasha knew that her mother was bewildered by her choice of subject.
“Good, mum. It’s getting really interesting.”
“I’ve not quite grasped what cultural studies actually means.”
“Mum, we’ve been through this. We cover politics, sociology, media theory, cultural anthropology…”
“And what are you going to do with that young lady? Can you teach?”
Sasha shifted in her chair. “I don’t want to teach.”
“Of course, you don’t Sash. You’re a doer. I for one want to know what you’re up to. Ignore your mother, she has no poetry in her soul.”
Anna smiled at her husband and stayed quiet.
“I need to interview a mature person about their life. Obviously it has to be as interesting as possible. It’s a fabulous challenge, especially if I’m going to be a writer but I’ve drawn a blank on who I could write about.” Sasha’s face dropped for a moment. “What have you guys been up to?”
“Oh, the usual. Appearing to be sweet natured pensioners while knocking off the odd visitor and burying them in the garden.”
“Never mind him, darling. I’m feeling a bit giddy after all that gin. What say we have dinner early?”
So many of Sasha’s friends hated going home for weekends, complaining about feeling claustrophobic under their parents love and their transparent way of living their lives through their off-spring. Anna and Gilbert were both strong characters. They loved her dearly but they had their own lives.
“What about Julia?” Gilbert had a mouth full of meat. Sasha and her mother waited while he finished chewing.
“Julia? Wouldn’t she be perfect?”
“Aunt Julia? The elderly grey-haired spinster woman?”
Anna laughed. “She may be old but she has lived, my girl.”
“I hope you don’t shock easily, Sash.”

It was a month later, as the air cooled and leaves changed colour silently on the trees that Sasha followed Aunt Julia’s instructions on how to find her flat. A Victorian house divided into apartments, just off the Chiswick High Road with a communal front door displaying a line of labeled door bells. Sasha pushed the one marked Julia Cadogan. It was some minutes before the door opened. Sasha noted that the old woman had walked down two flights of stairs using a walking stick. She followed her back up to her flat, Julia silent in response to Sasha’s nervous chatter. She wasn’t her real aunt, Julia was an old friend of her parents. Her hair had turned white but it was still worn elegantly pinned at her neck. Sasha remembered seeing her one evening whilst staying at her parents’ house, sitting on the guest bed, combing a river of silver hair which reached beyond her waist.
Julia walked shakily through the door of her home and using her stick, pointed to an armchair. “Tea?”
“That would be lovely, Aunt Julia. Do you want me to make it?”
A withering stare answered her question. “I may be old but I manage to look after myself. If you let others help, you lose your abilities. I need to keep all my muscles taut, especially this one.” Her free hand tapped her temple. She was dressed in black as if in mourning and although thin, did not look frail.
Whilst Julia moved about in her small kitchen, Sasha took out her notebook and glanced around the apartment. Every wall was painted a bright colour; vermillion, peacock blue, orange and what looked like William Morris wallpaper, gold leaves on a burgundy background. She was pleased to see several floor to ceiling shelves crammed full of books. Paintings signed by C P Lawrence hung against this vibrant backdrop, mostly nudes with a few of a young woman dressed in a black, a black shirt as it turned out.
Julia appeared with a tray, she had dispensed with the stick. She put the tray down on the dark wood coffee table in front of Sasha.
“I only need the blasted stick for the stairs.” She sat in the armchair to the left of Sasha. The early afternoon sun shone through the window, obscuring Julia’s face, framing her hair in the light.
“Don’t worry child, I won’t bite. Lapsang souchong?” Sasha nodded. “What do you want to know?”
“I have been asked to interview a mature person, who has lived an interesting life for part of my cultural studies degree.”
“And you thought of me?” Julia sat back in her chair, clutching her tea cup with a look on her face Sasha couldn’t place. Was it scorn or amusement? Sasha cleared her throat. “Mum and Dad suggested you. I don’t know much about you, to be honest.” Sasha’s face reddened. “They said you were a fascist.” To anyone else this would be an insult, maybe even to Julia.
“I am a fascist, girl. I’m not dead yet.”
Sasha thought back to the conversation she’d had with her parents a few weeks ago.
“A fascist! How the hell did you meet a fascist?”
Anna placed her wine glass over a gravy stain on the tablecloth. “We were on the tube, traveling from Richmond to Liverpool Street.”
“No, dear, we lived in Barnes then and we were going to Blackfriars.”
“Who’s telling this story, Gilbert? And when has accuracy been necessary in a good story?”
“I want the truth, Mum.”
“The bits I can’t remember, I’ll make up. Not the important bits, of course, I always remember those. Anyway, we were sitting opposite a woman, middle aged but very elegant. Her hair was swept up into a chignon and she held an un-lit cigarette, waving it around and chatting to a bunch of unsavoury looking youths.”
Sasha’s father took over. “They were skin heads, the real McCoy. Shaven heads, high-waisted jeans worn half-mast over Dr Marten boots, braces over their t-shirts. Quite obviously BNP.”
“They were National Front in those days, Gilbert. They were listening to Julia, completely swept up in her charm. They asked her back to their flat in Bethnal Green to show her their Nazi memorabilia.”
“And she was quite keen to go. Even though we didn’t know her, we had to intervene.”
“How did you stop her?”
“We had tickets for an experimental theatre in Liverpool Street.”
“Blackfriars, dear.”
“What’s an experimental theatre?”
Anna stifled a laugh. “The actors were naked, darling. Your father gave his ticket to Julia.”
“Julia loves a bit of nudity, even over entertaining a mob of skinheads.”
“And they were happy for her to go?”
“Julia insisted they exchange telephone numbers of course, never passed up an opportunity to talk shop. I don’t know whether she followed it up.
“What did you do, Dad?”
“I waited in the coffee shop across the road.”
“We joined him for doughnuts afterwards.”

“So, Julia, were you born or created?” It was a risk but Sasha felt Julia wouldn’t respond to Bourgeois questions. Julia chuckled darkly.
“Very good, dear. I was born in 1918, in London, at the end of a very messy war. Between the wars, as it turned out to be, was a promiscuous time, as if we knew it was the last hurrah.”
“What about you? Did you meet anyone interesting?”
Julia laughed, a strangled noise collecting at the back of her throat. “Oh, yes, I met someone. At a party in London, in the late 1930s. Cedric, my lover, was an artist and strongly right wing. He believed that if Marxism ever took off in England then it would be the end of us. The Bolshevik’s were a fearsome breed and Cedric was an idealist. I was 19 when I started posing for him. Do you mind if I smoke?”
“Sasha shook her head, not wanting to interrupt the flow as she struggled to keep up her notes.
“There was more social freedom, of course, higher hemlines than the previous generation, higher life, higher ideals. Cedric had heard from friends of the Italian prime minister who was one of the key figures in something called Fascism.
“Mussolini?”
“Of course.” Julia put out her cigarette and closed her eyes for a moment. “He had previously been involved in the Marxist movement but he had a change of heart after a spell in the military. He studied the works of Plato and Nietzsche, among others, which formed the basis for Fascism. You heard of Nietzsche, Sasha?”
“Not one of my favourite philosophers, God is dead as an excuse to behave immorally.”
Julia smiled. “I like him for just that reason. Mussolini wanted to raise Italy up to the levels of its great Roman past. It was very exciting. And then in 1932 when the BUF was created by Oswald Mosley, we had our own movement in England.” Julia paused and Sasha watched her. She had the look of someone who had discovered religion not rejected it. A light shone behind her eyes making her appear younger.
Sasha knew about the British Union of Fascists, they were anti-communist and racist, protecting their own race, as they saw it. Copying Mussolini, they wore the all black uniform.
“We always clashed with the Communists and the Jews but when the Black Shirts stepped in and removed the hecklers using force at the Olympia rally, let’s just say it didn’t go down well.”
“But you weren’t there, you were too young. Strong-arm tactics lost the election. They were bullies, even then. How can racism and anti-Semitism be right? 20 million people lost their lives, surely you can see how evil that was?”
“It was to protect the purity of race. Mussolini didn’t believe in a perfect race, he felt we were already tainted but Hitler really believed we could wipe out the mistakes of the past and start again, shiny and new.”
“You make it sound like an informed choice, it wasn’t. Hitler, Mussolini, Mosley, all monsters!”
“But Sasha, it was an informed choice. We were nearly elected. Diana Mitford, part of British aristocracy, married Mosley. Prince Edward and his new wife were sympathisers.” Julia laughed. “I loved her. The Princes’ American wife.”
“I still don’t see…” I still don’t see why my parents befriended you, thought Sasha and she had said so the last time she had visited them.
“Sash, whatever Julia was isn’t relevant anymore. There have been many people with high ideals throughout history, who have been manipulated by wicked leaders and dictators. It’s not Julia’s role to take the blame for all that loss.” Gilbert’s face was serious for once.
“She’s very proud, darling, but she’s not bad. That bloody lover of hers should have shouldered a lot of the blame. Her parents refused to see her, she hasn’t had anything like family in her adult life. But she’s always had a place here, in our house. It was the right thing to do.” Sasha wasn’t so sure.
Julia was starting to tire, her lined face appeared to slip further down her cheek bones.
“One can make anything plausible if it you present it in the right light. The 30’s were a very political time, war on the horizon. We needed strong leaders. Today our leaders are weak, fat and self-satisfied. Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, what sort of examples are they to our young? Margaret Thatcher, now there was a leader.”
Thatcher was hardly a memory for Sasha and was an old woman herself now. She knew that the Iron Lady had few sympathisers among her parents generation, although maybe some who wouldn’t admit support now had put their cross in the Tories box way back then.
“You’re confusing bullying with strength.”
“I kept diaries.”
A gnawing sensation passed through Sasha’s insides, of both desire and disgust. Desire to see those diaries, she was under no illusion as to the value of them, and disgust for the madness they would be filled with. What else could explain the exclusion and worse, of so many innocent people? To protect the race, what about Jews, blacks, homosexuals, gypsies? Even writers were robbed of their voice.
Sasha planted a dutiful goodbye kiss on Julia’s furrowed cheek. “You look tired, I’ll go. What happened to Cedric?”
“He went back to his wife. He wasn’t as strong as I had hoped.”
With two forces alive in her belly, Sasha drove back to campus. This was wrong, her cheeks were aflame as if she were guilty of Julia’s past. Her stomach churned as if she were infected with sores of shame. She still longed to see those diaries, what was the matter with her? Reading them could only make her feel worse. It would be best to let them die with the old woman than poison her own mind.
One of the last things Aunt Julia had said to her had been about Mussolini’s death. Italian partisans had found him and his mistress and shot them by Lake Como. Their bodies were taken to Milan where they were hung by their feet with piano wire in Piazza Loreto for all to see. Italy rejoiced, over 400,000 Italians had died because of this man. So much for protection, so much for leadership.
Months later Sasha picked up the phone, it was her mother to tell her that Julia had died. Sasha didn’t go to the funeral and after she had handed in her assignment, she tried not to think of Julia at all.
The following summer, sitting in the garden at her parents’ house, her mother handed her a blue ceramic urn and a note.
“Not Aunt Julia’s ashes?”
“Read the note.” Her mother urged.
Sasha slowly extracted a piece of flimsy paper from its envelope. Julia had addressed the note to her.
“I never wanted anyone to read my diaries, I hadn’t even considered it until I met you. I want to thank you for the most interesting afternoon I’ve had in years. I don’t have many friends still living now, apart from your dear parents who took me under their wing, despite my ideals. Don’t blame them for this. And although I may pick at the scab of Fascism from time to time, not even I wish to open up old wounds. Our ideals caused suffering. I have made many mistakes in my life and most of them are here in my diaries. They would make a great record of a terrible time but here is what is left of them. You won’t have to read them now. Better dead than read, darling. Be good. Julia.”
Sasha wiped away a tear. “Why did she leave this to me? I want to forget her. I can’t feel fondness for someone with such terrible beliefs”
But when Sasha got back to London she placed the ashes of Julia’s words on her desk. She wasn’t sure why and she meant to throw them out. But as the weeks passed, putting distance between time and her uncomfortable memories, Sasha thought that perhaps the academic views of Julia’s idealism were not part of Fascism itself. Maybe it wasn’t so clear cut. Could Sasha have respect for Julia and not for her beliefs? After all, her parents had been kind enough to see through that black shirt to the heart of a gutsy woman. She left the urn where it was, for now

A dark night on the festival of lanterns, the black cold of June twinkling like tiny fingers. Lanterns glow, painted and oiled, held in the small hands of children. Colours stream under the moonlight, whilst others lurk in shadows. The stalls sell exotic sweets or hot pastries and the aroma dances on the breeze. Glow in the dark necklaces, perfect circles around perfect necks. What a wonderful scene for murder. Blood seeping under the door, leaking into this winter tableau.
I can’t stop, not now and I feel no guilt, she always steals from me. The code, anything goes, except each others boyfriends. I reach the plush entrance hall, smelling of new carpet and paint. The walls in duck egg blue, a colour to calm, I am not calm. The lift doors open and I enter, press the number seven. Seven, lucky number, lucky Fleur. It’s quiet, there’s no one around.

He shopped at the same greengrocers where I went after work, looking to buy something for dinner, something last minute for a single girl. I’d seen him a few times. Tall with black hair, blue eyes. He looked shy but not awkward. He looked at me but he did not speak.
“Hi. You live around here?”
He looked startled. Was that too strong? “Yes. Just moved here, for work.” He held out a hand. “Drew.”
“Bridget. What do you do?”
“I’m a journalist.”
The beginning, a beautiful man and me, chatting over onions. Layers that bring out tears, should have seen it coming.

I got up and made myself a coffee, hungry but unable to keep anything down. As I sat at my kitchen table, lights off, only the grey light of pre-dawn for company. I could make it look like suicide. Crush pills and put them in her drink. Then push more down her throat when she became drowsy. Weed killer. I would tell her it was a new herbal brew. For strength, the one thing that Fleur always lacked. Like most beautiful things she was delicate, she wouldn’t be hard to snuff out.
Night falls around me, red and white, scarlet and pearly, blood-stained tiles. Images of half-baked plans of murder.

I asked Drew to go for a drink with me. He shrugged which I took as a yes. We arranged to meet at Harry’s Bar in town. I dressed carefully in black with a red beret to keep my head warm. My body trembled at the thought of him, I wondered about the smell of him, the touch. I walked there despite stilettos and waited at the bar sipping my drink, which was red too. I stared at my watch as the hand slipped towards the appointed hour. He wasn’t coming.
But he did and he looked serious, dressed in black, like a mourner, like me. Had anybody died?
“I wasn’t sure you were coming.”
“I said I would. Sorry I’m a bit late.” No explanation. “What are you drinking?” He nodded to my empty glass.
“A Bloody Mary. Please.”
In the quiet of Harry’s Tuesday night trade we hit it off, I thought. At least we drank too much and ended up in bed. His place. It was closer.
The soft yellowy light of dawn fell across the room. The curtains hadn’t been drawn. Awake before him I shielded my eyes from the light and turned to look at my prize. I watched him until his eyelids flickered. His dark hair disheveled as always, the blackest lashes on blue eyes. He stretched and groaned.
“Oh, shit. God, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for this to happen.”
My heart sank to my naked toes. “Thanks a lot.” I said, not meaning it. “Do you have any food?”
“I’ll make coffee.”
We sat across from each another at his kitchen table, each nursing a cup of coffee. His flat, sparsely furnished with piles of paper on the table and the breakfast bar; bills, photography magazines, A4 notepads filled with spider-like script.
Weeks passed and I didn’t tell Fleur, I didn’t want to dilute our experience but really I didn’t want questions. He hadn’t called. One day she rang me, full of news. She’d met a beautiful man. She told me he was a writer who buys her unusual presents, bright coloured journals, postcards of Paris, an exceptional man she says.
We arranged to meet at Harry’s Bar, her choice. I walked in wearing my black suit and white blouse and found them sitting in a booth, hands reaching across to each other. And I just knew he hadn’t arrived late for her.
Fleur saw me first, dressed in pale blue, she waved. “Bridge. Drew, meet my best friend. Bridge, this is Drew.” She smiled, she shined.
He stood to meet his lover’s best friend. Tall and dark, he cast a shadow over me, at least that’s how I remember it. Drew. My Drew, who’d never called. He looked at me and recognition hit behind the eyes.
“I’m sorry. I have to go to the bathroom.” I dragged myself to the ladies. Wrapped my arms around cold porcelain, my head leant on the toilet seat. Tears stung my eyes. Fleur could have anyone. Why him? Bridge, this is Drew, she said. Am I her bridge to Drew? What about the code? No crossing lines to get to each other’s boyfriends. Of course it only works one way; no boyfriend of Fleur’s has even been interested in me.
I washed my face and made my way back to the happy couple. They don’t see me at first, hands clasped, eyes searching one another’s. Drew frowned and Fleur turned her pretty head. She smiled, she had reason to.
“I’m feeling a bit off-colour. I think I’ll go. Nice to meet you, Drew.”
“Oh, Bridge. You poor thing. Will you be alright getting home?”
I nodded feebly and walked out of the noise and warmth of Harry’s into the coldness. Spring never felt so icy, leached of colour, dull though the sun is out.
My nightmare began, my own private hell. I imagined them together. His hand gentle in the small of her back, guiding her through expensive restaurants. Having breakfast together, Fleur wearing his dressing gown. So unlike our breakfast of bitter coffee and silent recriminations amid prayers for a hangover cure. Fleur would have orange juice and pancakes, real coffee.
I thought of her, how it easy it was, how men wanted to give everything to her. Did it come down to her looks? I knew the answer. She was a lovely girl, a lovely girl I’d like dead.
They asked me for lunch. Just me, at his apartment. I arrived early. I’d been awake since five, the lonely hour before dawn, the time when lovers turn to one another to keep the fears away.
“Oh Bridge! I’m so glad you came. No trouble finding it?”
No, I had no problem finding it. I noticed Fleur had tidied up. Papers cleared away, photographic magazines on the shelf, those notebooks put away somewhere safe. Drew appeared less disheveled than usual. Had she tidied him up too? He said hello and we sat down at the table.
Fleur had prepared a seafood banquet. Lobster, prawns and crab meat. The lobster flesh exquisite but when I closed my eyes Fleur’s flesh swims before me. Only her white flesh has a bluish quality to it. Dead meat.
“Are you okay Bridge?”
“Yes. I think so. I haven’t been so well since that night at Harry’s.”
“The night you met Drew?”
“Well. It was that night. But it wasn’t the first time we’d met.”
Drew shifted in his seat, his face flinching in preparation. Would I be that cruel?
“Isn’t that right, Drew?”
Fleur looked between the two of us, a shadow of fear in her eyes. Oh, how lovely. I had them both holding their breath.
“We shop at the same greengrocers. Don’t you remember, Drew? You must recognise me.”
“Yes, of course. I thought you looked familiar.”
I could almost hear the collective sigh of relief between them. Drew stared at me, eyes loaded with meaning. “Oh, course, I don’t shop there anymore.”
“Really? I wonder why.” I used an acid tone that might pop up in Fleur’s subconscious, late at night when night nurtures doubt.

Standing in the kitchen at the centre of a storm, devoid of movement whilst all around us spins and spins. Fleur’s fitted kitchen, white cabinets, the orange walls which stimulate appetite. Outside the dark night marked only by children holding lanterns for the town festival. Candlelight blurred into rings, thin red rings.
I lunge, the small fish knife in my right hand. There is a flicker of recognition before the knife slips easily into her white neck. It turns red, the colour of blood red roses. There is an arch of it, the devils rainbow. Her arms reach out for me. For me, imagine it! She falls to her knees, her eyes bulging in her face, green eyes that men love. Fear in them, panic. She slumps forward onto her white shiny tiles which are usually so clean.

Fleur rang, those nighttime doubts, and we met for coffee. Her pretty face looked pinched, white areas where she frowns and her hair isn’t as shiny as usual.
“Bridge. Before I met Drew, was there anything between you?”
I counted to thirty in my head. Flirty thirty. Hurty thirty. I smiled. “What do you mean? Did Drew say something?”
“No.” Fleur stared down into her cup, brimming with blackest coffee. Was she staring into hell too? She stirred it with a spoon.
“He looks uncomfortable when I mention your name. Do you know why?”
“Sorry. I don’t. Why would he look uncomfortable?”
“I get the feeling he’s hiding something.”
Fleur looked up as if in pain. Well, we can’t have that can we? “You’re different too,” she accused.
I shrugged, mumbled something about having to go. I left Fleur in the café next to the theatre. Plastic flowers in tiny glass vases at every table. Where you picked your food from photographs on a laminated menu. Good coffee, I don’t know how long Fleur sat there stirring hers. Maybe a tear or two fell to the formica table top. I’m glad I held back with the fish knife. I imagined the contract I had on her life dissolving until gone. No longer consumed in hate I still can’t bear to see her face, the face I would have had underground.
We don’t see each other for a while. One day Fleur phoned me and wanted to meet in the park and I figure I owed her that. Winter again, the skeleton branches silhouetted against a white sky, we wandered through the park, the ground frost twinkling in the opaque light. Our fingers pressed deep inside our pockets, our words suspended in the breath of an icy cloud.
“We’ve split up.”
“What?”
“Drew and I. We broke up last week.”
“Why?”
“There was something he was hiding.”
“Do you know what it was?” My heart beats in my cold ears.
“A girl he couldn’t forget.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know. He only spent a night with her. I don’t know her name.”
Drew did nothing and neither did I. But I thought about it, late at night, when being alone laboured my breath and I sobbed until my bones ached.

Karen walked purposely toward the fitting room at the rear of the shop carrying a green dress. Sally examined a pencil skirt, holding it up against her hips. She thought she’d try it on and if it didn’t fit it was because it was made in China, not because of those late night nibbles.
Karen looked up into a face of a woman walking towards her. As if someone had cut out a memory and pasted it in the present on a different body. Shiny Sally, cardigan rolled up to her elbows and the sweet smell of Juicy Fruit chewing gum. Well, not so shiny now. She looked worn down and ordinary, overweight.
“Sally? I don’t believe it! It’s me, Karen, Montford High. God, it is you, isn’t it?”
“I’m sorry? You do look familiar.” Sally lied as she struggled to place the other woman. A quick scan took in killer heels, hosiery-ed legs, a seemingly flat stomach, although she could have been holding it in, and a face painted in youthful pinks. She must be forty. “Karen, Karen Logan?”
“That’s it. Only I spell if with a ‘C’ and an ‘I’ now. C.a.r.i.n.”
“Of course. How nice to see you.” No it wasn’t. It was bloody inconvenient. Her first free Saturday in forever and she was trying to avoid talking to anyone at all.
At that moment both women looked down at the garments they were holding in their respective hands, each one at least a size too small.
“Who’re we kidding? Why don’t we forget shopping and go for coffee next door?” Carin smiled encouragement.
Sally didn’t want to but she couldn’t think of a good enough reason not to.
Next door was Francoise’s Café run by a woman with flinty eyes called Frances who wished she hadn’t taken business advice from a thin reedy woman with French leanings. It cost a fortune to buy in those tiny pastries and Madeleine’s. And the menu written in French didn’t go down too well in Basingstoke but at least her waitress was fluent.
“Allo, Mesdames. Qu’est que vous desirez?”
“Oh how gorgeous. I’m such a Francophile.”
I’d never have guessed thought Sally cattily.
“I haven’t been in here since Ray had the place. Fry-ups and extra strong tea.” Carin looked around the room. “I love the new décor. Tres chic.”
Sally smiled mildly. “Long black please.”
The waitress scribbled on her pad LB for long black or lardy bottom, who could tell.
“Chocolate au chaud, s’il te plait.”
Sally wasn’t going to pick her up on her use of the familiar, prolonging this painful outing.
“You didn’t go to the last reunion, Sally?”
Sally would rather have removed her own appendix without anesthetic. “No, busy with the kids.”
Carin fussed with her hair, and checked her face in the window. The café was painted in white and had bistro chairs. They looked sophisticated but were uncomfortable to sit on.
“You missed a great night. You’ll never guess! Sean Henson got caught out the back with Deanna Wilson.”
“Oh? Isn’t he married?”
“Yes, his wife wasn’t too pleased.”
Sally’s cheeks coloured.
“I’m being insensitive. I heard that you’d separated from your husband.” Carin leaned across, patted Sally’s hand. “It’s not your fault he went off with that young vet who put your dog down.” Carin looked at Sally’s granite face. “Mum told me. Is it true?”
“It wasn’t quite that simple. Things hadn’t been good for a while. We were both…” What was she doing? Explaining herself to an awful woman she’d briefly shared a Bunsen burner with half a lifetime ago. “Do you have kids, Carin?” Sally thought of Zoe and Emma, losing their beloved dog and their father moving out in the same week.
“No. The world doesn’t need to get bigger. I’ve never actually been to China but working in television…” Carin’s voice trailed off.
“You work in television?”
“Local network, outskirts of Bristol. Magazine shows, makeovers, gardening, fashion for the over 40s. it’s not all glamour.”
“Where does China come in?”
“It doesn’t. But you hear stories.” Carin flicked her hair extensions leaving Sally torn between manic laughter and finding a place to hide.
“So not having children was an ethical choice?”
“Ethnic? I suppose.” Carin frowned then blew the froth off her chocolate au chaud.
Sally remembered her. A skinny girl, always third wheel, never quite fitting in.
“Are you on facebook?”
“No. Doesn’t seem to be time. Work, kids, never any time.” Wouldn’t be caught dead on it. Virtual friends, Sally had enough problems with real ones.
“What do you do?” Carin gave a big smile which said I bet you don’t have a job as glamorous as me and Sally longed to tell her she was a high class hooker.
“Solicitor.”
“Oh? I thought only dusty old men did that? You know, Dobson, Dobson and Willis as if Willis was brought in at the last minute to save the family business.”
“There are a few female solicitors these days. Someone has to make the coffee.”
“Quite. Oh look, someone’s left their newspaper behind open on the horoscope page. What are you?” Apart from hard work.
A bloody Martian, “Aries.”
“Yes, I can see that.” Shiny Sally is still self-centered, impatient, quick tempered, Carin mused. “Some days you wished you’d hidden under the duvet and stayed there until tea-time. Funny.” Carin wrinkled her nose. “I’m Pisces.”
A wet fish, Sally could see that.
‘“Carpe diem’. What’s that supposed to mean?” Carin shrugged. “It’s your day for getting out and about. You will make good decisions’.”
“Well, it’s been lovely but I have to go.” Sally stood while Carin rummaged in her handbag. She retrieved a business card, bright pink. The words Carin Logan were embossed in gold. Sally took it and left before Carin could ask for hers.
Carin went next door to buy that dress as Sally trudged home empty handed. Joe had the kids on Saturday. She’d traveled into town on the bus, leaving the car at home. She thought the fresh air might calm her mind. It was the early days of separation and Sally lurched between anger and melancholy, while Joe appeared sheepish with her and out of his depth with the girls. It was the first time he had arranged their food and entertainment and hadn’t quite mastered it. Zoe and Emma, aged 10 and 11, usually arrived home on Sundays with indignant tales of puppet shows and visits to McDonalds.
Under Sally’s reign they went to the theatre and ate sushi. Joe behaved like an out of touch uncle who bought them presents several years too young for them, not like a father who had, until recently, lived with them fulltime.
The role of a mother was filled with invisible trails of love. Two pieces of fruit in every lunch box, Emma doesn’t like sandwiches and Zoe won’t eat cheese. Music lessons, remember instruments plus after school snack and bottle of water. No tomatoes in any meals with the exception of ketchup. Reading Harry Potter to Emma before bed gave her nightmares.
Stop thinking about them, Sally told herself. They’re fine. Joe may be a philandering bastard but he’s still a reasonably competent man. Sally had wondered why he had stopped complaining about the vet bills.
And finally Sally’s mind fell tentatively upon Karen. Caaarin. Still as nervy and eager to please but she looked good. She had that sheen, the lacquer that came with the extra effort of grooming accumulated over the years. Sally could imagine Carin painting her toe-nails with cotton wool pieces jammed between each toe, the phone squeezed between her shoulder and jaw as she talked to a new boyfriend or a much younger girlfriend. Surely there couldn’t be many women of Carin’s age still doing the same stuff they had done at 20. Sally wondered if she should have botox.
Carin bought the emerald green dress with the diamante belt. Another dress that would probably never get worn. The invitations weren’t so prolific these days. Everyone had grown up and got married, had children. Mind you, there were many whose marriages had become casualties. Women like Sally.
Carin thought about Sally as she chose a new lipstick to go with her dress, in the chemists across the road from the dress shop. She wasn’t sure about her old school friend. Although to be honest Sally had never been her friend. Carin still hadn’t got the hang of friendships and Sally had that same superior air she’d had at school. Okay, so she was a solicitor and Carin worked for a superficial television channel but she could tell Sally was as miserable as she was.
Once home Carin shoved the bright blue cardboard bag containing her new purchase to the back of the wardrobe. The small apartment was immaculate, walls painted white to make it appear spacious and sophisticated, only ever made it feel cold.
Carin’s bed boasted hospital corners and she slept on a simple wooden bed designed in Scandinavia and brought home in a flat-pack. The advertisement had promised endless nights of restful sleep but Carin hadn’t slept so well recently. Her bed was shared less and less, as was her life. She wondered if she had ever truly shared anything. And with every year came another number. The idea of aging horrified her, the decay, flesh crimpling and folding until it could slide off the bone. She shuddered as she placed thin slivers of cheese on toast before sliding them under the grill. Running her fingers along the spines of her dvd collection, while she waited for her supper. Romantic comedies and nature programmes, procreation and fornication. It hadn’t happened for her. She irritated people, even her mother bristled if she was around her for too long. Carin wasn’t sure what it was that people didn’t want to be around, and she wasn’t stupid, she’d seen that look in Sally’s eyes. Contempt and sympathy in equal measure. She wasn’t sure she could bear to see that same expression on another person’s face. The cheese was starting to burn under the grill while Carin turned over a small bottle of pills in her hands. A black thought tumbled through her mind. No one would miss her.
Sally looked around her house, a 1930’s semi. Dishes piled on the kitchen bench, cereal congealing, drying up until it would be impossible to remove. She would have to fill each bowl with water and leave them to soak. Books belonging to the girls and Sally’s home improvement magazines spilled from the coffee table to the floor. A layer of dust settled on every surface. Sally wished she could suck in great gulps of air and lift the dust, swallow it up. A fitting way, for a woman who struggled with housework, to die. ‘Woman chokes on own filth. Family wades through weeks of free catalogues to reach her. Tragic end to woman who joined Roberts, Roberts & Burke to help out with beverages.’ Sally thought of Carin. She was an odd one, a girl in a woman’s body. And although she didn’t mean to be funny she was, once you got over your annoyance. Like a child saying the first thing that came into her mind without adult censorship. Unexpectedly Sally found herself smiling for the first time in weeks.
She poured herself a large glass of her favourite wine, left it on the table and went through to the kitchen to soak the breakfast things. Opening cupboard doors which needed re-hanging, searching for something to eat. A tin of smoked mussels which had come in a hamper bought years ago and a half-finished packet of soggy seaweed crackers. The fridge offered nothing but limp lettuce and a hard chunk of cheese. She’d really let herself go. If she listened carefully she could hear social services beating a path to her door. Sally held back a sob and retrieved a pizza menu from the drawer next to the stove and, as if weak with the effort, slid to the floor.
She sat there for half an hour, amid the debris of her life which somehow she never had time to sweep away. Her body shook and her hair grew damp with salty tears. What had happened to that hopeful couple who had moved in? Five months pregnant with Zoe, no clue to the petty arguments to come, the loss of youth and finally the death of all hope. Joe didn’t even like animals. Heidi had been Sally’s dog. The thought of Joe’s new girlfriend giving her beloved pet a lethal injection, being there in her final moments in place of Sally, that had been the worst betrayal of all.
She stopped crying. Her insides felt raw as if jealousy and grief had run through her like battery acid, cleansing and stripping away her last defenses. She didn’t want to be alone right now.
But who could she call? Her friends seemed reluctant to get in touch. Couples love even numbers; Shelley and Mike, Richard and Nina. No space at their tables for an odd Sally. Who knew what a woman on her own was capable of? Best to leave her off the guest list, we were never sure of her anyway. She thought herself too good for us.
And it was true, she had. But it was hard to be smug sitting amongst toast crusts and spilt orange juice.
Carin wasn’t sure what had first roused her from the darkness, the smell of burning cheese or the shrill ring of the phone. The last person she had expected to hear from and once supper was tossed in the bin, Carin slipped into her shoes and left the building.
Later Sally claimed that Carin had saved her life. Carin didn’t say anything but maybe one day she would. Only she knew how close it had been.