Truly Madly Guilty

'What happened?' Poor Not Pat looked like she was about to break out in a sweat.

'The thing is, beforehand, I took one of those tablets you prescribed,' said Erika. 'A whole one. I know you said I should start out with a half, or even a quarter, but I took a whole one, because I couldn't break it, and then, at the barbeque, I think maybe I drank more than I would normally drink.' She saw Clementine running about trying to catch the frothing champagne.

'Oh dear,' said Not Pat with a grimace so exaggerated it was almost comical.

'As you may know, there's a big warning label on the front of the packet,' said Erika. 'It says the tablets can increase the effects of alcohol, but I just thought: Well, I never drink much, I'll be fine, but I had a glass of champagne and maybe I drank it too fast. I was feeling a certain level of stress. Anyway. I think I actually got drunk, which is not something I've ever done, and I have gaps in my memory about that night. Black spots. Like blackouts?'

'They're probably more like brownouts,' said Not Pat. 'Alcohol affects your ability to transfer your memories from your short-term memory to your long-term memory.'

'So you think they're gone forever?'

Not Pat shrugged. Erika glared at her. She didn't pay for shrugging.

'Something might trigger a memory for you,' said Not Pat. 'A taste. A smell. Something someone might say that makes you remember. Or sometimes being back in the same place might help. You could "return to the scene of the crime", so to speak!' She laughed a little at the words 'scene of the crime' but Erika didn't smile back. Not Pat's smile vanished.

'Right,' said Erika.

She would think about that later.

'So anyway, I took chocolate nuts to the barbeque. Like I always do.'

Not Pat waited.

'I guess I was just thinking about all those times that Clementine's mother asked me along to family events,' said Erika. 'Her dad would be driving, her mum would have the jar of nuts on her lap, and I'd be in the back seat with Clementine. Her older brothers were mostly off doing their own thing by then, so it was often just the two of us. I'd be looking out the window, feeling so pleased with myself, so blissful, pretending Clementine and I were sisters, and that her parents were my parents.'

She looked up at Not Pat, surprised to find that this was what she'd been circling, this not exactly shocking little factoid, as Oliver would say. 'Clementine wasn't blissfully pretending she was my sister. Clementine didn't want me there at all.'

'Ah,' said Not Pat.

'I always knew that, of course. Deep down I knew it. But lately I've been trying to put myself in her place, to be the one looking out the other window, the real daughter, with this impostor always hanging about.' Erika looked unseeingly at the plush, padded surface of Not Pat's ottoman. 'I wonder how that felt.'

chapter forty-two

The day of the barbeque

Erika had the dangerous, truculent look of a drunk about to reveal secrets.

Clementine's stomach tightened. 'We're still friends now, aren't we?' she said lightly.

Erika made a sound that was almost a guffaw.

Dear God, revealing the painful complexities of her friendship with Erika felt like a more intimate, socially unacceptable revelation than the news that Tiffany used to be a stripper.

Tiffany cleared her throat, and Clementine watched her make a marginal adjustment of the wine bottle so that it was further away from Erika.

'Excuse me,' said Erika. She stood. She didn't sway, but she had the careful stance of an inexperienced passenger on a boat, someone very aware that the ground could move at any moment. 'I'll just go inside to the bathroom.' She blinked rapidly. 'For a moment.'

'Oh, there's one right here,' said Tiffany, pointing at a door at the back of the cabana. Of course there was. Clementine's whole family could quite happily have moved into that cabana.

But Erika was already heading back into the house.

'She's a bit tipsy I think,' said Clementine apologetically, because Erika's strange behaviour was clearly her responsibility. She thought of their younger years when Erika would take charge, hailing cabs and making coffee when Clementine drank too much. It was strange to be apologising for Erika.

'Probably my fault for refilling her glass too often,' said Tiffany. 'I'll lose my responsible service of alcohol licence.'

'Oh, have you got one?' said Clementine. Maybe that was a requirement for strippers.

Tiffany smiled faintly. 'No,' she said. 'Just joking.'