‘I think everyone saw her. She was the kind of woman people looked at.’
Anna pulls another face when I say this, one that really doesn’t suit her. I still think I handled the question as well as I could without lying. She always used to know when I did that.
‘But how well did you know her?’ she asks again. I imagine a thin film of sweat forming on my forehead, but then my ex carries on speaking without waiting for a reply, something she’s always been rather good at. ‘Everyone always thought she was so kind when we were kids… but Rachel had a dark side. She hid it well, but it was there, and maybe it still was.’
‘Sorry, you’ve lost me. What does that have to do with you?’ I ask.
‘She was blackmailing me.’
‘What?’
‘Over something that happened when we were at school. She got back in touch recently, asked me to do something, and when I said no… what if she was trying to blackmail other people too?’
‘What happened when you were at school?’
‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘Clearly you think it might, or you wouldn’t have mentioned it.’
‘Being married to a person doesn’t mean you know everything about them, Jack.’
She looks away. My face tries to form an appropriate reaction to what she just said, but I’m not sure there is one.
‘Oh my God,’ she whispers, staring inside the car.
‘What?’
‘You kept asking about the friendship bracelet I was wearing yesterday. I genuinely thought I’d lost it, or that someone might have taken it from my room last night. I swear I have never seen that inside my car before.’
I bend down to look through the smashed window, and see a smiley-face air freshener made of bright yellow cardboard. It is hanging from the rear-view mirror, spinning in the breeze, and has been tied there with a red-and-white friendship bracelet.
Her
Wednesday 08:00
I watch as a team of strangers start to examine my car and I feel physically sick. It’s going to take for ever to wipe it clean when they are done. Jack walks towards me, and there is something inside the clear plastic bag he is holding that I can’t quite see.
‘You have a personal breathalyser in your glovebox?’
He says it loud enough for the whole team to hear, and they all turn to stare at me.
‘It’s not a crime, is it?’ I reply and he smiles.
‘No, it’s just… funny.’
‘Well, I’m glad to have amused you. Can I have my phone back now, please?’
Jack stares at me for a long time before reaching inside his pocket.
‘Sure, but if you get any more calls or texts, I want you to tell me straight away. Not the bloody newsdesk, OK?’
I dislike him the most when he speaks to me as if I am a child. He often did that during our relationship, as though always believing he knew best. He didn’t then, and he doesn’t now. Jack never learned to tell the difference between when I was telling the truth, and when I was telling him things he wanted to hear.
What I want now is a drink, but instead I stand at the edge of the car park, watching and waiting. Besides, everything alcoholic I had left was in my overnight bag, all I have on me now are a collection of empty miniature bottles.
I can’t stop thinking about Jack’s face when he described how the friendship bracelets had been tied around each of the victim’s tongues. It felt like some kind of out-of-body experience. His expression was definitely different when he talked about Rachel. He thinks I don’t know he had a thing for her, which was a foolish mistake. Wives always know.
I didn’t talk to Rachel, or Helen or Zoe, for several days after the Coke can incident. I would sit on my own in class and at lunch, ignoring the sound of their laugher that seemed to fill every corner of the school. I missed Rachel terribly, but couldn’t forgive her for what she did to Catherine Kelly. The poor girl was quieter than ever before, with permanently red eyes. That, combined with her wild white hair, made her look like an animal that had been experimented on. People had even started to joke that she belonged in a cage.
My mother picked up on my bad mood. She soon noticed that I was once again coming straight home from school, instead of hanging out with my new friends, and kept asking me to invite Rachel to our house. I couldn’t tell her what had happened – I worried that she might think less of me if she knew – so I just kept making excuses.
Imagine my surprise a week later, when Mum came home from cleaning Rachel’s house one afternoon, with Rachel sitting in the van beside her. I stood in the open doorway, not knowing what to think or say as I waited for them to get out.
‘I thought we’d have a sleepover, both our mums said it was OK!’ Rachel said, running up the garden path holding an overnight bag.
She smiled and hugged me tight, as though the incident in the school canteen had never happened.
As though we were friends again.
I didn’t know how to feel; I was confused and happy at the same time. It was like the relief you experience when you find something you thought you had lost. Something precious and irreplaceable.
It was so strange, her being in our little home. She had never been to visit before; I always went to her house instead. My mother had barely let a soul inside since my father left us, and it was as if Rachel did not belong there. To me, she seemed like someone who should only ever be surrounded by beautiful and perfect things. Our cottage was homely, but it was a mismatch of different second-hand furniture, and homemade curtains and cushions. Our bookshelves were crammed full of treasured stories rescued from charity shops, and although everything was spotlessly clean, it was also old and tired-looking. Rachel, on the other hand, always had a shiny new quality about her, and was as bubbly and full of life as it was possible for one human being to be. The kind of girl who always had a smile on her face.
Our conversation was not at all stilted; she was too good an actress for that. Even when I struggled with my own lines, she kept the performance going with carefree ease. My mother – who appeared to have no idea that there had been a falling-out – made a vegetable cottage pie, using nothing except ingredients grown in our own back garden. This was something she was rather proud of. ‘Fast food will be the end of human beings’ was one of her favourite mottos, but I never shared her fear of preservatives. Takeaways were always a treat after so many years of being denied them.
I thought it was a little embarrassing that we didn’t eat food from the supermarket, like normal people, but Rachel complimented my mother and praised the dinner, as though it were the best meal she had ever eaten. Once again, I marvelled at her ability to charm people and make them like her. It seemed almost impossible not to, regardless of knowing what she had done.
‘Would you like some chocolate ice cream for dessert as a special treat? I have some of that magic sauce somewhere, the one that goes hard when you pour it on top,’ Mum asked us both as she cleared the table.
We always had dessert in my house.
‘No thank you, Mrs Andrews. I’m full,’ our guest replied.
‘OK, love. You’ll have some, won’t you, Anna?’
Rachel looked at me. I said no too, and she smiled when my mother was gone. She had spent weeks trying to persuade me to change my dietary habits, and said that I needed to eat less and move more in order to lose weight. I’d started taking the pills Helen had given me, and according to the bathroom scales they were working. Not that I was terribly big to begin with. I remember how good it felt when Rachel looked pleased with me. Missing out on some ice cream, and swallowing a few tablets, seemed like a reasonable sacrifice to experience the satisfaction of her approval.