What My Best Friend Did (14 page)

What was she doing? I couldn’t help grinning. Nutter. I put my hand over my mouth and tried not to laugh as she launched into an a cappella version of “Wake Me Up.” There were a few shouts of “Get OFF!” and “Put a sock in it, blondie!” from the audience.

But she ignored them and began to wave her arms around,kicking her legs from one side to the other as she sang. It was a bit like watching my slightly drunk dad dancing to “New York, New York” at the end of a wedding reception, only with slightly more coordination and much better legs.

She was starting to get a little puffed out. The organizer walked onstage and put his hand on her arm. As he touched her, she suddenly stopped moving and shouted “DON’T touch me,” and glared at him furiously. Alarmed, the organizer backed off to the edge of the stage, hands in the air, and gestured to one of the barmen. He nodded and picked up a phone.

Gretchen, meanwhile, had bizarrely gone completely still and was clutching the mic in the middle of the stage, having closed her eyes firmly, still singing. I didn’t understand what she was trying to do—make the point that she’d finish when she was good and ready? It wasn’t that she had a bad voice, it was actually beautiful, surprisingly low and sultry, but I had now realized something was not right. She was clutching the mic as if her life depended on it. People in the audience had fallen quiet and were starting to whisper to each other curiously. Everyone was just looking at her. I saw one woman tap the side of her head and roll her eyes at her friend.

“Wo wooo wo wo wo, wooo wo wo wo woooooo …” She’d started to do the guitar solo and then I realized she wasn’t going to stop and this wasn’t funny anymore. Suddenly completely sober, I saw a door open at the back of the room and two grim, determined-looking bouncers appear. I grabbed our bags and started to weave through the audience and push my way to the front. The barman was saying something to the bouncers and pointing at Gretchen. They nodded and started to walk toward the stage. I got there first though and reached out to put my hand on her arm. She was still singing.

“Gretch? Gretchen. You’ve got to stop.”

Everyone was staring at us as a bouncer climbed the steps on the left-hand side of the stage. I protectively grabbed her and pulled her toward me. She dropped the mic and opened her eyes, appearing astonished to find herself there. “I just want to sing,” she said. “Let me sing.”

“Don’t touch her!” I said warningly as the bouncer advanced on us and I dragged her off the stage. Pulling her through the crowds, her tottering to move faster in heels, I shoved her up the stairs past the cloakroom and she started giggling uncontrollably, as if we were playing a game. I pushed her through the door and the night air hit us as we fell out on to the street. She stumbled and I grabbed her hand to steady her. “Gretchen, are you OK?” I asked worriedly.

She looked up at me and, in the neon lights of the bar sign, I saw that her pupils were huge, like pools. She just giggled again. With a sinking feeling, I realized why she’d been gone so long in the loos. She was as high as a kite.

I eventually managed to get us a taxi—Gretchen had begun to sing again under her breath. Having given my address I sank back into the seat, exhausted, and said nothing for the next few minutes. There was so much I wanted to ask I didn’t know where to begin. I thought again about her being near to tears the day before; P.M.S. my arse—there was obviously a lot more to it than that, something she wasn’t telling me. I racked my brains. Was it bloke-related, perhaps? But then the last person she’d actually dated had been that boyband prat, and that had been ages ago.

Gretchen stared out of the window, eyes glittering brightly as if she was waiting for the next party trick. Finally she said pleasantly, “Are we going back to your place then?” as if we were stopping off after a charming night at the theater.

I looked at her in disbelief. “Yes, we are.” I closed my eyes for a moment. I just wanted the day to stop. I’d had enough.

“Ohhhh look!” she suddenly said excitedly as we passed it. “There’s a church! Let’s stop and go in!” She reached for the door handle.

“Oh!” she said in disappointment as it clicked redundantly in her hand; it was on auto lock. The driver glanced in his rearview mirror in annoyance. “I can’t get out. Make it work, Alice, I want to have a chat with God. I need to tell him some stuff. Let’s go and see God right now.”

“Gretchen!” I reached out quickly. “The car is moving! Don’t—it’s dangerous!”

But she kept clicking furiously and in the end I had to grab her hand and pull it away. She just laughed and threw herself back in the seat breathlessly, tapping her fingers rapidly on her leg. Then she started humming under her breath.

I looked at her in frightened disbelief. What on earth had she taken in that toilet cubicle? I wasn’t naive enough to think that someone who worked in her industry would be completely squeaky clean, but still—she was practically delusional. She wanted to talk to God?

As the church disappeared from view, however, she settled down. We arrived back at the flat five minutes later and I eventually persuaded her to come in, my voice much calmer than I actually felt. I knew Tom would long since have gone to bed as it was a “school night,” so the coast was clear—but Paolo was still up watching TV, doing biceps curls with enormous dumbbells.

He looked up when we came in and then immediately set his weights down appreciatively at the sight of Gretchen. He pushed his damp-with-sweat dark hair off his face and then offered his hand to her, having wiped it first on the front of his T-shirt. “Hola,” he said disarmingly, and I saw her take in his well-developed shoulders—overdeveloped in my opinion—and absurdly flat stomach. “I am Paolo.”

“Hello, Paolo. I am staying the night.” She smiled seductively and then giggled.

Ohhhh no no. That was the last thing anyone needed. “Night, Paolo,” I said firmly and took Gretchen’s hand. I led her into the hall, quickly pulling our bedroom door to, so as not to wake Tom. She just saw the outline of his body in bed as she peered over my shoulder into the dark room. “He’s very lovely, Alice,” she said slowly. “Can I have him now that you don’t want him?” She hiccupped gently. “I think he’s perfect.” Tom? Perfect? God, she really was out of it. “Or I’ll have the other one. Wassisname—Mario. I don’t care. He’s very pretty. Is he single?”

“Yes he is, but it’s time to lie down now, Gretch,” I said quietly. “You can sleep in here.”

I opened the door to my old room, now my office, and cleared the junk off the unmade bed.

“Nice ‘bedroom.’” She mimed quote marks and laughed restlessly, flopping down on the mattress. Then she yawned so widely I saw the teeth at the back of her mouth. “I want to sleep now.”

Perhaps she was just drunk after all. “So do you think you’ll be able to get some rest?” I said and she nodded.

“What about you? Where are you going to sleep?” She giggled.

“I’ll kip on the sofa,” I lied, and made a mental note to be up early, before her, so she was none the wiser. “We’ll talk in the morning then, shall we?” I said, pulling a duvet over her. It hadn’t got a cover on it but she didn’t seem to care, her eyes were already shut. I closed the door gently behind me.

The following morning I woke up with a start, having overslept. Tom had already left for work and I quickly got up, my head throbbing, and dragged on my dressing gown. She wouldn’t be up yet,surely? She’d been out for the count. I checked my watch—I had an afternoon shoot, luckily. That would give me plenty of time to get her up and find out what on earth last night had been all about.

I tiptoed over to my office and pushed the door open a crack.

The bed was completely empty … She’d vanished.

S
he was simply nowhere to be seen. In the sitting room there was no note, no nothing, only her patent shoes … sticking out from under the sofa, unsettlingly reminiscent of the Wicked Witch in
The Wizard of Oz.
Slumped alongside them was her handbag. I actually got on my hands and knees and had a quick double check under the couch but, unsurprisingly, she wasn’t there. Where could she have gone without shoes and her bag?

I walked back into the hall and slapped into Paolo, who was dressed in a snug T-shirt, distressingly low-slung tracksuit bottoms and enormous basketball trainers. “Hola, Alice,” he said quickly.

“You haven’t seen Gretchen—” I began, but he tapped his watch and said, “Very late for the gym, sorry.” He glanced briefly at his bedroom—the door was pushed to—and then clattered rapidly down the stairs, banging the front door behind him.

What was he looking so evasive for? It wasn’t as if I’d accused him of abducting Gretchen into his room under the cover of darkness …

Oh shhhhiiitt.

No, that was impossible. She couldn’t have. She hadn’t said so much as a sentence to him the previous night! They had barely met.

Even so, I found myself curiously tiptoeing over to his room.

Very, very slowly, holding my breath and clutching my dressing gown together with one hand, I creaked the door open with the other and peered in.

The bed was unmade, but empty. Oh thank God for that. I exhaled heavily.

But then that still didn’t solve where the hell she was. There weren’t enough rooms in our flat to get lost in.

I looked everywhere and, even though I knew it was pointless because this wasn’t some bizarre game of hide-and-seek where she was going to gleefully stick her head out from under the sink and shout “I won!” I looked again.

She had simply disappeared into thin air. I sank back on to the sofa and tried to think sensibly. I couldn’t, so I rang Tom.

“Well she definitely wasn’t in your old room when I got up this morning,” he said. “Hang on a minute, Al—yes, I’ll be two seconds,” he told someone in the background. I could hear phones ringing, the hum and bustle of an office, then he came back to me. “Al, I’ve got to go, things are really hectic here this morning. I’ll call you later, love you.” And he hung up.

I sat there pondering whether I should call the police, but wasn’t sure what I would tell them. “My best friend got drunk and possibly high last night, I put her to bed and now she’s gone.” They’d tell me to bugger off.

I went and picked up her bag, peering into it. It contained her phone, purse, some makeup, a hairband—nothing that gave me any clues. I reached for her phone, it was on.

And then it occurred to me. Bailey. I could phone him. His sister had disappeared and I was worried about her. He ought to know.

Ohhh, but I didn’t want to phone him. He knew I fancied him. I was going to look like a teenage stalker. Thanks very bloody much, Gretch, I thought crossly as I went through her address book and his name slid into view. I paused. I so didn’t want to do this, but she was missing … ARGH! Taking a deep breath, and before I could change my mind, I hit call.

“Grot, please fuck off,” said a sleepy voice. “I’m still in bed …”

Oh God—suppose he wasn’t alone …

“It’s Alice actually,” I began, trying to focus only on the matter in hand. “We met at the café?”

“Oh right!” he said quickly, and I imagined him sitting up. “I’m so sorry! Hang on—you are on my sister’s phone, aren’t you?”

“Yes.” I took a deep breath. “I’m afraid something’s happened …”

I waited nervously in the coffee shop for him, clutching Gretchen’s handbag, in which I’d also placed her shoes. At half ten the door opened and in he walked, looking subdued and a little tired.

I couldn’t help it. My heart spontaneously leaped at the sight of him and I nervously pushed my freshly washed hair off my face and smoothed a wrinkle out of my black slightly-lower-cut-than-normal top, as I tried not to think about the fact that Gretchen had told him about my crush. There were far more important things to worry about. I half stood up awkwardly and held the bag out to him straightaway.

“Hi, Alice.” He managed a faint smile. “Oh, this is hers, is it?Thanks.” He took the bag from me and set it down on the table between us. Then, pulling out the chair opposite, he sank down heavily. “I’m so sorry that you’ve got caught up in all of this.”

“It’s OK.”

“It’s not OK actually.” He sat back and looked at me steadily. “It’s very frustrating and, well, sad I suppose. She hasn’t had a setback like this for a while and you almost manage to convince yourself that she’s fine, but then …” He sighed. “You’re reminded she’s not at all there. Poor little scrap.”

I hadn’t got a clue what he was talking about.

“She must have come off it to have ramped up like this. She hasn’t disappeared for a while now.”

“Come off what?” I asked.

“Her lithium,” he said, surprised by my confusion.

I must have looked totally blank, because he stared at me and then said, very slowly, “Oh holy shit—she hasn’t told you, has she?”

“Lithium?” I echoed, as that rang a bell somewhere. “I’ve heard of that.”

But Bailey was looking at the table and had covered his face with his hands, muttering “Shit, shit, shit” through his fingers. He exhaled, lifted his head back up and said simply, “Gretchen’s a manic-depressive. I thought you knew. I’m so sorry.”

I stared at him, utterly at a loss for words.

“I assumed …” he trailed off awkwardly. “It’s just she talks about you a lot, says how good you are for her. I thought she would have said. She’s usually pretty upfront about it—although it’s cost her lots of friends in the past. Maybe that’s why she didn’t say anything this time, she was worried about how you’d react. Oh fuck it, I’m such a wanker!” He looked furious with himself. “Where’s the waiter? I need one of your huge spoons,” he said, trying to lighten the mood but failing miserably.

My mind had spun into motion and was spooling back through the previous night; her singing and trying to get out of the moving taxi … So she hadn’t been drunk or on drugs? She was a manic-depressive? Why hadn’t she told me?

Bailey was looking at me carefully. “You look pretty taken aback. Don’t take this the wrong way, but do you actually know what manic depression is? You don’t need to be frightened, Alice; she’s not a nutter.”