What My Best Friend Did (23 page)

“I’m sure they’re not saying anything, Al. You’re just having a really rough time and it’s making you think stuff that normally I know you wouldn’t,” Vic tried to reassure me. “Tom is a good person, he’s not like that. To be fair, Al, he didn’t have to ring you to explain—lots of blokes wouldn’t have done.”

“Because of what happened with Bailey?” I said.

“Well, partly, yes,” she said awkwardly.

“But I never wanted to tell Tom about him! I was going to do what you said—I was going to fib and protect him, if it hadn’t been for Gretchen opening her trap. She had no business even being there, she was supposed to be in hospital for fuck’s sake.” And then just like that, a realization struck me between the eyes. Literally like an iron girder had swung through the air, smacked me in the forehead and knocked me clean off my feet.

“Oh my God, Vic. Do you think she meant to tell him?”

“I don’t understand,” Vic said, confused. “Meant to tell him what?”

“That Bailey and I were ‘going out.’ It very neatly split us up, didn’t it? And she’s now dating Tom. So obviously, she finds him attractive.”

“I don’t mean to be rude, but that’s rather stating the obvious, isn’t it?”

“My point is, when did she start fancying him? When she first met him? While he was still my boyfriend?”

My mind started to race as Vic considered the implications of what I’d just said.

She hesitated. “It honestly sounds like they just met in America and it grew from there … I think maybe you need to—”

“What, randomly, in a city of millions of people? What are the chances of that actually happening?”

I stared at the wall, on which there hung a large Warhol-style print of Gretchen, recreating the Monroe shots, head tipped back and laughing, all in various colors. It was like looking at a tile game and starting to slot the pieces into place to make one, crystal clear picture.

“Out of the blue, she decides to do a course in New York, where she knows no one … but does know he’s there, because I told her? And bingo! They just happen to meet and fall for each other? In a city that big?”

“Al,” Vic was starting to sound worried, “you’ve had a shitty weekend and I get that you’re upset and searching for reasons and explanations, but that’s really fucked up. You’re saying she went out there on purpose like some heat-seeking missile? She’s not Glenn Close in whatsit—
Fatal Attraction.”

“Well, she’d just had a stay in a mental hospital,” I said quickly.

“Oh Alice!” Vic said, horrified. “Come on! You’re bigger than that. I’m sure love and romance was the last thing on her mind. You said yourself she’d been really ill, done some horrendous stuff.”

“Yes, she had! Like tell Tom on purpose about me and Bailey!”

“What, so her illness was a handy excuse for her having put her foot in it?” Vic asked sceptically, which hadn’t even occurred to me until then.

“YES!” I said. “Of course! You’re absolutely right!”

“Sorry, but this is what’s actually crazy. Alice, please. You’re losing the plot, I wasn’t serious. No one could be that manipulative and calculating.”

“I can’t believe this!” I said, not listening. “I’ve got to go. I’ll call you back.”

“Alice, do not call Tom—” I heard her begin to say, but I clicked off and began to dial furiously.

S
o Gretchen fell for me in London, deliberately split us up and then followed me out to America?” said Tom slowly, in complete disbelief. “Sorry, Alice, I don’t buy it—I’m not that good-looking.”

I didn’t laugh. We’d been well into the phone row for twenty minutes, our past intimacy allowing us to believe it was acceptable to say exactly what was on our minds.

“It’s ridiculous. I mean, come on!” Tom said. “She and I,” he continued uncomfortably, “really fought what was beginning between us …”

Clearly. They’d obviously fought really hard.

“Neither of us saw it coming.”

“Don’t!” I said quickly. “I don’t want to know the details!”

“We never wanted to hurt anyone, but you were with someone else, remember?”

“Yeah, and look how you ‘accidentally’ found out about that!”

I gasped as something else occurred to me: Gretchen being offhand and cross when I first said I liked Bailey, then suddenly swinging completely the other way and fixing us up. Had she pushed me together with Bailey just to get me out of the way?

“And it was Gretchen who set me up with Bailey—did she tell you that?”

Tom ignored me. “Alice, me and Gretchen just happened. I was lonely out here, so was she. No one contrived to do anything deliberate at all—that’s an insane thing to suggest! You need to take a time-out.” I couldn’t believe he was trying to calm me down. I wasn’t the loony! I looked at the prints of her on the wall again and had to restrain myself from throwing something at them.

“You’ve hit it on the head,” I responded, with all the ferocity of an electric shock. “It’s insane. Let’s all feel sorry for poor innocent Gretchen: ‘Oh, did I just say something I shouldn’t have? Wasn’t me! It was the drugs, or the mental illness, or the depression …’ Bollocks! Being a manic-depressive isn’t an excuse for bad behavior. You can’t just do what you like and then turn around and say, ‘Whoops, didn’t mean to, that was the bad, old naughty me!’ She hides behind it when it suits her, so she can do exactly as she pleases—I just can’t believe I’ve not seen it until now!”

“Alice, can you even hear yourself?”

“And don’t you even care that she’s mentally ill? Doesn’t that worry you?”

“So you do want details,” Tom said patiently. “Look, I never really got to know Gretchen in London, for obvious reasons, but despite her illness, everything you yourself told me about her is true. She’s incredibly funny, generous, kind and spontaneous—”

“As well as manipulative, devious, will shag anything when hyper, goes on spending sprees like she’s using Monopoly money,” I cut in viciously.

Tom took a deep breath and didn’t rise. “We just have a lot of fun together. As far as the manic thing goes, it hasn’t been an issue. She was very frank about it from the start, she takes her medication … and sometimes she gets a bit ratty or a bit sad, but I just leave her to work through it calmly.”

“Gets a bit ratty?” I repeated in disbelief. “Are you fucking kidding me? I’ve seen her try to get out of a moving car!”

“Al, please,” Tom paused. “This isn’t fair to Gretch … and this isn’t like you.”

“So tell me how you just ‘met,’” I said, like a police officer determined to reexamine the evidence and find the giveaway clue.

“Jesus, Alice,” he said, exhausted. “She moved here, she didn’t know anyone else. She had no idea how to find medical support, couldn’t tell anyone on her course because she didn’t want them to know about her condition. She remembered you telling her I was out here on temporary transfer and remembered what firm I was with. She was desperate—you know what it must have cost her to call someone she’d only met twice? And not exactly under the best of circumstances on the last occasion …”

“But that’s just not true!” I burst. “She told me and Ba—” I stopped quickly. “Told me before she left that she’d already lined up a therapist. Why didn’t he or she help her out with medical support? Why call you?”

“Maybe they let her down, maybe they simply didn’t know—everyone out here calls themselves a shrink,” Tom said. “It’s embarrassing.”

Could he even hear himself? Since when was he an expert on psychiatry?

“Oh come on, Tom.”

“How would you know if I’m right or not?” he said, losing patience. “You don’t live here—I do.”

“She’s manipulated both of us—and you’re too stupid to see it!”

“What, she made you fall for her brother too, did she?” he snapped. “Look, I’m a bloke, Al—you’re right, I’m just not that complicated. We met, I liked her, I wasn’t with anyone else. That’s all. I accept that it would have been far more convenient to get together with someone you didn’t know, but no one can help who they fall for. You proved that with Bailey”—he managed to say his name, with difficulty—“and that wasn’t meant as a dig. It sounded like it, but it wasn’t.”

“It didn’t occur to you that it might upset me?”

“You want the honest answer, Al?” he cut in swiftly. “Actually yes, at first it did, and much as I hate to admit it, there was a big part of me that wanted to get back at you. I mean, fuck, Alice, you took him to Paris with you?”

I gasped. “Vic said she wouldn’t tell you!”

“She didn’t. I rang and Luc answered, let it slip by mistake. But I can honestly tell you that what I feel for Gretchen now …”

Hearing him talk about her like that made me feel nauseous. It was all wrong!

“… has nothing to do with that. Nothing at all. I’m not doing it to hurt you, Alice. I loved you.”

And that said it all—the past tense. I couldn’t listen to any more.

I hung up and just sat there, paralyzed.

How could she? How could he? But particularly, how could one of my best friends do this to me and not even tell me about it until after it had been happening for what appeared to be ages? I thought back over all the phone calls where we had chatted away aimlessly about stuff and nothing: her course, my work, the tutors she liked, my family news. And all the time she had met Tom and was dating him. Sleeping with him. I looked around slowly, as if seeing her belongings through new eyes. I was sitting on her sofa, living in her flat, which, of course, had been her idea too.

I felt shaken by the frightening ease with which she’d expertly maneuvered everything into position, but as I sat there, continuing to slot the pieces into place, a wave of anger, hurt, bitter betrayal and jealousy began to swell within me.

She was supposed to be one of my best friends. Everyone, everything that was important to me was now revolving around her.

I wasn’t sure I could bear it.

I
arrived back at Gretchen’s silent flat and slung my copy of
Loot
on the table. It was oppressively quiet after the buzz and hum of having been on location in a busy restaurant in Mayfair all day, where the presence of other people and their chatter had comfortingly washed over me. There was no TV on or kettle just boiled, no one to ask me how my day had been. Just Gretchen’s fucking Andy Warhol pictures laughing down at me. I decided to call Vic.

“Salut,
Alice,” Luc answered, his calm, assured doctor’s voice sounding in my ear. “I hear you are having difficult times. I’m sorry for this. You would, I think, like to talk with Victoria? Or perhaps with me?”

“Er, it was actually Vic I was after,” I said, a bit confused by his offer. “If she’s there?”

“Of course,” he said politely. “She is just finishing eating, in fact. Here she is now.”

“Hi, Al.” Vic came on the line, speaking through a mouthful. “How are you?”

“Going crazy,” I said. “I have to get out of this flat, Vic. You don’t understand what it’s like, feeling trapped in her space, but I literally can’t find anywhere.” I looked around Gretchen’s flat and shivered. “Trying to move house in the run-up to Christmas is virtually impossible. Only truly desperate people are trying to find room at the inn.”

“Well, you’re not desperate, not yet.” I heard her cutlery clatter on to a plate in the background. “Thanks, Luc, that was lovely … I know you hate being there, Al, and I can totally understand why, but she’s in another country and it’s not like you’re having to live with her. When’s she due back?”

“I assume it’s still the end of November—two weeks. If I haven’t found anywhere by the end of this week I’m just going to have to get a hotel or sleep at the studio or something.”

“But it’s Wednesday today!” Vic yawned. “So you’ve got what, barely three full days?”

“I know. I’ve been scanning the papers religiously for short lets, long lets,” I said tiredly, “but I just can’t afford a one-bed on my own, so that leaves me with a flat share. Bearing in mind I’ve got a lot of expensive camera gear, trying to find one with some semi-normal people that isn’t a crack house, or a moldy hole with rickety windows you expect to see someone silently climbing through in the dead of night, isn’t exactly easy. A few people have said some stuff might come up in the New Year, but that isn’t much help now.”

“What about one of the uni lot?” Vic yawned again. “God, sorry Al! I’ve just had a really long day at work. It’s actually really tiring trying to focus on catching the odd word you can understand when people speak so fast. I really have to concentrate or it all merges into one big French blah. Anyway, the uni girls—”

“OK,” I said. “Imagine how this would sound if you were one of them: ‘Hi, it’s Alice here. Now, I know that recently I’ve barely seen you apart from the odd birthday drink, mostly because work’s been really busy but also because I’m pretty lazy and it was easier to sit in on a Friday night with my then boyfriend than make the effort to meet up with you. Well, I’m not with him anymore—he’s going out with my so-called best friend, who’s mad, and in fact I’ve just split up with someone else entirely! Oh, and did I mention I need somewhere to live? I was thinking your place might do the trick. See you Friday?’”

“I take your point,” Vic sighed. “Fair enough.”

“Moreover, it’s embarrassing. I’m too old for this shit—begging a spare room. This whole me-staying-in-her-flat thing seemed such a good idea at the time, such a convenient, easy option. I never stopped to think about what would happen if we fell out. It never occurred to me that we would.”

I felt the now familiar mixture of sadness and anger swirling in my gut as I thought about Gretchen. I’d analyzed our friendship for hours since I’d found out about her and Tom, and had come to the conclusion that anything she and I had must have been entirely built on sand. It had all fallen away as quickly as it had begun, to the point where I wasn’t sure if it had ever really been there at all, even though it had grown to be so important to me. Was it my payback for expecting too much from someone who perhaps should never have been more than a cocktails-and-coffee buddy? She had, after all, once admitted she’d wanted to use me to expand her fashion contacts.