When Good Friends Go Bad (7 page)

She rose to her feet, staggering drunkenly.

'No!' Both Jen and Georgina sprang up, their chairs skidding backwards.

'People just don't do that over here,' Georgina said hastily, casting an anxious glance around her at the other diners whose peaceful evening they were now interrupting.

'I ain't people.' Meg tossed her red locks, impersonating the dumb blonde from
Singing in the Rain.
Jen grabbed her arm, pinning her to her place. 'How about neither of us will ever speak to you again if you do?'

'Oh well in that case . . .' Meg lurched a little, 'what's to stop me?' To their relief, however, she sat down. 'Who's that little squirt she's with?'

'Search me,' Georgina said a bit too quickly. Jen glanced over but couldn't place him. He was small, middle-aged, with a bulbous nose, sand-coloured wispy hair and a pot belly straining at the belt of his too-tight jeans.

'Bet your life he's some big-shot billionaire.' Meg made as if to rise again. 'Shall I check him out?'

'Sit down you silly moo,' Jen tugged at her arm again.

Meg grinned. 'Gotcha. You
totally
thought I was going to do it, didn't you?' She started laughing and after a second the others joined in.

A little fuzzy from the wine herself, Jen was comforted to know that yes, they were all very much the same. Maybe Georgina was slightly snobbish, maybe Meg was still an instigator, but all that was part of their distinctive personalities. None of her current acquaintances – except Helen, perhaps – had the history she shared with these two, and she'd missed this easy familiarity.

Just as Helen had taken her under her wing in her adult life, the women beside her had seen her through her first teen bra to her first period, had explained to her the mysteries of tampons and French braids, had watched her back through the pits and troughs of adolescence more times than she could remember. Since Jen was only four when her mother died in a car crash, she'd depended on them for all those things a mother might have provided, beginning with sex education (some wildly misleading information there). 'Well, first the boy takes his thingy . . .' 'No, really, you can't get pregnant if you keep your clothes on.' Then there was fashion advice, mostly disastrous, as the merits of frilly pirate shirts over tight leggings, headbands, and legwarmers were earnestly discussed. Social niceties were also included (well, Georgina at least helped her out on basic etiquette). 'If my mother burps/falls over/starts crying pretend you don't notice.' One of them even gave her the recipe for Rice Krispies chocolate squares.

All right, maybe there'd been clashes in the past, maybe there'd be conflicts in the future, but wasn't that always the case once you explored what lay behind people's social masks? Only someone so close could drive you incandescent with rage and yet be forgiven. And only with your best friends could you drop all barriers and truly be yourself, your faults revealed and accepted.

It was the reason their occasional spats sometimes ended in tears and hurt feelings, why there'd even been times when one wasn't speaking to the rest, but for so many years come hell or high water they'd always gravitated back to the friendship that was so much more important than any petty squabbles. And it also made it all the more sad that they'd ever allowed anything to split them up.

Meg was right. It was 'wild' meeting up with them. Now she and Meg were both in London, they could start seeing each other, and Georgina too, when she was up in town. They'd get to meet Ollie and Helen . . . whoa, all right, maybe not the best idea. Georgina wasn't too keen on bossy people – didn't someone say the faults you hate most in other people are the ones you possess yourself? Helen would probably slag off Meg the minute she left and Christ knew what Meg would say to Ollie.

But minor complications aside, they'd all be friends again.

It was only when Georgina had handed over her American Express to pay the bill, to Jen's half-hearted protests and Meg's barely concealed relief, that it dawned on Jen there was still a missing element to the night's tales.

'No, Jennifer, put that away.' Georgina handed back Jen's cash and stood up. 'It's my pleasure but I truthfully have to leave. I'm late as it is.' She'd excused herself earlier to make a call on her mobile.

'Next one's on me,' Meg volunteered. 'If you don't mind pizza in my hovel.'

'Not so fast.' As the waiter returned Georgina's credit card, Jen playfully snatched it up, preventing her escape. 'You haven't told us one single thing about this hubby of yours. Now I'm positive he must be a crack addict or a drug dealer – which is it?'

Then Georgina really did look flustered.

'Neither. He's . . .' she started and suddenly stopped.

Jen saw Meg's eyes widen in astonishment as she looked over Jen's shoulder towards the door. Georgina had stiffened, surprise, anger and, oddest of all, guilt flashing across her face all at once. There was no avoiding it, Jen had to turn to look.

A sledgehammer slammed her in the solar plexus.

His hair was collar-length and wavier, swept back handsomely from his prominent cheekbones. His eyes seemed darker, more velvety-brown than Jen remembered, but still as soulful and unfathomable as those of a Native American shaman. He was broader and more muscular. A man, a grownup man, no longer the boy she once loved. Recovering from his frozen position in the doorway, he walked over to them and placed a proprietorial hand on Georgina's shoulder, bending to brush her cheek with his lips.

'So this is your
business
meeting,' he said softly. 'I wouldn't have come in, but you were taking ages.'

At first it made no sense. It was like seeing a ghost conjured by a Victorian medium, as if all their reminiscing had acted as an Ouija board, three witches summoning a spirit from the past. How did he . . .? Who told him . . .? But as he straightened up, Jen saw Georgina's face, sort of crumpled in on itself, the swift assessing spark as Meg looked from the other two to Jen, and the sickening knowledge supplied a second blow, crushing her ribcage this time.

Oh God! Meg was standing now and he was kissing her, a big smack on her upturned cheek. Then he let go of her shoulders and it was Jen's turn.

'Come on then, Titch.' He stepped towards her and smiled. 'Give us a hug.'

The arms that encircled Jen's gave out an electrical charge so powerful that if she hadn't been rooted to the floor in shock, she might have been thrown right across the room.

Starkey! Starkey was Georgina's husband. Starkey was the father of Georgina's unborn baby.

And then she knew how deeply she'd been betrayed.

It was Clover who first brought Aiden Kenton Starkson into all their lives. She found him working at a petrol station and what caught her attention as she paid was not his long dark hair, pulled back in a ponytail, his discreet gold earring or his Byronic good looks – all the more striking because in those days he only wore black – but the book of e.e. cummings poetry he was poring over. A short conversation revealed that 'Starkey' was a poet, a lover of Kerouac and Yeats, who considered Bob Dylan, Van Morrison and Leonard Cohen to be the greatest writers of any generation. So in typical Clover fashion she brought him home to be her latest collaborator.

Everyone loved Starkey. Herb, who liked to label people in a way that made it hard to tell if he was serious, introduced him as "the coolest cat on the planet" to the stream of artists and performers who flowed through their purple front door, patting Starkey's shoulder in an avuncular way.

Starkey was nineteen, a few months younger than Meg's brother, Mace. Soon he was one of a revolving crowd of characters who regularly shared Clover's candle-lit pot-luck dinners in which brown rice, tofu, almond butter and all kinds of pulses, beans and grains crossed Jen's path for the first time. Only Meg, complaining about all the hangers-on, seemed less than enamoured, declaring herself 'totally bummed' at never seeing her parents without an entourage.

But even she was not immune to Aiden's presence. At fifteen Meg was quite the vamp. She'd lost her virginity the previous year and ever since then had been determinedly stalking any boy who had the fortune – or misfortune – to catch her fancy. She would hover over Starkey while he worked, resting her pointy little chin on his shoulder to see what he was writing, her nubile young breasts in a skimpy top pressing against his back, her ginger curls mixing with his black ones.

She'd laugh too enthusiastically when he spoke, her whole body shaking as if he were the cast of
Blackadder
and
Monty Python
rolled into one. And she'd even rub her toes provocatively up his denim-clad leg whenever they gathered in Clover's incense-scented boudoir, listening to Clover work up chords on the guitar. It was hard to believe that Starkey could resist such an overt seduction.

But he did. His pen never faltered, his dark brows merely wrinkling deeper in concentration as the words flowed out, or he'd casually shift position, moving his leg away, out of invading range, and tuck it under him, never taking his eyes off Clover and her strumming fingers.

Only once when he, Meg and Jen were lying back on the Thai silk pillows of Clover's king-size bed – Meg's parents had separate bedrooms, Clover using hers as studio, sitting room and for all kinds of entertaining – he happened to turn his head and catch Jen staring at him, and a small smile crossed his sensuous mouth as he closed his eye in the faintest of complicit winks.

It was a moment Jen replayed time and time again in long, sleepless nights of restless yearning. For the first time in her young life she was smitten. From then on Starkey was the only one who haunted her dreams.

He called her 'Titch' a name that she would have objected to from anyone else, but from Starkey's mouth it had the same effect as a love sonnet. 'Hey, Titch,' he'd say, 'what's up?' Or 'Hi Titch, how's it hanging?'

To which she never had any good reply, all her brain cells having fled with the onset of first love, taking all her pithy responses with them. She was tongue-tied in his presence, every bit as shy as Rowan. She found it impossible to meet his eyes, her mind would freeze as her face grew hot and not a single coherent sentence would emerge until he'd walked away, leaving her with a sudden influx of snappy comebacks. Soon everybody else was calling her Titch too, and she loved it, because each utterance reminded her of him.

Starkey was an enigma, a mass of contradictions and moods. He could be wildly social, livening up any room he was in, holding court with adults twice his age, or unpredictably silent and withdrawn, emanating loneliness and existential despair to rival any teenage rebel.

Either way he was impossible to ignore. Even Rowan and Georgina fell under his magnetic spell. Rowan decided he was completely 'yummy'. And Georgina swooned, discovering that despite his oddly rough accent, somewhere between East End cockney and South (Sarf) London wide boy, his family were listed in
Burke's Peerage.
In fact he'd dropped out of Eton where he'd been a King's Scholar, on his way to Oxford, until he'd decided the whole scene was unbearably archaic and phoney.

Meg once accused him of being a trust-fund baby, to which he replied equably that the coffers were looking pretty bare and he wasn't pumping petrol because he was getting off on the smell of it.

He had a girlfriend too when they first met him, a voluptuous twenty-year-old Scandinavian called Astrid, with the whitest of white-blond hair, who the four friends were ragingly jealous of, not only because she was older, but also because she managed to be both sexy and ethereal. Next to her they all felt like lumpish, awkward children – which, really, they were.

Astrid came to several of the Lennox parties, a pale sprite smooching with Starkey in the maroon and gold living room painted with astrological symbols. More than once they found her hiding from Herb's wandering hands behind a dust-laden curtain or the life-size African fetish statue sporting a mammoth erection.

Then at one party Starkey's blonde was conspicuously absent. Wandering on her own, carrying a glass of 7 Up with a lemon slice that she hoped made it look like a gin and tonic, Jen passed the open door to Herb's studio and saw Starkey sitting there, picking at the strings of Herb's beloved Stratocaster that none of them were to touch on pain of instant execution. He looked darkly morose, taking long drags on a joint resting between his lips, and Jen, lingering, might have moved on if he hadn't glanced her way and given the tiniest nod, summoning her into the room.

'Meg told me you broke up with Astrid.' Jen never was any good at small talk, so she just said the first thing that came into her head. Starkey looked at her thoughtfully for a second, his dark eyes staring into hers as if waking from a dream.

He played a few notes then said, 'She's better off without me. She wanted the whole hearts and flowers routine, someone who'd call her when he said he would, take her out every Friday, promise to be faithful, say he loved her. I told her when we met I'm bad news. I like my freedom too much,' then he sang, his voice light and ironic, 'but it ain't me, babe,' segueing into a Dylan tune.

'Me too,' said Jen, sitting on a cushion by his feet. 'I like my freedom.' Which was vaguely absurd because firstly, who could be free when you were a schoolgirl and living with your dad, and second, no one had ever shown the slightest interest in taking it away.

But Starkey nodded and simply said, 'Is that so?' The tune he was playing changed. This time Jen recognised it: 'Brown Eyed Girl'. (Since her obsession with Starkey her music repertoire had extended beyond the Pet Shop Boys and Sade.) As a browneyed girl herself, she couldn't help a little buzz of pleasure, as if he were personally serenading her. It made her bold enough to reach out her hand towards his fingers that held the joint, feeling very mature and daring.

He shook his head and put the roll-up back in his mouth. 'Don't get started on this shit.' His voice was thick and husky. 'I like you the way you are, sweet and wholesome. How old are you?'

'Almost sixteen,' Jen said with a mix of defiance and disappointment. Clearly he thought of her as a little girl. She stared at him hotly. 'And I'm
not
sweet.'

Starkey grinned, playing the first few bars of 'You're Sixteen You're Beautiful (And You're Mine)'. Then he put down the guitar.

'Let's see about that,' he said, pulling her from her sitting position on the floor towards him. His mouth pressed down on hers, his gentle kiss sucking all the air out of her lungs, the musky taste of marijuana on his lips and tongue. 'Hmmn,' he mused, when he let her go, his eyes burning holes in her tight T-shirt. He brushed her mouth with his for a second time. 'Sugar,' he said. Another kiss. 'And honey.' Kiss. 'And . . .' he kissed her a fifth time, 'could that be golden syrup? You're right,' he said, picking up the guitar again. 'Not sweet at all.'