Can We Still Be Friends (36 page)

When they reached their favourite spot, Kendra was reminded of their evening on another sandy beach, in Suffolk. ‘Do you remember?’ she said. ‘It was when you first mentioned the idea of leaving, the first time I ever heard you say it. And when I discovered you couldn’t swim.’

Gioia was nestling into a comfortable position on her thin mat laid out in the sand, her head resting on a cushion. ‘Thing is, people say we don’t know what’s going to happen, but I reckon there’s a part of us that can predict things. You have to know how to tap into it, how to get the access.’

The notion seemed possible to Kendra. She’d once read a book about how you could find out what you’d do in your life if you just recognized the signs as you went along – intuitive pathways, they called it. She still had that book, somewhere at home. She wondered where home was now. Wasn’t home meant to be here? Art had written that Marisa felt strange about having Christmas in London without Kendra and they would be going to the States. She hadn’t really expected that. She’d always thought that Christmas was simply the way Marisa had decided it would be. It had never occurred to her that the shape of that day had anything to do with her. It made her feel bad about leaving, especially after her parents had been surprisingly helpful when Gioia was thrown out of the Chapel.

Even Marisa hadn’t uttered a word of criticism, or a satisfied ‘I told you no good would come of it.’ Art had tentatively mentioned that he’d thought of someone Gioia could talk to about work – a concert promoter. Fat chance of that. Not the job, but Gioia meeting the guy. Too proud.

She looked over at Gioia sprawled on the sand only inches away, so comfortable in her body. She never adjusted herself, the way most women did on the beach, bending a knee in an attempt at making their legs look thinner, or forever fiddling with their costumes so that everything was covered.

‘I know this is going to sound like a bad idea, but’ – Kendra took a breath, pleased that Gioia’s eyes were closed – ‘I’m going to put it
to you. I don’t miss London. I love being here with you. But last week when I picked up the post I got this letter from Sal. It’s the first time I’ve heard from her since the rehab, and she suggested that she and Annie come and visit us. I really miss them, you know. I didn’t think I would. I’ve surprised myself. Maybe it’s because I want to get to a place where we can all move away from the past and, to do that, I need to see them.’ She watched Gioia to gauge her reaction, waiting for the objections, possibly the straight-out refusal. ‘You know it’s not to do with how I feel about you. It’s how I feel about them.’

‘What?’ Gioia sprang up to a kneeling position. ‘Am I hearing what I think I’m hearing?’ She spat on the ground. ‘You want to bring that headcase out here?’

‘It wouldn’t be for long. Sal’s cleaned up, and she’s totally AA. Annie’s having a difficult time with Charlie, you’ll be pleased to hear. You have to understand what they mean to me.’ Gioia began to walk towards the sea. Kendra wondered whether to leave her to it and then decided against it, knowing that Gioia would want her to run after her.

‘I know how you feel about Annie too. But, believe me, I think she was so fixated on the baby that she didn’t register what was going on. Sounds like she’s realized she’s made a mistake now.’

‘Yeah … yeah. You’ve told me all this before. Remember, I never wanted to go near that Sal and her … journalism.’

‘You’d be the first person to say that everyone deserves a second chance …’ Kendra put her arm around the taller woman. ‘Leave it. We don’t need to decide now.’ Sensing she might have made a breakthrough with the second-chance suggestion, she knew it wasn’t a good idea to push it. She’d learnt that it was always better if she let Gioia feel that she’d made a decision entirely on her own terms.

Later that afternoon, Gioia had taken the moped into town, leaving Kendra alone in the apartment. Bundles of photographs tied with string lay around her: faded colour snaps with dried-out photo corners still on them; larger, black and white pictures she had painstakingly printed herself. They appeared so old – her history. Seated
cross-legged on the floor, she looked at the one of the three of them that afternoon on the downs. She remembered Sal mocking the soppiness of John Lennon’s ‘Woman’ as if it were only a few days back, but there was also the spread of time, filled with the things they hadn’t known would happen to each of them, that made it seem very long ago. She opened another bundle, picking up even older pictures of Marisa and Art. There was one of them all on a holiday in Tuscany at a long table, Kendra with her childish arms around the two of them, Marisa’s hair in rat’s tails over her shoulder, looking a little the way Kendra’s did when she came out of the sea.

She had resisted opening the box of photographs until now – it was part of her strategy to make Portugal about the future. But from time to time she felt unanchored. It was one thing escaping but, when you had nothing familiar to latch on to, it wasn’t always easy to remember what you were running away from and what you wanted to find. She had caved in that afternoon and pulled the box out from under the bed. It wasn’t so much that the pictures were the past, she realized, but that they were her life. How could she have a future if she couldn’t handle what she already had?

‘There she is.’ Sal waved at Kendra, who was waiting among the crowd of travel reps and relatives clustered outside the door of Arrivals watching each new person emerge.

‘Look, she’s cut her hair.’ Kendra was at the furthest end of the line, her thick curls in a new wavy cap. She had lost weight too, demonstrated by her white shorts and tight T-shirt. She would never have exposed her legs like that before, even though both Sal and Annie were forever telling her that if they’d got legs that long they would show them off.

Kendra didn’t know which of the two to embrace first, which led to a clumsy tangle of greeting. Sal slid away, looked Kendra directly in the eye and spoke.

‘I’m so pleased to be here. You look fantastic. Check out Annie’s
luggage. You’d think we were moving out here, rather than staying for just a week.’ Sal gestured at her friend’s large green leather case and then at her own small black one.

‘I can’t believe you’re both here.’ Kendra steered them towards the glass doors separating the new arrivals from the bright, clear light of the Algarve. ‘Let’s go. I’m on the moped, but I can show you where the bus is and it’ll drop you only a minute from where I’ve booked you a room.’

‘Actually, I’ve hired a car. It just seemed easier.’ Annie wasn’t sure why, but she felt uncomfortable announcing this extravagance. ‘What with all of us needing to get around, I thought it would make sense. And it means that Sal and I can split and do some touristy stuff too.’

‘Fine. You’d better follow me then. It’s a pretty straight road out from here. What is it? Avis? Hertz?’

The black Fiat Uno easily followed Kendra’s moped along the broad road that tracked the coastline and occasionally offered a glimpse of the sea. All along its length grey concrete skeletons sat waiting to become seaside apartments. It wasn’t particularly beautiful, Annie thought, squinting slightly with the unfamiliar glare from the sun. She wondered why they’d chosen this place.

‘Wish I could share the driving with you.’ Sal rolled down her window and started to search for a cigarette. ‘Now I’m getting the flat, I’ll never be able to afford a car, so what’s the point of learning? I suppose it must say something about me that I’m committing to a mortgage. Christ, it’s baking …’ The car had still not managed to cool down from having sat in the sun in the parking lot they had collected it from. ‘It’s good to be here, isn’t it? Seeing Ken. She didn’t mention Gioia, though. When do you think we’ll meet?’

‘Gioia’s got this gig teaching English, so we’ve got the afternoon alone,’ Kendra explained as Annie drove them all to the beach a couple of hours later. ‘It was one of the reasons we chose this place – there’s a bit of work around. And it’s hot. Gioia really wanted to just melt.’

‘I wouldn’t put it quite as strongly as being terrified, but can I say I’m pretty nervous about seeing her?’ Sal piped up from the back of the car.

‘She’ll be fine. Relax.’ Kendra didn’t sound particularly convincing, even to herself. She hoped that, when they finally did meet up, Gioia wouldn’t be defensive. Equally, she couldn’t rely on Sal not to blow it. Her coltish enthusiasm so easily annoyed Gioia. ‘By the way, the sun’s misleading, because we’re on the Atlantic and you get this fresh wind. You don’t realize its strength so you have to watch it.’

Annie had already bought a large straw hat from a roadside vendor which shaded her bare shoulders. They walked along the slatted path towards a hut that was perched above the water. Below it, large waves gathered momentum and then slowed as they reached the sand, like a toddler’s tantrum running out of steam.

‘Try the coffee,’ Kendra suggested as she found them a table. ‘It’s very milky. Completely different to the London stuff.’ It was strange not to hear Sal say that she was gagging for a beer. She had always been relied upon to say that. You didn’t even have to put the coin into the machine. Her friend had definitely altered, as if a layer had been peeled from her.

‘I bought this for you.’ Sal pulled an object from her bag. ‘It’s meant to be an old Inca game – Perudo. I can teach you how to play it later.’ She handed over the long box in its fabric bag.

‘Thanks. Gioia loves games. We both do. We’ve been playing a lot of cards. There’s not much to do here at night, but there’s a poker game in a bar in the next village which Gioia’s in on. She thinks she’s better than she is, but what gambler doesn’t? If she wins, she comes home and wakes me up waving wads of cash. If she loses, we just don’t talk about it.’ Kendra laughed. ‘I’m no gambler.’ Of course, they knew that. They’d known her for ever.

‘I went to a Tarot reader a few weeks ago.’ Annie produced this information in the knowledge that her friends would be surprised. If any one of the three of them would go to a Tarot reader, it would be Kendra. ‘Lee told me about this woman in south London
who would know about the weirdest things. So we went together one evening. Funny, really. The room didn’t look at all like I’d imagined, though. I guess I’d pictured it would be a bit more Mystic Meg, all embroidered shawls and candles. This place was pretty minimal.’

‘And? Enough about the interiors … what happened?’ Sal interrupted.

‘I suppose I went because of the baby. I didn’t particularly want to hear whether I was going to get pregnant again or anything but …’ Annie stroked the length of her neck, with fingernails, Kendra noticed, painted a professional pale pink ‘ … she did know some things. She said I’d been through a trauma. That, and there was a card that indicated some kind of shift, though she couldn’t tell me what. Then she waffled on about challenges and how a man close to me was telling me something. I was pleased that Lee was there because, to be honest, I found the whole thing creepy and wished we hadn’t gone.’

‘Gioia’s done it, but I think it’s pointless.’ Kendra was moving the red- and blue-topped salt and pepper containers around the table in a jig. ‘After all, the future is the future, isn’t it? I don’t get the point of seeing what’s going to happen if you can’t change it. And that’s what fate is, really. Things happen that happen.’

‘Hmm, sort of. But … well, you can think differently about it,’ Sal intervened with confidence. ‘Like acknowledging that something else is in control, that it’s not all up to you and chance. It kind of makes sense.’ Her friends looked at each other, waiting for more on this line of thought. They knew enough about AA to recognize its stamp on Sal’s views. It wasn’t the kind of thing she would ever have said, or thought, before.

As she spoke, Sal was remembering a night, in previous times, when Pete had dealt the Tarot cards, delivering a reading that was highly memorable in its dramatic announcements. She hadn’t seen him in months. She missed him. And God knows she missed the sex, but she couldn’t hang out with him now. It wouldn’t work when she was clean. It would be too high risk, and she wasn’t even
sure that Pete would want to be with her with her new persona. They had never thought that they were going to stay together. It had been kind of one day at a time, which was ironic when that was the way they kept telling her to think at the clinic. One day at a time.

‘Am I the only one longing for that sea?’ Sal changed the subject and walked over to watch a group of boys playing volleyball on the beach below.

‘It’s never warm, this water, but you feel great when you get out,’ Kendra yelled as they reached the waves, chasing Sal towards them. Annie only managed a minute or so before fleeing back to the warmth of the sand, then looking out at the two friends bobbing around. She closed her eyes, letting the heat soften her goosebumps and feeling the water dry on her skin. She was nearly asleep when she heard the chatter of them returning.

‘Brilliant.’ Sal towelled off the water from her hair. ‘I’m just so … so pleased to be here. With you two.’ Again, the others heard a new voice from Sal. She had never been the one for emotional stuff but, now, it was as if she wanted them to share everything she was thinking. And to agree with it.

‘You know, Ken – I have to say it. I couldn’t say so at the time because you were furious. And I was a total mess. I know it was all my fault. What happened. I know that now. I also know it’s going to take time for Gioia to forgive me. If she ever does. But it’s important to acknowledge our mistakes.’

‘OK. Thanks. But let’s lighten up here.’ Kendra flung herself down on a towel and ran her fingers across her bare belly, which was already slightly tanned. She wasn’t prepared for such self-exposure from Sal and, although she had always considered herself the most emotionally understanding of the three, even she didn’t feel comfortable with this kind of talk.

The arrangement was to rendezvous at Santos, where, Kendra assured them, they would eat the best sardines in the Algarve. Ugly fluorescent lighting, only slightly mitigated by the candles stuck in
Mateus Rosé bottles on each table, dominated the restaurant, and the room was empty when they arrived. It did not inspire confidence, until a boy showed them into a courtyard at the back where Gioia and Kendra were seated in a far corner, away from two long noisy tables. A pergola covered the majority of the yard, already, even though it was only April, supporting large leaves and thick-stemmed climbers.