Too Close For Comfort (6 page)

‘Why would she say that? What would make her . . . does she know something? Fuck.’

‘No, not at all,’ I said. ‘No one seems to have any answers. Lysette says even Joshua’s completely at a loss as to what was going through her head.’

‘No change there then,’ said Helena, with a slight eye roll.

‘Do you think their marriage was in trouble?’ I asked, the question leaving my mouth almost against my will. I couldn’t help myself: I could feel a dangerous compulsion to grab
hold of Sarah, understand who she was.

Helena looked into the middle distance, the weak sun dappling the path, broken up by the lattice of branches overhead. Her voice sounded faraway when it came.

‘It’s funny, isn’t it, how things can look so different from the outside and the inside. Sort of makes you wonder whether black’s white.’

‘What do you mean?’ I asked.

‘I dunno,’ she said, more clipped. ‘Maybe Sarah looked more complicated than she was, and Joshua . . . Maybe he’s the other way round.’

She suddenly shouldered her way through a wall of brambles that were criss-crossing the path in front of us. The wood felt as if it was closing in on us, the sunlight too faint to warm me. Or
was the chill more sinister than that – was it coming from the creeping realisation that she hadn’t dismissed Lysette’s grief-stricken accusations out of hand? The thought of
Lysette brought me up short – I was doing exactly what I’d promised her I wouldn’t do. Excavating a story that wasn’t mine.

‘Is there anything else I can tell you about the process?’ I asked stiffly. ‘I can email you with some suggestions for how to find someone if you do decide you want
professional support.’

‘Can you talk to me about this?’ She stuck her hand out again, the tremor still present, and I retreated into my professional comfort zone, loading her down with tips about
mindfulness and meditation and the perils of losing sleep. As my words guided us somewhere safer, the track seemed to do the same, opening out into a space that was less shadowed and enclosed.

‘Thanks, Mia, that’s a massive help,’ she said, just as we emerged from the wood entirely, her gleaming car back in sight. ‘I need to get going. There’s a PTA
meeting at six. I don’t need to go getting myself a detention for shoddy timekeeping.’

‘Is the . . .’ I thought about the anxiety she’d just described, and blundered on. ‘I know it’s not my place, but do you any of you feel ready for it
to be business as usual with school stuff?’

‘Kimberley’s the chairwoman. And trust me, what Kimberley says goes.’ She smiled at me, her eyes lingering on my face.

‘Right.’ She had a look of sly amusement, a look that was designed to trap me into colluding with her. Or was I just being paranoid? ‘OK then, let’s hit the
road.’

But as we headed towards the car, she suddenly stopped. She turned to me, her face pinched.

‘You’re . . .’ She stopped, checked herself. ‘You’re a really good listener.’ The way she said it didn’t make it sound like a compliment.
‘I shouldn’t – I went on a bit, didn’t I?’

‘Not at all,’ I said, stiff again. ‘You asked to talk, and that’s what we did.’

‘Yeah I know, about like, candles and incense and deep breathing. All that other stuff I said – I was rambling on. We’re all just freaked out right now, the funeral
tomorrow.’ She flicked her hands outwards, anger in the gesture. ‘Just forget it.’

‘OK,’ I said uncertainly, not sure exactly which part I was erasing from the tapes – of course now I was spooling back through them, trying to work out what she was regretting
so much. ‘It’s completely understandable that you’re trying to make sense of it.’

A darkness crossed her face, a bright grin swiftly plastered over the top. I shivered, not sure if it was the rapidly descending sun or the change in temperature between the two of us.
‘You’re like a wise old owl, aren’t you?’ she said.

That didn’t sound like a compliment either. Besides, I really wasn’t. If I had been, I’d have flown out of town right there and then.

*

I could see into the kitchen when I climbed out of the car. Lysette’s face was caught in half-profile, her lips moving, a sense of bustling purpose immediately apparent. I
felt a tidal wave of relief, scrabbling in my bag for the spare key she’d given me. I pushed away my unease about the odd encounter I’d just had, calling out a hello as I wiped my muddy
feet on the equally muddy doormat.

‘How was it?’ she said, turning to smile at me. Saffron was sitting on a kitchen chair, little legs swinging above the ground, the mound of rainbow-coloured vegetables in front of
her telling me that supper was in progress. She had a butter knife, a half of a red pepper she was happily mauling.

‘Yeah, no, fine,’ I said, guilt needling me again. Had I elicited too much from Helena, overstepped the mark? ‘I like her. Well – I think I like her.’

Lysette laughed. She put a wok on the hob, poured in oil. ‘They can seem a bit up themselves when you first meet them – Helena and Kimberley, I mean, not Alex – but she’s
actually a real laugh. Not right now, obviously.’ Lysette paused, leaned on the scuffed pine table. ‘Thanks for doing that. Sorry if I was a bit . . .’

I shrugged, smiled at her. Was it me who should be apologising to her? ‘I get it, don’t worry. What’s the deal with Alex? She doesn’t seem like the other two at
all.’

‘She got friendly with Kimberley via the PTA. She’s an academic at Cambridge, super clever.’ Lysette crossed to the fridge. ‘Do you want a cheeky glass of what I’m
having?’

I sank into the chair next to Saffron, embraced by the comforting ordinariness. ‘Go on then. It sounds like the PTA’s a really big deal?’

‘You betcha,’ said Lysette, pulling out a bottle of white. There was less than a third in there, our glasses only half full once she’d tipped it all in. ‘Alex comes up
with all these schemes to bring in piles of cash so Kimberley loves her. She’s a single mum. She didn’t meet anyone so she decided to go it alone.’ She glanced down at Saffron,
who was cutting the pepper into ever tinier pieces with the blind focus of a serial killer. ‘Cra-zy decision,’ mouthed Lysette, taking a deep pull from her glass.

‘Or brave,’ I said, the words sounding more tart than I’d intended.

‘Bravery’s overrated,’ replied Lysette, the momentary lightness already draining away. She was staring off into the middle distance, ignoring the sound of oil fizzing and
hissing in the wok.

‘How are you feeling?’ I asked gently.

‘Oh, you know,’ she said, crossing to the stove, her face suffused with a bleakness that felt absolute. How could I have been so naive? Of course this wasn’t ordinary: it was
the very thing that Helena was lamenting, the outer veneer and the inner reality totally at odds. ‘Dreading tomorrow.’ I leapt up instinctively, enveloped her in a hug. ‘Thanks,
Mia,’ she half whispered, her body almost surrendering but not quite. Saffron looked on, eyes round and watchful. ‘Did Helena say much?’

How to answer that question? ‘No, not really. She’s in shock, like you all are.’

‘Right.’

‘Do you really think . . .’ The uncomfortable meeting with Helena somehow chimed with the tenor of Lysette’s grief – what kind of private hell was she in
right now? ‘Lys, do you really not think it was suicide? Do you think something happened?’

Her body juddered in my arms. She pulled away.

‘I can’t go there,’ she said, face full of struggle.

‘No, of course,’ I said, regretting my blundering attempt at empathy. ‘Is there anything – anything at all – I can do?’

‘There might be actually,’ she said, crossing back to the fridge. She spoke from inside there, the light illuminating her bent head. ‘I need to pop out once I’ve cooked
this. I’ll be less than an hour. Could you hold the fort with madam? She’s already eaten.’

‘Course,’ I said, grinning at Saffron who had a stray finger approaching her left nostril. I gave her a look and she put it down, giggling. ‘What have you got to do?’

‘It’s nothing,’ she said, still hidden in the fridge. As she stood up, I couldn’t help noticing she hadn’t taken anything out. ‘Just something I need to sort
out.’ Her voice was too light, too breezy to convince.

I tried again. ‘You’re not going to that PTA meeting, are you?’

‘Fuck no!’ she said, vehement.

‘What, to do with the . . .’ My voice dropped. ‘With tomorrow?’

‘Yeah, kind of,’ she said, her tone a full stop.

I felt a twinge of resentment. What was it she wasn’t trusting me with whilst she was busy trusting me with her only daughter?

‘Right,’ I said, equally clipped.

She ducked down towards Saffron’s blonde head, held it between her hands and kissed the crown. ‘You’ll be good for Auntie Mia, won’t you?’ she said, face still
dipped low. ‘You’ll take good care of her?’

The phrase didn’t sound throwaway in her mouth – it rang in my ears, odd and disconcerting. In a few minutes she was gone, her car zooming off into the early evening. I stood at the
window, watching it disappear, hurt and anxiety mixed up together. Where had she gone?

The question was so much bigger than I knew.

I annoy him, I know I do. He annoys me – no, he fucking drives me crazy sometimes – but when I think about not having him, it makes me want to
die. And if I think about HER stopping me having him – that would be it. Show’s over, folks. The end.

I smelt it on him, her perfume. It was that sweet rose she gets out of that clunky crystal bottle she’s got in her bathroom. I was sure it was that, but he said I was
being loony. That I was letting the nasty voice inside of me who says I’m not good enough tell me stories. I needed to listen to him instead – listen to him telling me how beautiful I
was, how special. He got me a vodka tonic, told me not to spoil things again, not when we’d finally pulled it off. I felt fuzzy then, good fuzzy and bad fuzzy all at once.

I ignored him the next day. I didn’t even have to see him looking at me, I could feel it on my skin like it was lotion. I didn’t turn round. I stayed talking to
Kimberley like I liked her – actually liked her, rather than had to like her because it’s too dangerous to listen to the voice telling me the truth about her. It’s funny, the
voice is either my best friend or my worst enemy and I don’t know which.

She’s invited us to her house. Girls only, she said, the cat’s away so the mice should play. Her eyes scorched me when she said it, and I knew exactly what she was
asking me to do. I’ve seen it before, where it can take you – when I was a teenager I wasn’t throwing up in some boarding school toilet and calling Mummy.

Maybe the fact I know and she doesn’t is my saving grace.

I might need saving. I think that more and more.

‘Are you definitely, definitely sure you want me to come?’

Lysette was concentrating so hard on her own reflection that she didn’t immediately reply. She was staring into the hallway mirror, applying a thick coat of scarlet lipstick, layer after
layer, each one chased by another in a dizzying circle. She was wearing a flaring green dress, a chunky silver bangle adorning her bare arm – the only sliver of black came from her skyscraper
heels. I felt Sarah then, almost as if it was her face, not Lysette’s, that would be looking out of the mirror if I got too close.

I could hear Ged in the kitchen pleading with Saffron to put down the jar of Nutella and eat her nourishing bowl of porridge. He hadn’t been sure he’d be able to rejig his work
commitments, but now he had, I felt like a bit of a spare part. I didn’t want anyone – not least Kimberley and her crowd – to think I’d muscled in on their tragedy.

‘Why do you think I asked you?’ she said, not turning away from her reflection. She was applying lashings of mascara now – it felt too callous to point out the obvious jeopardy
in that decision. Besides, there was something intimidating about her intensity. I hadn’t summoned up the courage to ask her where it was she’d gone when she’d finally returned
last night from her mystery assignation, and now the moment had passed. Except it hadn’t, not really. Something between us felt bruised.

‘I know,’ I said. ‘But now Ged’s here – I just don’t want to intrude.’

She turned, eyes clear and bright. She looked so alive in that moment, like she’d taken on the job of two.

‘I need you.’

‘So I’m coming,’ I said, reaching a swift hand out for my coat.

*

The day was warm and bright, sunlight playing off the stone façade of the huge church. A fleet of black cars was parked in the road, mourners streaming through the church
gates. Kimberley and her friends were standing in a tight black knot near the thick wooden doors. They turned towards us as we approached, and Lysette stepped into the centre without pausing for a
beat, sucked up, up and away like Dorothy, whisked off by the Kansas tornado. I could hear their sobs, all muddled up together into one sound. Was this what she’d needed, to be held in that
maelstrom of shared grief, all these last difficult days? Why had she held them so fiercely at bay?

Nigel Farthing stood on the outskirts of their group, more handsome than I’d expected from his pictures. It wasn’t just good looks; it was a certain charisma that was evident even
without him opening his mouth. A couple came towards him, and he double kissed and shook hands, all the time exuding an appropriate sombreness. He was a straight-up professional, I could see it
instantly.

I stood there awkwardly with Ged wishing I knew what to say – anything I thought of sounded too crass to utter. I liked him, but he was definitely Lysette’s husband rather than my
friend: we’d never quite graduated. I felt Patrick’s absence like an ache – he would’ve been my fellow interloper, my partner in crime. Nigel stepped towards us, breaking
the silence.

‘You’re Lysette’s friend from London, aren’t you?’ he said, blue eyes intense and focused. He shot out a firm hand, an expensive-looking watch peeking out from
beneath the sleeve of his smart navy suit. ‘Nigel Farthing.’