When Good Friends Go Bad (27 page)

'I've been racking my brain and I'm almost sure Ma Howard was Apostolic, but Pentecostal is probably the closest. Oh, and I found an old photo, not a very good one, half Rowan's head is missing but you can see her mum in the background hanging up the washing. And ta da,' she produced her last photocopy with a flourish, 'one of our clever computer chappies did an age progression of what Rowan might look like now.'

'Oh my god.' Jen snatched it from her and found herself looking at Rowan's blue eyes, staring back at her from a mature face with impossibly high cheekbones, a pouting full-lipped mouth and the faintest suggestion of crow's feet and forehead lines. It was surreal and not, she thought, all that convincing. The nose didn't look quite right and nor did the hair, which the computer wizard had replaced with a flirty shoulder-length style and a long fringe swept off to one side. It looked more like a cross between Angelina Jolie and Cameron Diaz than their long-lost friend.

'Far out, Georgie.' Meg was flicking the pages of her folder with an expression approaching awe. 'I feel like I just got enlisted in Mission Impossible. This isn't going to self-destruct in thirty seconds, is it?'

'No, but we'd better get a move on. We've only got the weekend. Chop chop.' Georgina clapped her hands decisively like a nursery-school teacher. 'Time is a-wasting.'

It was dark at five o'clock when they called an end to the day's search. There were carol singers standing in the square under a Christmas tree, belting out 'Deck the Halls' while dressed in Victorian costumes. Jen was throwing some change into their donation bucket when she spotted Meg and Georgina approaching from opposite corners. One look at their faces told the story.

'No luck?'

Meg shook her head.

'Just more blisters,' Georgina said, slumping on to a bench. 'I'm exhausted. Still have three addresses for tomorrow, though, where no one was in.'

'They do have some way cool shops.' Meg caught their expressions and backtracked. 'Not that I had a minute to check them out. Oh look, roast chestnuts. Let's get some.'

They bought a paper poke between them and fumbled with the shells, which were almost too hot to peel.

'If you want my opinion,' Jen said, 'it's time to follow Meg's suggestion. Let's get slammed.'

Three hours later they were sitting in their fourth pub, rubbing their bellies (except for Georgina, who seemed to have iron willpower and nibbled where the other two gorged). Their enquiries about Mrs Howard had been sidetracked by the enticing steaming plates of hearty pub food that kept being carried past them. They eventually relented and ordered some for themselves and settled in.

Feet up on a stool, huddled next to a crackling fire, Meg was telling them about one of her lovers. 'His name was Iggy. A Rasta dude, white mother, black father and like the sexiest man alive. I should have stayed with him. I think he could have been the only man I've truly loved.'

'Where did you meet him?' Jen surreptitiously undid the top button of her jeans.

'Jamaica. I spent the summer there before I went to LA to try acting. I was working in a hotel, he was tending bar and we rented a cottage on the beach in this funky little place called Orchard Road.'

'I used to love that Leo Sayer song about Orchard Road,' Georgina commented. 'How did it go again?'

'Haven't a clue.' Meg replied with a half-hearted lift of her shoulders, noticeably disappointed her one true love story took second billing to an old eighties song.

'I think it was something like . . .' Jen paused a moment. 'Yeah, I've got it now. Da da trundle . . .'

'Something about whistle-blowing,' Georgina warbled. 'And turning around and . . .'

They carried on singing for a short while until they realised it wasn't 'Orchard Road' any more but 'I Can't Stop Loving You', and sat in puzzled silence.

'Anyway, who cares.' Jen pondered a moment. 'What happened with the Jamaican? Did you ever see him again?'

'One postcard and that was it.' Meg tucked her knee up under her chin. She eyed Georgina, who'd been lost in her own thoughts, and casually threw a wrecking ball into the relaxed atmosphere. 'So, Georgie. Truth game. You never did answer last time. How did you and Aiden get together?'

Damn Meg, thought Jen. Why did she have to spoil things again? Georgina immediately blushed scarlet and started fidgeting in her chair. Jen almost stood up, thinking about going to the bar to buy the next round, but decided to stay. No matter how awkward this was, she wanted to hear.

'It was just . . . well, you know . . . one of those things. He was there in a pub one summer evening when I was on break from uni and of course the friends I was with knew him. For a while we were simply part of the same crowd and then, well, a few years later it was New Year's Eve and we were both a little tipsy and . . . it happened. It took me completely by surprise. You know when we first hung out together, all he talked about was you, Jen,' Georgina said earnestly, her scarlet face now calmed. 'About what a tremendous girl you were, how much he'd liked you, what an idiot he was.'

She was wrong. She didn't want to hear this. It hurt more than she'd expected. She took a sip of wine, struggling with her churning emotions. Jealousy. Resentment. Regret. Anger. All so bloody understandable if it weren't Aiden and Georgie. Two lonely people. The slow beginning. The innocuous friendship turning to something else . . .

'I used to tell him to call you if he truly felt that way,' Georgina forged on, 'that even if he'd done something frightful, you might forgive him. But he always said it was too late.' She looked horribly awkward. 'Of course if you'd been around he wouldn't have looked twice at me.'

'Rot!' Jen attempted a jovial laugh. 'Who wouldn't go barmy over you, Georgie? You've got the class, the breeding, all the right gubbins.'

'If you mean he went for the money,' Georgina replied stiffly, 'it wasn't like that. Starting Giordani took every penny we possessed.'

Damn. Now she'd offended her. And she honestly hadn't meant to. But then if Georgina wanted to be touchy and oversensitive, too bad. After all, she'd ended up with Aiden. Won the precious prize.

Georgina's eyes caught hers and suddenly Jen was positive she had more to say and equally positive she couldn't listen to another word. Didn't want to hear the sordid details of how Aiden had swept her off her feet and about how her toes curled as he kissed her softly on her rosebud lips and how terrible she'd felt knowing he was Jen's boyfriend first but they just couldn't help themselves. So it was almost a relief when Meg said, 'So, Jen. About this divorce. If he didn't cheat and you didn't cheat, what went wrong?'

'We were miserable,' Jen said simply. 'We should never have got married probably. But I was pregnant.'

'Well, not everybody's ecstatic all the time,' Georgina admonished. 'You have to work at marriage.'

Instantly Jen wanted to punch her lights out. How dare she say that! Stupid smug privileged Georgina, married to the man that destiny had surely meant as Jen's soulmate.

'We did work at it,' she seethed through clenched teeth. 'But when does it stop being work and when does it become a life sentence?'

'Who suggested divorce?' Meg asked, sleepily smiling in a catlike way, her slender fingers playing with the crystal around her neck.

'Ollie. He tricked me, started by saying, "You're not happy, are you?" And I gave some smart-arse answer like "Happy, what's that? Oh yes, I vaguely remember the concept." And then I went, "This is marriage, matey. Happiness doesn't come into it." '

But they had been happy once, she reflected. She'd loved the way he used to serenade her with tuneless love songs from the shower while she brushed her teeth. They used to mock-tango around the kitchen, Ollie dipping her, while more than once dinner burned on the stove top or smoke oozed unnoticed out of the oven. There'd been bike rides with Chloe in a little seat behind him, camping trips, with and without Chloe, and blissful Sundays just wandering around the London parks followed by lazy lunchtimes at the pub. They used to laugh, joke, talk about things.

'Romantic, huh?' Meg remarked drily. 'Did you have to be so brutal?'

'Truth is, I wasn't taking him seriously. I kind of imagined he was going to suggest we all needed a holiday or at worst counselling, and I couldn't be fagged. I mean he's great, Ollie, but I think we just slowly fell out of love. If we were ever truly in love, it happened so fast with the pregnancy and all. But anyway, silly me, I was still completely gobsmacked when he told me it wasn't enough for him and he wanted out.'

In a way, she reflected, hearing Ollie say it aloud had almost been a relief. Like the death of a terminally sick pet that you can't bear to put down.

It was as if she'd always known that day would come. It had taken its own sweet time, tried to lull her into feeling safe, whistling gaily, eyes averted and hands behind its back, but suddenly the cloak had been pulled aside, the sword revealed.

Georgina and Meg's expressions suggested they were taking this all too seriously. As if it were some kind of big deal.

'But are you sure you don't still feel something?' Georgina's eyes were huge, her voice solicitous. 'Couldn't you work it out somehow?'

'It's too late.' She said it with finality. She had to keep some pride! 'He was too young when we married. It wasn't fair to him – or to me. Almost ten years married,' she tried to throw in a joke, to show them it wasn't a major tragedy, 'and he still doesn't know I take milk in my coffee. If you ask me, that's
grounds
for divorce right there.'

'But what did you say? When he asked for the divorce?' Georgina looked appalled at her flippancy, while Meg groaned at her pun.

' "Fine with me." Then I asked if he wanted Lurpak butter or St Ivel's Gold because I was doing my shopping list. I think he expected more discussion but I grabbed the car keys and drove to Morrisons.' It still made her cringe to think of it. She bent over to stroke Feo who was sitting beside her on the corner seat, wheezing through his pug nose in an asthmatic way.

'You were in shock, probably,' Meg reassured her. 'I dated this actor for almost a year, crazy about the dude, and when he ditched me I blurted out, "You mean no more Malibu beach parties?" '

Alas, Georgina wasn't finished. 'Couldn't you—'

'No,' Jen interrupted sharply. 'I couldn't.' She stared hard at the window, turning her head away from the others. As much as part of her didn't blame Ollie at all – who would want to live with a moody uptight cow? – another more visceral, primitive side considered itself deeply betrayed.

'Have you thought it through?' Georgina asked practically. 'For example, what will you do about custody? Split the week?'

'We haven't sorted all the details.' Jen suffered an unexpected thud of alarm. 'I was thinking he'd have Chloe every second weekend or something.'

'Wouldn't work that way in the US, hon,' Meg informed her. 'Among most of my friends the men share custody, kids are with them half the week, with their mother the other half. Can't move to another state without a huge legal battle, need your ex's written consent to go abroad on vacation. Real pain in the ass, I'm glad I don't have to go through that with Zeb.'

'Yes, well, in England,' Georgina intervened, saving Jen from her momentary panic, 'the wisdom is that children need one real home so they can go to school from the same residence every day, not be shuttled back and forth like wrongly addressed parcels. With most divorced couples I know, the father gets them every second weekend, Friday to Sunday.'

'Hardly seems fair,' Meg observed, her fourth bourbon making her argumentative. 'Assuming having tits makes you a better parent.'

'So does Zeb's father have a say in his upbringing?' Georgina challenged. 'The silver-buckled bull rider?'

'Wait a minute.' Jen had had enough of this bickering. 'I never got my shot at the truth game.' She gazed at Georgina, gratified to see she looked nervous. 'Remember those plimsolls that got nicked from Gayle Honeybreath's locker?'

'Gayle?' Georgina frowned.

'Honeybourne, but we called her Honeybreath.' Jen narrowed her eyes. 'Gayle and her mates frogmarched me to my locker and I, in all innocence opened it up, and there were Gayle's plimsolls. I put it to you, Georgina Giordani Carrington, that you stole those plimsolls and then planted them on me.'

'I didn't.'

'Yes you did.'

'No I didn't.'

'Did.'

'Didn't.'

There was a pause. Abruptly both Georgina's arms flew up in the air, palms out in submission. 'All right. Yes. It's a fair cop. I took them.'

'I knew it. I knew it.' Jen bounced in triumph. 'But why? And why plant them on me? Everyone called me a tea leaf after that.'

Georgina looked shamefaced. 'I loved those plimsolls of Gayle's. They had sweet little stars all over them.'

'But why plant them on me?' Jen repeated, bemused.

'Gayle knew I liked them because I'd told her and I deduced that once she discovered they'd gone missing, I'd be her first suspect. I never dreamed she'd search your locker first.'

A kind of strangulated sound seeped over from Meg's direction. She had her head down and she was shaking. For a brief moment Jen thought she could be choking and tried desperately to recall the Heimlich manoeuvre. But when Meg lifted her head, she was giggling helplessly.

'What? What is it?' The relief of her being OK made Jen grin as well.

'I . . . can't . . .'

'What? What?' Georgina's shoulders started juddering as she became infected by her laughter.

'I . . . I . . .'

'Come on, tell.'

'I split. I told Gayle Honeybreath.'

'You? Why?' Jen's smile faded as her mind reached across the vast chasm of time, attempting to unscramble the events of a quarter-century ago.

'Well, I don't know, Bedlow,' Meg said, unrepentant. 'I was . . . what? . . . eleven? Who knows why anyone does anything at that age?'

'Do you remember our SOS signal?' Georgina was still grinning happily. She shoved aside a couple of soggy beer mats and knocked on the wooden table in front of her, paused, knocked, paused, knocked. 'It meant danger, danger, or urgent, come quick. Like that time we had a party in your house, Jen, with a bottle of vodka and cigarettes my parents had bought in duty-free and Rowan was in the phone box and saw your dad heading home . . .'

'I never did anything to you.' Jen's eyes were fixed on Meg. 'We were supposed to be best friends.'

'Oh for Pete's sake, Jen.' Meg rose to her feet. 'It wasn't me who took the dumb things or stuck them in your locker. I'm going to the bar. Anyone want anything?'

Georgina and Jen shook their heads. It was irrational, Jen knew. Why did Meg's confession bother her more than Georgie's? Because her heroine had wanted to cause her trouble?

She watched the American woman feed coins into the jukebox, tossing her hair and grinning at a man who joined her. At thirty-eight, especially from a few yards away, she could almost have passed for twenty with her skinny jean-clad legs, her wild red hair. She had an ageless quality, a mixture of innocent waif and wilful sexuality, that reminded Jen of Sissy Spacek. Only Meg saved her great performances for real life.

As if sensing her watchers, Meg turned towards their corner and put her thumb in the air.

'Girls, I scored big-time. Guess what I found out?' she said, rejoining them as 'When You Believe' boomed into the atmosphere.