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‘Don’t be like that.’ She laughed. ‘Come in.’
Lisa didn’t pick up her feet as she usually did, and her shoulders were rounder. On the kitchen table there was a dead cigarette butt in a saucer.
‘Don’t tell the girls,’ she said, sliding it into the bin and running the saucer under the tap.
‘Don’t beat yourself up. It’s not a crack pipe.’ Her girls were both away. They’d been on holiday with their dad and now they were off on their own travels. ‘You missing them then?’
‘You’re joking, aren’t you?’ She flicked the kettle on, busied about the kitchen, fetching mugs and milk and the tin off the high shelf where she hid her decent biscuits. ‘They’re never off FaceTime, and if it’s not FaceTime it’s WhatsApp. Jodi was WhatsApping her entire friendship crisis last night.Ping,ping,pingevery five minutes, honest to God. Long-distance counselling service, really, I should start charging.’
‘Fifty pounds an hour, apparently. Money for old rope.’ I envied her having a close bond like that with her daughters. I’d had that not so long ago with both my kids. I’d been proud of it, proud of the hours it had taken, the baking, the picnics, the days out, the conversations lying on their beds in the late evening if they had a problem they needed to share. When they were little, there was never anything I couldn’t fix. I used to love my ability to shrink their worries to nothing, feel their fraught little bodies loosen with relief. But now I couldn’t figure out what the heck Katie was cross about all the time, what she was going to do with her life, unless you counted YouTube and getting hammered with her mates. I looked up to find Lisa poised to seize the kettle the moment it boiled.
‘It’s still empty nest syndrome,’ I said.
‘Nest shouldn’t be empty, though, should it?’ She poured on the hot water. ‘Knob-end should still be here. We should be looking forward to long walks and drinking at lunchtime and whatever else you’re supposed to do when you get your freedom back. Anyway, sod him, what’ve you been up to? I’ve not seen you for ages.’
‘Oh, nothing much.’
She stopped stirring the tea and looked at me. I was not invisible to Lisa, never had been. She loved me, or so I thought then, and her gaze was like a bloody tractor beam. ‘Are you OK, Rach?’
‘Been a bit under the weather, I suppose. One thing and another, like, you know.’ My eyes filled. Traitors.
Lisa’s expression was full of sympathy and her eyes weren’t dry either. But how could I tell her what I’d been up to? Not like I could say, actually, remember you said I could get away with murder? Funny that, because I’m terrified I might have stabbed a young girl to death in the midst of a menopausal fugue and throttled a man while he was having a you-know-what in the church doorway, although I can think of no reason why I would do something like that. PS, I found a knife in my handbag that I may or may not have put there, bloody tissues in the bathroom that I have no memory of either and on top of that I spend every single night on the street talking to people who aren’t my friends. How about you?
‘The girls down the Prospect have been asking about you,’ Lisa said. ‘Have you not seen anyone at all?’
‘Not apart from sexy Dave at work,’ I said. ‘And the punters, obviously. I’m turning into a hermit. Borderline narcoleptic as well, I think.’
‘Is that something to do with drugs?’
‘I wish. No, it’s the one where you fall asleep all the time.’
‘Bloody hell, me too. I can’t even read a magazine anymore without finding myself half an hour later flat out on the couch, dribbling into the cushions.’
‘Thank God it’s not just me!’ I seized the comic turn in the conversation like it was a life raft. ‘I think I might go on a Buddhist retreat. Find myself. Although I’m probably better off looking down the back of the sofa. At least that way I might find a pound coin.’
She laughed, as did I. But I felt like we were performing a double-act like we used to do when we were out with our other friends. Only there was no one watching. It was because of all that I couldn’t say, couldn’t expect her to understand, I knew that. If you can’t talk to someone about what hurts, all that’s left is what you watched on telly, what you had for your tea, the weather. The close friendship we’d always had, the friendship that had seen both of us through the toughest times, was fading, I could feel it. But with Mark and Katie lost to me, she was all I had left.
‘Are you sure you’re OK, Rach?’ she said. ‘Really, like? You’ve not… I’ve not seen you.’ Her eyes were wary. That’s the trouble with the people who love us most, isn’t it? They know we’re not right without us having to say. Those eyes were asking me to let her in. They were wondering why she was even standing outside in the first place.
‘I’m fine.’
‘Rach? Tell me.’
‘I’ve been going on these walks,’ I spluttered. ‘At night, like, you know.’
‘With the dog.’
‘With Archie, yes. But it’s not about the dog. It’s this… this invisible thing. I know you said it’s normal, but I think it’s getting me down. No one looks at me at home, no one sees me except when I shout or mess up. When there’s no food in or the clothes have been left to rot in the washing machine because I’ve forgotten to take them out again. As if no one else could possibly do that. As if no one else wears the clothes, walks on the floor, eats off the plates.’
‘So you’ve been roaming the streets?’
‘Only to get some conversation,’ I said. ‘To engage with other human beings.’
‘I’m a human being,’ she said softly.
‘I know, love. I know, I do, but I can’t be coming round here every five minutes, can I? You’ve got your own life.’
‘But I’ve always got time for you, Rach – you know that. I’m your friend, remember? That’s what the word means. I just don’t want to badger you every five minutes asking if you’re OK because I can see that might be a bit wearing.’
