It’s been a month now since I discovered that Sarah and I have inconveniently fallen for the same guy and, despite my resolution, I don’t feel a shred less wretched about it.
It was so much easier when I didn’t know who he was; it allowed me the luxury of imagining him, of fantasizing about stumbling into him again in a crowded bar or spotting him drinking coffee in a cafe, of his eyes finding mine and us both remembering and being glad that the stars had finally aligned again.
But now I know exactly who he is. He’s Jack O’Mara, and he’s Sarah’s.
I spent all of Christmas telling myself that it would be easier once I got to know him, that there were bound to be things I didn’t like about him in reality, that seeing him with Sarah would somehow reset him in my head as a platonic friend, rather than the man who has broken the beats of my heart. I stuffed myself with food and hung out with Daryl and pretended to everyone that I was okay.
But since we got back to London it’s been worse. Because not only am I lying to myself, I’m lying to Sarah too. God knows how people have affairs; even this paper-thin layer of deception has me constantly on edge. I’ve kept my own counsel. I’ve heard my own case, I’ve listened to my own plaintive cries of innocence and misunderstanding, and still I’ve delivered a damning verdict: liar. I’ve made a liar out of myself by omission, and now every day I look at Sarah through my liar’s eyes and speak to her with my forked, serpent tongue. I don’t even want to admit it to myself, but every now and then I burn with miserable jealousy. It’s an ugly emotion; if I were of a religious bent I’d be spending more than my fair share of time in the confession box. I have moments of a different perspective, times when I know I haven’t done anything wrong and try my best to still be a good friend even though I’ve been backed into a corner, but those moments don’t last long. Incidentally, I’ve also discovered that I’m quite the actress; I’m one hundred per cent sure that Sarah has no idea there’s anything amiss, although that’s probably because I’ve found reasons to be somewhere else on the couple of occasions when Jack’s been at the flat.
Tonight though, my luck has officially run out. Sarah’s asked him over for pizza and a movie, but the subtext is that she really wants me to get to know him better. In fact, she said it, as plain as that, when she handed me a coffee on the way out of the door this morning.
‘Please be around, Lu, I really want you to get to know him so we can all hang out together more.’
I couldn’t think of a decent excuse off the cuff and, moreover, I realize that avoiding him isn’t a long-term solution. What bothers me most of all, though, is that while ninety-five per cent of me is dreading tonight, the other five is sparking with anticipation at the idea of being close to him.
I’m sorry, Sarah, I really and truly am.
Let me take your coat? What the hell am I, the maid? I’m just glad I didn’t call him sir for good measure. Jack walked into our flat thirty seconds ago and already I’m acting like a moron. His smile is nervous as he unwinds his scarf and shrugs out of his winter coat, handing them to me almost apologetically even though I asked him for them. I have to work hard not to bury my face in the dark navy wool as I hang it on the already-packed coat hooks beside our front door, almost laying it over my own jacket before pointedly hanging it as far away from it as possible. I’m trying, I really am. But he’s half an hour early, and has managed to arrive just as Sarah ran down the fire escape off the kitchen, as if they are theatre actors in a farce.
‘Sarah’s just nipped to the shop for wine,’ I flounder. ‘It’s round the corner. She’ll be back soon. Five minutes, I should think, unless there’s a queue. Or anything. It’s only round the corner.’
He nods, his smile still hovering despite the fact I’ve repeated myself at least three times.
‘Go through, go through,’ I say, bright and overanxious, flapping my hands in the direction of our tiny living room. ‘How was your Christmas?’
He perches on the end of the sofa, and I momentarily falter over where to sit before choosing the chair. What else was I going to do? Join him on the sofa? Accidentally press myself against him?
‘Yeah, you know.’ He smiles, almost bashful. ‘Christmassy.’ He pauses. ‘Turkey. Too much beer.’
I smile too. ‘Sounds a lot like mine. Except I’m more of a wine drinker.’
What am I doing – trying to make myself sound sophisticated? He’s going to think I’m some kind of pretentious knobber.
Come on, Sarah, I think. Come back and rescue me from myself, I’m not ready to be on my own with him yet. I’m horrified as I find myself wanting to snatch this chance to ask him if he remembers me from the bus. I can feel the question climbing up my windpipe like it’s being pushed from behind by a determined colony of worker ants. I swallow hard. My palms are starting to sweat. I don’t know what I hope to gain from asking him if he remembers, because I’m ninety-nine per cent certain that the answer would be no. Jack lives in the real world and has a super-hot girlfriend; he’d probably forgotten about me before my bus turned the corner of Camden High Street.
‘So, Laurie,’ he says, clearly casting around for something to say. I feel the way I sometimes do when I get my hair cut; as if the stylist finds me hard work and I’m shortly going to need to lie about where I’m going on holiday. ‘What did you study?’
‘Media and Journalism.’
He doesn’t look surprised; he must know that Sarah and I were on the same course at Middlesex.
‘I’m a words person,’ I elaborate. ‘Magazines, hopefully, when I can get my foot in the door somewhere. I don’t plan on a career in front of the camera.’ I stop myself from adding ‘unlike Sarah’, because I’m sure he already knows that Sarah’s life plan involves presenting the local news before moving up the ranks towards the national broadcasters. There’s a trite quote I see bandied around on Facebook every now and then, ‘Some girls are born with glitter in their veins,’ or something similar. Sarah is that, but there’s grit mixed in with her glitter; she doesn’t stop until she gets what she wants. ‘How about you?’
He lifts one shoulder. ‘Journalism at uni. Radio’s my thing.’
I know this already, because Sarah has tuned the kitchen radio into the station he works at, even though he’s only ever on it if the late-night presenter isn’t there, which has been next to never. Everyone starts somewhere though, and now I’ve heard his voice I know that it’s only a matter of time before he moves up the ranks. I have a sudden, hideous vision of Sarah and Jack as TV’s golden couple, the next Phil and Holly, shining out of my TV at me every day with their in-jokes, finishing each other’s sentences and winning every People’s Choice award going. It’s so realistic that I’m winded, and I’m relieved to hear Sarah’s keys clatter in the lock.
‘Honey, I’m home,’ she calls out, slamming the door so hard she rattles the old wooden sash window frames in the living room.
‘Here she is,’ I say unnecessarily, springing up. ‘I’ll just go and help her.’
I meet her in the doorway and take the unchilled wine from her hands. ‘Jack’s just arrived. You go and say hi, I’ll stick this in the freezer to cool down for a bit.’
I withdraw to the kitchen, wishing I could climb into the freezer drawer too as I shoehorn the bottle in beneath the bag of frozen berries we use for smoothies when we feel like we might die from lack of nutrients.
I open the bottle of wine we’ve already chilled in the fridge and pour out a couple of decent glasses. One for me, one for Sarah. I don’t pour one for Jack, because as I already know, he’s more of a beer kind of guy. I’m warmed by the fact that I know what he’d prefer without needing to ask, as if this one tiny snippet is a new stitch in the quilt of our intimacy. It’s an odd thought, but I run with it, imagining that quilt as I pull out a bottle of beer for Jack and flick the lid off, then close the fridge and lean my back against it with my wine glass in my hand. Our quilt is handmade, carefully constructed from gossamer-thin layers of hushed conversations and snatched looks, stitched together with threads of wishes and dreams, until it’s this magnificent, wondrous, weightless thing that keeps us warm and protects us from harm as if it were made of steel. Us? Who am I kidding?
I take a second mouthful of wine as I catch hold of my train of thought and try to reroute it along safer tracks. I force myself to see that quilt on Sarah and Jack’s king-size bed, in Sarah and Jack’s gorgeous house, in Sarah and Jack’s perfect life. It’s a technique I’ve been testing out; whenever I think something inappropriate about him, I make myself counter it with a sickly, positive thought about them as a couple. I can’t say it’s working all that well yet, but I’m trying.
‘Come on, Lu, I’m gagging in here!’ Sarah’s voice runs clear with carefree laughter as she adds, ‘Don’t bother with a wine glass for Jack, though. He’s too unsophisticated for our five-quid plonk.’
I know, I want to say, but I don’t. I just shove Jack’s beer under my arm and refill my glass before I go back through to join them in the living room.
‘Pineapple on pizza is like having, I dunno, ham with custard. They just don’t go together.’ Sarah shoves two fingers down her throat and rolls her eyes.
Jack picks up the offending piece of pineapple that Sarah has flicked disdainfully into the corner of the box. ‘I had banana on pizza, too, once. Trust me, it worked.’ He squidges the extra pineapple down on to his slice and grins at me. ‘You can have the casting vote, Laurie. Pineapple yay or pineapple nay?’
I feel disloyal, but I can’t lie because Sarah already knows the answer.
‘Yay. Definitely yay.’
Sarah snorts, making me wish I’d lied. ‘I’m starting to think that getting you two together was a bad idea. You’re going to gang up on me.’
‘Team J-Lu.’ Jack winks at me as he laughs, earning himself a good punch on the arm from Sarah that makes him groan and rub it as if she’s broken it.
‘Easy. That’s my drinking arm.’
‘That’s for trying to split up team Sa-Lu.’ She’s the one winking at me now, and I nod, keen to show that I’m on her side even if I do like pineapple on my pizza.
‘Sorry, Jack,’ I say. ‘We’re wine sisters. It’s a stronger bond than pineapple on pizza.’ And I have to say, the wine is definitely helping me get through this situation.
Sarah shoots him a ‘suck on that’ look and high-fives me across the gulf between the mismatched sofa and armchair. She’s curled into the end with her feet shoved under Jack’s ass, her long red hair plaited round her head like she might nip out the back and milk her herd of goats at any moment.
I’ve deliberately gone effort-light with my appearance; I’ve aimed for a ‘making a bit of an effort to be sociable’ look without obviously looking any different to normal. I’m dressed in leaving-the-house clothes, which definitely isn’t a given for a night in front of the TV. Jeans, soft, dove-grey sloppy jumper, slick of lip gloss and a flick of eyeliner. I’m not proud of the fact that I put more than a few minutes’ thought into my outfit, but I’m trying to be reasonable with myself about this too. I don’t actually own sackcloth and ashes, and I don’t want to let Sarah down. Besides, she added her own silver daisy hairslide to my fringe earlier because it kept flopping in my eyes and she knows I covet it, so I reckon she’s pleased that I look presentable.
‘Which movie are we watching?’ I ask, leaning forward to grab a slice of pizza from the box flipped open on the coffee table.
‘Twilight,’ Sarah says, at the exact same time as Jack says, ‘Iron Man.’
I look from one to the other, sensing that once again I’m about to be asked to play adjudicator.
‘Remember which team you’re on, Lu,’ Sarah says, her lips twitching. Seriously. I couldn’t make this stuff up. I haven’t read the books or seen the films yet, but I know enough to know that Twilight is about a doomed love triangle.
Jack looks pained, then bats his eyelashes at me like a seven-year-old asking for money for the ice-cream man. Jesus, he’s lovely. I want to say Iron Man. I want to say kiss me.
‘Twilight.’
Fucking Twilight?
Everything about this evening screams of awkward. And now we’re watching one of the most cringe-worthy films of all time, about some moody-mouthed girl who can’t choose between two guys with superpowers. Sarah leans into me, and I kiss the top of her head and train my eyes on the screen, not allowing myself to slide even an occasional glance towards Laurie on the armchair unless she speaks directly to me.
I don’t want things between me and Laurie to feel awkward, but they do, and I know it’s my fault. She probably thinks I’m some kind of exceptionally dull weirdo, because my conversational skills dry up around her. It’s just that I’m trying to establish her place in my head as Sarah’s friend rather than the girl I saw once and have thought of often since. All of Christmas – which was terrible, by the way, my mum was so sad, and as usual I didn’t know what to do, so I just got drunk – I kept seeing Laurie in her pyjamas in the kitchen, gazing at me with that strange look on her face. Jesus, what a twat I am. I take solace from the fact that it’s just the way my blokeish brain stores away a pretty face, and from the fact that she doesn’t have a blokeish brain and so hopefully has no awkward memory of me gawking at her from a bus stop. So far I’ve managed quite successfully by just avoiding spending any time with her, but Sarah came straight out with it yesterday and asked me if I didn’t like Laurie, because I seemed to say no every time she invited me over. What the fuck was I supposed to say to that? Sorry, Sarah, I’m currently trying to reprocess your best friend from fantasy sex partner to platonic new friend-in-law? Is that even a phrase? If it isn’t, it should be, because if Sarah and I ever split up, she’ll spirit Laurie away with her. The thought makes my gut churn.
Of losing Sarah, I mean.