A Friend of the Family (18 page)

‘Carly. Hi.’

‘Ned.’

They hugged, Ned with his goatee and glasses, Carly with her red coat and rucksack, and Ned knew immediately that everything had changed. She smelt different, Ned noticed. She always used to smell of cherries and talcum powder. Now she smelt of some kind of proper but not unpleasant perfume.

‘Look at you,’ she said, holding his hands and eyeing him up and down. ‘Love the beard.’

‘Do you?’Ned ran his hand over the soft fluff and felt a flutter of pleasure at the first compliment his goatee had received since he got home.

‘Yeah, suits you. Makes you look more… interesting.’

‘Are you saying that I used to look dull?’

‘Deadly, sweetie.’

Sweetie?
Carly didn’t say things like
sweetie.

‘And you,’ he said, gesturing at her blonde-ish hair and trendy coat, ‘you look brilliant.’

She grinned and bobbed up and down. ‘Thank you.’

They walked to the bar. ‘What d’you want,’ said Ned, ‘a beer?’

‘No,’ she replied absent-mindedly, picking up the
Cocktail menu and perusing it, ‘I’1l have a… a… mojito.’

‘Really?’ he said, his voice so full of concern it was as if she’d just asked for a pint of skunk’s milk.

‘Yeah.’

By the time the twenty limes that Carly’s drink seemed to require had been quartered and pounded, a table had come free at the back of the bar and they carried their drinks over and sat down.

‘So,’ said Carly, resting her face on glamorous hands with long, manicured nails and flashing a rather meaty cleavage at him. ‘It’s really great to see you.’

And Ned thought, This is
so
weird, so unbelievably weird. This was Carly – definitely, he was sure about that – but, at the same time, it
wasn’t.
This was Carly Deluxe. Carly with make-up on and shiny fingernails and a cleavage and self-confidence oozing out of her like liquid gold. She was a little bit
scary.

‘So, anyway –
you
!’ He suddenly sounded like a game-show host. ‘Let’s talk about you. I mean, new job, new hair, new everything. Seems like everything’s going really well for you. Tell me everything.’

Carly smiled and fiddled with the zip of her rucksack while she talked.

She’d gone travelling after Ned left, cashed in her savings, rented out her flat and gone away for a year, had
the
most amazing time. The Amazon –
amazing.
The Aztec Palaces –
incredible. Stunning
apartment in the Bahamas where she looked after a millionaire’s shih-tzu. San Francisco –
the
best city in the world, without a
doubt.
So awful
having to come home, could have stayed away for ever. Made so many new friends, had so many experiences. And the
boys.
Boys, boys, boys. Blond ones with tattoos and Bermuda shorts. Dark swarthy ones with Vespas and speedboats. American ones, Danish ones, Australian ones. Should have done it years earlier. Built up her self-confidence
no end,
all that flirting and chasing. But that’s what being young’s all about, after all. I mean, if you can’t do it when you’re young, when can you do it, eh?
Soooo
depressing coming home, the weather, grey skies, dirty old London town and all those miserable pasty faces. Urgh.

Still, she had to get back to real life some time. Did a bit of temping, moved in with Mum and Dad, sold the flat, made a fortune, a
mint
, bought this stunning one-bed flat in Brixton. Of course, Brixton is so cool now, loads of really brilliant bars and restaurants – it’s really trendy. Her flat’s already gone up thirty per cent in value in just eighteen months. Soooo – she was temping for this really cool company on Eastcastle Street, just over there, and she and the boss, this really, really cool woman called Marty – forty-three, but looks about thirty – well, they just
clicked.
It was weird, really, like they’d known each other for ever. And Marty just turned round one day and said, ‘I’ve let the senior pattern-cutter go – the job’s yours.’And it’s soooo great. Loads of money, loads of free samples, really nice clothes – she has no idea how she stuck it among all that Crimplene at Dorothy Day for soooo long. And it’s so great now that she’s a size 12, because the samples all fit – they even use her
as a house model sometimes. So, she’s got this great job and this great flat and this great figure and then Marty introduces her to her cousin Drew. And Drew is soooo gorgeous – blue, blue eyes, dark, dark hair, loaded – and whisks her off her feet. Meals, holidays – oh, they’ve been to Majorca, Mauritius and Zanzibar already and they’ve only been going out for ten months. He’s
won
derful. And Carly’s life is
perfect.
Just perfect. Like a big fat fucking fairy tale.

Ned nodded and smiled grimly, nearly paralysed with boredom and bitterness. ‘Great,’ he said, grinding his teeth together so hard they almost gave off sparks, ‘that’s really great. I’m so glad everything’s worked out so well for you.’

‘Yeah,’ said Carly, ‘I’ve been really lucky. Life’s
so good
right now. What about you?’

‘Well, you know, I haven’t really been back all that long.’

‘What are you doing? Are you working?’

‘Yeah. Yeah. Well – sort of. I’ve been doing some stuff for my dad.’

‘Oh,’ said Carly, looking like an air hostess during severe turbulence, ‘right. That’s good.’

‘Well, no, it’s not really. I’m intending to do something about it.’And as he said it his jaw set hard because although he’d been gently toying with the idea since he’d got back, he was now absolutely, 100 per cent determined. A job. Yes. Definitely. He was going to get one of those. And a good one, too. With a good salary. Yes.

‘Still at home?’

‘Uh-huh. Yeah.’

‘Is that just… temporary, or…?’

‘Yeah,’ he said abrupdy.’ Yeah. I’ll be, er… looking for somewhere as soon as I get myself together, sorted, you know…’

Carly nodded and they fell silent. Ned contemplated his empty beer bottle and realized that this was possibly the first time there’d been a silence between them. And he knew why. Because there was now a gulf between them that had never had the chance to develop when they’d been together. Carly had moved on. And on. And on. She’d moved so far away from him that she was now just a blot on the landscape.

He gulped and felt sad, scared and very alone. Because Carly wasn’t the only one who’d left him behind during these last three years. His other friends had, too. They’d started cohabiting, getting mortgages – some of them even had people working for them now. That was the weirdest thing of all in some ways – or the most unexpected, at least. His friends had
staff,
hired and fired, chaired meetings, ran departments, were the subjects of bitching sessions in the pub after work. And it had all happened so quickly. It felt like he’d only been gone for about five minutes, but in those five minutes Mac had lost forty per cent of his hair, Sarah had dumped Colin, slept with Mac, and moved in with John – whoever the hell John was. Mike had been made area manager, Rob had proposed to Sam and Michelle had got married within six weeks of meeting someone called Tizer, had two
miscarriages, got divorced two years later and had aged about ten years.

And Carly – Carly had transmogrified entirely into this glamorous, slightly bizarre
blonde
person to whom he could think of nothing to say.

‘Do you want another drink?’

‘Mmm,’ she nodded and knocked back the dregs of her mojito, ‘thanks.’

When Ned got back with more drinks Carly was on the phone. Her mobile had a leopardprint casing. Ned shuddered.

‘OK, sweetie,’ she was saying. ‘Yeah. No. Not sure what time I’ll be home. Oh. Right. OK. No, that’s fine, midnight’s fine,’ she laughed, ‘more than fine. Really fine. OK – completely fantastically fine. Oh, you! OK. Yes. Love you too,’ she said then sighed annoyingly and turned off her phone. She was still smiling when she looked up at Ned. ‘So,’ she said, picking up her drink and holding it out towards his beer. ‘Here’s to life and destiny and moving on. Cheers.’

They clinked glasses. ‘It’s so weird,’ she continued, ‘just think – if you hadn’t met Monica in that bar, then you’d never have left and I’d never have left Dorothy Day and gone travelling and met Marty and moved to Brixton and met Drew and everything would have been so different. It’s a funny old world, isn’t it?!’

She looked utterly thrilled by how funny the old world was and Ned gulped. Just think, he thought, if I’d never met Monica in that bar, I’d never have ended up living in Sydney with the unhappiest woman in the world
and come home three years later to find that all my friends have left me behind and that my beloved ex-girlfriend and former best friend is a blonde, leopardskin-mobile-cover kind of a girl with a boyfriend called Drew and a taste for trendy South American cocktails… Where was the real Carly, he thought? What had happened to that round, apple-cheeked girl who only wore make-up to parties and never shaved her armpits in the winter?

They got through the evening together in time-honoured tradition – by getting pissed. Ned capitulated to Carly eventually and started drinking mojitos too. He liked them. They tasted like old-fashioned lemonade and got him good and pissed in record time. His tongue unstuck after a couple and, though he and Carly never quite recovered their old rapport, they did find things to talk about – mutual friends, mainly. Ned filled her in on all the gossip and she filled him in on hers. By ten o’clock they were actually laughing together and, although it was nothing like it used to be, if Ned had closed his eyes and pretended he was having a drink with someone else entirely – with a girl he used to go to school with who he’d bumped into unexpectedly on a bus, say – he’d have to concede that he was having a perfectly enjoyable evening. At eleven o’clock, or thereabouts, they put on their coats and gloves and headed out into the damp night air.

‘So,’ said Ned, forcing his hands into his coat pockets.

‘So,’ said Carly, twirling her scarf a little tighter around her neck.

‘I’m going to get the bus.’

‘Number 3?’

‘Yup. Good old number 3. What about you?’

‘Oh, I’ll get the Tube. It’s quicker.’

‘Oh. Right. Are you sure?’

‘Uh-huh. Yeah,’ she cast her eyes downwards. ‘I’ve, er, arranged to meet Drew at my flat at midnight. I don’t want to be late.’

‘Right. No. Of course.’

‘So, thank you for a lovely evening.’

‘And you. And you. It’s been really nice.’

‘Yeah. It has. OK, then,’ she stretched on to her tiptoes to kiss him then, just a brief, warm brush of her cheek against his, too quick for Ned to respond or reciprocate in any way. ‘Bye. I’ll phone you.’

‘Yes. Do. That’d be great.’

And then she smiled at him, a tight, inscrutable kind of smile, waved at him stiffly and walked away. Which was really silly, actually, as the Tube and the bus stop were in the same direction. But it would have been too embarrassing, Ned felt, to start walking behind her, so he turned 180 degrees and started walking in the opposite direction anyway. And as he walked he felt something really weird happening to him. It started as an ache in his gut, turned into a stabbing pain in the back of his throat and then a tingling in his eyes. Tears. He had tears in his eyes. He swallowed hard, trying to force them back in. And then he heard something.

‘Ned!’

He turned around. Carly was standing on the corner
of Great Portland Street with her hands cupped around her mouth.

‘What?’

‘I… I…’

‘What?’

And then she let her hands drop from her face and tucked them into her pockets. ‘Nothing,’ she shouted. ‘Nothing. Just – welcome home.’

Ned shrugged and shouted, ‘Thanks.’

And then Carly turned away again and disappeared around the corner.

When he got home, there was another parcel from Monica waiting for him.

He didn’t even bother opening it.

www.morningsicknessremedies.com

‘Oh. Hello. Is Millie there, please?’

‘Speaking.’

‘Millie. It’s Tony. You sound dreadful. Are you OK?’

‘No. I’m awful.’

‘What? What’s the matter?’

‘Oh, just the onset of the truly delightful morning-sickness phase of my pregnancy.’

‘Oh dear,’ said Tony, ‘have you been sick?’

‘No. Not yet. Just spent the whole time feeling like I’m about to. I’ve gone from eating like a bulimic horse to not being able to eat anything at all. Everything I swallow just makes me feel worse.’

‘Shit. Is there anything you can take for it? Medicine or anything?’

‘Unfortunately not. They tried that with thalidomide but it didn’t really work out. No – it’s just another wonderful aspect of pregnancy that you don’t realize until it’s too late. I mean, you know you’ll have to stop drinking and smoking and taking recreational drugs. But nobody tells you about all the other things you’re suddenly not allowed to ingest. Like mayonnaise, for God’s sake. And soft cheese and runny eggs and sushi
and rare meat and
shellfish.
Shellfish, for fuck’s sake. Imagine it, Tony – no prawns for
seven months.
It’s tragic. And then there’s the whole pharmaceutical thing. No Nurofen, no paracetamol, no Rennies, no cold remedies or cough mixture – I’m not even allowed a bloody throat lozenge, for God’s sake. Just got to grit my teeth and take it like a man.’

‘Bloody hell,’ said Tony, who popped half of Super-drug at the merest suggestion of pain or discomfort, ‘Isn’t there
anything
you can take at all?’

‘Nope. I tell you, it’s so ironic. We go to so much trouble making sure that our unborn children aren’t tainted by anything even slightly chemical or unhealthy, bring them into the world all perfect and wholesome so they can spend the rest of their lives shoving as much crap into their gullets as they can fit in. I don’t know why we bother. Maybe we should just get them on the hard stuff from the outset.’

Tony laughed nervously.

‘God – listen to me,’ she said, ‘I sound deranged. You’re probably going to get the social services on me.’