Can We Still Be Friends (33 page)

Annie shifted again. She looked happier in her sleep than at any other point in the day. Charlie stroked her hair and threw the
Sunday Times
on the floor in the vague hope she might wake. It worked.

‘Kendra called. I said you’d ring later. It doesn’t say much for their sex life that she’s on the blower first thing Sunday.’ He felt the smooth curve of Annie’s bottom.

‘That’s not like her … oh, I’m still so tired,’ she whispered, reaching out for a glass of water. The pills meant that she woke with a dry mouth. As she moved away from Charlie, he sighed, resigning himself to no sex and instead giving the
Herald
the once-over. Turning towards the back of the paper, he stopped, and nudged Annie.

‘Hey, isn’t that your friend? Kendra’s mate?’ Annie dragged herself out from the half-awake place that she was inhabiting, trying to stay there as long as she could. It was the best place to be, before the heaviness took over. Leaning over his shoulder, she wiped the sleep from the corners of her eyes, taking in a picture of somebody who did indeed look like a version of Gioia. The woman was wearing a belted safari jacket, her hair tied back from her face as tightly as a sumo wrestler’s. ‘Bull Dyke’, that’s what the picture screamed to the
Herald
’s readers.

Charlie was now all concentration, scratching his hair as he read. ‘Christ. She’s not gonna like that,’ he said.

‘Like what?’

‘This headline … “Double life of youth worker”. Hang on … I’m trying to work it out. They seem to have something about her having a “dubious sexual history” – that’s Kendra they must be talking about – and the space being used illegally. What’s that all about then?’

As Charlie read, Annie’s eye was caught by an item running in a column down the side of the page: “The Charterhouse consortium is in the vanguard of this movement which is sweeping across London, destroying local communities with little regard for residents or history. Witness the march of the new Yuppie tribe, eyes focused only as far as their next deal.’ Oh no. The idea that Sal must have orchestrated this filtered through to Annie’s foggy mind.

Charlie gave out a snort, slapping the paper in amusement at the side of the bed. ‘I don’t think we’re going to have many problems getting that site now. That girl’s days are numbered, big time. They haven’t quite spelt out that she’s a lesbian, but they don’t need to – look at the snap. She looks terrifying. And they’ve found locals to say they want her out, the building’s all but falling down, and they think something dodgy’s going on, with vans coming and going at night. Sounds like your Kendra’s got herself in a right bag of tricks.’

‘That must be what she was calling about.’ Annie closed her eyes in the hope of shutting out the day. ‘I don’t want to know any more right now. Poor Kendra.’

‘Kendra! Never mind fucking Kendra. That’s not the half of it.’ Charlie had now seen the sidebar. ‘Look at this.’ He sat up in a movement that shook the duvet off the bed. ‘Have you read this?’ he spluttered, and began to read out the column where Charterhouse was mentioned, becoming more enraged with every word. ‘Total crap. What does she think she’s doing here? “Destroying local communities … march of the new Yuppie tribe.” It’s not going to make a blind bit of difference to our game plan, but it’s plain nasty, isn’t it? Total bollocks. Our PR is going to have to sort this out.’ He threw the paper on the floor. ‘I thought she was meant to be your friend.’

Annie kept silent. She didn’t understand what Sal had hoped to achieve but it was obvious that she had thought she was doing something that would help Kendra. It was equally obvious that she hadn’t given a moment’s thought to what it was going to mean to Annie.

Charlie had left the bed to use the telephone in the sitting room. She could hear him barking down it. ‘Yeah … totally … soft in the head and not to mention a fucking drunk …’ Annie stayed exactly where she was, wishing that she would never have to move again.

When Annie called Kendra back, she could sense the atmosphere in Gioia’s flat.

‘Yeah, I know,’ she said. ‘Terrible. Total catastrophe all round. We don’t know where she is. Have you been able to track her down?’ Kendra noted the ‘we’. Hadn’t Annie realized, even now, that Charlie was just as much the problem as Sal? She tried to keep her fury in check, arranging to meet in the Polish café on Annie’s side of town. Anything to escape Gioia’s cloud of anger.

It didn’t take long and she was out the door and on her way. In contrast to the empty streets where she lived, Annie’s neighbourhood was crowded, as families straggled along in the direction of the nearby museums and couples wandered, arms around each other after a loving Sunday morning lie-in. At the café, a boy and a girl sat at the table next to theirs, their legs entwined as they shared a breakfast.

‘So … I called her parents, but they haven’t heard from her. Of course, I didn’t tell her mum anything. She wanted to know how Sal was, so she obviously hasn’t seen them for ages. I decided not to mention the wrist and everything.’ Annie was sipping from a tall glass which was filled with hot water and a slice of lemon.

‘You know something, Annie? I don’t give a shit about her broken wrist. It’s a broken head she deserves. She’s lost me this time. Totally lost me. You can’t imagine what this has done to Gioia. It’s not just the gay thing, we could deal with that, but there’s all this stuff about Gerassimos, and she
adores
him, and then about
her being irresponsible, an inappropriate person to be in charge of kids. There’s no way she can fight this.’

‘What can have happened though?’

‘The idiot got drunk and smashed herself up, didn’t she? Then, I suppose, she must have given her notes to someone, and because she wasn’t there someone – and no prizes for guessing it was Marsha – wrote it up the way she wanted to, or the way she thought it would make a better story. It’s all tied in with this other stuff about new developments.’

‘Yeah, don’t I know it? Charlie’s furious. It’s not just you and Gioia, you know. Anyway, it’s true, isn’t it? Some of it. Like the stuff about the place falling down.’

‘We’re not going to get anywhere if you start down that road. We could look at your husband’s plans, for a start. He didn’t care about us, did he? Where’s the loyalty here?’

‘This isn’t about him, Ken. Look. As far as he’s concerned, business is business. The Chapel was a tiny part of this deal, and I guess he didn’t let it be a factor. I know I should have spoken more to him about it, and if I’d been feeling stronger I would have, but …’ She shrugged.

The casual movement infuriated Kendra, who stood up, knocking into the breakfasting couple next to them. ‘I can see where
your
loyalties lie. This is pretty fucking pointless, sitting here with you.’ She grabbed her bag. ‘When you find Sal, if you get to her before I do, tell her I’ve got to speak to her.’

Annie didn’t have the energy or the desire even to try to stop her leaving. The mess in her head was a knot that had no apparent beginning or end. She couldn’t start to unravel it. As she watched Kendra’s cycling figure climb the hill towards the park she wondered what was going to happen next, but, if she was honest, she didn’t much care.

Sal’s personal party had come to an end. It had been fun, thought Sal, as once again she stood on the station platform, but coming down from this one was major, and the bright sunshine wasn’t a
help. The pair of sunglasses she had found at Pete’s made her look ridiculously like Ant from her childhood Ant and Bee books. But anything to help with her head … She’d overdone it because of the pain, of course, especially the pain in her wrist. Everybody knew she wouldn’t normally touch Southern Comfort.

She looked at the
Herald
’s front page, in the disappointing knowledge that she wouldn’t have any copy in that edition. Even the oldest hacks still got a kick out of seeing their bylines printed – they counted the week’s achievement in column inches. The train arrived and as she settled into her seat she folded the large paper professionally into a manageable shape – no wonder most people just bought tabloids: they were so much easier to handle – and looked through it. At first she wasn’t sure it was Gioia in the picture. She took off the sunglasses to look more closely at the caption: ‘Gioia Cavallieri, the controversial leader at London’s Chapel youth centre’. But it wasn’t possible. This was her story,
and she hadn’t been at the office last week. She had given Andrea the outline and notes on her interview with Gioia so she could see how Sal was getting on, but it had always been clear that the interview was going to be part of a bigger piece about the scandal of development. As she read, she saw it wasn’t an interview, more of an assassination. Her eyes scanned the double-page spread, taking in the several interlinked stories and spotting not only hers but Marsha and Doug’s names in a list at the bottom. It was news to her that they’d been working on this. And it wasn’t just Gioia they’d done in: ‘Kendra Rootstein, her well-connected companion in life and work’
.
Kendra was going to kill her.

By the time the train reached London Sal had reread the page at least eight times, on each reading coming up with a different interpretation of what was in front of her. For some reason, Patrick must have decided he wanted to run the story this week. It was bloody August, holiday season, and nothing was happening, she supposed, no matter what Marsha said. And instead of running a piece in support of Gioia, somebody had put out this dirt-digging rubbish as the ‘human interest’ angle. Stuart must have told them to beef it up, and she hadn’t been there to fight her corner and make sure that the emphasis wasn’t warped in this way. It was all because of this bloody wrist. She made her way down into the Tube, her backpack over her shoulder, her arm hanging limply in its cast, the stitches in her cheek aching and her hangover still worsening.

Stopping in the centre of a stinking underpass, surrounded by people all going somewhere with suitcases and children, friends and parents, she knew she was in a terrible way. But she didn’t know how to get back to where she once was, before she’d become this mess.

When she came out of the Tube station, dusk had taken over and the Earls Court Road was noisy, the pubs full, as they were every night. She thought about stopping in one of the phone boxes she passed to call Kendra, but her headache was so bad she didn’t think she’d manage to say anything that would help. Of course, a quick drink would help. She walked mechanically to the pub on the corner. God, Sundays were awful. The dregs of the week, and it was just her luck that it was now her day off. She ordered a double vodka and tonic, the thought of its arrival making her feel a little better as she waited at the bar, surrounded by groups of noisy Aussies.

It seemed that only moments had passed when she heard the words ‘Cheer up, love.’ A beefy boy with a rugby shirt rubbed up against her, grinning jovially and winking at his friend.

‘Fuck off,’ Sal replied, draining her third drink. The first two had been excellent medicine, taking the edge off both her headache and her examination of the day’s catastrophe. This one didn’t seem to be making much difference. Luckily, she had got some more at home, she was pretty sure. She didn’t want to see any of the other occupants of the flat, but they wouldn’t care. She’d never fitted in with them. Message to self: she had to get out of there. Yeah, she had to get out of there, and she had to call Kendra and Annie. But first, another drink.

That black suit she’d bought all those years back in Joseph had been worth every penny. Sal could only see her top half in the bathroom mirror, but it was enough to show that, all things considered, she
appeared almost respectable. She couldn’t get the jacket over her cast, but she draped it over her shoulders and she could roll up the sleeves of the pale-blue shirt. It was important that she looked the part today for the confrontation with Andrea. She’d decided that she needed to have that meeting before she spoke to the others. At least then she’d have an explanation.

Walking up the road to the office, she could see the ornate clock that hung from the building over the street. Nine o’clock. It was heaven knows how long since she’d been in this early, and on a Tuesday too. It wouldn’t surprise her if she was the first one there. But once she reached the first floor where the newsroom spread out in all directions, it was clear that many people regarded nine as the start of the day. In the corner, Jackie was making a cup of tea: three sugars and just a drip of milk, the way she knew (after six years in the job) her boss liked it.

At least Marsha wasn’t in yet. Sal didn’t want to have to start the conversation with Andrea in front of an audience. She nervously kept an eye on the door to the newsroom, hoping that her boss would arrive soon. She had felt reasonably confident until now, but as the minutes passed she was becoming nervous – nervous of what Andrea would say about what had happened, and nervous of what she would discover her own role in it was thought to be.

The older woman arrived shortly, unbuttoned her raincoat and hung it up on the hook. She placed a plastic bag of groceries far under the desk where it couldn’t be seen and began to unscrew the top from her pot of Nivea.

‘Andrea’ – Sal walked up to her – ‘can we have a chat?’

Andrea considered Sal, taking in her unusually neat appearance, and the cast on her arm.

‘How’s the arm? Can you work this week?’

‘Yeah. Well, I hope so. That’s what I want to talk to you about. About last week, and what happened?’

‘Indeed. It might be good to discuss what happened,’ Andrea replied, rhythmically smoothing the cream in a motion down her hand and into her wrist. ‘I take it you saw the story.’

‘Yes. Of course. But that wasn’t the story. You know that wasn’t the story. I don’t have any idea how it came to turn out like that, but what I do know is that it’s completely fucked up – no, sorry … screwed up … no, caused terrible problems for my friends.’

Andrea stood up and took Sal by the arm, walking her in the direction of the hooks on which her coat hung.

‘I think it’s time you and I had a talk. Here’s not the place.’