My Best Friend's Girl (8 page)

“You’ll do that?”

I nodded, my face buckling with emotion. I knew what I was offering. I couldn’t say the word, but I was offering to watch her do it. I’d have to watch my best friend leave this planet. I’d balked at the thought of taking care of a child, could I really sit with someone I loved and watch the life ebb out of her? I’d have to. Of course I’d have to. She had no one else. And she’d do the same for me if the roles were reversed. “Of course I’ll do that, Del,” I said. “Of course I will.”

She held her hand out to me and I took it. It was cool to the touch, the skin papery and dry. I thought it might crumble if I held her too tight. Our eyes met and for a second I felt like I was back in that college bar. Everything good about her, all her inner beauty radiated outward at me.

“Count yourself lucky,” I said with a cheeky smile. “You know I wouldn’t do that for anyone else, don’t you?”

“I’m honored,” she replied with a slight laugh, her fingers curling around mine, “truly, I’m honored.”

“No, I am.”

chapter 9

A
week I’d been in London, although it felt like a lifetime. A lifetime of traffic-clogged streets, anonymous living and accents like mine. It was almost as if I’d never left. In that time, in the past eight days, the three of us—Adele, Tegan and I—had slipped into a routine. A loose one, but still a routine. Structure, no matter how small, was important for all of us.

We’d wake at fifteen seconds past the crack of dawn because Tegan liked to scramble out from under the covers, lie on the end of the bed, turn on the hotel room TV, find cartoons and stay in front of them for as long as I allowed her to. As soon as the TV went on, I would pull a pillow over my head, trying to blot out the high-pitched squeaks and clangs emanating from the screen.

After about an hour of cartoons, I’d drag myself from the double bed, stiff and kinked up because I’d have been on the edge all night scared to death I’d roll over and crush her. After my shower, I’d persuade Tegan into the bath. By the time we were both dressed, Tegan would be incandescent with excitement because she knew she’d be seeing her mum soon.

We’d drop by the hospital for an hour or so until we’d exhausted Del, then we’d go house hunting. None of the houses or flats Tegan and I saw were right for us but I knew we were going to find something today. A nice three-bedroom ground-floor flat that would give Del her own space and Tegan and I our own rooms. Maybe even a garden for Tegan to play in now that summer had kicked in and the days were bright with sun and positive energy. Today was the day, I could feel it in my soul.

Everything else had slotted into place. I’d asked for a six-month sabbatical from work, but they’d suggested I have the preceding week and the next two weeks as my annual leave, then work from home—home being the place I rented with Del and Tegan—three days a week. We’d get e-mail, I could easily work from the London office of the department store, where I was national marketing manager, and if I needed to go to Leeds, they’d schedule midday meetings so I had time to get there and back in a day. I’d find an estate agent to sort out renting my flat in Leeds. It was all going to work out. We just needed somewhere to live.

Despite my conviction about finding the right house, today hadn’t exactly started well. My five-year-old charge hadn’t roused from bed yet because she’d been up late, fizzing with excitement about the future. About the three of us being together. She’d begun to relax with me in the past eight days. Now she felt she could do things like turn on the telly without staring at me until I asked her what was wrong. Also, I guessed her mother had been talking to her about the longer term future because she’d started asking things like, “What’s Leeds like?” and “Can I have my own room?”

Tegan’s latest idea was getting a cat. There was no way on earth that we were getting any kind of furry animal, not now, not ever. They were fine in the wild, but not in my flat, nor my realm of responsibility. I don’t know where she got the idea from but it’d been one of the first things she brought up when we went to visit her mother yesterday.

Tegan had opened the door to Del’s room, ran in, leapt up onto the bed and began her ritual of kisses. They started high up on Del’s left cheek, got lower and lower, crossed her chin, avoiding the tube hooked through her nostrils, then went up to her right cheek. Tegan never seemed to notice her mum wasn’t looking well or that she was connected to machines. And, yesterday, I wasn’t surprised. Del looked amazing.

Color was back in her face, that mottled gray and yellow had faded, instead her skin glowed a healthy pink. The red had all but gone from the whites of her eyes and the sparkle was back in the steel-blue windows to her soul. Apart from the navy blue scarf around her head, the thinned face and the lack of eyebrows, she could have been the Del I knew all those years ago. I’d grinned because she’d done it. She’d accepted that she did have a choice in this after all—she could get better, live.

“How you doing?” she asked. Her voice sounded far more substantial than it had been only three days ago, and my grin widened.

“I’m fine. I’m always fine,” I said. “You look so well.”

“I feel well. Not well. Better. A lot better. You, on the other hand, look exhausted.”

“I’m fine, really.” I
was
tired, couldn’t remember the last proper night’s sleep I’d had, but hey, let’s get everything in perspective. Terminally ill, a bit knackered—who should be complaining here?

“Please take care of yourself, Kam.”

“I am,” I replied.

“That’d be a first,” Adele said.

“I
am
.”

“Can we get a cat?” Tegan interjected.

“You’ll have to ask Kamryn about that,” Del said, passing the buck rather neatly to me, even though she knew how I felt about all things furry.

“Can we?” Tegan asked me.

“Not right now, sweetie. We’ll talk about it another time.”
As in never
.

Del pushed her lips together to hide her smirk.

“We saw a house with no upstairs today,” Tegan informed her mother. “It was a bung-low.”

“That’s nice,” Del said.

Tegan stretched out on the bed and rested her head on her mother’s right breast, avoiding almost by some sixth sense the tube coming out of her torso and the drip in her hand. Del gazed tenderly down at her daughter’s head, then back up at me. “She’s tired as well.”

“I know, but a day house hunting will do that.”

“She needs to be settled.”

“She will be. When we find somewhere that feels like home she can have her own room and she can see you any time she wants. Which is what you both need.”

“If we get a cat, can we call it Pussy Puss?” Tegan asked in a sleepy voice.

“Pussy’s a good name for a cat,” Del said, trying to hold back her laughter.

“Yeah,” I said, “it certainly is.”

“Can you imagine walking around the neighborhood calling ‘Pussy, Pussy’?” Del giggled.

“Why are you laughing?” Tegan asked as her mother and I snickered like two schoolboys who’d discovered seethru bras in the underwear section of their mothers’ catalogues.

“Your Auntie Kamryn is just being silly that’s all. Don’t mind her.”

“No, sweetie, don’t mind me.”

Tegan had snoozed while Del and I thought up the weirdest, rudest names for pets that we could wander around the streets shouting out. Our favorite had been Your Hairy Butt (“Your Hairy Butt, Your Hairy Butt, dinner time!”), which made Del laugh so much I thought she was going to pass out.

When we got back to the hotel, Tegan had been fizzing, keyed up about getting a cat, about her mum coming home, about having fish fingers for dinner…Nothing was too trivial for her to chatter about. I’d watched her babble as she bounced on the bed. Then watched as she lay down as if about to sleep, then suddenly leap up with something else to talk about. I marveled at the transformation. Less than a week ago she wouldn’t talk to me, now she couldn’t stop. When she’d finally fallen asleep it’d been pushing 3 a.m. and I was whacked out myself.

Now I checked her sleeping form, a small crescent shape under the blue blankets, blond hair splayed out around her face.
Maybe I’ll leave her a bit longer
. Del was seeing the consultant this morning, anyway, so we had house hunting as our first task of the day. I wanted to get on with it but Tegan obviously needed her sleep and a grumpy child was something I could do without.

A knock at the door made me jump. My eyes went to the LCD display on the clock radio by the bed: 7:55. Far too early for callers. Maybe it was the laundry woman. I bit my lower lip anxiously; I hadn’t gotten our dirty clothes together for washing. I looked around at the room, ashamed. Stuff was all over the joint: new clothes that I had to buy because I hadn’t brought enough down with me, outfits that Tegan didn’t want to wear that I’d taken out but hadn’t folded away, toys Tegan had been playing with. I wasn’t the tidiest of people and living out of one room you really needed to be. I’d have to ask the laundry woman to come back later when I’d got our washing together.

I traversed several piles of clothes to get to the door.

But it was Nancy, Adele’s nurse, who stood on the other side of the door. She was wearing a buttoned-up beige raincoat. Her black plaits were loose and her face was free of makeup—it was also missing her usual bright smile.

I knew. The moment my eyes settled on her face I knew. But I also didn’t know, I wasn’t ready.

“Hello, Kamryn,” she said with a smile. Not her usually bright, sunny one, this one was warm but subdued.

“Hi,” I said back.

“Where’s Tegan?” she asked.

“She’s asleep,” I replied.

“OK, good. May I speak to you in the corridor?”

I nodded, looked to make sure Tegan was still sleeping before I put my shoe in the doorway so the door wouldn’t slam shut.

We walked to the end of the hallway, to where there were two tan leather armchairs and a glass side table upon which stood a vase of silk flowers. Neither of us sat in the armchairs and I kept an eye on the door to our room.

“I’m sorry, Kamryn,” Nancy began, and the bundle of butterflies that had been fluttering around my stomach plummeted through my body. “Adele passed away in the night.”

“But she looked all right yesterday,” I said through the thick lump of emotion that had filled my throat.

“She was very, very ill.”

“But she looked better yesterday,” I insisted. “She said she felt better.” In the face of such testimony, testimony from the one person who should know, how could this woman be telling me this?

“Adele looked better but she had been deteriorating for a long, long time. We were all surprised that she survived this long.”

This didn’t make sense. No sense at all. We’d been laughing yesterday. Joking about pets called Your Hairy Butt. “She wasn’t on her own, was she?” My eyes frantically searched Nancy’s tired face. It was the most important thing in the world right then, that Del hadn’t left, started this new journey, all alone. “Adele didn’t die alone?”

Nancy shook her head. “No, I was with her. She said to tell Tegan she loved her and to tell you goodbye.”

“It should have been me, I should have been with her. I said I’d be with her.”

“She didn’t want that,” Nancy said gently and laid a hand on my arm. “She’d asked enough of you already. Adele had been holding on because she didn’t know what was going to happen to her baby. But when you came she was happy because her child would be taken care of and she could let go. That’s why she was looking better, she wasn’t as worried. She knew yesterday that she was near the end—after you had gone she said that if she passed away in the night, not to tell you until this morning. She didn’t want to spoil the last memory you had of her laughing and joking. She just wanted you to remember the laughing.”

“That sounds like Adele, a control freak till the end,” I whispered, anger tingeing my voice. If I had known, I could’ve said a proper goodbye. I could have kissed and hugged her. Told her how much I loved her.
I hadn’t said that, had I? Not once in the past nine days did I say I loved her. And I never said I’d forgiven her. Had I forgiven her? I don’t know. I didn’t want to talk about things, I know that, but had I forgiven her? Even if I hadn’t, shouldn’t I have said it? Shouldn’t I have put her mind at rest?

“She didn’t suffer. She went to sleep and didn’t wake up. I was holding her hand as she fell asleep, she knew she wasn’t alone.”

“I didn’t want her to be alone,” I whispered.
I thought she had months left, not days. I should have listened to what she had to say, let her unburden her mind. I didn’t want her to die thinking I still hated her.

“Thank you, Nancy,” I said, wanting to hug her, wanting to show her how grateful I was to her for doing my job for me. I couldn’t move, though, was rooted to the spot, so I crammed as much gratitude into my voice as possible.

“For everything. For being there all these months, for being there at the end, and for coming to tell me yourself. Thank you.”

“You’ve had a terrible shock,” Nancy replied. “Do you want to sit down for a while?”

I shook my head. “I’m fine. It’s not as if we weren’t expecting this to happen, it’s just sooner than I thought.”

“Is there anyone you would like me to call? Someone who can come and stay with you?”

“No. I’m fine, really. I…” My legs gave way and suddenly my knees were pressed into the faded paisley carpet and my body was bent forward, my forehead almost touching the floor. I pushed the base of my thumbs onto my eyelids as my face crumpled.

It started as a small nugget of pain deep inside but it grew and grew until it was a huge choking ball of agony. She was gone. I was never going to see her again. I was never going to speak to her again. Never going to hold her hand. Or call her a silly tart. Or have her pull my hair and tell me to stop being a hard-faced bitch. Or just sit with her and watch the TV.

The first wave of tears came spilling forth. She’d left me. I’d left her, but she’d left me. Forever. My best friend was gone.

My body lurched again as another flood of tears poured out. I’d wanted to cry like this, to collapse and break down, the day I found out about her and Nate, but hadn’t been able to. It was there, just at the back of my eyes, just at the back of my throat, just at the back of my chest. Just at the back of my emotions. Even on the day of what would have been my wedding I hadn’t been able to cry completely because it hadn’t seemed real. I’d gotten on with things. Life. Everything. Now it was all coming out, coursing through my body in painful waves, gushing down my face in a waterfall.

The next emotional block dissolved. The block that had stopped me from breaking down when I got that card on my birthday and had found myself neck-deep in memories about Del and Nate disintegrated and the shock, anger, resentment came gushing out.

Next came the outpouring caused by seeing her lying in that hospital bed. The horror of finding out she was a sliver of the person I knew; the shell of the woman I loved. I’d hated myself at that moment. Hated myself for letting her down, for ignoring her, for rejecting every reach for help she’d made. I’d abandoned her. When she needed me most I’d turned my back on her. And she’d dwindled to that. To nothingness. I’d wanted to cry then but hadn’t.