Bad Friends Read online

  CLAIRE SEEBER

  Bad Friends

  For all my parents

  and

  in memory of my beloved Granny.

  I’m running towards you (though it might take me a while).

  BAD FRIENDS

  ‘If love is judged by most of its effects,

  it resembles hate more than friendship.’

  François de La Rochefoucauld – Les Maximes

  AFTER: DECEMBER

  I am running for my life, I know that now.

  The moon slips behind the clouds. Perhaps the darkness is a boon, but the shadows that fall beside me seem to mock me as I flee, as I fly down the drive from the house. Desperately my hand closes round the bunch of metal; my little finger catches on a jagged edge, I feel my flesh tear slightly, but I ignore the pain. I slide dangerously in the mud but I will not fall, will not allow it; I right myself, though my leaden legs suck me into the stony ground; they scream with every step that I should stop but I can’t, I daren’t. I push myself on, stumbling on and on, because they are nearer now … closing on me for sure …

  I am off the gravel drive and tracking across the great wild lawn towards the wooden bridge; towards the pub where there is life. I have no time to look around; worse, I can’t bear to see how long I’ve got.

  Running for my life. I cannot get my breath; I fight for it until it sobs up through my chest like a dead man’s rattle. I was fast once, really fast as a child, running for joy and for gold – but I am out of practice now, I haven’t run properly for years and my bad foot hampers me. Terror drives me, terror that drips down and smothers me.

  If I can just reach the pub, slam myself inside, I might be safe. Saved. But God, why was I mad enough to think I was safe to come here alone?

  It is too late. The car is stopping, skidding behind me, and it’s like I am fastened to the house by its beam. I swing round. I have to face my hunter; I cannot stand unseeing, so exposed. The car door opens smoothly as an oily disc of moonshine slides out from behind fingers of cloud. Everything is illuminated so perfectly and I start towards the car in relief – until that smile meets me, and I actually gasp. I reel in shock like I’ve been punched, gut-punched where it most hurts.

  ‘You?’ I say numbly. ‘It can’t be you.’

  A small and measured step towards me. ‘But it is, Maggie.’ And that smile, it is a flat smile. A traitor’s smile. ‘Weren’t you expecting me?’

  BEFORE: JUNE

  I breathe hard onto the coach window and watch the fug slowly spread before me. Tracing the small cloud with my finger, I write my name across the middle like a schoolgirl. My name slants; a single tear tracks downwards from the M. I make a fist and vigorously rub myself out again. My hand is damp now; I wipe it dry. Cocooned in this muggy warmth, safe for the moment from the damp, dark night, I’m struggling to stay awake. Far off in the drizzle a tiny house twinkles with beguiling light, nestled into the old church beside it like a trusting child. I gaze wistfully after the enticing image, but we are truly hurtling down the motorway now, a sleek capsule slicing the M4’s black, and the house has vanished already.

  I hold my breath as the teenage boy beside me bobs his head shyly, uncurls his awkward new height from beside me, scuttling with an odd spider’s gait to talk to his mates up-front. Now he’s gone there is some space here for my sadness, some room to acknowledge the pain of what I’ve just left behind. I feel utterly raw; like I’ve been flayed alive. I bite my lip against the grief. The truth is we’ve gone too far this time, I can’t see a return. We said it all; we let the floodgates down and we got truly drenched.

  An abandoned can of Strongbow rolls under my feet. I let the can rattle until it annoys me, hitting my heel over and over. I retrieve it, stick it firmly into the net on the seat-back in front, fighting the urge to lick my wet fingers, drying them instead on the knobbly cloth on the seat beside me. I wish I’d had the foresight to find something to kill the ache before embarking. I wish I had some wine, my iPod, a cookery book – any means, in fact, of forgetting. I wish I wasn’t travelling alone. I wish I’d known I would be.

  My eyelids droop inexorably until my head bangs against the thick, cool glass.

  ‘Ouch.’ I jerk up, feeling foolish, forcing myself upright again. I don’t want to sleep here, don’t want to surrender to the inevitable nightmares surrounded by these strangers. So I watch the little woman across the aisle, a mousey hobbit who mouths each word of Northanger Abbey aloud, scanning each page fervently, her pale lips oddly stiff despite their constant movement. I wish that I’d never read the book myself so that I could have that pleasure again for the first time. The couple in front lean into each other, the tops of their heads touching, their hair almost entwined as he whispers something he wants only her to hear. Right now, I think tragically, it’s unlikely I’ll ever feel any first pleasure again; that anyone will ever want to whisper anything to me again. I almost smile at my self-indulgence. Almost – but not quite.

  Eventually I succumb to sleep, rocked by the lullaby of voices that murmur through the dim coach. I don’t notice the dark-haired girl as she passes by to use the poky loo, though later the girl swears blind that she saw me in my seat – she liked my hair, the girl says (God knows, it’s hard to miss). Says she knew I was a kindred spirit. But I do notice the tall man who drops his bag as he stumbles past, jolting me uncomfortably back into wakefulness. I am startled again as I glance up, befuddled. My heart stops; I think it’s Alex. My heart flames with pain; my belly corkscrews.

  I won’t catch the man’s eye, although I can sense he wants to speak. I can’t bear to look at him. He might see what I’m trying so hard to hide, so I turn away again. I find my fists are clenched, nails dug deep into my palms. I twist my hair into a nervous rope, tucking it behind one shoulder. Even in my shadowy reflection I can see the red of it, the flame I can’t escape and –

  I see something else, something beyond the window, out there in the dark. I hold my breath in shock.

  What I see is fear. Pure and undistilled, the face I gaze into is mad with it, big eyes rolling back into the brain until they are all white; a nightmare vision that is in fact quite real. The nostrils flare in panic, the huge teeth bared in a grin of frothing terror, the mane flying in the wind. For one small second snatched in old time, the time that will soon become the time before – the safe time – I find I’m not scared. I want to stretch my hand through the window and smooth the trembling flank; soothe this rearing beast. But then my own terror crashes in around me and I feel very tiny. The horse’s great flailing hooves will surely pierce the coach’s metal side. Frantic, I press back into my seat, trying to flatten myself against the blow.

  The chance to find my voice, to shout a futile warning, has already passed. The lullaby is building to a shriek. The passengers are screaming, have begun to scream as one, because the coach is tilting, tilting on its axis until it cannot right itself again, until finally it topples. It skids across the road in hideous scraping chaos, on its side now – and still the coach keeps moving. I am level with the road; blue sparks fly up from the concrete before me as if a welder were torching the ground. Then I roll, slam hard into a body so all the wind goes out of me.

  I cannot see. My hands flail at the blackness. Panting with terror, I am thrown against some metallic edge. A flash of agonising pain fills my left shoulder as I crack it on what must be the ceiling. A child cries piteously. Someone’s foot grinds into my gut, a fist pummels my mouth in fear. I claw at my face as something oddly intimate drapes itself across me, a mouthful of hair that chokes and sickens me. I struggle to breathe, to let some air in. Any air. I panic that I am blind. We are still moving. Why the hell haven’t we stopped moving?

  A huge whump: the central reservation crump
les as the coach crashes through, on its back now. It’s slowing, and someone near me is screaming, they won’t stop screaming, on and on –

  A terrible metallic crack ends the voice. The coach is jerked by force into the fast lane. My head whips forward, then snaps back again. There’s a crunch as the first van hits us head on, and folds: then the next vehicle, then the next. A hot flash up my left leg. Finally there is silence – almost silence. Just a single horn blaring into the complete darkness, then, soon after, another: a petulant electronic chorus. Closer to me, a whimpering that spreads like wildfire. We have finally stopped moving and now there is nothing. Just darkness. Just the sob of my own breath as I clasp myself and wonder: Is this death?

  Contents

  Title Page

  Epigraph

  AFTER: DECEMBER

  BEFORE: JUNE

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  A Conversation With Claire Seeber

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  By The Same Author

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Chapter One

  ‘Maggie Warren?’

  I am not ready for this.

  I was about to change my mind when the girl came to get me.

  I smiled. Such a false smile, it nearly cracked my face.

  She was a new girl; she must have started after the –

  Since I’d been away. She was confident. Supremely so. More confident than I had ever been at her age. At her stage. She was young and blonde and she walked with a swish of paper-straight hair and an empty click of the long leather boots that promised – something, I wasn’t quite sure what. Exactly Charlie’s type.

  ‘I’m Daisy,’ she threw over an immaculate shoulder as I tried to keep up. I was already unsettled, and her swagger unnerved me more. Did she know something I didn’t? Painfully I followed her down corridors, trying to keep up, banging awkwardly through the doors, my crutches unwieldy beneath my arms. Waiting all the time for her to speak. She didn’t. I searched for something to say. I contemplated myself in her position, remembering all the inanities I’d spouted since I’d started, the yards and yards of crap I’d sparkled with. The punters have earned it, I always thought. In Daisy’s book, though, apparently, I hadn’t. But I was different, perhaps.

  I needed to fill the silence – the silence aside from the click of her dominatrix boots. She awarded me a thin smile as she pulled open the next set of doors, as she waited for me, not quite tapping her toes, with a smile that said, ‘I am leading you like a lamb to your slaughter.’

  I said, ‘Have you worked for Double-decker before?’

  She shook her sleek head. ‘Came from the Beeb.’

  I loathed people who said ‘the Beeb’.

  ‘Graduate trainee.’

  Didn’t like them much either. The graduate trainee who invariably thought they knew it all. She was remarkably flat-chested for one of Charlie’s girls, I noted, as I squeezed past her.

  ‘Oxford, you know.’ Had she actually sniffed as she said it?

  ‘Ah, Oxford.’ I nodded sagely. That would explain it. Charlie had a penchant for posh.

  Before I could struggle any further to be her ‘friend’, just like all those punters in the past had tried to be mine, we were there. Pull yourself together, Maggie, I told myself firmly. But my hands were actually shaking. It was so odd to be here on the other side. The green room was alive with people and light, the buzz and hum of adrenaline and apprehension. The buzz of attention, of being ‘the one’, the vital one. Everyone was bathed in the horrible neon light that yellowed the skin and made the eyes look dead. The banks of croissants and egg-and-cress sandwiches were already dry and curling; the orange juice was spilt in brilliant pools on the white linen. What was I doing here? Would they see inside me; know I’d sold my soul? I looked for Sally, then for the wine – but Charlie found me first.

  ‘Maggie, darling.’ The emphasis was on darling as he kissed me on both cheeks, his face lingering a little too long next to mine, his Ralph Lauren jumper tied in that silly knot over his breast-bone. His aftershave was as noxious as ever.

  ‘I could murder a drink.’ I was just a little too bright. I contemplated him for a moment. Then I leaned forward and asked, quietly, ‘You are sure about this, Charlie? I’m struggling a bit with my –’

  He clasped my hand, a little too hard, his hooded eyes veiled. ‘Not going to back out now, are you, darling?’

  I winced. It wasn’t a question.

  ‘Daisy, get Maggie a drink, would you? A wine.’

  Kinky-boots smiled at him, tossing her hair becomingly, and fetched me a drink. Begrudgingly. She’d go far.

  ‘What?’ Now Charlie leaned in to catch my words, his hair-oil glinting in the light. Had I spoken aloud? ‘Don’t freak out on me, Maggie, please.’

  ‘I’m really nervous. This is very –’

  ‘Exciting? I knew you’d see it my way in the end.’

  Did I have a choice? ‘I was going to say … I’m really not sure that –’

  ‘Don’t be silly.’ He looked impatient. ‘We’ve been through all this. It’s going to make the show.’

  ‘What is?’

  He leaned forward so only I could hear. ‘And, of course, it’s your absolute last chance. Don’t fuck up. Again.’

  ‘But –’ I began, as Sally peered round the door. I was so glad to see her that I cried her name much too loudly. Her jolly broad face was uncharacteristically tense. She smiled back, but even her dimples were subdued. Stress was definitely winning the day.

  ‘Babe.’ Her eyes flicked round the room. ‘Daisy,’ she said as she found her target, gesturing frantically, ‘has the anti turned up yet?’

  ‘What anti?’ I frowned.

  ‘Oh, don’t worry. They’re not for you.’

  I didn’t believe her. My job had lost its allure some time ago, from years of deceiving those we relied on to provide the entertainment. With a nasty lurch, I realised I was the entertainment now. Oh God. I shook my head.

  ‘Sal, I really don’t need a row on air, Charlie promised. He called it a – a “healing” show’. Who was I kidding?

  I lost Sally’s attention as Renee swept into the room, pausing by the door for maximum effect. She knew exactly how to work it. There was a brief lull as heads turned, a visible wave of excitement over by the crois
sants. Renee didn’t always bother with the guests these days, but this was a big one. A real ratings winner, if it went right: this year’s greatest tragedy – just in time for BAFTA nominations. I shuddered. Sally was off again.

  ‘Sal,’ I hissed after her, ‘I’m not going to have a row with anyone. Really. Charlie did promise.’

  A shadow flitted across Sally’s face. ‘Bear with me, all right, Maggie? Daisy, get the rostrum tape of the headlines into the gallery. Now, please.’ Then she was gone.

  I downed my drink in one huge gulp. The headlines. That overwrought outpouring of horrified, voyeuristic – what? Delight? A glut of hysterical sympathy for our terrible misfortune on that coach. Blame, shame and sorrow. I’d managed to avoid most of them the first time. Only occasionally, when a nurse had forgotten to bin –

  I skidded the memory to a necessary halt. My head was aching and I wanted a cigarette badly. I wanted to get the hell out of here even more. I must have been mad to agree to this, and right now I couldn’t quite remember why I had. I inched toward the door as surreptitiously as my bad leg would let me; then Daisy was by my side.

  ‘Okay?’ She smiled that horrible thin smile again.

  ‘I need a fag,’ I tried to smile back. Someone stopped Daisy to ask where they could change and that was it; I was off down the corridor as fast as my crutches would carry me. But I wasn’t going to make it outside in time so I veered off to the loo. Perhaps they wouldn’t look here (they always looked here – I was hardly the first guest to hide behind a locked door). The end cubicle was free. I stood against the door and fumbled for my cigarettes. My skeletons weren’t so much rattling the closet, they were smashing down the walls. My hands were trembling so much I dropped my lighter and cursed myself. Two women were discussing Renee over the divide between their cubicles. ‘Such pretty hair,’ one cooed. If only they knew. Normally I would have smiled, but right now I felt more like crying. Everything was out of kilter. Worst of all, I despised myself. I hadn’t realised quite how hard I was going to find this. Oh God. I didn’t know if I was more scared about being on the other side for the first time in my life, or of talking about – it. Digging up the past. Would they manage to mine my depths for secrets long untold? I inhaled deeply, reckoning I’d got about five more puffs before the smoke alarm went off. The women clattered out, tutting about passive smoking. My leg throbbed. Holding my fag between my teeth I searched my bag for yet more pills.