Springer Bell yelped and scratched at the kitchen door. He was a lively beast and Karen always locked him in there whenever I visited because I got nervous around jumpy dogs. He yelped again and I winced. I was hungover. My head was throbbing and the inside of my mouth had the texture and smell of a nightclub carpet.
I reached into my bag for my bottle of water. “Tell me about Dan. You looked pretty cosy when I left.”
Karen flipped on her side and propped herself up on an elbow. “We were just chatting. He’s married. Nice bloke, though.”
“Chatting, my arse.”
I started to sing “Danny Boy”. She laughed and threw a cushion at me. I threw it back. For a brief moment I felt the old warmth return. For some reason that I didn’t understand, our friendship of almost thirty years had waned recently. Karen used to be like family. We saw each other at least twice a week, often turning up at each other’s houses unannounced, we swapped clothes, went on mini-breaks and holidays together and spoke on the phone for hours at a time. Our relationship had ebbed and flowed when we were younger, but I was confused about why she had distanced herself from me now. I suspected she was fed up with me offloading my grief on her. I was hardly a bundle of laughs anymore. The pain seemed to consume me sometimes. She was so supportive in those first weeks and months, but I guess she got weary. Her clients vented to her all day at her clinic. Why would she want to listen to me unburdening my grief when she got home as well?
She picked up the cushion from the floor and hugged it to her chest. “Don’t worry about Bryonie Phillips and Tallulah, Carmel. It’ll all be forgotten in a day or two.”
I threw my hands in the air in mock horror. “Don’t worry about Bryonie and Tallulah? You’re supposed to be a therapist. I’m an angsty nail-biting neurotic. Of course I’m going to bloody worry about them!”
I laughed it off but I knew I would worry about that night and my shameful behaviour. The racing thoughts would keep me awake. At breakfast Joe had told me I was a disgrace. He was laughing at the time but I detected a serious undercurrent. He looks after himself and doesn’t drink that much nowadays. And now, on top of everything, I had to worry about Bryonie Phillip’s daughter Tallulah spreading rumours at the university about me being a drunk. I knew what students could be like. Especially ones like Tallulah. She was a sly little madam who’d had it in for me ever since I’d called her out for plagiarising chapters in one of her essays on Chaucer.
I slumped back into the armchair. Karen swung her legs off the sofa, sat up straight then pulled an elastic band from her wrist and tied her hair back. She turned and looked out into the garden. It was long and narrow and bursting with colour in the sunshine. Cabbages and carrots sprouted in the vegetable patch, flowerbeds were alive with cerise tulips and daffodils and hyacinth and blowsy red-and-white shrub pieris crept up a side wall. She sat perfectly still and strummed her fingers on the top of the sofa, humming along with Chet to “I Fall in Love Too Easily”.
I wondered what she was thinking about. Had something happened with Danny Boy that she hadn’t told me? It was more likely she was thinking about Simon Whelan, though. She swore it was over between them, but I didn’t believe her. I’d noticed she was wearing a bracelet I hadn’t seen before. It was lovely, gold with the two ends shaped in the form of a snake’s head with tiny emeralds for eyes. When I complimented her on it, she said it was new. Simon must have bought it for her. He was always surprising her with presents like that. It wasn’t like she was ever going to tell me though. She’d stopped talking about him. She knew how much I disapproved.
Though Karen and I had been friends since we were eleven years old, she was still an enigma in many ways, especially when it came to men. None of her relationships had lasted longer than a year and the minute any boyfriend hinted at commitment, she kicked them into touch. The list was long and it included Alexia’s father Marco, a gentle Brazilian musician. When she fell pregnant at twenty he was desperate to stick around and play a part in his daughter’s upbringing. Karen was having none of it. She wanted to go it alone and she played cruel games over access. Marco, stung, moved to Leeds and started another family.
Men fell at Karen’s feet at every opportunity. Maybe she just hadn’t met the right one yet but it struck me that she had attachment issues.
She glanced down at her watch. “Sorry. I’ve got to get changed. I’m meeting some friends at the anti-austerity march in town.”
Slightly piqued she hadn’t asked me to join her, I grabbed my bag from the floor and followed her into the hall. A silence hung between us like taut elastic. She opened the kitchen door and scooped up Springer Bell into her arms.
As I went to open the door, I stopped in front of a new poster at the bottom of the stairs that I hadn’t noticed on my way in. It was a framed black-and-white photograph of Maya Angelou. She looked elegant and stately and across the bottom it said: “Love recognises no barriers. It jumps hurdles, leaps fences, penetrates walls to arrive at its destination full of hope.”
I turned round. “Very romantic,” I said.
She was kissing the top of Springer Bell’s head and I noticed she was blushing. I found
