We had somehow managed to navigate our way through two decades of friendship despite the odds being stacked against us.
Yet here we are, two old friends, our past teetering between us; the truth about to be laid bare.
The secret I had kept from Caitlin is about to emerge. I imagine it bursting out of me, then sitting between us where we would both look at the ugliness of it, neither of us daring to touch it.
I make it to the bar as Caitlin eventually moves away from the crowd she has drawn around her. I hop up onto a bar stool, and I see her coming towards me with a glass of something tall and fizzy in her hand. I try desperately to compose myself. It’s warmer here than down on the beach, with the heat coming from the swell of bodies and the bar lights. I order a glass of water from the barman and finish it in three gulps. The sun was about to slip seamlessly into the horizon, the fiery sky becoming a darkening blue.
Caitlin has been dragged back into the crowd again for something. I am losing my nerve. I glance anxiously around as though someone might step out and rescue me; say the words for me instead. Maybe they could also tell Caitlin that none of this is my fault. I stare at the final strip of sunlight stretched out across the water; a thin line winking at me, mocking my hesitation.
I think about the luxury apartments we are staying in a few kilometres away, and I suddenly wish myself there. Caitlin had been determined we would have a seafront location when she first mentioned a holiday abroad. But at such short notice, I could only get us a sea glimpse. Caitlin had tried to hide her disappointment, but when you’ve studied the expressions of one person for over two decades, the emotions they try to disguise are never truly hidden.
Caitlin is on the move again. I feel the prickly heat creeping its way across my back. I begin to imagine what her face will look like when I tell her, and how I will be reminded of the way she was when we were kids. She would almost certainly get that look in her eye, the one that suggests that tears will surely follow, but they never do. She had always allowed her years at a strict boarding school and a mother who seemed to shudder at the slightest flicker of sadness to continue to dictate her emotion. She would hold herself together, for the sake of her dignity.
I look at Caitlin as she sashays her way towards me, her dress kicking out with every step. It is definitely tamer than some of the outfits I’ve seen her in. Caitlin’s crazy dress sense was one of the things that I found most attractive about her, and she used to be so fond of dressing up, always overdressing for occasions. She carried this on into her twenties, and I had been known to get annoyed at times when I wished she would just turn up in some sweats or jeans for a cinema date instead of arriving in a crimson blouse with emerald-green flared trousers and purple heels. But these days, she seems to only wear whites and blacks, and I’ve aligned her sudden change in dress code to her granny Josephine dying a year ago. It was as though a part of Caitlin had died too.
They say opposites attract, and Caitlin had always been the complete opposite to me in so many ways. As we grew, I realised our friendship was not so much based on mutual likes or the need to tell each other our fears or worries. But rather, for me, it became more of an affirmation of our dedication to a friendship that would never have been had I not moved from Hackney to Dorset.
Over the years it began to feel more as though I had to remain friends with her because of the connection we had to the old house at Saxby. It was our secret place away from society; those years of youth and innocence that we shared were something no one else would ever be able to understand, and that’s what I wanted to hold on to.
I am starting to feel hung-over and it is barely nine o’clock. I have drunk far too much already today, far too much for me anyway. I’ve never been a confident drinker.
Caitlin has been stopped on the way towards me again, this time next to a man and she is laughing a heady, full laugh at something he’s said. I imagine endorphins flooding her body that will protect her when I break the news.
Caitlin is on the move again. She arrives at the bar, raises one hand to the barman and downs the last dregs of her glass of pink fizz.
I go to speak, but my words catch in my throat, which is now dry and scratchy even though I have just drunk a glass of water. I silently curse the person who thought it was a good idea to begin the day with pina coladas.
I swallow and clear my throat.
‘Caitlin.’
She throws me a glance as I try to pick a tone to my voice that represents tender sincerity.
‘I need…’ I pause and take a deep breath. ‘I need to say something.’
‘Oh, my! That’s a serious tone,’ she says to
