An hour and a half later, when we leave and walk down the street together, my phone pings a message.
We’re both really looking forward to next week. X
I look at Chuck, who is eyeing my phone but can’t see the message.
‘Everything okay?’ he asks.
‘Another client,’ I say, and then I immediately hate myself. Because now I am lying to Chuck as well. I realise how much is at stake, but I’ve come too far now to change my mind. I have to go ahead and face whatever consequences will come of it.
22 Saxby House, Dorset, August 1990
I looked at the ornament on my dressing table: a brown bear holding a huge red heart with the words Best Friends Forever on it. It had appeared on the doorstep of the cottage in a red box with a white bow wrapped around it on the morning of my birthday in April. There had been no card, but I knew it was from Caitlin.
Later that April afternoon, after Mum had taken me clothes shopping, Caitlin had come over. I had thanked her for the ornament, but she had shrugged it off as though it was nothing. But I pressed her some more and said I was glad she was my best friend. Then I said ‘like sisters’ and she had looked at me with a sparkle in her eye and gripped my pinkie finger. Deep down she loved me like her own flesh and blood. Siblings argued and did mean stuff to one another, but they made up and moved on. Being like sisters with someone was better than being best friends, because no matter what you did to one another, you could never really disown your own sister.
So last week I had asked Mum if I could get the same ornament as the one Caitlin bought for me, for her. So she took me into town and it wasn’t long before we found a replica in a card shop, where they sold candles and pens. I would leave it wrapped on the table in the kitchen tomorrow afternoon and was looking forward to seeing what Caitlin thought when she discovered it later.
This weekend was the big weekend: Caitlin’s and Josephine’s joint parties. Caitlin was turning fourteen and Josephine, who couldn’t possibly say – although Mum and Dad knew it was her seventieth.
Ava had hired party planners to run the whole the weekend. I thought about my own birthday a few months ago. A Colin the Caterpillar cake had been sat on the kitchen table surrounded by a handful of presents in silver wrapping paper when I arrived downstairs for breakfast. Mum, Dad and Hunter grinned inanely, and all sang ‘Happy Birthday’ loudly in different keys. We devoured Colin, and I told them I wanted him every year from then on.
As I sat in my bedroom, I wondered what it would be like to have a party planner for my birthday. There was going to be a marquee and a little stage for a DJ and a dance floor for a disco. They were also putting three temporary toilets in the garden as Caitlin said Ava was adamant she didn’t want anyone traipsing through the house to use the facilities.
I had asked Caitlin who she was inviting to the party, and she had said it was just the usual cousins and extended family, and it was Josephine who was bringing the most guests. Friends were flying and driving in from all over: old school friends, cousins, old work colleagues. It was going to be the party of parties. Even Mum and Dad and Hunter were invited to this one, and Mum had bought herself a new dress from a catalogue; it had arrived in the post just last week.
Of course, Chuck was there too. He seemed to spend as much time here with Caitlin now as I did; it was almost unheard of for Caitlin to arrive at Saxby alone any more. As I sat by the open window in my room, I heard him and Caitlin running out of the gates and across the wildflower meadow towards the tennis courts. Part of me thought about following them, but I was tired and I fancied being alone.
Looking out over the wildflower meadow, I had a sudden urge to be in the woods. Mum was working, and Hunter had gone off to work with Dad as he usually did, where he would either sit in the greenhouse eating Mr Kipling apple pies and reading his comics, or Dad would be teaching him a new skill or piece of information about a flower.
I packed myself a rucksack with an apple, some beef Monster Munch, a carton of Um Bongo and the latest copy of Jackie, and I set off through the wildflower meadow towards the woods. I felt a strong sense of independence as I headed off to the spot I had only come to over the last year or so with Caitlin. When Caitlin was not here, I would invite a friend over from school. I was good mates with Sian and also Jeni, and they both were in awe every time they came down the drive in the back of Dad’s Volvo with me. But when Caitlin was here, it was the holidays, and so I didn’t want to rub Caitlin up the wrong way by bringing other friends over.
I realised for the first time, we always went where Caitlin suggested, and that not once had I been down to our camp by myself, even when Hunter begged for me to take him there. I had told him it was our secret place, and so Dad made him his own special den out of branches near the elderflower trees at the top of the drive.
I realised it made no sense that I should have stayed away, after all, it was our den; it was mine
