I didn’t even want to be staying in, as it went. I wanted to be going out with Bailey, going to fun places, the dating stuff you were supposed to do at the start of relationships that I’d never had with Tom either, because we’d been living in the same flat when we started seeing each other. Bailey, however, was nervous about Gretch being on her own for long periods of time, so when we did go out, I felt like we were having to rush back for the babysitter. In fact it was worse—we were the babysitters. Bailey and I would hold hands chastely while we desperately waited for her to go to bed, so we could make out on the sofa. Except I was more than ten years too old to be satisfied with that sort of stolen moment. Was it that selfish to want some time with my new boyfriend that didn’t involve her?
“Anyway,” Gretchen said, as if she’d read my mind, “you two badly need some time on your own. Tell him I’ll text him to let him know I got back to my flat OK.”
“You’re sure you’ll be all right?” I said, immediately feeling like a total bitch for thinking such mean thoughts.
But she was already halfway out the door and answered me only with a resounding slam.
Two weeks later, when she’d apparently had several successful off and on nights at her own place, I tentatively suggested to Bailey that perhaps we could have a weekend in Paris, a sort of “Let’s start again, shall we?” gesture, coupled with showing him off to Vic, of course.
He agreed, once he’d checked in with Gretchen that she’d be all right. “Just do it,” she said. “It’ll be the perfect test for me—three whole days on my own. Look, if worst comes to the worst, I promise I’ll call Mum and Dad. OK?”
I, however, had no doubt in my mind that it was the right thing to have done when I finally woke up next to Bailey in our anonymous, private hotel room. He kissed me slowly like I was the first woman he’d ever seen and the last he wanted to love. Could things finally be turning a corner? God, I hoped so.
“Thank you for being so patient for the last couple of months,” he said, looking at me as he stroked my head. “You are without doubt the most incredible, strong, beautiful woman I’ve ever met. How did I ever manage before you?” Then we had sex that was so good I actually felt like the woman he’d described.
“How did he ever manage without you?” Vic repeated, later that afternoon. “He said that?”
I nodded. “I know! I almost melted. So? What do you think?”
“I think it’s very nice of you to drag yourself out of bed long enough to meet us for coffee during your Paris bonkathon. Thank you,” she said. “I feel honored.”
“I meant,” I said quietly, as we walked around Lafayette, “what do you think of him?” I gestured toward Bailey, who was admiring the department store’s impressive galleried roof, being pointed out to him by Luc.
“OK, OK, I like him!”
I smiled, relieved. “Good. Me too. And don’t you think he’s gorgeous?”
“Heartbreakingly,” she said.
“Do you think we’d have pretty children?” I said dreamily.
She paused and said carefully, “I’d leave all that sort of thing to your sis for now. I’m not sure Bailey is the sort I see with children. A great fun uncle perhaps, but he’s already done quite a lot of looking after already, hasn’t he?”
We walked in silence for a moment while I decided firmly she was wrong, but I’d keep it to myself.
“I heard from Tom last week,” she said, changing the subject. “He’s OK. Started dating.”
Which, oddly, made me feel very strange. I’d not really allowed myself to think about Tom.
“Thought you might like to know,” she continued, pulling a stray bit of dark hair out of her mouth. “In fact I think he was hoping I’d tell you, poor old bloke. I take it he still hasn’t contacted you yet?”
I shook my head.
“Give it time, he will. I’m sure of it.”
“Did he ask about me?” I said.
She nodded. “He asked if you and Bailey were … together.”
I winced.
“I didn’t say I was meeting you today,” Vic said. “That would have been way too much for him, but I did say I thought you were dating. I wasn’t more committal than that. That’s when he said he was seeing people.”
I didn’t say anything. She reached out and squeezed my hand.
“So,” she said, wisely changing the subject again, “was that girls’ night at Tanya’s fun? I sort of wish sometimes that I didn’t still get included in the e-mails. I know everyone does it to keep me in the loop, but it sucks knowing you’re all there having fun without me. Damn Luc and his smooth French ways!”
“What e-mail?” I frowned. “I didn’t see anything.” There was a brief pause and then Vic said kindly, “I’m sure it was just an accidental oversight, Al, or I think maybe I’d explained to Tanya that you were taking some time out to look after a pal. How is Gretchen, by the way?”
I was subdued when we arrived back in England on Sunday night, already missing Vic’s easy company while knowing Gretchen was waiting for us back at the flat.
When we walked in through the door, however, I thought perhaps we’d come to the wrong place. The whole flat smelled faintly of polish and effort; fresh flowers were in a vase in the sitting room and food was waiting for us on the table. But it was the difference in Gretchen herself that was most apparent.
She literally looked like a different person. Her hair was bouncy and gleaming, she was wearing makeup and a dress I didn’t recognize. She was positively glowing with excitement. It was as if the other Gretchen had simply packed up and left town. She looked like her old self again.
“Come in and sit down,” she said shyly. “I’ve made you dinner. And I’ve got some news.”
“I know it’s the right thing for me to do,” she insisted later, as I cleared our plates. “Acting and singing is the way forward, no more hosting, and this three-month summer workshop I’ve booked will be the perfect kick-start. I’m so excited! It starts in August. You two have been so great, but I need some routine and structure back. I can’t sit around here or at my place all day like Miss Havisham.”
“That’s great, Gretch,” Bailey said warmly as he reached behind him for the giant cake we’d brought back for her. “Sudden, but great.” He got up and grabbed three bowls and spoons, then sat back down, cut himself a large slice and dug in. “So where is this course?” he asked through a mouthful.
“New York,” she said.
Bailey paused. “But, sis, I can’t just get on a plane if you flip out again or come off the lithium.”
She looked at him patiently. “I can see why you might worry about that. But don’t. It’s not going to happen. I promise you. Look at how much better I am. I’ve already lined up a therapist out there … I did that before I even found somewhere to live! I’m going out way before the course even starts, so I’ve got plenty of time to get settled. Everyone thinks I was poised to go out there anyway, so I might as well actually do it. It makes perfect sense!”
Bailey looked doubtful. I, on the other hand, was holding my breath with hope. It was the first time in ages she’d been this animated, and might Bailey and I also be about to get the chance to be a proper couple? Just us? She could have said she was going to swim to America and I’d have offered to blow up her armbands myself, I was so keen for her to grab the opportunity with both hands.
“Talking of somewhere to live. My flat.” She reached into her pocket and pulled out a key. “I’m not thrilled about leaving it empty for so long and, Al, I know you have to move out of your place soon anyway … I’m planning to stay on in the States until the end of the year, so you’d be doing me a massive favor and it would be rent free, of course. Help you save some cash for your own place. Would you stay there for me?” She shoved it across the table and it slid straight into my lap.
“I can’t deny she hasn’t got it all worked out,” Bailey said to me later in bed. “But she doesn’t even know anyone in New York! What am I going to do if I get a call from some hospital saying she’s been admitted? I’ve already turned down so much work these last few months to be here for her. I can’t start flying across the Atlantic at the drop of a hat. Do you think I should persuade her to stay?”
“No, I don’t think so,” I said slowly. “She’s probably right. She needs a challenge. And she does seem a lot more stable. I think we have to trust her.” I was actually really proud of her—she’d been so patient, come such a long way to get herself to where she was. I couldn’t help but feel sad that just as I was getting my friend back, she was leaving. But then, it had been such an intense last couple of months, I sort of needed the space from her too.
“I think it’ll be great for her,” I said. “And New York! The lucky thing!”
I still can’t believe I was so stupid.
B
ailey eventually finds me in the hospital chapel.
“Don’t just leg it like that again,” he says. “It really freaked me out. What are you doing down here anyway?”
He has a point. The chapel is cold, dingy, and the walls are saturated with desperate prayers. It’s hard to imagine anything good coming from this little room set aside for people who are holding out for a miracle, or looking to find comfort from a habitual faith. There is a small plastic Jesus, arms outstretched, balanced on a table, alongside a book with a pen next to it, a sort of religious request book. “Pray for the soul of Mary McCarthy,” “Make my dad better please.” But at least there are no doctors, and no watching nurses.
“I think I walked past the same man in a dressing gown three times, it was like I was on some sort of medical Escher staircase,” he says conversationally. He twists a chair around behind me, so it’s facing the opposite way. Then he sits across it and reaches his arms around my shoulders and neck. “Don’t cry,” he says, and kisses the back of my head.
Actually, his doing that makes me feel even more like crying. “How’d you know I’d be here?”
“I didn’t,” he confesses. “Tom suggested it.” Oh.
He peers over into my lap. “You’re reading the Bible?” He reaches an arm around and grabs it before I can close the book.
“‘Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother when he sins against me? Up to seven times?’ Jesus answered, ‘I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times,’” he reads aloud. “Hmm,” he says. “Seventy-seven. That’s a fuck of a lot.”
“Bailey! It’s a chapel,” I say quickly.
He looks around the craphole of a room. “Al, I’m not sure God is here any more than if I were sitting in a cupboard full of cleaning equipment. Who are you down here forgiving anyway? Gretchen? Me?”
I shake my head. “Of course not—it’s really not your fault. Tom’s just scared, he’s looking for someone to blame.”
“I wasn’t just talking about me missing the plane. No one should have to sit at the bedside of their best friend with two ex-boyfriends, of all people. It isn’t reasonable.”
I try to smile. “No it isn’t—you’re damn right there.”
“I’m so very sorry for all this, Alice. For everything. I really am.”
There’s not very much I can say to that. It won’t change anything.
“Try not to blame Gretchen,” he says. “It really isn’t her fault either.”
I say nothing.
“Although admittedly, things weren’t exactly easy for us, were they? If we had had more time together at the start … if she hadn’t been so low and needed us both so much, perhaps things would have been different …”
Oh please don’t. I don’t need this on top of everything else.
“You were so amazing through that time, you know,” he says. “She wasn’t exactly easy, but you were incredible.”
No I wasn’t. She was my friend who needed help. It’s what you do, isn’t it?
“I am truly sorry though,” Bailey says, staring at the plastic Jesus. “I wish it could have been different. It’s just that once she went to the States and I had the opportunity to start working again … you know I couldn’t turn the offers down, Al, I was so strapped for cash by then. We barely saw each over those three months, did we? I felt like a tax exile. And I guess,” he sighs sadly and shrugs, “that’s the downside of my job. I have to be away a lot. It’s just the way it is.”
“We really don’t have to do this, Bailey,” I say. Mostly because I don’t want to—it’s still too fresh to be discussing it. I can hear myself now on the phone to him in LA, in Cape Town, in Timbuk-fucking-tu and God knows where else, an unfamiliar, unwelcome needy tone creeping into my voice as I said, “I miss you.” Quietly worrying but trying to squash it as he replied absently, “I miss you too, but I’m working hard and it feels good to be doing stuff again. Listen babe, I’ve got to go, still got some things to write up. I’d like to get it down while it’s still fresh in my head, you know?”
“So, do you forgive me?” he says, snapping the Bible shut with one hand and giving it back to me.
“There’s nothing to forgive.” I shrug. “People fall out of love. It happens.” Then I feel foolish and embarrassed because he never actually said he loved me. I just loved him.
“You’re so great, Al.” Bailey shakes his head admiringly.“Nothing ever fazes you, does it?” He shivers. “Can we go back up now? It’s really cold in here. And it’s creeping me out a bit.” He shudders as he stares at the statue on the table.
“It’s not cold, you baby!” I force a smile. “You’re just used to more exotic temperatures.”
“I’m not away that much,” he scolds.
I raise an eyebrow.
“OK, I am.” He sighs. “I might have to reappraise that a bit now though. I thought Gretch was doing so well. But … anyway. I’ll just have to scale down again for the time being. Articles on ‘A hundred weekends of fun in Britain’ here I come!”
“You’re going to do that, just to be around for her?” I can’t keep the incredulity out of my voice. He has to be away, doesn’t he? It’s just the way it is, isn’t it? Apparently not … not when he doesn’t want it to be.
“Of course!” Bailey says in surprise. “She’s going to be really low when she wakes up,” he adds determinedly, as if there is no other alternative. She will get better. “You remember.”
I know he’s her brother and he’d do anything for her, and that’s how it should be. If Gretchen shouted for him on the highest hill in the middle of the loudest storm, he’d get to her somehow. I think it’s lovely that he has such a generous, big, kind heart that still remains full of hope that he can love her better; it’s one of the many reasons I fell in love with him. You should be there for your family. It just really, really hurts to have it so obviously pointed out that I am not as important to Bailey as Gretchen is—and I never will be. She will always come first with him.