What My Best Friend Did (30 page)

“I don’t remember.”

“Doesn’t really matter. Point is you waited at all. You did it on purpose.” She closes her eyes tiredly.

“I—” I begin.

“Go,” she says, opening her eyes, turning her head and looking straight at me. “Just go. Don’t come near me ever again. Stay away from me, from Tom and stay away from my brother.”

“I was going to anyway.” My eyes fill with tears. “I’m leaving tonight.”

“Where?”

“Does it matter?” I shrug with a half smile, throwing my arms out uselessly.

She considers that. “Not really.”

“Gretchen—” I’m about to say how truly, truly sorry I am, but she cuts me off and says, with as much energy as she can muster, “Just go, now.”

“I only want to say good-bye to Tom and Bailey,” I say. “How can that hurt?”

She hauls herself back up determinedly and shakes her head. “No. I want you to go.”

“But I’m going anyway. Can’t you just—”

“If you try to stay,” she says hoarsely, “I’ll tell them what you did. You decide.”

I look at her sitting there, a small tube still embedded in her arm, her hair plastered greasily back, violent shadows under her eyes, still fragile as a spider’s thread yet strong as steel, just like she was when she was telling me her lies about making Bailey dump me and confessing she had tracked Tom down to America.

“Did you lose the baby, Gretchen?”

“What baby?” she says.

“Your baby. The one you …” I exhale heavily. “The one you wanted me to help you get rid of. You said it didn’t feel like Tom’s, you said I knew what you’d done in the alley with Paolo at the party.”

“What the hell are you are talking about?” She coughs painfully, grabbing her throat and then reaching for the water again.

I look at her in total disbelief. “You remember me not calling an ambulance, but you don’t remember what led to it in the first place? Bailey called me and said he’d been delayed in coming over to you and you seemed very worked up. I got to yours and you were drunk, had taken some pills and told me you were pregnant, wasn’t sure whose baby it was and had a plan to get rid of it. You were going to make it look like a suicide attempt; you said that everyone would assume that was what it was. I just had to pretend to find you so it didn’t go all the way, but far enough so you’d lose the baby. I tried to stop you—I begged you not to—and you punched me, then you told me you’d always wanted Tom, that you’d told him about Bailey on purpose and that you’d made Bailey dump me …” I trail off and find that I’m shaking with adrenaline.

“I have,” she says and looks at me steadily, “literally no idea what you are talking about. There’s no baby, Alice. There’s never been any baby! Ask the nurse who just helped me change my pad, if you don’t believe me.”

I wince at such a graphic remark and feel overwhelmingly sad. “So you lost it?” I say. “Like you wanted.”

She doesn’t flinch. “There was nothing to lose! I have manic depression, I become delusional. I’m ill! You know that.” She leans over and takes another sip of water. “You can’t believe anything I say when I’m manic—I’m beyond reason!”

“You didn’t seem beyond reason yesterday! OK, you were clearly manic, but you seemed to have calculated exactly how far you needed to go!”

She leans back, closes her eyes again and says, “It’s very simple. I stopped taking my medication because I was happy, I didn’t think I needed it. I obviously did. I’m sorry I hit you but I’m certainly not pregnant. I never was. And I’ll tell you what I do remember: you, rational, sober and in your right mind, deliberately not helping me when I needed you to.” She forces the last words out with energy.

I sway slightly. “I … I didn’t want you to die, Gretchen,” I say eventually. “I was just so appalled at what I thought you’d done. I didn’t want Tom to have to keep going through this and I was very, very angry … You said some foul things to me.”

“So? You can’t make this OK!” she croaks. “I nearly died because of you!”

She’s right, there is absolutely no excusing my part in this.

“I called them! I did—I didn’t leave you!”

“Just GO!” she says fiercely. “Go, or I’ll call one of the nurses.”

I think of yesterday’s nurse, already suspicious and armed with what I blurted out to her about not wanting Gretchen to wake up.

She reaches toward the emergency buzzer and my heart begins to race.

“Last chance,” she says. “Go now and I won’t tell anyone.”

“OK, OK!” I say. Tears have started to run down my face and I wildly grab my bag. “But what are you going to say to Tom and Bailey?”

“I’ll think of something.”

I
‘m running blindly down the corridor, unable to see for tears.

At one point I bash into someone and they angrily shout, “Hey!” but I don’t stop, I just sob, “I’m sorry!” and clatter around the corner—out into the car park and the cold January sun. I run desperately over to the taxi rank; thank God—there’s one there. The driver sees me approaching, folds up his newspaper expectantly, shifts in his seat and undoes the window. I see him frown as I get closer.

“You all right, love?” he says—he’s noticed I’m crying. I nod dumbly, tell him the address and he says kindly, “Get in, we’ll have you there in a jiffy.”

He swings out, rather too fast, and pulls on to the road. The traffic lights ahead are on amber, and at the last minute he decides not to go for it, slamming on the brakes and jolting me forward, making me look up in shock. “Beg pardon!” he says, “Lumpy petrol,” and looks sheepishly in his mirror.

But all I’ve seen is a taxi approaching from my left, swinging around, with a man anxiously looking at his watch and then saying something to the driver and pointing out the hospital on his left.

“Tom!” I exclaim and grab the headrest to the passenger seat, shifting forward in my seat urgently. His taxi glides past us and I watch as he moves by me, totally unaware.

“Want to stop?” the taxi driver says, hand at the ready on the indicator. “Someone you know?”

I open my mouth to say yes, because surely this is God’s way of forgiving me just a little bit, offering me the chance to just say good-bye. But then she’s right, I don’t deserve it—she is ill, she needed me, and I withheld my help deliberately. What kind of person would do that to a perfect stranger, never mind someone who was their friend? Whatever I thought was the situation, whatever judgment call I made, whatever moment of madness, jealousy, anger—I should have picked up that phone. I should have called for help, no matter what she had done to me. I should have been the bigger person but I wasn’t. I am bitterly ashamed and repulsed by what I have done.

“No,” I say. “Keep going.”

I look desperately over my shoulder again. I can see him getting out, paying, becoming smaller and smaller and … I’m never going to see him again. At least not for a very, very long time. Just one good-bye! If I catch him before he goes in, she’ll never know.

“Stop!” I shout. “I need to go back, just—”

But the driver’s already on it. He’s hit the brakes and earned himself an angry honking from an oncoming BMW, which he completely ignores. He swings sharply around to the right and puts his foot down, roaring up behind Tom’s taxi and screeching to a stop. But Tom has already paid up, and for some reason is legging it toward the hospital.

“Wait here!” I say breathlessly, hand already on the door, and jump out. “Tom!” I shout.

He doesn’t hear me.

“TOM!” I yell for all I’m worth.

This time the sound carries to him and he turns, looks astonished to see me, but then starts frantically beckoning me to him. I start to run, aware that a couple of people, shivering in dressing gowns and smoking, are staring curiously at us.

I reach him and, breathing heavily with the effort, can’t get my words out.

“No, no! Don’t stop running!” he says, grabbing my hand and dragging me toward the door.

I pull back. “Tom! Stop!” I say desperately. “What are you doing?”

“Al—she’s pregnant! I didn’t know! We have to tell them so they can do something. Before it’s too late!”

At that I feel unbelievably sad and say, “Oh Tom, she …” and just as I am about to say “imagined it all” I suddenly realize that he can’t even know she is conscious yet. He’s just arrived. So how the hell does he know about the pregnancy, or rather, lack of it?

“What do you mean, she’s pregnant?” I say carefully, as a bit of hair blows across my face and I draw it out of my eyes.

“I found a test!” he says. “I wouldn’t have, but the rubbish bag split and it fell out—she’d wrapped it right up. It was positive!”

“You’re absolutely sure?” I say.

“Of course I am! I saw it with my own eyes! I have to get up there, and I have to say something, because they don’t know! She must have come off the lithium because she knew it would harm the baby, but that made her manic and confused. We have to do something! Quickly!” He looks at me urgently, with haunted eyes.

And it’s then that I realize she has absolutely, totally, lied to me. There was a baby and there was a plan. She’s done it again. This will be Gretchen for the rest of her life, doing whatever it takes to get whatever she wants, by whatever means necessary. Woe betide anyone who gets in the way, but …

She is undeniably ill. There is no question of that. Is it just cruel to expect her to be governed by the rules the rest of us live by when she is so very incapable of doing so? When does all this stop being devious manipulation on her part and become excusable—or at least explainable—because she is unwell? Where can a line ever be drawn with someone like her?

All I can be certain of is how I behaved; what I did.

“Alice, come on!” Tom shouts. “Why are you just standing there?” He reaches out for my hand again, but I resist. I pull back and suddenly I know exactly what I have to do.

“Stop!” I say, wavering on the spot but taking a very deep breath. “Tom, I have to tell you something.”

I lead him over to a bench, and even though it is freezing, we sit down and I begin to tell him everything. Absolutely everything, just as it happened. I leave nothing out.

He does not move as I speak. At various points he closes his eyes in shock and then anger—and at one point, when I start to cry but force myself to carry on, he reaches for me, but then I begin to say things that make him pull his hand away, and he looks at me in horrified disbelief.

But I say it anyway. I have to, because it is the truth, and I know that is all we have left now, and that it is the only thing that can set both of us—free.

I
am very grateful to Sarah Ballard, Lucia Macro, Melissa Chinchillo, Esi Sogah and the team at HarperCollins for their support and faith.

The help Lee Tomlinson, Sally Dawson and Camilla Dawson gave me proved invaluable, but as anyone with a medical background will realize, I only took their advice as far as it suited the plot. Thanks to the rest of my family, my friends and James for being there when I needed them too.

Finally, to Ruth Easton, for your encouragement and kindness, thank you.

Lucy Dawson
has worked as a journalist. She is now a full-time writer and lives in the UK.

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