To My Best Friends. Sam Baker

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СКАЧАТЬ which there was no answer. Parent fail.

      David knew they weren’t saying it to hurt him. They weren’t even three years old, for God’s sake. And they were hurting too. They didn’t understand where Mummy had gone. Even though, as coached by the child psychologist his mother had insisted he consult (‘She’s an expert on child bereavement, you’re not’), he’d taken Harrie and Charlie to the funeral. And, to be honest, he didn’t understand why Mummy had gone away either.

      The bell rang again. Whoever it was had no plans to go away. It was a miracle it hadn’t woken Charlie and Harrie already.

      ‘All right,’ he muttered as he dragged himself from the kitchen table. ‘You win. I’m coming.’

      ‘Look, just—’

      David was in full flight as he flung open the front door. He stopped, as if looking for someone else behind Jo. ‘Jo . . . I . . . you didn’t . . . I wasn’t expecting you.’

      He didn’t exactly look thrilled to see her.

      From the far end of the hall she could hear the low buzz of voices competing for airspace. Someone in the kitchen. She strained to hear . . . someone in the living room, too.

      ‘I’m sorry,’ Jo said. ‘I haven’t seen you for a week or so. I dropped by on the off-chance. I should have called first, to check you didn’t have visitors.’

      ‘Visitors? I don’t . . . ?’

      Pushing gently past him, Jo went to investigate. The door to the living room was open and a documentary was on the TV. In the kitchen a poet was saying something she clearly thought profound on Radio Four. An iPod played softly from the dining table.

      The kitchen was a mess again. One of the spotlights over the sink had blown since her last visit. It looked like the washing-up hadn’t been done in days. And there were still bunches of dead flowers from relatives David claimed not even to know on the windowsill.

      ‘Oh God.’ She turned to him. She wanted to take him in her arms and hug him, but everything about his manner said no.

      ‘That bad?’ she said.

      ‘Worse.’

      Shoulders sagging, David shoved his hands in his pockets. He looked about twelve. Boyishly handsome, utterly lost. There was a splosh of wine on the front of his work shirt. It didn’t look recent.

      ‘I can’t stand the silence,’ he said finally. ‘Before Nicci . . . when she was here, her constant racket used to drive me nuts, all the music and chat – you lot always here, and when you weren’t you were constantly on the phone. Never a moment’s peace, never just us. You have no idea how hard it was to get that woman on her own. But now . . .’ he shrugged, looking helpless. His eyes brimmed, the long lashes that Jo had always thought wasted on a man, glistened. ‘Now I can’t stand it, Jo.’

      ‘You should get an au pair.’ It sounded pointless even to her.

      ‘A what?’

      She could see David thinking, How did we get from there to here?

      ‘I just mean it might help having another person around. With the girls, I mean, and . . .’ Jo couldn’t help glancing at the washing-up, a pile of clothes sprawling on the floor by the washing machine . . .

      ‘You mean the mess?’ He forced a grin. ‘I have a cleaner. I just gave her a few weeks off. I couldn’t, you know, cope with all her . . .’ he grimaced, ‘. . . sympathy. The nanny’s bad enough.’

      Jo nodded, waited for him to continue.

      ‘I don’t think I could stand having someone around full time,’ David said eventually. ‘An au pair, I mean. Living here, with us. Not yet, anyway. It would be too much.’

      ‘Tea?’ Jo waved the kettle at him. ‘Or something stronger?’

      David grimaced again. ‘Better be tea. I already tried something stronger. It just gave me a headache.’

      The phone rang just as the kettle began to boil. Instinctively, Jo reached for it, as if it were her own. Sorry, she mouthed, seeing the expression that flashed across David’s face, and held it out to him.

      He shook his head.

      ‘Hello?’ she said, and paused. ‘Hello? Hello?

      No one there,’ she shrugged a few seconds later. ‘Must have been a wrong number.

      ‘That’s odd,’ David said. ‘Had a few of those lately. Wonder if it’s a call centre or there’s a problem at the exchange. Anyway,’ he added, watching her move around his kitchen as if it were her own, ‘I’m guessing you didn’t just drop in on the off-chance. What is this? Project check-up on David? Or something else?’

      ‘Does it matter?’ Jo said.

      David said nothing. Instead he waited for her to turn to look at him. He’d been wondering when she’d come. And he’d known it would be her. Jo was the doer, the efficient one. Lizzie was too beaten down by that idiot she’d married to volunteer for a confrontation. And Mona – the bolter, his mother called her – she’d run to the other side of the world to get away from her family, and then run all the way back to get away from her cheating husband. And poor Dan, the evidence of that marriage, had packed his little rucksack and come with her.

      No, when it happened, it was always going to be Jo.

      ‘You do know, don’t you?’ Jo said, after she’d dragged out the tea-making as long as possible.

      Know what? David wanted to say. But he didn’t have the energy.

      ‘Of course I know.’

      Even as he felt his anger rising, he tried to suppress it. This wasn’t Jo’s fault. There was no way she’d have come up with a stunt like this: four letters; life divided like a pie. No, there was only one person who could have come up with this.

      Of course, Jo had been enabling Nicci for years. So had he. Every little thing Nicci wanted to do he’d tried to help her with, from the moment he’d fallen for the peroxide pixie.

      ‘What?’ Jo asked.

      David shook his head. ‘Nothing.’ How did you explain your heart just twisted?

      Nicci hadn’t been peroxide for a decade now, more, but the memory of that meeting was burnt in his brain. That was how he thought of her. Even now he felt bad about using Lizzie as an in. But from the moment Nicci had walked into the party, he’d known – like in some dodgy rom-com – she was his one, and he would do anything to get her.

      ‘David?’ Jo was standing in front of him. ‘Are you OK? I mean, I know you’re not . . .’

      ‘I’m fine,’ he said. ‘Just thinking.’

      ‘So did she tell you about the letters?’ Jo ventured. ‘Consult you, I mean?’

      ‘You mean, did I choose Mona?’ Amongst the confusion and disgust, despite СКАЧАТЬ