Beautiful Liars. Isabel Ashdown

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      5

      Casey

      I’ve barely slept a wink tonight, worrying myself into a state of high emotion over the e-mail I sent to Martha this morning. As I lay in the darkness I ran over the words in my head, searching for clues that I had got it wrong. Had I misjudged what Martha wanted? It was true that there was some urgency in her original message, wasn’t it? My stomach knotted and turned; at this rate I would be stuck on the toilet for most of the morning while my insides cleared out. It’s a curse, I reminded myself, passed on from my mother. A delicate constitution, Mum had called it. Irritable bowel syndrome was the doctor’s diagnosis, but not before I had endured over two decades of its tortures. Perhaps I should get up and take a tablet, I considered as I lay there biting down on my lower lip, fighting back the tears. But I must have carried on lying there in pain for at least another hour, writhing against the twist in my gut. Sometimes I think I must like it, to allow myself to suffer for any longer than I need to. Do I like it, the pain? Surely not.

      Shortly after three a.m. I abandon sleep to make myself a cup of tea and swallow two of my antispasmodic tablets. The stomach cramps should ease in the next fifteen minutes or so, and in anticipation I cut myself a chunk of fruitcake to have with my tea, placing it on the side table as I fetch Martha’s letter. Wincing, I lower myself onto the sofa to reread it and reassure myself that I haven’t got things muddled, haven’t got it all wrong. Next, I open up my laptop and review my own—or rather Liv’s—reply, and with a mixture of relief and impatience I feel satisfied that my message to Martha was well worded. Appropriate. So why, then, I’m wondering now as I bite into my cake, hasn’t Martha replied immediately? I look at my watch, the small Timex that Dad gave me on my fifteenth birthday. It’s a child’s watch really, its pink leather strap now balding and cracked and straining at my wrist on the last hole. Really, I ought to get the strap replaced, but I can’t bring myself to part with the old one. It would seem so wrong to throw it away like any old rubbish.

      I’m drifting again.

      I sent the e-mail to Martha at just after ten yesterday morning, and here I am almost a whole day later, and still no reply. To distract myself I’ve been researching her on the Internet, and I’m surprised at how private she appears to be, skirting over her childhood in interviews and no mention of her missing friend Juliet anywhere to be found. I’ve added what I can to my notebook and made a mental note to spend more time delving into Martha Benn’s past. She’s really quite the mystery! When by the time I went to bed last night there was no reply from her, I thought with irritation, Well, it can’t be that important. I wrap my quilted gown closer, rearranging the belt with a cross tug. Maybe Martha has exaggerated the importance of Liv’s role. Maybe she’s playing games. Or more likely, I think with a sudden flash of embarrassment, she’s a busy woman and she hasn’t had a chance to pick up her e-mails. Perhaps she’s at one of those red carpet events you see in the glossies—an awards evening or a charity gala—or perhaps she’s been out all night, wining and dining and signing autographs. That’ll be it, I think now, feeling the pain in my stomach subside as my heart rate slows and my eyelids grow heavy; that’ll be it. As sleep tugs at me, I imagine myself in a schoolroom, dressed in a smart uniform to match my three best friends, sitting together on a table of four: Martha, Liv, Juliet, and me.

      * * *

      I remember my first year at infant school with clarity. I was four, one of the smallest and youngest in my class, and even now I can recall the overwhelming sense of being on the outside, separate from the other pupils in some unspeakable way. They slotted together naturally, even those who came from other places, the ones who arrived speaking different words and accents, handicapped by language, perhaps, but not by character as I was. I am aware how harsh on myself I sound, but these are simply the facts. Of course, I didn’t know it at the time, but many of these children were already acquainted from playgroup or nursery or from simply living in the same neighborhood. That was always going to count against me, wasn’t it, being a newcomer? And even if those children were previously unknown to one another, there was a thing—a “sameness’ about them that I lacked. A straightforward, easy-talking child-ness about them. It was a thing that allowed their arms to rest easy at their sides, their eyes to scan a crowd without fearful anticipation. A gift that let them be both noticed and blissfully unnoticed all in the same moment. I have never possessed that gift, then or since. Somehow I manage to be both invisible and horribly СКАЧАТЬ