Gina stands up and leans over the bar table, offering me a hug and a wide beam. She’s the easier-going out of the two. Heidi doesn’t move from her chair; she’s sulking with me but that’s not the reason she doesn’t hug me. She knows me better than anyone and she knows that I’m not really the hugging type. I do it occasionally, because other people seem to expect it and feel slighted if I don’t, but she gives me my space.
‘We thought you’d fallen off the edge of the planet,’ she mutters.
‘The planet is round, Heidi, and there’s gravity, so you don’t have to worry about that.’ I stick my tongue out and pull a daft face so she knows I’m trying to be funny.
‘Smart arse.’ She clinks her glass against mine. I’m forgiven.
Heidi and Gina are my best friends. Honestly, they are my only real friends. Of course I have endless friendly colleagues, but I think those relationships might be situational. We find ourselves thrown together at industry events and have a chat and a laugh because we have a lot in common. Heidi, Gina and I have very little in common nowadays. They are both married stay-at-home mums. Heidi has three teen kids: Troy, her eldest, is at uni, Fifi and Aaliyah are still at school. They live in Woking, Surrey, and have for twenty years. Gina lives in Kingston, also Surrey. She and her husband, Mick, started their family later. They have an eight-year-old, Lottie, who we all dote upon as the baby of the group.
My best friends spend their time doing school runs or pickups from parties, drunken experimental ones in nightclubs or ones with fairy cakes and bouncy castles (either way, the parents know the party is over when the guests start to throw up or cry). They worry about school league tables and their kids’ friendship groups. I spend my time in meeting rooms worrying about profit and loss and carbon emissions in the FTSE 100 supply chains. Yet despite the fact that our day-to-day experiences are not at all similar, we are best friends. We trust one another completely, tell each other everything, and we have history. If ever either of them rang to tell me they’d killed their husband, I’d reach for a shovel and jump in my car. Not that it is a scenario that’s likely to be tested: they both have husbands who make them happy.
Heidi and I met at Birmingham University almost thirty years ago. She was the first black friend I ever had. I studiously avoided the subject of colour with her for months because I thought that was the least prejudiced thing to do – ignore our differences, pretend there weren’t any. But she put me right when she explained that her life experiences in no way mirrored mine, and pretending they did wasn’t especially helpful.
She told me that teachers at school often commented on her ‘unruly’ hair, which was in fact a completely natural afro, and insisted she ‘crop it’. When she refused, she was excluded from school. This happened twice. She explained that when browsing around shops, she was often trailed by security guards. Once when she was on a train, reading The Catcher in the Rye, she heard a middle-aged woman say to her husband, ‘What’s she reading that for?’ The husband responded, ‘I’m surprised she can read at all.’ Shocking, right? Yes, if you’re white. Apparently not if you’re a person of colour. It happens too often to still shock.
‘This is the low-grade stuff. You should hear what my dad and brother deal with,’ she told me. ‘You’d never guess how many times they’ve been stopped and searched, pulled over in allegedly “random” car checks, the aggression they face on the street, at work.’ She broke off at that point. I got the sense there was more but she couldn’t bear getting into it. I told her it sounded awful, that I had no idea, that I burnt with fury that such arseholes were out there wallowing in ignorance, spreading hate. She said she appreciated my anger. ‘The thing is, it’s just sadder being me. Not because I am black – I’m proud of that and who I am. It’s sadder because I’ve known how crap the world is from an early age and most people of colour have the same experience. You whities get to live in la-la world for far longer. Sometimes indefinitely.’
Then I told her about being orphaned.
Not the fast, edited account, but the messy truth. My family situation was not something I had ever spoken of to my friends at school, and I hadn’t planned on breaking my rule of reserve at university, but she’d been so brave in revealing her vulnerable moments to me, I wanted to show her the same respect. ‘My dad was driving drunk. My dad was often drunk. I didn’t grieve for him because I hated him for being so bloody stupid and selfish and weak and destructive.’ I was panting as I confessed this, the words exploding out of me like bullets. ‘My paternal grandparents weren’t people my brother and I had been close to, either physically or emotionally. They’d found their son an embarrassment and so had given up on him and cut him off before he even met my mum. Something they maybe regretted. Anyway, they offered us a home, of sorts, after the accident. I was sent to an all-girls boarding school, my brother was sent to one for boys. They simply thought that was the proper thing to do. Or maybe the easiest thing to do. I don’t know.’
I admitted that I had fared better than Tom. Yes, I was lonely and isolated, but I threw myself into my schoolwork. People said he was attention-seeking when really he was grief-stricken. He made friends with whoever caused the most trouble at school. Too much cash and time, not enough direction, age thirteen he and his mates were all taking drugs. By eighteen he had visited the Priory three times. He was generally considered, by anyone who could be bothered to express an opinion, a lost cause. ‘Very much like his father’ was the verdict. There is a big difference; I love Tom, although even I admit he’s not easy.
‘My grandparents allowed us to go to theirs in the holidays, but they didn’t go so far as to make themselves available. Instead they timed their trips to the French Riviera, Barbados and Aspen to coincide with the summer, Easter and Christmas breaks. My brother and I stayed with staff, paid to monitor us.’
When I finished telling Heidi about my childhood, her eyes were like saucers. I’m still not sure if that was because she was impressed with my grandparents’ holiday locations or horrified by my life. ‘It’s a conundrum which of us has it worse,’ she commented drily. ‘The black kid with loving parents who is irrationally hated by strangers and consequently will have limited economic options, or the rich white kid who has every financial advantage in the world but isn’t loved by anyone.’
It was such a shocking thought to articulate that all we could do was laugh out loud. ‘Why are we laughing?’ I asked as we rolled about on the thin, cheap carpet in her small student bedroom; helpless, barely able to breathe.
‘Because of the old adage, if you don’t laugh, you’ll cry, I guess.’
Heidi has the widest smile and always wears bright red lipstick. She did then and does now. It’s her signature look. She was laughing so hard, little bubbles of saliva popped on her teeth, and I felt such fierce love for her. That Easter she invited me to her home for the holidays. I’ve never been alone at a holiday since.
Heidi and I met Gina when we were twenty-five. Heidi was trying to tone up for her upcoming wedding to Leon, and so we’d started to go to fitness classes at the local sports centre. The classes were run by an instructor who hadn’t updated her routine since the early nineties. There was a lot of energetic side bends and jumping jacks, she constantly bellowed things like ‘No pain, no gain, ladies!’ It was probably something to do with evolution and survival instinct, but we habitually set up our mats in the same spot, at the back of the hall, as far away from the instructor as we could possibly get. Gina always set up a row in front of us. She was, from the off, comedy gold. This is in part because she has absolutely no clue which is her left and which is her right. Heidi claims she once wet herself laughing at Gina’s earnest, hopeless attempts to T-step to four counts and round the world, knee lift, clockwise.
A plain-speaking northerner, Gina would provide a no-inhibitions running commentary, often piping up with things like ‘My leg does not go there and wouldn’t even for Keanu Reeves’, ‘I’m dying, you sadist’ and once, most memorably for the subsequent formation of our little gang, ‘Sod this for a game of soldiers, I’m off to the pub.’ Then she left, mid-class. The brilliant thing is, Heidi and I shared a glance and followed her. Heidi saw that Gina was a soulmate. I’m the yin to Heidi’s yang, but we are not alike. There was space for Gina in our friendship.
We are a strong threesome. We love each other equally but differently. Like the legs of a stool, we need each other and offer support without any of the ugly jealousies or insecurities that women are so often – and so unfairly – accused of. Gina and I were both single until ten years ago. We discussed dates, analysed texts, offered advice when things were going well and then shared negronis when things fell apart. I’d assumed that we’d stroll into old age together, keep one another company on bank holidays. Gina used to say she was looking forward to going on Saga cruises, where we’d eat our body weight in chocolate gateau at the all-inclusive buffet. ‘No one can resist one of those. Even you,’ she’d tease.
However, ten years ago, the boy she had dated at sixth form got in touch out of the blue. He had moved to London and didn’t know anyone there at all. He said he didn’t know how to go about making friends outside work. The two of them met up. Gina was expecting to share a list of restaurants and bars worth a visit, perhaps give him some instruction on how to pronounce Marylebone, Southwark and Ruislip so he didn’t come across as a tourist. As it happened, they shared a long-buried chemistry and were engaged within six months, married within a year. I’d tried to hide my unbecoming frustration at the fact that as I’d gone to an all-girls school instead of the local comprehensive, I didn’t have a childhood sweetheart to fall back on. ‘Fall back in love with,’ Heidi corrected me when I mentioned as much to her.
I fake-groaned and admitted what I was thinking. ‘You’re happy that she’s joining your married-people gang. But you have a doting husband and three kids. You don’t need any more company. I’m doomed to be an old spinster, and I’ll be doing that all alone.’
She wouldn’t indulge me. ‘This isn’t about you, Emma.’
‘I know. But what am I to do now?’
‘Buy an expensive gift and slap on a smile. That’s what friends do.’
I followed Heidi’s advice, of course. When Gina asked me to be bridesmaid, I acted as if it was all I’d ever dreamed of. I threw her a fabulous hen party: chocolate fountain, a life-drawing class with a hot naked guy as the model, and a cocktail-fuelled afternoon tea. It was the right call, I knew it then when I struggled with it and I know it now, a decade on, when I see she’s a happy wife and mum.
We meet in central London once a month. I missed last month’s get-together because, frankly, I just didn’t want to get out of bed as I’d finally just got in there with Matthew. We had nine dates, over four weeks, before we had sex. He said I was his first lover since his wife had passed. Part of me wished he had bashed out his grief with three or four meaningless hook-ups before we’d met, but as he hadn’t, I was aware that when we climbed into bed it would mean something to both of us. Once we got there, it fast became my favourite place to be. I realise blowing out Heidi and Gina goes against the catchy maxim ‘mates over dates’, but I can’t tell you how many times they have blown me out because one of their kids had football practice or felt unwell or because their husbands hadn’t got home from work early enough to take over on the childcare. As you get older, you realise there isn’t a snappy little rhyme to explain that priorities change.
‘So work’s been busy?’ Gina asks as I reach for my wine glass. I take a couple of large gulps. They’ll appreciate the fact that I’m trying to catch up; it demonstrates my commitment to our evening. I can’t resent the fact that she assumes my absence is due to work. It usually is. However, I see the pair of them share a look that feels exclusory, and it chafes. I can’t quite discern the exact nature of the look. I think maybe it is one of pity, or boredom, or duty. It infuriates me that they might pity me for having such an exhilarating, purposeful career, and it hurts me that they might think it’s a boring duty to listen to me talk about it. Although, to be honest, I often feel a little that way when they start talking about school catchment areas or the change in swim club instructor. I just try not to let it show. It’s rare that we draw battle lines that flagrantly highlight that we’re on separate paths. I know their hint of irritation is the result of my being unavailable recently. I have been very wrapped up in my own world. I want to defuse any tension that might be brewing by talking about something that I know will grab them in a way my work doesn’t.
‘I’ve met someone,’ I announce. Their eyes bounce to my face. I’m grinning.
‘Someone you like a lot!’ exclaims Gina, reading me correctly.
‘Details,’ demands Heidi, instantly gripped.
7
The getting-to-know-you stage of a relationship is – if you believe the romcoms – a delightful ensemble of fun dates, chock-a-block with deep and meaningful conversations, stargazing and laughter. My actual experience of dating has exposed that the reality is far from that. It’s tricky, not least because we all have our secrets and habits. I am not keen to reveal how often I dye my grey roots or the time I spend reading the deplorable sidebar of celeb gossip. Plus I snore; I know because I have woken myself up doing so. Yet even accepting all of the above, I maintain the guys I dated before Matthew were still getting the better part of the deal. Men, as they start to approach their forties, just don’t bring it to the table. They are often boring, lazy, messy or sullen. I don’t think I need to elaborate. Those who have been there get it, those who haven’t wouldn’t believe it. Safe to say the getting-to-know-one-another stage is often fraught, sharing bathroom space is awkward, finding common interests is rare, and sex is seldom orgasmic.
However, with Matthew the romcom vibe is there in all its glory. Our dates have been thrilling. We’ve been to concerts, a mixologist class, a circus skills workshop and several bottomless brunches, not just a coffee in the local dreary chain. He took me to a filthy old pub in the East End that he promised was ‘the real deal’. It was. There he taught me how to play darts and we ate jellied eels, which don’t taste as bad as they sound. We’ve been to a trendy neon-lit bar where we played ping-pong while we drank espresso martinis. He thinks my snoring is sweet and says it’s really more of a purr, which is a lie but a kind one.
And the sex? The sex has been good from the get-go and has continued to get better and better. We’ve tipped into the needy erotic stage. The filthy, fascinating, fleeting part of a relationship when you want each other even when you’re in the company of others, even when you’re bone-tired, when you’re watching TV, or at a restaurant, or driving. My body craves his.
Possibly even better yet, the conversations we have on these fun and hot date nights are meaningful and careful. Despite his tragic loss, or maybe because of it, he is emotionally available and talks to me about how he thinks and feels about a myriad of subjects. Actually, he is more ‘in touch’ with his feelings than I am with mine. We are living in an era where it’s fashionable to constantly talk about mental health, but I often find I’m out of step. I would have done well in the 1940s, when the stiff upper lip was the order of the day. Since my father drove my mother into a tree, people have been asking, ‘Do you want to talk?’ I don’t, I never do. Why would I want to talk about that?
‘Becky always wanted to talk,’ commented Matthew when I made it clear that baring my soul isn’t a priority for me. ‘She wanted to sit and define love and life and look at what it all means.’
‘That sort of thing embarrasses me,’ I admitted.
‘You don’t feel things like she did,’ he mused aloud.
‘You’re saying she was deeper?’ I tried to keep the hurt out of my voice, but I felt somehow judged and lacking, in comparison to his more profound, passionate late wife.
