Meg, and ten minutes later she was on the platform, waving her arm in the air. I noticed how dressed up she was, in a cerulean swing dress with white polka dots, her pink hair swept up in a chignon speared with a peacock feather. She pulled me into a tight hug, and then we walked to her car.
Meg’s flat was in the Avenues in Gateshead, close to Saltwell Park. When we pulled up I noticed a To Let sign outside. I asked her about it, but she didn’t answer. She made me dinner—a fry sandwich, a banana, and a cup of tea—while I told her all about the interview, about Tom and Gaia and Coco, and about my novel. She didn’t say anything. I noticed she’d had a new tattoo done. A big fox on her left biceps in thick black ink.
“I have a favor to ask,” I said finally, when she didn’t respond the way I thought she might. “Obviously I’m a bit skint just now, so I can’t afford to get my mail redirected, and David has blocked my number. Could you possibly nip round every month or so and pick up my post ’til I get back?”
She looked winded.
“What’s wrong?” I said.
She sat down at the table and clasped her hands, so that the letters on her knuckles read LHOAVTEE.
“Look, I’m just going to say it,” she said, lowering her eyes. “I’m . . . David and I . . .”
“David and you what?”
I felt like I was in a meeting with my manager, about to be given a Verbal Warning. She was wearing pea-green eyeshadow and navy lipstick. I always admired how Meg could pull off color like that.
“You’ve been pretty hard to deal with, Lex,” she said tersely. “Canceling plans at the last minute, not responding to text messages . . . You’ve never even paid me back that forty quid I lent you.”
“When was this?” I asked, flustered. “Forty quid?”
“And you lost my Zara dress.”
“I . . .” The Zara dress flashed into my mind. Meg was a champion at finding amazing dresses. This one was an elegant chiffon number that I’d borrowed a couple of years ago when David and I went to York. I’d left it at the hotel and they’d never sent it on. I’d offered to buy her a replacement on eBay, but she said not to worry about it.
“I didn’t mean to lose your Zara dress, Meg. You know I didn’t.”
She rolled her eyes and leaned back in her seat as if I’d told a barefaced lie. “You see? It’s always about you, Lexi. You’re so wrapped up in your own stuff that you never consider what other people are going through.”
The room seemed to be breathing and I felt a migraine coming on. Did she pick me up just to give me a bollocking?
“I’m sorry,” I said meekly, and she started to say more about something else I’d done, but then she clapped her hands to her eyes and started to cry.
“Meg . . . ?”
She lifted her hands off her face, her makeup streaked all down it.
“I know I’m a complete tit at the best of times,” I said. “But . . . I’m sensing this really isn’t about your Zara dress or the money I borrowed.”
She looked down at her lap.
“Look,” she said. “David and I . . . We’re moving in together.”
“OK,” I said gently.
She rubbed her nose. “And I know this sounds like I’m a bad friend, but it wasn’t planned. We just . . . I didn’t intend for everything to happen like this. OK?”
“OK.”
“I’m going to make it up to you,” she said, reaching over to a box of tissues on the worktop and dabbing her eyes. “I’m going to go over to his flat tomorrow and pack up a suitcase of your things for you to take to Norway.”
I wondered if I should mention that David insisted on separating our food with named labels, even after eight years of living together, that he snored like a tractor was passing through the bedroom, or that he liked to cut his toenails with one foot raised on the dinner table, usually while I was eating. Maybe she already knew this.
“Here,” she said, sliding a silver door key across the table. “There’s milk and bread and eggs in the fridge. I’ll bring some ham and carrots tomorrow night.”
I tried to imagine a meal made of ham and carrots, but she interrupted my thoughts