Karen grimaced. ‘I called her this morning. She sounded weird.’
‘Weirder than usual?’
‘Arse. You don’t have to be so mean about them, you know; they love you.’
He smiled. ‘Who doesn’t? You know I like them, I just think it’s weird how they depend on you so much. I mean, you’re all in your thirties; shouldn’t they be grown up by now? Eleanor’s got two kids of her own and she’s still dragging you out of work at the slightest problem.’
‘You don’t get it because you’re a man. Men don’t have these kinds of friendships. They rely on me because that’s what they’ve always done, since we were five. I’m the stable one. The sensible one. The one they can depend on.’
‘And what happens to you when they don’t need you any more?’
‘That’s not going to happen,’ she replied confidently. ‘They will always need me.’
38
Bea
Her eyes were closed but she could smell cut grass and river water. The breeze cut through her hair and she pumped her legs harder to push herself further out over the water. The branch that the rope was twisted around creaked dangerously, and Bea’s fingers gripped the swing until her knuckles turned white. She hadn’t thought too much about how she was going to get herself back on to the riverbank, not stopping to consider when she pulled the dirty old tyre swing towards her that her thirty-five-year-old body might not be as supple as her sixteen-year-old one had been. Not to mention that it was long summer days she and her friends had spent down here rather than cold autumn ones, and their forays on to the rope swing had nearly always ended by plunging into the refreshingly icy water. These days the water just looked filthy and scum-topped; it was a wonder none of them had caught E. coli.
She often came back here – although she didn’t tell the others – to relive those carefree teenage days, the days before any of them realised that bad things could happen to them.
They had found this stretch of river, with its dusty mud platform reaching out into the water and hidden by trees and bushes higher up the bank. You had to climb or slide down a narrow gap in the greenery to where half a dozen teenagers lounged on the dirt platform passing around two-litre bottles of White Lightning and lemonade bottles filled with whatever concoctions they could steal from their parents’ alcohol cupboards. The sun cast leafy patterns on their denim shorts as they took turns boosting each other on to the rope swing – it had been a branch back then; no sophisticated tyre set-up back in the old days – screaming as they tried to make the leap back on to dry land and failed.
And then there was the last time …
They hadn’t visited the river in years; they had grown up, moved on. All three of them were at university, and the boys they used to try to impress had long moved on to other girls, less educated and more fun. Adulthood had grown on them like a tumour, almost undetectable at first, and by the time they had noticed, it was terminal. They had returned home for the summer after their first year – the year Bea’s life had veered so far off course it had formed a permanently new track – with an urgency that none of them could explain. It was as though with the knowledge that bad things could happen to good people the veil had been lifted from their eyes and they were fighting it with everything they had. That summer they reverted to their adolescent selves: they took Saturday evening jobs in bars and spent their days sunbathing in Eleanor’s parents’ garden, or down by the river. The nights they had off work were passed in an alcoholic haze, just the three of them this time, wearing jeans and Doc Martens rather than as little as they could get away with. It felt to Bea as though her friends knew she was spiralling out of control and they had two choices: try to pull her back, or stick as close to her as possible while she fell.
‘Who’s going to boost me?’
The sun had begun to push its way through the clouds now, and Bea let her legs stop pumping and leaned back gently. She could hear the words as clearly as if she’d spoken them out loud only seconds ago; pictured