Page 30 of When We Were Friends
‘With Hugo, I was out of my depth and didn’t want to stop falling.’ The condom had come off. She hadn’t been sure at what point. As soon as she got home, Morgan rang a helpline, to find out the odds of getting pregnant from sleeping with someone once. The woman listened to Morgan’s situation, talked instead about STI tests, but Morgan persisted so she went through several leaflets and finally found the statistic. Morgan put the phone down, unworried by the one in twenty chance.
Maths had never let her down before that.
‘You never showed any interest in a relationship,’ said Paige. ‘Why didn’t you tellusthe truth about how you really felt?’
‘I guess if I kept it quiet then I could hang on to the possibility that I was wrong and one day, the right lad would come along. Boys were never my number one interest – teaching maths was my dream, not a big white wedding – but even so, I was still a young woman, and I still wanted to feel attractive.’
‘I can relate to what you say about how Hugo got into your head,’ said Tiff and she reached for the bowl of crisps they’d set out. ‘He’d overheard me moaning to you lot about Mum. She’d read about a new celebrity diet, and her latest plan was for me to take elocution lessons. He apologised for the football pitch incident, said that he deserved to lose the captaincy, but had been dreading telling his dad who had such high expectations. He said his dad put on constant pressure and wanted Hugo to either be an international football player or a whizz on the stock markets. Hugo said he admired me rejecting the pressure from my mum to fit some ideal she had about how actors should be. He said I looked and sounded great and nothing was more appealing than someone happy in their own skin.’
‘But youwerehappy with yourself, Tiff,’ said Paige, frowning, and she put down her wine. ‘So why was it so special, Hugo saying all that stuff?’
‘You used to give the finger to Jasmine and her friends when they oinked,’ said Morgan. Although, just occasionally, Morgan had wondered if it was an act.
Emily’s brow knotted. ‘You were just Tiff, to me. I was always too busy laughing at your stupid jokes to think about your size. In fact, I was jealous of your bust. I was in an A cup until my late teens. I never really got why Jasmine made a thing of your curves.’
‘Really?’ Tiff replied, coolly. ‘Where did that Jabba comment come from, then?’
‘From Mum, as it happens.’ Emily rubbed her brow, suddenly looking tired. ‘I’d been combing her hair, put on her favourite lippy, made her breakfast. She’dpinched an inch, as she said, around my waist. Called me Little Miss Jabba and said I’d never get a boyfriend if I ate so much cake. It was the first thing that came to mind, that night at the prom, because her comment had hurt me so much.’
‘That’s shit about your mum.’ Tiff’s jaw set into a hard line. ‘But no excuse for passing the insult on. How could none of you have worked out my insecurities? Remember how we obsessed overLove Actuallywhen it came out, the first term of Year Eleven?’
‘Bill Nighy was brilliant,’ said Morgan. ‘You loved Hugh Grant, Paige. We used to argue about which of them was the best character.’
‘Martine McCutcheon was so relatable,’ said Emily.
The three of them looked at Tiff.
‘I wanted to be Keira Knightly.’
‘You said that was because you had a crush on Andrew Lincoln,’ said Paige. ‘That you wanted him to stand outside your front door reading those cards.’
‘That was partly it, but mostly… she was pretty, so thin.’ Crisp fragments tumbled out of her mouth as she spoke. ‘Hugo’s attention was too much to resist, for’ – Tiff’s voice wavered – ‘a sexless chubber like me.’
‘You were never that,’ said Emily and looked quite fierce for a moment.
Tiff carried on as if she hadn’t heard. ‘How Hugo must have laughed because I told him to ignore me, as usual, in school. I didn’t want my best friends finding out.’
‘I told him that as well,’ said Emily.
‘Yup, ditto,’ said Morgan.
‘Me too,’ said Paige.
‘We made it so easy for him,’ said Tiff and put the empty bowl back on the coffee table.
The four women looked at each other.
‘He might still laugh at us, even now,’ said Morgan.
‘It doesn’t feel real, that we might see him tomorrow,’ said Tiff.
Paige swirled the wine in her glass. The sun was beginning to set. ‘A few weeks after the football incident, he appeared by my side as I walked home one Friday night. He commented on my new school bag, which was designer, made by my mum’s company. He said everyone thought they knew him because of the way he looked, because of his confidence, but they were wrong. It put pressure on him to act like the stud and left him worried no one would like him if he lost his coveted position as Mr Popular. Losing the football captaincy had devastated him. He suggested maybe I could relate, because of my background. He was right. People judged me too, by my parents’ money, my accent, my clothes. It was refreshing to find someone else in the same position. He trusted me with his truth. I felt unique.’ She turned to Morgan. ‘He never called me a princess.’
Morgan blushed. ‘Yeah, well, you fell for his lies too. I remember seeing Hugo out and about with his dad. He always had an arm around Hugo’s shoulder, Hugo laughing at his jokes.’ Morgan got up and went over to the French windows. The last rays of sun lit up ripples of water. She turned around. ‘Hugo said at the prom it didn’t take much to hook four silly girls whose heads were so easily turned by a few snogs – girls who couldn’t be trusted because they gave up a supposedly strong friendship and principles for flattery and stupid presents.’
‘He gave me chocolates. Of course he did,’ said Tiff.
‘A charm bracelet,’ said Paige.
