Page 45 of When We Were Friends
‘His parents welcomed me with open arms. They’ve always reminded me of your mum and dad, who always took an interest in us and invited us to their fancy parties. I remember your mum chatting to me about nature, and she’d ask Tiff about her acting and your dad liked to throw maths puzzles at Morgan.’
Paige’s parents had been great. Their lifestyle couldn’t have been more different from hers, but Morgan could always relax and be herself in their presence. Whereas Tiff’s irritated Morgan, because she could see how they put pressure on their daughter, probably without even realising it. As for Emily’s, she hardly ever saw her dad, and Emily’s mum… she was a good laugh but sometimes made jokes at the expense of Emily, and Morgan didn’t like that either, didn’t understand it.
Their pizzas arrived. The four of them cleared their plates. Afterwards, having studied the dessert menu, they shared ice cream.
‘Is afternoon tea still a thing in your family, Morgan?’ asked Paige. ‘Your mum always made it on your birthday. We’d pile around after school and she’d have made a batch of scones, and as a treat got clotted cream.’
‘Loved those,’ said Tiff. ‘She’d make tiny sandwiches cut into squares and triangles.’
‘With white bread especially for me,’ said Emily.
There was never much money when Morgan was growing up, but Mum and Dad always gave her a great birthday. ‘Me and Olly carried on the tradition when he was little. An alternative one, Mum didn’t approve. He’d want peanut butter or crisp sandwiches, and scones slathered with Nutella.’
Tiff drained her wine glass. ‘I need to stretch my legs or I’ll never sleep. It was only five minutes in the taxi, let’s walk back. I’ve got Google Maps.’ She was about to put on her coat when her phone pinged. She read the message. ‘Joe,’ she said. ‘We’re meeting on Saturday. He’s suggested dinner at Mowgli’s. Joe loves Indian food so clearly he’s looked up Mancunian curry houses online. I’m assuming we’ll be back by then. Tomorrow’s only Tuesday.’
‘Wit woo,’ said Emily and took the phone. ‘Ooh, a return kiss on the end.’
Paige wasn’t messaging with Felix, but then he was away on an intense business trip. Den used to message Morgan with all the emojis, the hearts, flowers, kissing faces, a side he kept hidden at work, with his cutthroat sales pitches. But it wasn’t Morgan, not really, and she’d just send funny GIFs back. Den never said anything but she hoped he was with someone now who appreciated the romantic frills.
Emily paid and they went outside. The wind that had blown since they arrived at the villa had dropped. They headed up the hill… arms linked. Step by step, they huddled closer, stopping to admire the intricate, wrought-iron gate leading to a cemetery; it had spikes on the top and a circular pane of flowers worked into its centre. The church stood behind, daunting in the moonlight, with its sharp spire, grotesque gargoyles looking down from under its eaves, and, as Emily pointed out, bats swooping above it.
‘Let’s go in,’ whispered Tiff, as if the dead might be listening in. ‘I love reading gravestones. They do say your only legacy is the way you make people feel, and that’s reflected in what relatives have engraved.’
‘But the writing will be in French,’ said Morgan.
‘We’ve got our GCSE to fall back on – and Google translate.’
The gate creaked as they went in and Morgan felt like a schoolgirl again, stealthily making her way to the unused basement to meet the girls, being careful not to let anyone follow her. She breathed in the smell of damp soil, the cemetery lit up by night lights on the church. The grass was overgrown and covered many of the graves, along with bunches of dead flowers. The occasional plot stood out for being weeded and adorned with ornaments or windmills. They passed worn gravestones, decades old, some of the letters unreadable now. Tiff stopped in front of a rather grand affair, a vault made out of pale-brown stone. She took out her phone and looked up some words.
‘The stars shone more brightly because he was here. Jean Paul Blanchet, 1950 to 2019,’ she said. They walked on and stopped in front of an arc top headstone, moss clinging to parts that had crumbled. ‘Goodnight Sweetheart. Until we meet again. Annette Charvet, 1911 to 1975.’ They turned to the right and the back of the church. Tiff stopped by a square top headstone, by a bench. ‘Allé au bowling, Claude Dupont, 1960-something to 2011… I love that. “Gone bowling”.’ Tiff bent down and pulled out a weed that was obscuring the date.
‘1968. That’s the year my mum was born,’ said Emily, and she sat down on the bench. The others joined her. She linked her arm through Tiff’s, on her left, Morgan’s on her right. Paige gave her an encouraging nod as if she understood Emily was about to open up. ‘We didn’t arrange a funeral for Mum because, well… you see…’ She took a deep breath. ‘I’m so sorry I never told you. I can see now that… that it was a huge thing to keep secret. You see my mum… she was never even ill.’
‘What?’ said Tiff.
‘Not ill?’ said Paige, her jaw dropped.
‘But the tubes… the weight loss…’ Morgan stuttered. Was Emily tipsy?
‘Yes… and on the other hand, there was the laughter as loud as ever, the booze she kept drinking, the way she always insisted she was fine to go to hospital on her own, the way she never lost interest in make-up and nail varnish, not even for one day.’ Emily’s breath hitched. ‘All the signs of her deception were there.’
‘Surely she wouldn’t pull a prank like that. I mean, she was yourmother,’ said Paige.
Morgan shivered. Emily had to be lying. Or mistaken. Perhaps she was on drugs. If not… was it possible that Emily had deceived her friends, day in, day out, formonths and months? But then Morgan looked back through a different lens. The laughter, the gossip, every time they went around, the glamorous look, the content expression across Emily’s mum’s face as she watched her favourite TV shows. Morgan had never once seen her wince with pain, wipe her eyes or steal away to her bedroom when the girls made a noise… If what Emily said was true, then it was her mum who’d really carried out this deception on such a huge scale.
‘She was only my mother in name,’ said Emily in an emotionless tone. ‘Looking back, she used Dad for money, tolerated us kids as long as we didn’t impinge on her social life. Mum took us for mugs: me, my dad, my younger brother. When she first fessed up, it made sense in a warped way. She’d never liked doing the cleaning or cooking. This way, she got me to do all the skivvying.’
To make up cancer to get out of housework? Morgan shook her head. That would be like finding out if aliens existed, only so that you could playAlien vs Predatormore effectively. It made no sense, to do something that big, for such a trivial reason.
‘But then she finally told us the real motive – in front of Dad. Didn’t give him space to save face. I hated her for that.’ Emily inhaled. ‘She admitted to having an affair with a customer from the betting shop. The supposed trips to The Christie were to shag him. He worked shifts, she fitted in around his routine. So that’s when she gave up her job, and she wanted to look her best, so she made me prepare salads and stir fries, all of a sudden, to lose pounds, not fight the “cancer”. I even spent ages knitting her a scarf, for if her treatment changed and her hair ever fell out. I didn’t tell her that was the reason, but she didn’t like it anyway, said she wasn’t over eighty yet. Apparently woolly scarves aren’t sexy.’
With her hands, Tiff acted out her head exploding in disbelief. ‘And I thought I was a good actress!’
‘What self-belief to think she could carry it off,’ said Paige and she took Emily’s hand.
‘It’s like some misleading tabloid headline,’ said Morgan, ‘where the cancer turns out to be in a pet hamster. What a betrayal.’
‘You’re not far wrong,’ continued Emily. ‘I’m sure a story in the newspaper is what gave her the idea. She talked once about an article she’d read, a couple of years previously, about parents who faked their kids having cancer, to get money, to get attention. It was odd that she sounded impressed.’ Emily’s nose wrinkled as if she’d been asked to clean up after a patient with a bad stomach upset. ‘“I’m in love,” she said, as if that excused everything. Mum said she couldn’t help it, was only human. She told me I’d understand one day. I never have. My mother and lover boy then disappeared off to Spain. She’s still running a bar in Marbella, I think.’
