Page 46 of When We Were Friends
‘I’m sorry, so sorry, at what you must have gone through,’ said Tiff. ‘But…’ She pursed her lips.
‘What? asked Emily. ‘No more secrets, right? Tiff?’
‘Okay… why didn’t you tell us? This ishuge. Why keep it to yourself?’
‘Shame, I guess,’ she muttered. ‘It was easier. I wanted to forget about her when I was with you. And how would I have found the words, Tiff? It sounded so ridiculous. So horrific. I think I was in shock at the beginning, just getting through each day as best I could.
‘But we werebest friends. Buzz and Woody.’ Tiff’s voice shook. ‘What other secrets were we all hiding – on top of our affairs with Hugo?’
Morgan held her palms vertical in the air. ‘Let’s not do this. We… we’re just getting to know each other again, beginning to get some perspective on what happened with him. As adults. Women. Those young girls made mistakes, of course they did, and they should have been allowed to, it’s part of the process of growing up.’
Tiff shook her head. ‘Not ones like this, Morgan. It’s massive. You talked about giving her clothes to a charity shop, Emily, about your dad having bereavement counselling. I’d get that for when the other pupils asked questions, and even the teachers. But us?’
‘He did get that counselling,’ she said shortly and took her hand away from Paige’s. ‘There are different types of grief, different ways of losing someone.’
‘In adulthood, life becomes complex and makes you behave in ways you normally wouldn’t…’ said Paige, voice sounding strained. ‘But in our teens, life was a lot simpler. You wanted to tell us the truth, right Emily?’
‘No, I bloody well didn’t! The whole situation made me look like an idiot. Andsimple, back then? Not for me it wasn’t,’ said Emily. ‘Living with honest, straight-as-a-die Lewis has been far more straightforward than living with my mother ever was. Look, it wasn’t about you three,’ said Emily, in a tense voice. ‘You look so hurt, Tiff, but I was in absolute bits. Rock bottom. No further to fall. So was my dad. My brother too. School and our society were an escape, the one place I could pretend none of the deception had happened.’ Her voice cracked. ‘If I could have told you, I would, but some things are so… so huge, so overwhelming. I had nightmares for weeks afterwards. With you guys, I just wanted to pretend none of it had happened, because there was no way of getting away from it at home, with Dad zombie-like and my little brother crying.’
‘You still lied,’ Tiff said. ‘Like Hugo did. I’m sorry. I am sympathetic. In fact, there are no words to describe how much I’d like to go back in time, to be there for you. But it’s a lot to take in.’
Emily gasped. ‘You dare compare me tohim? The only thing Hugo lost was the football captaincy and stupid prom crown.’
An odd expression crossed Paige’s face.
Emily folded her arms. ‘You’re really going to make me do this, aren’t you, Tiff? It may be nineteen years later but I’ve not forgotten. And I’m not that naïve teenager any more who used to find it difficult to stick up for herself. I won’t be portrayed as the only one of us who kept a terrible secret.’
The indignation drained out of Tiff’s face. She loosened the top of her jacket.
‘What are you talking about?’ asked Morgan.
‘Emily?’ said Paige.
Tiff stood up and wiped her hands on her trousers. ‘Emily, don’t, look, I…’
‘Don’t? After you berating me? When you were a blatant liar for no good reason?’ Emily’s eyes glistened. ‘You’ve brought this on yourself, Tiff. Now it’s your turn to explain yourself. Why were you secretly friends with that total bitch, our tormentor – Jasmine White?’
25
PAIGE, EMILY, TIFF
Tiff bolted and left the others standing by gravestones. Her heels tip-tapped into the distance, the creak of the gate sounded.
‘See. I’m not the only one who held things back,’ said Emily, red blotches across her face. ‘Don’t ask me anything about Jasmine. It’s up to Tiff to explain.’
‘Friends withJasmine?’ Paige could hardly get the words out. That would have been such an utter betrayal. That girl’s insults were always aimed straight to the core, laughing at, belittling the four of them for simply being themselves.
Morgan’s face had hardened. ‘That bitch wasn’t just cruel to us. She made life hell for some of the less resilient pupils. Remember Kath Mitchell? How we reckoned she changed schools because Jasmine made such fun of her lisp? She’d started missing lessons. How could our Tiff get close to a monster like that?’
The three of them made their way up the hill in silence, Morgan’s hands deep in her trouser pockets. Paige hung behind and lit up again. She inhaled deeply. Emily must have got it wrong, although… Morgan loved trivial facts, and had discovered that the noise humans attributed to pigs in Japanese wasboo booand in French wasgroin groin. So, the four of them would shout those noises back every time Jasmine and her clique oinked at Tiff. However, a few months before prom, they’d chatted about how they hadn’t had to do that for a while. For some reason, the vile oinks had stopped.
Paige inhaled again. As for Emily’s mum… She blew out smoke and stopped walking, as Emily’s story sank in. Eyes blurry, Paige tossed the cigarette onto the ground. Emily, pure-hearted Emily, so soft and obliging back then, she often came to school with split nails and chapped hands; her parents didn’t have a dishwasher, and she scrubbed floors, changed beds, cleaned windows. Emily had muttered once how her mum told her to do jobs she never used to bother with herself, as if getting sick had suddenly made her houseproud. Paige, Morgan and Tiff had always protected her, but never once considered they’d need to defend her against her own mother. As for Emily’s poor dad… no wonder he’d needed counselling. After the funeral, the three of them had clubbed together and bought Emily a bunch of flowers. She’d thanked them and said she’d put them on her mother’s grave. What had happened was life-changing for Emily on so many levels, yet she hadn’t felt able to tell her three friends the truth.
Perhaps she had confided in Felix – or rather Hugo, as he was called back then. The young people at the community project confided in him about their problems, and he kept their confessions and worries confidential, only ever occasionally mentioning the surface stuff, like Jamal wanting to be a personal trainer. Paige lit another cigarette and took a long drag. Perhaps he had known.
When she and Felix had met for the first time as adults, that Saturday in 2016, he’d looked nervous as he ordered hot chocolates. The barest of pleasantries were exchanged, they talked about their jobs. Five minutes in, Paige looked at her watch, prompting Felix to talk about what mattered. At times, his face turned red, fists curled; at others, his eyes teared up. The longer he spoke, the smaller he looked, like an anxious teenager, like a genuine version of the Hugo back then, not the one he showed the world, full of smarm and charm.
Felix had ended by explaining his name change. Fifteen minutes stretched to two hours and lunch in the Old Wellington. He also talked about why he’d left France. Except the word he’d used wasfled.
