Page 47 of When We Were Friends
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Morgan and Paige sat on the sofa, Emily on one of the armchairs after closing the shutters. She did her best to get comfortable, like a patient in A&E getting used to lying on a hard, medical bed. Tiff went over to the French windows and looked out at the pool. She slid down to the floor, facing the other three, let her jacket fall off her shoulders, kicked off her high ankle boots. Tiff bent her knees and lowered her head onto them.
Emily should have kept her mouth shut. There was nothing to gain from dropping Tiff in it. It wasn’t as if Emily cared about her old friends. It wasn’t as if she’d ever see them again. Emily listened to her inner voice raving, like a Friday-night drunk in the emergency department, in denial, saying they’d only had one pint.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Emily and looked at the others. ‘Over the years, I’ve felt bad that I kept Mum’s illness to myself. I know you’d have all been so supportive and done whatever you could to help. Like the time you bought me my favourite box of chocolates, Morgan, even though you were saving every penny of your pocket money for some book about Pythagoras. And you made me a lasagne, Paige, even though you despised cooking. Tiff, you’d come around with a DVD and snacks and help with housework so that I had a free moment to chill out.’
‘Did your mum pretend to be ill with her friends as well?’ asked Paige.
‘Yep. Dad being away so much made it easier for her to lie to everyone, casually saying she’d been to appointments that he’d have wanted to hear about, in great detail, if he’d been around. She must have known, at the back of her mind, one day she’d be running off to Spain, so she didn’t care.’
‘How was she found out?’ asked Tiff.
‘Bit by bit, her story didn’t add up. Her explanations of what happened at The Christie hospital, each visit, were always sketchy. I used to watch documentaries about cancer patients when she was upstairs in bed and my brother wasn’t around. She never looked as ill as them. I assumed she’d need either chemo, radiotherapy, or surgery, but she said the tablets were enough. In the end, I rang the hospital, pretended we had an emergency at home, that I badly needed to speak to my mother and she wasn’t answering her mobile phone. They’d never heard of her. I told Dad and he went mad at me, saying Mum would never lie about something like that. But they had a terrible argument the next day, after he’d slept on it.’ Her voice broke. ‘She never said goodbye. That was the worst thing, especially for my brother. One morning, she was there. The next, she wasn’t.’
Tiff stood up, hesitated and then went over. She squeezed into Emily’s armchair, next to her, like she used to when they were teenagers. She slipped her arm around Emily’s shoulders. Emily leant in.
‘You shouldn’t have to apologise to us,’ said Tiff. ‘What a messed-up situation. I don’t blame you for keeping it quiet. We were so busy anyway, what with it being Year Eleven, and if you’d tried to tell us, where on earth would you have started? I can see now how difficult it must have been.’
Emily caught her breath. A shudder turned into a sob. She buried her head onto Tiff’s shoulder for a moment, shaking as the tears came. Tiff understood, she got it. ‘It’s such a mess, still,’ she said in a muffled voice. ‘Even now, I’m so angry.’ She looked up. ‘I’ve spent my life caring for others, as if to prove I’m not a mug, that other people genuinely need me. Mum left me feeling so… pathetic. But after the last few years, with all the abuse, with nurses being taken for granted, it’s as if I’ve been taken for a mug again. Yet… guilt overwhelms me, sometimes, at not wanting to stay in the profession.’
Morgan passed her a tissue. ‘Maybe you will go back to nursing. Maybe you won’t. A vocation isn’t a life sentence.’
Emily exhaled. That was the first time anyone had said that.
‘I’m a cashier,’ Morgan continued. ‘It’s not my dream job but shit happens and you have to get on with it. Mlle’s Vachon’s story about how she eventually followed her aspirations and embarked on a new career in her thirties has given me hope that maybe it really never is too late to switch direction.’
‘Have you told anyone how you feel, Emily?’ asked Paige. ‘Lewis?’
‘Lewis knows about Mum’s deception but not that, in the last year or two, I’ve been feeling like that sappy, gullible teenager again whom I should have left behind. It’s hard to explain because with him, I’m confident. I know Lewis can tell I’m holding something back but he sees this capable nurse on the outside. I… I’d feel like a failure in his eyes if I told him the truth and I couldn’t bear it if he brushed it aside, because part of me would feel that yes, he’s right, I should have got over Mum by now and it’s pathetic that I haven’t.’
‘You were never sappy or gullible,’ said Tiff firmly. ‘You were compassionate, through and through. There’s a big difference.’
‘Maybe youshouldtell him,’ said Paige.
To Emily’s surprise, saying the truth out loud hadn’t confused matters further; instead, the opposite had happened. Morgan was right. Emily was only thirty-five. Hardly anyone had a job for life these days. Why should nurses be any different? Plenty of colleagues of hers had left since 2020. Looking back, she could see it hadn’t been an easy decision for them either. They’d clung on as long as they could, until their mental health or living bills gave them an ultimatum.
What else was she qualified to do, though? Emily wiped her eyes, sat up straighter and blew her nose. Private hospital receptionist? Medical sales rep? Cat whisperer?
The prospect of change blew a gap in the clouds that had settled over her head in recent months.
* * *
Tiff prised herself out of the armchair and made coffees. She brought the mugs over and put them on the table in the middle before sitting on the floor, cross-legged, as if time had spun back nineteen years.
‘I’m sorry too,’ she mumbled. ‘It’s… true. All of it. Jasmine and I became friends.’
‘How could you?’ said Paige and she folded her arms. ‘We all stuck up for you over that “oink oink” business. Were you and Jasmine laughing at us behind our backs?’
‘No! Of course not.’ Tiff shook her head vehemently. They mustn’t think that.
‘It was bad enough that we all betrayed each other over Hugo, but Jasmine… she’d always had it in for us, year in year out, viciously,’ said Morgan tightly.
Tiff interlocked her fingers and squeezed her hands tightly together. ‘Jasmine approached me in Year Ten. She’d almost failed another assessment. A new boyfriend had distracted her. She asked me to coach her in English as I was such a fan of drama and reading. It was the only subject I always got As in. I told her to eff off but she offered to pay me, a good rate. You know how guilty I felt about my parents spending any spare money onmaking me a star.’ A heavy sensation settled in Tiff’s chest as she recalled those times, the fatigue when Mum announced she’d signed her up for yet another singing or dancing class. ‘Jasmine would give me a piece of work, I’d mark it up, highlighting areas she could improve and mistakes, give it back.’
‘I couldn’t even bear to be in the same room as her,’ said Morgan, an edge to her voice.
‘Same for me, at the beginning. But we’d speak on the phone now and then. She came across as more human. Jasmine was given a load of fancy chocolate for her birthday, didn’t want it so gave me some. My mum liked racy reads and Jasmine spotted one in my rucksack. I lent it to her and that became a habit.’ Tiff bit her lip. ‘She was callous, cold-blooded, no doubt about it, on the surface – but underneath, I saw a different side. A vulnerability. I caught her crying once. We were in her bedroom, I’d nipped to the loo. When I came back, she put her phone away. Her boyfriend had dumped her and she muttered something about always being treated badly. I gave her a hug, expecting to be pushed away, but she held on, wouldn’t let go. My sleeve was damp afterwards from her tears. We never talked about it. I just got a vibe that something had happened to her once. I never found out what it was, but I think that’s why she put on a form of armour in public.’
