The Things We Do to Our Friends(73)

I considered it.

I liked the second before I knew I was going to drift off to sleep, when sleep was inevitable and I could relish the thought of falling into it and forgetting who I was. I liked lying in the sun for hours, avoiding the shade, getting as hot as possible so my skin fizzed and burned. I liked Edinburgh when the streets were dark and quiet, before the city had turned on me. My favorite thing had been Tabitha and the way she made me feel that we were powerful, but I also liked it when she cared for me like a sick child. I liked the world we’d created until it had all gone wrong.

Then there were the things I didn’t like. I hated being out on the edge of it all sometimes, being left out and having so little control. I hated not being able to trust my body as it fell apart at the seams, my mind broken. I took it out on Georgia and Ashley, and I was filled with an almost uncontrollable rage at them; I would put salt in the sugar bowl, rip through cereal packets so that the grains spilled out when they took the box down from a cupboard. They either didn’t notice or chose to ignore it.

“I’m not who you think I am.” The words sounded dramatic as I said them.

He nodded slowly, still confused. There was a brief silence before he spoke again, and his voice was softer. “What do you mean?”

“It means I think we should end things.”

“What the fuck, Clare?” He looked at me in confusion.

“I don’t think I’m the person you think I am,” I said.

He sighed again, calming down. “Yes, you’ve said that,” he said, as if I was very fragile.

Patient Finn.

He was sad, of course, Finn with the puppy-dog eyes, but I’d played the scene out in my head all night. I had come to terms with it.

Looking back now, I’m proud of myself because I have never been drawn to kind acts, but it was a kind thing to do, one of the kindest things I’ve ever done.

The safest thing for Finn was if he was cut out entirely, and if that meant I had to give up the comfort, the predictability he had dosed out to me for so long, then that was what had to happen.

Cut away the fat to get to the meat, Tabitha had always said.

I didn’t want any harm to come to him, and he didn’t belong to whatever was sure to come next.





62


There were still no more silent calls. All the same, it was easy to catastrophize. A newspaper article about it perhaps. Eyes on me as I walked down the street. If it came out, I would be stripped bare. It was painful to consider the possibility.

I was on a mission to understand how many of them had been involved in making the video. That would help me work out what the repercussions might be. To remove myself cleanly from them, I knew that I needed more information.

My first port of call was Ava, because she was the one I was closest to. My calm and collected friend who had generally always been on my side. Right at the beginning, we’d stood outside on the street and smoked, and she’d promised me it would be everything I could ever hope for.

She agreed to meet, and I chose a tiny pub located on the Royal Mile, all dark chipped wood and fussy oil paintings of grazing cattle.

I smelled something in the pub when I sat down. The scent was earthy, with a moist heaviness in the air that hit the back of my throat with each intake of breath. I peered down and it was there under the table, behind old pieces of chewing gum stuck to the underside. A faint line of mold, black and furry, just peeking out.

I felt sick, but I pulled back and sat up when I saw Ava come in. She didn’t look uncomfortable, even though by all rights she should have been, dressed up, as usual, in the strangest combination of garments: leather trousers and a suede coat that looked as soft as a baby rabbit, dyed the color of a hi-vis vest.

Three old men hunched over, almost welded to the bar top like they’d been there for years, and they all turned and watched her duck to avoid bashing her head on the low beams. She didn’t notice their stares. That was just like Ava; she was good at being focused on the matter at hand.

She sat in the nook next to me. Taking in everything to work out how to best handle me, pulling her hair forward so that it fell over the table and pooled softly like a kitten curled into a ball.

“What’s the matter?” she asked, taking a sip from the glass of wine I’d bought for her.

“The video.”

“What video?” she asked.

Like chess. Where to go from there and what to say? Instead of pushing her, I went in another direction.

“She poisoned Finn.”

She listened to my story without interruption, letting me explain the full thing: the fire exit, the drug that was the same as the one from the episode, from Périgueux. I didn’t go into detail about Périgueux, just the bones of the story. I also wasn’t about to tell her I was planning on leaving Edinburgh for good.

“Well, that’s quite a tale,” she said.

“He could have died!”

“Could have. He didn’t.” She sounded so unfazed.

“No, but he was very unwell,” I said, hearing how prim I sounded. “So, what do you think?”

She softened a little. “I think it sounds…stressful for you, and horrible,” she said kindly. “I guess if you’re asking me what you should do, I think that you should come back.”

“I’m not sure I can.”