The Best of Friends Alex Day (best short novels .TXT) 📖

no reason. It’s a sobering thought, another thing to give me cause to re-evaluate my life, where I am now, and what I want for the future. Though I don’t usually drink in the day, such soul-searching calls for strong liquor so I pour us both a gin and tonic, garnished with lemon slices from the crop I brought back from the garden of the Corsican villa.

You are full of sympathy for my predicament, and presumably to demonstrate how deep your empathy is, you tell me about your first boyfriend, how you were betrayed and brutally ousted from your flat by him and his new woman. You had to return to your hometown with all its miserable pretensions, to your unspeakably dull family and their lower middle-class preoccupation with what other people will think. It led you to do something that should be unimaginable, which you now tell me all about.

As you talk, I study you intently.

Chapter 31

Susannah

Charlotte listens avidly as I tell her the story of Charlie’s treachery, keeping her eyes fixed on my face, bent a little forward so she doesn’t miss a single word. It’s hard to articulate all the details; though the memory is fresh as a summer’s day, the words needed to express it have rusted and corroded so that I must wrench them out of myself with the force of will.

‘It was awful,’ I say, slowly and tentatively, feeling my way. ‘It’s hard to believe that another human being could deliver such a devastating blow that it would make someone doubt their own life, their own worth. But that’s …’ I stutter, falter, manage to continue, ‘that’s what Charlie made me feel.’

‘It sounds dreadful,’ Charlotte says, sipping her G&T, the ice cubes clinking against the glass as she does so. ‘Absolutely terrible.’ She finishes her drink. ‘So what happened next?’

‘I tried to commit suicide.’

The words are out. I’ve never said them before, never told anyone. Not Justin, not any other of my friends. Charlotte’s gasp of astonishment makes her cough and splutter. Her drink must have gone down the wrong way with the shock and surprise of my confession.

It’s almost gratifying that she cares so much, is taking it so seriously, not immediately dismissing it as a young girl’s folly but even so, I don’t know why I’m telling her. I don’t even know why I’m here, sitting in the elegant drawing room of the woman who has what I want … wanted. Whatever. I’ve lost all track of my feelings towards either Dan or Charlotte. But somehow I can’t let go, can’t turn my back on Charlotte, on our relationship. I can’t help it. She’s my best friend. I’ve got no one else, now that Dan is gone.

‘I waited until Marjorie and Dennis were out at some Rotary Club do,’ I continue, my eyes fixed on the garden beyond the window, my voice monotone like it’s on automatic playback. ‘I took pills, lots of them. One after the other, swallowing them down with water though they still stuck in my throat. It wasn’t hard though. I enjoyed it.’

Charlotte is dumbstruck, saying nothing, just listening open-mouthed. She’s finished her drink, I notice. That was quick – but at least she won’t choke again.

‘I couldn’t cope,’ I admit. It’s so hard to do this, to admit to her – to anyone – that I didn’t have the resources, mental, emotional, or physical, to deal with what Charlie and Josephine did to me. Perhaps I’m sharing the story with her to make her feel sorry for me, which will in turn serve to mitigate her anger when she finds out it was me who … Or to provide myself with some kind of pre-excuse, a pre-emptive strike before … I don’t know. I really don’t know why I’m doing what I’m doing. But I can’t seem to stop.

‘How did you survive?’ she asks, a hint of vicarious pleasure lurking beneath her sympathetic tone.

‘My parents came back unexpectedly early – Dennis wasn’t feeling well – and Marjorie found me,’ I respond, briefly.

We both sit in silence for a moment, absorbing this information, the fact that my mother’s chance appearance is all that prevented my life from being over.

‘How dreadful!’ she exclaims, eventually. ‘What an awful shock. She must have been terrified for you.’

I shrug again. It’s funny how the memory makes me regress right back to being that confused, mixed-up, desperately sad and lonely twenty-something.

‘I suppose so,’ I agree. I recall the ambulance arriving whilst I was in a state of semi-consciousness, being rushed to hospital, having my stomach pumped. The concern tinged with reproach shown by the paramedics, the A&E doctors, and worst of all by my parents.

Why did you do it, Susannah? Surely a broken relationship isn’t worth this? But it wasn’t just Charlie and Josephine by then. It was my criminal act as well and they knew it, though they didn’t say so.

‘Did you suffer any lasting damage?’ asks Charlotte, her voice interrupting my reverie. ‘I’ve heard that paracetamol can destroy your liver.’

‘I was fine,’ I reply, without hesitation. ‘No lasting effects. All good.’

There’s another pause, during which we are both presumably contemplating the fragile line that lies between life and death.

I’m glad I’ve told her, I suddenly decide. I wanted to share the worst time of my life with her. But it’s her husband who’s hurting me now, I think with sudden rancour, and she has no idea about any of it. I’ve been clutching onto her friendship from sheer force of habit. And, if I’m honest, to avoid any possibility of anyone in the village pointing the finger of blame at me. The rumour mill is like a river in full spate, flowing out of control, questions being asked about where Dan is, why his car is never in its usual place in the gravel driveway anymore. If Charlotte and I were suddenly no longer friends, it would be all around the place in nanoseconds.

Sitting here now, I have a