Caro didn’t strike me as needy. She didn’t give off the desperate vibe that so many high-flying women do who really yearn for a good man and a chance to endlessly look at paint samples for the vintage dresser they bought together. Why was she pushing this? Jimmy might be head over heels but he wouldn’t have suggested moving in – he didn’t have any get-up-and-go, no drive like that. For Jim, everything plodding along nicely was the ideal state of play.
‘Of course, it’s very heartbreaking for yours truly that he’s moving into hers – Clapham is absolutely miles away – but her flat is divine and much nearer her work, so I do understand.’ Sophie looked up from stirring the risotto and smiled at me. ‘You’ll be a bit unsettled not having him around so much, I think? We’ll have to find you your own Caro.’
I was unsettled. I wouldn’t admit that to Sophie, who has always been slightly nervous about just how close I am with her son. Not that she’s ever blatantly discouraged it – nothing so blunt. I think she just found it strange that her son could spend his entire teenage years hanging around with a girl without ever falling for her. Or at least, never saying it outright. Sophie and John don’t really have friends of the opposite sex – it’s always couples at their dinner parties, or the occasional single pal that they tried to set up with someone, normally in vain. I still suspect that she spent our teenage years hovering outside the den, just waiting to swing the door open and find us naked together. She never did. I think that was even more disconcerting for her than if she had. At least then she’d understand the dynamic.
The thing is, Jimmy has probably always been in love with me. Oh, he’s never said it. He’s probably not even aware of it on a conscious level. Jimmy isn’t one for deep introspection. But I’ve known it forever. You just know, don’t you? And normally, that would be a friendship breaker – at some point, someone confesses, or lunges, or starts acting out. But not Jimmy. He loves me fiercely. I’m a part of him. But it never tipped into anything of note. Well, we wobbled just that once, when we were just on the cusp of adulthood and I didn’t want him to pull away completely. But mostly I held the line – never giving him a suggestion of something more, or encouraging him to explore the possibility. No lingering looks, no drunken hugs that feel just a little too intense. I’ve played it well and kept my friend. I knew that any potential exploration of deeper feelings would break us in ways that we couldn’t fix. And why would I fuck it up for some idiotic attempt at a relationship in our teenage years, when nothing meant anything? I always stored it away, thinking that it was something to revisit when we were both older, when the mission that had driven my life was finished. A bond that I’d made over years and years would reward me with a simple and uncomplicated future. But I couldn’t think of any of that yet, not while I had such work to do. I’d not even entertained it properly, never imagined the specifics of that life. It was just a vague sense, but one that was strong, and always there. And now I could see that Caro was going to derail it all. You cannot account for the Caros of the world, no matter how tightly you try to control things. People like her take pleasure in striding into your world and taking what they want from it. Not even deliberately, the bonus of your loss is just a nice extra. I might be able to carry out a ruthless line in fairly epic revenge, but I didn’t know how to stop love. That felt completely beyond me and it made me feel like I was drowning.
*
I have derailed myself. My mother used to do this and it always enraged me. A story about a trip to the supermarket would veer off into some sad tale of the local café owner and her back problems and I would sit there scratching at my arm wanting to bark at her to hurry up. Nobody gives a shit about the stupid café woman, I wanted to say. Stop caring so much for strangers who don’t even know your name and figure out a way to get the heating back on. All of this is to say, I could write an entire book about the trials of Caro, but it is not the most interesting story I have to tell, and also, she’s dead. So I was the victor. Except I wasn’t. Because Caro was never going to let me win with any ease, was she?
The facts are these. Jimmy moved into Caro’s immaculate flat in Clapham. His communication with me crumbled almost immediately. Long chats on the phone late at night were out first. Then impromptu coffees or meet-ups in the pub we’d frequented since we were old enough were next to go – after all, Clapham is another country when you live north of the river. The text chain was not erased entirely, but I was the initiator more often than not, which made me feel pathetic and furious. Worse, whenever I did see Jim, she usually inserted herself into the plans. Drinks （with her friends）， dinner at the Latimers’ （where she would greet me at the door）， occasional parties at their flat, where she would make a great show of introducing me to incredibly dull, ruddy-faced men in chinos and then abandon me and walk off looking amused.