“By the way,” Barbara said. “I saw your chum today. Lana. We had tea—and a nice cozy chat.”
“Did you?” That didn’t make sense. They weren’t friends. “Where was that?”
“Lana’s house, naturally. My, my, isn’t it grand? I had no idea you were so ambitious, duck. Mustn’t set your sights too high. Remember what happened to Icarus.”
“Icarus?” I laughed. “What are you on about? How many whiskeys have you had?”
Barbara grinned, showing her teeth. “Oh, you’re right to be scared. I would be, too, if I were you. I had to put a stop to it, you see.”
We reached the top of the stairs. Barbara let go of my arm, as I handed her stick back to her. I tried to sound amused.
“A stop to what?”
“To you, duck. I had to put the poor girl straight. She doesn’t deserve you. Few do.”
I stared at her, feeling frightened. “Barbara. What have you done?”
She laughed, delighting in my distress. As she spoke, she hammered her stick on the floorboards, underscoring the rhythm of her speech. She was clearly relishing every word.
“I told her all about you,” Barbara said. “I told her your real name. I told her what you were, when I found you. I told her I’ve had you followed—that I know what you get up to in the afternoons, and the rest. I told her you’re dangerous, a liar, a sociopath—and you’re after her money, like you’re after mine. I told her I caught you messing about with my medication not once, but twice, recently. ‘If anything should happen to me in the near future, Lana,’ I said, ‘you mustn’t be surprised.’”
Barbara drummed her stick on the floor as she laughed.
“The poor girl was horrified. Do you know what she said? ‘If all this is true,’ she cried, ‘how can you bear to live with him in the same house?’”
I spoke in a low voice, flat, expressionless. I felt strangely tired. “And what did you say?”
Barbara drew herself up and spoke with dignity. “I simply reminded Lana that I am a writer. ‘I keep him around,’ I said, ‘not out of pity or affection, but to study—as an object of repulsive fascination. Very much as one might keep a reptile in a cage.’”
She laughed and pounded her stick on the floor repeatedly, as if applauding her witticism.
I didn’t say anything.
But let me tell you, I hated Barbara in that moment. I hated her so much.
I could have killed her.
It would be so easy, I thought, to kick that stick of hers and knock her off-balance.
Then just the lightest of touches would send her falling backward down the stairs—her body thumping down the steps, one by one, all the way to the bottom … until her neck broke, with a crack, on the marble floor.
9
You’d be forgiven for thinking, after everything Barbara West told her about me, that Lana would never speak to me again. Friendships have foundered on less.
Thankfully, Lana was made of strong stuff. I imagine how she reacted to Barbara’s character assassination; that cruel attempt to discredit me in her eyes, and destroy our friendship.
“Barbara,” Lana said, “the majority of what you said about Elliot is untrue. The rest, I knew already. He is my friend. And I love him. Now get out of my house.”
That’s how I like to picture it, anyway. The truth is, there was a definite coolness between Lana and me after that.
It was made worse because we never spoke about it. Not once. I only had Barbara’s word for it that the conversation had even taken place. Can you believe it? Lana never mentioned it. I often thought about bringing it up, forcing her to confront it. I never did. But I hated that there were secrets between us now, subjects to be avoided—we, who had shared so much.
Mercifully, Barbara West died soon afterward. No doubt, the universe sighed with relief at her passing—I certainly did. Almost immediately, Lana started calling me again, and our friendship resumed. It seemed as if Lana had decided to bury Barbara’s poisonous words along with the old witch herself.
But it was too late for me and Lana by then.
Too late for “us.”
By then, Jason and Lana had embarked on their “whirlwind romance”—as the Daily Mail breathlessly called it. They were married a few months later.
Sitting in the church, watching the wedding ceremony, I was keenly aware I wasn’t the only guest with a broken heart.
Kate was sitting right next to me, tearful and more than a little inebriated. I was impressed she had brazened it out—in true Kate style—and attended the wedding, head held high; despite having ignominiously lost her lover to her best friend.