The Best of Friends by Alex Day (accelerated reader books .txt) 📕

followed. Before Charlotte started calling and calling and spooking Dan so much that he felt compelled to get shot of me.

Justin Facetimes but I reject the call. I can’t bear for anyone to see me. He makes a voice call instead which I answer in case there’s something wrong. But there isn’t. He proceeds to regale me with tales of everything he and the boys have been up to in the Lake District – some triathlon challenge or other seems to feature large in the activities list. He’s become a fitness fanatic since the bankruptcy and break-up, one of those Mamils we hear so much about in the media, sad middle-aged men in Lycra, using their bicycles as relationship substitutes, and he and the boys have been cycling and swimming and running like maniacs for the past two weeks.

When he first got a bike, my initial thought was about where on earth he had got the money, but now I don’t even have the energy to care. Jamie and Luke are fine, which is all that really matters. Though right now, despite how much I love them, I can hardly bear to think of them coming home, of having to function again, cooking regular meals and helping with homework and sounding interested when they tell me about their day.

It occurs to me once Justin has hung up that, with or without the boys, my whole position here in the village is in jeopardy. Just as I’ve begun to rebuild my life, it has all come crashing down around me. Working at the tennis club will be a constant reminder of Dan, but I can’t afford to let go of my job. I valued my friendship with Charlotte but I was so beguiled by Dan that I fell into the trap he laid for me, thinking that he was offering me something real, the solid relationship I craved, a two-parent family for my boys.

I hate myself for being so naïve. But somehow, however hard it will be, I have to pretend nothing’s happened; I have to carry on as normal.

Normal. This is about as far as I’ve ever been from that state since the horror of Charlie and Josephine and its aftermath …

I wander around the house, unable to settle to anything. I make cups of tea that I don’t drink and plates of toast that I don’t eat. In the living room, my old course books, together with some newer ones I’ve borrowed from the library or bought cheaply on Amazon, litter the floor and the coffee table. When time has allowed, I’ve been beavering away at my book idea; I thought I’d done quite a lot, had made good progress. But now I understand that it’s never going to happen, I’m not going to see it through. I never was. All those hours of research and note-making, wasted.

My life, wasted.

I kick miserably at the corner of one of the biggest tomes that’s lying open to the frontispiece. My name, written by me over twenty years ago, my writing large and childish, looks quite different from how it is now. And it’s not even my actual name but ‘Sue’, the shortening of Susannah I adopted for Charlie, who found my real moniker offensive, reeking as he felt it did of elaborate middle-class self-satisfaction. He wanted me to join him in being a working-class hero, which of course I never could be, however much I tried. I went to private school for years, for God’s sake.

I sit on the sofa and think of Dan. The extent of my foolishness, the error of my judgement, hits me with full force. Not for the first time, I’ve been shown up as a credulous idiot who fell for the oldest trick in the book: ‘my wife doesn’t understand me and I’m lonely’. And now I risk losing everything not for the first, nor the second, but the third time.

When the doorbell rings, I jump out of my skin. A deep sense of foreboding weighs me down like a lump of lead in my stomach. It would feel right, somehow, if it were that researcher, if he’d tracked me down at last after plaguing me by mail for so many months. His latest letters have changed tack somewhat, now containing veiled threats along the lines of ‘If you agree to take part, you get to tell your story in your words, your way. If you don’t, then we tell it anyway, but in our words, our way.’ However many times I ignore his missives, or put them back in the post box labelled ‘Return to Sender’, he keeps on trying. I don’t know what it will take to make him understand that I’m not going to bite, that I’m not interested. I push from my mind the offer of payment that was mentioned in the very first letter, repeated in every one since. It is quite a lot of money. But despite being perpetually skint, I’m not tempted. I’m not that desperate and my past is not for sale.

I am not for sale.

I’ve slumped onto the floor whilst I wait and hope that the post woman will give up and leave. But instead, the rings on the bell are followed first by knocks on the door and then loud, insistent raps at the window. I crane my neck to see out without being seen. But immediately, my eyes meet those of the person outside, the person who is peering in, hunting the room for signs of life.

I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. Instead of the pestilential researcher or a representative of the Royal Mail, it’s Miriam, her moon face looming at me through the glass. Relief floods through me that my fears are unfounded, but even though she’s not who I dread, I still want to wave her away, to tell her to get lost. But I can’t do that. Being rude is not the answer, especially not to Miriam, who has always