CLAUDIA
I sat at the kitchen table while Mara made coffee, absent-mindedly running the tips of my fingers across the smooth surface. It was late on Saturday morning and the kitchen was filled with Mara’s crossness. I didn’t prod her for details. I found that, given space and time, Mara usually got around to talking about whatever was bothering her. Sam had never understood this, which I always thought was unfortunate and remarkably blind of her.
‘Where’s Sam?’ I asked.
‘I don’t know. She was here this morning, her door was shut before I went shopping but she left without doing her Saturday jobs.’
I raised my eyebrows. ‘She has Saturday jobs?’
‘Well’ – Mara set a plunger and two mugs down – ‘I don’t mind if she does them on Sunday but I’d prefer she did them on Saturday to get the weekend off to a good start.’
Mara’s mouth was pinched as she poured warm milk into both mugs, stirring the liquid aggressively as she added the coffee. She sat down and looked at me.
‘What?’
‘I didn’t say anything.’
‘You not saying something usually means something, Claud. Am I being unreasonable?’
‘Unreasonable? Oh what would I know? I don’t have to share my space with anyone else. I imagine some ground rules would be helpful. But perhaps . . .’ I paused, about to rephrase what I wanted to say, then decided against it. ‘You might be treating Sam a little bit like a child?’
‘She is one though! She missed her bloody rent this week for the third bloody time!’ Mara held up three indignant fingers.
I stepped around my thoughts once more. Mara was obviously burning up about all this. But it had to be said. ‘Could it be she acts like a child because she gets treated like one?’
‘I don’t know. Maybe. It’s a pain in the neck though, regardless of how it’s come about. She’s almost thirty years old! Honestly.’ Mara took a long sip of coffee and sighed. ‘I don’t know what to do about it, Claudia. I can’t carry her for much longer. She’s gone completely silly over this Charlie business. Every day for two weeks there’s been a new exfoliator or body cream or something in the bathroom. Not to mention the dress – and the rest. But no bloody rent!’
‘I paid for her dress,’ I added, instantly regretting it.
‘Great! So that was money that could have gone to rent and it didn’t. It’s disrespectful – to me, to our friendship, to’ – Mara waved her arm in circles at George and the kitchen – ‘our home!’
I reached out and caught Mara’s angry hand and squeezed it. ‘Babe, you’re really upset about this, aren’t you?’
‘Wouldn’t you be? If one of your best friends gave such a small shit about you?’
‘But she does care about you, of course she does. She can just be horrendously ditzy.’
‘Call it what you want, Claud. I’m completely over it.’
It always amazed me how effectively anger smothered memory, leaving only a handful of irritating traits to chew over relentlessly, as if they were the only food the angry person had available. I saw it time and again with conflicts I was required to mediate at work – people who had once been friends, who knew each other really well, pacing around their grievances, completely forgetting that the person they were upset with had any feelings at all – let alone complex ones. And here was Mara, chewing over a few – highly irritating, I agreed – misdemeanours of Sam’s, as if that was all there was to her. Completely ignoring her warmth, years of loyal friendship and the highs and lows they’d shared. Forgetting all the weeks she had paid her rent or hadn’t brought a bug into the house. Forgetting who she was beneath the dizzy exterior. But what would I know really? I pictured my tidy, peaceful flat. Nobody else to negotiate; no one at all. But in that moment the image of my empty flat was far from comforting and I felt my chest squeeze a little.
‘I’ve got some news, actually,’ I said before I could stop myself.
‘Good, let’s talk about something else.’ Mara set her cup down and smiled.
‘It’s not good.’
‘Oh?’ The half-hearted smile fell off.
I felt a lump lodge in my throat, out of nowhere. For a moment I thought I wouldn’t be able to speak.
‘I . . .’ I swallowed. ‘I’ve been diagnosed with an STI.’
‘What?’ Mara looked shocked.
‘Don’t look so shocked, Mara, you know what I’m like,’ I said, more bitter than I wanted to.
Mara frowned. ‘Yes, I know you’re a grown-up, onto-it woman!’ She reached across the table and grabbed my hands. ‘And here I am bleating on about Sam, when you’ve got much more important issues.’ Then a change came across her face and she grew paler.
‘Wha-what . . .’
‘It’s only chlamydia,’ I finished for her.
Colour flooded back into Mara’s cheeks. ‘Oh thank God.’ She let out a huge sigh through her teeth.
‘Indeed.’
‘Do you know—’
‘Who gave it to me?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, strangely enough, yes, I think I do. At least tests point in his direction. But—’ I shook my head. ‘I can’t believe it could be him, he’s so . . .’
‘Grown-up?’
I looked up at her in wonder. That was it! That was what I had been trying to put my finger on. He was an adult, not a boy in a man’s body.
‘That guy from work, I take it, John something or other?’
‘How did you know?’ What was going on? Mara had her ignorant blinkers on thinking about Sam but then turned her head towards me bursting with insight.
‘I could tell by the way you’ve talked about him in the past.’
‘I’ve hardly spoken about him and not very nicely when I have.’
‘Exactly. If you didn’t care about him you would have got a lot more mileage out of it. And this time, even when you made fun of him, you were holding something back. There was something in your eyes.’
‘There was?’
Mara shrugged as if it was completely obvious. If it was so bloody obvious, I thought, why had it taken me so long to realise how I felt about him?
Mara collected the mugs and cafetière and took them to the sink, casually asking over her shoulder, ‘So when are you going to tell him you like him?’