Lunch

I’m late, and officially out of the time period in which you could claim to be fashionable. This is just late. Its not my fault, Rupert my husband somehow managed to brake the washing machine, then Megan the nanny was delayed with her train, and then to cap it all, Cathy my four year old said she didn’t want to go to school. All of this made me late. Most people you can explain this to… most of my friends, family and colleagues understand that having a family, a house and a job aren’t the easiest things to make run smoothly – Helene Hayward is not someone who understands this. Somehow she manages all of these three and, as I round the corner of Garrick Street I see she also manages to be prompt.

I enter the exclusive restaurant and pray the staff don’t ask me to leave. Helene looks vaguely like a Hitchcock Blonde and a fashion editor combined. She smiles broadly when she sees me and kisses my check. You may wonder why a woman such as this wants or needs a friend like me. I use to say that it was because we’d known each other on and off for years, since we did community theatre together aged eight (she played Titania, the fairy queen I played Thisbe, the guy in drag. Perhaps that sums up our relationship.) Her family owned the theatre, in fact her father; the Hon. Clive Hayward was probably the reason that theatres and shows still went on in London, if not the UK. Helene and I had drifted a lot when we’d reached our early 20s, we’d gone to universities at either end of the country… of course we’d both gotten top grades but she’d had a family place at Cambridge, and I’d went to Durham instead. After we said goodbye at 18, I’d not seen her for seven or so years, other than the occasional letter. I’d gone and taught in Australia for four years (that’s where I met Rupert) but when I got back to England there she’d been deputy editor in her uncle’s publishing business. We were bridesmaids at each other’s weddings. Through he last ten years of husbands, jobs, children, housing… we’d stayed in touch. But I could now admit, as I compared her caramel colored suit against the once pressed now sadly crimpled white shirt dress that I was wearing, that the reason why she wanted me as a friend, was because I made her look good. That may sound unnecessarily mean, but as I’ve got older and I’ve learnt more, I can see things more clearly – I believe I can see Helene for what she is.

“Oh it’s been an age. What would you like to drink?”

“I’ll have what you’re having.” The waiter was back in a moment with a g and t. I smiled. She’s still talking “- Leopold is such a darling boy, and so bright-” (she has two sons) “and he’s taking after his father…”

I nod and listen. And then we discuss my kids. I agree with her, when she says she’d like our boys to meet up, although since she lives in South Ken and I live in Langdon in Kent I can’t imagine this happening any time soon.

The waiter returns and we place our order. The restaurant (she always chooses where we eat) is beginning to fill up. A smart couple in their mid forties walks past our table. The woman’s large handbag nudges Helene’s chair and she turns and shifts it out of their way. I’m too busy admiring the woman’s lovely dress to pay attention, but when I look back at Helene she is whiter than white. And looks like she might throw up (I’ve only seen her do this once when we were fourteen and stole her father’s whiskey.)

“What’s the matter?”

She’s turned back to the table and is staring down at it. Her hands, which rest either side of her plate, are shaking.

“Are you ill?”

“Shhh.” Her voice is both shrill and quiet so that only I hear it. “I have to leave. Now.”

“Okay.” I glance back at the couple they are sitting two rows away. The woman doesn’t appear to notice us, but I see the man glance more than once at Helene almost as if he were trying to remember her. I look back at Helene but she’s gone. She’s got up and ran from the restaurant. I find the waiter and settle up. When I get outside, I see her BMW, is waiting for me. I climb in, certain the Helene must be having an affair. If you saw Sal you probably wouldn’t blame her.

She’s still white, shaking and now she’s started crying.

“What’s going on? Who was that? Helene….” I pat her hand. I really cannot handle her crying, just because I’m not use to it. “Are you cheating on Sal?”

“God I wish it were that simple.” She takes her hands off the striving wheel and turns towards me. “Please promise me that what I tell you next – you – you won’t repeat.”

“I promise.”

“That man inside he was one my johnnies.” Her fingers have laced through mine and she’s crying even more.

I frown, “Ehh?” I don’t know the expression that she just used.

Her face scrunches up, lines, tears, make up mashed together. She could be all of 16 again. “I never told anyone who didn’t already know … But you weren’t there…I didn’t want to say…” There are more tears, it is like watching one of my pupils whose cheated on a test and been caught, but this could she be that she’s ill, dying…. She takes a deep breath. “I slept with that man in there, years ago –”

“So he’s an ex. God the number of times I’ve-”

“No he’s not an ex. We never were an item. He paid me…”

“What the f-” I know wouldn’t be helpful but if you could pick someone to tell you that they‘d once been paid for sex, you wouldn’t have chosen Helene. She wouldn’t have even gotten on the list. She smiles very faintly at my interruption.

“He wasn’t the only one. He just stuck out, because he was the first one to hit me. He chipped my tooth.” She starts crying again.

“But your family –” They may have been snobby and overly privileged but they cared, especially her mum Grace.

“They tried to help at first, but I was hooked, and they realized the tough love was the only thing that was going to work. It did eventually,” she grabbed my hand once more, “look at me, Rachel, I’m better.”

I stare at her, wondering what made her do it, “What were you addicted to?”

She’s stopped crying. She opens her handbag and begins to wipe away the mess. “Smack.” She daps on some more make up, does her eyes and lips, and once again is the haughty prim London princess. She turns on the ignition. “Lets go get a drink.”

I nod, unable to disagree.

“I really need you not to tell anyone about this. Sal knows, but imagine if the parents council or worse….” Her voice is back to its clipped perfection, and I hope that I never see her cry again. She isn’t the friend I thought she was. And I don’t know with this pleases me or not, and don’t want to think about the kind of person I would be if it did.