The Book of Us Read online

  Chapter 2

  Lauren shouldn’t have been driving. Her dry mouth and fuzzy head told her this as she bumbled up the motorway. She seemed to feel hangovers deep in her bones these days, like she was filled with poison. She wound the window down and the sharp, cold air was a relief, blowing out the cobwebs.

  As she crawled along, Lauren looked at the other people in the cars, all travelling somewhere for New Year’s. Going towards people they loved, making promises for the year ahead. Lauren could almost hear the clink of the wine bottles in the back seats, the yowling sing-alongs from the twenty-somethings, convinced this would be the best New Year’s ever. She and Cass had enough of those memories.

  One was spent on the beach in Brighton, shivering but steadfastly remaining, gritted teeth and a vodka blanket to numb them. Lauren couldn’t remember much beyond being mesmerised by the dark oiliness of the ocean at night, how the waves were deafening. She did recall curling up under a blanket, Cass’s breath warm on her cheek as she whispered, ‘This will be our year, Loll. This will be the one.’

  The years had started to bleed together. She remembered the jealousy she felt at Cass’s mum’s parties, how Cass had always been sparkling at the centre of it all, showered with attention. The Christmas lights shone, and Cass had worn a pearlescent dress that caught the light like mermaid scales. People couldn’t pass without reaching out a hand to touch her shoulder, as if entranced. Lauren wore black that year. Cass was the angel on the Christmas tree, and Lauren sparkled dully on the side. That always seemed to be the way.

  There were the London lights one year, with the scramble of thousands of people and fingers numb with the cold. Darren had been annoyed about that one. He’d wanted her to himself back then.

  After that came the New Year’s festivities without her – the expensive meals in fancy hotels. An argument with Darren about something pointless. After a while, they stopped bothering. The promise of a new beginning starting with the chime of midnight didn’t seem as exciting as before. They went out for dinner, like adults did. One year they had a party, but Lauren felt like a failure. Drinks were spilled, food was burnt. But she brought it on herself, of course. She was too highly strung, too anxious. She took everything too seriously, like the laughter of Darren’s workmates as they chewed charred mini quiches and explained why their champagne was better than her prosecco. She’d started the new year hiding in the bathroom, and when she reappeared Darren asked her why she always had to worry and ruin everything for herself. Then came the years of sitting on the sofa, watching the fireworks through the window, a dine-in-for-two meal on the coffee table. They’d stopped sitting opposite each other a long time ago.

  Why was no one else annoyed by the traffic? Lauren tugged at her hair in frustration. Her ring caught, tugging and splitting strands. That would teach her. She shouldn’t have been wearing the damn thing anymore anyway. She pulled it off, letting it sit in her hair before she tugged it out and chucked it on the passenger seat. The traffic moved forward briefly, and Lauren held out for almost three minutes before reaching across and feeling for it, placing it back on her finger with a sigh of relief.

  Her life seemed to split into two sections: with Cass, and after Cass. After was like watercolour, wishy-washy dullness like that overcast sky above the grey motorway. But there had been less pain. Cass had shone so brightly, all that colour and noise and excitement, that there had been no place for Lauren to be someone of her own. That’s what she’d thought, after Cass was gone. Now it was her time to become someone.

  But Cassidy Jones had been out of her life for six years now, and Lauren still hadn’t made her own life colourful. Cass was oils on canvas, bold and messy. Lauren was the practice paper, the daubs of pastel that bled at the edges and merged. Not the good kind of mess. She wondered if Cass would look sick, whether she would finally fail to outshine everyone else in the room. It was awful to hope for that, though.

  The car’s speaker system rang shrilly, Mum flashing up on the dashboard. Lauren took a deep breath before answering, injecting a smile into her voice.

  ‘Hi, Mum, how are you? Got any big plans for tonight?’

  ‘Plans? We’ll get fish and chips and watch the fireworks on the telly, same as every year. What are you talking about?’

  Of course. No wonder I’m boring. It’s in my genes.

  ‘We were going to ask if you wanted to join us, sweetheart. How are you?’ Her mother’s voice dripped with sympathy, and it made Lauren’s organs itch.

  ‘I’m fine, Mum. Honestly. Feeling good … new year, fresh slate and all that.’ She pretended to believe it. That was the key to being a good lawyer, after all. Truth was relative. She hadn’t liked that part of the job at all. Which explained why she’d ended up where she had.

  ‘Lauren, your husband just left you for a younger woman. At Christmas.’

  ‘I said I’m fine.’ Her teeth were hurting. She must have been grinding them in her sleep again.

  ‘No one would be fine after that. Why all this proud, brave stuff? We’re family. Come home to us.’

  Martha Martinez was not a woman people often said no to. She was capable of muffling their excuses with love, until they couldn’t find a single reason to disappoint the lovely woman with the constant frown lines on her forehead.

  It was the reason she’d so often escaped to her grandmother as a teenager. Her abuela’s home was warm, she was greeted with a bear hug and no one ever looked at her like she was a disappointment. Although maybe if her abuela was still around to see what a mess she’d made of her marriage, she’d feel differently. But at least she would have had back-up against her mum. No one else stood up to Martha.

  Lauren often felt like her mother took up all the air in the room, and then siphoned it off to whoever she felt was deserving enough. Her brother usually won that one. Just one of the reasons she’d feigned sickness on Christmas Day. Hearing about her brother’s impressive cases (he was a real lawyer, according to her parents) as a barrister, which news site had featured him, who he had helped. Then, dealing with her perfect sister-in-law, bouncing their gorgeous dark-haired son on her knee, feeling the velvet of his baby cheeks as he gripped her finger … it would have killed her.

  ‘I can’t, Mum, I’ve got plans tonight.’

  Her mother was rarely silent. It sat heavily between them, like a bowling ball, trundling down a lane towards its target. Lauren counted backwards from ten and waited for the impact.

  ‘Please don’t tell me you’re going to beg him to come back to you. The idiot wants to go, let him go. It’s embarrassing enough to be left, darling. Don’t let him make you pathetic.’

  That your entry speech for Mother of the Year Awards, Ma? Lauren said nothing, and wondered if one day she’d bite her tongue so hard her mouth would fill with blood.

  ‘I don’t want him back, Mum.’ She was surprised to find she was telling the truth.

  ‘Well, good,’ Martha seemed marginally appeased. ‘Don’t you forget what he did to you. You called me drunk out of your mind at three in the morning on Boxing Day, howling about how you drove him away because you wanted a baby. I don’t want to see you that broken again.’

  Lauren twitched her mouth to release the tension and pretended to be fine. ‘I remember. I don’t want him. In fact, I wish him a lifetime of happiness with the teenager he’s in love with. She can deal with washing his pants and making his dinner and listening to him whine about not getting promoted. See how long the magic lasts then.’

  Martha laughed, and Lauren relaxed. Her mother always liked when she was sassy. She preferred her when she acted more like a conqueror, less like a victim. More like Cass.

  ‘So where are you going? Taking yourself for a spa break? A good idea to get away and get refreshed. Though maybe you want to start thinking about money if you’ll be getting divorced soon …’

  Lauren winced at the d-word, a sharp little pain in her chest. She wanted to blame it on the coffee that morning, but she couldn’t. Divorced before thirty. Excellent. What a waste of an expensive party.

  ‘Actually, I’m going to see Cassidy.’

  Martha’s gasp was a little dramatic for Lauren’s taste. Her mother had loved Cass. She was always going on about how beautiful she was, how elegant and stylish and bold. Cass wouldn’t have dreamed of being a human rights lawyer and ended up being a conveyancing solicitor. Cass wouldn’t have been left for someone younger and more beautiful. And if someone had been stupid enough to leave Cass, she wouldn’t have stayed in her house, screaming like a banshee, asking what she’d done to deserve it. She would have gone out and found someone new, evening out the playing field. Only fair.

  Cass was big on fairness – crimes had to be paid, sins atoned for. Actions balanced the scale. Their friendship was a timeline peppered with Cass’s offerings of apology, from a can of Diet Coke on the side in the morning to a box of doughnuts decorated with pink nipples (she’d borrowed, and lost, Lauren’s best bra). Some were more labour intensive, like the hand-drawn cartoon of their friendship, from meeting in the nightclub all the way through to graduation.

  Lauren’s favourite apology remained the beautiful copy of Alice in Wonderland, a hardback with gold leaf edges on the pages. That one was because Lauren had an anxiety attack in her first law exam and Cass had said she was overreacting. She’d expected the quiet, comforting voice Cass always offered, the thumb in the middle of her palm. The soothing words that told her it would all be fine, that she could do anything. Instead, she was told to stop worrying, like it was something she could control. The same words everyone else had always used. The book had been placed outside her room, wrapped in a purple ribbon. On the inside cover was an inscription, the closest thing to a written apology. Down the rabbit hole, we’ll
go together, it read, in Cass’s wayward scrawl.

  They were always impressive, these tokens, dependable and preferable to the empty words and awkward silences. The insistence that everything was okay when it wasn’t. They had found their balance. Cass would mess up, and then she would make it right. That was the way it always been.

  Except for that last apology. There had only been words, and words weren’t enough. Nothing would have been enough to undo that mistake. Except, Lauren hoped, maybe time.

  Her mother’s squawking brought her back to the present. ‘Oh my goodness, all this time, and now Cassidy is back again? How is she?’ Martha’s excitement was untempered, and Lauren couldn’t bear to burst her bubble.

  ‘She’s … she’s reaching out. And I thought it was time.’

  ‘Yes, whatever it was you girls fell out about, it probably all seems very silly now, doesn’t it?’

  It most certainly did not. But it seemed less important. In the scheme of things.

  ‘You never did say what happened between the two of you …’

  ‘And if I’ve held out this long, why break a habit?’ Lauren clenched the steering wheel.

  ‘Do you remember that time she told me off because I said you’d put on weight? She stood up and said, “Mrs Martinez, I know I’m a guest in your home, but your daughter is the most wonderful person I know, and she doesn’t need to be criticised like that.” Do you remember?’ Martha laughed. Okay, so maybe one other person besides her grandmother stood up to Martha.

  I remember you scowling and coming into my room later that evening to say how embarrassed you were and that I needed to exercise more so I didn’t put you in that situation again. Lauren held her tongue, as always.

  ‘She was a good friend. She always stuck up for me,’ Lauren said dully.

  ‘Well you always needed someone like Cassidy, didn’t you? I’m so glad you found her at university or you would have stayed in your room and done nothing!’

  ‘I might have got a first instead of a 2:1.’

  ‘Yes, you would have spent three years with your head buried in books, crying because you had no friends. You don’t always make it easy, you know, being so quiet. You don’t let people get to know you. You’re lucky Cassidy put in the time.’

  It was a talent her mother had, managing to pinpoint her fears so terrifically, amplifying them until they were obvious. As if Lauren hadn’t spent all these years hating herself for how grateful she’d been, for how much she’d depended on her one friend. How angry she was that one person in the world had seen her properly, without criticism, and then she was gone and Lauren had no one else. It was hardly what she wanted to be thinking about right now.

  ‘Well, I’ve got to go, Mum. I’ll give you a call when I’m home. Say happy New Year to Dad for me, okay? I love you.’

  ‘You too, darling. Give my love to Cassidy, tell her I’ve missed her.’

  Lauren rolled her eyes. ‘I will.’

  ‘And Lauren? Tell her you’ve missed her too.’ Martha laughed and hung up, and Lauren couldn’t help but snort at her mother. She would not tell her she’d missed her. Even if it was true.

  Blackpool. Bloody Blackpool. They’d gone to university in Hertfordshire. Cass had grown up in North London. So how the hell had she ended up in Blackpool? Lauren conjured visions of Cass standing in the cold, shepherding kids on and off dodgems or a tired carousel. Would that be her life now? When she left all those years ago, Lauren had imagined her on a beach in Greece, dressed in jewels and designer swimsuits, endlessly adored by rich muscled men. Not in a grey, rainy town by the sea, lit up with tacky lights and strewn with L-plates and feather boas.

  The Big Book sat on the passenger seat next to her, infinitely worn, with its thumbed pages and fraying black leather cover. It was a book of un-lived dreams, and she pushed it under her coat when she caught sight of it out of the corner of her eye. Who would want to do that to themselves, look back at all the things they failed to achieve? A lot of it had been travel, she remembered that much. They had been obsessed with all the places the world could offer.

  She had been on holidays with Darren. But they tended to be four-star hotels at all-inclusive resorts, where you never saw the people who lived there, never had anything but buffets and booze and commenting on the scenery. They went to wonderful countries and stripped away the culture until there was just a pool and a sunset. It always made her feel a little uncomfortable, but Darren had a thing for luxury. ‘They’ve made it the best of both worlds,’ he’d say, ‘why wouldn’t you want that?’ Why would she want to backpack across India and sleep in hostels when she could be here, in Mauritius, sipping Mai Tais? Why cycle through Vietnam when she could be on a beach in Mexico? Somewhere down the line, she had stopped craving adventure, focusing instead on home and family, preparing for the next part of their journey together.

  If she’d known how it would all end, maybe she would have gone backpacking. Although the idea of being brave enough to do that without Cass was laughable. Her, by herself, out in the world? Impossible.

  Lauren turned down a few streets, trundling along at a slower pace than she needed to. Under a grey sky, with winds rattling canopies and rain spitting on the floor, Blackpool looked post-apocalyptic. Lauren counted five people, sitting grumpily in a café, nursing cups of tea and shivering. Everything looked so incredibly normal.

  She wondered what Cass’s home would be like. It was easier than imagining her response when she opened the door. Her house would likely be a hippie den with oversized cushions and bright fabrics, the way her room had looked at uni. Cass was always getting into feng shui, or crystals, something pretty with a side of spiritual, before dropping it again. Her mum had been the same.

  Barbara ‘Babs’ Jones had been an actress, model, backing singer, air hostess, aromatherapist, agony aunt and reiki healer. And those were the ones she’d stuck at for more than six months. In between those, Lauren was sure she remembered Cass talking about the failed doggy spa, selling health shakes and writing a couple of Mills and Boon-esque stories for magazines. Cass’s mum had been fascinating, so different to her own straightforward mother. Barbara always looked effortless, it was something in the chin. It said ‘no offence, but I don’t care what you think of me’. An inherent confidence lived in the Jones women’s bones, made plain by hand movements and head tilts. Lauren had craved it so badly when she first met Cass that once she recognised it as a series of traits, she spent hours in the mirror trying to figure out the reasoning behind the magic. But, alas, it wasn’t for the likes of her. It was just who they were, as natural as breathing.

  Barbara loved an audience, she was always ready to hand you a glass of wine and tell you a hilarious story about a time she was in Bombay on a movie set, or Nicaragua, volunteering. She had fit a lot of life into her life. She’d died young, too. And still, not as young as Cass would be. God, that was a horrible thought. Lauren physically shook it away as she gripped the steering wheel.

  There it was. She pulled the car over and just looked. The street was leafy and pleasant, the little Victorian terrace was grey, with white window frames and a tiny paved entrance. There was nothing about it that told her Cass might live there, except the little evil eye that hung in the top corner of the doorframe. They’d got them in Turkey that first summer together, solid blue glass with a white eye painted on top. She touched it as she approached the door, fingertips chilled by the glass.

  Lauren was quite sure she was going to vomit. The only way to put it off was to repeat, ‘It’s not a big deal, it’s not a big deal,’ over and over, until the words ceased to make sense. The rhythm was comforting, and she echoed it as she knocked on the door. Five seconds passed, and then five more. She knocked again, tapping her foot as she counted another five seconds. Okay, well … she wasn’t in. The relief of an anticlimax dripped from her fingertips. She would get back in her car, and go home. Maybe spend a night in a hotel by the service station. Surely those wouldn’t be booked up on New Year’s Eve? Enjoy some tiny room-service bottles and rubbish TV. She could even retrieve the Big Book from her car, leave it on Cass’s doorstep as a gift. A sign that she came, that she tried—