‘I’m so sorry.’ Zoe looked up from her spot, lying across the foot of our bed. She looked younger without make-up on, but there were red marks circling her eyes.
‘Don’t be.’ I moved to sit beside her, bed sheets still pulled close, stroking her hair the way I had when her wildness had taken her too far. Like everyone else, Sam had egged her on at first, but now that we were getting more serious, it kind of felt like Zoe should be doing the same, like maybe it was time for us all to start growing up, preparing for what was next.
‘What’s the matter?’ I asked, pretty sure I already knew the answer.
‘My dad got in touch.’ She confirmed my thoughts with tear-stung eyes.
‘Thought so.’ I nodded, stroking her again. Zoe’s dad had left their family just months before we’d started university. It was messy and so was processing it. That was why I had never questioned her partying or never wanting to settle down; life could be unpredictable. I knew I was lucky mine was so stable, my future with Sam so clear.
‘What did he say?’ I asked, quietly, conscious Sam was waiting outside, but knowing I’d move mountains to give Zoe all the time in the world.
‘Not a lot.’ She shrugged, tears falling freely. ‘Not enough.’
I held her tighter as she sobbed.
‘I’m sorry.’ She wiped her tears with the back of her hand. ‘I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt your morning… I didn’t mean to…’
‘Zoe.’ I held her hand in mine. ‘We’re best friends.’ I smiled down at her, wanting to fix everything but knowing I couldn’t. But for every promise her dad couldn’t keep, I knew I could at least make one. ‘Crack of dawn to the middle of the night and every bloody minute in between.’ I squeezed her hand tightly in mine. ‘You’ll always be my priority.’ New tears brimmed in her eyes as a smile spread across her wet cheeks.
‘And,’ she whispered weakly, before salvaging some strength, ‘you’ll always be mine.’
Chapter 15
3 August 2020 – Sydney, Australia
I dragged myself off the bus and stepped into the evening in Coogee. The streets were alive with groups of friends, joggers and commuters happy to be on this side of work. I leaned against the back of the wooden bus shelter and looked out across the sea. My eyes traced the burnt horizon as I tried to recapture the feeling I’d left work with: useful, wanted. Zoe was busy, she was at work. And she was still worried about me, she still cared. Not that she needed to be worried. I’d had a good day, seen Sam, I’d even made my way back from Woolloomooloo alone. I had a job – kind of. I’d be out of his apartment by the end of the week, for sure. Everything was going to work out. It had to. Walking on the pavement, tracing its way along the beach, I looked upwards at the endless ascent before me. Jamie would just take a cab, too gorgeous to break a sweat anywhere but her early morning runs. But then I wasn’t Jamie. I wasn’t a doctor with legs for days. I had to walk – or rather climb – step by step. At least this time, Sam wasn’t around to see it.
‘Jess?’
Shit. I turned to find the tall, slender figure of Jamie’s friend beside me, the one who seemed to share her ability to eat pancakes without gaining an ounce of weight.
‘Alice?’ I asked, as I put one leg in front of the other and tried not to cry from the blisters. Alice’s long limbs stretched out beside me, making the climb look effortless. ‘Good day?’ I asked, accentuating the question mark to differentiate from the fact I wasn’t just saying hello again. I would fit in here if it killed me, which, judging by this mountain, it might. She smiled as I willed the redness of my cheeks away.
‘Busy but good.’ Alice gave a brief nod; but of course, it was going to be busy if you worked as a doctor and still insisted on going for early morning runs. ‘How about you?’
‘It was, actually,’ I said, trying not to sound too surprised or give too much away; I knew anything I said about lunch would get back to Jamie quicker than you could say ‘Big V’.
‘You’re helping with the Leo Todd thing, right?’ Alice asked. News sure did travel fast – was there anyone in their circle who wasn’t also in the loop?
‘Yeah.’ I grinned, trying to catch my breath. ‘Just for a bit. You into art?’ I asked, keen to keep the conversation on safe ground, nowhere near Jamie, even further from Sam.
‘A little,’ she said, not bothered or breathless. ‘Anything that gets me out of the hospital.’ She shrugged. ‘Maybe we can go for a culture-binge sometime?’ I glanced down to her pin-legs; evidently culture was the only binge Alice would be having anytime soon. I shrugged away the offer, cursing myself for how much I wanted to be her friend, anyone’s friend here.
‘So, you work in a hospital?’ I asked in an attempt at small talk. Thankfully, she took the bait, chatting about her day in a blur of patients, drugs, sickness and health, as I put one wrecked foot in front of the other until the turn-off to Oberon was blissfully in sight.
‘This is me.’ I slowed to a halt where the street met the main road. Alice looked back at me, her long brown hair pulled to one side.
‘Me too.’ She smiled. Oh, they were neighbours; I guess that made their decision to run together at dawn make a little more sense. I continued down the drive towards Sam and Jamie’s with Alice’s footsteps behind me. ‘I’m not stalking you,’ she laughed. ‘I’m having dinner round yours tonight.’ Alice smiled, narrowing her all-knowing eyes, but what could she know? In any case, it was kind of her to refer to it as mine when it was clearly anything but. As I turned my key in the door to let us both in, the sound of chatter and music coming from the kitchen-living room filled the corridor before me. Shit, shit, shit. That was why Alice was here. Jamie’s church friends were round. And I’d told Sam I would be out, suggested I had my own friends to hang out with now. I froze, the door still open behind us, as I tried to work out if I could turn around and escape. It wasn’t that I had anything against the said church friends, or even against church in general. It just wasn’t really for me. Apart from the odd Carols by Candlelight, the last time I had stepped foot in one, I had ended up being kicked out of a Remembrance Day memorial service with the Brownies (apparently turning the collection bag into a hand puppet was not a funny joke) and I hadn’t really given it a chance since. But I’d given it a hell of a lot more of a chance than Sam. Where me and church seemed to have come to an agreement that we were better off as long-distance, see-them-once-a-year-at-Christmas friends, Sam had actively had a problem with it – a reluctance to entertain any mystery he couldn’t understand. Just seeing him nodding along with Jamie, getting passionate about her perspective in a way he never could with me made me want to run in the other direction, blisters be damned. I hadn’t even taken my shoes off; if I could just turn around and sneak back out maybe they’d never know I was here. Before I could act, Alice shouted, ‘We’re here!’ just as another familiar face poked his head around the arch into the hallway, his floppy surfer’s fringe falling effortlessly to one side.