Danger's Edge

9 Hours

I pull back a chair from the solid pine dining set and sit down. The kitchen has loads of fitted storage units and appliances. I tell Alesha where everything is kept.

While the tea is brewing, she pulls open the fridge and lifts a plastic bottle towards her face. Her nose crinkles, her face taking on a distasteful frown. “Ugh, I’m afraid this milk is off.” She holds the bottle at arm’s length, inspecting the label. “It’s well out of date. I’ll pour it down the sink.” Looking around her, she adds, “The bread’s mouldy, too, or I’d have made toast. Can you take your tea black? I’m okay with it that way.”

“I can, but we don’t need to.” I point to a larder unit. “There should be a carton or two of UHT long-life milk if you’re okay with it. I don’t feel like food just now, but I have some bread in the freezer if you would like some.”

We sit across from each other at the table, with our drinks. Alesha puts her hand on mine in a friendly, comforting gesture. When I consider, it’s difficult for me to accept that I hardly knew her before today. I feel like we’ve been friends for years. In these last few hours, she’s become privy to my situation and been present through my interview, hearing some of my most intimate secrets and witnessing my fears. She’s been unbelievably supportive and a good confidante. Today has been one long nightmare, and I don’t think I could have coped without her help. For now, I’m happy to sit here in her company, doing nothing.

“When we were waiting for you at the clinic, I got talking to Jenny,” she starts. “She told me you’ve known each other since school.”

“Yes, we first met at secondary. It must be…” I pause to think, “fourteen years ago now. We’ve been very close over the years. It’s almost as if we’re related. We know each other’s families quite well, too. We’ve holidayed together often, right back to our early teens. Jenny would come with, when Mum and Dad took me on vacation, and I sometimes went with her when her mother and brother went away. It meant we had twice as many holidays.”

Alesha smiled. “You were so lucky.”

“We were. We did everything together. There was a small group of us who were close friends. Tony, that’s Antoinette, and Karoline and Freida made up our little gang, but Jenny and I were especially close.” I think back, reminiscing, “We made a great team because Jenny was really smart, and I was the daring one.”

“What do you mean, daring?” Alesha asks.

“Oh, nothing significant. It was just that we liked to play practical jokes. We’d work out all sorts of pranks to play on our classmates and teachers. We’d think them up together, but more often than not it was me who carried them out.”

“Why was that?”

“As I said, Jenny was smart. She didn’t want to get caught.”

“So, you were the one who got caught?” Alesha asks, smiling.

“No. Hardly ever, actually. She may have been smart, but I was street smart. I nearly always escaped with no one knowing it was me, and even if they suspected, I could talk my way out of just about anything.”

“Sounds like good training for a career in marketing,” Alesha jibed.

I’m about to defend myself before realising she’s probably right. I laugh at the thought, aware it’s the first time I’ve had something to laugh at all day.

“What sort of things did you do?”

“Nothing special. Various wind-ups, or sending folk on a fool’s errand. One time, we had the entire class believing there’d been a news item about Iceland imminently sinking into the sea because of global warming. We embellished the story with add-ons like saying Bjork had been on television pleading for international aid.” I chuckle at the memory. “Because Jenny went along with the story, everyone believed it. You see, Jenny was very accomplished academically, always top of the class in science, and she was considered to be a bit of a dork. Because Jenny was agreeing it was true, everyone believed it.”

“How did you get away with that one?”

“It was quite easy because there were a lot of stories at the time about rising sea levels because of melting ice flows. It sounded quite credible. We both claimed someone had shown us an internet news feed which featured the story – fake news we’d call it now, I guess. By the end of the day, we had most of the class believing they’d seen the story themselves.”

Alesha laughs. “You must have been very popular at school.”

I take a moment to think. “I was, I suppose. I was lucky that way. Looking back, I had an easy time of it. I could achieve reasonable pass results without having to do much work. Also, my folks were quite comfortably off, so I always had the latest gadgets and fashionable clothes. Our gang was usually considered the in-group. Jenny wasn’t anywhere near as lucky. Her father died when she was very young, and her mother had a bit of a struggle to bring up the two kids on her own. They had to be careful with money.

“Besides, she sometimes doesn’t do herself any favours. She’s not unattractive. She has a pretty face and, until recently, we were the same size and shape. She’d often borrow clothes from me. We used to share lots of things. I think she’s put on a few pounds in the last few months and, as you may have noticed, she doesn’t wear cosmetics. Because she was very studious, she was considered a bit of a swot and, resulting from all of that, she suffered a lot of bullying. Being part of our little group helped because we looked after each other, but she had quite a hard time as a teenager.”

“Is there a reason why she doesn’t wear make-up?” Alesha asks.

“She says it’s an allergy thing, but she doesn’t like to talk about it. This has been going on for years, back since early high school. I’ve tried to convince her to investigate whether there are products she’d be more tolerant of, and it would have been easy for her to do now because she’s a qualified pharmacist, but she hasn’t been interested. Personally, I think she’s wanted to make herself different.”

“Maybe it’s a religious thing or a moral stance, you know, like being against animal testing,” Alesha says.

“No, I’m certain it’s nothing like that. She’d sometimes immerse herself in her studies, even though she was already miles ahead of the rest of the class. She didn’t seem to care that some kids thought she was a nerd.”

“That’s sad. Was she very unhappy?”

“I don’t believe so. What she did was self-imposed and there were lots of times we had great fun. We still do. She’s very kind and generous and she’s a great friend.”

Further discussion is curtailed when we hear the doorbell ring.

I lift the security entry phone, and when I hear Margaret’s voice, I buzz her in.