Honeybee, page 2
‘It’s weird being here, isn’t it?’ she says. ‘Have you been back … since?’ I assume she’s referring to my dad’s funeral. He died, quite suddenly, when I was fifteen. It was one of the things that brought Renée and me together all those years ago: her mum dying, my dad. Two unlikely friends bonding over grief. Is that beautiful or horribly depressing, I have no idea.
‘No. Luckily, no.’ I just want to leave now, squashing down the memory of Dad’s coffin disappearing. The overwhelming restraint it took me not to smash it open and drag him outside.
‘I have. We did Nana’s funeral here. She died a few years ago.’
‘Yes, I heard,’ I say, feeling guilty for never contacting her about it. I wanted to, I just couldn’t. Not after everything that happened between us. ‘Sorry to hear that, she was a lovely lady.’
‘It’s so strange that Sally, my mum, your dad, Nana and Pop all ended up in the same oven. Maybe us too, one day,’ Renée says, staring aimlessly towards the front.
‘Well, that’s a morbid thought,’ I say, turning and looking at her properly for the first time. She’s still as pretty as she ever was. Her cheeks the perfect amount of chubby, her nose splattered with freckles. Her dark brown hair is scrunched up into a messy bun, with a multicoloured scrunchie holding it together. I know her well enough to understand that each bit of hair hanging down is meticulously chosen and separated from the rest, framing her face in a way that looks natural but is no accident. ‘Organised chaos’ is how Renée once described her appearance. It suits her perfectly.
‘Depends how you look at it. It’s only a morbid thought if we didn’t live great lives,’ she says. ‘We can’t fight the fact we are going to die; we just have to make sure we have the best time before we do.’
‘I suppose.’
‘Which is why we should probably go to the pub and get drunk,’ she says, every bit the chancer she always was.
‘Bloody hell, Renée. You think I’m just going to forgive you for everything you said?’
‘Language, Flo. Your best friend Jesus won’t like it,’ she says, winking. ‘Or did you ignore him for three years too?’
‘Actually, Renée, I had an epiphany about faith all by myself. I moved on because of an educated decision that I made. It served me for a while and gave me what I needed, OK? Anyway, what are you doing here?’ I ask, deflecting.
‘Oh, you know. I can never miss a party. Can we leave? I’m a bit creeped out by Sally being behind that curtain.’
We head outside. The rest of the funeral guests start to disappear down the hill. My giant suitcase is still where I left it.
‘What twat left that there?’ Renée says, as I reach for its handle. ‘Oh, sorry.’
‘I flew in this morning. A bit last-minute, but looks like I’ll be back in Guernsey for a while. I was in London, but it didn’t work out.’ I immediately regret saying that.
‘London? When did you move there?’
‘A couple of months ago, after uni finished.’
‘And why didn’t it work out?’
‘It just didn’t.’ I walk away, my suitcase making a horribly loud noise as I drag it. ‘I’ll go back in a few weeks and …’
‘And what? Why do you need to go back if it didn’t work out?’
‘I’ll have to … God, do you know what, it’s none of your business Renée.’ I storm off down the hill, my suitcase filling the silent graveyard with an intolerable rumble. As the hill gets steeper it starts to overtake me, moving so fast I will have to let go or I’ll fall. ‘Shit, no!’ I shout, running after it. Renée follows me.
‘I’ll get it,’ she says, launching herself at the case. It falls flat with her on top and eventually grinds to a halt. She is laughing hysterically; I stand over her and the giggles make their way to me too.
‘What have you got in here, a dead body?’
‘Renée, not OK in a graveyard!’ I tell her, laughing. ‘Who throws themselves at a moving suitcase?’ I want to add that I’ve really missed her, but I keep that to myself.
‘This is quite a niche catastrophe. Splayed across a suitcase in a graveyard. That sounds like an indie song lyric. “I’ve been splaaayed across a suitcase in a gra-a-vyaaarrrd!”’ she sings through giggles. I roll my eyes as she stands up and dusts herself off. ‘Come for a drink?’ she asks. ‘I’ve got Aunty Jo’s van. It smells like a goat’s anus but it gets you from A to Pub. If we decide to get on it, I can just leave it in town overnight. It doesn’t lock, but no one will nick it because of the whole anus thing.’
I don’t want to go home, back to Mum’s. She didn’t even bother waiting for me at the airport, so she can get lost as far as I’m concerned. Who else doesn’t see their mum right away after being away for months? Renée, I suppose. And now I am reminded of why we became friends in the first place. I pick up my suitcase. ‘I’ll come for a drink,’ I say, walking away, hiding my smile.
It was easier to deny myself of Renée while I was on the mainland, but it seems like our friendship is growing out of the ground here. It’s in the sky, it’s in the sea, it’s in this graveyard. Embers of our history are scattered all over the island. I suppose it’s worth one last try to rekindle it.
‘Goat’s anus?’ I say, my hangover tapping me on the shoulder again. ‘I suppose hair of the dog won’t hurt.’
Renée
Even parking on the Crown Pier with Flo gives me butterflies. It’s like déjà vu, or something. Like we’re following the tracks of our old lives, but observing ourselves from a distance. As we walk along the harbour wall, I look at her and it kind of takes my breath away. Same old Flo, but different. Her hair is long and brown. She’s tall and slim. In fact, she hasn’t really changed physically, except her black clothes look a lot nicer than the things she used to wear. She’s lost the puppy fat on her cheeks that we all had when we lived on chippie chips and mayonnaise after school. She looks good, actually. Pretty. Maybe even beautiful, if she’d only believe it. That was always her problem.
There was a time Flo and I knew everything about each other. But she’s been off, living in London, being so grown-up. I’m a bit intimidated by it, she’s got this new self-assurance. I like it, I think. But it’s weird.
We walk into the Ship and Crown, order two Bloody Marys and sit down at what used to be our table. ‘It hasn’t changed at all,’ I say, as we both look around.
‘You did that,’ Flo says, pointing to a hole in the stool she’s sitting on. ‘You stabbed it with your tweezers because you wanted to pull out the stuffing and put it into your belly button to make some stupid joke about belly fluff. God you were weird. Do you still never leave the house without your tweezers?’
I pull my tweezers out of my bag and we both laugh.
‘I remember doing it. We were chatting to that guy with the massive beer belly. Do you remember him, he was always in here, he sat over … oh my GOD!’
We both turn in the direction of the guy’s old seat and there he is, still sitting there. Still drinking a pint of Breda, the local Guernsey beer. Still a huge beer belly. Still alone.
‘Fuck me that’s depressing,’ I say, watching him gulp down his beer. ‘I thought my life hadn’t gone anywhere. He’s been staring at that wall this whole time.’
‘I swear he used to wear that actual T-shirt. Wow, that is really tragic,’ says Flo. ‘At least you’ve managed to get changed.’
‘Yeah, go me! Do you still only wear black?’ I ask, sipping my Bloody Mary. It’s quite spicy and makes my nose itch.
‘Mostly. Did you not get the memo about wearing black to a funeral?’
I look down at my navy jumper and dark denim jeans. ‘I thought there would be more people and it would go unnoticed.’
‘You thought being the only person not wearing black in a roomful of people wearing black would make you go unnoticed?’
I raise my shoulders.
‘You never want to go unnoticed, Renée.’
I smirk. She’s right. ‘I turned up to pay my respects to someone who once gave me a dog poo wrapped in kitchen paper for my birthday. My presence was enough, she didn’t quite warrant a new outfit.’
‘What did you wear to Nana’s funeral?’
‘I wore one of her dresses from the Seventies. Aunty Jo did too. It was special, Sally didn’t deserve it. Also, I can’t get into it any more because I’ve been stress-eating since my best friend stopped answering my calls.’
There is a silence. Then some drinking. Then some more silence. There’s a big conversation to have, possibly even a fight, and my guess is that we both feel like we need a drink before we go there.
‘I’m sorry I wasn’t there, I …’
‘It’s OK, I didn’t need you to be there. It was for family, you know? Small. I had a few moments where I realised I’d lost almost everyone, either because they’d died, or they didn’t want anything to do with me. I felt quite liberated, in a way. One less person to worry about. One less person to disappoint. After the funeral, we all went back to Aunty Jo’s, I made polite chats with some of Nana’s friends. She hadn’t made a particular impact on anyone. She just sort of lived and then didn’t. I went back to Spain, to Dad’s, with a new energy after that, determined to make my mark on the world, you know?’
‘Well, she created your mum and Aunty Jo, and that led to you. So I wouldn’t say Nana didn’t make an impact. That’s a pretty good legacy, don’t you think?’
That was a nice thing for Flo to say. I smile, to show my appreciation. She smiles back, because she loves me really, even if she might not want to admit it quite yet.
‘How did your “new energy” work out for you in Spain?’ she asks, finishing her drink. I’m barely three fingers into mine.
‘I had loads of meaningless sex, drank over four million shots of sambuca and accepted that my dad doesn’t love me. So great, it went fucking great,’ I say, dealing with the spicy nose and downing my drink.
‘I’m sorry Renée.’
‘Yup. I went there to bond with him and left feeling like a total stranger. And if I mentioned Mum, he looked at me like I was trying to destroy his marriage to Maria. Like, to mention my dead mother was to bring a past so dark into his present happiness that it would shatter everything.’ I stop talking to let the trauma run though me. ‘What fucks with me the most is that he’s such a good husband to Maria, and a great dad to my stepbrothers. It’s hard to see the person who has basically abandoned me emotionally be full of love for his other family. I have shame, but didn’t do anything wrong. Like, with men I just automatically feel dirty and damaged. I really tried to fix it, but I was just this annoyance trying to tag onto their perfect lives. So, I fucked around instead. You know me, got an answer for everything.’
‘What about Nell?’ Flo asks, noticing her glass is empty.
Nell is my younger sister, we’ve never been that close. ‘She needs love in a different way. She hates affection or intimacy, so her just being able to live with Dad is enough. Sometimes I’d watch him blatantly ignore her as he spent time with his other kids, and she’d not mention it. But I could see it hurt her. I think she’s so scared of losing him that she just takes whatever she can. God, FAMILIES. It’s so depressing.’
‘Not as depressing as my dad being baked in the same oven as Sally de Putron.’
‘You win,’ I say. We raise our glasses and clink them together.
‘How’s Abi?’ Abi is Flo’s little sister. There’s a fair age gap between Abi and Flo, but they get on really well.
‘She’s amazing; she seems to have got through Dad’s death totally unscathed. And, well, Mum still treats her like the golden child, so she’s a high-achiever at school and not wracked with self-loathing like the rest of us. She’s an amazing kid, I’m really proud of her.’
‘And I’m proud of you, Flo. Honestly, you’ve had a rough relationship with your mum and look at you now. Back on the island in a pub with me, pretending she doesn’t exist. Strong, healthy work.’ We clink our glasses again. We always bonded over how broken we were, it’s nice to know we still can.
‘There aren’t many people I can talk to about this, thank you,’ I say, meaning it with all my heart.
‘You’re welcome,’ Flo says. ‘From one abandoned puppy to another. I guess there has to be a point in life where you stop hoping your parents will change and you just get on with things?’
‘I agree. I feel like I could fight for Dad’s love forever and then he’ll just die, and it would all have been for nothing.’
‘OK, well that’s the most morbid thing I’ve ever heard,’ Flo says, waving at a blonde girl behind the bar and asking for a bottle of wine. I watch her while she pours it into our glasses. She keeps going until it’s almost to the rim.
‘Flo, I’m sorry for everything I said in Nottingham. I’ve regretted it for years, and I’ve missed you.’
She looks at her glass and says nothing.
I’d gone to visit Flo at uni, gotten drunk, said some things I shouldn’t. I remember calling her ‘boring’ and ‘unadventurous’ because she just stayed cooped up the whole time. I think, deep down, I was jealous of her newfound freedom. And it made me angry that she wasn’t out, meeting people, seizing the day. It was one of those arguments that felt insignificant at the time. I hadn’t known I was risking losing my best friend.
‘I had no right to criticise you. And look, nothing about my life is how I want it to be. I’m back here living in Guernsey because I have nowhere else to go. I’m going to have to get some shitty job and see people who are thriving while I am floundering. I don’t want to do any of it. I feel like a total drop-out and I can’t tell you how good it feels to be with you right now. Please forgive me.’
She looks at me sternly at first, and then pitifully.
‘You really hurt me. And not for the first time, I—’
I reach for her hand across the table. ‘Please Flo, we’re both back on the island. Great things ahead of us. Think of it as a sign from the universe.’
Eventually she reaches back, a small smile appearing. It’s not quite forgiveness, but maybe we’re close.
We both look up as a man appears at our table. He is staring at me and it’s weird. ‘Yeah, can I help you?’ I ask him, in my toughest voice. I hate how men think they can interrupt two female friends who are talking, it’s so rude.
‘I’m sorry if this sounds strange,’ he says. Flo and I roll our eyes and wait for whatever pathetic chat-up line he’s come up with. Gross, he can’t be less than fifty. ‘But are you Helen Sargent’s daughter?’
Immediately, Flo squeezes my hand. My face burns up, I can feel it turning red. My heart starts racing and it takes everything I have not to cry.
‘Um, I am. Yes. Why?’
The man smiles so sweetly. ‘I knew your mum. I knew her very well.’ He blushes. They clearly dated. My heart stops pounding. ‘You look so much like her. I saw you walk in and I knew right away that you must be her daughter, or at least related. It took my breath away. I was so fond of your mother, she was a wonderful woman. Beautiful and very funny. I’m John, by the way.’
He holds out his hand for me to shake, I put my sweaty palm in his. ‘Renée. This is my best friend, Flo.’
‘Hiya,’ Flo says, also shaking his hand.
‘I’ll leave you to it, it was lovely meeting you, Renée. You are beautiful, just like your mum. I’ll be happy all day having seen you. Goodbye.’
‘Goodbye, John.’
I watch him walk away. A lump in my throat pushing tears up to my eyes. I am completely overcome; this island is haunted by my life, but not always in a bad way. I don’t know what to do except run into the toilets and burst into tears. Mad thoughts running through my head. Why couldn’t she have married him? That nice man could have been my dad. I look in the mirror, and I see her. He’s right, I am so like her. I have her face, her hair, her blood. I could be sick from missing her. Flo bursts in.
‘Renée, my God, are you OK? That was wild. Amazing, really. Beautiful, but my God, are you OK? If someone did that to me about my dad, I think I’d throw up on the spot.’
‘I’m OK,’ I say, both hands on the basin, trying to regulate my breath. Flo strokes my back. It takes a few minutes, but I get myself together. Long breaths out. A splash of water on my face. I’m OK, I’m OK.
Flo has gone quiet. ‘Renée, look.’ She points at the toilet door, and there, scratched by my tweezers are the words, ‘Renée and Flo 4ever.’ We just stand there, staring, until finally I can speak again.
‘Come back to Aunty Jo’s with me,’ I say. ‘We can sleep head to toe and pretend the last three years never happened. For old times’ sake?’
‘But my mum …’
‘“I guess there has to be a point where you stop hoping your parents will change and you just get on with your life”,’ I say, quoting her, raising my eyebrows.
‘OK, I’ll come,’ she says. ‘But I’ll sleep on the floor. I don’t want to be anywhere near your feet. Are you sure you’re OK?’
‘Yeah, I’m fine. I mean, it was lovely, it just shocked me. You know? He recognised me, isn’t that amazing?’
‘It really is,’ she says, linking arms with me. ‘Come on, let’s go. I can’t wait to meet Aunty Jo’s goats.’
2
Renée
It’s 9 a.m. the next morning and I’m sitting in the kitchen with Aunty Jo. She’s cooking Flo and me bacon and eggs. Flo is yet to appear. She was out for the count when I climbed over her in bed. It must have been the Bacardi I’d grabbed from Aunty Jo’s drinks cupboard when we got back from the pub. Flo started doing shots of it when we’d run out of Coke. I couldn’t face it.
‘I knew you guys would work it out one day,’ Aunty Jo says, over the sound of the kettle boiling and bacon sizzling in a pan. Being back here is heaven. She’s the coolest, kindest, most loving person I’ve ever met in my life. She can’t do enough for me; it’s always been that way. I think, in many ways, she saved my life. After Mum died, Nell and I lived with Nana and Pop, and things were so hard. They were too old to deal with teenage girls, it was exhausting for us all. And then Aunty Jo appeared, like a real-life angel. She moved back to Guernsey, and I went to live with her instead and it felt like a thousand tons had been taken off my shoulders. She’s so like Mum, she even smells like her. I mean, Mum smelled mostly of Chanel No.5, but every now and then, before Aunty Jo has a shower and before she cleans out the chicken coop or mucks out the goats, I get this whiff of her. Her real, natural smell, so powerful that for one moment I can sense Mum’s skin against my cheek. Her arms around me. Her gentle ‘I love yous’ in my ear. I’d do anything to feel that safe again.
