Brothers & Sisters - Charlotte Wood [81]
‘What are you doing here?’ I said.
My chair rocked on its wobbly legs. Klara gave me some answer about a connection to my cousin’s funeral as I tried to steady myself with my feet but found them jarring against the stubby carpet. A waiter came to collect the glasses and litter from the table. Once he had left, glasses in a ladder up his arm, the surface was still tacky with spilled beer and wine so that the underside of my arm peeled away from the table’s veneer like a strip of contact paper.
‘Natalie and I were at primary school together,’ Klara explained to her husband. ‘But my family moved to the country and we lost touch.’
I stared at her.
‘We used to be best friends,’ Klara said.
‘I came to visit you after you moved.’ I had to raise my voice against the clamour of the mourners. My glass was empty. Acid biting into my gut.
‘Did you? I’d forgotten,’ she said, tilting her head, still alert and birdy. She leaned sideways so that her shoulder rested against her husband’s chest. ‘Natalie was one of the smart ones at school. She’s probably a doctor now, or a lawyer or something.’
‘I stayed at your house for a week.’
She shook her head as if this was unbelievable to her. ‘I’ve got a terrible memory,’ she said. ‘Haven’t I, darling?’
‘You always remember where the credit card lives,’ her husband answered.
‘That’s because you let it live in my purse,’ she replied smartly and laughed.
Of course she couldn’t be like the old Klara. It was a kind of relief. This was not Klara. This person wouldn’t know the answer to the elephant riddle that used to make us laugh until we got a stitch. She wouldn’t know anything about us, or what happened.
On that day when we were twelve I eventually made my way back to the house. As I stumbled through the hot dry kitchen Klara’s mother asked me what had happened. ‘I fell over,’ I told her and she asked if I was hurt and I said no, just a bruise. ‘Are you sure, sweetheart?’ she asked me and I said yes, I was sure. She told me I should change my clothes and have another shower because I had dirt all down my back and in my hair and she didn’t want my mother thinking they hadn’t taken care of me. The hot water of the shower hurt me in every place. Afterwards I sat on the bed in Klara’s bedroom, wet hair dripping onto the eiderdown, waiting for my mother to arrive and take me home. Klara came and sat beside me. I was too exhausted to push her away. Klara’s mother put her head around the doorway and saw us sitting there side by side.
‘Oh, you darling girls are like a pair of beautiful dolls,’ she exclaimed.
Until that day I’d thought Klara was like a doll made of porcelain, that she was the one who would be easily broken.
‘I’m going to get another drink,’ I said to Klara and her husband.
I wouldn’t come back to the table. I would pretend to fall into conversation with someone on the way to the bar, then slip away home to try and gather everything close again.
‘I’ll have a G and T. Give Natalie some money, darling.’
‘No!’ I said too loudly. I pushed myself out of my seat and rushed into the crowd of people roaring and jostling elbows around the serving counter. Once I was surrounded by other people, I began to feel better. At the bar I ordered a shot of whisky and downed it on the spot. Above me, the racks of glasses jittered in time with the jukebox bass. I ordered another whisky and moved further along the bar, out of Klara’s line of vision, holding onto the counter with my fingers resting on its damp sticky towel because my legs were still shaking.
‘Natalie!’ A man in a grey suit with his tie loosened and his sleeves pushed up emerged from the crowd. He leaned across the bar and ordered himself a beer and me another whisky. He looked me up and down as if he was appraising my value, as if I was a piece of real estate.
‘You’re looking good,’ he said. He rigged his sleeves higher up his arms. Rolled his