Chapter 4

15th May 2006: 12:00 pm.

I was so fucking nervous, the drive back home I just wanted to tell Will the truth. We were no longer the three musketeers. That was the nickname that they had given us in college. We were always hanging out together, Emma and the pair of us. I’d met Will back in boarding school. He was too bright for his own good, which was why I had made him a friend from the start. I needed someone to help me with geometry, algebra - fuck all the damn courses - and it just came so naturally to Will. It was only later that I started to like him, classed him as my best friend, and he called me the brother that he’d never had. It was no secret that his mom was single who worked two jobs just to get him into boarding school. Until she could no longer afford it, and the school wanted to keep their reputation of being the best of the best. And keeping students like Will in their school was better for them than keeping students like me.

“Mother.” I smiled as she came to the library. Every month I’m forced to have Sunday lunch with my parents. I would have thought that after going to college, I would be let of the hook and no longer have to have these painful family experiences. Yet, Dad reminded me that if I wanted to be financially supported until the end of my course, then I needed to keep to traditions. I wanted to laugh as he spoke about it. Family. Traditions. It was as if he knew the meaning of the word, when I knew that he didn’t. We all knew about his dirty secret, but none of us spoke about it.

“Well, you still brought Will with you. I would have thought that seeing as you and that girl are serious about each other that she would have at least made an appearance.”

Will looked confused and I gave my mother a look. One that told her that I’d meant to tell Will about mine and Emma’s relationship, but I hadn’t got round to it. The timing never seemed right. I’d thought that I’d do it on the way here, but then I’d envisioned a weekend of him being upset about it, so I’d decided to do it on the drive back to college. In hindsight, I take after my father. He’s a coward when it comes to matters of the heart, just like me.

She walked up to Will and gave him two gracious kisses in the air by the side of the cheek. My mother saw it as a privilege to be air-kissed by her. She would never allow anyone to actually kiss her on the cheek in public, especially my father. She said that a lady should never be touched in public. Skin-to-skin was for people with no class and she had plenty of that, which was why she had a nickname of the ‘Ice Queen’.

“What girl?” Will winked at me. I’d had a reputation in boarding school and no doubt in college it hadn’t changed; commitment felt like a disease to me. Until last weekend with Emma. Will’s mom had fallen down some stairs at work, and we’d been alone in the dorm. We’d had one too many drinks and we’d had sex. Not just any ordinary sex, but mind-blowing sex. I’d said that I would talk to Will about it, and get him to understand that I wanted Emma, and not only for one night, but the rest of her life.

“Oh, the name escapes me.”

I hated my father for telling my mother. I’d made the mistake of telling him, when he’d called to remind me of lunch this weekend. He always called, trying to make sure that mother was happy. I told him that I was getting married after college, and when I mentioned Emma’s name, he’d known instantly about Will’s feelings about her. It was written on his face every time that Dad had visited me at college. Not often, but enough for him to know what was going on there and to make sure that I was studying, something that I rarely did. I’d told him, because I’d hoped that we would have a connection, a thing that I craved from time to time. Will would voice his disappointment in life at not having a father and I would look at mine, and wonder if I did have the benefit of having one, because at times he was like mother. As cold as ice.

“Nothing ever escapes you, Mrs. Rogers.” Will was smiling at me, but it soon changed to something different; a darkness that I never knew he possessed. Last year when his mom had told him that the neighbor, the one in their ten story council flat who was married to the check-out assistant in the local supermarket, Tesco’s, was his dad, he hadn’t blinked an eyelid. Instead, he’d simply told me that it was in the past. When we’d been accused of cheating in boarding school and he’d owned up and said that he was feeling stressed and had copied my paper, even though it was the other way round, he didn’t get upset when he was suspended for a week. Dad had let him stay at our house for taking the rap, and he’d said that Will was a good solider. Will knew me too well. Best friends for nearly ten years and I had never betrayed him until now.

“Emma!” My mother always clapped her hands together when a plan of hers came through, and she was looking directly at me. Coldly. Smiling. Pleased with her supposed innocent outburst. It was no secret that she detested Will. She hated anyone that wasn’t rich and from a known family. She used to say to me so many times when I was a teen, “Do you have to hang out with that boy? Can’t you find other friends who come from families like us?” That was when Dad had put his foot down. He’d said that she shouldn’t dictate everything in my life. Besides, he felt that Will stopped me from getting into trouble. I never understood what he meant until I was older. He meant that Will stopped me from being part of the wild parties. We went, but after a drink or two, we were just a couple of guys hanging out while the rest got drunk and wild. He was my ‘ying’ and I was his ‘yang’.

“Will, let me explain,” I pleaded as I grabbed his arm, before he left and things would change, not for the better but only for the worse.

“Fucking right! On the ride back home!”

His dark eyes looked at me as if I was something that he’d scraped off the bottom of his shoe.

Mother chased after us. “So you’re not staying for lunch?”

Her eyes darted innocently between Will and I.

She then scolded Will, “And you know I don’ t tolerate such language in my house!”

“Elizabeth, the fucking Ice Queen, you should have thought about that before you fucking opened your big mouth!”

I knew that there was a consequence for talking to my mother like that. But I didn’t care, she would go out of her way to make sure that I suffered as a result of it. Maybe she’d make sure that dad didn’t send me my usual monthly allowance, or she’d torture me by spending every weekend at college with me. Either way I didn’t care. I stopped as dad lingered by the door. His face was indifferent and I still didn’t fucking understand why he’d told her. Why tell her anything? I wanted to ask him, but I had other things to worry about. More important issues. Dad looked at me waving his hand and shouted, “Go after your friend. I’ll deal with your mother as usual.”

I wondered what he meant by that statement, but a part of me didn’t care, as I thought about my mother. She could fucking sit today and look at that empty seat, the one that I would usually occupy on her Sunday lunches. Because I wasn’t fucking coming back for them. I’d go on a Monday or even a Saturday, any other day just to fucking wind her up. The same way that she’d done just now.