Childhood Friends | Eloise Moench

Kathy

It comforts and depresses me, being home. The soggy seaside-ness of it all, the town suffering a life under siege from the ocean breeze. There’s a familiar flatness in the sky and the weather-beaten lady in the chippy still refers to me as “girl”.

I’m always wary when I turn the key in my mum’s front door - anxious about what awaits me. The years of my mother’s turmoil are now etched into her face. They pool  around her stomach in a cushion of unwanted fat. Her medication has made her easier to deal with, less frantic, but she’s still unpredictable. Growing up, it was always just the two of us. Us and Mona, of course.

I spend a week rotting in my old bedroom before I text Mona. I expect her to show up with either a new haircut or a new boyfriend, so I laugh when I see her striding across the beach with both. She’s dirty blonde again, chopped into the kind of short pixie cut only beautiful people can pull off. She looks older, more sophisticated without the knotty waves and experimental box dye.

“Kathy!” she shouts, beaming her wide smile as she scrambles over the pebbles. I wave but don't get up, wrestling with my own long hair in the wind. She begins running and drops into my lap, wrapping skinny arms around my neck. She smells the same way she always does, cheap perfume and home.

“Missed you,” she says.

“Missed you too.”

The boyfriend trails along behind her. He has dark features and an easy arrogance, some kind of musician, I assume from the punk leather jacket. Mona is wearing her battered black one to match.

“Hey mate,” he says, sitting down and immediately pulling paraphernalia out to start rolling a joint.

“This is Joe,” Mona says, swiftly getting up to go sit next to him.

I greet Joe with a micro-nod and Mona launches into her usual interrogation. She asks me about my new job, my new friends, am I fluent in Dutch yet? She’s quick-fire, hungry for information, casting me in her warm spotlight. I reply as best I can, sensing the inevitable undercurrent of unease in her line of questioning.

***

The last time we saw each other, I told Mona I was in love with her. It was on this very beach eighteen months ago. Her dad had been dead for exactly one year. She asked if we could not speak about it then, so I agreed and apologised and it’s never been brought up again.

Mona’s dad was the best man I’d ever known. He practically raised me as his own. One morning when we were fourteen, my mum threw me out of the car on the way to school. I called Mona in tears and she told me to sit tight. Ten minutes later I spotted Nigel’s battered Volkswagen pulling up on the street. He was waiting as I peeled myself off the pavement, watery eyed and full of snot. He handed me a tissue and we drove the final leg to school in heavy silence. Just as I was about to get out, he turned to me and said, “Kathy, whenever you need, you can always just call me directly, alright?”

I mumbled an embarrassed reply, silently vowing that I would never take him up on his offer.

Nigel stayed true to his word over the years. He came to my rescue numerous times when my car broke down or my mum acted up, always assuring that it was really no bother at all. I would see that old Volkswagen and heave a deep sigh of relief. I’ve never told Mona about all of the times I needed to call on him, there was really no need.

I came back from university as soon as I heard the news of his passing. I arrived to find Mona and her mum weeping at their kitchen table, clutching onto each other's hands like the mere act of letting go would cause them to lose each other as well.  The three of them had always been the perfect equilibrium; Mona and her mum were an intense force because Nigel was a calm presence. Without him, everything fell off  kilter.

I did what I could to make things easier for them both. I brewed endless cups of tea and opened the wine when they wanted it,  vainly hoping that my gentle attendance could provide some kind of familiar comfort. Mona and I shared her bed  every night during that strange, suspended first week. We would fall asleep with our ankles touching and I would listen as her breath became heavy and slow. I was thankful for the rest she was getting from her pain yet struck by an age old stirring. There was something very loud in the quiet of her body close to mine.

***

A few months after Mona and I had our terrible conversation on the beach, I accepted a job offer in Amsterdam. Mum cried when I told her I was going, big gulping wails like a cat. I assured her I was still only a phone call away,  still on hand to talk her through whatever disaster was coming her way. This calmed her slightly.

The contact between Mona and I became more sporadic when I moved. Gone were the long rambling phone calls into the night, replaced with occasional Whatsapp updates and a few pictures back and forth. I threw myself into my new life, cycling down cobbled streets next to lapping canals. I drank more beer than usual, picking up new friends in brown bars and stumbling into nightclubs with them. I began dating a tall Icelandic girl called Maude. I occasionally wondered if my renewed sense of adventure was a thinly veiled attempt at running away.

***

After listening to her boyfriend regurgitating half remembered facts from a YouTube video, we make our way to the old stomping ground. The Queen’s Head is as busy as ever, punters shoulder to shoulder, bellowing laughter from red-faced men and football screens in every corner. We’ve both served time pulling pints here, whole summers lost to wiping down sticky ringed surfaces with damp rags. The only thing that made those shifts bearable was each other, sneaking out the back for cigarette breaks and collapsing into fits of laughter at our manager’s expense.

Mona and the boyfriend go to look for a seat outside whilst I order three beers, pushing my way back through swaying bodies to find them. They are on a bench at the back of the garden. He’s whispering something in her ear and she’s laughing in the way she always does, head tilted back and giggles overspilling. I walk over and drop the drinks down on the table, the glass makes a dull thud.

“I was just telling Mona how good she’s looking now she’s eating more consciously,” Joe says, peeling his eyes off her to look up at me.

“... Consciously?”

“Joe’s got me into this new diet of intermittent fasting,” Mona adds by way of explanation, a slight apology in her voice.

This is not the first time Mona has picked up a rogue habit because some monosyllabic love interest has told her to. There was Ben, the vape enthusiast whom I lost her to for three months under a cloud of strawberry smoke. Jim, the stick and poke artist and reason she now solely wears long sleeves. Rick, a whiskey-breathed father of two with a casual cocaine habit. From what I gather, he was the worst of them all.

“It’s when you don’t eat anything for sixteen hours of the day. No breakfast, no food after seven pm. It has mad health benefits. People just don’t understand how important fasting is,” Joe explains.

“You should go tell that novel idea to all Christians and Muslims, I’m sure they’ve never considered it,” I jab, unable to help myself.

Annoyance flickers across his face. He leans back. 

“So, Kathy,” he pronounces my name like it had a bad taste, “you seeing anyone? Got any love interests in Spain?”

“Amsterdam, actually, and yeah I am.”

Mona shifts in her seat.

“Oh, and who’s the lucky guy?”

“Girl. Just someone I met at a bar.”

“Well, well,” Joe says with the kind of smirk that makes me want to hiss at him,  “very good for you, very nice.”

He gulps down half his pint and gives Mona a rough kiss on the side of her face.

“I’m going for a wazz,” he announces, standing up and pushing his way through the crowds towards the toilets.

“He’s a keeper,” I say once Joe is out of earshot.

Mona narrows her eyes, “Don’t be rude. He’s actually super nice.”

“Yep, the way he defended Russel Brand back there really made me think - what a stand up guy.”

Mona looks down at her hands. Sun creeps out from behind a cloud and its dappled light cuts shapes across her face. I note the dark circles under her eyes, the way her collar bone is protruding from her top. She looks beautiful as always, yet also fragile. She’s always been so easy to break.

“Mon, you know you can always still come stay with me whenever you want?”

“I know that.”

“You haven’t gone on a trip in years. I can pay for your flight.”

She smiles sadly.

“Who would watch my mum if I came away with you, Kath? And yours?”

I am about to respond when somebody scores a goal on the many screens in the pub garden. One of the beer battered men from the table next to us stands up and pulls his top overhead. Hair sprouts out from odd places on his large wobbling torso as he cheers like Achilles returning from battle. His glassy eyed mates begin whooping and hugging him like the goal had been his own doing.  In the months I’d spent hanging out in cafes with international friends, I hadn’t seen the unapologetic glee of football hooligans at all. Mona and I begin spluttering with real laughter for the first time that day. I look over to see the familiar sight of her face cracking open.

“I don’t know why you bother coming back to this madness!” she says.

I smile at her.

“I do.”

Mona 

Kathy was a weird kid, super lanky and full of nits. She got bullied a lot when we were in primary school. I always admired how she dealt with it, kids would laugh at her for being dirty and she would just sigh like they were an annoying but necessary inconvenience to her day. I’d be silently watching all this from the sidelines, guilty in the knowledge that if these kids ever turned on me, Kathy wouldn’t think twice about coming to my rescue.

Rumours used to circulate about Kathy and her mum when we were growing up. Nobody knew who the dad was, the story goes that Jean simply turned up to the pub pregnant one day like some kinda immaculate conception. Everyone in town knows how Jean struggles; there are multiple accounts of the time she threatened to set herself on fire on the beach or strip her clothes off on the high street. I’ve never seen Kathy blame Jean for the public mess she makes of their lives, she just runs out to give her a coat or take the lighter from her trembling hands, cleaning up the latest spectacle and moving on.

Kathy and I were the only two kids in our nursery class without any brothers or sisters. It’s kind of what brought us together. She used to copy me all the time, I would turn up to birthday parties with french plaits and she would beg my mum to do her hair like mine. It drove me nuts, this constant mirror image, but anytime I got too annoyed my parents would tell me off for not knowing how to share.

When we hit puberty, Kathy started butterflying like crazy. Her skin cleared up and all of her puppy fat dropped off, revealing these fierce cheekbones. We started experimenting with makeup on and I would compare our looks in the mirror. My wide teeth and big eyes gave me this all-American appeal but Kathy’s beauty was different, it could knock you down. She wore it like an ill-fitting dress, though, never quite sure how to respond to the growing attraction people had of her.

We started going to gatherings on the beach when we were thirteen and Kathy would nurse a beer in the corner with our close friends whilst I drunkenly flirted with boys too old for me, giggling at stupid jokes. My favourite part of those nights would often be our journey home together. Kathy and I would slip off and find a secluded spot on the beach and watch stars swimming in the sky. We’d lie on cool pebbles, holding clammy hands whilst sugary cider coated our teeth. I would have Kathy squealing with laughter as I gave dramatic impressions of something someone had said or done that night. Eventually she’d declare that we needed to get back, always the little adult of the two, and we’d tiptoe home to collapse into bed together. Kathy is a real comfort blanket, I never sleep as well as I do when I have her ankle crossed over mine.

 The day Kathy got into university was a surprise for us all. She was lauded for being one of the only students in our year to pass all her exams and I found out I missed the grades for my art course by two points. I went to wave her off at the station on the day she left, I really wanted to be happy for her. She was standing on the platform alone with a bruised suitcase, rubbing the back of her neck the way she always does when she’s nervous. We hugged for a long time, I buried my head into her shoulder and deeply inhaled the scent of her lavender soap.

 “I don’t know what I’ll do without you,” she said into my hair.

I pulled away and gave her the brightest smile I could muster.

“You’ll do it all!” I said.

***

I worked full time at a new pub in town after most of our friends left town. It sucked - being there alone. I became super addicted to my phone in the evenings, scrolling through photos of old acquaintances with new faces. I missed Kathy all the time. I visited her mum twice a week, listening to Jean’s ramblings and checking there was still enough food in the fridge.

The only time I went to visit Kathy at her uni I hated it. Her student accommodation was squat and depressing, there were gaggles of young people everywhere. The friends she introduced me to were loud and opinionated. I’de never known people to debate and argue so much without it turning into an actual punch up, I felt dumb and mute in their presence. On my last day there, Kathy and I got into our own stupid argument. I was rude about one of the girls she’d started hanging out with and she got all sensitive. This spat was a lot more hostile than the ones we had growing up, months apart had removed the cushion of familiarity that usually blunted our sharp words.

My dad got sick when I was reapplying for art college. Stomach cancer, uncommon for a man his age and caught too late. I ditched the application to make sure I was there for every appointment. He tried to argue, saying I couldn’t put my life on hold for him, but I was adamant - I can be as stubborn as anything when I want to be.

So it went that impulsive sex and crappy men became my weird little escapism. Kathy doesn’t know this but I slept with girls a couple of times, picking them up in the pub and enjoying their soft curves. I met Rick six months after we got the diagnosis. He was eleven years older than me and had this kind of gruff attractiveness girls would whisper about across the room; shaved head, strong bone structure. He wolf-whistled when I walked past him. I turned to shoot the perpetrator a dirty look and was taken aback when I saw just how damn good looking he was. He smirked at my reaction, taking a slow puff of his cigarette.

“Ah, there she is,” he said as I found my way to him in the pub later that night.

I flashed him a winning smile and challenged him to a game of pool. We played into the early hours, circling each other around the table. At one point I potted three balls in a row and he stopped to look at me intently.

“I’m gonna fall hard for you, you know.”

We had sex on that first day. It was rough and all-consuming, he asked me how much I liked it when he penetrated me and I took a weird comfort in the way he took control. Afterwards, he racked up two lines and we sat in bed, revealing things about ourselves in the synthetic intimacy of a cocaine fuelled conversation. Rick told me about the two children his ex-wife didn’t want him to see. The celebrity houses he’d done building work on and the nomadic lifestyle he’d led. 

“You’ve lived here all your life?” he asked, leaning back on the bed after snorting another line.

“Uh huh.” I responded, taking a drag of his cigarette and blowing the smoke out the window.

“Funny, I got the fuck out of my hometown soon as I could.”

“Yeh, that’s like my best friend. She’s got bad juju with this place because of her mum. For me it’s where all my best memories are.”

“Eh, not many I know can say that about where they grew up.”

I didn’t respond, looking out the window whilst he watched me.

“You’re funny you know, you're like a little girl still.”

He moved along the bed to start kissing me, first slowly and then with force, filling my mouth with his tongue. His hands moved their way up my body. He climbed on top of me again. As the sun started making its way through the curtains, I already felt changed by Rick.

***

His number was blocked from my phone by the time my dad died. The romance had quickly soured. Rick was constantly demanding my attention. I'd get out of medical appointments with my dad to find a string of missed calls littering my phone. There was an unpredictability to him, a wild self destruction that made me nervous. He would march into the pub during my shifts to scowl at the bar, knocking back whiskey and coke after whiskey and coke.

I didn’t give Kathy too much detail about the whole situation when she came home. I was too deep in grief and cocooned by her gentle attendance to bring it up. When she walked into our kitchen, it was like seeing land whilst adrift at sea. Every night we would fall asleep in my bed, entangled in the warm darkness together. Some mornings I would wake to watch her face while she slept. She always looked so serene and picturesque in the morning, finally fitting into her beauty.

The incident occurred a couple of weeks after she was gone again. I was walking home and Rick’s hands were on my neck. He slammed my head into the wall, holding me there as he spat into my face. I whimpered, trying to plead through restricted breaths.

“You’re ruining my fucking life,” he sneered.

Shouts came from somewhere, I was dropped like a dead weight to the ground. I don’t really know what happened next. Some kind stranger saying it would be alright, bruises that needed measuring, stony faced police officers, wailing into my mum’s arms.

I didn’t tell Kathy about what happened. Nor did I tell her about the days locked in my room in a destructive cyclone of my own thoughts. I knew it would worry her, there was really no need. Mum and I tried to help each other as best we could although neither of us really had any idea how. Dad was always the one who cleaned up our mess. When Kathy came home some time after that and admitted how she felt about me, I simply didn’t have the strength to respond.

A few months later I met Joe on Tinder. I knew Kathy would hate him for his silly ideas and blind self-obsession, but he was a loyal and harmless lover. My feelings for him were tepid but pleasant enough. He would go on these long rants about his spiritual journey and I would agree at the right moments. He would then lie across me, a loyal Labrador, kissing me tenderly and my body would respond in the way it had always known how. It was easy to mask myself behind the role of a doting girlfriend with Joe. With Kathy, it would be so different. There would be no putting on a baby voice when I wanted something. I couldn’t win her over by stroking her ego or acting dumb. There was no game or pretense. Just the two of us, navigating life together.

***

A week after Kathy has visited from Amsterdam, Joe and I are at my house and I am painting for the first time in ages. He’s sitting on the computer next to me, playing some obscure techno music which sounds like a mosquito repeatedly slamming into a pane of glass.

“These guys are doing something really profound here,” he says, bopping his head, “the arrangement is ground-breaking. I can’t believe they’ve turned the concept of a song so on its head. It’s, like, the new frontier of music.”

I leave Joe talking as I wander out into the garden, taking my phone out of my pocket and scrolling down my contacts to find her number. Our lavender bush unfurls in front of me, each purple flower bursting with a clean, powdery aroma. I watch a lazy bumble bee doing its rounds whilst I listen to the international dial tone. She picks up after a few rings.

“Hey,” Kathy says.

“Hey. About coming to visit, I think you’re right. I think I might need a holiday.”

---

Eloise Moench is a British writer, currently working with a UK Agency to prepare her first novel for publication. She has developed a collection of short stories, one of which was highly commended in the Anthology Magazine Short Story Competition and another that will be featuring in the MacGuffin Anthology this Autumn. Her nonfiction work has been featured in several online publications, including Shado Mag and The Gallyry.