‘James has left me,’ wailed Liza and, for a millisecond, Ginger’s brain went into a slight confusion.
James ...? And then she remembered. James, the love of Liza’s life. Groom at the wedding from hell. Amazingly, she felt nothing – not a quiver, nothing.
‘I know he left you,’ Ginger said bluntly. ‘It was on Facebook, ages ago.’
Liza burst into fresh sobs.
Even though she was small, she had a lifetime of pushing Ginger around and, somehow, she made her way into the apartment, where she immediately sat down on the most comfortable armchair. Arranging her feet up under her, she began to cry again. She was clearly there for the long haul.
‘Do you have anything to drink? A white wine spritzer, perhaps?’ said Liza, between sobs.
The new, improved Ginger reasserted herself.
‘No,’ she said. ‘It’s morning, for a start. This isn’t a bar. And you can’t stay, Liza. I’m going away for a few days.’
‘But I need you,’ wailed Liza. ‘I have to get him back!’
Ginger thought of the talks she now did in schools and colleges about women empowering themselves and not allowing themselves to be defined by either society or one person.
She had never used the precise example of her friendship with Liza to illustrate this fact: that would be cruel to Liza. But she explained how she had allowed her feelings of not fitting in due to her weight to allow herself to be walked on, made to feel less than.
‘Sometimes you simply have to learn the lesson and sometimes you have to confront someone,’ she said in her talks.
Now was her chance.
‘Why did you come here for help?’
Liza employed her tried-and-tested wobbling bottom lip technique: ‘You’re my best friend after all, Ginger, and I need you.’
The sheer gall of that answer spurred Ginger on.
‘If I am your “best friend”,’ began Ginger, ‘where have you been this past year?’
Liza still did not look remotely ashamed.
Time for the big guns.
‘Why did you dress me up like some seventeenth-century bar wench in that bloody awful dress and let James tell your cousin that I was in possession of virginity that needed to be got rid of like a bad case of lice? Why would you do something like that, if I was your friend? Or was I someone to use?’
All of this had occurred to Ginger recently. The prism of time allowed her to see their friendship for what it was: and it had been more equal than she’d remembered. She had been the clever one, the one who’d corrected Liza’s homework, the one who made sure Liza scraped through school. Yes, Liza had given Ginger a protection of sorts, but perhaps, without Liza’s bitchy influence, Ginger might have made other friends, the people like herself who were clever and definitely not a part of the fabulously beautiful gang. Without Liza scaring those clever but shy girls off, Ginger could have built up real friends during her years in school. That way, she might not have felt like the cuckoo in the nest of Liza’s glittering entourage.
‘You used me, Liza, and I couldn’t see it because I trusted you.’
‘Look where trusting James has got me,’ sniffed Liza, self-pity evident in every word.
Ginger’s mind flew through the months when Liza had pursued James. How she’d gone out of her way to capture him, weaving a web until he was caught. Their relationship had suited them both. Liza had a handsome, wealthy boyfriend and James had a beautiful, party-going girlfriend who always had the right clothes, the perfect hair and make-up. It was hardly a firm basis for a strong marriage.
‘You chose James because of what he was on the surface,’ Ginger said, not wishing to be cruel but dropping all attempts to be conciliatory. ‘He chose you for the same reasons. How did you think it would end?’
Liza’s face crumpled. ‘We had a fairy-tale wedding,’ she cried.
Did fairy-tales allow for random cruelty in the middle of them? Ginger wondered. Of course they did. That was how the lessons of the past were passed down. The wolf ate Grandma, after all.
‘That day wasn’t a fairy-tale for me,’ she said simply. ‘It was devastating.’
‘Then you know how I feel now,’ wailed Liza. ‘Devastated.’
Ginger looked at Liza, still beautiful even though her face was streaked with tears and her long blonde hair could have done with a wash. The shine had gone from her, as if the fairy godmother who’d promised her beauty had taken the gifts away.
