“How did you know Alice?” Timid, tremulous.
She takes a deep breath, closes her eyes for a second. “I am—I was—Alice’s best friend,” she says. “I asked Martha to get your number. When I heard he’d moved some other woman in…God, I was so angry. I was a bit hotheaded that day. I should’ve been more understanding. I’m sorry, too.”
“It’s fine,” I say quickly. “You were defending your friend.”
“The reason I wanted to speak to you was to tell you what sort of man you’re living with. You need all the facts. But I’ll leave you to make your own decision. I just ask that you listen.”
“Of course,” I say, and my heart starts to pump with excitement. This is it.
Like she has been waiting a lifetime for this moment, Serena plunges straight into the story.
She tells me that she met Alice at a bar, on the first night of their freshers’ week at uni. They were both nervous, both out of their depth, and they gravitated toward each other.
“We got chatting. She was just impossible not to like, you know? I couldn’t believe that anyone could be that nice, but she genuinely was. Didn’t have a bad word to say about anyone.”
I stop myself from rolling my eyes. Call me skeptical, but I simply do not believe that anyone could actually be that nice. I wonder what was going on underneath that perfect smoke screen. What dark thoughts she was harboring, roiling just beneath her surface.
“But that quality made her trust people too easily,” Serena continues. “We were friends all the way through uni, and I meanbestfriends.We were so close then. I helped her through everything: bad breakups, bad flatmates. We both moved to London after we graduated, and, not long after, she met Jack. And everything changed.” She sighs.
“Notwithstanding the fact he was a mess—clearly into some quite heavy stuff—he was awful at the dinner where she introduced me to him. It was just the three of us, but he kept making these inside jokes that only the two of them would understand. It sounds ridiculous, but I felt really left out.
“Then Alice helped him get sober, and if anything he got worse. He acted like he couldn’t give less of a shit about her wider circle. He never asked any questions about me, always acted like he thought he was too good for us. I didn’t know whether to tell her or not. She was so obviously in love with him, but he was just wrong for her.” She wipes a tear away.
“I wish Ihadsaid something now. I don’t know if it would have made a difference, but at least I could say I tried. Anyway, I started to see less of her. At first, she just canceled on small things, like drinks or a film. But then she canceled on my birthday. I asked her about it. I told her I felt she was avoiding me. Do you know what she said?”
Serena laughs bitterly.
“She said, ‘Jack doesn’t feel very comfortable around you. He doesn’t feel that you like him very much.’ I’m not going to lie, I was pissed off that she was throwing away a friendship that she’d had for nearly five years for a man she’d known for six months. We stopped speaking so much after that. Whenever I did see them, Jack would make this point of saying how everyone he knew was impressed by her…. Like she was some trophy to show off or something. It was bizarre.”
She takes another breath.
“About a year later, he proposed, and she said yes. Do you know how I found out? Fucking Instagram,” she spits. “I thought the friendship was well and truly over, but she invited me to her engagement drinks.That was something at least. But it was then that she told me that Jack wanted to keep the wedding ‘in the family,’ so she’d asked his cousin to be the maid of honor. She said she hoped I didn’t mind.
“I couldn’t really say anything, could I? A few months went by, and I saw basically nothing of her. It was at the hen party that I noticed she had a bruise on her arm. I asked her about it, and she went red and snapped at me to mind my own business. It was the most venomous thing I think I’d ever heard come out of her mouth.
“Anyway, they got married, obviously,” Serena continues, “and at the wedding both of them basically ignored me. I’m not trying to make this about me, I’m really not, but we were so close, and now she was acting like we were distant acquaintances.” She clears her throat again and presses her lips together.
“There was one moment, during the wedding, where it felt like everything was normal again. We were all quite pissed, and she came over and hugged me, and we danced together. Jack must have seen us, because within two minutes he was between us, dragging her away from me. And he just had this look in his eyes as he pulled her away, you know. It was almost mocking. Like he’d got the prize, and he knew there was nothing I could do about it.
“After they got married, I just got on with my life. I stopped hearing from her entirely, and I stopped trying to get in contact with her. And then, out of the blue, about two years into the marriage, she called me hysterically crying down the phone. I’m talking likesobbing. I’m not going to lie, I was angry. There’d been some huge changes in my life—I’d come out, and she didn’t even know about it—but I obviously didn’t like to hear her upset. She told me that she’d been diagnosed with breast cancer.
“Well, you can’t be angry with someone who’s got cancer, so I talked it through with her, and she apologized and said she knew that she’d been a bad friend, and it all felt all right again.
“I went with her to every appointment after that. Jack couldn’t do anything about that, of course, because her family were around a lot as well, and he didn’t like to be seen as ‘controlling.’ ” She makes quotation marks with her fingers.
“He was all charm. Then she got really sick while she was going through the chemo, and I think he was grateful for the help.”
Serena dabs her eyes with the heel of her hand. I take a large sip of tea. “Alice and I got to spend some time together for the first time in years. And she was so supportive of everything I’d been through, and she apologized again. And after a while, she started talking about the marriage, and what it had been like. She said that mostly, it was amazing, but she confided in me that Jack had this domineering streak. He wanted to be with her the whole time, and wanted to know where she was whenever she went out. Her social life had begun to fizzle out by then, and he didn’t like her talking to me.”
She coughs. “Well, I told her to leave him.” Another bitter laugh. “She didn’t, obviously. But after she went into remission, I think she started standing up to him a bit more. I began to see more of her.” Remission. That word again. I press my hands between my thighs so Serena does not notice them shaking.
“Once she was a bit stronger, she became more like her old self. Happy, not as self-conscious as she’d seemed since she was with Jack. It was like the old days. She would sneak out for our lunches so he wouldn’t know she’d left.
“We got really close again, and I kept trying to get her to leave him, but she’d always shut down. Then, one day, she confided in me that she’d met someone at the gym. That she thought she was in love. She was planning on leaving Jack for him, but she was scared about how Jack was going to react.
“I was thrilled. I thought she’d finally be able to live a normal life. Then”—Serena’s voice cracks—“she called me crying again. Said shethought Jack might have found out. She told me that she was scared. I offered to have her come and stay with me, but she said she knew Jack would come after her. Said she needed to collect evidence of his abuse that would support her divorce claim, maybe even a restraining order.
“On the night she died she sent me a picture of herself. Jack was working late, and she was going to see her new man. She wasexcited. Hopeful, even.” Snot is trickling down Serena’s face. I watch its progress, but I don’t go for my sanitizer. I already feel dirty. “The coroner recorded it as an open verdict. But I know she didn’t do it, despite what everyone thinks. I know she didn’t kill herself.”
