Okay, so I know what you’re thinking – but come on!
I already said I wasn’t going. And, I mean, would you have gone, in my position?
Sure, I love Jeanie, like I love no one else really – but trawling out there? That would be one step too far. New Year’s Eve in the home counties, all Crimplene and fake Barbour – or, even worse, flouncy WAG hairdos and spray tans. Most fun to be had: warm Chardonnay, sweaty husbands and a spot of fantasising about swapping wives for the night? No ta.
To be honest, I had better things to do on New Year’s Eve 2014. Biggest night of the year: bigger fish to fry, I could say.
There was Levi, first off. He’s cute – like properly cute. He’s what the kids call ‘buff’. Body like Brad Pitt’s back in the day, pretty face to match. All smooth caramel-coloured skin and muscles where they’re meant to be, you know, where you want to stroke ’em. And whilst we’re not official – I don’t do official, you know – I suppose I kind of like him. We are more ‘Netflix and chilling’, as Sharon on reception likes to say when she’s swiping left on her Tinder. Horrible expression maybe, but it suits me just fine right now. I don’t need complication in my life.
And then once that was done, once I’d seen Levi, and the single malt was drunk, and the itch was scratched, there was the small case of the girl named Nasreen.
Nasreen, who I’d met at her sixth-form college just a month ago when I’d given a talk on the pros and cons of digital journalism; Nasreen who had upped and disappeared from her home in Hounslow, just before Christmas. Done her Christmas shopping, left it all neatly wrapped in the wardrobe she shared with her little sister, under her winter jumpers – and then just vanished, without a whisper to her distraught family. No note. Oh yes, sorry – a text. One text to her sister, saying:
Don’t worry, sis, I’m fine
And that was it.
I felt it was my duty – very much my duty, all things considered – to find out what had happened.
So please don’t blame me for not noticing right there and then that Jeanie needed me.
And anyway, at that point, I’m not sure Jeanie even did.
At that point, NYE 2014, she was still basking in the warm glow of new love and lots of sex. You know what it’s like, that first year: can’t get out of bed, can’t get them out of your head – like Kylie said. Okay, well, the first six months at least. That’s the longest I’ve ever managed without getting bored. Without having to run.
At that point, it hadn’t all hit the fan. Not yet anyway.
So. Don’t look at me like that. Please.
Cos what I’d also say is this: family – they’ll either make you, or they’ll break you.
As an adult, of course, you get to walk away – if you have the courage. As a child, you have little choice. Generally you’re stuck right there.
So. You can have that nugget of wisdom for free – Marlena Randall, 2016.
And here’s one more: keep your best friends close; keep your enemies closer. Now I didn’t make that one up: some old Chinese general did – according to Wiki anyway. Wise words, my friends, wise words. That’s what I told Jeanie when she was worrying about Scarlett.
Keep her close.
Because how do you know who has it in for you? How do any of us really know?
Six
Jeanie
31 December 2014
9 p.m.
* * *
Despite all the dancing, the smiling at new faces, the shaking of hands and kissing of cheeks, I never shake my feeling of unease.
I try my best to feel like I am part of something in a way I haven’t been for a very long time. Or ever maybe. I really do try.
I had felt ready to face the bigger world officially, for the first time since we’d married at Berkhamsted Town Hall a month ago. Not a white wedding, more a foggy grey one – but definitely a whirlwind, winter one. I was so happy on the day – I thought my heart might burst. Frankie and I, we were part of a proper family now, I told myself, and it didn’t even matter when Marlena didn’t come.
I was happy, despite Scarlett scowling her way through the ceremony, chewing gum then drinking her one glass of champagne too fast at the French restaurant, meaning she felt so sick she had to sit outside with Matthew for a good twenty minutes. And Luke spent most of his time texting – his mother, he said, when I asked. When Matthew returned with Scarlett, dropping a kiss on my head, it was quite obvious she’d been crying.
Inside Frankie had just told me he was dropping out of Hull, that art wasn’t for him. He’d reapply to do music production the following September. It was for the best, he kept saying, and I found myself downing my own champagne pretty fast too.
Despite all of that, I kept telling myself it would be okay. It wasn’t just the two of us any more; it was all of us. And it’d be fine.
How wrong could I be?
* * *
10 p.m.
* * *