There was energy in their stride as Raeleen and Alison were heading out of school, not that either of them saw anything specific in waiting.
The two chattered occasionally though had no words for whatever they might be seeking, despite a drive to find something.
Quite a few girls had their eye on the boy who might determine where they settled, but marriage and children were not in view for either Raeleen or Alison.
The friends had once been intertwined.
Both had capable, strong-minded mothers, assured that whatever they saw was a quite sufficient view.
Once the girls began to see that perhaps their mothers didn’t know everything after all, they took up a meagre freedom together.
Pulling back from where they had been enclosed, at about ten they attached as limpets, determined to be in agreement for nearly four years.
“Best friends for life,” became a refrain to repeat.
They still claimed friendship as each left home to move further apart but separation had begun earlier, after they were put in different school streams.
Raeleen’s mother was decided in her opinion, which she shared in categorical terms with the girls, that her daughter would have done just as well as Alison in those exams if she’d applied herself, as her friend had obviously done!
Both were mortified, though unable to share if it was worse to be called a secret swat or to be a proclaimed disappointment to your mother?
It left gooey residue between them.
Raeleen’s mother’s words were not forgotten, but discomfort remained unacknowledged.
Beneath the veneer of staying friends and sometimes still giggling further messy complications began to accumulate over the following years.
Some things were easy – they could catch a coffee together on brief returns to their parents, who remained living within a few miles of each other.
Alison and Raeleen attended each other’s weddings and asserted their claim to long friendship.
It was a surprise when Alison changed from a promising career to retraining as a midwife, while everything seemed to go well for Raeleen.
She didn’t see herself as just lucky or feel especially grateful if fate had put chances in her path. The credit was hers that she’d made more of her life than Alison.
Not that she admitted, even to herself, that she felt in any way superior to her one time best friend.
Raeleen studied design then eventually set up her own business.
Working as a design consultant hadn’t made a lot but her husband, Richard, was in finance and a big earner.
Raeleen had a large house, enough money, with two successful children and was sometimes generous to Alison’s daughters…perhaps she failed to recognise ambivalence in her friend’s gratitude but to Raeleen, Alison’s life looked difficult with that restless husband of hers, Don, who changed jobs every few years, making the family income unreliable.
And Alison’s hard work as a midwife was not well paid given they had three girls.
Raeleen had a neat one son, one daughter.
The children of both families had left home to study before Alison and her husband began travelling.
Alison wanted to see midwifery in its varied and more traditional forms and they made their way to remote places by local transport.
Don had long been good at planning difficult journeys and making any necessary arrangements that might include some kayaking where possible.
Clearly, he and Alison enjoyed each other on these expeditions.
Perhaps they made too much of their relief at escaping the rat race – Raeleen certainly thought they did when she invited them over.
But Richard showed genuine curiosity in where Don and Alison had been.
He and Raeleen would travel Business Class and stay in good hotels. They could afford Club Med holidays with their two children, while Don and Alison always went camping.
Raeleen quickly came to believe it was her friend who seeded discontent in Richard – a betrayal – probably because Alison’s own husband was not a solid earner.
Richard tried to persuade Don to join him at golf but gave in to persuasion that he try kayaking instead.
Don was experienced and even in treacherous waters rarely fell in at this stage. Richard, however, had a lot to learn though his competitive spirit took up the challenge.
Only gradually did Raeleen recognise her once steady husband was changing.
Richard insisted he’d made an effort to enjoy Don and Alison for her sake but added that he felt more alive now he and Don went on adventure weekends.
Then Richard began to speak of cutting back and even of downsizing so that he could take early retirement.
After all they certainly didn’t need five bedrooms and several bathrooms.
For some months his work no longer got the long hours he’d once put in and Raeleen suspected Richard might have offered to take redundancy.
He was vague over exactly how it happened but, too abruptly, there he was accepting a generous redundancy package.
Raeleen was attached to her glamorous home and sure it was more stylish than any that family or friends owned.
Richard, disloyally, said how much he liked the lived in feel and unstuffy atmosphere of Don and Alison’s small home.
Even worse, Raeleen and Richard’s ambitious son announced he, too, wanted a change.
He worked absurd hours, he complained, and spent his weekends sleeping a lot to recover.
“What a way to waste a lifetime,” his girlfriend had said, adding that she would not consider having a baby if he was going to be so absent.
The pair of them seemed to admire Alison and her choices.
The only thing that Raeleen felt sure about was that Alison must be gloating and as she woke from a dream her mother’s words from all those years ago were loud and clear – Alison the sneak, the secret swat – the girl Raeleen had assumed to be on her side who was showing her up instead.
Alison had been let in close back at school and then was the instrument of humiliation.
How was that excusable?
Yet Raeleen also knew that Alison did better in any school test, so why not get higher marks in the exam where results were public?
Richard announced a holiday suggestion. He and Don, planning to go white river kayaking, found a good place in Spain. Richard’s new idea was that the women come too, so they could enjoy each other.
How well did that man know her, Raeleen asked herself?
He wouldn’t choose to look at how his wife’s feelings about Alison had shifted because it didn’t suit him.
If Raeleen said directly that she had no wish to go it would be awkward. But unlike herself, she didn’t think it through and blurted out that now her mother was widowed she’d promised to spend time with her while Richard was off kayaking.
Raeleen assumed, wrongly, that if she was not joining the men Alison wouldn’t go either.
The holiday plan remained unchanged except that Raeleen found herself trapped with her demanding, difficult mother.
Richard went off cheerfully and Raeleen checked that he was not subsidising those two.
The days of generosity were over.
But Don had made the arrangements and it was not expensive.
Raeleen was shocked by the taste of her own hatred and that was before the accident.
Richard tipped over and was crushed against rocks.
According to Richard, Don risked himself to get him out of the rapids.
Only Don’s long experience saved them both.
Alison had already been concerned as she noted the ways Richard was competitive with Don, and wondered how far Richard took risks to prove he was an equal, though Don had been kayaking for nearly two decades.
And then both men were in a Spanish hospital – Don only for a few hours, as his shoulder had been at an odd angle after hauling Richard off the rocks and out of the water.
But Richard had badly cracked his hip, broken two bones in his wrist and swallowed a lot of water.
He was, however, in disconcertingly high spirits.
Alison asked what cheering drugs the hospital offered but Richard insisted it was adrenalin from the drama.
He was already constructing his version with the river growing more dangerous in each telling.
Alison asked exactly what he’d told Raeleen but Richard was hazy.
In the ambulance he made it clear that he wanted to tell his wife himself.
Alison was surprised that Raeleen didn’t contact her and asked Richard whether he had actually rung his wife.
“Tomorrow,” he said, then added, “She can’t do anything from there and given she badly wanted this time with her mother, I won’t disrupt that.”
Unlike Alison and Don, Richard stayed rather excited about what happened and had no complaint about the hospital.
He didn’t share their concern over how to get him home with a fractured hip.
Alison challenged Richard for details of what he said to Raeleen, other than promising he’d come back with a great tale of his time in Spain, and pointed out that she had her own responsibility to Raeleen, as a friend. If the situation was reversed she’d feel furious she had not been properly informed.
Did Raeleen even know that he was still in hospital?
Richard tried again to be vague but Alison insisted that she must speak to her friend.
To her surprise and Don’s discomfort, Richard, becoming choked, was barely able to speak.
“Please don’t persuade her to come. Raeleen has never tolerated my being weak.”
He wept and all his bravado collapsed onto the white hospital bed.
Alison hugged him as best she could, and his fear of no longer being as he had been fell out of him.
“What if I can’t walk properly?”
Gradually the three were able to pool their questions, then ask a nurse and the consultant about getting Richard out of hospital.
The two men sorted the insurance and found what it would cover.
Richard was set on delaying the flight home and asked if either or both could stay with him.
Alison was adamant that Raeleen must be consulted.
It didn’t go well.
Alison had little idea that Raeleen had long been hatching antagonism about Don’s influence on Richard and was still resentful that Alison had gone to Spain, even after knowing Raeleen felt she must visit her widowed mother.
A mother who had not been especially welcoming let alone grateful.
But her mother had not asked for sacrifice and found the routines she relied on disturbed by her daughter.
Of course they loved one another, they each told themselves, though it certainly was not easy to always show it.
As soon as Raeleen realised Richard had been in hospital all her frustration and fury went in a flame throw of blame, direct at Alison.
That was it – here, finally, was the unforgivable.
How could Raeleen ever again trust a woman who called herself a friend and behaved with such duplicity?
It was an outrage and Richard must agree with her that it had been Alison’s responsibility to ring immediately.
He was injured, Alison was not.
He was on heavy pain relief, she should have been clear headed.
Richard’s claim that he’d asked Alison not to call and that he wished to tell Raeleen himself made no difference.
Raeleen could not draw back from the certainty that she would have nothing further to do with Alison.
Only someone you let in close could hurt you as Racleen was hurt.
Alison understood her oldest friend was upset, it made sense, but she believed the worst would pass.
She and Raeleen knew each other’s children and had too much history to break connection for long.
Besides there was Richard – she and Don were fond of him.
The wealthy and apparently powerful man was exposed differently when they had been thrown together.
Raeleen might be invested in keeping her husband puffed up as successful but surely, since they were ageing, they would all soon slide of such roles.
However, Raeleen remained fixed – severance was final.
Even so the cut ends of connection still pulsed and both women found themselves wondering how the other was doing far more often than through those years of spasmodic contact.
Alison jumped awake out of some frenzy.
Had she been yanking someone off her father or maybe off Don?
Perhaps it was her own hands clutching to a male figure and Raeleen the one pulling her away.
The vehemence had been saturated with rage — that urge to possess and the force to satisfy it was not anything Alison felt she could own.
She did not have access to such jealousy with her sisters and hadn’t seen it quite that fierce between their three daughters.
Yes, there had been rivalries but nothing as determined as the woman in her dream.
The image left her feeling at the mercy of Raeleen’s outrage.
She wanted to shake her old friend and make her listen but had to accept she could not get her hands on Raeleen, let alone force her to see a different version of those events in Spain.
Richard sank in Alison’s opinion and in Don’s.
Obviously, he was unable to take a stand and presumably went along with Raeleen’s view that her husband should not bear responsibility – he was in shock and too drugged. All he could think, poor man, was that he must spare his wife.
Alison saw some truth in that but was used to woman in extremis during birth and only in an absolute emergency would you override their wishes.
If Alison understood some of why Raeleen was angry, she could not see that her behaviour warranted a death sentence to friendship.
It was Alison’s middle daughter, Amy, who made a crack in the thick wall of exclusion Raeleen maintained.
It was almost ten years after the Spanish trip and Amy had just bought her first flat.
As a child Amy had been the most impressed by the glamorous home of her mother’s friend and had, long ago, been given two wonderful, expensive dresses that Raeleen’s daughter didn’t want and had barely worn.
Every detail of those two dresses were still vivid as Amy knocked on Raeleen’s door.
Whatever her mother had done to end a long friendship, Amy sought Raeleen’s advice over decorating the new flat and Raeleen opened the door just wide enough for Amy to come through.
***