Ginger was looking at her belongings stacked in the tiny hallway of her apartment and wondering if she’d overpacked, as usual. The guinea pigs were thrilled to be going on an adventure and were squeakily squabbling over who got to use their wheel.
‘You’d swear you pair never got to go anywhere,’ Ginger laughed, peering in at them affectionately. ‘If we get to go on our next big adventure after this birthday party, I’m buying you a second wheel and a bigger luxury duplex.’
And keeping it high up, she added mentally.
The next big adventure was that she and Will had decided to move in together to a fixer-upper house they’d discovered half an hour from the gym. Because Ginger would work from home a lot more, and because Will’s hours were flexible, they’d decided to get two dogs.
‘Rescue ones,’ said Will decisively.
‘Yes,’ said Ginger fervently, thinking of the stories she’d written about sad-eyed abandoned animals in shelters, staring up at her and waiting for a forever home that didn’t always come.
Dogs would love the guinea pigs: in a sandwich, out of a sandwich, whatever. She could not put her two beloved guinea pigs through that. So careful plans to keep the guineas safe would have to be made. Her dad would be delighted to help. He could build some yoke of a bookcase that was dog-proof and high enough for the dogs not to notice. Well, she hoped so.
Her dad loved Will, almost as much as Declan and Mick did, who – after an initial period of assessment while they grimly decided if he was good enough for their little sister – had adopted him as practically another brother.
Her phone pinged with a text:
Sorry, Ginger, just leaving. Got delayed. Love you.
Her heart did that little skip that Zoe, her sister-in-law, said was not atrial defibrillation but a woman in love.
Will always said he loved her in texts. He’d practically moved in already, and might be the worst in the world at cleaning up the bathroom and used the washing machine on 60 degrees every time, so he shrunk sweaters, but he knew Ginger needed reassurance. He understood her. That was worth more than ruined sweaters any day.
When the doorbell rang a moment later, Ginger was still in that loved-up place, and, without thinking that Will had his own key, would hardly be using the doorbell and must have travelled via Star Trek technology to get there at this speed, she opened it, beaming.
Except the visitor was not her tall, handsome beloved man. It was Liza.
A Liza who was still thin, no longer tanned, possibly Botoxed, Ginger thought in some alarm, and sobbing her eyes out.
‘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.
Even now, when Ginger had asked why Liza had hurt her so much, Liza couldn’t answer. Either she had no answer or, simply, Ginger was not important enough for her to think one up.
‘Why did you let your mother talk you into making me chief bridesmaid?’ she asked, the journalist in her coming to the fore.
‘She nagged me,’ said Liza absently.
‘You could have said no.’
‘She and Dad were paying for the wedding,’ snapped Liza, as if this explained everything.
‘And you were going to dump me as a friend afterwards?’ The questions that had once haunted her no longer hurt as much as Ginger thought they would.
‘People move on. You’re in your fancy job now, mixing with all the celebs.’ There was no disguising the jealousy in Liza’s voice. ‘Let’s forget and be friends again.’
Ginger shook her head. ‘No, I can’t forget it. I don’t do friendship edits,’ she said. ‘But you and I haven’t been proper friends for a long time. I didn’t realise that, I used to be a bit blinkered. I have friends in my life now that I can rely on. Let’s go our separate ways.’
‘No!’ For the first time, Liza sounded anxious. ‘We’ve known each other since we were four, Ginger, we’ve history together. You can help me go to cool events like the things you go to now. James will see me in the papers and magazines and get jealous.’
Even by Liza’s standards, it was a breathtakingly callous plan.
It deserved Liza being thrown out on the street and screamed at. It deserved well-aimed insults . . .
But Will would be there soon. And if Ginger had learned anything in this past year, it was that, sometimes, you had to let things go and take the wiser path.
‘I deserve a friend who really is a friend, Liza,’ she said softly. ‘You’re not. I have good friends now you don’t want to use me. I’m sorry about James.’
She meant it. She hated anybody to suffer, but Liza needed to learn her own truths.
Liza stood up, shaking back her hair defiantly. ‘So you won’t help me?’ she demanded.
Ginger opened the front door.
‘Take care,’ she said. ‘I mean that, Liza. Have a good life. Take care of your friends.’
Liza’s face was screwed up with fury as she tried to think of something to say.
‘Hey Ginger, darling,’ said a voice and Will stood in the doorway.
Automatically, he reached in to grab Ginger and pull her into a hug. He’d changed out of his gym clothes into jeans and a T-shirt and with his hair wet from the shower, he looked like a magazine advert come to life. ‘Who’s this?’ he murmured into Ginger’s ear.
‘Liza. Someone I went to school with.’
Liza was gazing at Will as if he was the answer to all her prayers.
‘Liza?’ he said to Ginger. ‘The bride . . .?’
‘Yup.’
Liza was clearly about to launch into full-on flirt mode with Will. Ginger had seen it before. But not this time.
Will reopened the front door. ‘Thanks for calling, but goodbye, Liza.’
Ginger was stunned.
Liza was stunned.
‘I just—’
‘You should go.’ Will smiled a polite, businesslike smile and opened the door wider.
‘He’s right,’ agreed Ginger. ‘We’re not friends anymore and we have nothing to say to each other. Goodbye.’
Slowly, Liza walked outside but turned quickly. ‘I never meant—’
‘That’s the past, Liza.’ Ginger put an arm around Will. ‘Goodbye.’
And Will shut the door.
‘Right,’ he said, picking her up, ‘I think you need a serious kiss after that.’
‘So do I,’ said Ginger.