Page 4 of Friend of the Family

‘So come on,’ she said. ‘Tell me everything. Are you still living on the estate?’

‘God, no, I moved out to Potts Field about ten years ago.’

‘Nice,’ said Amy honestly. Potts Field was definitely a step up from Westmead, the tough pocket of the city where they had grown up.

Karen shrugged. ‘It’s okay, I suppose.’

‘And you’re working at a . . . shop?’

‘A florists to you.’

‘Not Mr Jones still?’

Karen gave a half-smile. ‘Same place, but Mr Jones moved back to Wales years ago. It’s called the Rose Yard now, it’s like a chain? There are loads of them all around.’

The waitress returned with two glasses of Chardonnay, and Amy held up her glass in a toast. ‘Here’s to . . . the Dragon.’ She smiled.

‘Although it’s a carpet shop now,’ Karen replied, clinking her glass against her friend’s.

A silence rippled between them.

‘How’s Tilly?’

Amy was surprised that Karen had remembered her daughter’s name.

‘I can’t believe she’s almost finished her first year at school. She starts Year One in September.’

‘It goes quickly,’ said Karen with a smile. ‘Remember, children are just lent to you.’

‘And how’s Josie?’ asked Amy finally. She said it brightly, as if it was just another idle query, but this was the thing she had been dreading. Josie was Karen’s daughter, but she was also the elephant in the room, the real reason Karen and Amy hadn’t seen each other for years.

In Amy’s first year at Oxford Brookes, Karen had come to visit and things had been just as they had always been. They had gone drinking, clubbing, having a scream: best friends for ever, as the kids said nowadays. By her second year, they were starting to lose touch. Karen had a boyfriend, Lee, and she came less often; the letters arrived only sporadically. They both promised nothing would change, but it did, of course it did. Amy was experimenting with new friends, new ideas, trying on different clothes and skins. In hindsight, she supposed Karen was struggling to cope. Money, family, the isolation, it was all there between the lines, but Amy had her own concerns. She had essays to write, study groups, a string of exciting new boyfriends. The summer she had graduated, Karen had fallen pregnant with Josie and everything changed for ever. Amy moved to London, and Karen just got on with it, she supposed, and although they had seen each other a couple of times in those first few years, soon Amy found herself slipping in and out of Bristol on her flying visits to see her parents, without even telling Karen she was coming. Perhaps they would have drifted apart anyway, but they had both seen Josie as the deal-breaker, the not-so-invisible barrier that came between them, an excuse to cut the ties that had seemed so tight back on the estate.

‘She’s doing okay.’ Karen shrugged.

Amy frowned. ‘Is there . . . is she all right?’

‘She’s fine. Just struggling to get off the ground since uni.’

‘She went to uni? I didn’t know that. Where did she go?’

‘Brighton. English and media studies, got a 2:1.’

‘Bright girl.’

‘I’m so proud of her, but you know what it’s like these days. They end up with a zillion pounds of debt, then can’t get a job. And there’s nothing happening in Potts Field.’

‘What does she want to do?’

‘She wants to be you, of course.’

Amy was taken aback. ‘Me?’

Karen laughed. ‘You should see your face, like it’s a crazy idea. Look at your life: brilliant job, going to parties, flying all over the world. Honestly, Ames, you’ve done amazing. And there’s me at the florists.’

‘You’ve done fine, Karen. And you’ve obviously raised a pretty special girl.’

‘I just hope university hasn’t gone to waste. She must have sent out two hundred CVs, but she just can’t get a foot in the door. Still, I’m sure it was the same when you started.’