Here’s the next instalment of a story about friendships, loneliness and the quest for mid-life happiness. The second chapter can be read here.
The story so far: Kitty Burtenshaw has found herself fifty-five and friendless, and wondering how it got to this point. Reflecting on her past friendships, she reassures herself that she has shed her old self, and life will now be lived on her terms.
That is until an old work friend - Zelda Pecure - contacts her, explaining that a mutual friend of theirs - Christine Lanchester - is a murderer.
Zelda, a would-be murder/mystery novelist, tells of how she was attending a Scandi-Noir convention (featuring her favourite author, Compton Larbey), and how she discovered a discarded memory stick containing highly personal information on Christine…
Charged with her new mission, Zelda was determined to return the USB drive to its owner, preserving their dignity in the process. Zelda knew things about Christine that her own family would never have known. At least one would hope.
Overcome with knowing a person from afar, Zelda was compelled to smooth off all the corners of her knowledge of Christine Lanchester. Using the parlance of those much younger, Zelda “searched up” Christine’s social media accounts.
Christine’s Instagram account projected glamour: New hairstyles, cocktails at The Shard, meals in chic Soho bistros. Her Facebook account presented an endless parade of memes which, presumably, Christine identified with. She followed such accounts as ‘Positive Thoughts & Quotes’, ‘Poetry of Pain’, ‘All Men are Bastards’ and ‘Quotes for the Shat-Upon’, which offered many a meme (usually featuring a black-and-white image of a sagacious Morgan Freeman giving a glance of pure wisdom, as if he was an authority on women's relationship issues.)
The memes offered such pearls of wisdom as:
“Don’t be a chaser! You’re the Tequila, not the lime!” Being tee-total, this didn’t make much sense to Zelda.
“Ditch all the things which make you unhappy. When the liars and cheaters realise their mistake, you hold all the cards.” - Anonymous.
“Don’t run to them. Just wait for them to come flocking to YOU.” - Anonymous.
“Your enemies can’t kill you. Only the ones you love.” - Anonymous. Whoever this Anonymous was, they certainly considered themselves a fountain of sanctimony.
“If they don’t miss you then you never mattered in the first place.” For some reason, this gem was presented in courier font over a black-and-white image of Alan Titchmarsh.
“When you start to say no and put yourself first, you’ll find yourself alone. Good riddance to all those toxic people who never gave a damn about you.” (This particular quote was from a man called Johnny Brixton, who upon further investigation proved to be involved with football thuggery. Zelda couldn’t be sure, but it seemed our Johnny Brixton, purveyor of deep ‘n meaningfuls, released the pain of his wounded heart by smashing in the faces of rival football gangs.)
There was one meme which spoke of Christine’s pain in the form of a short story.
‘There are times when my inner Goddess is wounded. When my spirit wolf is cold and weak, and the hawk of my mind finds no safety. All I can do is lay in the darkness with my broken demons. “We’ll deal with the bastards one by one. We’ll kill them all.”, speaks my truth.’
(Of course, I’d read all of these myself, being Facebook friends with Christine. And what a load of old toss it is too. Why I’m still friends with Christine on Facebook is anyone’s guess, given that she is no longer speaking to me. But then she has deleted me four times in the past, usually when I had unwittingly done something to offend her. Deep down I know I’ve not heard the last from Christine. She will no doubt reinstate me when she needs me. Maybe there is some truth in these memes?)
Zelda even turned to Spotify, as her heart bled into Christine’s life story. She found playlists created by Christine with headings such as ‘Need A Good Cry’, ‘Pissed-off’ and ‘Pour A Big Fat Glass Of Red’. There was a lot of early to mid-2000’s music, probably the last time Christine had a loose grip on what was a new release. Dido, James Blunt, Razorlight, Ronan Keating, Kaiser Chiefs, reformed Take That, and a surprising amount of Rammstein.
Before Christine, Zelda was strictly a crime/murder/mystery podcast person. But now Christine had Zelda’s sympathy.
Zelda liked what Christine liked, which led Zelda to believe she could be the friend Christine needed. After all, Zelda knew so much about her. It could be a fast-track friendship, thought Zelda; her obsessive tendencies wildly spinning the wheel of her emotional bumper car.
With Dido on rotation on her Spotify playlist, Zelda found herself passing by Christine’s workplace; a multi-media company based off of Regent Street. (This, of course, was nowhere near Zelda’s East London stomping ground of Walthamstow). Zelda soon found it to be a fruitless exercise. No amount of loitering outside an anonymous grey building would ever make Christine magically appear, even though Zelda had run that scenario through her mind countless times.
Even if Zelda chanced upon Christine, what would she say to her?
Zelda ditched her daydream of two strangers who just happened to become friends in the middle of London, and plumped for joining the same pilates class as Christine - another crucial piece of information found on the USB stick. (Christine had written an e-mail to the sports centre to complain about the attitude of a staff member on the welcome desk who wouldn’t open the barrier when Christine had forgotten her membership card.) It proved to be an expensive urge: Zelda had to join the gym, as well as travel to South London early on a Saturday morning.
But the gamble paid off.
Zelda had never attended any sort of aerobics class - keeping fit was something for the already-body proud - so she wore a baggy pair of jogging bottoms and an oversized “I got slaughtered at Scandi-fest 2017” t-shirt and kept to the back of the room. She watched the room from her defensive corner, following everyone else’s lead until a familiar face entered, slightly taking her breath away in the manner of a Doctor Who fan bumping into David Tennant at a WH Smiths’ magazine stand.
She was there. Christine was actually there, in the flesh and in stretchy sportswear.
With everyone in position on their exercise mats, following the lead from the perfect specimen of an aerobics instructor, rows of bodies stretched and arched. Zelda did what she could with one eye on Christine’s backside, two rows diagonally to her. Christine wasn’t athletic but was making a better fist of it than Zelda.
Midway through the class, Zelda wondered if she had lost her mind. What was she doing following a total stranger? She had become one of those oddball loners she’d read about all these years. When the hour was up, Zelda had chastised herself enough, resigning to common sense. The plan now was to slip the USB stick into Christine’s bag without her noticing and run in the opposite direction.
Stupid, stupid Zelda…
Gym-wear hidden under her long coat, Zelda followed Christine on foot for twenty minutes to a small row of shops where there was a newsagents. Zelda skulked out of sight in the poky store, squeezing into a tight corner amongst packets of Haribo and Pringle tubes. She watched Christine impatiently queue until it was her turn at the counter.
The young man behind the till sipped from a bottle of Prime, nodding for Christine to speak.
‘I need to send these back…’ Christine placed a small white box on the counter.
‘What’s wrong with them?’ asked the cashier.
‘Don’t work. I’ve got a QR code to scan…’ said Christine, thumbing her smart phone.
‘That’s what you get when you buy cheap,’ said the cashier with a dry tone. Zelda saw Christine glance over her shoulder at the long queue forming behind her, presumably hoping nobody heard that remark.
‘You should get iPods next time,’ suggested the cashier with a snooty expression.
‘They’re over two hundred quid. These were nine,’ retorted Christine.
‘You get what you pay for,’ said the cashier with a derisive exhale of air.
‘Look, we can’t all be on Dulwich Discount Grocery money, can we?’ snapped Christine.
‘Just sayin’…’ said the cashier, raising his thick pair of amused eyebrows.
‘Well how about you just serve me and keep your fucking opinion to yourself?’ glared Christine. The Cashier pulled a silly ‘ooooh’ face, doing as he was told.
Zelda followed Christine as she stomped along the high street, muttering sharply to herself, oblivious to the short woman in the long coat who was following her.
Inside a coffee shop, Zelda queued a couple of people behind Christine, watching as she collected her latte with whipped cream and sprinkles, and sat at a secluded table. There was an empty table positioned behind Christine. All Zelda had to do was nab the table and discreetly slide the USB into Christine’s gym bag. It was all going to plan.
Drink purchased, Zelda carefully passed by Christine, who was engrossed in a discarded newspaper. Sitting delicately behind her, Zelda played it cool. She reached for the USB inside her coat pocket, glancing surreptitiously at the people dotted nearby, engrossed in their own lives. Zelda slowly leaned around the back of Christine’s chair, USB in her outstretched hand.
Then Christine turned sharply, suddenly aware of Zelda’s intimate presence. Caught in the spotlight of Christine’s wide-eyed glare, Zelda froze in an awkward angle.
‘I… I think you dropped this?’ sputtered Zelda, holding up the USB stick.
‘No.’ Came Christine’s tart response, before seriously considering whether the USB was hers or not. Christine turned her attention back to Zelda. ‘I know you, don’t I?’
Zelda shrugged, no words forming in her open mouth.
‘You’re in my aerobics class. Thought I recognised you.’
Zelda smiled, nodding with relief.
‘It was awful today. Every week I move to a different mat and the same bloke wearing nasty fart-traps winds up in front of me. Honestly, he constantly farted for the entire hour with my face inches from the vent. I swear he’s doing it deliberately.’
‘Men…’ offered Zelda, smiling feebly.
‘Mind you, it beats my last interaction with a man. I dropped a pack of paninis on the floor in the supermarket and a passerby laughed at me,’ mused Christine.
There’s never a right time to start a friendship, but this was it for Christine and Zelda.
Zelda admired Christine’s outlook in life: She didn’t consider herself a loner, but she knew she was alone. Christine had a fire inside which Zelda hadn’t experienced in a friendship before. Christine could rant about anything, and Zelda found it hilarious. Like a wind-up toy, Christine’s perpetually pissed-off, animated tirades were lively and entertaining.
‘My commute to work lasted a bloody lightyear. Lost my hearing on the friggin’ Central Line. The thing which made it all worse was some Instaponce posing with his finger to his chin, clinging to a handrail like George Michael in the Careless Whisper video…’
‘… the woman who sits opposite me in the office was bleating on about how much pain she was in and I’m like “You think that’s bad? I had my wisdom tooth taken out in May!”’
After a few weeks of “coffees in town” (Zelda had given the impression she worked in Central London when, in reality, she had been unemployed for a couple of years), the one-sided conversation explored deeper waters. Christine’s love life. Her divorce from a man called Simon Griddle, an insurance broker with, as Christine discovered far too late, multiple lives and multiple women on the side.
‘He never liked it that I refused to take his surname when we got married. I mean, Christine Griddle. Sounds like a barbecued heffer…’
Zelda knew of whom Christine was referring to, as there were many jpegs of Simon on the USB stick. Or rather, many photos of the copper-haired Simon with other women. Zelda asked Christine how she was handling the divorce.
‘What, finding out my whole life was a lie? I think I can live without him. What goes around n'all that. He’ll get what’s coming to him. One day.’ All of which could be considered a typical response from a lover spurned, but those words were the first to leap into Zelda’s mind five weeks later, when she was curled up on the sofa one evening.
She had scoured Netflix, Apple TV+, Now, Amazon Prime, iPlayer and terrestrial television, but there was nothing of interest, so Zelda decided to go to bed. Remote Control in hand, she stood in the doorway of her husband’s gaming den, watching him thumbing his controller, headphones on; oblivious to his wife.
‘I’m going up,’ said Zelda, to no response. Turning back to the television, she aimed the remote to switch it off. That’s when she saw the familiar face of Simon Griddle, followed by a reporter standing beside a woodland police cordon. Zelda hurriedly tapped the remote, turning up the volume too loud as the reporter spoke the words ‘… his body was found in the woods behind me early this morning by a dog walker…’
The television audio faded away as Zelda’s brain recalled the words spoken by Christine.
‘He’ll get what’s coming to him. One day.’
‘So what did you do next? Did you speak to Christine?’ I asked Zelda in the coffee shop. ‘You’re her friend. Her ex-husband was found dead. She must be upset, even if she was angry at him.’
What Zelda did next was question every conversation she had had with Christine. Pondered all those private thoughts Christine had written about her own mental state and how Simon had destroyed her life when she discovered his unfaithfulness.
How did she leap to the conclusion that Christine was a suspect? Why was she even telling me?
Zelda was used to profiling people on the internet. It was a fun hobby for her, finding out as much as she could about people through their social media accounts, just to prove that she could. She enjoyed the power of it. Of knowing everything about a total stranger.
That’s why she came to me. Zelda was friends with me on Facebook, as was Christine.
Their mutual friend.
I paced for days, consumed by thoughts of deleting all of my social media accounts, berating my own stupidity and weakness of character. Adding and following and friending all these people who have come in and out of my life; collecting names and faces that I once shared a class room with, or a work place or a social club. Collating it all just to prove to myself that I had done something with my life. That I had been places and seen things. That I had had a life.
The past was the past, I told myself. So why was I on my way to meet Christine Lanchester?
Copyright © 2023 Andrew Wright