Too Close For Comfort by Eleanor Moran

crossing to the stove, her face suffused with a bleakness that felt absolute. How could I have been so naive? Of course this wasn’t ordinary: it was
the very thing that Helena was lamenting, the outer veneer and the inner reality totally at odds. ‘Dreading tomorrow.’ I leapt up instinctively, enveloped her in a hug. ‘Thanks,
Mia,’ she half whispered, her body almost surrendering but not quite. Saffron looked on, eyes round and watchful. ‘Did Helena say much?’
    How to answer that question? ‘No, not really. She’s in shock, like you all are.’
    ‘Right.’
    ‘Do you really think . . .’ The uncomfortable meeting with Helena somehow chimed with the tenor of Lysette’s grief – what kind of private hell was she in
right now? ‘Lys, do you really not think it was suicide? Do you think something happened?’
    Her body juddered in my arms. She pulled away.
    ‘I can’t go there,’ she said, face full of struggle.
    ‘No, of course,’ I said, regretting my blundering attempt at empathy. ‘Is there anything – anything at all – I can do?’
    ‘There might be actually,’ she said, crossing back to the fridge. She spoke from inside there, the light illuminating her bent head. ‘I need to pop out once I’ve cooked
this. I’ll be less than an hour. Could you hold the fort with madam? She’s already eaten.’
    ‘Course,’ I said, grinning at Saffron who had a stray finger approaching her left nostril. I gave her a look and she put it down, giggling. ‘What have you got to do?’
    ‘It’s nothing,’ she said, still hidden in the fridge. As she stood up, I couldn’t help noticing she hadn’t taken anything out. ‘Just something I need to sort
out.’ Her voice was too light, too breezy to convince.
    I tried again. ‘You’re not going to that PTA meeting, are you?’
    ‘Fuck no!’ she said, vehement.
    ‘What, to do with the . . .’ My voice dropped. ‘With tomorrow?’
    ‘Yeah, kind of,’ she said, her tone a full stop.
    I felt a twinge of resentment. What was it she wasn’t trusting me with whilst she was busy trusting me with her only daughter?
    ‘Right,’ I said, equally clipped.
    She ducked down towards Saffron’s blonde head, held it between her hands and kissed the crown. ‘You’ll be good for Auntie Mia, won’t you?’ she said, face still
dipped low. ‘You’ll take good care of her?’
    The phrase didn’t sound throwaway in her mouth – it rang in my ears, odd and disconcerting. In a few minutes she was gone, her car zooming off into the early evening. I stood at the
window, watching it disappear, hurt and anxiety mixed up together. Where had she gone?
    The question was so much bigger than I knew.

Sarah’s Diary: February 21st 2015
    I annoy him, I know I do. He annoys me – no, he fucking drives me crazy sometimes – but when I think about not having him, it makes me want to
die. And if I think about HER stopping me having him – that would be it. Show’s over, folks. The end.
    I smelt it on him, her perfume. It was that sweet rose she gets out of that clunky crystal bottle she’s got in her bathroom. I was sure it was that, but he said I was
being loony. That I was letting the nasty voice inside of me who says I’m not good enough tell me stories. I needed to listen to him instead – listen to him telling me how beautiful I
was, how special. He got me a vodka tonic, told me not to spoil things again, not when we’d finally pulled it off. I felt fuzzy then, good fuzzy and bad fuzzy all at once.
    I ignored him the next day. I didn’t even have to see him looking at me, I could feel it on my skin like it was lotion. I didn’t turn round. I stayed talking to
Kimberley like I liked her – actually liked her, rather than had to like her because it’s too dangerous to listen to the voice telling me the truth about her. It’s funny, the
voice is either my best friend or my worst enemy and I don’t know which.
    She’s invited us to her house.