The Two Musketeers

The prison doors open as slowly as the months that have just passed inside them. I glance at myself in a nearby pane of glass, examining my sober reflection as I carry my precious box, oh so carefully.

It’s not such a terrible place, really. It’s a relative new-build, rosy red brick instead of drab Dickensian grey; category C, with a garden and drama society, and even pockets of care and supportive sympathy. There are worse places to be. Let me tell you how I got here. I’d always accepted that my best friend Tina was prettier and more popular than me. There had never been rancour or jealousy between us. What’s that old chestnut about opposites attracting? I know it’s supposed to apply to romantic partners, but it had applied to me and Tina since Year 3 at school, when Wayne Dawson dropped a slug down Tina’s neck while we were all building a bug hotel on the school nature plot.

Tina had run away, screaming, but that wasn’t my style. I had a temper. “You’re a bit of a slug yourself, Wayne!” I’d shouted, grabbing the wriggly creature and dropping it down the front of his cagoule (the poor slug deserving neither fate).

Later, I’d found Tina waiting for me outside Miss Walker’s office, scuffing her shoe on the lino. “You did that for me?” “I did it ’cos he’s a bully!”

She had peered closely at my red-rimmed eyes. I might have been brave, with a highly developed sense of natural justice, but I wasn’t immune to a scolding.

But then Tina’s hand had slipped into mine and she’d said, “Come on, I’ll show you the honeymoon suite we’ve made for the ladybirds,” and I’d thought maybe it had all been worth it.

By secondary school, I was often getting into trouble, sometimes as Tina’s champion and sometimes on my own behalf. I was hot-headed, feisty. Dan Hardwick said I should come with a warning triangle and ‘approach with caution’ sign. He dated Tina for a while, but then he transferred to sixth-form college and we stayed on at school, so that kind of fizzled out.

Funnily enough, I liked Joe when Tina first introduced him to me. We were at college then – me at catering, Tina across town doing hairdressing. He worked as a ‘junior pencilpusher’ in insurance, and seemed to get that the pact between me and Teens was indissoluble and, two years later, even started off his speech at their wedding reception: “There are three of us in this marriage,” enjoying the gasps and raised brows until everyone twigged the joke.

But marriage changes people, shifts the dynamic. That’s what I told myself when Tina started backing out of long-standing arrangements (Abba weekend at Butlin’s) and giving me the silent treatment when I asked why she’d bailed from outings like coming to the pictures.

“You’ve changed,’’ I concluded, hiding how upset I was.

“People do, Kath. Look, maybe you should… you know… not rely on me so much for company, now I’m an old married woman.”

I gave her the silent treatment then. We had vowed years ago that we would never, ever let a man come between the two musketeers.

She did make an appearance a few months after her ‘old married woman’ dig, pitching up at the pub for my birthday drinks, but she could only stay an hour, she said, her attention patently elsewhere.

As she rose to go, I glimpsed them: bruises on her wrists when she absentmindedly adjusted the cuffs of her jacket. I knew she must be hiding worse. I was sure of it, but no longer sure enough of the two musketeers to follow her out of the pub and tackle her. Once she knew I knew, she might shrink even further away in mortified denial, humiliation – or fear.

Joe was no Wayne Dawson, but the principle, I thought, remained the same.

I didn’t hesitate. As Tina’s natural protector, I rang Joe’s mobile and told him I’d seen the bruises and what I’d do to him if he ever laid a finger on her again. “I’ll know,” I said, “because I’ll be watching.

Don’t think you’ve driven a wedge between us, because you could never do that.”

Fighting words. I had no idea if they really meant anything. Maybe, I thought, I should go to Tina’s parents with my suspicions? Or the police? How did I even know, I reflected in a panic, that Joe was the culprit? I’d hung up before he could confirm, deny, jeer or threaten.

He turned up at college the following evening as I was wiping down units in the testing kitchen. I was the training assistant in the catering department by then, tasked with cleaning up and locking up after the students had left. He must have slipped in and waited until the coast was clear.

I knew straight away by the look on his face – furtive, cocky and disdainful – that I had got the right person. Small comfort that was, though.

As he lounged against a steel worktop in his suit, he wasn’t even particularly menacing, but for some reason I felt frightened.

He smiled and said, “You might mean well, Kath, but you’re not back at school now, giving people Chinese burns to show what a dutiful sidekick you are. Tina’s been bumping into things a lot recently.

Doc reckons her metabolism is too low, makes her dizzy. You know she’s into these faddy diets?”

I merely said, “You’re a brave man, coming to see me in my workplace.”

Nodding briefly at the knife block nearby.

“Is that a threat?” he asked, and his eyes seemed to sparkle in a

‘bring it on’ kind of way, making me wonder if

I’d always accepted that Tina was prettier and more popular than me

he’d fantasised about beating me up as well – showing Tina’s interfering friend ‘what for’. “I know you’re secretly jealous,” he went on, smoothing his tie. “Can’t be much fun watching Teens mop up all the attention and compliments. I mean, look at you, you might consider combing your hair the odd day. Tina says you do like the male species, you just can’t get anyone of your own–”

I whirled round, gripping a knife he hadn’t seen, lying on a nearby chopping board, feeling its sleek, reassuring weight, thinking of Wayne Dawson and the satisfying look of terror on his face as I’d lunged towards him with a slug…

I watched Joe’s own certainty falter, the goading sparkle vanish from his eyes. He finally stopped talking.

And now the prison doors open enough to slip through. There’s a pat on the back, a gruff, “Mind how you go”.

I hug my box, looking up at a blue sky, the colours blurring as Tina hurries towards me. She wraps her arms around me, and I can feel her alarming thinness. The box comes between us and she asks, through our tears, “What’s this?”

I raise the lid, part the tissue paper, and there it is – a beautiful ladybird brooch, enamelled in red and gold. I don’t know if she’ll remember…

“The ladybird honeymoon suite!” She smiles, lifting out the brooch and holding it up to the sun. “I’ve dreamt of something like this,” she says. “Thank you, it’s perfect.” Then she looks around and sees her parents waiting patiently (tactfully allowing the two musketeers their reunion), and I step aside to let the family reunion take over.

I’d been devastated – we’d all been, her friends and family – when she was sentenced to six months for credit card fraud, even though it had been all Joe’s idea. By then, she’d been too under his heel to see or refute what he was doing, adding her own name to his fraudulent applications for cards. And even now, there’s still a part of her that agrees with the court that she was culpable: “I signed some of those dotted lines, Kath. I knew what I was doing.”

She broke all contact with me after Joe told her he’d gone to the college to “beg me to stop smothering them”, and I’d threatened him with a knife. It wasn’t something I could deny. She’d issued a threat of her own, no doubt Joe holding the phone up to her ear and mouthing the words he’d had her rehearse: “Joe told you about my dizzy spells, and it still wasn’t good enough. You’ve got to stop crusading on my behalf – it’s got you imagining things! Plus, my dad has a heart condition, Kath, so if you ever go to Mum and Dad with any of your lies, I’ll tell the police you threatened Joe with a knife. They’ll only have to look at your school record to know you’ve got form for kicking off. I’m pretty sure waving a knife around is illegal.”

I was pretty sure it was, too, though I’d only actually glared at Joe for a few seconds while clutching it – but her threat wasn’t the reason I’d said nothing in response. My real fear was that if I pushed things too far, there’d be no way back for me, for us. I wish I’d shouted it from the rooftops straight away, though, even if it had meant putting her dad’s health at risk. The rest might have been avoided.

While I’d tossed and turned at night over what to do next, Joe’s card scam had been rumbled by the police.

The bruises were fading by the time of the trial (Joe had skipped the country, of course – all bullies are cowards) and she’d refused to wear a sleeveless dress to show the marks of his persuasion.

The fact that she was in court at all had made me as angry as the sentence. But then, I’ve always had a temper.

“Hot-headed, feisty,” corrected Dan Hardwick when he came into my restaurant a few months after Tina’s release (I say ‘my’ but I’m actually the commis chef – I fancied a change from the workplace where I’d faced down a smirking Joe). “I bet,” added Dan, “they do a fiery chilli in this establishment. Does it come with brown sauce?” He’s a brown sauce kinda guy, I’ve come to discover; smothers every delicately prepared dish in the stuff. Appalling. “You love me really,” he says. I’ve told him I’ll let him know.

Tina is back living with her parents, and has interviews lined up at several salons. Meanwhile, there have been sightings of Joe in France. “Must be awful for him, looking over his shoulder all the time.” Tina shudders. “I’m lucky by comparison.”

She’ll always be gentle-hearted and perhaps because of that, easily swayed; everyone who loves her hoping she’s learnt to harden a little of that generous heart when it really matters. I just hope she’ll keep a mind as open as her heart when it comes to best friends. And though we’ll always be best friends,

I’m no longer her keeper, nor she mine. We both know it’s time to take a step back and let her find her own path.

Anyway, while the three musketeers got along famously, as I recall, and even became four when D’Artagnan joined, Dan has made me think of being part of a different duo for a change. And there are far worse places to be than in his arms.

THE END

‘They’ll only have to look at your school record to see you’ve got form’