The book with the broken spine

  She was rummaging feverishly in her black hobo handbag, at the same time trying to untwist her cardigan from behind her shoulder, although whatever she was looking for she couldn't find and it was this that was leading her headlong to wherever she was going. Her empty fingers forced her to look over towards Emma.  Although she didn't notice her corner-eye glance but had spotted her arm half deep within the handbag. It was hard to miss that.

 

An hour prior to this, over coffee, Emma had been reading the signs: the fact that Andrea couldn’t maintain eye contact, instead her eyes darting to Emma’s sides right behind her towards the street, was one of them, as if watching live tennis or something. Another was the new bag on her lap, clasped like a new puppy might have to be after it had seen another dog for the first time. But the way she was doing it, empty-eyed, almost demanding the question about its contents or if she was ok. Emma didn’t, she wasn’t the type to pry, even though they had been friends for years. Something very British about that she had later thought.

 

Back on the street things got worse. Someone had walked into Andrea on purpose, anyway that’s what she said, more the other way round, on account of her not paying any attention to what was in front of her. It was enough to cause a bit of a scene. Andrea reacted first, throwing her arms in the air and using the F word, doubling back on herself a few strides just to prove the point. Emma coiled within herself, hating any kind of confrontation, even continuing her march on as if pretending she hadn’t heard or witnessed a thing.

“You not waiting? Can you believe that? Rude sod.” She bleated, looking ungainly, almost drunk, as she compensated her time spent there with huge strides to catch up Emma.

 

“He tried to snatch me bag, did you see that. Bloody thief!”

 

Although Emma had tried to be as detached from the scene as possible, without not being there at all, she couldn’t recall seeing the passerby doing as she said. But Emma being Emma didn’t bring it up, let it go, just wanted it to smooth over, long enough for the uncomfortable knot of anxiety to subside.

 

She’d sometimes questioned her friendships, not just with Andrea but also with others. It seemed more pronounced with her because they were closer, known each other since they were fifteen, when Andrea had taken her under her wing after arriving late into the year at Buckingham Secondary. She questioned them because she just felt like a spare part most of the time, nodding and agreeing, following and pleasing. A friendship built on a foundation of sand she’d thought because if she’d spoken her mind who was to say they would ever have liked her. Needless to say she viewed her friends as phonies, won over by her complete insincerity.

 

Andrea bounded on. Emma played catch-up, trying to hang on to her coat tails along the high street, just like she had done since the fourth year at school, when Andrea’s gang was the place to be, and being on the periphery was a major triumph.

 

They’d met in the school library back in 1988, Andrea was trying to bunk off English and Emma was diligently researching a project.

 

Emma had lost some of her innocence that afternoon. When Andrea rocked up and pulled up a chair next to her, her chin touching the table and whispering behind a book about the early Greeks with a damaged spine, Emma had done what she always did, pretend she wasn’t there. However, they got chatting about that book somehow and it was certain that, right then, she traded some of her nerdiness for ‘in crowd’ non-conformity. Truth was she didn't wear those clothes well, looked kind of ill fitting on her. Nevertheless she did wear them and also for some time to come.

 

Within the key cutters window she caught sight of both their reflections, whether it was the spring sun's trick of light or a greater truth being echoed, Andrea completely dwarfed her stooping frame, and this made her cower further. She stretched her neck ahead as if checking that it was still there. This only served, however, to accentuate the mismatch. Stupid thing was Emma wasn't short by any means.

 

Today of all days seemed to magnify everything she had ever run from and she knew that it was building to a critical point where she could hide no longer. 

 

While this was all ricocheting round her head, she looked up to notice she was now alone. Andrea was nowhere to be seen. She waited. Still nothing. Meanwhile she felt the eyes of a hundred passing faces burn holes through her being, questioning her existence, laughing like the Buckingham posse did when she often found herself lost in the lunchtime crowd. She found a friend in her phone and busily did nothing with it except pretend to. This served to calm her pounding heart and shortening breaths. She found herself apologising to almost every pedestrian just for being there, side-stepping and spinning about like on hot coals.

 

For what seemed like hours Emma repeated this pattern of behaviour, not thinking for one second about all of the available options to her, too preoccupied with her own state of agitation.

 

Suddenly a hand grabbed her arm and span her round. It was Andrea. Her saviour, her absolute saviour. Relieved beyond the realms of anyone’s imagination, she did something other people did, something that was not ‘good’ old Emma. She shouted. She screamed. She yelled. She did this all of six inches from her bewildered friend’s face.

 

“Where the hell have you been?! You didn’t say a thing, you just waltzed off in your merry little world and didn’t give a shit about me. How was I supposed to know where you were?”

 

Ironically this time the public was watching, even stopping to grin at the event unfolding, nudging to their fellow companions as they did so.

 

This continued for about a minute more until she had completely run out of puff and looked like one of those party balloons you find behind the sofa two weeks later.

“And another thing…you’ve been really odd…clutching that stupid bag, not listening to me, dragging me about with you like I’m your pet dog or something.”

 

Andrea’s mouth was somewhere near the pavement by this stage so she picked it up and guided her shaking friend into a coffee shop across the road, nodding at the crowd and carrying a stupid grin on her face.

She pointed to the corner table and told her to sit there and she’d bring her some water and a pot of tea.

 

Whilst waiting there Emma began to feel herself returning to the body she woke up in that morning, the one that made breakfast and put on her make-up. It gradually dawned on her what she’d just done. She felt a wave of guilt wash into her shore, loosening the sands as it went.

 

Seeing her return through the café, she said.

“Andrea, I’m so sorry, I don’t know what…I thought...”

Before she could continue, Andrea had the bag on the table, but on this occasion quickly took out a wrapped object and carefully placed it in front of her.

 

“I’d been meaning to do this for ages and, since it's your birthday, I pulled out all the stops. I left it on the counter before I met you, didn't realise that and was franticly stressing out, went back and bingo, they had it. Don’t know how I kept it all in earlier!”

 

Emma’s eyes welled to bursting, a blink later and the tears quickly escaped and ran the channels of her rather reddened nose and puffy cheeks. Her guilt swelled once more but then turned to excitement.

 

“Go on, what you waiting for, Christmas?”

 

Her trembling hands skillfully unwrapped the corners of the present, desperately trying to avoid tearing.

 

“It’s Christmas Eve, Em!” She smiled jokingly.

 

Finally she had it in her hands.

 

“Do you remember? I want you to have it. I had it polished and the links mended. I want you to have it, Em.”

 

“I can’t. Really, Andy. No.”

 

“It’s yours. You deserve it putting up with me all this time. Thrilled you lost it out there too, don’t know how you bottle it so. Go girl! Socrates would be proud.”

 

As Andrea did up the necklace around her neck Emma touched the pendant: the one that she’d always wanted but could never find anywhere else, the one that her friend had worn to all the main events back in the day and the one that had etched in black those two words that had brought them together all those years ago:

‘Know thyself’.

 

“Yer getting there, Em, yer getting there. Who’d have thought it, a book with a broken spine an’ all.”