Naomi

In the end, it was me who finished it.

In the end, it was Emily who made it impossible for me not to.

Now those are the cold, hard facts. What led up to it is a long and painful story. So be prepared. It started with a cold, windy rooftop at dawn. Well I suppose thats not entirely true either, and if I'm going to get this all out, I might as well be truthful from the start.

OK...it actually started with an open day at Goldsmiths Uni in London during the summer after the Love Ball. Goldsmiths was the glittering prize I had promised myself after the slog that was my A levels. Three A's actually, and even then, I only squeaked in through admissions. But that was later...after the storm...

I met 'her' outside, before the meet and greet. Emily thought I was visiting relatives in London. I didn't like lying to her, but Emily's plans were all decided, and I don't remember agreeing to any of it. Not that the idea of travelling with her on a gap year wasn't appealing...its just I had never planned on a gap year at all. A levels, first class degree, maybe a post grad Masters, then into politics via an internship. Simple. The 'plan' actually was written on the back of an envelope, in my bedside table, but Emily hadn't even glanced at it all summer. She was so caught up in her own plans, her escape from her mother and sister...she hadn't asked me much at all. I was just the plus one on the tickets.

OK, wall to wall sex, partying and drugs didn't leave much time for deep discussion, but it would have been nice to have been asked. Bit like her moving in here. One minute we were shiny new girlfriends, next thing she was my pajamas. Not that I'm complaining about the fit of that nightwear, but like I said, it would have been nice to have been asked...about anything actually.

Anyway...the open day...As I said, 'she' tapped me on the shoulder outside the college entrance, and after we chatted for a while, I found myself telling her things I really shouldn't have. Like I felt trapped by Emily's cheerful certainties. Like my life was being controlled remotely these days...and, fatally, as it turned out...in more than one way...like I quite fancied this dark haired, blue eyed girl who obviously wanted me. The train ride home was a blur of anticipation and fear. I touched her hand, she stroked mine back with a nervous finger. I smiled at her, she licked her lips. My stomach flipped at her shy stare, she batted her long lashes. The deal was pretty much done before we left the carriage. One chaste kiss, brief and full of promise and I was suddenly and overwhelmingly intoxicated by her differences. Blue eyes instead of brown, tall and slim instead of small and curvy...and her breasts...oh yeah, her breasts. I'm not kidding myself that those full and unfettered tits didn't cry out to me for exploration. By the time we crashed through my blue front door, still holding hands, it would have taken a welcoming committee of Emily, Katie and my mum combined to stop the inevitable happening.

We didn't use 'our' bed to have sex...even in my aroused and reckless state, I wasn't ready to cross that boundary... But after the first feverish open mouthed kisses in the hall, her top came off, and I was like a starving man presented with a Queens banquet...where to start? Kisses turned to urgent mutual touching. When she found my wetness, she groaned as if she was in pain. When I slipped two fingers inside her, it was like the first time I fucked Emily all over again. Sophia obviously had some girl experience, because she wanted it all. Not just a frantic finger fuck on the couch, she wanted more. We ended up on the carpeted floor, naked in front of the hissing gas fire. I tasted her, and moaned in satisfaction at the unfamiliar tart flavour. So similar, but so different to the only other sex I had lapped. Her sighs, moans and movements were different too. When Sophia came, I actually laughed. She was so helpless and frantic in her need to finish, so unlike Emily. For once, I felt back in control. When she wanted to return the favour, I let her without question, eagerly watching her hungry mouth devour me. My own orgasm was strong and delicious. We did it again ten minutes later. I enjoyed it just as much, I won't lie...she licked me almost better than Emily had...not more skilful, just...more eager...I guess.

We rested on the couch, still naked...still touching each others warm skin. I didn't love her...not even a little bit...but that made it easier. No consequences, no emotional attachment. Or so I thought then. Stupid me. I thought I was being a bit like Cook. Fucking a random. He picked them up and discarded them like empty sweet wrappers. I had no plans to copy him to that extent, but surely this proved two things, didn't it? I was definitely gay...its not like I was cheating with a guy, was it? Cook had been trying to get his dick inside me from the very first day we met. And didn't it prove that I still had control of my life? Fucking Sophia was supposed to reinforce my independence. Not that any of the above was remotely close to the truth.

Afterward, of course, came the crushing guilt and fear of discovery.

When she'd finally left...and boy, was I scared she would never go. Emily was due back at 6...and I only got a clingy and reluctant Sophia out of the door at 5.30. She turned out to be a limpet. Well, she turned out to be a lot of things I wasn't expecting. Suicidal, bunny boiling, obsessive. Pick your adjective. Anyway. I showered quickly and cleaned my teeth twice. The thought of Emily...my Emily, smelling Sophia's orgasms on my lips almost drove me frantic. As it turned out, she was so distracted when she came in...(Katie had had a 'shoe crisis' whatever the fuck one of those is)...that she didn't notice my anxiety at all, which made it worse, strangely.

My relief at not immediately being found out was short lived, of course. Later, after Cook dealt me the MDMA, and I, in a fit of panic that the increasingly stalkerish Sophia would reveal all to Emily, gave her a substantial chunk of my stash to keep her quiet. Whereupon, after spotting me and Emily kissing on the stairs, she climbed to the top of the gangway over the dance floor at Thomas's club night, and bashed her brains out on the concrete floor below. Everyone was shocked and saddened. But I caught Cooks eye as he hung over the railing, trying to see who the ex clubber was, and he knew. He knew it from my face. Emily, of course didn't. At least not then.

Later, days later...as we stood on that windy rooftop, me desperate, Emily sick with fear at what she was about to find out...I realised that I was the clueless one. I'd played with fire, and got totally scorched.

"You've ruined it"

"You don't want anyone to care"

"Everything's so...fragile...didn't you know that?"

"We were special"

Those phrases cut into me like a surgeons scalpel. All bitterly true...apart from the not caring bit, obviously.

I found out I did care...enough to beg her pitifully. On the rooftop, and afterwards, when she came back to the house. Well, came back isn't very accurate. She lived under my mothers roof, that was all. At first it was just so raw...she wouldn't even speak to me...even to ask for the salt at dinner. We slept 'together', her in the double bed we had shared every night since she moved in...me on the put you up bed against the wall. So not really together at all. Anyway, I spent most nights sleepless, arms round my knees, watching her sleep.

After a month, we had progressed to short sentences. She still shied away from any semblance of physical contact. Her eyes weren't as permanently red as mine. I guess she did her crying early on in the car crash formerly known as our failed relationship. I seemed to have a permanent tap going behind my eyes. She rarely looked at me directly, just sideways, like she had on the roof, when she walked away from me. My cry of "I was scared" dismissed abruptly by her then. She was right, I am always scared.

And then there was that fucking barbecue. Her tormenting of me with the blonde random. The forced kiss in the kitchen, which felt like a punch in the stomach. My confession to sleeping with 'the dead girl' . My phrasing of that could have done with a bit more care...she wasn't actually dead when I slept with her. And the unwanted dip in the paddling pool. Not my finest hour. Or Emily's.

That night I tried to make it right, for about the 50th time. When she got back from her old house, I had made chilli...one of her favourites. A bottle of her favourite Chateauneuf stood opened on the checkered kitchen table.

When she came in I thought for a second she was going to let me talk. Fat chance.

"I've already eaten..." she said flatly, eyeing my culinary efforts "Pizza...with my family" I caught the bitter inflection in her words.

"Right" I thought "That would be the family which comprehensively disowned you not long ago...hence your presence here...that family"

But I didn't say it. I had no right any more.

"Oh" I said quietly "But I cooked it specially for you" Stupid, I know. That much was obvious.

"Should have asked" she breezed, swallowing a mouthful of wine from my glass and hunting for her bag.

"Going out...with my friends...don't wait up...I might not be back until tomorrow" she said indifferently. My stomach clenched at the casual cruelty in that sentence.

Like thats the sort of thing couples say to each other all the time, isn't it? Well, maybe couples like us. Where one half has fucked up...spent weeks trying to make it right, and then, like a beam of torchlight in a dark room, the realization comes that the phrase "I'll do anything" is utterly meaningless. It only has meaning if there is an end result. I knew right then that I was utterly wasting my time. I was a useful, if unimportant means to an end. I cooked, cleaned, worried and waited, but in all those weeks, not a single flicker of redemption came my way. We were no further along than the day she first found out about my treachery. She hated me, loathed me even.

A bit of the old Naomi Campbell still resided inside this skinny, over medicated body and I realised at that moment she would never forgive me...not like this anyway. She slept here, ate here, and kept her clothes here. I was nothing to her. Nothing any more, at least.

And so I took some control back. Not like with Sophia...That sort of 'control' burns too brightly..

I waited until Emily had left, then noticed she'd left her phone on the side. I had never checked her phone, even when we were 'together'.

But this day I did.

Four messages and two voice mails. Very informative, all of them. She hadn't even bothered to set a PIN.

All from one person too. Mandy. Her 'straight' friend. The cold realization that Mandy was anything but straight hit me like a bullet.

The girl she said was just a friend. Just platonic friend. Not according to the evidence I was looking at.

"Babe...missing you...need my Emily kisses tonight?"

"You're such a tease Fitch...come back and finish what you started last night"

Every message, every text a dagger in my heart. Straight, my fucking arse.

The fresh tears in my eyes were wiped away savagely. I'd been feeding my addiction to Emily Fitch on false promises. Promises I had made myself. When Emily rushed back ten minutes later, hunting for the missing phone, I handed it to her without comment, well apart from one sentence.

"I"m going over to visit Effy in Bath" I lied "Probably stay over until tomorrow afternoon at Antheas. Lock up when you come in, Ems?"

I saw the small flash of interest in her eyes at the prospect of having the place to herself. I guess it must be awkward when your cheating ex stays home a lot getting hammered, putting the brakes on your sex life with your new lover. I could see Emily had taken the bait without hesitation. I had no doubt Mandy would be spending the night here.

After Emily left, I packed an entirely superfluous overnight bag and took my toothbrush from the bathroom. I actually spent that night on Brandon Hill. Alone, in the dark...on a bench, huddled against the cold in a musty car blanket I found under the stairs, drinking steadily from a litre of cheap vodka and smoking the last of my weed.

At 8 am the next morning, I woke, hungover and cold, still wrapped in the blanket. I got a bus to the bottom of the hill near my house, and trudged up to the familiar blue door. The upstairs bedroom curtains were half open. I let myself in silently. As I picked my way along the hall, items of female clothing were scattered along it. Must have been a heavy night..no time to pick up your dress or underwear, I thought. My head already knew what my heart dreaded when I climbed the stairs one at a time, avoiding the third step, with its annoying creak.

Standing outside 'my' bedroom, I caught the low murmur of voices, then Emily's brief deep chuckle. My heart sank even further as I carefully gripped the brass door handle. Taking a deep breath, I pushed it open without making a sound.

I could describe every tiny detail of that scene from memory afterwards. They weren't shagging, although by the smell of sex in there, there had been plenty of that too. They were lying top to tail on the bed, Emily facing away from the headboard, At each end was an open laptop in front of them. Revision, then. That's innocent enough, I hear you say, if a little intimate for platonic friends to be doing it on a bed...my fucking bed..

But naked platonic friends? Maybe not so innocent. I had the time to notice the abundance of smooth flesh on show. The contrast of Emily's pale skin beside Mandy's darker Asian complexion. The easy way they lay there, comfortably naked together. This wasn't the first time they had been like this. 'This' comes later, after you're properly together. Again the sickening thump inside my chest as I understood this had been going on for a good while...all the time I had been grovelling, pleading...hoping.

Is it strange that I found this scene more profoundly upsetting than if I had found them going at it? Well, it was. Finding your girlfriend making out with another woman is shattering. Finding her in 'your' bed...casually enjoying some post coital study time...naked, with her new lover? I found that more heartbreaking than I thought I would ever feel. My whole body ached with cold despair.

I stood in the doorway for a couple more seconds before Mandy noticed me. She blinked in disbelief, then nudged an absorbed Emily in the side, before sliding off the bed, clutching at a discarded dressing gown on the floor. With a nauseous lurch, my brain told me it was my dressing gown. She was even borrowing my clothes.

Emily looked up at me with a blank disbelieving stare. Her brown eyes wide with shock.

"Naomi...?" she stuttered..,"you're back...but..."

I felt my mouth settle into a thin frozen smile. It was like they were waiting for a bomb to go off. I steadied my shaking body, and drew a deep breath before speaking.

"You..." I said, pointing at Mandy "Get dressed...in your own fucking clothes and get the hell out of my house. If you're not gone in 30 seconds, I'm coming down to the kitchen and finding the biggest knife in the drawer...and that's not a threat...its a stone cold promise"

She got up quickly and ran past me naked down the stairs. Emily just carried on looking at me fixedly. Her gaze was a mixture of shock and growing defiance. I knew instinctively what was going through her mind.

"You did this first"

She didn't say it, but it hung in the air between us like Christmas lights.

Well, she was right. I did. But not in this bed, and not like this. This wasn't cheating, this was contempt, humiliation and disdain, all wrapped up neatly in one toxic package. This was "I don't give a flying fuck how you feel about me cheating on you"

Finally, I broke the silence.

"You leave my house now Emily...this minute. I'll pack your things later...you can come back for them tomorrow. I'll get someone to be here when you do.. Leave your key when you go today. This ends now...this fucking... farce"

I could see the emotions crossing her face. Resentment, anger, guilt...and finally a small dose of fear. I don't know what she was expecting, but I didn't think this was it.

I turned to go downstairs, hearing the front door bang as I did...obviously Mandy had believed the knife threat.

"Naomi?" she said , in a low voice, but I couldn't even look at her.

"I said I'd do anything Emily" I said with my back to her "But I guess you were right all along. I ruined it. There's nothing left but you humiliating me...and thats just fucking cruel, don't you think?"

I didn't wait for an answer.

The bedroom door banged behind me.