Thanks for the comments, and thank you for welcoming me back :) Would love to know your thoughts on this chapter
2.
It was gone half-past six before there was any sign of life in the deserted car park. Naomi pulled her coat tighter around her and lit another cigarette. Then another. The skin of her hands was drying and cracking in the cold and as she crushed the end of her third cigarette with the ball of her foot she was thinking of abandoning the wait and tossing the little bag into the fast-flowing body of the unassuming river.
Deserted cars sat askew within the orthogonal grid of the car park, some burnt out, and as the sun began to withdraw behind the buildings and cast long shadows across the asphalt Naomi started to feel unsafe. The sudden hollow cracking of brittle twigs caused her to stare wide-eyed across the tarmac towards the barrier of trees between the car park and the road. It was Emily, emerging from the wrinkled shade of the trees cautiously, shuffling through the dried, curled leaves that lay on the ground. Naomi watched her approaching, her arms and hands trained tightly to her sides as she walked, as if she was self-conscious of their movement.
'Hi,' she said once she was close enough to be heard.
'You're late,' Naomi replied.
'Yeah ... sorry,' Emily answered, and as if by way of an explanation she turned her head away from Naomi and gazed back towards the trees just as Katie finally picked her way out from the undergrowth.
'Oh,' Naomi stated, at once disgruntled and intrigued by the prized twin's presence.
Katie was flushed and irritable by the time she reached Naomi and Emily, a single yellowing leaf suspended in the finer wisps of her red hair. 'What the fuck Emily,' were the first words from her mouth. She didn't acknowledge Naomi. 'Do you think we're the fucking SAS or something?'
'We needed to be discreet,' was the quiet reasoning.
Naomi resisted the urge to ask why Katie had been brought along at all if discretion was the main objective.
'Jesus Christ Em,' Katie sighed with dramatic fatigue. 'You're actually going to become invisible one day, you know?'
A noncommittal frown flitted across Naomi's features at the statement, but disappeared before either twin noticed its presence.
Katie looked between the two expectantly. 'Well?' she asked. 'Has she got it?'
Emily's mouth quivered momentarily, like she was considering reposting to her sister's barked imperatives, but she instead turned her big brown eyes to Naomi, raising her eyebrows slightly. 'Have you?'
Naomi reached into her pocket and withdrew the bag, the plastic crinkled and creased from where her fist had been clenching and unclenching around it in nervous spasms.
'See?' Emily said, proudly, as if she was the victor of an ethical gamble to which Naomi was imperative but not privy. Katie remained unimpressed. 'Whatever,' she said dismissively, snatching the bag from the loose grip of Naomi's thumb and fore-finger and pocketing it immediately.
Naomi hadn't been expecting a thank you, and wasn't surprised when it didn't come. What did follow was an uncertain moment of silence, where Katie made it quite clear that she didn't want to hang around, and Emily looked like maybe she might like to. Naomi stood, her hands beginning to twitch uneasily as she waited to be excused.
The moment passed, ending with a bored exhalation from Katie and a 'come on Ems, let's go.'
Emily looked up at Naomi again as Katie began to walk off. 'Thanks for keeping schtum,' she said.
Naomi's eyes darted to the side then to the ground. She felt used somehow, cheapened and embarrassed at being so eager to go to such lengths to appease a group of people who didn't even like her. 'Yeah ... well,' she trailed off, pulling her coat tight across her torso again as the wind flapped it outwards.
'You should –' Emily stopped. Naomi watched her judge the distance between herself and her sister. 'You should come over this Saturday,' she said, 'as a thank you,' she justified. 'We'd ... we'd be happy to have you.'
Naomi raised an amused eyebrow at her, 'Would you now?' She glanced at the retreating back of Katie. 'Where?' she asked, as disinterestedly as possible, trying to ignore the excitement she could feel growing in the pit of her stomach.
'We meet in Cook's flat,' Emily gestured to the council block in the foreground – the same block that Naomi could see from her window. 'Number 32.'
Naomi looked up, squinting sceptically. All the years she had lived opposite that flat, never once had she seen Cook enter or leave it other than with Effy on a Friday morning. She supposed it was possible they could live together – but if that was so, why did they always meet in the car park? She looked back at Emily, who was gazing expectantly up at her with big, innocent eyes.
'Cook's flat?' Naomi asked.
Her question didn't really have a point, and all it received was a swift nod. 'Saturday at eight?' Emily prompted, before rolling her eyes as the breeze carried Katie's impatient voice from where she stood by the trees, hands on hips, unimpressed.
Naomi looked at Emily, hard, her pupils small and focused. Then she shrugged evasively. 'Maybe,' she offered. 'You'd better go,' she added as Katie looked increasingly like she was about to march back over and drag Emily away by the scruff of the neck.
'See you tomorrow then,' Emily said, optimistically, her smile dimpling her cheeks, rosy from the cold. Then she turned and scurried back to Katie's side.
...
Cook didn't live there, that was clear enough. In fact no one did, she was pretty sure. The entire flat smelt musty and disused, dust gathered at the corners of the skirting, and the cheap surfaces of the floor and walls had the wornness akin to that of derelict churches – sculpted by the impressions of hundreds of bodies for many years, followed by centuries of nothing. The flat contained a total of three pieces of furniture: a grey, threadbare sofa, upholstered with a fading leaf pattern; a narrow side-table of a deep red wood and elegantly carved legs; and a single bed, visible from the hallway through the bedroom door that stood ajar. The only evidence of any kind of inhabitation was a thin duvet at the foot of the bed, crumpled and twisted into a peak.
'Nice place Cook,' Naomi said, the tone of her voice expertly conveying the opposite.
Cook smile broadly, charmingly ignorant as ever. 'Aw cheers babe,' he said, craning his neck back to look at Naomi upside-down from his position on the sofa. He sat with his legs spread apart, one arm hooked over the arm of the sofa and the other draping across the back, physically claiming as much of the piece of furniture as he could possibly manage. Effy sat next to him, looking up at Naomi with amused curiosity, as if she had been waiting for the evening to get interesting. Freddie sat at her other side, his large hand covering the width of her thigh.
Pandora sat on the floor, legs akimbo, leaning against the radiator beneath the window, seemingly engrossed in a hushed conversation with Katie until: 'You cannot be serious,' Katie said, standing and pointing unnecessarily in Naomi's direction and staring at Emily, who had answered the door and shown Naomi through to the lounge.
'Shut up Katie,' Emily said quietly. 'She did us a favour; it wouldn't kill you to be a bit nicer you know.'
Freddie snorted in amusement, and Cook glanced between the twins. 'Come on Katiekins, we're all friends here,' he said, slapping his thighs and standing up. 'Let's get some drinks inside you ladies,' he said, winking at Naomi. 'Always makes them a bit more agreeable,' he explained laboriously, and Naomi thought, briefly, that she saw him look down, deliberately, in the direction of his own crotch. She shook her head, wishing to disregard the gesture, as Cook crouched down to the cupboards of the kitchenette and began palming around inside their dark emptiness.
A look of puzzlement slowly settled over Emily's features as she watched Cook on his hands and knees. 'Are we not –'
'Two words everybody,' Cook announced before Emily could finish, pouncing up from the floor so violently that Naomi felt herself spring back reflexively, 'Tequila slammers.' He wielded a bottle triumphantly with his right-fist, the amber liquid sloshing excitedly around the sides and up the neck.
Pandora pressed her fingertips together repeatedly in silent, excited applause, whilst Katie glared intensively at first Cook, then Emily, before finally focusing on Naomi. Awkwardness and uncertainty pervaded the cramped, musicless room and Naomi was under no false impression that this was what the group had been planning to do with their evening. Somehow, her presence had prevented their usual activities, whatever they were, and if she hadn't been too seduced by the prospect of spending her Saturday night with people other than the faction of nudists and mavericks that her Mother welcomed warmly in her house, she probably would have turned and left by now.
Ignoring the melodramatic sounds of abhorrence emanating from her sister, Emily reached up and snatched the bottle from Cook. She twisted open the cap and brought the bottle to her lips. The liquid rushed smoothly down the narrow neck into her mouth as she tipped it, and her throat undulated with a loud gulping noise. She wiped her moistened lips as she handed the bottle to Naomi. 'Tastes like shite,' she observed, 'want some?'
...
It wasn't that the awkwardness and unease went away; it was just that as Naomi felt herself get steadily drunk she found that she cared far less about it. She was huddled into the very corner of the sofa, pinned in position by the proximity of Emily, who sat so close that Naomi could smell the shampoo and body spray applied earlier in the day. Freddie had, mercifully, started playing music via the tinny speakers of his phone. He sat on the sofa with his head rolled back and a limp spliff hanging from between his dry lips, the thin strand of silver smoke trailing from the end occasionally lost in the rolling billows of white that he exhaled. The sweet, damp smell of weed curled lethargically around the room and Naomi began to feel warm and sleepy.
She felt the smooth skin of Emily's bare arm brush against hers and became dimly aware that she was talking. A low, velvety sound, like a bow being drawn across the strings of a cello.
'Do you remember that year seven assembly when they asked you to do that Bible reading?' Emily was recalling.
'Oh God,' Naomi flattened her palms and pressed her fingers to her eyes in recollection, 'What a bunch of twats.' She remembered the passage vaguely. Something about the stony ground – withered roots with no earth to grow from.
'You completely lost it – went on about the 'latent Christianity of state schooling' ...' Emily smiled fondly with the memory. 'The teachers didn't know what to do with such an anti-establishment twelve year old. You had to be escorted from the stage.'
Naomi smiled, looking at Emily. Emily – with her cheeks flushed red from alcohol and her wide eyes deep brown and jovial, her skin pale and unblemished and her fingers gradually stilling their plucking of the hem of her skirt. Through her drunken vision Emily's edges seemed to haze, blurring into an aura that blended her with every sensation Naomi felt – like she was dissolving into a tangible experience at Naomi's fingertips.
'You're completely monged aren't you?' Emily asked, her lips curling into a smile, her eyes scanning tirelessly as Naomi shook the feeling from her and blinked repeatedly.
'No,' Naomi insisted reflexively, pushing herself into a more upright position. 'You're monged,' she retaliated.
'I think you're both flippin' adorable,' a different voice said. Naomi looked down to where Pandora sat cross-legged on the floor, looking up at her with earnest eyes. 'Look at you all snuggled up together,' she elaborated, making Emily look away and shuffle a few centimetres towards Freddie. 'Shut up Panda,' she mumbled, her fingers quickening their manipulation of the material of her skirt.
Naomi sighed and glanced around the room. Cook and Effy were nowhere to be seen, and the door to the hallway had been shut. Freddie's eyes were closed. Naomi knew she should leave soon, but she sat completely still for a few more moments, letting herself pretend that she belonged here. That these were her friends. That this was her life.