Golden Days by Caroline Barron

Author:Caroline Barron
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Affirm Press
Published: 2022-12-26T00:00:00+00:00

I understand how difficult things were at the time of Chris’s death and how it changed your life. Well, it changed my life, in innumerable ways, too. Nothing was ever the same again. But I’ve done a lot of work around that – I’m learning to see things with fresh eyes – and I want you to know something: I forgive you, Bec.

‘Are you kidding me?’ I shriek, snatching the letter from Meg.

‘I told you you wouldn’t like it,’ she says.

I scan the letter, as if what Meg read out could not possibly be true, that she had somehow misread the words on the page. But they are there, in inky blue pen on the white page. She forgives me?

I somehow hold it together for the rest of the morning, so Meg won’t cancel her plans to go home for the weekend. I owe her that much, at least. We even pull down the attic stairs to retrieve my guitar and spend an hour playing old tunes. I’m rusty, but with the help of ultimate-guitar.com I strum a few: Ben Harper and Mazzy Star, Lenny Kravitz and The Cranberries.

In reality, after waving goodbye to Meg, I’m still furious. What right does Zoe have to say that she forgives me? Rage torrents through my body, and, like a toddler post-tantrum, I cannot settle. I try to take my mind off it by marking in my diary the number of alcohol-free days I’ve had: twenty-one. It helps to keep track of it, to feel as though I’m succeeding at something. But that only takes a second, and I spend the next minutes furiously scribbling in my diary about how fucked off at Zoe I am, that she has no right to say I need forgiving, wanting to smash those words out of her mouth. I sit back, the whole page an angry scrawl of ink. I’m breathing hard. And that’s when I start thinking about the night of the bonfire.

Perhaps there is a Jono and Carrie because there was a Jono and Zoe. It only happened once. Between Jono and Zoe, I mean, and it was before Jono and I were together. But Zoe knew I liked him – that I was keeping him ‘on ice’, as we liked to say, for when I was ready to stop partying and get serious. It’s strange, thinking of that statement, how we thought marriage and babies would see the end of our golden days. The end of fun.

So, it was a cool October night, a bunch of us drinking lemon-wedged Coronas around a bonfire at the beach, having spent the afternoon dragging driftwood into a pyre. We were sprawled on beanbags and beach chairs we’d brought out from Chris’s place, when Jono arrived with his guitar and more beer. Before that night, Zoe had only two settings with Jono: take the piss or completely ignore him. I thought at the time she might have been envious of the attention he paid me, of his loyalty.

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