Burnt To Ash

I hate her, I hate her so much that my words can’t express how much I hate her.

I was in the wrong, yes and she invited me over to talk, as she did every Friday night, sharing a bottle or three with a friend. She was my friend, my best friend, I couldn’t think of life without her.

She invited me inside. The Summer nights were eventually coming to an end and I knew this would be the last few times we would drink out on the patio. We walked through the house and onto the decking, pulling up a sun lounger. We sat side by side, white plastic table in between us, drinking from wine glasses we’d brought out with us.

“Another?” She says, the bottle already being tipped.

I nod. We laugh, about nothing in particular. That was the great thing about being friends with someone you’d known since school, they knew every part of you, and I thought I knew Becca that way too, apparently not.

When you’ve known someone for over twenty years, there’s a bond that strengthens you. When we were teenagers, I spent more time with her than I did with my own family. Nowadays, with one thing and another, work, children that sort of thing, it’s harder to see her. That was why Friday nights meant so much to me, it was a break from the chaos, to be the two naughty schoolgirls we once were.

Two and a half bottles down and we lay on the loungers like floppy fish. We laughed about old crushes back in the day, and how much they had changed.

“I saw Dan walk past the gym on Tuesday.”

“Handsome Dan? Dan, two years above us?”

“Yeah, Dan, Dan. Not so handsome now though.”

“He was going to the gym?”

“No! He was on his way to buy himself a burrito.”

We burst out laughing. It was childish, it was real, we always reverted to our youth.

Becca had a text on her phone. She told me she’d be back in ten minutes, told me her neighbour needed the spare key, I didn’t know the details. I waited; I sipped on red wine until the bottle was empty. I searched around her kitchen for more, but no luck, and in my drunken stupor, I fell into the television cabinet, accidentally bumped into the wooden doors and her collection of DVDs and CDs came tumbling out.

“Drat” I said. working out how to shove them back in using nothing but my drunken brain to solve the problem.

Within the piles of DVD and CDs, were journals. Battered journals that had seen better days. Reaching for one, I read the cover, 2005. We were fifteen then, young, and stupid. I turned the pages, flickering over stories about handsome Dan, the teachers we hated and other ridiculous stories we thought important at the time.

My thumb slid over the pages. I read the same paragraph again and again making sure I hadn’t imagined it. “I went to meet Hannah for a smoke today, had to get away from Jess for a while.”

We hated Hannah. It was a running joke. She had called me names for wearing bug eyed glasses in our first year. Becca had wanted to get away from me. I felt my heartbeat harden in my chest. I knelt on the floor, her journal open on my knees.

I rushed to the kitchen window. From there I could see Becca outside with her neighbour, fixing some kind of issue with their shed key. I don’t know why; I couldn’t think straight at this point. I grabbed her journal, put her collection back into the cabinet and left the house.

I walked all the way home. My blood running warm, furiously a mess. It was cold when I got home. My Husband and the kids weren’t back from football practice. The evening drawing in, the sun was finally setting and I opened the patio doors.

I held the journal in my hands. They were still shaking. I saw the BBQ, still warm from the afternoon when we had cooked hotdogs. I knew it wouldn’t look suspicious. I took the journal, placed it onto of the top and grabbed some matches from the kitchen cabinet. My phone had been ringing non-stop since I left Becca’s.

She had left voicemail after voicemail, text after text, asking if I was okay and saying how she couldn’t drive around the neighbourhood looking for me because she was over the limit. I’m not replying to her, I don’t want to look at her face. The fact her squirmy, little, smiling face pops up every time she calls does my head in.

I strike the match and let the pages burn slowly. I watch them curl as the flames rise.

If I smoked, which I don’t, I would light my cigarette using the ashes. I watch as the front cover burns. The Diamanté Becca once stuck on to decorate, crackle.

Every word she has written disappears. I see the words Hannah, again and again, and I know it wasn’t a one-time thing. She wanted to be away from me and I hadn’t a clue.

I take a fold out lounge chair. It’s cheap and rusted but I don’t care, I sit and watch the last of the journal as it torches. Like snow, the pages fall. Becca’s scrawled handwriting lies on the grass, and I can pick out one or two of the lines and words. One sentence survives. The edges are scorched but I can read clearly what it says.

I feel awful and I’m sorry for lying. Jess will never know how I feel. She drives me mad but I love her.

The ‘love her’ is scratched into the pages deeply, it’s clearer to read than the rest of her journal. I stop shaking. I hold the words in my hands. Guilt washes over me and she rings again.

“BECCA, CALLING.”

I can’t answer, not now and I can’t stitch the paper back together again. The BBQ smell is strong, the smoke wharfs around the back yard. The journal is no more.

I stare at the words I love you.

What have I done?