They had once been four.
Kate, May, Gemma, and Beth. The Fab Four, their parents called them, with an affectionate nod to the original Fab Four from Liverpool and a wry nod to the fact that their teenage daughters happened to agree that they really were, after all, pretty damn fab.
Four best friends, from their first days at infant school, through the wide-eyed years of junior school and the drama of high school and then on to university and their fledgling careers. Along the way there were fashion fads and music crazes, first kisses and last kisses, tears (lots) and laughter (even more). All of it added layer upon layer to their deepening and – it seemed – eternal friendship.
And then, without warning, it all changed.
Looking back, Kate could pinpoint the night she noticed – they all noticed – that it was going wrong. She had no idea at the time quite how wrong it was going, or how quickly, but she had known that something was not as it should have been.
When she fully understood what it was, however, it was too late.
Beth was already lost.
She had to get out of there.
There were many thoughts going round in her head – confusion, regret, shame – but that was the overriding one.
She needed to leave. That instant. Kate Armstrong wanted to be anywhere other than where she found herself.
Leaving, though, was complicated by the fact that the man whose bed she was in – what was his name? Rick? Mike? Mack? Shit, she couldn’t even remember that – was not there. His side of the bed was empty. Which meant that the option of sneaking out quietly was not available. He was up and about, somewhere in his Turkish holiday apartment, and she would have to face him before she could flee.
Unless there was a window. She knew that leaving that way was unorthodox, maybe even desperate, but she was desperate. He might think it was odd when he came in and she was gone, the window wide open, but she didn’t really care.
She sat up in the bed, making sure that the sheets were pulled up over her naked torso – God, she was naked, naked in a stranger’s bed – and looked around. Her vision was milky – the result of leaving in her contact lenses overnight – and her eyes itched, but she could see through a window that the apartment was not on the ground floor. There were branches of a tree of some kind she did not recognize right outside the window.
So that was that. She would have to face him. Rick or Mike or Mack.
It was Mike, she thought, details of the evening coming back to her. He was called Mike, and she’d met him in a nightclub. She was buying drinks for her friends, May and Gemma, at the bar when some perma-tanned Italian had sidled up behind her and put his arms around her waist, pressing the crotch of his white linen trousers into her bum. He’d muttered something unintelligible – or Italian, at any rate – into her ear and then she’d tried to wriggle free.
She’d managed to turn to face him and he grinned in what she assumed he thought was a charming way, then put his hand on her hip.
Which was when the guy – Mike – showed up.
Hi, he said. He put a hand on her shoulder and smiled.