The Patience of a Friend

Julie stood in the doorway with her jaw practically dropped to her knees. Stunned, she deliberated between succumbing to the wave of hysterical laughter caught in her chest or simply turning round and leaving so as not to be caught up in this next chapter of lunacy.

Meredith had well and truly lost the plot, she thought.

“What have you… I mean… why…?” Julie sputtered.

Meredith stared back at her, a vacant expression washed over her face. Julie couldn’t tell if she’d upset, enraged, or in fact provoked any reaction in her. As a matter of fact, she hardly recognised her at all.

Her friend’s once voluminous, golden waves of flowing hair, chopped right across, now barely reaching her jawline. The colour was drastically different from the day before when she’d popped in for a Saturday morning coffee - a solid block of jet black, as shadeless as a tropical beach at midday. Sat atop of it, a bright red, woolly beret, deliberately positioned at an angle.

Her usually bare skin now undetectable beneath the uneven thick black eyeliner that tailed off well beyond her eyebrows and towards her earlobes. This would have taken the prize for most ridiculous new feature, if it weren’t for the cracked red lip stain creeping well past her lip line and leaving behind a smattering of pinkish blots on her teeth.

Julie restrained the laughter. She didn’t have the energy for another of her friend’s temper tantrums today, not after last week’s when she'd suggested that perhaps the recent revelation needn’t have as much of an impact on their daily lives as it had been having.

“I didn’t realise you had a hair appointment today?” Julie said, pleased with her tact, “I’d have come with you if I’d known... like always.” 

“Please don’t be upset Jules, I know I broke tradition but I was pretty sure you’d try and talk me out of it.”

Julie toyed with the idea of prolonging this guilt trip as a means of avoiding the next question: did she like the new look. But she knew that would be a waste of time, and would only result in an emotionally-charged Meredith intent on distracting her from the copious amounts of reading deadlines she’d self-assigned for that day. Julie and Meredith had always been polar opposites in this regard. Julie, cool-headed, straight to the point, always striving for academic perfection - nothing else really seemed to matter. Meredith on the other hand, a bit of a hot head though generally content with her lot in life - she wasn’t a lazy character, though one might say, not particularly ambitious either. Somehow the two fit together quite nicely and had managed to form a sturdy, life-long friendship, in spite of the occasional flair up. 

No, Julie wasn’t prepared to rock the boat that day (though make no mistake, winding Meredith up was one of her favourite pastimes). Instead, she would need to be a little more strategic in her approach.

“James has done a great job with the hair! Who knew he'd been trained to do colours now!” Perfect, she thought - not exactly a lie and still manages to placate her highly strung friend.

“Yeah I'm tres pleased with it ACT-ually. What do you think of the new gear?” She grabbed the bottom of the striped t-shirt, flattening it out under her bosom so the interlinked semi-circles were more visible. Before answering, Julie noticed the label on the floor, casually ripped off and tossed aside next to the bin. As she bent down to pick it up, she could clearly make out the price. 

“£300 on a t-shirt?!”

“Ahh I know. It’s super spenny but it is Chanel so it will practically pay for itself.”

Julie dropped the label to the floor in disbelief. Despite being a wealthy family, Meredith’s parents were incredibly strict with money and condoned unnecessary big spends. No surprise really when they were both accountants, and the children of a long line of accountants too.

“Mer, t-shirts aren’t an investment, it’s not going to earn you any money…”

“It’s fiiiiiiiiiiine. It’s part of who I am now, my people all own at least one Chanel item,” she said nonchalantly looking back into the mirror to fix the tilt on her beret. 

Julie could feel her eyes rolling to the back of her head again, a sensation she’d become accustomed to in recent weeks whenever she was in Meredith’s company. 

This was ever since Meredith’s Aunt Cassandra announced to her whole family over the Christmas Day lunch that her own mother (Meredith’s grandmother) had actually been the product of an illicit love affair. The suggestion was that Meredith’s great grandmother had fallen pregnant with another man; a French man named Paul Marchand, shortly after her husband had set up the family business, Gavaghan Accountants. The very same that was still run by Meredith’s parents, and the one she hoped to take over when they retired, despite continued suggestions from them that she might not be best suited to run a business. 

According to Aunt Cassandra who had found numerous diary entries documenting events, Paul was one of the business’ first employees, hired to run the office. Great Grandmother Jane had described it as love at first sight.

One particularly explicit report (and definitely not appropriate to be recounted over Christmas lunch, even a century later) told of how Jane and Paul had "succumbed to their burning loins" one night after hours right on Great Grandfather Henry’s desk. The final diary entry revealed details of Jane’s heartbreak after having admitted to Paul that she was pregnant, and the tumultuous argument that ensued as a result. Aunt Cassandra hadn’t managed to locate the next diary in the series that would have probably elaborated on subsequent events, but thanks to the accurate dating of the entries, she was able to confirm that the little fetus growing in Jane’s belly at that time was indeed Meredith’s grandmother, Paulette.

When Meredith first recounted the story to Julie, she could barely control her excitement. At the drama of it, the romance, and a new lineage into which she claimed to have “always felt particularly close to all these years”. Within one day she had already started looking into changing her last name to ‘her true last name’, Marchand... until of course she clocked, with a little help from Julie, that it wouldn’t have carried down her mother’s side of the family tree anyway.

How far this was going to escalate, Julie wasn’t sure, but she was sure that she didn’t have the patience for it.

***

The next day, Meredith peered over the top of her book, her eyes barely visible under the shadow of the beret. The red of it clashing spectacularly with her plum-cloured school uniform.

“Well?” Julie said, annoyed that she’d simply been ignored in the first place, “I said, are you coming to French or not?” Julie tried her best to keep her voice down as she could feel the glare of Mrs H, the school’s ancient librarian, on the back of her head.

“Julie. I told you I only want you to speak to me in French. I’ve got a lot of catching up to do and you’re the best French speaker I know,” she whispered aggressively. 

Meredith had dropped the language after her GCSEs to focus instead on business studies in an attempt to ready herself for taking on the family business. Halfway into the school year however, this had begun to look like it might have been the wrong move by Meredith, who was not exactly excelling in it. After the Christmas holiday revelations, she had marched back into school and insisted that she pick French back up again. There had been some back and forth with the administrators of course, who reminded her of her initial decision to go for a Geography A-Level instead so as to bring her average grades up across the board. It was the only one she'd managed to achieve higher than a C grade at at GCSEs.

“Going to the lesson on time would be a more worthwhile exercise, you know, instead of sitting here, relying on me to teach you. Come on, we’re late.” 

Julie went to help Meredith pack up her things, and in the process, grabbed the book she’d been pawing over; How to channel your inner French goddess. Julie let out an almighty snort. As she realised what she’d just done, she saw Mrs H fast approaching no doubt to reprimand them. Book in hand, Julie ran out the door into the hallway. Meredith hurried behind her, unamused by her so-called best friend’s reaction back there.

"Ca c'était quoi?!" 

“Oh my God, Meredith. Stop! Do you know how ridiculous you are? You find out you’re one eighth, ONE EIGTH, French, and all of a sudden, you’re changing your look entirely, spending LUDICROUS amounts of money on clothes, and insisting on only speaking to your friends in French. You’ve completely lost the plot! Oh and purporting gross cultural stereotypes to top it off!"

“Wow. That’s nice isn’t it. I find out something pretty huge in my life, and this is how you show your support. What is it? Are you jealous or something?”

“Oh yeah, of what exactly?” Both girls were shouting by this point.

“Of the fact that I have an interesting heritage now, and you’re just boring old English. No back story, no culture and to top it off, I’m getting better than you at French. Probably because it’s my native tongue.”

Before Julie could respond, a man’s voice bellowed down the hallway. Alerted by the loud altercation in the hallway, Mr Barronn came running out of his office to see what all the commotion was.

“What are you doing in the hallway making such a fuss?” He looked at the clock on the wall. “You’re late for your next lesson - what do you both have now?” the short rounded Mr Barronn was puffing after the brisk walk from his office, he paused. “Is that you Meredith Jones?”. She nodded. “What the hell have you got on your head? Take it off right now, it’s against the rules and you look ridiculous.” Meredith handed over the beret and stormed off in a sulk.

***

Julie and Meredith didn’t talk for three days after that incident.

Both had been as stubborn as goats for as long as they had been friends - neither of them ever willing to make the first move. When Meredith snapped off the head of Julie’s new Barbie, or Julie accidentally let slip to Meredith’s dad that his daughter had just started her period. Neither were ever prepared to admit defeat, yet somehow over the years, they’d always managed to find a way through it.

And this time, Julie was truly enraged, stewing over ever since. Who did Meredith think she was? Talking to her like that after all she’d done for her? From day one she’d sat and listened dutifully to the whole story, offering up her gasps and ‘wows’ in a timely fashion. She’d waited for hours with her at the school’s reception as Meredith fought to get back into the French course. She’d even taken being late for class on the chin, as she hung about like a lemon every day for the past few weeks whilst Julie and the French exchange student, Gregoire, flirted with each other over lunch.

By the Thursday evening though, she had calmed down somewhat, evidenced by the fact she absent-mindedly went to call Meredith for their daily post-dinner catch up call. Julie stopped herself before she started to dial, tossing the phone on to the unmade bed. She began to pace.

Had she been too harsh on Meredith? She wasn’t hurting anyone with her new behaviour afterall, so why had it bothered Julie as much as it did? 

And Meredith had always been supportive of her whenever she’d set herself yet another goal of some sort. Like when she attempted to read three books a week last summer, Meredith didn’t complain once about the hours spent inside the library on gorgeous sunny days as Julie trawled the shelves in search of the next book. Or when she challenged herself to getting every answer right on University Challenge, and in preparation re-watched every episode since its launch to prepare. Meredith had sat with her through each one, making note of which questions Julie got wrong and right.

She wondered if perhaps Meredith was right. Maybe she had been jealous. It was an exciting revelation after all, and Meredith had just grown in confidence so much since she'd found out. She was getting a lot of praise from teachers of late, particularly in French. She’d also had way more attention from guys than Julie ever had, which bothered her despite claiming to have no interest in matters of the heart, but instead wanting to focus on matters of the head.

The realisation that she’d been quite unfair to Meredith hit her like a punch in the gut. How could she be so unkind to her old friend, who was simply on her own journey of self-discovery.

The sense of guilt flushed through her veins. Quickly, and without even really thinking about what it was she would say, she launched on to the bed to find her phone. Scrabbling around, with every toss of the bedsheet, Julie grew more impatient. It had been there a second ago.

Just as she spotted it on the floor next to the bed, the doorbell rang.

“Jules, Meredith’s here darling!”, her mum called up. Muffled now, Julie could make out her mum tell Meredith to head on up to her room.

Julie froze. If she’d felt ill-prepared for calling Meredith up on the phone, then she was practically a nudist stood in the middle of the Arctic during a blizzard now.

She could hear the footsteps on the stairs. She racked her brains for what she would say to her face to face. She had wanted to be sincere in her apology, but was also unwilling to seem desperate, or accidentally relent to every little thing they had ever fought about. She still had her pride after all.

And what if Meredith wasn’t here to have a calm, grown up conversation anyway? What if she’d made the trip just for round two of the fight? Julie hadn’t prepared for that at all.

She could hear she’d reached the top of the stairs as the old floorboard let off its distinctive screech. The door knob began to turn. Julie stood firm facing the door. She knew then what she needed to say, what in her heart of hearts was the right thing to do, regardless of whether her friend was here to have a go or not.

“I’m so sorry!”, she shouted prematurely. Meredith’s face could barely be seen with the door only ajar at this point. But she’d heard her loud and clear.

Meredith entered the room, head bowed, her short jet black hair piled as much as it could be into a messy bun on top of her head - much less impressive than when she’d had her long blonde locks that could be circled at least twice into a thick but immaculate ballerina’s bun.

Julie noticed there was something off.

“Mer what’s wrong?”, she said as she pulled out the desk chair to offer to her sulking friend.

Meredith sat down and with an almighty sigh, and began to unleash the heavy weight that she’d dragged all the way from her house, up into Julie’s room.

“It’s not true.”

“It is true, I really am sorry Meredith, I was such a cow to you… I think you’re right, I was jeal…” Julie had reached a break-neck speed, but was cut short by Meredith who had begun to sob.

“No, not that,” she let off a heavy sigh, “Aunt Cassandra was wrong. She got all her facts muddled up. My family isn’t… I’m not... we’re not French at all.”

“What? Are you sure?”

“Yes I’m sure. My mum did some more digging into it. Turns out the Paul Marchand she had dubbed as my biological great grandfather, was actually... Paula Marchand. The ‘a’ got lost on the cursive handwriting. My Great Grandmother was definitely having a secret love affair with this Paula woman, but that was it. My mum re-read the last diary entry too, she thinks that the fight they had was because Paula was upset with Jane for not having ended it with her husband,” Meredith said as she wiped the snot away with her sleeve.

“Oh. wow. Mer I’m really sorry.” Julie put her arm around her. “I’m also really sorry… for how I treated you with all of this. I should have been much more supportive, like you’ve always been of me.”

“It’s OK, I was being ridiculous. I just got so excited,” she blubbered as Julie handed her a tissue, “now I’m back to being boring old English... and... oh God I’ve embarrassed myself so much too!”

“No, you haven’t. Yeah sure you went a little overkill on some things, but you look super hot - Gregoire couldn’t get enough of your new look the other day! And you were right, you are actually bloody good at French too!”

“Really? You think I’m good at French?!”

“I really do! Ever since you actually started making an effort with it, you’ve come so far in just a few weeks… I hate to say it, but you’re far better at it than I am!”

“Oh mon Dieu! What a compliment!” Meredith was elated. “Well what do you know... Hey do you think maybe I should focus on that instead of business studies?”

“Maybe you should, Meredith. Maybe you should.”