The Missing O

Charlotte had been my best friend since the first day I had started secondary school. We were both the only girls in our year with braces, and oddly, that had brought us together. However, it was the only physical similarity that we shared.

Charlie was short - at least, shorter than me, but then so were most people - and had a curvy figure that kicked in the day she turned sixteen, hips and breasts growing seemingly out of nowhere. Her skin was fairer than mine, almost porcelain. When we had met her hair was mousy blonde and had been grown all the way down her back. For the past two years she had started colouring it platinum white, and had it cut up above her shoulders. Her eyes were green, with flecks of yellow, and I always told her that they reminded me of Day Lily’s.

We had lived through everything together, through the best and worst of puberty, boyfriends, first kisses and first times, school and college. We had conquered every obstacle together, but non had been as hard as our recent trip-up in life.

Charlie told me the day she found out, ringing me the second the pregnancy test showed up positive. We cried about it together, I was scared for her, she was scared for herself. I held her when she told her parents, and I held her when they kicked her out. Two weeks later, two months after my eighteenth birthday, we moved into an apartment together.

It was small, on the top of an old three-story townhouse, and had just two bedrooms, one bathroom and an open plan living-kitchenette area. When we had first moved in there, Charlie three months pregnant, it was a shit-hole. The heating barely worked, our hot water only ran when all of the lights were switched on, the wallpaper was peeling everywhere and where it had fallen off altogether you could see damp growing through the plaster.

That was two years ago and now, with baby Kaitlyn one year old and sharing a room with her mother, we were finally getting somewhere. The damp had gone, new wallpaper had been pasted up, and the heating and water worked pretty much all year round. We were content and getting by.

Still, things were pretty tight even with me working at a small Graphic design company - I made more tea and coffee than I did anything to do with Graphics - and Charlie only able to work park time at H&M because day care was damned expensive, and we had no-one else to look after Kaitlyn, we struggled every month when the bills arrived in our letter box.

I arrived home on a Monday night, my back aching from being arched over a computer all day and even before I set my key into the door I knew something was wrong.

The apartment was silent, which was the first worrying sign. Usually Kaitlyn would either be wailing her lungs to the point of explosion or giggling happily whilst Charlie made the most ridiculous faces. I closed the door, waiting for the noise to erupt, almost like a “Gotcha!”, but it didn’t.

Charlie was perched on the edge of the brown, saggy couch, her blond hair had fallen forward, her face pressed into her hands. I saw her back shaking.

“Charlie?” I breathed and threw my coat and bag to the ground, rushing to sit beside her. I pulled her into my side, she buried her face into the crook of my neck. “Charlie, where’s Kaitlyn?”

I could feel myself shaking, feel myself panicking. Kaitlyn wasn’t my daughter, not by blood anyway. But I had been there through every part of her life, through the pregnancy, the birth, every 3am feeding, every bath time. I’d rocked her when she’d cried, and sang her to sleep. I loved Kaitlyn, as if she were my own.

“Charlie?” I prompted.

My friend sniffed, pulling herself up so I could see her face. Her thick layers of mascara had ran down her cheeks, and her nose was running, threatening the curve of her lips.

“She’s sleeping,” she croaked, and I literally felt my heart screech back into place. My shoulders relaxed, just a little.

“It was so quiet,” I mumbled, “I thought something had happened to her.”

Charlie shook her head, looking into her lap, black spots appearing on her knitted dress where the tears fell.

“Come on,” I cooed, pulling her up and to the kitchen, “We’ll get you some tissue, and you can tell me what’s going on. Have you had anything to eat?”

“No,” she sniffled, watching her feet as she sat down at the tiny dining table, and just like that I went into what we jokingly called ‘recovery mode’.

Charlie had a habit of getting herself into trouble, quite often, and would get into a total state over it. She’d cry, I’d clean her up. It’s how it worked with us, and although it would often mean a sleepless night and a wasted box of tissues, I didn’t mind one bit.

I pulled off three squares of kitchen roll and handed them to her, watching for a second as she began to wipe the mess off of her face.

“So,” I asked, looking through the freezer, “what’s happened?”

“Morgan,” she muttered, and the way she sounded so serious made me stop and look at her. She was looking straight back. “It’s bad this time. Real bad.”

I swallowed, closing the freezer door when the cold began creeping over my arm.

“How bad?”

She looked into her hands, “I lost my job. That’s how bad.”

I blinked once, before sighing, pressing my fingers either side of the bridge of my nose. “Shit,” I growled.

“I’m sorry,” Charlie gasped.

I took a moment, counting back in my head, before I snapped back like elastic into recovery mode. Opening the freezer door again, more for an excuse not to have to look at Charlie and end up ripping her head off, I began pushing through boxes of ready meals for something to cook.

“What happened?” I asked, scoring a bag of French fries and throwing them onto the counter.

I turned on the cooker to pre-heat the oven and pulled out a tray, scattering the fries on there, before pushing up my sleeves, folding my arms and leaning against the counter top.

“I got another complaint from a customer.”

“Another one?!” I cried, but quickly lowering my voice, remembering that Kaitlyn was sleeping in the next room. “Another one?” I repeated, quieter. “What did you do?”

“Look, Morgan, I know I say this every time, but I swear she started it!” she began quickly, and I sighed. It was always the same with Morgan, blame everyone else before herself. “This bitch tried to tell me that a sixty quid dress had been reduced to half price, when I know that it hadn’t. I’d priced that stock myself, Morgan. The cheek of her, she’d brought a red biro into the shop with her and just decided she’d mark down whatever she felt like! So I took the dress from her and told her she either paid full price or nothing. She ripped the dress out of my hands and pulled the damned buttons off, right there in front of me! I called security, and the bitch started screaming, saying that I’d wanted the dress for myself, and that I’d ripped the buttons off.”

“And that’s why you got sacked?” I slid the fries into the humming oven and closed it’s door, taking a seat for myself at the table, across from Charlie.

“Well…no, there’s more,” she said. “I sort of hit her. But she took a swipe at me first! She just missed. I put my hand out, to try and stop her from hitting me, and I got her right on the face. That’s why I got fired. I’m so sorry, Morgan, I really am.”

I chewed the skin on my lips, nipping at it. It was a bad habit, but I only did it when I was stressed in some way. And at this point, I was on the verge of a breakdown. We could barely afford this place whilst both of us worked, what were we supposed to do now?

“What’re we going to do?” Charlie asked as if she were a parrot to my thoughts.

Her face was worried, her brow furrowed with two, deep lines carved in between her eyes. She was desperate for me to fix this, fix this like I fixed everything else. I wiped a hand over my face and breathed deep.

“I don’t know Charles,” I muttered. “But it’ll work out.”

“It always does, doesn’t it?” she smiled, and I couldn’t help but smile back.

“Only as long as I’m around,” I winked, and just like that our troubles melted away, even if it was just until morning.

We ate our French fries, hers soaking in mayonnaise whilst mine were buried under a fortress of grated cheese, and we slagged off the girl at H&M. Apparently the poor girl had the worst hair Charlie had ever seen, was wearing a bright pink jumpsuit, and probably had never put a set of tweezers to her mono-brow. The image in my head was enough to send me into a fit of hushed giggles.

It had gone midnight by the time we decided it was too late and got up to go to bed. I cleaned up the plates, leaving them to soak over night and was just wiping down the table when Charlie reappeared in the kitchen, wearing her pyjamas, looking solemn.

“Hey,” I threw the cloth by the sink and dried of my hands.

She smiled, but it was sad. “I’ll start looking for a job first thing tomorrow,” she said. “And I’ll do better this time, Morgan. I promise.”

I just stared at her. I knew Charlie so well, sometimes I doubted that she even knew herself as well as I did. I tried to look a few months into the future, tried to see where life would have put us, and all I saw was Charlie, stood there in her pyjamas, dried mascara on her cheeks, telling me she would do better next time. With Charlie, there was always a next time.

“I know, Hon. We’ll do fine,” I lied.

The next morning both Charlie and I took Kaitlyn to the day care place. It was at an old bakery, a few streets over from us, closer into the city centre, and was the nicest place that we could afford.

Kaitlyn had started walking a month or two ago, but her steps were shaky and unsafe to be on the street, so Charlie pushed her in her chair whilst she babbled happily, only the odd work actually understandable.

“Da bubb-bubbs Mamma!” she gurgled, pointing at the birds over head.

“Yes, sweetie, birdies!” Charlie cooed, and I smiled down at the toddler.

I may be biased, by Kaitlyn had to be the cutest little girl I had ever laid my eyes on. She had her mothers milky skin and large green eyes, and the thickest black lashes. Her hair was dark, like her fathers - who we never discussed, point blank - which was thick and curly. It had only just grown past her ears, but Charlie had already began pinning cute little hair-clips in it.

Today she’d been dressed in some pink chords, her little white and pink Velcro trainers, and her thick Winnie-the-Pooh winter coat, the furry hood pulled up to protect her ears from the cold.

“So,” I folded my arms, trying gain more heat against the cold wind, “got any ideas of where you’re going to start looking?”

Charlie, who had been smiling prior, lost any expression from her face and sniffed. “Well, I was going to have a walk around town first, y’know, hand around my CV. Then I’ll go look at the job center, see if there’s anything there.”

“Okay,” I nodded. “You know what you’re looking for, right? Part time-”

“Part time, week days and weekends if available, and preferably more than minimum wage. I got this, Morgan. I’ll do good, I promise.”

I smiled at her before looking on forward, unable to get the image of her stood there in the kitchen, make-up stained cheeks, telling me she’d do better. I wondered how long she’d keep this job for, before I’d have to start working over-time again.