My Girlfriend Told Me That Her Friend Had First Been Lying in My Bed, but When the Door Opened Vanessa’s Smile Disappeared

That night, before Adrian lay down in my bed, he changed the sheets again, and a few minutes later my best friend entered the bedroom and slapped him in the face.

It was eleven o’clock in the evening. Autumn rain fell in thin lines against the window, while the sharp smell of lavender detergent filled the room. I lay beside Adrian and looked at the crack in the ceiling.

This had been happening for months already. Every time I spent the night with him, I found freshly changed sheets. At first I thought it was simply his habit. Adrian treated order as if every grain of dust were destroying his life.

But that night I could not endure it any longer.

“Why do you always change the sheets when I stay here?” I asked quietly.

Adrian wound a strand of my hair around his finger. His smile was so warm, the kind that had made me feel safe for years.

“Because Vanessa sweats a lot,” he told me.

For several seconds I could not understand what he had said.

“What?”

He chuckled and stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray.

“When she finds out that you are staying with me, she gets jealous and asks me to be with her first. Then I change the sheets so that you do not notice anything.”

The room seemed to turn upside down.

“You sleep with her? In my house?”

Adrian shrugged.

“Clara, your mother was killed by your father through his violence, not by me. You cannot force me to pay the price of your trauma for my whole life.”

Mother died when I was sixteen. For years I watched the kitchen door close, heard the sound of breaking dishes, and saw Mother barely find the strength to smile in the morning. Adrian knew everything. He knew why touching was difficult for me, why my body froze at sudden noises.

“When you are with me, you look like a corpse,” he continued. “But Vanessa… Vanessa brings our relationship to life. You should thank her.”

At that moment the door opened so forcefully that the handle struck the wall.

Vanessa rushed in. Her eyes were red, and in her hand she held my white ceramic mug, with a small yellow sun drawn on its handle.

“You bastard!” she shouted and slapped Adrian.

The slap sounded through the room.

“Apologize to Clara, right now!”

I looked at both of them. The woman who had been sleeping with my boyfriend for months was now trying to protect me.

Everything was ridiculous. The bed. The house. The three of us.

One bed had never been made for three people.

I got dressed and reached for my shoes.

“Where are you going?” Adrian asked me.

I did not answer.

Vanessa grabbed me by the wrist. Tears were running down her face.

“Clara, please, let me explain. Do not do anything foolish.”

I looked at her hand and laughed briefly.

“My greatest foolishness was letting you into this house.”

Vanessa froze.

“Since childhood I gave you everything. If you liked my dress, I bought you a similar one. When you wanted to study at university, I helped you. When you had no money, I lent you some. When you were alone, I opened my door to you.”

I looked into her eyes.

“Now you want my boyfriend too, and my bed.”

Adrian stepped forward.

“Clara, it is midnight. Where are you planning to go?”

“Keep it,” I told them both. “Everything you wanted already belongs to you.”

Cold air struck my face outside. Only when I reached the street did I notice that I was wearing pink slippers with rabbit ears. Vanessa had bought ones like mine and told me: “Best friends should have everything alike.”

I took off the slippers beside a trash bin and threw them inside. Then I called Elena, my aunt, whom I had not spoken to for two years.

“Aunt, I have decided,” I told her.

“Are you sure?”

I looked at the illuminated windows.

“For the first time, I am no longer afraid of being alone.”

Elena exhaled quietly.

“Tomorrow we will buy a ticket.”

But before dawn Vanessa sent me a photograph. Under it there was only one sentence: “Clara, this began long before Adrian.”

I brought my finger to the screen to open the photograph…

I opened the photograph in a small street café at four in the morning. Outside, the rain was already turning into snow, while I sat barefoot on the floor and stared at the phone as if my life were locked inside it.

In the picture, Vanessa and I were children. We were standing in my mother’s room. I was holding the mug with the yellow sun, while Vanessa had my old diary.

On the wall behind us, a date written in Mother’s hand could be seen.

I called Vanessa.

“Where was this taken?”

“In your house, one week before your mother’s death,” she answered.

“Why do you have this photograph?”

She was silent for a long time.

“Because that day I first understood what your mother was hiding.”

“What?”

“Adrian did not start anything, Clara. He was only the last part.”

My breath caught.

“Vanessa, if you hide something from me one more time…”

“Do not go to Elena in the morning until you hear everything from me. There is a letter from your mother in your bag. I put it there.”

I returned home immediately. I threw the bag onto the bed and searched the inner pocket. There I found a folded sheet, and I recognized Mother’s handwriting on its corner.

The very first line froze my blood: “If Clara ever asks why Vanessa tried to take her place, tell her that I left the answer that night…”

At eight in the morning I arrived at Elena’s apartment. Tea was steaming on the kitchen table, but I could not touch it. The letter lay in front of me, and beside it was a small memory card that Vanessa had sent by mail.

Elena locked the door.

“Read the letter first,” she told me.

Mother wrote that she was planning to escape from my father. On the night when her death was declared an accident, Vanessa had been in our house. Mother found her in the kitchen and learned that Vanessa had been taking my private letters to my father.

“She wants Clara’s life because she has never had one of her own,” it said at the end. “But the most dangerous thing is that Adrian has known this for a long time.”

“This is impossible,” I whispered.

Vanessa appeared in the doorway. Her face had gone white.

“Your mother found out everything,” she said. “I was fifteen then. My father threatened me. He told me that if I did not obey his orders, he would take away my little brother.”

“And then?” I asked.

“Then I learned to remain in your family. I wore your clothes. I copied your mannerisms. I slept in your room when you were in the hospital. I thought that if I became you, no one would ever abandon me.”

“Adrian?”

Vanessa lowered her eyes.

“He told me your mother’s letter had been destroyed. Then he told me you would never be able to have a normal relationship and that I had to protect your house.”

We turned on the memory card. An old recording appeared on the screen. My father was threatening Mother, while Vanessa stood by the door. Then Adrian’s young voice was heard: “If she dies, everything will remain with Clara. The important thing is that the recording disappears.”

Silence fell over the room.

Elena covered her mouth with her hand.

“Adrian was there,” she said.

Vanessa was crying.

And for the first time I understood why he changed the sheets. It had not only been betrayal. He was preparing my place in my own house.

At that moment a call came to my phone from an unfamiliar number.

“Clara Foster?” the man asked. “I am investigator Lasha Beridze. We also received the recording you have just seen. But I have bad news for you. Adrian filed a report with the police this morning saying that you attacked Vanessa and stole documents from your mother’s old archive.”

The phone became heavy in my hand.

“What does he want?”

“In ten minutes we are going to his house. You must come too. Because there we found one more thing that Adrian did not manage to destroy…”

Elena looked into my eyes, and I immediately understood that this story no longer concerned only the past…