After Forever Ends (37 page)

When it was all said and done Oliver and I said our goodnights with plans to meet again soon. Alexander pecked me on the lips and told me mockingly, “Thank you for behaving yourself, Silvia. You’re usually so difficult to deal with, but you were lovely tonight, Sweetie.”

“I always rise to a challenge, Darling,” I kissed him again on the lips just to brass Melissa off. I thought about patting him on the arse as well, but I didn't.

“It was so nice to meet you!” Melissa told me, pretending that she didn’t want to pull my hair out of my head for being a raving bitch, much less for kissing her man on the mouth twice, “We need to get together soon!”

“Oh, aye, that’s likely as these two are brothers! Couldn’t get out of that one if we wanted to, yeah?” I didn’t offer her a hug. “Night now!”

I walked out of the room and left my husband on his own to say a proper goodnight.

“Good Lord, Silvia, what was that display of hostility?” Oliver asked about thirty seconds later when he came out the door, “Have you lost your manners completely? You were so rude!”

“What?” I asked innocently, walking down the steps to the front door, “I hate her.”

“You just met her!” He caught up to me in the foyer and held the door for me as he drew the keys from his front pocket.

“And I can tell you right now she’s a fraud and a fake!” I turned to face him.

“And how could you surmise that in all of five seconds?” He stepped outside. The door caught him in the back and sent him forward a half step.

“Didn’t you pay one bit of attention?” I couldn't believe how daft he was. Men! So stupid! “Did you even look at her? You think she was born blonde? Her brows are dark! Did you see her finger nails? They’re like great talons with glittering gems on them. Acrylic! Her jumper was pure cashmere and her purse and shoes...”

“So?” He was clueless as to what my point might be. We walked together across the garden and out the gate to the road.

“Her purse, Oliver, and her shoes were Prada and not a knock off either! Fucking Prada!” I stood outside the passenger door of our car and watched him walk around to the driver’s side.

“Her shoes were hideous,” He agreed, but obviously had no idea what Prada was, “They looked like witches’ boots made out of some dead animal’s skin.”

“Doesn’t matter!” I tossed up my hands, “Prada, Oliver! Prada!”

“What the blooming’ hell is a Prada, Silvia?” He peered at me over the car.

“It’s very expensive designer shit is what it is! I don’t even know what a pair of Pradas would cost! More than any of us has! Alexander just got his degree! He’s going to be eating peanut butter without a spoon and she’ll be dripping in cashmere and sporting Prada!”

“Maybe she wore her best. You just met her!”

We got into the car, “And so did you!” I wasn't going to let it go, “By the look of you I would have thought you didn’t think much of her either, but it would appear now that you are as in love with her as your stupid brother! Soon there’ll be a full on incident of twincest! I can see it now! Both blinded by a set of rock hard silicone enhanced tits!”

He glanced at me sideways with his mouth hanging open. “Twincest? I can’t bloody believe you just said that! Your breasts are much larger than hers!” He paused, “My God, are you jealous?”

“Me? What do I have to be jealous of? The fact that she’s an irritating, plastic Barbie doll? Or the fact that she has just as much between her ears as one of them?” I yanked on my seat belt. “Or that she looks like what would happen if Angelina Jolie and Heidi Klum got smashed together too closely on the tube and became one person?”

“Aw, come off of it! Silvia!” He laughed out loud, “She’s attractive, she is, but not nearly as pretty as you are!”

“Now you’re a liar!”

“Am not!” He was still laughing, “Settle down! She’s not that pretty! Sure, she’s tall and she’s got all that…American stuff...going on, but she’s got an odd mouth and…wow! That accent is bloody awful!”

“You wanted to tell her to shut up as well?”

“Well, didn’t you know? She talks too much and too fast,” He was always good at imitating accents. He launched into an American accent, waving his hand in the way that she did as he spoke, “An-duh…oh, my God! An-duh it was like reeeeely just cra-zay and-duh I was like holy shit! An-duh then I was like…oh, my God, yeerrrrrr joking! Uh-no way! An-duh ya think?”

He had me laughing so hard I had to wipe tears away, “I thought you got on so well!”

“We did! But honestly! She’s a nightmare, I swear!” He pulled away from the curb. “My brother would marry a monster, wouldn’t he?”

We drove on for a few minutes before I spoke again, “I reckon I should apologize to her.”

“You should. You were a complete cow back there, Love.” He smiled and shook his head, “It was quite humorous. I haven’t seen you that angry since Serena McLaughlin and Amber Monaghan set about their skulking in the common room.”

After that party in Ebbw Vale when we were kids, Serena McLaughlin, Amber Monahan and Peggy McGhee went on a calculated crusade to break up Oliver and me. All three of them mercilessly stalked him around campus, getting in his face and being extra cutsie and ever-so-sweet. Oliver couldn’t stand Peggy so I was bothered very little when I saw her approaching him. Amber, on the other hand, had a lovely face and not only that, she was fairly clever. She was meaner than a skinny dog as well. Attractive, clever and unkind are a dangerous combination in a teenage girl and I knew that even then. Amber made me nervous. Not that I thought she’d take Ollie from me, I just knew sooner or later there’d be an ugly confrontation and I wasn’t interested in getting into trouble. Serena, on the the other hand, just made me insane. She was not particularly pretty, although not ugly, either, and I wasn’t impressed with her intelligence, but she had dedication, let me tell you. She was tenacious.

Sandra came to me on afternoon before class and told me she’d heard Amber talking about how the free period she and Serena shared with Oliver was the perfect time to “home in because Silvia’s in class and can’t watch his every move”. I went through the roof! Sandy asked me to settle down and told me that she’d been watching and Oliver was ignoring both of them, but I didn’t care. The very nerve of those bitches!

I was so angry I swore I’d kill all three. I skived off class and marched straight into the common room where they sat across from Oliver with their backs to me. Ollie was studying and didn’t notice me come in, so I began the conversation by kicking the back of Amber’s chair. What ensued was your typical altercation between teenage girls, complete with the boy telling everyone to quit squabbling and the girls ignoring him while hurling insults and threats. What was not typical, however, was when I reached out and grabbed Amber by her gorgeous blonde hair and shoved her so hard she flipped over her chair onto the table. She tried to stand, but I bitch slapped her back down.

Serena hadn’t possessed the brains to run away like she should have and gave me a push. I glanced a blow off of her shoulder, at which point she decided she didn’t want to get beaten up like her friend, and tried to run off to hide in the girl’s lavatory. Ollie insisted I let her go and got in my way, but by that point I was quite literally seeing red. I stormed past him into the toilet. Serena thought she was going to fight me and took another chance at striking me. I hit her once in the stomach, but beyond that, it only took about forty seconds before I had her head stuffed into a toilet. Ollie and Merlyn burst in and hauled me off. I still can’t believe nobody told on me.

“They got what was coming to them,” I mumbled, releasing the memory.

“Alexander loves Melissa, yeah? She’s an odd fit for him, I admit. He doesn’t do well with the insecure type, but if he feels that strongly about her, we have to give her a go. We have to accept her and at least try to love her, too,” I forgot sometimes how thoughtful Oliver was. He was the kindest person I ever knew, “If you think about it, Sil, she was probably nervous. Alex said he had her meet with us first because she was way too wound up to meet with Mum and Dad. I can‘t blame her.”

He had stopped speaking too suddenly. I knew immediately he was not telling me something. “Oliver, what is it?”

He stared straight ahead and screwed up his face.

“Oliver, Xander tells you everything. What did he tell you that you’re not telling me?”

“I know it won’t make you any happier, Love.” He warned.

“Tell me! I’ll find out sooner or later, won’t I?”

Oliver sighed, “I want to get home first. It could take a while.”

“Tell me, Oliver!”

He said nothing until he stopped the car at the bottom of our hill. He made me get out before he told me that Melissa was pregnant.

Then he held me while I cried.

It took me two days to phone Melissa. I hadn’t been sad about our baby for a long time, but finding out Alexander’s wife was pregnant had brought back the emptiness inside. It wasn't fair that they were having a baby without trying and Oliver and I weren’t. It made me hate her all the more that on top of not liking her, I was jealous, too. But regardless of how I felt, she was family now. Alexander had married that dim tart monkey and there wasn’t anything I could do to change the fact. Family was everything and I wasn't going to create a rift in it that I could avoid. So I decided it was better to gather myself than to act like a troll again.

I was at the greengrocer’s when I finally did ring her. “Hello, Melissa?”

“Yes, this is.”

“Well, I know it’s you, you twit. Who else would answer Alexander’s home telephone?” I thought, but I said, “It’s Silvia. I’m dreadfully sorry for the way I behaved the other night. I was right awful and I didn’t need to be. I got my monthly the next day, maybe that had something to do with it, but it doesn’t matter. I want to apologize.”

“Oh, it’s OK,” She laughed, but it sounded forced. “I’m sorry, too. Maybe I was trying too hard. I didn’t mean to put you off. I get nervous and I don’t know how to act sometimes.”

“Listen,” I told her, “I know Alexander very well. He has no tolerance for stupidity. If he married you then you must have something special. Loads of girls have tried hard to peg him down and he tossed them off like rubbish. He chose to keep you on. It says a lot, it does.”

“Well, he has nothing but the best things to say about you.”

“That’s kind of him. I can be a bit of a cat, if you didn’t see.” Slight pause, “Has he taken you to meet his parents?”

“Not yet. Tonight.”

“Oh, heavens!” I rolled my eyes, “Do they know you’re married?”

“No, Alexander said not to tell them until we get there.”

“Alexander is a dolt,” I dropped the cucumber I was holding into my basket, “Listen to me carefully. Those two boys thrive on chaos and discord. Their parents are very conservative to say the least. How two people so by the book could have produced a pair of hell raisers like those two I have no idea, but bringing their parents to the brink of a stroke is sport to them. They enjoy watching them turn blue.”

She was quiet.

“They have a bet, you see, to see which twin can kill which parent first. Believe me, you can’t just walk into Edmond and Ana’s home and say, ‘Hi! I’m Melissa and I’m all banged up! By the way, I married your son this afternoon!’ They will have nothing of it, let me tell you!”

“What…what can I do then?” She sounded sincerely frightened.

“I’m going to do you a favour. I’m going to save you from what happened to me when Alex and Ollie decided the best thing to do was to drop a bomb on their parents laps and his father shouted until I was in tears,” I paid the grocer.

“What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to phone up his mum and I’m going to tell her myself!” I answered bravely as I left the store, “Believe me, you’ll be happy I did, too! I’ll do it straight away as soon as I hang up with you! Your phone may begin to ring the instant I’m through. Do not answer it yourself under any circumstances. Is Alexander there?”

“Yes.”

“Good. By the time he has time to want to ring me up and shout at me I’ll have done it.”

“Uh…ok.”

“Whatever his parent’s say, don’t take it personally. They’ll get over the shock. They always do sooner or later. Honestly, they’ll love you in a couple of hours, so just relax and make sure you keep that muffin safe.”

“What?”

“Your baby. Think of your baby and stay calm. It’s not going to be ugly if I do this right, but be ready if it goes bad. Oh, and you’ve been married more than a month, remember that!”

“OK.”

“Right then! Cheers!” I clicked the phone closed.

I walked to a bench and set down my groceries as I hit speed dial for my mother in law. She answered on the third ring. “Hello, Mummy!” I sang in my sweetest voice, “How are you?”

“I’m wonderful, Darling!” Her voice was light. I knew she'd probably been preparing all day for Xander and Melissa to arrive. She was blissfully in her hostess element. I bet the tea tray was already laid out. I almost hated to be the one to toss the grenade into her kitchen, “Xander is bringing his American girlfriend over to meet us tonight! I’m so excited to see him!”

“Yes, well, make sure you serve decaffeinated tea.”

“Oh? She doesn’t take caffeinated tea?”

“Oh, Mummy, don’t you know? All the doctors say a pregnant woman shouldn’t have caffeine!” Silence on the line. Dead, cold silence. “Mummy, are you there?”

“She’s…” Ana couldn’t say it. I never did understand why pregnant was a dirty word.

“Baking a muffin, yes!” I answered brightly, “But everything’s all right! They’re already married! Didn’t Xan tell you?”

“He said he had a surprise.” She muttered.

“Oh, stupid me! I’ve gone and ruined it!” Alexander was madly beeping in on my other line, “Yes, yes. They married a month ago or so and he didn’t want to tell you and break your heart that he’d denied you being there the way that Oliver and I had. He said he loved her so much he just couldn’t wait! Who am I to fault him for that when I did the same?” I rolled my eyes as far back in my head as I could and hung my tongue out.