Before She Was Mine (28 page)

‘Now. Please.’

I clutched at my little polythene bag. ‘Is it urgent? What’s happened, Nicks?’

But she’d rung off.

As soon as I saw her, sitting at the table near the window with an untouched cup of coffee, I knew something major was up. Her face was white and her lips pinched tight as though she was
struggling to control herself. I slid in opposite and wondered what we must both look like, two women caught up in our own separate train wrecks.

‘Is it Christian?’ I asked. Though even as I spoke, I was thinking,
What more can he do?
He’d already delivered the final blow, surely, when he told her they were
through. That had been bad enough. Michael and I had taken her out that night and sat like bookends while she puzzled and ranted and cursed and mourned. ‘It’s the
waste
,’
she kept saying. ‘Nearly two years wasted on him, thrown down the drain.’ And Michael going, ‘Hell of a bigger waste if you’d married him.’ And me going,
‘He’s the loser here. You’ve got everything ahead of you.’

Later I’d helped her write her lists, some of them practical (‘Try again to get dress deposit back’), some of them more fantastical (‘Go on internet and add
Christian’s details to spinelessgits.com’). I’d listened to her litany of ways in which the future was ruined – she’d been a total idiot, she’d never trust
anyone again, people would always know her as the girl who got jilted, all weddings and everything to do with weddings was now spoilt forever, her mother was on the verge of a breakdown. I’d
mopped her tears and told her a million times she was still attractive. I’d agreed that Christian would live to regret his decision, would probably never marry at all or if he did it would be
to an evil witch type, and that Corinne would eventually die alone and unloved in grandiose squalor.

Meanwhile, across the table from me now, Nicky was swirling her coffee around dangerously. ‘Of course it’s Christian. Bastard.’ She clapped the cup down on the saucer.
‘Him and his bloody bloody mother.’

‘The thing is, Nicky, you don’t have to have anything to do with her now. That’s the silver lining in the cloud. No more snotty Corinne, ever, yeah?’

Nicky shook her head. ‘It just goes on and on. I found out this morning that she never booked the reception. Never booked it, Frey.’ She paused to let me digest the news. ‘So
that means not only was she a lying deceitful cow, but she
always knew the wedding wasn’t going to take place
. That’s why she offered to arrange it all, wouldn’t let me or
Mum do anything towards it, and why she talked about swapping the venue so late on. Of course you can swap something that never even existed!’

‘Oh my God.’

‘I only discovered it because it was on my list: “Make sure you’re unsubscribed from potential mail shots”. Michael advised me to do that. He said it would be upsetting
if I got wedding literature through for months afterwards.’

‘But I remember you going round the hotel and looking at the banqueting room. You chatted with a woman at the desk. You showed me a sample menu.’

‘That was before Corinne supposedly made the booking. Why would it ever cross my mind she hadn’t done it? You know, I’ve been taking people up there to show them, I drove Aunty
Paula and Uncle Vic round the grounds but we didn’t stop at reception and check any paperwork. I didn’t think there was any need. Corinne told me she was dealing with everything. All I
had to do, she said, was tick the menu options and give her the names of guests who’d be needing rooms. I can’t believe it, Frey.’

‘And your mum never rang the hotel to check details?’

‘Corinne told her not to in case it caused confusion. Everything was supposed to go through her, to “avoid mixed messages”.’

‘Didn’t your mum and dad mind her organising everything?’

She pulled a sour expression. ‘They assumed she knew best. You know what they’re like. Anyone speaks with a posher accent than theirs and they just roll over. Corinne’s such a
forceful woman anyway, it would have been like arguing with a bulldozer. Not to mention she was the one putting down the deposits. Except she wasn’t.’

The waitress came and took my order. I touched Nicky’s hand.

‘I don’t know what to say. It’s just shit. Have you spoken to Christian about it?’

‘I don’t ever want to speak to him again. I hate him. I’m filled right to the brim with hating him.’

‘When he hears, though. Presumably he’ll be as shocked as you are.’

‘Why “presumably”?’

‘Oh, he wouldn’t be involved, Nicky. He wouldn’t have had any idea what his mum was up to.’

‘Wouldn’t he?’

‘No. Come on. It makes no sense.’

‘What
does
?’

I thought of his smooth, blond cheeks, the tilt of his chin. ‘He may be weak, Nicky, but he’s not malicious.’

‘You always stick up for Christian, don’t you? I know you were sweet on him.’ She looked tiredly back at me. ‘Everyone was.’

‘I was not.’

‘If you say so. It doesn’t matter.’ My heart was pounding. Nicky lowered her gaze. ‘None of it matters any more. It’s just that I thought I’d got to the end
of this mess, and then something else crops up, and something else, and something else. I realised last week there was a load of my stuff still at his parents’. So I’ve that to worry
about now.’

‘They’re only things. You could always walk away. Or get him to parcel the lot up and send it through the post, assuming Corinne hasn’t already made a bonfire out of
them.’

My Sprite arrived and I drank it gratefully.

‘Can’t abandon it. There’s family albums – we were looking at past wedding dresses – and there’s some clothes and jewellery. Too precious to leave, too heavy
to post.’

‘Fuck.’

‘But it’s OK because Michael said he’d drive me over next weekend. You can come too if you want, though I don’t suppose it’ll be a very jolly outing.’

‘Michael?’

‘I popped round the garage to give him back a book he’d lent me, and I ended up telling him about my gear, how I couldn’t face going to retrieve it on my own. He said he had to
pick up an engine in the area and could factor a stop-off at the Bliaises’ into his journey, if I wanted. How lucky is that?’

‘That is lucky,’ I said.

‘We’ll have to go in his van. Which will give Corinne another reason to sneer at me.’ She pushed her lips into a sulky trout pout which I assumed was meant to represent her
mother-in-law. ‘But Michael’s so kind, isn’t he? He’s twice the man Christian is. A really decent guy. I never really took much notice of him before, but now I’ve got
to know him . . . He’s been great with me.’

‘He has, yes.’ And I remembered standing in the hospital car park after the memorial service and Michael telling me what a nice girl Nicky was; how she could have any bloke she
wanted. An unhappy suspicion crept into my mind. ‘What was the book he lent you?’

‘Something about volunteering work overseas. It was brilliant, actually. You know, the difference people can make to struggling communities around the world. Teaching, building and
engineering, advocacy – that’s what I might do if I went – healthcare and social work. Lives turned around. Makes my job here look pretty irrelevant. Michael would be a mechanic,
he reckons. Well, obviously.’

I swallowed. ‘Did he ask you to go with him?’

‘Not outright. He seemed to be dropping some pretty heavy hints, though. He was so –
lit up
– when we talked about it. His enthusiasm’s infectious. I wanted to
pack up there and then and go too. Leave all this mess behind.’

‘You love being a solicitor.’

‘My mother loves me being a solicitor.’ She gazed mournfully into her coffee. ‘I don’t know, Frey, when something like this happens you end up questioning everything. Why
shouldn’t I just take off in a different direction? Leave them all standing gaping.’

‘We could all go together,’ I said recklessly.

Nicky looked startled. ‘You?’ There was no need for her to say any more. Me, who couldn’t even manage to stay the course on a school camping trip twenty miles down the road.
Useless, samey, stick-in-the-mud Freya.

All of a sudden I wanted to stand up and shout in her face that I was pregnant: that in fact I was starting out on my own adventure, about to take a huge and irrevocable step that would change
my future forever in ways she couldn’t imagine. For once I’d be the one leading the way, striking out into uncharted territory. A child of my own, I’d have. Top that.

‘Are you all right?’ she said. ‘You look furious. I’m really sorry if I sounded like I was being—’

‘It’s fine. I was imagining punching Corinne in the gob for you.’

She laughed. ‘I wish someone would.’

‘Get Michael to do it for you while he’s down there.’

I regretted my tone at once, but she didn’t pick up on it.

‘I just can’t believe I had so much and now it’s gone,’ she was saying. ‘I wake up in the mornings and then I remember, and it’s like hearing him say it all
over again. I lie there in bed and I don’t want to get up. Because I’m thinking, what’s the point? Three months ago I had everything ahead of me, and now I’m stuck living
with my parents, no boyfriend, a career path I’m not even sure I want to be on any more. Perhaps I should jack the training contract in and come and work at the nursery with you. At least it
would be something different.’

‘And earn beggar all, like me. Great plan, yeah.’

‘At least you’ve got Oggy!’

She raised her eyes to mine and pierced me with a tragic expression. I couldn’t bring myself to make any other response than a nod.

‘And you’re glad you went back to him, aren’t you, Frey? Basically, I mean, even if he can be a bit of a lump. He’s
there
. You love him. It’s less of a mess
than my life, anyway.’

Against my finger the copper ring burned.

‘I have to get home,’ I said. There’s this thing I need to do.’

As I walked back through town I tried to imagine what my days would be like without Michael around. Or Nicky. That last was a hard picture to conjure, though: she was too fond
of Chester life, lunchtime shopping, browsing the Rows, stopping off for an espresso and panini or a glass of wine and a dish of olives. Her polished nails were not cut out to drive a jeep along
dusty potholed roads, her feet too tender for army-style boots.

But Michael I could see. I could see him under a corrugated roof mending cars and tractors and probably generators and radios and God knows what else. His skin would bronze and he’d grow a
beard and wear a sweatband round his forehead. He’d learn the native words for ‘Where’s it broken?’ and ‘It’s fixed!’ and the locals would all love him.
Small barefoot boys would sit and watch him strip engines and pass him spanners and wire cutters on request.

But when I tried to think what life would be like here in Shropshire while he tuned machinery on the hot side of the world, that’s when my imagination failed. It was an impossible
idea.

I passed the supermarket, crossed the car park and stopped off at the bridge that crosses the brook. Here I’d pictured throwing Oggy’s ring, hurling it in a big defiant arc to land
in muddy oblivion.

I put my shopping bag down and twisted the ring off. The green mark it left below my knuckle looked sickly and gangrenous, and I wondered how long that would take to fade. The ring itself I
turned slowly, studying the minute figures stamped into the metal. What I’d first thought were random animals had turned out to be signs of the zodiac, identified under Geraint’s bug
magnifier. I found the lion now, Leo, and revolved the year between my fingertips. Where would I be in twelve months? Where would we all be? I hardly dared predict. Melody, with her burden of
grief, Liv with her physical scars, Nicky re-building her dreams from scratch. And me, would I be holding a baby in my arms, lifting him up to see the mallards as they paddled underneath us with
their own milling brood? Oggy sprawled on the sofa in a haze of smoke: he would still be in the same place, the same pose, this time next week, month, year.

Sunlight winked on the surface of the stream and willow branches dipped and flittered in the breeze. A crisp packet made its way lazily down to the storm drain. Near the surface stickleback
darted and hung, darted and hung, seeking out the shadows, and my practised eye could make out water-vole runs along the banks, and burrows, patches of feeding. The times I’d stood here as a
kid while Liv pointed them out and took her photographs. Worlds ago.

Without warning the ring slipped from my grasp and dropped away. I heard it splash, saw ripples spread out and a small gust of mud billow up from the stream bed, then the water flowed on over it
all, as before. Seems like some decisions just get made for you.

Even as I let myself in, I could hear music coming down the stairs. It was loud, too. Some warbling, throbbing prog rock from Geraint’s collection of tatty LPs that only
he ever listened to. I’d known Liv would be around because she’d had chemo the day before and she always took it easy for the following twenty-four hours. But Geraint should have been
out on the Moss, supervising a herptile diversity day.

I poked my head round the door of her study. It was empty, and her computer was switched off. There was no one in the living room or kitchen. I thought about calling up, but I didn’t want
the contact. I just wanted to be on my own.

So I slipped up the stairs, and when I got to the top I could see Liv’s bedroom door was open, music blasting out. No doubt Geraint’s prehistoric Bush record player had been cranked
up for the occasion. Tempting to march in and demand he turn the bloody thing off, but that would be too confrontational; I could at least cut the volume by pulling the door shut, though. I stepped
across the landing and reached for the handle.

Then, out of the corner of my eye, I clocked the bathroom door was open and someone was sitting in the bath. For three long seconds I couldn’t tear my gaze away, enough time for me to take
in Geraint – Jesus wept – Geraint naked, his hair plastered to his scalp and his beard saturated to a spindly tail, and, tucked in against him with her back to his belly, Liv. She wore
no wig, and her scalp seemed so pink in contrast with his. He had his arms around her and his hands pressed protectively against her chest, and her eyes were closed in blissful calm.