How We Met (42 page)

‘I’m sorry I’m late,’ she panted, pausing to tie her hair in a knot on top of her head. ‘I totally overslept. Fucking alarm clock didn’t go off.’

Everyone looked at her and there was a moment’s accusatory silence.

Anna gave a short grunt of disbelief. ‘I overslept,
OK?
’

Mia put her arm around her. ‘OK, nobody’s getting at you. Nobody’s having a go.’ After the last time they met, Mia was keen to keep things convivial with Anna. After all, this trip was about Liv. She wanted it to be nice. ‘We don’t even know where we’re going yet, do we?’

‘Hey, what’s that, Span?’ Norm asked, somewhat tensely, eyeing up a huge Tupperware box tied to the top of her suitcase.

‘It’s a cake, why?’ said Anna.

Norm cleared his throat.

‘Oh, because I’ve made a cake, that’s all. I made Liv’s birthday cake.’

‘
You
made a cake?’ said Melody, looking at him.

‘Yes, I made a cake,’ said Norm. ‘I’m very good at it now, actually, thanks very much.’

There was an awkward silence. Anna looked at everyone looking at her.

‘Right, so can’t she have two cakes?’ she said. ‘Does it really matter?’

‘Well, no, NO, of course it doesn’t matter, it’s just …’ Norm squirmed, a man under threat, and Fraser felt a smile curling at his lips. ‘What sort of cake is yours, anyway?’

‘Triple chocolate, why? What sort of cake is yours?’

‘Victoria sponge,’ said Norm. ‘Which I think, actually, was Liv’s favourite ca—’

‘Oh, for fuck’s sake,’ said Fraser. ‘She’s not even here to fucking well eat it!’

There was a horrid silence.

‘Well she’s not, is she?’ he said, matter-of-factly. ‘So, you know, let’s not have a cake war, please.’

Norm and Anna glared moodily at the floor like two scolded children.

‘Let’s just go and sit down and find out where we’re going today, shall we?’

They all gathered in Costa Coffee on an elevated level of Terminal One Departures. It seemed a bit soulless for something so significant. Fraser had imagined doing it with a glass of champagne in one hand, watching the planes take off from a floor-to-ceiling window that didn’t seem to exist.

They bought hot chocolates and coffees and huddled around a tiny table.

‘Well, who’s going to choose, then?’ said Anna. She hadn’t yet taken the shades off.

Due to finances and time restrictions, mainly UK destin
ations had been put in the hat: Cork, Glasgow, Leeds, Galway, Newcastle, Edinburgh, Belfast and – just to add a little excitement – Paris because, fuck it, they’d find the money from somewhere. Melody had joked that she could take it from her and Norm’s divorce settlement.

Nobody said anything.

‘I think Fraser should do it,’ said Mia.

‘I think Norm should,’ said Melody, staring at Norm. Everyone sort of frowned. ‘You know, just an idea.’

‘Well, I’m cool with that.’ Fraser shrugged. ‘I don’t want the responsibility. Liv would have forgiven you for choosing a crap place, whereas me, I’d have got a right bollocking.’

They all laughed.

‘All right,’ said Norm. ‘All agreed?’

At the other end of the table, Anna gave a big sigh.

‘As long as you’re all OK with that, it’d be an honour to choose Liv’s thirtieth birthday destination. I mean, I feel a
bit
greedy since I was also official cake baker …’

He winked at Anna but she was too busy hiding behind her shades.

‘Andrew, just get on with it.’ Melody laughed.

He dug deep in the hat.

Silent anticipation while, out of the speaker in the corner, Gloria Estefan sang out some soppy, whiny ballad.

Norm pulled out a piece of paper and kissed it.

‘Come on, Livs,’ he said, lips tight, clutching his fists. ‘Come on, you beauty, let’s be ’aving Paris.’

There was an intake of breath as he unfolded the paper. Fraser couldn’t bear to look and covered his eyes.

‘Well, come on, Norm,’ said Mia. ‘The suspense is killing me. What’s it say?’

He looked up, his face utterly crestfallen.

‘Leeds,’ he said.

They arrived at gone 4 p.m., already feeling like they’d been up an age.

The flight had been a short but rather tense affair, with them all hovering in the aisle before take-off, deliberating about who should sit where, but none of them able to admit the truth, which Mia deduced to be that Melody and Norm didn’t want to sit next to each other, Fraser and Anna didn’t want to sit next to each other, and Mia was desperate to sit next to Fraser, but would rather sit in the toilet than own up to that fact.

In the end, Mia had flounced down on the nearest spare seat, next to a morbidly obese man, and spent the rest of the flight asphyxiated by his shoulder fat and feeling rather sad that the last time they’d all got on a plane together to go on holiday to Ibiza, it had all been so different.

Still, in the way that die-hard campers refuse to stop enjoying themselves, even when Force Nine gales hit, despite the stresses and strains that bubbled away underneath, and the toll the last year had taken, they all faced this break with a gritty determination. After all, this was Liv’s thirtieth birthday. And, as Norm announced as they all gathered outside Leeds/Bradford Airport, they would ‘bloody well do her proud if it killed them’, which was followed by a very long silence and then much nervous laughter, which was a welcome release.

They had a nice hotel, anyway. Miraculously with six rooms spare. 42 The Calls – where Melody had apparently once attended a hen do – was a converted mill on the Liverpool Canal, the water lapping right up against its
red-brick façade. It was nestled in between many other converted mills and warehouses in Leeds’ trendy Brewery Wharf district, a place that, judging by the old photos all over the hotel, had once seen men in flat caps and braces heaving great sacks of corn about, but now saw architects and graphic designers poring over plans amid loud music and exposed white brickwork.

The hotel, which itself had exposed white brickwork, also sported exposed pipes and stable doors in some of the rooms, which looked out over the water. Mia had one of these rooms and the officious manager, a small, moustached man, spent quite some time explaining how it was through these doors that, once upon a time, the bales of hay were offloaded from the boats, ready to be milled using the vast, iron machinery, the remains of which Mia
also
had in her room.

She was all for authentic surroundings, but as she lay on her vast double bed staring at the huge iron wheel that jutted out of her ceiling, she grew mildly anxious: what if it fell down in the night and crushed her to death? A more ridiculous and unbelievable death, even than Olivia’s? It also occurred to her that this was all quite mental. So they had got up, gone to an airport not knowing where they were going, and flown to Leeds. And now she was lying in a hotel room, predicting her own gory death, suddenly missing Billy, all because of the List.

Just then, there was a knock at the door.

‘Are you naked?’ came the Kenneth Williams-esque nasal voice from the door.

Fraser. Mia smiled.

‘No, I am
nude
’ (she and Fraser had decided long ago that ‘nude’ was one of the funniest words in the English dictionary) ‘but do please enter nonetheless.’

He put his head around the door. ‘What, no foreplay? You’re rather forward.’ And, despite trying really hard not to, Mia couldn’t help but laugh.

He strode towards the window.

‘Gawd, check out your room, you jammy sod. You’ve got a canal view and a wheel. Check out that wheel!’

‘Actually, I was just worrying about it crashing down and crushing me in the night. Slicing me clean in two, so you will find one leg here and one on the floor.’

‘Nice. Like a Sindy doll,’ said Fraser. ‘I worry about your mind, sometimes, you know. The twisted things it’s capable of—’

‘Yes, I may look blonde and harmless, but actually I’m black and rotting inside. Gnarled and twisted like an ancient tree.’

Fraser laughed and sat down on the bed. He prodded her leg annoyingly.

‘Anyway, I just came to see how you are. You were a bit quiet at the airport. Is everything OK?’

Mia shrugged. ‘Yeah, everything’s OK.’

‘Are we OK?’

Mia rolled her eyes. ‘Yeees, we’re OK.’

Fraser pulled at a thread on the bed cover. ‘Good, because I just wanted to let you know, that, you know—’

‘No, what Fraser?’

‘That I didn’t do it, did I?’ He shrugged, unconvincingly, like a child who doth protest too much.

Mia groaned and rolled to face him.

‘Frase, give it up. It doesn’t matter. It was two months ago now.’

‘She was terrifying. She wore a leather bra and only ate meat.’

‘Wow, she sounds like Wilma Flintstone.’

‘She was! She was like a cavewoman: primal, like raaaAAAA!’

‘Like what?’ Mia laughed.

‘Like raaaa! Frightened the life out of me.’

Mia smiled and picked at the same thread.

‘Did you carry on the Portuguese lessons?’ he said, eventually.

‘Are you mad? I was mortified. Could never show my face there again.’

He put his hand on her leg.

‘I’ve missed talking to you, you know?’

‘And I’ve missed talking to you
,’ she said. ‘Very much.’

So, SO much.

‘How are things with you and Billy, anyway?’

‘Oh, good, great. He’s the only man in my life right now and that is how I like it. He’s very low maintenance, you know; likes to get a movie out, go for walks, chill on the sofa, that sort of thing …’

‘Is he as happy staying in with a DVD and a nice bottle of wine as he is going out and hitting the town?’ said Fraser, referring sarcastically to the dating sites they’d once looked at together for a laugh, the ones Mia had threatened to join. He didn’t dare ask if she had.

‘I miss him too,’ said Fraser, and for a second Mia didn’t know who he was talking about. ‘I loved our little afternoon together, our pint and a packet of Cheddars in the pub.’

‘You gave him Cheddars?’ said Mia. ‘Outrageous. He didn’t tell me that.’

‘I’d like to do it again some time, you know, if you could ever find it in yourself to trust me?’

‘Course I trust you,’ said Mia. ‘He’d like that. I’d like that. Very much.’

These days it was like a love affair between Mia and Billy. Although he saw his father regularly, something both she
and
Eduardo were grateful for (Eduardo especially, since he’d finally realized that Billy was all he had), it felt as if it was just the two of them again, against the world.

They spent mornings in bed together, sometimes on a boring afternoon they’d just lie in the middle of the carpet in the sun, Billy on top of her, falling asleep like a little sloth bear.

She’d never admit this to anyone, but sometimes when she watched him sleeping, marvelled at his exquisite mouth, the way his lashes fell on his cheeks, she doubted there would ever be a man in the world so beautiful, and she would think to herself, if ever anyone dared hurt him, she would personally rip their heart out.

Then she’d come to her senses, remind herself not to drink in the evening because it made her sentimental, go downstairs and watch
Coronation Street
.

They sat saying nothing for a while. In the bars outside, they could hear the first of the post-work drinkers arrive.

Eventually, Fraser said, ‘Anyway, see you downstairs. We’ve got someone’s birthday to celebrate.’

Then he got up and walked out of the room, closing the door softly behind him, and Mia curled up on the bed and, for ten minutes, fell asleep, thinking as soon as she woke up, that she would call her boy.

Back in his room, Fraser now sits at the dressing table in the hotel’s fluffy robe, listening to the water gush and tumble into the roll-top bath next door. He’s had fun examining all the free potions in their mini-bottles, going for a use-all approach, and the room fills with a heady, lemony scent now, the steam from the bath filling the room, creeping across the mirror like a ghost.

He lets it almost conceal his face, then he leans forward and wipes it clean.

Not bad, he thinks, examining himself. A nine o’clock shadow that he intends to address in the bath, pouches under his eyes that don’t go any more, even after a good night’s sleep. Definitely not the face of a man in the flush of youth, the one who actually
believed
he could be a rock star, but it’s a face he likes better, somehow. One he is less angry with, less often; one that he trusts, that feels like his friend. Most of the time.

He gets up, opens the wardrobe, and lays out his clothes for this evening: a suit, tobacco brown, slim-fit legs, two-button jacket. He hasn’t worn a suit since Liv’s funeral and, if he’s honest, that’s probably why. Almost like the reverse of a happily married woman who likes to take her wedding dress out of the wardrobe just so she can play back the memories of that perfect day, every time Fraser catches sight of the black Next suit hanging there, his stomach rolls, he can smell only the fustiness of a hymn book, feel only the weight of her coffin on his shoulders.

So he’s thrown it out and this is a brand-new suit. ‘A birthday suit, Liv,’ he says quietly. Three hundred quid from Hugo Boss, no less. It was in the sale, but still it’s the most expensive item he’s ever bought in his life. He smooths it out on the bed, slips off the towelling robe and stands in front of the mirror, naked. It feels as if they’ve waited an age for today; that it’s been ten years, not a year,
since the anniversary of her last birthday and the decision to do the List. In the reflection of the mirror, he can see the bare March trees outside, black against the night sky. They remind him of the same time last year – that grim day after her birthday, after both birthdays, when he felt he might cave in and never recover. However, he looks at himself now, in all his bare glory, and he can feel in his bones the premature relief that he won’t feel like that tomorrow, or perhaps ever again.