Before She Was Mine (24 page)

I pictured Christian’s bright beautiful face, his clear blue eyes, and gave her a friendly shake. ‘Of course you want to be married to Christian. He’s gorgeous. You love him.
You can’t let someone like him get away, not over a little spat.’

And we sat there for a minute while I re-played his visit to the nursery the day he proposed; what it must feel like to have someone make that much of an effort for you
. I have this idea for
an illuminated avenue, Frey. I want it to be magical.

‘This,’ I said firmly, ‘is a blip. You’re going to meet up with him next week and he’ll be as sorry as you are. There’ll be no need for apology cards or
cancellations. Then in twenty-five years, when you’re planning your Silver Wedding party, you’ll look back at this, this week, and you’ll laugh.’

‘You reckon?’

‘I do. And here’s another thing: you really can’t let Corinne win, can you? You’ve got to go through with this marriage just to put her in her place. Mad old cow.
Actually, how old is she?’

Nicky gave a wan smile. ‘Hard to say. Younger than Julian. She’s got such good bone structure it’s impossible to guess.’

‘OK, picture this: one day she’ll end up in a home for retired bitches, and then you can really have some fun. You can go visit every Sunday, and spend an hour reading out the
opinion pages from the
Guardian
. You can fill her iPod with death metal and smear Marmite on her false teeth and plant mealworms in her commode. You can take away all her novels and replace
them with copies of
Socialist Worker
. Let’s see how superior she manages to be then, yeah? What goes around comes around.’

I felt this was a good speech, one that would go some way to restoring a sense of balance and cheer. For once, I had said the right things. Nicky did look less upset than she had been, and in
any case I truly wasn’t just saying what I thought she wanted to hear, I genuinely believed myself. Couples did bicker while they were engaged; I’d read that in magazines. These small
skirmishes didn’t mean anything sinister. Corinne sounded a complete shrew, but all Nicky had to do was show her who was boss. Certainly nothing to throw in the towel for. I thought
,
She’ll remember this pep talk. In years to come she’ll tell people how my words of calm common sense stopped her panicking and saved the day
. I felt almost high on it.

Don’t get me wrong. I would never ever have gained enjoyment from witnessing my best friend in distress. I love Nicky, and I only want to see her happy. Nonetheless in the minutes after,
there was something, a distinct and tingling thread of pleasure running down the centre of my chest. I think it was the being here together again in my room like the old times, like the Christmas
she ruined Joan’s best table mats with glitter glue, or when she let the family guinea pig get eaten by a cat. The relief of burying my own problems underneath her drama, a drama that really
demanded nothing more of me than to sit back and listen and give sympathy. Not messing up by blurting something stupid.

‘Honestly, though,’ she said. She still wore that stunned, not-quite-there look, but the colour had come back into her cheeks and her hair was drying.

‘I know.’

‘You think you’re on track, you think it’s all going along smoothly, and then, then, bang! Everything totally disintegrates.’

‘Tell me about it,’ I said.

After she’d gone I texted Oggy to check the coast was clear. I knew it was stupid and wrong, but right at that moment it was the only place I wanted to be.

From Liv’s diary,
12/05

And now she hates G. Hates way his toothbrush leans against hers in bathroom glass, way he wipes round plate with piece of bread, that he puts empty packets & jars back
in cupboard, that he doesn’t flush toilet if he gets up during night. None of this F’s said straight out but you’d have to be dense as a brick not to pick it up. This evening she
said to me, ‘I’m not sure it’s working.’ I feigned ignorance. ‘What isn’t?’ I said. ‘Three of us in the house,’ she said. I said, ‘It is
difficult moving back in when you’ve been away.’ She just scowled, didn’t try to correct me. Think she’s as frightened of direct confrontation as I am.

Instead she niggles, won’t let him have TV remote, sighs when he comes into room, makes great fuss if he finishes something from the fridge or cupboard. E.g. was moaning on & on
last night no peanut butter left, yet she hates the stuff & I’ve seen her texting while he’s talking & I know she’s sending messages about him. Tuesday night some comedian
on BBC making jokes about beards, F snorting & casting meaningful glances in G’s direction.

Last night v low, but G was great, showed me website about reintroduction of beavers to UK, & cheered me right up.
This
is
what F doesn’t see, he is a
kind
man,
steady, &
he loves me
. For first time in years feel supported by another adult.

Want to say to her, ‘You have M in your life & I don’t particularly like it, I have G. That’s how families work, compromise.’ G thinks should put that to her.
Terrified I’ll lose her, though. Not even G could make up for that, & he knows it.

Notice she’s stopped calling me ‘Mum’, but haven’t reacted.

Wonder what she calls M to her face?

We had a beautiful day for Liv’s shearing.

I’d known it was imminent, but had pretended not to notice how her scalp was showing more and more, especially at the front. Then, early that morning, we were standing by the kitchen
window watching a nuthatch on the feeder, and completely without thinking I reached across and plucked a loose hair off her shirt sleeve. She looked at me as though she’d been slapped. Before
I could tie myself in knots apologising, though, she’d said, ‘It’s time, isn’t it?’

So after we’d had our breakfast I took a chair into the garden and set it on the lawn by the pond. I went back for scissors, a brush, a towel, a plastic bag to hold the clippings, and the
wig.

Liv came out and sat in the chair and I began to brush her hair through. Handfuls of it pulled away between the bristles. I shook out the towel then laid it across her shoulders, lifting her
long tresses aside. Then I took a hank of hair between my fingers, brought the scissors close to her scalp, and cut.

‘Stop!’ she said.

I nearly dropped the scissors. ‘Oh, God, what, did I hurt you?’

‘It’s— You don’t have to cut my hair for me, Freya, this is silly. I can do it myself. In the bathroom. I’ll go and do that, shall I?’ She started to peel off
the towel.

‘It’s fine. Please, let me.’

‘I don’t know what to do.’

‘You don’t have to do anything, Mum. Sit back. It’s fine. Close your eyes if it helps.’

After a moment she shook herself and smiled thinly. ‘Go on, then.’

I replaced the towel and began again.

I tried to work symmetrically, so that what I took from the left I next took from the right. It seemed important to do that. Still it felt outrageous to be shearing her at all, exposing the pink
skin with its freckles and marks she never knew she had. There were creases at the back of her neck, a silvery scar above one ear. Secret Liv.

As I chopped, she gave a running commentary on a pair of grey squirrels frolicking in next door’s spruce. One was mean and the other was feeble. Feeble kept venturing out onto the garage
roof, and then Mean would come after and chase him back up the branches.

‘Is it territorial or are they getting ready for mating?’ I asked.

‘I’m not sure. Squirrels aren’t my area of expertise.’

Geraint appeared at the kitchen window, then retreated again.

At last I paused to take stock of the job and a hot wave of fear washed over me. Almost all her hair was gone now, only a few short clumps remained. Liv would be appalled when she saw
herself.

I peeled away the towel and ran it gently over her scalp to dislodge any last loose wisps. ‘How does it feel?’

‘Exposed.’

‘Do you want to go in and look, or would you rather have the wig on first?’

She turned in her seat. ‘I’ll try it with the wig first. My lovely chic head-warmer.’

I imagined her in front of the mirror at bedtime, staring at herself, trying to take in her newly naked face. Geraint would be propped against the pillows, offering nothing or with his nose in
some book about the history of peat bogs. Whatever, I knew she wouldn’t get much support from that quarter.

While she pulled on the wig, I stooped to pick up the hanks of hair lying among the grass and started to poke them into the plastic bag.

‘No,’ said Liv, ‘don’t throw them away.’

‘Are you keeping them?’ I was surprised.

She took a length of hair from me and ran her fingers along it. ‘No, drape it over the hedge. It’ll make wonderful lining for mammal nests.’ She laughed at my expression.
‘You have to look on the bright side. My loss might be some wood mouse family’s gain.’

So together we spent a minute or two distributing her hair around the garden at various mammal-friendly stations. Only Liv could have turned such a morning into a wildlife event. Then she went
back in while I gathered up my tools and carried everything indoors. I slid the chair home under the dining table, and I was on my way to take the brush and scissors up to my bedroom when I passed
Liv standing perfectly still in the downstairs cloakroom. I hesitated, wondering whether this was a private moment, but she called me in. Her fingertips fluttered uncertainly across the wig.

‘It is still me, isn’t it?’

‘’Course it is.’

‘Bloody cancer,’ she said.

Later, on the way upstairs, I met Geraint. As he passed me he cleared his throat. ‘Thanks,’ he said.

‘’S OK,’ I said. Neither of us broke step.

Once I’d put everything back on my dressing table I went into the bathroom, locked the door and ran the shower till it was warm. Ironic to be dyeing my own hair minutes
after Liv had lost all hers, and I wondered whether I was perhaps being a bit tactless. But I needed this shot of colour to give me courage. In less than two hours I was meant to be at the hospital
chapel, saying goodbye to Melody’s baby.

I plunged my head under the running water, squirted shampoo, lathered, then held myself under the needle jets, losing myself in the hiss and steam. To be honest I could have stayed there
forever, till I dissolved away to nothing and disappeared down the plughole alongside the gobbets of froth. In a hour or so Geraint might batter the door down and find nothing but a slimy trail of
Pantene.

I couldn’t bear the thought of going to the funeral and yet I also knew I couldn’t stay away. When Michael had texted me at work with the date, my first reaction had been wild panic.
It would just be too horrible. I knew I wouldn’t be able to stand the intense focusing of all that sadness; I’d be like an ant under a magnifying glass, grief would fry my brain. And
what if I somehow managed to say the wrong thing again? I’d have to leave the country, possibly the planet.

Frantically I’d tried to think of possible excuses: a crisis with Liv, a last-minute migraine, general mental breakdown. I even contemplated deliberately pranging my car on the way to the
hospital.

But when I’d texted back to ask what time I should be there, Michael had replied:
Might jst be me + mel.
And that – the blunt unexpectedness of it – had gutted me.
I’d actually felt sick when I read it. Because obviously what he meant was that I’d been such a crap daughter over all of this, Melody couldn’t bear to have me around. That I
couldn’t be trusted to behave like an adult. I had to be shut out.

I switched off the shower and reached for a towel, scrubbing hard at my scalp, remembering how I’d spent the four hours after his text consumed with self-pity. Blundered about the nursery,
glassy-eyed. Wouldn’t speak, refused to serve in the shop, spilt a bin full of grass seed all over the car park. In the end Ray made me go sit in the office and eat an out-of-date flapjack to
raise my blood-sugar level.
This baby was my sister
, I’d raged to myself.
I had a right to be there. I could have taken flowers. Read a poem. Just stood and held Melody’s
hand. Claiming me as part of the family and then shutting the door again – who the fuck did they think they were?
Then, when I’d got home that evening, Liv told me Michael wanted me
to ring him, so with a pounding heart I had done.

‘It’s at 11.30, if you can get the morning off,’ he said.

‘Does she want me there?’

‘Of course she does.’

‘I thought—’

‘Oh, she was all over the place, Frey. She didn’t even want me to go, at first. Then she only wanted her mum over from Ireland, and then, would you believe it, my dad, which
obviously was crazy. And we had a huge row about the post-mortem results because I think it’s good they haven’t found anything but she feels let down. She does need us there. Trust
me.’

‘Isn’t she cross with me?’

There’d been a sigh, a kind of warm noise, like an aural hug. ‘I promise you, she’s not cross any more. She needs you there. We both do.’

And in that instant I’d gone from dreading the idea of being at the funeral to wanting to be there, standing between them, a unit. I could do it.

‘OK,’ I’d said.

The noise of next door’s dog barking brought me back to the present. I wiped the cabinet mirror free of steam and assessed the state of my hair. I combed it flat, frowned at the result,
then mussed it up again, ready for the dye. Bold Red, I would be today. I pulled on the plastic gloves and unscrewed the cap. A liquid similar to venous blood blobbed out onto my palm. Quickly I
clapped my hand against my scalp, and began to work the dye through, so that within minutes I resembled the victim of a frenzied zombie attack. The residue as usual was splashed about the bathroom,
across the tiles, smeared gorily around the taps. Bloody foam slipped down my fingers. There were even drops of it down the toilet bowl.

Like I was suddenly seventeen again and back at Oggy’s mum’s house the afternoon I lost my virginity, staring at the smear of blood on the toilet paper and wondering whether
I’d done a very clever or a very stupid thing. ‘What will your mum say about the sheets?’ I’d asked him. ‘Should we wash them before she gets home?’ He’d
howled with laughter at that, but I tell you, I never could look her in the eye afterwards.