Before She Was Mine (4 page)

‘
Helping at the garage?
’ I tried to picture her lacquered nails clamped round an oily spanner.

‘Only answering the phone, booking appointments, that sort of thing. He was stuck. I was free.’

‘And it went OK?’

‘Yep.’

‘Is it going to be a regular set-up?’

‘God, no.’ A fragment of cereal burst from her lips. ‘I told you, he was stuck. It was a favour. There’s no way I could cope with my brother as a boss full-time.
I’d brain him within a week.’

‘Bet the feeling’s mutual.’

‘Could be. Hey, sorry, have you eaten?’

‘Ish. I made a stew, but then when it came to it, I didn’t have much of an appetite. I’m hungry now, though. Have you got anything in? Apart from cereal, I mean.’

The cupboard above me was still open and she nodded at it. ‘Jam, honey, marmalade. There’s a hunk of cheese in the fridge, anything you like.’

‘I’m not having just toast. I’ve been shifting bags of Osmocote all afternoon. What’s in the freezer?’

Melody looked vague. ‘There might be some battered cod.’

‘That’ll do.’

‘Don’t know how old it is, though.’ ‘I’ll take my chances.’

She wandered off, bowl in hand, back up the stairs. I lit the oven and carried on with the quiz.

The fish was pretty much ready to serve and I’d plated up some bread and butter to go with it. But when Melody came back down, she was all glammed up. Her skirt was a
black sequinned tube down to her knees, and for a top she had on an emerald camisole which may or may not have been meant for outside wear. She’d twisted up her shoulder-length hair into a
messy chignon.

I said, ‘You look as if you’re going out.’

‘I am. Didn’t I mention it?’

‘No.’

‘Sorry. You can still stay, though. We can catch up later. Do you want to open a bottle of wine?’

My spirits dipped. What I’d been hoping for, what I’d been sure Melody would provide, was a good long session of hard-core cynicism. I’d thought, I can tell her about
Nicky’s engagement, about the fancy preparation and fairy lights, and Melody will do what she always does on these occasions, which is to pour scorn. Flicking Vs in the face of
happy-ever-after is one of her favourite entertainments. ‘The only reason people marry,’ she says, ‘is for legal security. To nail down stuff like who turns off your life support
machine, or who gets custody of the hi-fi system. The rest is bollocks. And weddings are the worst: poncy dress, boring speeches, half the congregation taking bets on how long till the divorce.
It’s a humiliation
I’ll
never put myself through.’

She certainly seemed to be sticking to her word. In the five years I’d known her, I’d met maybe a dozen of her boyfriends, and every one she’d delighted in slagging off behind
his back. The guy with the weakness for jewellery she’d initially called ‘Jingle Bells’; after they split up, he became ‘Pimp’. Another she tagged ‘The
Gobbler’ because he ate with his mouth open. There was ‘Lurch’ and ‘Mr Potato Head’, and another she referred to as ‘Whopper’ (glad I didn’t meet
him; I wouldn’t have known where to look).

‘Why do you date them if you don’t like them?’ I remember asking her.

‘I do like them,’ she’d said. ‘I’m just not stupid about it.’ Another time she told me, ‘It’s a hobby.’ I don’t know whether she meant
the men or the casual cruelty.

Sometimes it was funny, other times it got a bit wearing. But there’s no doubt Melody’s was a great place to be on Valentine’s night. Two years in a row we spent the evening of
the 14
^th
getting drunk and watching
Dawn
/
Day
/
Land of the Dead
, then mocking the soppier of the love messages from the local paper. Happy hours, where I’d felt
as though Melody was just about the only person I knew who was on my wavelength.

I’d thought we might do something similar tonight. She could bitch about Nicky and Christian and the Engaged in general, and I could scold her, and we’d both enjoy ourselves.

Except she was going out and leaving me to eat unwanted fish.

I did try before she went. While she was fiddling with the cap on the wine bottle, I related the story of Christian’s proposal and Nicky’s reaction.

‘Jesus!’ was Melody’s first response, but then I realised she’d cut herself on the metal edge of the screw top. So while she sucked her finger, I gave her the news again,
in summary.

‘Oh yeah, Mr Posh-Pants,’ she said.

‘Don’t call him that.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because I might come out with it myself.’

She dabbed her hand on her skirt and grimaced. ‘When’s the date?’

‘Not sure yet. Mad, aren’t they, though? She’s only twenty-three. Don’t you think that’s too young?’

‘Totally.’

She glanced round the room, frowning.

‘What feels weird—’ I began.

‘Shit, you haven’t seen my phone, have you? It was on the window sill, I’m sure it was on the window sill. I definitely put it there.’

So we stopped to hunt. All the cushions off the sofa, her bag tipped upside down on the carpet, every pocket in every coat turned out. She found a tenner she didn’t know she had, and a
mysterious number on a scrap of paper. No mobile, though. Next she got dust in her eye, and I had to follow her to the big mirror on the landing while she poked under her lashes and swore. I was
still trying to talk about Nicky, but she wasn’t listening.

‘Who is it you’re meeting?’ I asked as she repaired her eyeliner.

‘Joe.’

‘Joe who?’

‘Sounds like a knock-knock joke.’

‘I meant, what’s his particular strangeness? Have you a nickname for him yet?’

Melody bared her teeth at her reflection, then started down the stairs. ‘Nah. I only met him a couple of months ago.’

Two months? Plenty of opportunity to have dismantled his character
, I thought as I followed her.

‘Will I meet him?’

‘Soon, hun. Promise.’

She looked back over her shoulder at me and she was doing this twinkling thing, this cutesy half-smile at me. I swear, if she’d had a fan she’d have fluttered it.

‘What’s he do?’

‘He’s a shop manager at Comet. Pass me my coat, will you?’

Hanging by the front door was the Union Jack blazer; she’d had to order it online in the end. It looked tiny, like a child’s garment. I’m only a size twelve, but I feel like a
cart horse beside her sometimes.

‘Do I look OK?’ she said, hooking the blazer off its peg and slipping it on over the camisole.

‘You want to stop shrinking into the background. Stand out from the crowd for once.’

She smiled sweetly. ‘Says the girl with the fluorescent hair.’

A car horn bibbed. Melody grabbed her bag.

‘Where’s he taking you? If you haven’t got a phone and anything happens – you’ve not known him that long. Stranger danger.’

‘Don’t be a div.’ I caught a whiff of her perfume as she opened the front door. ‘Finish the wine, watch a DVD. Eat anything you can find. Don’t wait up.’

And then I was on my own. Again.

I binned what was left of the fish, then sat and zapped through the TV channels, eventually settling on a stupid romcom where we were supposed to believe the gorgeous glossy
lead was actually a moose. ‘If only I could get him to notice me,’ she simpered, flicking her hair about like she was in a shampoo ad. These films do your self-esteem no good at
all.

Then the bell rang. I assumed it was Melody, back after a row, or to retrieve some vital piece of kit. But it wasn’t. It was Michael, returning the missing phone.

‘She swore she hadn’t taken it to work,’ I told him as he stepped in, shaking the rain out of his curls.

‘She’d left it in the toilet. God knows what she was doing with it in there.’

‘Texting Joe, I bet.’

‘Ah, Joe.’

‘You’ve met him?’

‘Only the once. He’s younger than she is.’

‘By how much?’

Michael shrugged. ‘Visibly.’

‘What’s he like?’

‘All right, I suppose.’

‘Go on.’

‘Nothing else to say. We didn’t talk for long, they were going to see a film.’ He laid the phone on the coffee table and perched himself on the sofa arm. ‘What’s up
with you, anyway? You look like you’ve spent the afternoon sucking crab apples.’

‘Get lost,’ I said.

‘Come on, Mrs Glum, give us the news. Let me see if I can’t sort you out.’

He always adopts this teasing tone with me. He doesn’t do it to other women; I’ve heard him in the pub, in the garage, and I know he can hold a perfectly normal conversation if he
wants to. I suppose he likes to think of himself as a kind of uncle, except he isn’t blood relation to any of us. His dad moved in with Melody’s mum when Michael was five and Melody was
thirteen, then moved out a decade later, leaving Michael behind at his own request. ‘I was doing my exams, I was settled,’ he’d told me. ‘Staying seemed the easiest
thing.’

All of which makes him a paper-brother only. But he’s still loose family and, having already been married and divorced, he does have a fair bit of life experience under his belt.
He’s not a bad listener either.

So I told him.

‘Your best friend’s engaged.’

‘Yeah.’

‘And, naturally, you’re thrilled for them both.’

‘I am.’

‘You bloody great liar, Frey.’

‘I
am
. Of course I’m happy for Nicky. She’s my
friend
.’

Michael stared at me till I looked away. Then he said, ‘She’s all right is Nicky. I’ve never forgotten that time you had glandular fever and she came round every few days with
books and fruit, pictures she’d taken on her phone, all that girly shit.’

‘I’d have done the same for her.’

‘Yeah, yeah.’

‘I helped
you
when you fell down the inspection pit and broke your ankle.’

‘That’s true. You made me at least one cup of tea.’

‘I should have poured it over your head.’

‘Thank you, Florence Nightingale.’

‘You pretended you couldn’t get to the toilet and needed to pee in a milk carton. Is it any wonder I left you to your own devices?’

‘Poor, gullible Freya.’ He grinned and raised his eyebrows. ‘Hey, I think I know what’s bugging you. It’s that you might have to wear a frilly bridesmaid’s
dress. In pink, I shouldn’t wonder. You couldn’t bear the humiliation.’

‘If she does stick me in a daft frock, I’ll make sure I have my DMs on underneath.’

‘And your combats.’

‘I wonder if they do camouflage taffeta?’ I flopped down on the sofa next to him. ‘Seriously, though, I must be a bit crap if I can’t just be happy for her. She’d
be ecstatic if it was me getting married. She would. Because she’s everything I’m not. She’s straightened out, and uncomplicated and grown up.’

Michael snorted. ‘What are you, then? Still a teenager?’

‘You know what I mean.’

‘I don’t.’

‘Nicky – she’s got everything, she’s done everything in the right order.’

‘What’s the “right order”?’

‘She stuck the course out at uni, for one. Then she got her legal qualification. Then her training contract. It’s all mapped out.’

‘You chose to do something different.’

‘I flunked it.’

He pushed affectionately at my shoulder with his knuckles. ‘Not that again. Look, what’s done is done. There’s a lot to be said for admitting you’re wrong and doing
something about it. Unfairly maligned is the U-turn. I wish I’d walked away before I got married, it would have saved everyone a lot of grief. But you get so far down the line and it’s
difficult to untangle yourself.’

‘There’s more to it than the degree. Nicky’s going to leave her mum and dad’s, get her own place. Choose curtains. Hold dinner parties.’

‘I can run you to Homebase if you’re desperate.’

‘It’s the moving-on thing. She’s being
normal
.’

That made him laugh.

‘’Cause we all want to be that, Frey, don’t we?’

‘It’s not as if I want her life. I don’t want to get married. It’s just – it’s change. Yeah, that’s it.’

‘And you’re not good with change, are you?’

‘I know it shouldn’t matter in the face of my best mate’s happiness. But the thought of the wedding feels, urgh. Crap.’

He drew in a long breath. ‘OK, listen, I’m going to put it to you straight, and I’m only asking because I think you need me to: are you sure this isn’t a plain case of
jealousy?’

‘No. I told you,
I
don’t want to get hitched.’

‘You’ve got a crush on Christian.’

It sounded shocking, hearing it out loud. ‘No!’

‘You’ve got a crush on Nicky?’

‘For God’s sake,’ I began.

At which point the landline began to ring. We both jumped.

‘Go on,’ he said. ‘It’ll be Melody, in some sort of bother. Forgotten her eyelash glue, broken a heel.’

So I picked up the receiver. There was a pause, then Geraint’s voice came down the line, cautious, rusty, Welsh. ‘Freya?’

‘Yeah.’ What the hell was he ringing me here for? Wasn’t there anywhere I could go to escape his wheezy old-man presence?

‘Can you come back?’

‘What, now? I’m stopping here tonight. I told Liv. She was fine with it.’

‘She’s—’

‘What? What’s the matter?’ I caught the fear in his voice, and that made me frightened too. ‘Is there a problem?’

‘It’s Liv.’

‘Is she ill?’

He made a sick strangled noise. ‘Yes, I think she is.’

‘What, Geraint? Tell me.’

‘She’s, she’s found a lump. In her. In her. A lump in her chest. She’s gone a bit – upset. Can you come home now? I don’t know what to do.’

No, you never bloody do
, I thought.

I replaced the handset with extreme care. Michael said, ‘Frey?’

‘I’m all right but I have to go,’ I said shakily.

Funny how just one short phone call can be all it
takes for your world to begin unravelling.

Case Notes on: Melody Jacqueline Brewster

Meeting Location:
42,
Love Lane, Nantwich

Present: Miss Melody Brewster, Mrs Abby Brewster, Mrs Diane Kozyra

Date:
11
a.m.,
11/11/86