How We Met (19 page)

Also, the salsa classes had become an unexpected bonus in his life. He never thought he’d ever say this after that terrible first lesson, but he actually looked forward to Tuesdays. He would never be a natural dancer, but he could put steps together now and lead Karen with some
mastery, which gave him a sense of achievement he could
never have predicted. Calvin told him weekly how much
he’d improved – nobody had ever, in his life, told him he’d improved at anything, except perhaps the guitar, but even that he’d taught himself. No, this was a teacher/pupil relationship he’d never experienced, and he liked it. It was worth staying with Karen a little longer just for that.

Norm turned to him. ‘Can I say something, mate? I don’t think you should feel guilty about having a relationship. Karen’s a great girl, she seems to make you relatively happy and Liv would have wanted that – you know that
, don’t you?’

‘Yeah, I guess,’ said Fraser, fighting that uncomfortable tightness in his stomach again.

‘Also, we all have to move on, don’t we? We’ve been seeing Mia and Eduardo a bit lately, and they seem to be getting on well, seem to be putting their differences behind them.’

Fraser stopped. ‘Right, so are they back together then?’

Norm had got his mobile out and was fiddling about, walking on ahead and looking distracted.

‘I said, are they back together, Norm?’ shouted Fraser, stopping. It came out stronger than he’d planned and his voice echoed over the Heath.

‘Well,
I
don’t know,’ said Norm, bemused, and he went back to his phone. ‘You’d have to ask Melody, she’s the one who keeps on top of all that.’

Fraser was gutted. Pissed off beyond belief. It had taken him six months to pluck up the courage to ask Mia over and now he’d totally ballsed it up. Or rather, Melody had, albeit unknowingly.

‘What the fuck? Why did you tell her that?’ Fraser had said to Melody, when Mia had suddenly disappeared out of the door.

He’d wanted to go ballistic at Melody, he’d wanted to blame her
, but she was obviously so confused, so clueless … ‘What you on about?’ she’d said, standing there with the dustpan and brush. ‘I’m sure Mia wouldn’t care, she’d just think it was funny’ –
that he didn’t have the heart, or the balls, come to think of it, to admit what the whole night had been about for him. He’d done such a fine job of pretending he and Mia were just mates that even his housemate believed him. Nice one, Fraser!

He’d gone round to her house two days later and searched all over campus to no avail. Then it was the Christmas holidays and he’d spent the month at home in Bury, fretting, kicking himself, planning what he’d say to her when he finally got a chance to explain.

And now that time had come. Now, he was sitting in the Merchants in the January of 1997 – a brand-new year in which he was determined to get the girl of his dreams – and Mia was having none of it. And also he’d drunk too much to make his point clearly. Why did he always do that?

‘Listen, I know you think I’m just this big tart, this big skirt-lifter who can’t keep his hands to himself.’

Mia had sniggered at ‘skirt-lifter’.

‘You make it sound like a hobby, Fraser. Which I think it kind of is, for you.’

Damn it, he’d chosen that word carefully too. He thought it sounded less serious than ‘massive shagger’, which, for the record, he didn’t see himself as either.

‘You were different though, Mia.’

She smiled, wearily.

‘Yeah, Fraser, course I was.’

‘You’re my special shopping buddy.’

‘
Wow. Now I do feel honoured. Now I feel like one of those tartan things you see old ladies pulling along, that you can buy in the back of the
Telegraph
magazine.’

God, she could be annoying.

‘But, Mia, seriously, I really like you …’ he said leaning forward.

‘And I really like you too,’ she’d said, putting her hand over his. ‘But I don’t want to spoil what we’ve got. I don’t want it to be weird. I couldn’t bear that. Now can you just shut up, go to the bar, and get me another drink, please?’

For a year after that, Fraser intermittently tried his luck with Mia; there were drunken declarations of love, declarations
of love on ecstasy, and a truly embarrassing attempt to show her his ‘massage skills’ he’d picked up on a trip to India with Melody and Norm in the summer of 1997, which ended up with a visit to A&E, when Mia had pulled a muscle in her neck and had to wear a neck brace.

He was obsessed with her. For the first time in his life he knew what love was
– at least he thought he did. But it was unrequited, and there was only so long, he figured, you could be in love with someone if they didn’t love you back. So eventually, he’d given up. Sod her, he’d thought. I found The One but she didn’t want me.

And eventually the pain eased, the wanting waned and Fraser learnt a valuable lesson in life: that no intensity of feeling lasted forever.

And then there was Liv: lovely, no-nonsense, dry-humoured Liv. Of the two boys in the group, it had always been Norm who’d had more of a bond with Liv, them being into the same (dreadful) music, doing the same course and going to gigs. But essentially, Norm was with Melody, and so when Boring Ben dumped Liv, and suddenly
, six months after they graduated, she and Fraser found themselves alone, stumbling into their early twenties, scared at what the future might hold, they started to hang out more, just the two of them.

Feelings grew – Fraser had never seen his friend ‘like that’, but suddenly he got Olivia Jenkins. She wasn’t Mia but she was a beautiful person – kind, funny, someone pragmatic to balance his often emotional and brooding side. He then learned another valuable lesson: that broken hearts do mend, and you can love again.

Mia took another great spoonful of mayonnaise and dolloped it into her mashed egg. Egg-mayonnaise sandwiches – was that just too common? It was a baby’s first birthday party, so surely she shouldn’t be doing goat’s cheese on ciabatta, but still, maybe Jo and Tamsin’s kids were allergic to eggs? Or they didn’t approve of shop-bought mayonnaise? Maybe she should have bought brown bread?

She spooned some egg mixture onto a corner of white bread and stuffed it in her mouth. Ah, but it was bloody delicious though. And anyway, she told herself, this was
Billy’s
first birthday party and Billy loved egg mayonnaise on white bread … and cocktail sausages and cheesy Wotsits and, oh, Christ, she’d better do some carrot batons.

She stood at her kitchen sink, in her pyjamas, chopping away manically at a bag of carrots, her worries about the day buzzing about her head. Melody had been so sweet offering to host Billy’s first birthday at their house, even if it did mean she could tick one of her tasks off Liv’s List:

‘Ooh, that fits so well because I pulled out “Have a massive party for my wonderful, wonderful friends. Just because …”’

Mia thought about this and found she couldn’t help smiling because it wasn’t ‘just because’ at all. In fact, Melody – God love her – had managed to shoe-horn in about five different, entirely self-interested reasons to have this party. Talk about killing two birds with one stone, she could have murdered an aviary.

So there was the List, then there was the fact that it was also her and Norm’s wedding anniversary today – their third. Then, Melody had called her to say: ‘How thick am I?! This would be the perfect chance to flog some of my Pampered Chef stuff to all your mummy mates!’ – as if Mia’s ‘mummy mates’ spent their entire life on a quest to procure more kitchen implements and would be ecstatic to fuse a kid’s birthday party with a chance to buy a tomato de-seeder.

Mia sniggered quietly to herself at this, making a mental note to tell Liv all this when she next visited the bench, whilst at the same time fighting another wave of nerves about the day. It wasn’t like her to be neurotic, but for some reason this birthday party business had really given her the jitters. There were just so many variable factors and unknown quantities: for example, would Jo, Tamsin and the other mums she’d invited from Rock-a-Bye Baby think she was cheap for having the party at her mate’s house? (Not that she had much choice, you couldn’t swing a cat in her lounge.) She worried about how her ‘mummy friends’ would get on with her ‘normal friends’, or her ‘real friends’ as Melody ‘jokingly’ called them, and also how well SHE was going to get on with her real friends. This was the first time she’d seen them all since telling them she and Eduardo were officially back together, after all, and the news hadn’t exactly gone down a storm. Also, her mother would be here any minute. God, her head might explode.

Chop, chop, chop, but must keep on with the job in hand, she told herself. Today was not the day for an existential crisis. As if on cue, Billy shuffled across from the other side of the kitchen on his bum, his arms in the air as if to say, ‘Up! Up!’

Billy hadn’t quite mastered the art of walking as yet, and Mia was quite happy to stave it off for a bit, if not for a few years. Why everyone was so desperate for their baby to walk, she’d never know. Weren’t they hard enough work without being mobile?

Having said that, just lately, she was feeling more like it was worth it. When she was pregnant and working at Primal Films, she’d asked her friend Maxine what all the fuss was about, what was so good about having a baby? Maxine had looked at her as if she was mad, and Mia had felt dreadful: clearly she must have no maternal bone in her body. ‘You just love them so much,’ Maxine had said, misty-eyed. ‘And they love you and it’s soooo flattering.’ Mia had never got that; Billy had never seemed that impressed and even looked mildly relieved when someone else came to look after him. In the past month
or so, however, Billy would sometimes cry when she went out of the room, and although Mia would roll her eyes
and say, ‘Oh, Billy, come on …’, inside it felt incredible, and, yes, flattering.

She hitched her pyjama bottoms up and picked him up – ‘Hello, birthday boy, my little friend – and picked off the bit of egg he had stuck to his lapel. Melody had wanted to buy him a first birthday outfit and, not exactly being flush, Mia wasn’t going to say no. However, she now regretted this decision as she regarded her twelve-month-old son in his pinstriped suit and tie.

‘What’s she done to you, that Aunty
Melody, hey?’ she said, kissing him on the forehead. ‘Made you look like William Hague?’

She screwed her nose up at him and Billy started to giggle as if at her joke, and she got that feeling again, it had been happening more and more lately, as if something was expanding in her chest and her throat and there wasn’t enough room. She had to catch her breath.

The doorbell went – her mother – and Mia mentally prepared herself for disappointment (after twenty-eight years, it was better that way).

She padded towards the door in her slipper-socks, carrying Billy, and arranged her features into what she considered to be her best, most serene and coping face.

Lynette Forrest (maiden name, although Mia had lost count she’d changed her surname so many times) was dressed almost head to toe in animal print and had at her feet a gigantic box wrapped in pale blue Cellophane and topped with an equally gigantic blue bow. She’d had her blonde hair blow-dried for the occasion in a smooth, bouffant bob, and Mia cursed herself. Why couldn’t she have got it together to at least put some clothes on? Why put herself through this every time?

Lynette put her arms out for Billy.

‘And how’s my scrummy birthday boy?’

Billy nuzzled coyly into Mia’s neck and Mia rolled her eyes as if to say, ‘Honestly, so clingy …’

‘You are going to love your nanna!’ said Lynette, pushing Mia to the side with the gigantic box, in a waft of Ysatis. She kissed her grandson, leaving lip gloss on his cheek, and Billy almost recoiled, more due to the wall of overpowering fragrance than any personal aversion to his maternal grandmother, but Mia felt the need to cover for him: ‘He’s a bit overtired, Mum, you know, his birthday and everything …’

Lynette tottered on her zebra-print heels, through the hallway and Mia closed the front door, Billy still in her arms, looking skywards as if for some Divine support.

She followed her mum through to the tiny lounge, most surfaces covered, she now realized, with toys and opened birthday cards.

‘Cup of tea, Mum?’ she said, as Lynette set the box in the centre of the coffee table and sat, hands clasped, in front of it, as if this was
her
present she was desperate to open.

Lynette smoothed her hair down as if merely being in her daughter’s flat made her feel untidy. ‘That’d be nice,’ she said … and then out it came: ‘Now I know you’re very busy, darling, but it
is
quite a mess in here and I always brought you up to be so clean and tidy …’

Wow. That was definitely less than five minutes.

Billy started whimpering and bucking to get down. Then the timer went off on the sausage rolls and Mia put Billy down to go into the kitchen.

‘Well, is he going to open his nanna’s pressie?’ shouted Lynette from the lounge as Mia opened the oven door –
Oh, God, oh, surely not – to find she’d put the grill on rather than the oven and the sausage rolls were now like lumps of charcoal, smoke billowing from the oven.

The smoke alarm started going and she swore, loudly, wafting it with a tea towel, wondering why everything would always be going so smoothly until the minute her mother arrived and then all hell would break loose, making it look as though she spent her whole life in her pyjamas setting fire to her kitchen.

‘Mia? Are you all right in there? It smells very smoky and Billy’s going crazy for this present, aren’t you, sweetie-pie? Yes, that’s right. Nanna Forrest’s big pressie!’