How We Met (4 page)

Through all of this, of course, Mia was four months pregnant with Billy, and sober. She’d tried to reason with them that perhaps that second round of sambucas was not the best idea, that Fraser had had enough to drink,
that quite possibly, Liv wouldn’t have wanted him to take a swing at a bloke twice his size on her behalf, but they wouldn’t listen. Of c
ourse they wouldn’t listen, they were steaming and Mia had gone home feeling utterly deflated, sure that two broken fingers and a police caution was definitely
not
how her best friend would want her birthday to be marked.

Also, perhaps due to being pregnant, she felt blocked. She couldn’t let her grief run riot like the rest of them. Everything was too much – life event overload – and even though everyone else had piled back to Melody and Norm’s, she’d gone home to Eduardo (who was still with her at this point, preferring to wait until she was thirty-six weeks pregnant to tell her, actually, this whole baby thing wasn’t really going to work for him …) and lay in bed, staring into the dark.

But tonight was a whole year later, wasn’t it? Their grief was less raw; it would be more of a celebration, a celebration of her life! A chance to reminisce about the good times – so many good times – and a chance to get together. Then she located Melody and Norm at the end of the final tunnel, clearly already in the throes of a row, and her heart sank.

Melody turned dramatically when she saw Mia, who thought, if she were turning into a character from
Coronation Street
, then her good friend Melody Burgess was fast becoming one from
Ally McBeal
. All power dressing and courtroom drama.

‘Nobody’s here yet,’ she said, breathily, with what Mia couldn’t help but feel was a slightly staged flick of her hair. ‘Twenty past eight and not a peep out of anyone.’

‘Well, I’m here,’ said Mia, brightly.

‘Right, yes, I suppose so and er … Billy,’ said Melody, somewhat begrudgingly, clocking the buggy, as if Mia had a choice in this matter. Mia gritted her teeth.

Norm groaned. ‘I’ve told her to take a chill-pill,’ he said. ‘I’ve told her this is about Olivia, REMEMBER?’ He fired daggers at Melody, and Mia found herself thinking – not for the first time in the last year: what happened to my friends? Jolly old Norm and Melody? Inseparable. Bonded for years in their love of cider and singing appalling indie anthems on karaoke?

Melody folded her arms indignantly. ‘Well, I’m disgusted, frankly. I mean, Anna’s no surprise but
Fraser
? Liv was
his
girlfriend,
remember?’

‘I think we do,’ said Mia, in a way that was supposed to be helpful and calm her down but didn’t.

‘So why the fuck isn’t he here then? No phone call, no text,
nada
!’

‘Um, do you mind putting your foot down, mate?’ Fraser was sitting in the back of a black cab travelling from Preston to Lancaster, jiggling his legs up and down, which he always did when he was nervous. Honestly, what was wrong with these provincial types? No sense of urgency. Liv was doing this, he thought. She knew all about his overactive conscience and she was having a laugh. He imagined her looking down at him now, sweating and toxic and wracked with guilt, and thinking, you muppet, Fraser Morgan. All this guilt for
a fumble with a barmaid? Deep down of course, so
deep down he couldn’t bring himself to admit it, Fraser Morgan knew this tardiness and stress was entirely of his own making. In fact, the last twenty-four hours were entirely of his own making.

He was supposed to have caught the four o’clock from Euston – which would have got him to Lancaster and the Merchants in plenty of time, but because he was far too nice and far too hungover to put up a fight, he’d somehow become embroiled in a Tarot reading from Karen, which overran (he wasn’t sure how long the average Tarot reading was, but felt sure an hour and a half was overrunning), missed the four o clock, so had to catch the five o’clock, and only realized when he was on the train that it didn’t go further than Preston.

He now felt wretched, having thrown up in the train toilets and fielded three texts from Karen – are you on the train yet? How’s the hangover? He’d finally broken when she’d told him what she was having for tea and switched off his phone.

Still, at least in the end he’d told her the truth; he’d been nothing but a gent. At least there was that.

‘Unfortunately,’ (he was now somewhat regretting the ‘unfortunately’ line. You give these people an inch and they take a mile) ‘I can’t hang out all day because I’m going to a reunion with my university mates – we do it every year.’

All true, nothing but the truth. But even that had backfired when Karen had propped herself up on her elbow, shaken her head slowly and given him that look – the look of love – and said, ‘Do you know what? That doesn’t surprise me one little bit. I can tell that Fraser Morgan is the sort of person who, once he is your friend, is a friend for life, do you know what I mean?’

Oh, Jesus Christ.

‘So this is Ollie. Ollie, these are my friends …’

Fraser practically skidded into the Merchants, locating
his mates in the last arch, just as Anna was introducing
some
new … boyfriend/fuck-buddy/future husband –
it was hard to know what to expect where Spanner was concerned.

‘Ollie,’ thought Fraser, standing in the doorway of the arch, they’re always called Ollie and I
bet
he works in the media and lives in Ladbroke Grove.

It took him another few seconds to register the reality of the situation. Spanner had brought some idiot in red skinny jeans – no doubt last night’s conquest, a bloke nobody knew from Adam – to Liv’s birthday reunion? He felt a sudden, overwhelming blackness of mood that crashed down on him like a tonne of rock involving anger on Liv’s behalf, fury at his friend’s audacity, mixed with a horrible,
horrible
wave of self-loathing – an ugly sense of his own double standards as the reality of what he’d done last night hit him again.

What Anna had done seemed suddenly outrageous, and yet, was what he’d done actually any better? And these were his friends, his best and oldest friends. They’d just know.

Nobody said hello to Ollie, who had the most unfortunate hairstyle Fraser had ever seen: dyed a reddish-pink and pulled forward around his face, like a giant crab-claw had him in a headlock.

‘Right, wicked … well, er, I’ll just go to the bar then?’ he said, eventually, to nobody in particular.

Anna stroked his arm repeatedly as if he was a cat. ‘Can I have a vodka and lime, please? Proper lime juice, not lime cordial?’ she added, lowering her lashes at him, and Ollie nodded, locking eyes for far longer than was natural. (Or necessary, or fucking appropriate, come to think of it, thought Fraser. Who did he think he was? Playing out his postcoital dance, here?) And went to the bar.

‘So you got here then?’

Fraser was still boring a hole in Ollie’s back when he realized, back inside the arch, that Melody was talking to him.

‘A call would have been appreciated, Fraser, we’ve been worried sick.’

Ha! this was rich. What about Anna? Why was nobody angry with Anna, who was busy removing her various bags (Anna always seemed to be carrying an assortment of bags, since her life was one big impromptu sleepover) like nothing had happened? Anna had always been flaky and selfish and Fraser had always forgiven her, not least because Liv always had (‘I understand her, Fraser,’ she always said. ‘She’s a mass of insecurity inside.’) Also, Anna compensated by being gutsy and fearless; she appealed to Fraser’s passionate side. Anna came from a socially aspiring, lower-middle-class family who had as good as bankrupted themselves to send her to private school. She and Fraser would have awesome ‘heated debates’, i.e. blazing slanging matches, in the kitchen of 5 South Road, where she would accuse him of being an inverted snob and he would accuse her of being a shameless social climber with a massive chip on her shoulder.

They disagreed on many things: Fraser incensed her with his tendency to always play devil’s advocate. But Fraser loved her passion, how she wasn’t remotely interested in life’s subtle emotions: it was all pain and death and love and torture with Anna. But these days, she seemed to be using Liv’s death as an excuse to be even more flaky and selfish, and Fraser wasn’t having it.

He felt rage rise within him.

‘Um,
Anna
.’ He rubbed at his head hard, as if this would somehow get rid of it. ‘Can I have a word with you? Like, outside? In private, please?’

Anna froze. Everyone had gone quiet and was staring into their drinks.

‘Why?’ she said, defensively.

‘
Why?
Fucking hell, Anna. If you don’t know why, then there’s something wrong with you.’

‘Oh, look, we’ll just leave,’ Anna snapped, standing
up and gathering her stuff. ‘Jesus Christ. If I’d thought this was going to be such a big deal … if I’d thought—’

‘Anna,’ Melody broke the silence. ‘How can you say that? Of course this is a big deal, this is Liv’s birthday.’

Anna let out an incredulous little gasp.

‘Oh, my God, you’re at it too! What is this? Gang up on Anna night? You lot have such double standards. HE was forty-five minutes late.’ Anna was standing up now, pointing at Fraser. ‘Later than me, and Liv was his girlfriend!’

‘She does have a point, Fraser,’ said Melody, grimacing, but Fraser didn’t want to know about logic or who had a point; he was just angry, really fucking angry, and he didn’t know why but it was taking over him, becoming bigger than him,
as if he was being engulfed by a fireball.

The words came out in a torrent before he could help himself. ‘God, you’re selfish.’ Anna stood there open-mouthed as he laid into her. ‘You’re like a fucking
teenager. You want so much back, and yet YOU, you, just
do what you want, when you want. Bring who you want – twats in red jeans … some bloke you probably shagged last night.’ He was on a roll now and he didn’t care. ‘No respect for Liv, for me …’

Out of the corner of his eye, Fraser clocked Norm staring at him and looked away.

‘Fras
er come on
…’ It was only when he heard her voice, alarmed but still soft, that Fraser clocked that Mia was with Billy – why was she with Billy? Oh, he knew why she was with Billy. Eduardo. Such a useless pile of shit. Why she’d ever got together with him was beyond him.

Then Mia got up – Billy was crying now – and went over to him, putting her arm around Fraser as if trying to soothe him.

Anna exploded. ‘Oh, that’s nice, that is. You just take sides, Mia, go on – you always look after him, don’t you? Have you noticed that?

‘Anna, I do not … I—’ Mia tried to defend herself, but Anna cut her dead.

‘It’s not all about you, you know, Fraser. I know Liv was your girlfriend, but she was our friend too; we all miss her. She wouldn’t have given a shit if I had wanted to bring a friend along, or someone I shagged last night for that matter …’ She was shouting now and Billy was crying harder. ‘I’m sure she would have liked Ollie actually.’ Ollie had come back from the bar now, and Fraser could feel him looming behind him. ‘She
liked
new people, unlike some people I know. Some very angry and tormented people.’

What the hell was that supposed to mean?

She carried on and all hell broke loose. Anna was
shouting at Fraser, Melody joined in and Fraser was
shouting back. Then Mia was arguing with the landlord, Bruce, who said she couldn’t bring a baby in a pub after 7 p.m., to which she shouted, ‘DO YOU THINK I WOULD UNLESS I HAD TO? Unless it was a very special occasion? Do you not
remember
last year?’ Then ate her words when a look of realization crossed Bruce’s face as last year’s escapade came flooding back. In the middle of all of this, Fraser had a flash of lucidity, something he found very uncomfortable when he got like this, which was getting more, not less, often, because he knew, deep down, that they’d done it again,
he
’d done it again. He thought of Liv.
Jesus wept, you lot, get a grip
,
and he felt a trickle of shame run down his spine.

It was Norm who finally snapped and got them all to shut up. Including Billy.

‘Look, people …’
He slammed his pint down, a good deal of which splashed all over his shirt. ‘Shit,’ he mumbled, wiping it away. ‘Don’t you think this is pretty lame?’

He shifted on his feet, looking slightly uncomfortable. Voice of authority and reason was not a natural role for Norm, but circumstances called for it.

‘I mean, if Livs could see us, you know, if she was looking down on us now – on her twenty-ninth birthday, in case you’ve all forgotten; if she had her feet up watching
Countdown
, having one of her cheeky Tia Maria coffees and maybe a twenty-quid fag …’ There was a murmur of laughter and recognition from the group. ‘Do you think she’d be impressed? Do you reckon she’d be like. Awesome. Look at my mates, aren’t they just the best?

‘I don’t think so somehow.’

Fraser looked at his friend and felt a bloom of pride in his chest. Norm must think I’m a dick, he thought. I AM a dick. Norm had been so good to him in that text, going out of his way to make Fraser feel better, and then he’d still
let the side down: rocked up an hour late, hungover, taking his guilt out on everyone else. He really hated himself sometimes.

‘Look …’ said Norm eventually.

Everyone was shuffling and staring at the ground, as if they were being told off by the headmaster.

‘I found this.’

He reached inside his pocket and pulled out a tatty piece of A4.

‘It’s a list that Liv wrote – Things To Do Before I Am Thirty. I thought it might be nice for us all to read it later, pass it around or whatever and raise a drink to her. But since everyone’s being idiots now …’