River Deep (7 page)

‘I’ll wear a bra and my black top,’ she said with determination, wincing as she pulled off the toupée tape.

Sarah shrugged with disappointment. ‘You’re
so
behind the times. Please at least make it a push-up. We’re not joining a nunnery here.’

Maggie started rummaging through the suitcase she still hadn’t unpacked and fished out a black Wonderbra. ‘And listen,’ she fixed her friend with a determined gaze. ‘I want to talk about what you just said to me. What did you mean when you said that, Sarah?’

Sarah’s stomach sank and she flopped on to the bed, rolling her eyes before reapplying her lip gloss and checking her roots in a handmirror.

‘I meant what I said. That I never did like Christian. I thought he was a twat from the word go.’ She smiled at Maggie, fluttering her lashes in an attempt to be comic, though so far Maggie had yet to see the funny side of anything concerning her one true love.

‘You think he’s a
twat
?’ Maggie asked her in amazement.

Sarah shook her head apologetically. ‘And then … over the years, I warmed to him. Nice manners; seemed to treat you OK. Wads of cash. I thought, you know, first impressions aren’t always right. But, well, Nanna always says you
can
judge a book by his cover, and it turned out that I was right. He was always a twat, that’s all I’m saying. I mean, he was shagging his new girlfriend behind your back. It’s not such a newsflash, is it?’

Maggie spluttered into her wine and Sarah felt the mad urge to say what she meant grip her once again.

‘I’m sorry, mate, but I said to myself the first time I met him that he was a stuck-up, ignorant wanker and that you’d be better off without him, but, you know, you seemed to like him …’

Maggie looked from Sarah to her bemused reflection and then back again.

‘You could’ve said something before,’ she sighed. ‘Before I fell in love with him for ever and ever.’

Sarah plonked herself down beside Maggie and rested her head on her shoulder.

‘Don’t be so dramatic. No one falls in love for ever.’ She thought briefly of Aidan Carter and dismissed the thought immediately. ‘One day you’ll fall in love again and it’ll be better than it ever was with Christian.’

Maggie moved away from Sarah, pulling her off balance.

‘What about you? When are
you
going to fall in love again?’ she challenged.

‘I don’t do love, love,’ Sarah said briskly. ‘Now move your arse off that bed and let’s go out!’ She strode to the door and held it open.

Taking a deep breath and adjusting her bra, Maggie headed out into the real world, shaking like a nervous wreck.

‘Haven’t I seen you somewhere before?’ Pete asked the woman at the bar. She was pretty, if not quite his type: dark, slim and small with huge brown eyes.
He
knew he wasn’t hitting on her, but it occurred to him seconds after his comment that that was the last thing she’d be thinking. However, he was sure he knew her somehow.

Maggie turned to him incredulously as she tried to elbow her way to the bar and gave him her most scathing glare.

‘Oh,
please
,’ she said coolly, and pressed closer into the noticeably youthful crowd that thronged around the chrome bar of St Albans’ trendiest nightspot, thrusting her twenty over the heads of some teenagers and shouting, ‘Two vodka mules, please!’

Sarah could have gone up to the bar at least once, but no, she insisted that this was all part of Maggie’s rehabilitation. More like an excuse for her to sit on her arse and play footsie with the rugby player at the next table. Maggie gave an unconscious scowl. She knew and Sarah knew that he was not the sort of bloke who’d want anything serious to do with a mother of two, but Sarah didn’t seem to care. In fact she seemed to actively prefer the men who wouldn’t hang around long. ‘Love, my love,’ Sarah often told Maggie over the years, ‘just gets in the way of the game plan. You’re much better off without it, you’ll see.’ Oh well, thought Maggie, I am seeing and I don’t like it.

Maggie felt a tap on her shoulder and he was there again. Scruffy blond hair and flashy blue eyes that he probably thought got him in anywhere he wanted with anyone. Well, not with her.

‘No,’ Pete persisted. ‘I mean, I have actually seen you before, but without all the … stuff on your face.’

He looked closely at her and for a moment she wondered if one of the false lashes that Sarah had remorselessly glued to each eyelid had begun to unstick and curl up like a dead caterpillar.

‘I know!’ Pete clicked his fingers. ‘I saw you in the street this morning. You were crying.’ His face softened and behind her Maggie could hear the barman ask her for some money as she carefully rearranged her face into a perfectly blank mask. ‘I wondered if I should go up to you or something,’ Pete blundered on, ‘but you seemed like you wanted to be alone. And also, in my experience, women don’t like strange men approaching them in the street.’ Maggie turned away from him. ‘Or in bars, for that matter …’ Pete kicked himself, belatedly realising his clumsiness.

‘I had something in my eye,’ Maggie said abruptly, handing over her note to the barman and taking two bottles and some change. Disconcerted, she made her way back through the crowd. Why didn’t she just say that it wasn’t her? Why did she openly admit to blubbing in the street? Why was it that after having her heart pulverised into mush, her dreams ripped almost to shreds and her hopes thoroughly dashed, she was also left with a compulsive desire to jump to the front of the queue whenever a chance of public humiliation was on the horizon? She hurried over to Sarah, sensing the crowd close over the strange man as she headed back to her table.

‘Christ, talk about a busman’s holiday,’ Maggie said to Sarah as she sat down. ‘That’s the trouble with working in the pub – it makes going out seem like work. Except here there are customers. Mum and Dad don’t really have customers.’

Sarah didn’t answer, but instead waved a long bare arm at Maggie in agreement, which Maggie considered a privilege as her face was almost entirely submerged under the ravenous attentions of the rugby player.

‘Oh God, couldn’t you at least hold on until last orders?’ Maggie said bleakly. She wanted Sarah to reassure her about the crying in the street thing. She wanted her to say something down-to-earth and blunt like she usually did. Instead her hand offered Maggie a ‘What can I do?’ apology and Maggie settled back in her chair, nursing her bottle and regarding the ravenous crowd eyeing each other with a barely concealed ferocity. It hit her then, like a sharp slap: she had nothing to do with any of these people any more. No one here, except Sarah, knew who she was, or cared.

Before Christian, before Maggie had allowed herself to believe it was safe to love him, she’d followed Sarah, hunting in bars just like this one, constantly looking, searching for that chance, for that certain blue eye, a particular kind of mouth, a sensitive nature, and she’d have dated whatever approximation presented itself. Until Christian, with his self-taught upper-class accent, his manners and his hang-ups. All these things made her love him, gradually more each day they spent together. Now here she was again, turned loose back into the field, and she couldn’t stand it – couldn’t stand the thought of going through it all again. She felt too tired and too in love, still, with Christian. She had to make her plan work, she had too. It was too late in her life, she was too set in her love for anything else to be an option.

For the last few years, wherever Maggie had been and whatever she’d felt, she had always known, always believed, that Christian was somewhere near because he was in love with her. Now, if she was to believe what Sarah had said to her, he was gone, and she was left here stranded in a room full of people who didn’t give a toss.

Maggie pushed the chair back from the table and reached for her coat, swaying slightly. She couldn’t let herself believe Sarah and her newsflashes. She couldn’t give up hope. She gently pinched Sarah’s hand, garnering the attention of one eye.

‘I’m going home, mate. I’m plastered and about to cry,’ Maggie told Sarah matter-of-factly.

Sarah signalled a stop sign and forcibly pushed the rugby player away from her, her face gleaming faintly with saliva and smudged lipstick.

‘Don’t go!’ she pleaded, her hand planted squarely in the chest of her conquest to keep him at arm’s length. ‘I don’t have to get off with, um, Wossit here. We can go clubbing, and then I’ll walk you home.’ She grabbed Maggie’s wrist. ‘Go on, this is an occasion! I’m sure if you hold your breath and have a tequila you can stop yourself from crying.’

Maggie smiled at her, touched at her readiness to drop Wossit and shepherd her through several more hours of therapy.

’There’s no point, Sarah. I’m fairly certain that gouging my eyes out wouldn’t prevent me from crying at some point in the next minute, and if I have to go through it again the very least I can do is minimise the audience.’

Sarah bit her lip and nodded in understanding.

‘I’d be miserable. You enjoy yourself. I’m working behind the bar tomorrow, so if you come in I’ll feed you free vodkas all night. Deal?’

Sarah smiled regretfully. ‘Can’t, mate. Sam’s presenting a fully staged version of “Beauty and the Beast” for his dad, and I promised Becca a girl’s night in with all the girly videos we can find. Anyway, I’d never get another babysitter. Come by the salon tomorrow and I’ll do your nails instead, make them long and red so you can scratch that tart’s eyes out.’

Maggie nodded seriously and slipped on her coat.

‘OK. I’ll see you soon, then,’ she said over her shoulder. ‘That’s if Wossit hasn’t sucked your face off by then.’

Maggie was fine as she pushed her way through the crowds. She was OK as she opened the door and stepped out into the cool of the night air. It wasn’t until she got two feet down the road that it knocked her flat. She was alone, she would always be alone, and maybe,
maybe
, Christian really did mean it was over and Sarah was right. And maybe he
wasn’t
going to change his mind … Suddenly Maggie couldn’t breathe any more. She couldn’t walk, she could only cry.

She found herself doubled up, crouching on the pavement, distantly aware of how she must look: drunk, ill, mentally imbalanced. Listening to the far-off sounds of her own rasping sobs in her ears, pushing her palms against the grit and dirt of the pavement, she pressed her head into her knees and waited. And waited. It should be fatal, she thought, this kind of pain. Surely no one should have to live through this.

‘Are you OK?’ A faintly familiar male voice bounced off her shoulder. ‘Come on, get up. Let me help you get up, please. You can’t stay down there all night.’

Maggie felt an arm grip her under her forearm and gradually she found herself straightened.

‘What’s happened? Do you need me to call someone?’

Finally Maggie unscrewed her raw eyes, lifted her face and looked at the man – the scruffy blond from the bar again, staring at her intently.

‘Do you get your kicks from following upset women around?’ she snapped, finding that once the moment had passed, she was usually able to carry off the pretence of being a normal human being more or less right away.

Pete shrugged, feeling as awkward as he looked.

‘I’m fine, thanks,’ Maggie told him, a slight slur blurring the edge of her businesslike tone. ‘Too much to drink,’ she amended, and followed up with a brisk smile, allowing the stranger to guide her to a nearby bench. ‘I’m all right now, just a bit pissed,’ she repeated, waiting for him to go.

Pete sat down next to her and thought of Stella in the middle of one of her benders. You couldn’t leave women alone in that state. They invariably did something stupid and usually with someone stupid. For some reason, after seeing her tears yesterday and again today, he felt he owed this woman something, some kind of protection at the very least.

‘You can go now,’ Maggie assured him with blunt impatience.

‘Take deep breaths,’ Pete told her, ignoring her invitation. She’ll be all right when she’s worked out I’m not hitting on her, he thought before saying, ‘I don’t think I should leave you out here alone. You were … sort of shrieking. At least let me call you a cab, OK? I mean, anything could happen. You could faint or collapse or …’

Maggie huffed out a deep breath. ‘I won’t faint!’ she told him shakily, her voice rising as she spoke. ‘I won’t collapse, I won’t have a seizure and die. OK? Because I’m not that drunk. I’m not even ill. I’m just chucked. I’m left. I’m abandoned. My boyfriend, who is no longer mine in any sense of the word, doesn’t want me any more and I can’t cope with the thought … with the thought that there is no point in being me any more, which is why I was crying like a baby in the street both earlier and now, OK? And several other times, which I’m assuming you didn’t bear witness too. I’m perfectly well, I’m just so fucked up right now that I know no boundaries to the humiliation I’m prepared to inflict on myself, as you must surely, by now, be able to tell.’

Pete blinked at her, and his hands dropped from the sleeve of her coat as he felt a moment of panic. For a moment he wasn’t sure he could cope with a woman this turbulent, but then he thought of Stella, who was turbulent even during sleep, and he steadied his nerve.

‘You weren’t crying like a baby,’ Pete said mildly. ‘More shrieking like a banshee.’ He half smiled. ‘I didn’t mean to embarrass you before with all that stuff about you crying. Social skills are not my forte, Stella, my fiancée, always says. She always says, “Pete, it’s a wonder you have any relations willing to talk to you, let alone friends or lovers, what with your lack of sensitivity.” It’s just that I don’t know anyone in St Albans except my new flatmates and they’re all a bit … different, to say the least. I only got here today, and socialising isn’t my best thing, and I recognised you, so in I went, two bloody left feet straight in the gob.’

As he talked, Pete found himself relaxing for the first time since Stella had left for the airport. Quickly he checked himself; he was supposed to be helping her, not blathering on about his own problems.