The Mystery of Mercy Close (34 page)

‘Not for much longer.’

‘What do you mean? You’re going to take Blake’s name?’

‘I suppose.’

‘Cripes. You don’t have to, you know.’

‘But I think I want to. So will I have to wear a dress?’

‘You’re going to do the whole church thing?’

‘Yes. I’ll feel like such a thick in a dress. I’ll feel so stupid.’

I didn’t think I’d ever seen her in a dress but I suspected she’d look quite odd.

‘Just wear your jeans and hoody,’ I suggested.

‘Maybe if they were white?’

‘Well … yeah, maybe.’

‘Will you be my bridesmaid?’

‘Course! Sure! Thanks. I mean, I’d be honoured. Will there be others?’ Although I couldn’t think who could possibly be in the frame.

‘No. Just you.’

‘Her only bridesmaid?’ Margaret later declared. ‘What an honour!’

‘Ah no, no, it’s not,’ I hurried to explain. ‘It’s because she has no other friends.’

‘I’m her friend!’ Margaret was wounded. ‘I get on great with her.’

‘Right, yes, of course, I’m not saying … just she has no other
close
friends.’

‘Am I not a close friend of hers?’ Margaret asked. She sounded like she was going to cry.

‘Of course, yes, I’m only saying, I mean, I’m not saying …’

They say that every bride looks beautiful.

But you couldn’t exactly say Bronagh looked
beautiful
. She wore the plainest wedding dress anyone has ever seen – she’d told her designer to just throw a white bedsheet over her head and cut out a neck-hole and, though it killed the poor designer, she did her best to fulfil her brief.

Bronagh went up the aisle with the maddest look in her eyes, as if she had some wild stunt up her sleeve. (Watching it back on DVD was like sitting through the early stages of a horror film, when you’re digging your nails into your palms because of the anticipation that something appalling is about to happen. Especially because Blake’s face was a soppy mush of love and gratitude.) Right up to the last second, I was expecting Bronagh to swivel on her heel and march back down the aisle, or do something taboo like snog Blake’s dad, but it all went off okay.

Back at Mum and Dad’s, my stuff had been unpacked and put away. Clothes were hanging smoothly in the wardrobe, underwear was folded tidily into drawers, and the nudie photos of Artie were placed with care beneath a small hillock of rolled-up socks.

On the floor of the wardrobe, two dozen pairs of my very lovely, very high shoes were lined up neatly: sparkly ones, lizard-skin ones, ones with peep-toes or slingbacks or ankle-straps, such a variety. I looked at them, as if I’d never seen them before in my life. They were all so beautiful, but they looked like so much trouble. How would I even stand up in them? It was hard to believe that once upon a time – and not so long ago either – I’d actually been able to run in them.

When I’d been going out with Jay Parker, I’d worn high heels for almost every single second. I’d been very glamorous back then. Being with Artie was way different, much more low-key. Yes, we had the occasional ‘date night’ (though both the phrase and the concept were very high on the List), but our time together and the way we spent it was still pretty much dictated by his kids.

However, at least now they’d met me; they knew I existed.

Artie and I had run into very choppy waters earlier this year when he was trying to keep his two worlds from colliding. It had been okay at first. We’d seen each other through January and February – sometimes he came to my flat and sometimes I went to his house. But we couldn’t just free-float and see each other whenever the mood took us. If the kids were staying with Vonnie, then it was a go, but if they were staying with him, he was off limits. I didn’t like it, but I
liked him, and the whole business was too fragile to withstand analysis, so I decided to not think about it, for the time being anyway.

I was mildly obsessed with Iona. Often – when Artie was out of the room – I stared at photos of her and tried thought transference to say: Fuck with me and I will make your daddy love me more than he loves you. But I would never have admitted it, not even under torture, not even if I had to listen to the phrase ‘good to go’ being said a million times while a hundred thousand eggs were fried, one by one, in front of me.

But by March my non-existence was starting to piss me off and it came to a head one morning. I’d stayed with Artie the previous night and I’d got dressed and was ready to leave. ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘I’m off.’

He handed me a bra, the one I’d worn the day before. ‘Don’t forget this.’

‘Thanks,’ I said, a little sarcastically.

‘What?’ Didn’t miss a nuance, Artie.

‘Yeah, better not leave a single trace of myself behind.’

He looked at me, his face hard. ‘You know it’s complicated.’

‘So you keep saying and it’s starting to bore me.’

I grabbed my bra and stuffed it into my bag and left without saying another word. He could fuck off. I was tired of being nobody.

I’d decided to not answer his calls. But he didn’t ring. I didn’t ring him either and it was hard, harder than I’d expected. As each day passed without hearing from him, I started to realize that this was over. Well, I’d never expected it to last anyway; we were totally unsuited.

Funny, once I thought about it, none of my relationships had lasted longer than three months. The day Artie and I had had the fight about my bra was exactly three months since we’d met at the Christmas fête.

What was it with me? Had I deliberately picked the three-month mark to decide I no longer wanted to be the invisible girlfriend? Mum often said that when I was a little girl and got new toys I wasn’t happy until I’d broken them. It seemed that, even now I was an adult, nothing had changed.

With that sort of attitude I was always going to be alone. Well, what could I do about it? That was who I was. So I began to package up my feelings about Artie, my sadness, the way I missed him. I pushed and compressed them, making them into a manageable little cube, the way they do with crushed cars, small enough to be stored in some rarely visited, dusty part of my head. I always did that with things I didn’t want to feel but this was much more demanding than I’d expected.

After eight horrible days, he called. ‘Can we meet?’ he asked.

‘Why? So you can give me back my stuff? Oh, I forgot. There is
no
stuff for you to give me back.’

‘Can we meet? Can we talk?’

‘Is there anything for us to talk about?’

‘Let’s see. Let’s find out. Will you come for a walk with me?’

‘How do you mean, a walk? In the countryside?’ I thought it was a weird request but maybe it would be better than sitting down for a direct face-to-facer. ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘I suppose I could. What do I have to do?’

‘Wear trainers. Do you have a waterproof jacket?’

‘No.’

‘Let me guess, you don’t believe in waterproof jackets?’

‘That’s right, I don’t.’

‘I’ll sort something out for you and I’ll bring a picnic.’

‘Ah … look, Artie, the word “picnic”, it’s very high on my Shovel List. Would you mind not saying it?’

‘Okay. How about I say I’ll bring some food? Portable food?’

It was a beautiful day in the middle of March, the sort of day when, almost like a shock, you realize that winter isn’t going to last for ever, when your body suddenly remembers that there’s such a thing as summer.

Artie picked me up and as I climbed into the car we warily said hello, but we didn’t kiss each other, we didn’t even touch. He drove us to some deserted, madly forested part of Wicklow called the Devil’s Glen and when he got out of his car I studied him: he was wearing proper walking boots, jeans, a blue jacket made of some modern technical stuff and he was carrying a rucksack.

‘Shovel List?’ he asked. ‘Is it the rucksack?’

We were striving for a tone of olive-branch jocularity so I said, ‘I’m not keen on it. But luckily for you, you’re good-looking enough to avoid looking like a tool. Tell me,’ I asked, ‘what if it rains?’ The sun was bright in the sky, but this was Ireland.

‘You could wear this.’ Artie produced something from the boot of his car.

‘What is it?’ I asked suspiciously.

‘It’s a jacket.’

Reluctantly I took it in my hands. It was black and it weighed less than a bag of Randoms – one of the small ones that are barely even worth tearing open, there’re so few sweets in there.

‘Is it one of those technical ones? From one of those shops?’ A creepy thought occurred to me. ‘It’s not … Vonnie’s, is it?’

‘No.’

‘Or Iona’s?’

‘No.’ He laughed.

‘So where did it come from?’

‘I bought it.’

‘For me?’

‘For you.’

‘Like a gift, is it?’

‘Yeah,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘Like a gift. Are you going to try it on?’

‘I don’t know. I suppose.’ I slipped my arms into it and he zipped it up for me. It was fitted at the waist and sat perfectly on my hips, not too tight and not too loose. It had Velcro tabs at the wrists and a neat little hood, and to my surprise (category: surprising), I found I liked it.

‘It fits me,’ I said. ‘Like,
perfectly
. How did you do that?’

‘There were three sizes: small, medium and large. You’re small. I got the small.’

‘Thank you for not saying, “It’s not rocket science”.’

‘You’re welcome.’

‘And thank you for the jacket.’

‘You’re welcome.’

He took me down a path into deep forest, a small narrow valley, beside a busy stream. The light was strange and green, sunbeams breaking through the trees just now and again. The only sound was the wind rattling the branches and the water rushing and gushing over rocks. It felt like we were the only people on the planet.

To my surprise (category: enchanting), now and again we came upon quirky quotes cut into stone alongside the path. They said things like, ‘We will hide here after the battle.’ ‘I can see a seahorse in the pool. In the distance are the bears and wolves.’ ‘So tired. I can’t walk any further. I’ll sleep here tonight.’

‘What are these?’ I asked Artie.

‘Just … stuff. Art, if you like.’

Beside a rough little staircase of moss-covered rocks was carved, ‘I have to clean these steps.’ That made me laugh.

Strange wooden sculptures appeared intermittently: a massive ball made of logs; a sinister piece that looked like a body hanging upside down; a four-paned window in a tree, framing our view of the valley.

After walking for about an hour, we reached a waterfall
and the path ran out. In a pool by the cascade was another quote: ‘When we find the ring I’ll propose.’

I didn’t point that one out to Artie.

He produced a waterproof rug sort of thing, cheese and coleslaw sandwiches, Mars bars and a bottle of Prosecco, and even though he’d obviously gone to a bit of trouble to make my favourite sandwiches, I couldn’t eat. I drank Prosecco out of a white plastic cup and waited. I didn’t know what Artie was going to say, I didn’t know where we could go with this, but I could feel he was working up to something. This was make-or-break time.

Without looking at me, he said, ‘I missed you.’

I said nothing. I wasn’t going to make this easy for him, and if he asked me to give him more time, he wasn’t going to get it.

‘Bella still asks about you,’ he said.

I shrugged.

‘She’s told the others about you.’

‘So?’

‘They’re looking for a meet.’

‘And?’

‘Would you like to?’

I went silent for a long, long time. Eventually I asked, ‘Would you like me to?’

‘Yes.’

‘I see.’ I got to my feet and picked up the plastic cup I’d been drinking out of. I carried it several yards away and planted it in the grass, then I came back to Artie and gave him the cork from the bottle of Prosecco.

‘What are you doing?’ he asked.

‘It’s a test. Throw the cork and if you can get it in the cup I’ll meet them.’

He looked at me to see if I was serious. ‘No.’ He sounded almost scornful.

‘No?’

‘No one’s throwing any corks in any cups. Meet my kids or don’t meet them, but don’t play these sorts of games.’

I started to laugh. ‘That
was
the test. You’ve passed with flying colours, whatever they are.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘You’ve manned up.’

‘Is that right?’ He was twirling the cork between the thumb and fingers of his right hand, turning it over and over.

‘I’ll meet them,’ I said. ‘Fix up something for us all.’

‘Okay.’

‘Nothing too long for the first time. No dinners with eight-course tasting menus. I don’t want to be trapped. Just something … speedy.’

‘Done.’ Casually, almost without looking, he chucked the cork and it flew high in the air in a graceful arc, then landed right slap-bang in the middle of the cup, rattling it and knocking it over.

The official meet with Artie’s family took place in their living room one Saturday afternoon. I was just ‘popping in’ (Shovel List) for a cup of tea, even though I would sooner walk to Santiago de Compostela in my Louboutins than ‘pop into someone’s for a cup of tea’, and they were all there, waiting for me, even Vonnie.

Bella put a hand to her chest and said in a fluttery way, ‘Helen, it’s been soooo long.’

Vonnie was even nicer to me than Bella was. Together they exclaimed and squealed over my cuteness, as if I was a doll.

‘Mum?’ Bella cried. ‘Didn’t I tell you that she’s adorable?’

‘Add. Ore. Abb. Ill,’ Vonnie agreed.

Leeettle
bit patronizing, just the tiniest amount, but you couldn’t fault her for warmth and friendliness.

To my great surprise (category: pleasant), Iona was also very sweet but not terribly interested in me. The big shocker was Bruno.

He looked nothing like the photos of him that were dotted about the house. In those he was a gawky, smiley, pre-adolescent lad. But he’d obviously grown up a bit because he was dressed, toe to neck, in narrow-fitting black clothes, his hair had been peroxided to within an inch of its life, he was wearing mascara and he was bristling with hostility.