What Now?

by Shari Low

  When my mother returned from the loo, I could see she was furious, but, for once, she bit her tongue.

  Callum and Michael pulled another table across to join ours and the profits of O’Reilly’s tavern soared for the next hour, until Jess finally broke the revelry by loudly and repetitively clinking her new wedding ring on her glass.

  ‘Eh, Mr and Mrs,’ she said, looking at Mark and me. ‘Unless you really are ditching him for Sugar Lips, we’ve only got half an hour left to get round there and get married.’

  Bugger! We’d been enjoying ourselves so much, I’d completely lost track of time.

  ‘Daniel,’ I shouted over to my bit on the side. ‘Can you keep these tables for half an hour and we’ll be back?’

  ‘The amount you lot are spending, I’ll keep them for a week,’ he answered with a wink. ‘The live music starts at five o’clock, so you won’t want to be missing that.’

  ‘Will they let me do a wee number for the bride and groom?’ my gran asked, beaming. If there was a musical instrument within a hundred yards, she automatically started warming up her vocal cords. She didn’t always hit the right notes, but she made up for it with enthusiasm and a set of lungs that ensured everyone within a mile radius could join in.

  There was every chance Coney Island would have to wait until another day, but I was all for it. The best parties were always the spontaneous ones.

  Daniel didn’t even break off from pouring a Guinness. ‘Indeed they will.’

  I blew him a kiss, and there was a scramble for the door, as one bride, one groom, one best man, four bridesmaids, and assorted family members mobilised.

  We made it in the nick of time, handed over the licence we’d bought the day before to a smiling clerk and, thankfully, were ushered straight through to the registrar. It seemed not many other people left their wedding until twenty minutes before the place closed for the day.

  Bursting with joy, with excitement, and with the absolute certainty that I’d found my happy ever after, my grin never left my face as I stared into the eyes of the love of my life while we took our vows.

  ‘I now pronounce you man and wife,’ the registrar announced. ‘You may kiss… Oh.’

  We were already way ahead of him, Mark’s lips were on mine as the people we loved clapped and cheered.

  Mark eventually pulled back, his hands on my cheeks, his face still only inches from mine. ‘I will adore you every day of our lives,’ he whispered.

  It had been the perfect day. The perfect wedding to the perfect man.

  I just had no idea that those words would turn out to be the perfect lie.

  6

  Sunday 28th July, 2019

  Landslide – Stevie Nicks

  I was still sitting on the floor in the hall, ten minutes after Mark and the boys had left for the airport. My buttocks were numb and I was desperate for more coffee, yet the churning feeling in my stomach hadn’t subsided enough for me to get up or even think about what I was going to do for the rest of the day. Or the rest of the week. Or the rest of the month.

  How could I miss them so much already when they would barely be out of Chiswick yet?

  Nothing was shifting me from here. Nothing. I was going to sit and drown in self-pity for as long as I damn well wanted. Or at least until I needed to pee. Or…

  ‘Carly? Carly?’

  Or until Kate used her key to come in the back door and shout at me.

  ‘I’m in the hall, but you don’t want to see this. Run. Save yourself,’ I hollered back. Mark might have had a point when he accused me of being dramatic.

  She appeared in the doorway, hands on the hips of the white jeans, her flowery top setting off the perfect summer look. I really had to swap her for a messy pal. ‘Nice T-shirt,’ she said, as if there was absolutely nothing strange about me sitting there in my feminist-statement pyjamas in the middle of the day.

  ‘Thanks. You bought it for me.’

  ‘I know. I’ve got great taste,’ she joked. ‘Right, pity party over. I’m making you coffee…’

  ‘I’m staying here,’ I argued weakly.

  She delivered her smoking gun. ‘And I’ve brought you pie.’

  ‘What kind?’

  ‘Banoffee.’

  My favourite and she knew it. Damn that woman. She’d hit me right in the weak spot.

  ‘Okay,’ I grudgingly agreed. ‘But only if you’re prepared for me to be a miserable cow. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.’

  Thighs aching, arse still numb, I pushed myself up and plodded through to the kitchen. I plonked myself down and, as always, Kate sat down directly opposite me. It was one of those comforting things about our friendship group – out of sheer force of habit, we all sat in the same seats every time we visited each other’s houses.

  Kate slid a coffee, a large banoffee pie and a spoon in my direction.

  As I picked up the spoon, I glanced up at her. ‘Are you not having any?’

  She shook her head. ‘I saw Mark leave with the boys. I think this is a full-pie kind of moment for you.’

  ‘That’s why I love you, oh wise one,’ I said, taking my first bite. ‘Can I moan about my sad, solitary life while I’m eating it?’

  ‘Okay, you’ve got ten seconds to get it all off your chest, and then we’re over it,’ she said, indulging me.

  Spoon in mid-air, I paused. ‘I know that I should be happy for them, and I promise I am, but there’s just a bit of me that wishes it was different.’

  ‘Do you want Mark back?’ she probed gently.

  ‘No… at least… No!’ I repeated, more firmly the second time. ‘I think I just want my family back.’

  ‘That’s understandable, hon,’ she said, taking my non-spoon hand. ‘They’ve been your whole life for the last twenty years. But maybe this is a good thing. Remember when you first found out they were going? At my Mother’s Day barbecue, you told Val that you were going to find yourself again and plan something fantastic for when the boys were away.’

  I swallowed an exquisite chunk of thick gooey caramel. ‘I know. I think I was high on the fumes from your firepit. If I’m going to find my old self, she’s going to have to pitch up at this kitchen table. I can’t think of anything worse than going away on my own. Are my ten seconds up?’

  She checked her watch. ‘They are.’

  ‘Okay. Wanna go binge-watch some trash telly?’

  Before she could answer, a sound took my gaze to a new shadow outside the back door.

  ‘Who’s that? And why don’t you look surprised?’ I asked her, suspicious now.

  The door swung open and Carol and Jess trooped in, making straight for their usual seats – Carol next to me, and Jess across from her, next to Kate.

  ‘Bloody hell, you lot are like some kind of Avengers squad that kick in in times of trouble. Middle Age Pals Assemble,’ I muttered, secretly delighted and grateful they were there. I took a deep breath. ‘Look, I realise that in the grand scheme of things I’ve got absolutely nothing to moan about, so I’m going to save you all the pep talk. I’m fine. I’ll be okay. I just needed a moment for reality to sink in and to consume calories that will stay on my arse for ever. That’s now been achieved,’ I gestured to the large chunk that was missing from Kate’s pie, ‘so I’m going to pick myself up and get on with it.’

  ‘Get on with what?’ Jess asked. She’d always been a details person. In school, she made up all our timetables, colour-coded and laminated, complete with handy hints and reminders. Later, she’d studied politics at Aberdeen University and at the end of the nineties she’d become a researcher for Basil Asquith, MP. Unfortunately, she was then caught shagging the aforementioned MP and was plastered all over the pages of the Sunday newspapers. Thankfully, twenty years later, that’s been largely forgotten by the British public and she’s built a hugely successful PR company that specialises in scandal and damage limitation. Handy, because if the world discovers she’s meeting blokes from Tinder for sex, she’ll know how to deal with it. What�
�s important here, however, is that she’s the absolute kickass kind of friend every woman should have. Even if she occasionally scares me.

  I saw they were waiting for an answer and I hesitated, squirming a little. ‘Ah, I’m… not exactly sure yet.’

  Jess continued to probe like this was a House of Commons committee on rogue arms deals and I’d just been caught with a cache of AK47s next to the fold-up table, the Flymo and the bucket of old wellies in my shed. ‘So you’ve no plans?’

  ‘No, I’m—’

  ‘And you’ve no work for the next month?’ Jess went on. I was under so much pressure here that I couldn’t even object that Carol had taken my spoon and was now dipping into my banoffee pie.

  ‘Just my usual columns,’ I said, referring to the load of pretentious, mummy-chic nonsense that I wrote for Family Values magazine. ‘I don’t start my next ghost-writing gig until the beginning of September. That bloke off morning telly who spent all his money on cocaine and hookers.’ I don’t know why I felt the need to add that. Maybe I just wanted to make the subliminal point that, in comparison, my life was tickety-boo.

  Kate took over. ‘We think you should go to LA and visit Sam like you said you would.’

  Buying time, I lifted my coffee and held it to my lips. I’d thought about it. I mean, what wasn’t there to love about a friend of twenty-five years, who just happened to have made it big in Hollywood and who lived in a Pacific Palisades resort-like home down the road from Ben Affleck? Something had stopped me making the booking though. Maybe I didn’t want to irritate Mark. Perhaps I wasn’t ready to hold the failure of my marriage up to the sun by discussing it with an ex. Or maybe it was just that, given the current state of my body, my roots and my wardrobe, I was pretty sure I’d be stopped by the Los Angeles Glamour Police and packed off on the next flight home. ‘No. It’s just not the right time,’ I argued.

  Jess leaned forward, elbows on table, hands clasped, going full-scale inquisition on me. ‘Why not?’

  I decided to bluff it. ‘Because I think it’s important that I readjust to all these changes in my life in a holistic way and the first steps are reconnecting with my inner self and learning to embrace being alone.’

  ‘Is she talking about stuff that requires sex toys?’ Carol asked Kate, who nearly choked on her tea.

  Jess’s steely glare didn’t leave me, and she continued as if Carol hadn’t spoken. ‘You’re lying.’

  I shrugged. ‘Was it the whole “holistic” thing that gave it away? I thought that might be too much.’

  Kate and Carol were both laughing now, but Jess still wasn’t letting me off the hook. ‘Come on, Cooper…’

  Time to go on the offensive and see if that threw her off. ‘Look, Jess, I’m just knackered. In the last year, I’ve gained thirty pounds, none of my clothes fit me, insomnia has aged me five years and the last thing I want to do is go to the land of the beautiful people where I’ll feel totally self-conscious and spend the whole time trying to cover my wobbly bits.’ It was so shallow, so superficial, and so me, that she was bound to believe it.

  ‘I think that’s part of it,’ she conceded, her tone suddenly softer, ‘but we both know it’s not the whole story.’ Damn it. Not for the first time, I wished she didn’t know me so well.

  The temperature in the room dropped about ten degrees as silence descended. Meanwhile, someone took a chisel to my heart and widened a crack that had been there for way too long.

  She was right. It was so much more complicated than that. If I delved really deeply into my soul, I knew what was going on, I just didn’t want to say it out loud. I couldn’t. It hurt too much.

  Carol’s head dropped on to my shoulder, while Kate leaned over and put her hand on mine again.

  ‘Babe,’ Kate said, gently, ‘Sarah wouldn’t have wanted you to live like this.’

  No matter how many times I heard her name, the pain still hit me like a cannonball to the chest, taking my breath away and making every cell in my body scream in pain.

  I could feel Carol’s breath on my cheek as she said, ‘What happened to Sarah wasn’t your fault, Carly.’

  ‘I know that,’ I lied, my words strangled. Of course it was my fault. The one thing I’d learned in the last couple of years was that when I made crazy choices, when I was the old Carly Cooper, the woman who went off searching for her exes, who risked her marriage by galloping off to LA to try to land a movie deal, who sought out fun, excitement, thrills and adventures – when I was that woman, people got hurt. If I hadn’t done any of those things, Sarah would still be here. I wouldn’t have married Mark. I wouldn’t have then asked my husband of twenty years to leave. I wouldn’t have split up my family. Taking wild, spontaneous risks might have seemed like a great idea, but look where it had got me this afternoon: sitting alone on the hall floor, with my family gone, and facing the rest of my life without one of my best friends.

  Nope, I was done with risks and rash decisions. It was over. My actions had consequences for me and for the people I loved. I had no right to throw caution to the wind and go off in search of excitement and happiness when I’d already done so much damage to us all.

  I didn’t verbalise any of that, though. I didn’t have to. We all knew each other so well, we’d all lived through the pain of losing Sarah together, so they knew I carried the scars and the guilt, even if they didn’t realise the depth of it.

  Jess reached around to her handbag, slung over the back of her chair. It took me a moment to notice that she’d pulled out a document, which she unfolded and pushed in front of me. I really hoped it was a voucher for a make over. Or a recipe for cake.

  ‘Cooper, you have to get over this and the only way to do it is to get back out there and live your life, so here’s what’s happening.’

  My eyes followed hers to the paper, and immediately picked out the important bits.

  Flight Confirmation:

  Carly Cooper.

  28th July 2019.

  20.05 – Flight BA2934 – Heathrow to Los Angeles LAX.

  I tried to process the words, but they weren’t computing. ‘I don’t understand. What is this?’

  Carol answered first. ‘It’s your Christmas and birthday presents for the next year, from all of us. And you need to take it, because it’s the only way you’re going to find a way to get past this.’

  ‘But… but that’s ridiculous. I mean, thank you, but that’s mad. It’s today’s date. And it’s… it’s…’ I checked the kitchen clock. ‘Five hours from now! I can’t just pick up and take off tonight…’

  ‘Why?’ Jess asked, innocently, knowing full well that it was exactly the kind of thing I used to do on a regular basis when we were younger.

  ‘Because… because… I just can’t. I don’t even have a visa.’

  Kate winced. ‘You do. The ESTA you got last year when we were thinking about going to New York is still valid. I checked.’

  New York. We’d been planning to go over to see Sarah’s kids. In the end, we hadn’t gone on the trip for a whole load of reasons: Hannah had been too busy with work, I’d been too busy wrecking my family, and Jess couldn’t go because Josh broke his leg playing rugby and came home from uni for six weeks to recuperate. The Gods conspired against us, and if I was being honest with myself, I was glad. New York came with too many memories and I couldn’t face them. Not then, not now, maybe not ever.

  As for this insane plan to hop on a plane to LA tonight… my palms were sweating and my stomach was lurching like a tumble dryer on the highest setting. And I couldn’t even vocalise that because my mouth had completely dried and my lips were stuck together.

  I couldn’t do this. I wouldn’t.

  An almighty thud interrupted the panic and I realised that someone was battering my front door. My surge of relief was short-lived.

  ‘We thought you might say that,’ Kate said. ‘And we knew there’s only one way to change your mind.’

  Jess laughed, and there was hint of triumph in her voice when
she said, ‘We’ve called in the big guns. And you’re not going to be able to refuse.’

  7

  Still Sunday 28th July, 2019

  I’m Every Woman – Chaka Khan

  Carol slipped out of her seat to go and answer the door, while I stared at Kate, then Jess, then back to Kate again, before deciding that she’d be the easiest to crack.

  ‘Kate, what have you done? Who is at the door?’

  ‘Our insurance policy,’ she replied. ‘And even if you’re mad at us now, just remember we’re making you do this for your own good, honey. You’re not going to solve anything by sitting at this table for the next three weeks.’

  ‘Carly, your visitor is here,’ Carol announced, before stepping back, holding the door from the hall open and taking a bow, while the new arrival breezed past her.

  ‘Hello, ma darlin’! Surprise!’ bellowed my Aunt Val, arms wide, just stopping short of doing jazz hands. Her platinum bob was the width of the door frame, and she was dressed in a white skirt and floaty top, accessorised with electric blue wedges, belt and handbag. Her cerise lipstick was an identical shade to her nails and toenails. She was like a cross between Joanna Lumley in Ab Fab and Kanye West at his Sunday Service.

  My chin hit the floor. ‘Val! What are you doing here?’

  What the hell was going on? I hadn’t seen my lovely Val for years and now she’d shocked the life out of me twice in six months.

  ‘I’m going on holiday,’ she chirped, hugging me, before pulling out the seat at the end of the table. It was only then I saw that Callum and my niece, Toni, had come in behind her. Callum kissed me on the cheek and then headed straight for the coffee machine, while Toni slouched against the door frame. I guessed they’d been dispatched to collect Val from Heathrow.

  ‘You are?’ This was clear as mud. Was she off somewhere that required a layover in London and she’d decided to visit us en route? ‘Where are you off to?’