“I love you, Jen,” Ed whispered, just about able to manage the words. There were so many ways that he could think of to express his joy but he could barely speak.
For a moment, Jenny was silent.
“Ed?”
“What?”
“That’s all right then,” she said, too overwhelmed with emotion to manage anything more. She had wanted this – this togetherness – to go on forever. And suddenly, with one small question, she felt like it could.
Chapter 5
September 1st, 1998
Jenny
Ed doesn’t even cast a glance at the photo as he walks past me – sort of through me, actually – with the tray of orange squash that he’s carrying outside for the party. None of those kids outside will touch it – I know them of old. They all want fizzy drinks and sugary stuff and he’s giving them squash and cheese sandwiches. If I’d been here the menu would most certainly have been different. And there wouldn’t have been a bouncy castle either. Bee’s too small for a bouncy castle and it’s her party. As it is, only her cousins, Tyler and Marcus, are on it and they’re engaged in a game of jump-kicking. If Ed lets her on with that happening in the background I’ll do my best to jump-kick him.
I turn my attention back to the photograph. In it, Ed’s beaming straight at the camera. He looks so happy. My head is bent a little as I duck, using my bouquet as a shield because Betty and the other crone – I mean Ed’s sisters, of course – are chucking rice about. But you can see I’m smiling too, clinging on to Ed’s arm, my new ring visible. And there, just behind me, slightly out of focus, visible only from the nose down is Guillaume. Smiling too of course. Like it meant as much to him as it did to us. Bloody Guillaume. But let’s not think about him, eh?
All the other photographs are in an album upstairs somewhere. At the time I said that I didn’t even want a bloody photographer but Ed insisted. Not all of them were memories to treasure, mind, but I’m glad now that we went ahead with one, if only so that Bee can see us as we were.
I didn’t frame any of the others – just Ed and me. The photographer was very trendy and we asked him for just reportage shots, but of course Ed’s mum and dad and the coven had had a ‘quiet word’ as they’re all so fond of doing and my final selection contained quite a few formal Mycroft family portraits. Many of them without, shock horror, the bride.
Eileen – Ed’s mum – has one framed in the hallway of their house – Ed, in his suit, with his buttonhole that she insisted he wear even though I specified that there should be no flowers other than the bouquet, flanked by herself and his dad, Frank, and gathered around them his sisters, Betty and Vicky. I can never understand how these people could be related to my lovely Ed. Betty’s all right, I suppose – a complete busybody, but practical to have around for Bee – but Vicky? Well, she almost makes me glad to be dead.
Betty’s here, of course – it’s her two little ninja thugs monopolising the bouncy castle. And Vicky’s breastfeeding Matilda-of-the-Mystery-Paternity in the corner, telling all and sundry how breast is best while they try to avert their gaze from the fact that the breast she’s feeding with isn’t the only one that’s on show. And there’s my poor little girl, my Bee, in the thick of it, clinging on to a biscuit and seeking Ed out in the crowd while Betty’s eldest, six-year-old Sasha, bends down right in her face asking over and over again if she wants to play dolls, to play picnics, to play cars. I want to pick up my daughter and take her away from the child’s good intentions. But I can’t, so I look back at my wedding picture. The only one I was proud to look at. But not any more. I hadn’t been for some time, in fact. But we were happy in it, me and Ed. Despite everything.
Natalie’s here too. She doesn’t even have a kid to bring so I’m surprised that she’s turned up. Then again, she’s been popping over a lot since my funeral. Food here, little outfits for Bee there. It’s good of her, I guess, even if her motivation is a bit of a mystery – I mean it’s not like we were ever friends or anything. Just colleagues. Still. She’s good to Ed and Bee and I guess they need all the kindness they can get.
The rest of the guests are made up of a small posse of mums from Bee’s nursery. They don’t really want to be here, of course. Don’t have a clue what to say to Ed – they chat about the birthday and Bee and the weather and so on, but they shy away from him a bit, like they might catch death off him or something. I’m sure that they don’t realise that they do that to Bee too. Thankfully their kids are a little kinder and even if Bee just stands and stares at the others, watching, just like I do, they still try to call her into their games and don’t bother about her when she doesn’t. And, bless her, sometimes she does.
Happy Birthday, dear Bee, I think – very hard. As if somehow she might hear me, as if she might suddenly turn and smile like she did before. Please see me, I beg, my voice silent and useless as I look at the people who have turned up to consume my husband’s food and drink and who mutter about how tragic it all is out of Ed’s earshot. I watch them gather around the dining-room table to blow out the candles on the cake that Betty brings through from the kitchen. Three of them. Three years since she was born. And instead of me being the one helping her to climb onto a chair at the table, instead of me being the one to blow the flames out for real over her shoulder, the task seems somehow to have fallen to my beaming former work colleague, Natalie, who cheers along with everyone and then plants a kiss on my daughter’s cheek. My soul aches at the thought that that should have been me.
I hate this. Seeing this – all of this – that should have been mine.
This is hell.
Chapter 6
October 17th, 1993
Ed and Jenny
“Say ‘Brie’!” shouted Dom, the photographer, waiting at the bottom step of the registry-office entrance for Ed and Jenny to descend. He didn’t have to: Jenny couldn’t stop smiling and Ed broke into a broad, proud grin as she linked his arm with her left hand and glanced briefly at him. Then, just as she made to descend, she ducked as she was showered with handfuls of rice thrown by Betty and Vicky. She instinctively raised her small bouquet of calla lilies over her head as a defence. She laughed, and Dom snapped and there it was. Their wedding day. Ed and Jenny. Mr and Mrs Mycroft.
Ed didn’t think he’d ever seen Jenny look as pretty as she did in her buttercream dress that she had, out of the blue, designed and made for herself. It suited her height perfectly – cinched in at her small waist, the long chiffon sleeves covering her arms against an October chill, the skirt tumbling to just above her knees, the sweetheart neckline framing her mother’s silver locket. The wine-coloured flowers made a bold contrast against it and the cream shoes added easily an inch to her height, but it merely made them stand shoulder to shoulder, Ed in his navy-blue suit, his pudding-bowl haircut now cut tightly to his head.
Jenny’s hair hung loose on her shoulders, clipped back on one side with a sparkling antique hairclip studded with fake rubies and with three teardrop-shaped pearls dangling down into her auburn hair. Ed’s mum had been shocked when she’d heard that the wedding gown would be homemade and that there was to be no veil, for starters. But then again a lot about Ed and Jenny’s wedding had shocked Eileen Mycroft and her whole family. Looking around her on the steps of the beautiful nineteenth-century building, Jenny couldn’t help but feel a small twinge of triumph as she took in the small gathering – Ed’s parents, sisters, their spouses and dates and offspring, her dad, Guillaume, and Tanya, Jenny’s cousin and bridesmaid, in powder-blue. She couldn’t help but steal a glance at her mother-in-law that was filled with triumph. If Eileen Mycroft had had her way, Jenny knew that she’d now be standing on the steps of a vast, modern church with one hundred and fifty guests of Eileen’s choosing lined up in rows behind her with a photographer standing on a ladder before them all, instructing them to wave. Jenny knew that her dress would be white with a train, her veil long and held aloft by one or both of Ed’s sisters who would be dressed in identical cerise pink, Eileen
’s favourite colour. Of course, if Eileen were to really have her way, Ed would be hard at work at his desk at Brightwater and Jenny Adams wouldn’t exist.
She could see that Eileen’s grin for the camera was fixed and insincere, her teeth gritted, her eyes narrow. Jenny reached the bottom of the steps and suddenly beamed, turning her head to kiss her new husband on Dom’s instructions. Eileen was going to hate the reception.
It had been a long road to get there, to get to the bottom of the steps of the Wellington Place Registry Office.
From the start there had been so many objections. Their age, first of all. Even Guillaume had brought that one up, but only briefly. Ed had told her about it later.
“You’re twenty-three, man,” he’d said to Ed over a pint. “Why don’t you just, I dunno, move in together? Although even that seems a bit, well, serious, to be honest.”
Ed had shrugged his shoulders at the friend he had just asked to be best man.
“I love her, Gui,” he’d replied simply. “I just want to be with her all the time.”
And Guillaume had shrugged in return. “Look, I know you love her. I love you, man. And I want you to be happy. Just saying – twenty-three is awfully young to be getting hitched for good.”
Eileen almost had to be revived with smelling salts at the news. Normally, when something displeased her, when an issue needed Eileen’s opinion, she would look at them both in silence and then request one of her ‘quiet words’ with Ed. On the announcement of their engagement, however, as they stood in her kitchen, tanned and happy from their Sicilian holiday, she’d looked at them both in dismay, as if waiting for a punchline, and then promptly burst into tears.
“You’re too young!” she’d wailed, as if that was simply an end to the matter. “You’ve only just finished college for heaven’s sake! You’re a baby, Edmund. Too young by far.”
And when she’d eventually accepted Ed’s quiet determination that a wedding was most certainly going to happen, it was time to release so much more that she’d kept in reserve.
“What do you mean a registry office? What’s the matter with you, Edmund? Insisting on jumping into marriage is one thing, but not in a church?Is that even legal?”
“One bridesmaid? One? What are your sisters supposed to do? Stand there like they’re not part of the family? How will anyone know that they’re your sisters for heaven’s sake? We are your family, Edmund! We are the most important people in your life!”
“Recorded music? What about hymns? Whatever will my friends think if there are no hymns to sing?”
“Edmund, I simply cannot believe that you refuse to invite my friends . . .”
When she’d heard that the guest list comprised only her immediate family, the witnesses and Jenny’s dad, Betty was the one dispatched to have the ‘quiet word’. Yet Ed had stuck quietly to his guns all the way through the preparations. It was Jenny’s day, he kept telling himself, even though a part of him agreed secretly that, yes, a church would be lovely, and, yes, of course his mum and dad’s friends, and his cousins, and his work colleagues and their college friends were a vital part of his life, but he stayed strong and firm for the first time ever against the usually unbeatable team that his mother and sisters made. “Our day, our way,” he kept telling them, over and over again. For Jenny. Because he adored her and this was what she wanted.
On the day, the service was brief and perfunctory, the bride and groom handsome, and the mood in the air one of such love that even Eileen Mycroft felt it, although it pained her to do so. Standing on the steps of the registry office with the leaves beginning to turn brown on the trees, and a chill wind blowing, Jenny and Ed looked into each other’s smiling faces and kissed again, this time not for the cameras but for each other.
At the reception, they danced together for the first time –‒ to Jenny’s choice: ‘There is a Light That Never Goes Out’ – oblivious to the other guests as they told each other what a pleasure, a privilege it would be to die by the other’s side. They followed that with Ed’s favourite – Satchmo with ‘All the Time in the World’.
Because that’s what we have,thought Jenny as Ed pushed her gently away from him in order to twirl her around and then pull her back against him, and she flung her arms around his neck, both of them lost in each other, smiling. Ed nuzzled into her cheek as they circled slowly on the dance floor of the upstairs function room of the King’s Arms – a venue that made Eileen Mycroft physically itch, but Ed and Jenny didn’t care. As they danced, Jenny watched the room spin slowly round her from where she rested her head on Ed’s shoulder. The long table with its white linen cloth, still strewn with the remains of dinner for fourteen; Guillaume’s smirk as he made an exaggerated ‘care to dance’ gesture at a blushing Tanya before they took to the floor to join in; the disgruntled expressions of Ed’s sisters and mother as they watched the dancers; the complete disinterest of both their fathers, sitting in a corner, deep in conversation about Chelsea FC.
This is perfect, thought Jenny to herself and smiled, raising her left hand again to look at the two rings that now lived on the third finger. Mrs Mycroft, she thought to herself, and closed her eyes, contented, squeezing Ed tighter as a thrill of excitement ran through her at what the future – what everything beyond that day – would bring.
Chapter 7
september 1st, 1998
Jenny
It’s Natalie who’s looking at the wedding picture now. I don’t know what she’s still doing here – all of the guests are gone and there’s really nothing left to tidy up after her so-far efficient performance.
Ed’s sitting on the couch, breathing a ‘phew’ because he’s finally got Bee to sleep, no easy task since Betty’s thug ninjas were slipping her fizzy cola bottles all day. And there was no sign of their blessed mother to help when the colas all came back up again, was there? I look at Ed, feeling a certain sense of liberation from being in this state. I want to shout at him, “I hate your bloody family!” I want to say, “My child has gone to sleep crying and ill on her third birthday because you let them take over!” Instead I just watch, as always. What else can I do?
Natalie is standing there with the photo in her hands, silent. Why the hell is she looking at it?
“God, she was beautiful!” she says suddenly.
I see Ed jump. Like he’d forgotten she was there, even though she’s standing only two feet away from him. It takes him a moment to register who she’s talking about and then he sees the picture in her hand as she turns to look at him. His face falls in a funny way. Like he doesn’t want to talk about it. But Natalie’s not taking the hint.
“What colour was her dress?” she asks, gazing at my picture like she and I were long-lost sisters or something, instead of two office managers who worked in a video-shop chain.
I look at Ed who is just staring at this woman that he doesn’t really know.
“Oh,” he says, realising that Natalie wants him to respond. He looks from her to the photograph, shifts uncomfortably on the couch and makes an ‘I don’t know’ sort of face. “White. Cream, maybe . . .”
Back to Natalie who is back staring at me like she can’t take her eyes off my beauty. Like I’m the Mona Lisa or something.
“You look so happy,” she sighs and looks back expectantly at Ed who doesn’t know what to say.
He just looks back at her, sort of helpless.
Natalie shakes her head and replaces the picture on the bookshelf where it always lives, normally covered in a layer of dust. “What am I thinking of, Ed?” she tuts. “It’s been a long day and I’m sure you don’t want to talk about . . . it.”
He shrugs again, embarrassed at not knowing what to say, on the spot now because he actually doesn’t want to talk about anything but is too polite to say that. He’ll have a whole conversation about something he doesn’t want to talk about purely not to offend Natalie. Just like his dad might. Just like I would have, to keep the peace.
“You look exhausted, Ed,” says Natal
ie, affecting some sort of sympathy. There’s something up with her, I can tell. “Let me get you a glass of wine – or would you prefer a beer? Heaven knows we could do with something stronger than tea after the day we’ve had!”
Her laugh is sort of tinkly. I don’t remember it sounding like that, actually. Ever. It follows her as she leaves the room, floating down the hall after her like pixie dust. She’s obviously made the decision on what they’re having already. I can hear her in the kitchen rummaging around for a corkscrew or a bottle-opener or something.
While she’s gone, he glances over at the picture that Natalie just replaced. Our wedding day. Our memory. I long to touch him, to give him a hug. To be the one to go to the kitchen and get him some of that Italian beer that he loves and tell him that he did a fantastic job today, even though he didn’t really.
“Red all right?” tinkles Natalie from the hallway, and appears back in the living room, carrying two goblets of wine.
Ed hates red. I know this, so I expect him to refuse, but he takes it from her and says thanks and takes the tiniest of polite sips before setting the glass down on the floor beside the couch.
Natalie, meanwhile, sinks down on the couch beside Ed and takes a generous slug from her glass. I watch as she slips off her navy-blue court shoes and curls one leg underneath her, her long, cotton polka-dot skirt spreading itself over the couch. She’s reapplied her lipstick too – where did she find the time to do that? I imagine it’s called ‘Venus Flytrap’, or ‘Vampire’s Dinner’ or something.
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