The Other Woman

by Sandie Jones

  ‘Your mum’s having a bit of a hot flush,’ Pippa whispered into my ear, interrupting my jealous thoughts. ‘Am I all right to open one of the windows?’

  I looked across to the table my lot had commandeered, in the darkest corner of the room. They were happy there, hunkered down, away from the bawling masses. Dad was nursing a pint of bitter, his second and last one, Mum had reminded him, whilst she was sitting protectively beside a silver ice bucket with a bottle of prosecco in.

  ‘To celebrate us finally meeting,’ Adam had announced as he’d presented her with it, its poshness at odds with the spit and sawdust of its surroundings.

  I’d watched him, so at ease, and wondered why it had taken so long to introduce them. On the three previous occasions we’d set something up, Adam had been called into work on two of them and had had to placate his mother on the third.

  ‘Em, it’s me,’ he’d said breathlessly, when he’d called as I sat waiting in Côte Brasserie in Blackheath. Mum and Dad had been on their way.

  ‘Hi,’ I’d smiled. ‘Where are you?’

  ‘I’m sorry babe, I don’t think I’m going to make it.’

  I’d thought he was joking around. He knew how much I’d wanted him to meet my parents. I’d been sure he was playing, but my stomach had lurched all the same.

  ‘It’s just that Mum has got herself all in a state.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I’d said, trying desperately hard to keep the anger from my voice, all the while smiling through gritted teeth.

  ‘Yeah, sorry.’

  ‘What do you mean, your mum’s in a state?’ My indignation startled the couple at the table next to me, who both looked at me, and then at each other, with raised eyebrows.

  ‘She’s got herself worked up about a letter she’s received from the council.’

  The conversation of the previous night resounded in my head. The one where I overheard Adam telling Pammie on the phone of our plans.

  ‘You’ve got to be kidding me?’ I’d hissed.

  ‘Er, no. And you would do yourself a favour by dropping the attitude,’ he’d said.

  I’d lowered my voice. ‘You can deal with her sodding letter from the council tomorrow. I need you here tonight.’

  ‘I’m pulling into Sevenoaks now,’ he’d said. ‘I’ll come by there if I get back early enough.’

  I’d cut him off. He was already there? How could he have gone to her, when I was waiting for him? We were waiting for him?

  Looking at him now, a month later, with an arm around my mum, he was charm personified.

  ‘Oh, I do like him,’ Mum had enthused, her cheeks flushed. ‘What an absolute gentleman.’

  ‘Isn’t he?’ I’d gushed. ‘Do you really think so?’

  ‘Oh, he’s a keeper, for sure.’

  Mum’s relatively easy to please; it’s Dad any potential suitor has to win over.

  ‘So, what do you think?’ I’d asked him, as soon as Adam was out of earshot.

  ‘He’ll have to go a long way to prove his worth,’ he’d said gruffly.

  ‘He loved him,’ Seb had said sarcastically, from his seat beside him.

  I looked back at Pippa, now standing in front of me. ‘Is Mum all right?’ I asked. I could see that the windows behind their table were steamed up and running with condensation.

  ‘Yeah.’ She nodded. ‘It’s one of her usual ones, but she’s worried about opening a window because it’s so cold outside.’

  It wasn’t yet March, and there was a bitter chill in the air. ‘Someone’s bound to complain,’ I said. ‘But they’ll just have to get on with it.’

  Pippa nodded. ‘No problem. And by the way, who is the guy over my right shoulder? The one in the pink shirt?’

  I glanced over and my heart did a little leap, though I had no idea why. ‘Oh, that’s Adam’s brother, James,’ I said, far more casually than I felt.

  ‘Oh my God. He is dish delish,’ she said.

  I smiled. ‘He’s taken, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Aw, no way. Who by?’

  I made a convincing show of looking around for a girl in a blue dress, but I was already pretty sure she wasn’t there. I’d tried to find her before. So, either she hadn’t come, or she was wearing a different colour.

  The boys were getting rowdy again, and it was only a matter of time before one of them exposed their manhood to a bunch of like-minded exhibitionists.

  The only saving grace was that Princess Pammie was in attendance, which went some way to sorting out the boys from the men. Though, if I had the choice, I’d rather see sixteen flaccid penises being paraded by their far-prouder-than-they-should-be owners, than Adam’s mum. I should be saddened by that admission but, with half a bottle of prosecco inside me, I found it quite amusing. The very thought of it made me smile. I wasn’t going to let her get to me, no matter how hard she tried.

  ‘Wait a minute,’ cried Pammie, as she scurried towards Adam across the wooden floor. Her long, tight-fitting skirt restricted her leg movements, making her top half look as if it were going faster than the rest of her. She pasted on a smile and gave a nod to the guests she hadn’t yet acknowledged, as if it were her own party. ‘Oh, Gemma, how lovely to see you,’ she said, blowing a kiss.

  I reminded myself of my mantra, as I watched her fawning and pontificating. I won’t let her get to me, no matter how hard she tries.

  ‘When you’re ready, Mum,’ Adam said over the loudspeaker.

  ‘Yes, yes,’ she huffed. ‘I just want to get a photo.’

  ‘What, now?’ asked Adam.

  ‘Yes, now,’ tutted Pammie theatrically. Her audience tittered. She was at her best in front of a crowd, yet she pretended she hated it. ‘Just a quick one, whilst we’ve got the chance, and before you all get pie-eyed. Now, where is everybody? Where’s the family? I want one of all the family.’

  Adam rolled his eyes, but watched patiently as the queen bee buzzed around, ushering her relatives into three rows of eight. James came from behind me and placed a hand in the small of my back as he passed.

  ‘So, Lucy and Brad, you little ones kneel down here,’ Pammie said. ‘Your mum and dad can go behind, and Albert, you stand at the back. We won’t be able to get you up again if you kneel down.’

  Canned laughter from the gallery.

  ‘Okay, have we got everybody? Emily? Where’s Emily?’ she called out.

  I walked over, glass of prosecco in hand, conscious of the bystanders not invited to be a part of the Banks’ family album.

  ‘Adam, give me your phone,’ demanded Pammie. ‘Mine’s no good. We’ll take it on yours.’

  Adam made a show of handing her his phone with mock reluctance.

  ‘That’s it. Now Emily, give me your glass.’

  I did as I was told, and stood waiting to be directed into place, embarrassed by the quiet that was now descending over the drawn-out proceedings.

  She stood back to check that everybody was in place. ‘Okay Toby, you move a little bit across so I can squeeze in the middle. There you go.’

  She turned and handed me the phone with a quick, ‘Thanks, Emily,’ before running into the frame, pasting on her best smile. ‘Say cheese!’

  A heat that started at the very tips of my toes worked its way up my body, like a rush of lava erupting from a volcano. Every inch of me tingled and my stomach lurched. The tell-tale pull at the back of my throat told me that tears were imminent, but I fought them back down, blinking furiously to stem the flow. I quickly turned my back on the other guests so that they couldn’t see the humiliating redness creeping up my neck. I tried to smile, to pretend that I would never have expected to be in the ‘family’ photo. After all, I reasoned, I’m not family, so it’s no big deal. Except it was, and it really hurt.

  I looked at Adam on the back row, all smiles as I took the photo, with not a care in the world, and I felt my heart break in two.

  ‘Okay, so where was I?’ asked Adam, resuming his place behind the microphone.

  I quickly
lost myself in the watching crowd.

  ‘Yes, yes,’ persisted Adam over the din. ‘Quieten down. I’ve got something important to say.’

  The crowd hushed.

  ‘So, now I’m thirty, I’ve got to be all grown up and mature.’

  ‘That’ll never happen,’ shouted Deano, another teammate, from the back.

  ‘A-ha, you’d be surprised, my friend. So, first, I’d like to thank you all for coming. It means the world to me to have you all here. I’m especially chuffed that my cousin Frank flew over from Canada just to be here tonight.’

  The crowd cheered, and more backslapping ensued.

  ‘I’d also like to thank my beautiful girlfriend, Emily, for putting up with me and just being amazing. Em, where are you?’

  I felt a hand on my back pushing me forward, but I kept my gaze down and feebly stuck a hand in the air to show where I was.

  ‘Come on Em, come out here.’

  I shook my head, but the pressure on my back was mounting, propelling me forward, when all I wanted to do was to go further back, into the shadows, where Pammie obviously believed I belonged.

  I thought the very cheeks of me would explode with the heat trapped beneath them as I walked towards him. I could see James standing on the far side of the semi-circle that had been naturally created by bodies. Pippa was standing beside him. There was still no sign of a girl in a blue dress.

  Every pore on my torso felt blocked, as if I was cooking from the inside, with no extractor fan to cool me down. I looked back to Pippa’s concerned face, as she slowly mouthed, ‘Arrre yooou oookkkaaay?’ I gave her a small nod as I took Adam’s hand, and fixed a smile onto my face.

  ‘This woman here is my reason for living. She makes the good days even better and the bad days go away.’

  A mist descended over my eyes, making everything blurry, but I could just make out Mum staring out from the circle, wide-eyed.

  Adam turned to look at me. ‘Honestly, I adore you. I couldn’t live without you. You are the best thing that’s ever happened to me.’

  Embarrassed, I ruffled his hair in an attempt to lighten the situation and get the spotlight away from me. But then he dropped down onto one knee.

  The ahhs turned to short, clipped gasps as I struggled to keep my vision steady. What the hell? Is he doing what I think he’s doing, or is this a big joke? I looked around at all the pensive faces peering their heads into the bubble I’d created around me. Everything seemed to be going in slow motion, as if I was watching myself from outside my body. Adam’s voice sounded as if he was under water and, all the time, the inane grins and wide eyes kept getting closer and closer. All except one, whose face, crumpled with grief, seemed to get further and further away.

  ‘Will you please do me the honour of being my wife?’ Adam said, one knee still on the ground.

  I can’t remember exactly when the whoops of joy turned to screams of horror. But I know I had a square-cut solitaire diamond on my finger by the time I was stroking Pammie’s hair as she lay on the beer-sodden floor.

  Adam was kneeling beside us, holding his mother’s hand, and James was pacing the floor, telling the ambulance where to find us.

  ‘Please hurry,’ I heard him shout. ‘She’s out cold.’

  It had all happened so fast that my brain couldn’t process it. I’d lost the ability to put things in the order that they were occurring, no longer able to determine what was real and what I’d imagined in my head. Had Adam just asked me to marry him? Did Pammie really collapse? The edges between reality and make-believe were becoming more and more blurred with every passing second.

  ‘Mum, Mum,’ Adam was saying over and over again. His voice becoming more animalistic with each frantic call.

  Her head moved ever so slightly and she murmured her confusion.

  ‘Mum,’ Adam called out again. ‘Oh, thank God. Mum, can you hear me?’

  She didn’t answer, her eyes just flickered open before closing again.

  ‘Mum, it’s James. Can you hear me?’

  She murmured something inaudible.

  A shaft of light pierced through as the crowd around us parted to let the paramedics in. They laid the stretcher down beside Pammie.

  ‘It’s okay, Mum,’ said James, kneeling down beside me. ‘You’re going to be okay.’

  He looked at me, panic-stricken, as if he expected me to say something that would take his pain away. I wished I could give him what he needed but, as I stared down at Pammie, I had nothing to offer him.

  ‘Oh, Jesus Christ, please save her,’ cried Adam, his shoulders beginning to rise and fall.

  Mike put a steady hand on his back. ‘It’s going to be okay, mate. She’s going to be okay.’

  I watched numbly as they called her name, got no response, and lifted her onto the stretcher.

  It wasn’t my place to go in the ambulance. Adam and James went with her, whilst I was left in the surreal void they left behind: a celebration that had so abruptly been halted. The music had stopped, the lights were on, and the heart-shaped balloon that had carried my ring lay shredded on the floor, its shrivelled rubber now unrecognizable.

  Shocked guests filed past me with sympathetic smiles, bidding premature farewells and their best wishes to pass on to Pammie and her boys. I vaguely remember one or two awkwardly wishing me luck for our engagement, their congratulations at odds with the commiserations that quickly followed.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Em,’ said Seb, reaching out to embrace me. ‘I’m sure she’ll be okay. What do you want to do? Shall I take you home, or do you want to stay here?’

  I looked around the hall that, just fifteen minutes earlier, had been bursting with friends and family. The place where Adam had celebrated his thirtieth birthday and the place where he had asked me to marry him. Neither seemed to matter anymore.

  ‘I guess I should see everyone off?’ I asked, unsure of the right answer myself.

  ‘We can get rid of everyone pretty quickly,’ he said reassuringly. ‘You get your stuff together and I’ll chivvy the stragglers up. Okay?’

  No. Nothing was okay. I’d just been proposed to, but could barely remember it now, the memory blurred and the occasion forever marred.

  ‘Darling, I don’t know what to say,’ said my mum, arms outstretched, pulling me into her. ‘Come here.’

  The first tear fell then, and once the floodgate was open, I couldn’t stop. Big wretched sobs racked my chest as my mother attempted to soothe me.

  ‘Ssh, it’s okay, everything’s going to be okay.’ There’s something about your mother’s voice that nobody else can replicate. That takes you back to school, when you were little and waiting in the nurse’s office for her to come and pick you up. I remember being pushed over in the playground by a bully called Fiona, and hitting my forehead as I fell onto the black tar floor. A bump, of Tom and Jerry proportions, had throbbed just above my eye and the nurse had hurried me away to her office, which was actually just a little bed and desk behind a curtain in a side corridor.

  I’m sure I would have been as right as ninepence if I’d just sat quietly for a few minutes before rejoining my class for our music lesson. But, by the time I was on that tiny chair behind the screen, all I wanted was my mum: to take away both my physical and emotional pain. My bump would no doubt disappear within hours, but the mental scar would remain. What if Fiona was mad with me for going to the nurse? Would she do it again tomorrow? Would she bully me forever? They were conundrums that only my mother could answer, well, at least in my nine-year-old’s head. I felt guilty for making her leave work, but not guilty enough to say no when the nurse asked if I’d like to go home. I fretted over whether she would be cross with me. Whether my injury would be sufficient to warrant calling her. But I so needed to feel safe, it was a risk I was prepared to take. It felt like hours before she arrived, though I knew she was there even before I saw her. I just sensed her, and when she peered round that curtain I felt as if my heart was about to burst. That feeling, when only your
mother will do, never really goes away, and as she whispers in my ear that everything will be all right, my heart breaks for Adam, who no doubt has the same memories, but is now in danger of losing the only person who can make everything better.

  12

  It was six o’clock in the morning when Adam called. Mum and Dad had come back with me, but had figured that I needed to sleep and had left me, with strict instructions to call them as soon as I heard anything. I couldn’t have slept if you’d paid me. My mind was full of whirring thoughts, and I paced the kitchen floor with a large glass of red. Back and forth, until the shrill ring of my phone made me jump.

  ‘Em?’ He sounded tired.

  ‘Yes, how is she?’ I asked. ‘What’s happening?’

  ‘She’s okay,’ his voice broke.

  ‘She’s going to be okay?’

  I could hear soft sobs at the other end of the line.

  ‘Adam . . . Adam.’

  ‘I’m just so relieved.’ He sniffed. ‘I couldn’t bear it if anything happened to her, Em. Honestly, I don’t know what I’d do.’

  ‘But she’s going to be okay?’ I asked again, desperate for confirmation.

  ‘Yes. Yes. She’s sitting up in bed, drinking a cup of tea, looking like she doesn’t have a care in the world.’ He let out a tight laugh.

  My voice caught in my throat. ‘So, what happened, then? What have the doctors said?’

  ‘They’ve carried out all sorts of tests – blood pressure, heart, urine – and she’s as good as new.’

  I stayed silent.

  ‘Em?’

  ‘So, what could have caused it?’ I asked, trying to keep the edge in my voice from creeping in.

  If he noticed the intonation, he didn’t say. ‘They think it must have been a case of dehydration. She’s admitted to not looking after herself these past few days, being all stressed about the party and forgetting to eat and drink. She’s then gone and chucked back a couple of glasses of wine and it was goodnight-vienna.’