‘They’re big girls,’ Woody said laughing. ‘Surely they can look after themselves.’
‘Oh, whatever. You’re right, none of my business. Have a great night!’ And I huffed off back towards the bar to order a cab back home.
‘Hey, Amanda!’ Woody caught my shoulder and I shrugged him off. ‘It wasn’t me. I promise.’
‘It doesn’t matter. I don’t care who it was.’
‘You did when you thought it was me.’
‘I was just cross. And you seemed the most likely person. It’s Jacqui’s first time out with everyone and she’s never done anything stronger than wine before.’
‘Oh.’
‘Yes, exactly.’
‘I think Will gave her some MDMA.’
‘Fucking brilliant. And Ali is breastfeeding and shouldn’t be doing anything other than wine.’
He looked shame faced.
‘Well, all I can say is it will wear off soon. They hardly had anything. It’s Will’s, not mine. I have no idea how strong it is. I didn’t have any.’
That wasn’t reassuring. ‘I’ve got to get them home now.’
‘I’ll come and help. I can carry the records.’
‘No, it’s fine.’
‘No, it isn’t. I feel bad because I knew what was happening. I’ll come.’ He bid goodbye to Will and followed me back inside, waved through by the bouncers.
*
‘I love you, and I love you too, Wooden,’ Jacqui enthused for the millionth time as I made cheese on toast in the kitchen at three a.m., my hangover starting to tear at my head and insides.
‘Woody,’ he repeated patiently.
‘That’s what I said, Wooden.’
I glanced at Woody and he smirked, taking a sip of his freshly made tea. He didn’t seem drunk.
The low lights underneath the cupboards had transformed the kitchen into an illicit late-night bar where Jacqui and Ali sipped red wine from an already open bottle. Tealights twinkled in the vintage teacups on the dresser and on the shelf underneath my decks.
‘Can we have some dance music on?’ Ali asked, bopping to a bass only she could hear.
‘Oooh, yes, please, can we? Any Spice Girls, though?’ Jacqui joined in.
‘NO! What about Babs? She might wake up.’ Babs had agreed to stay over until seven a.m.
‘OK. Can we have some chill-out music on instead…?’
At four a.m., Woody and I put Jacqui in Meg’s room and Ali in Isla’s.
‘But I’m not tired,’ Ali griped.
‘You will be when you have to make up bottles at seven.’
‘I did them already,’ she said smugly, giving up on the fight and lying down, surrounded by teddies, a giant Dumbo the elephant standing guard at the end of the single bed.
‘Well, you still have to be on duty and you have to express all your milk for a few days.’
‘OK, Mum!’
Jacqui was already gently snoring. I was hoping the post-comedown cheese on toast would soak up all the chemicals. I felt responsible for her falling down the rabbit hole on my watch.
‘They’ll be OK,’ Woody assured me, reading my mind. ‘I don’t think they’re going to die in their sleep.’
‘Thanks for helping. I don’t know how I would have managed to get them, plus all the records, home on my own.’
Woody smiled, melting my stomach. Oh, no! I thought I was numb below the waist and this discovery, instead of instilling me with hope, left me feeling like a flustered sixth-former. Not Woody…
‘Do you want another tea?’ I managed to squeak out, certain he would be picking up clues from the heat I could feel rising up my chest and tingling my cheeks.
‘I’ll make it. Do you want one?’
‘Yes, please,’ I yawned, eyeing my bed through the open door.
‘Go and lie down; I’ll bring it up.’
I hardly heard the tap of the tea being set down on my desk next to the bed. Awakened libido or not, the late hour had me in its grasp.
‘Thanks,’ I mumbled, the weight of sleep pressing my body down into the bed, strange dreams and visions dancing round the periphery of the darkness, waiting to pounce the minute I surrendered. The bed dipped under his weight as he sat on the edge near my feet.
‘I’ll drink my tea, then go,’ he said quietly, his voice bringing me back to the room.
I opened my eyes to find his directed on me. Immediately, he looked away.
‘You seem better,’ I said, for want of something to say.
‘Well, I had a kind of breakdown a few years ago.’
‘Oh, I had no idea.’
‘No, I didn’t tell anyone apart from Will and Sarah. I was away taking a boat to St Lucia from Antigua for this guy, and I hadn’t slept for days. Partying, you know…’ I did know. It was all he ever did. I had no idea how he sustained it and where he found the money. ‘And I lost the plot. Wanted to jump in the sea to get away from it all. One of the crew had to sit on me. Anyway, I came home and have been staying with Mum in Essex ever since, working for one of Dad’s mates in the building industry, doing a bit of carpentry and then sailing the rest of the time. I go out occasionally.’
‘Oh. So it must be quite hard coming up to London to see people if they’re all still caning it.’
‘No, everyone’s got kids now. They do it for a laugh now and then, but it’s not every weekend, and every day.’
‘Do you still go mad?’
‘Not like I used to.’ He drained his tea. ‘I saw that bird Sam’s with on telly. Well, it was all over the papers. She was on Loose Women.’
‘Urgh,’ was all I could come up with. I had ignored all the press attention after the big reveal. I knew if I started looking, I would never stop and would be consumed with checking every little thing on line. The Journey had brought me back to the present every time I was tempted to take a peek; its major message of Don’t Gossip flashing up in huge theatrical lights inside my head. Don’t put energy where it doesn’t need to be. Let the universe take care of things. The times I had looked with Ali, when we’d had too many wines, always ended up with me almost regurgitating my dinner/breakfast/lunch at the sight of Carrie, renamed ‘Thunder Thighs’ due to her overly curvaceous bottom.
‘What were you doing watching Loose Women?’
‘I didn’t have anything else to do. I was just flicking. Will and Sarah have met her.’
I could feel tears sting the corner of my eyes. And this is where it starts, I thought. The slippery slope before I am permanently wiped from people’s memories as Sam’s wife.
‘Oh God, sorry. I’m shit. Sorry. Oh, Amanda.’
The tears flowed properly. I couldn’t find the energy to wipe them away and alcohol always made everything worse. Woody jumped up and lay next to me, pulling me in for a hug. He smelled faintly of cigarettes and some fresh citrusy aftershave that plucked a memory from the deep recesses of my brain, a stolen kiss from another life.
‘Me and my big mouth,’ he whispered into my hair. We lay like that for a while as I calmed down, his presence comfortingly familiar on Sam’s side of the bed.
‘I’m fine. Sorry for crying. It’s still, you know, a bit raw.’
‘Don’t apologise.’ He pulled away and patted my hair away from my face, some of it stuck damply to my cheek. ‘I think he’s mad.’
I smiled weakly.
‘If I was married to you…’
‘Woody…’ My breath caught in my throat. ‘Don’t go there.’ His face was right in my eye line, his leonine eyes searching mine. He leaned in and kissed me chastely on the lips. I closed my eyes, a whole brass band marching in my stomach. ‘I think you should go.’
‘Yes. Look, do you have my number?’
I shook my head.
‘I still have yours. I’ll send you a text. I’m away for a while next week.’
‘Oh, that’s good. Sailing?’
‘Yes. I have a job out in Antigua for a few months. I’d love to see you before I go?’
‘OK. Well, look after yourself, and get some sleep. I can let myself out.’ He ruffled my hair and disappeared downstairs.
I heard the front door close quietly as sleep crept up, ushering in the tantalising dreams about Sam and me still being together.
11
King Herod’s Wife
‘He’s living with her, and he never told me,’ Jacqui squeezed out between sobs. ‘I knew it. The spineless twat.’ This was the first time I had seen, or rather heard, Jacqui fully let her defences down. She wore a steely air of sang-froid compared to Ali and me, our bleeding hearts pinned to our sleeves.
Her divorce made mine seem like one of those joyful wet Sunday afternoon films with inclusive smiles, warm hugs, and puppy dogs. A wise person once said, if a group of people threw their problems up in the air, they would race to catch their own rather than their neighbours’. The same applies to divorce. As much as I hated my situation and everything it threw at me, I would so much rather deal with it than have to deal with Jacqui’s.
‘Are you at home? I’m just at Sainsbury’s but can come to yours. I’ll leave the trolley; I’m still in the veg aisle.’
‘No, I’m outside the court having a fag. I can’t believe it, Mands. He stood up in court and brazenly said he would tell the truth, and when the judge asked where he was currently living and who with, he said he was living with her.’
‘The woman who sent the emails?’
‘Becky, yes.’
‘Oh, Jacqui. I’m so sorry.’
Sonny started crying and, being ill-prepared, I hadn’t brought any snacks with which to plug the building noise.
‘Dad, Dad, Dad.’ He wanted to get out, but I knew if I scooped him out and let him loose on the shop floor, I would get zero shopping done so I started to manically push the trolley one-handedly towards the baby aisle.
‘Do you need to go?’ she asked as Sonny turned up the volume when he realised he was stuck fast in his metal cage of a trolley seat. I was always having nightmares about snapping his legs off when I yanked him out of those things like a poor rabbit in a poacher’s trap. They hadn’t improved since I had sat in them in the seventies.
‘No, I’m just about to shoplift some rice cakes.’
‘Oh, what, the extortionate apple organic ones?’
‘Those very same.’
‘I always nick them too, stuff the wrapper in one of the freezers.’
‘That’s what I do!’ We had a brief comic relief before Jacqui remembered she was the wronged woman. I ripped open the rice cakes and Sonny clapped his hands together like a seal awaiting its mackerel fillet. Silence prevailed once more.
‘So, Simon is officially living with Becky?’
‘Yes. He didn’t even seem embarrassed. He had denied everything up until now.’
‘You never really explained why this needed to go to court.’
Jacqui was very self-contained. It didn’t surprise me, really, as we had only been firm friends now since January and Sam and I were about to hit the first anniversary of our splitting up in May.
‘Simon went after half of my inheritance. I received it after he left. All of us sisters got a share of it.’
‘But he left you! He isn’t entitled to anything after he left, surely.’
‘That’s not what the court thought. They awarded it to him.’ She started crying again. ‘How could they? He has a new life and is buying a house. He said he needed the money to make the split fair, to buy this house with her! The kids and I are left heartbroken. Joe is in speech therapy because he can’t talk properly and won’t eat, possibly because his dad left, and I’ve been called up to the school about Neve because she has been crying in class. He has moved on while I’m still picking up the pieces for all three of us. It’s shit. I hate him!’
‘Oh, Jacqui. I wish I was there with you. You should have told me. I would have come with you today and taken Sonny to his child minder.’
‘I didn’t think this would be the outcome. My lawyer said we would win so I thought I would be OK. But seeing him acting all hard done by in the dock made me want to scream across the court how he’s ruined our lives.’
‘Look, as soon as you can leave, come round. Bring the kids. I can make them pasta and we can just all slump in front of the telly until bedtime. Don’t be on your own.’ Silence. ‘Jax, are you still there?’
‘I won’t er, be on my own. I’m going out.’
‘Oh, OK. Who with?’
‘Tim.’
‘Who’s Tim?’
‘That guy from Ali’s birthday.’ I failed to conjure him up from the blurry memory of that night. ‘He’s really cute. Loved your DJ-ing.’
‘Oh, him! Where you going?’
‘For dinner.’
‘Wow, on a first date?’
‘No, third date.’
‘You are such a secret squirrel!’
‘I know. I didn’t want to say anything in case it was crap. But he’s really nice.’
‘Well, have an amazing time. Let me know how it goes. I’m working tomorrow but I’m around before I leave for Mel’s on Friday.’
*
The Saturday morning after I’d arrived at Mel’s, we headed out to attend an angel meditation workshop. ‘It’s for people who have a bit more experience, are either already healers or want to be healers. We could give it a go. It might distract you from thinking about your single parent anniversary,’ Mel had suggested on the phone before she booked it.
More people had been expected, but it was just us and one other, older lady (who kept giving me filthy looks) that turned up in the intimate room at the top of a Norman church in Western, a tiny picturesque village nestled in the heart of the scenic Downs. There was nowhere to hide at the back and mentally tally up a shopping list or think about lunch. My tummy rumbled hungrily, making Mel giggle.
‘Now to welcome your angels into the room, imagine a white light shining down from above.’
Nikki, the lady leading the event, was truly out there. If we possessed Reiki, we had to open up our channels and connect with the universe. I could feel the energy in my hands shoot out and begin pulsing in my palms. ‘Notice any subtle differences in your energy field. See if anything is trying to communicate with you.’ The whole point of the workshop was to link into the same frequency as angels, which to me, now a card-carrying member of the Beardy Weirdy brigade, wasn’t too hard to visualise.
On the Beardy Weirdy scale, this was at least an eight, but I had thought: what the hell, I’m open to anything on this weekend. I wasn’t immune to inexplicable feelings or premonitions.
‘I’ve just realised who you are!’ the other woman, named Patricia, burst out as we took a break from mind-expanding exploration. We had apparently tuned in to our guardian angels and, despite the subject matter, I felt myself easily accepting its dogma, keeping my mind open to new experiences. This, along with all the other alternatives on the Beardy Weirdy spectrum, served as my somewhat outlandish coping mechanism for facing a situation I had no emotional contingency fund for.
‘You were Herod’s wife at the Crucifixion!’ I looked at Nikki and then back to Patricia, whose eyes had toned down their flinty glare. ‘I was Mary Magdalene.’
‘Oh, yes, you were Herod’s wife. I can see you now with your crown,’ Nikki agreed wholeheartedly. ‘I was there, too. I was one of the priests.’
‘I’m sorry. How on earth was I there?’ We had suddenly flown from an eight to a ten, leapfrogging over number nine.
‘We all were. Well, it’s believed in many healing circles that a huge cross-section of people were all in attendance at the Crucifixion of Christ. From major players to bystanders, we all had a part to play.’
‘Was I there?’ Mel asked Nikki in a thoughtful tone.
‘Yes, you were an embalmer. You prepared Jesus’s body.’ The seriousness with which Patricia disclosed this snippet lent it gravitas I wasn’t sure it deserved.
> ‘You don’t believe, do you?’ Patricia asked me, not unkindly.
‘I don’t know. How was I there, though?’
‘In a former life. Do you believe in past lives?’
‘Yes, I do. But to be Herod’s wife – that’s pretty mad. Why me?’
‘Why not you? Do you like a man who can fix things with his hands? Someone who is good at making things out of wood?’
‘Yes. My ex-husband was amazing at carpentry. It was a major reason why I found him attractive.’
‘There you go. Jesus was a carpenter. Herod’s wife didn’t want him to die. You like a carpenter; you’ve carried that love through from then. This may be why you feel so stuck and can’t move on from the split. You need to accept what has been before.’
Or maybe it is because I really loved him to the moon and back and just wanted to stay married.
‘What do you reckon to all that?’ I asked later as we wandered to Mel’s car parked down a side street. The gentle heat of spring fluttered on the breeze as we strolled past whimsical walled gardens populated by a few squat gnomes, the brick cottages and statuesque houses all draped with wisteria and climbing roses, their heady scent tickling our noses. I always felt a tug in the very centre of my being when I returned to this part of Sussex, like an ancient mariner must feel the draw of the sea from his bath chair, knowing he will never sail again.
Mel was silent.
‘You believe it, don’t you? I don’t think I do. How could I have been there?’
‘Now, don’t freak out, but I have a recurring dream that I work in a morgue. I’ve had it for years!’
‘But that doesn’t mean anything.’
‘I know, but when she said that, I kept getting nasty whiffs of chemicals out of nowhere. It made my eyes sting. And that other woman really did seem convinced.’
‘Great, so tomorrow is not only the shit anniversary, I am also the wife of a despot who killed Jesus Christ. I didn’t think this weekend could get any worse. I’m probably doomed for all eternity.’
‘Oh, Jeez, will you look where I parked.’
I started laughing and thought I wouldn’t be able to stop. The car was directly outside an undertaker’s.
The Single Mums' Mansion: The bestselling feel-good, laugh out loud rom com Page 8