The Good, the Bad and the Dumped

by Jenny Colgan

  ‘Sukie,’ said Almaric with a slight edge in his voice. ‘Do you want to do this or not?’

  ‘We’ll be . . . in another country,’ said Posy, half dragging Margie up the aisle. Almaric nodded, barely noticing, and as they got to the doors, Posy heard ‘Angels’ start up once more.

  ‘I think that went well,’ she said to Margie as they emerged. Suddenly a flash went off, blinding them in the morning light.

  ‘Argh, Christ, what was that?’ said Posy.

  ‘Sorry, love,’ came a voice. ‘Wedding photographer. Thought you was the happy couple.’

  Posy went up to him, smiling. ‘Promise me,’ she said. ‘Promise me you’ll put that one in the album.’

  ‘Sure,’ said the photographer, and took another couple for good luck, as Posy and Margie staggered up the street back to the car.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Posy is bone-bloody-knackered.

  It was very late and very dark by the time Posy and Margie made it back to London. Margie had sobbed much of the afternoon. Posy had let her. She had understood. Occasionally she leant over and patted her hand. Until Margie perked up a bit just past Bristol and said, ‘Well, I guess it’s just you and me together in all this, spinsters for life,’ whereupon Posy had wanted to smack her hard.

  Once they got out of the countryside her cheap city package mobile signal came back. But there was nothing on it. One odd message from Fleur saying she was off to visit Dad and did she want to come, at which Posy had rolled her eyes, but apart from that, nothing. Nothing from Matt at all, not even enquiring after Pepe.

  She was so agitated by this that, at a service station, she jumped back into the car and backed it out slowly. Into a bollard.

  Posy dropped her head into her hands.

  She dropped Margie off in Croydon, which was miles out her way and kind of her. Margie didn’t thank her. Matt was home and watching TV when she got back and jumped up guiltily.

  ‘Hey,’ she said. Not a phone call. Nothing, nothing at all. Even now, when she was done with it all. It wouldn’t matter to him.

  ‘Hey,’ he said. He looked guilty and upset too. They were making each other so miserable.

  Matt was biting his lip. ‘Here’s the thing,’ he said. ‘I was thinking, while you were away.’

  ‘Yes?’ said Posy, wondering if it would be possible. To explain that she’d sorted things out with Almaric, that she thought it might be fine, that she was wondering if there might be the tiniest, most minute possibility of a second chance.

  ‘And, well, I got an estate agent in to value the place.’

  Posy was so shocked she felt like he’d slapped her across the face. Obviously the set-up now wasn’t exactly perfect, but still, selling up? Moving out, moving on? Surely not.

  ‘I crashed Pepe,’ she found herself saying, chin in the air.

  ‘What?’ Matt went white.

  It didn’t sound as good in Posy’s head as she’d been thinking, defiantly, walking in the room.

  ‘Well, you’re breaking my heart, so I, er, dinged your car.’

  But Matt didn’t hear: he had already jumped up and was heading for the door.

  ‘It’s just a scratchy dent kind of a thing,’ said Posy. ‘He’ll be fine. I patted his boot and everything.’

  Matt shook his head. ‘Don’t you want to know what the estate agent said?’

  Posy gulped. ‘Uh. Whatever.’

  ‘She said, forget it, it’s worth about five quid now.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Posy. ‘Well, that’s good.’

  There was a silence.

  ‘What do you mean, “That’s good”?’ said Matt suspiciously. ‘Why is it good that the biggest investment of our lives is now worth less than, and I quote, “The car parking space outside it”?’

  Posy realised she just couldn’t fight it any more. It was pointless. It was done.

  ‘I’m very tired,’ she said. ‘I think I have to go to bed.’ Matt sighed. ‘And I have to go see to Pepe. Is there any point in being cross with you about it?’

  ‘Do you mean, could you make me feel worse than I actually do at the moment?’ said Posy. ‘Not really.’

  ‘Thought not,’ said Matt, pulling on his coat.

  ‘Matt,’ said Posy as he stood at the door. He turned expectantly.

  ‘Do you think I was looking for a father figure in my life?’

  Matt screwed up his face. ‘You want me to spank your bum for breaking the car?’

  Posy stared at him pitifully.

  ‘Posy, I . . . what did you do in Wales?’

  ‘Figured out some things,’ said Posy meekly, hoping this would stop him from going to see the car.

  ‘You shouldn’t try and figure things out while you’re reversing, ’ said Matt.

  ‘I know that now,’ said Posy.

  Matt headed for the door again. Then he popped his head back in.

  ‘Did I think you missed your dad? Yes. Of course I did. I do. I said it several times. I also suggested you go visit him. So does Fleur. You just never listen to me.’

  ‘But I never mention him,’ said Posy.

  ‘Yeah, well, that’s obviously why, you idiot. You never say his name, not on Father’s Day, not at Christmas, not when you’re talking to my dad. I was surprised when I met him and found out he wasn’t dead or a Tory politician or something.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Posy.

  ‘So it’s obviously something,’ said Matt. ‘Something huge.’

  Posy stared at him.

  ‘You did ask,’ said Matt.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Meanwhile, however, my baby is lying out on the pavement wounded and alone.’

  ‘Go to him,’ said Posy, flapping her hands. ‘Go.’

  ‘Don’t be stupid, you were both absolutely fine!’

  Jonquil banged the Battenburg cake on the kitchen counter and Posy winced. Battenburg meant that her mum had gone to a special effort to make everything nice for her visiting. Battenburg was special. Posy fiddled with the plastic corner of the wrapper. She hated marzipan. Her mother had never known that.

  ‘The best psychoanalytical minds of the day said that the best thing to do was total honesty, total freedom. You weren’t children, you were smaller adults.’

  ‘Except that we were children,’ said Posy softly, taking the scum off her cup of tea.

  ‘So, I told you straight up, didn’t I?’

  ‘That our father was worthless and didn’t care enough about his family to live with them?’ said Posy.

  ‘Wasn’t that true?’ shot back her mother. ‘That sounds like exactly what happened to me.’

  Posy shrugged.

  ‘And then, I was quite surprised by this, you and Fleur didn’t seem to want to engage with it quite as much as I’d expected,’ said Jonquil. ‘Why was that?’

  How could Posy explain? The tears, the horrible unnameable emotions that were going on in the house. They couldn’t ask about that; it just wasn’t information they were qualified to know. It had seemed like they would hurt their mother less if they didn’t ask; if they didn’t pester her as to the whereabouts of Daddy. Suddenly Posy was hit with an image of the two of them, her and Fleur, coming home from school and perching themselves on the bottom of the stairs, so that if their father came home that day he would see them immediately. They carried two pieces of string with Blu-Tack fixed to the ends as camouflage. When their mother asked them what they were doing they said ‘Stair fishing’, and dangled the strings off the banisters. Had she really not known? Had she really not seen?

  ‘Because it was your job to protect us from the horrible stuff!’ burst out Posy, savagely squeezing the pink and yellow crumbs between her fingers. ‘It was your job not to tell us everything about him and everything he’d done wrong.’

  ‘But it was the truth,’ said Jonquil, appalled. ‘You should always tell children the truth.’

  ‘No, you shouldn’t,’ said Posy stubbornly. ‘You should have told us he was a pirate capt
ain in the Far Eastern islands!’

  ‘You wouldn’t have thanked me.’

  ‘I’m not thanking you now.’

  ‘Oh Posy,’ said Jonquil. ‘It was just a divorce. People have them all the time.’

  ‘Oh Posy,’ mimicked Posy. ‘It was just a terrible betrayal, upset and destruction of all the security you’d ever known. People have them all the time.’

  ‘Don’t get hysterical.’

  ‘You mean it’s never crossed your mind? All those failed relationships, all those times you made remarks about my “not being the settling down kind”? You never ever ever thought to connect the two things?’

  Jonquil shrugged.

  ‘I don’t want you to get tied to a man. Or any human being, for that matter. I just want you to be your own woman.’

  ‘Why can’t I be my own woman while I love another man?’

  ‘I haven’t seen much evidence of it in my life.’

  ‘That’s because you spend all day dealing with over-pampered self-obsessed north London nut-jobs,’ spat Posy viciously.

  Jonquil rolled her eyes. ‘Hostility, darling. It’s a defence mechanism, you know.’

  ‘Yes. Against you.’

  ‘Well, I’m not going to fight with you.’

  ‘You shouldn’t be fighting with me!’ said Posy. ‘Don’t flatter yourself! You should be apologising and explaining things to me.’

  ‘Never apologise, never explain,’ mused her mother. ‘Who was it who said that again?’

  ‘A sociopath,’ said Posy. ‘I just need to know. Did my father love me?’

  ‘What can I say?’ said Jonquil, stirring her long-cold, long-dead tea. ‘He loved you both very much. He didn’t change nappies . . . men didn’t then. But he threw you up and down in the air, took you swimming, tickled you, tucked you in at night.’

  ‘They tuck you up, your mum and dad,’ said Posy, sadly.

  ‘Can’t you see what I’m trying to say?’ said Jonquil. ‘He did everything that people call love. He did everything that looked like love; he provided for you, cared for you.’

  Posy’s eyes were wide and she was trying not to cry.

  ‘But don’t you see? In the end, it wasn’t enough. His love wasn’t enough to stay.’

  Jonquil’s face turned hard. ‘I know you find me difficult, Posy.’

  ‘Uh huh.’

  ‘I know you think I’m hard work, and annoying.’

  ‘I’m sure you think the same about me.’

  ‘No, I think you’re self-obsessed and a touch pathetic.’

  ‘MUM! Stop with the honesty!’

  ‘But do you know what it would have taken me to walk out and close the door on my own children?’

  Posy looked at her; her eyes were fierce and intense.

  ‘They would have had to set me on fire, Posy. They would have had to set me on fire to separate me from you and Fleur. And he gave barely a backwards glance. And I could never, ever forgive him for that.’

  ‘How’s Mum?’ said Fleur on the phone.

  ‘Stop it,’ said Posy.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Stop knowing exactly what I’m calling about.’

  ‘It’s because I have a special psychic aura thing,’ said Fleur.

  ‘It’s because you’re a total flake and you’ve probably just spoken to Mum.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Fleur. ‘So?’

  ‘Go round and see her,’ said Posy. ‘I think sometimes we forget how much she loves us.’

  ‘What, just because she says really mean things to our faces and never cooks for us or says anything nice or buys us anything or is happy for anything that happens in our lives and keeps trying to diagnose us with weird psychological illnesses? ’

  ‘Yeah. Because of that.’

  ‘Can you lend me the bus fare?’

  Posy sighed.

  ‘And by the way,’ said Fleur. ‘While you’re bossing me about to go see Mum, why won’t you go see Dad?’

  ‘You don’t even remember,’ said Posy. ‘You don’t even remember how sad Mum was. You were too small. You don’t even know.’

  ‘Well, why don’t you go see him and ask him why?’

  ‘Actually, I’m fine,’ said Posy. ‘And, really, one problem at a time. Which at the moment is trying to stop the love of my life from hating me.’

  ‘Oh my God, why does Lord Voldemort hate you?’

  ‘What makes you think that’s him?’ said Posy, hanging up.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Posy is looking for someone who can do cheap car re-sprays.

  ‘Come on,’ said Leah. ‘Drink will cheer you up.’

  ‘I still blame you for everything.’

  ‘Yes. Me. Not the wine.’

  ‘No.’

  They’d come out to Express 34, a new bar that had opened in full-on hope despite the recession. There were about six people in it, all of them looking like they were glumly spending their redundancy cheques on blue drinks.

  ‘So, did it help?’

  Posy took a deep breath. ‘No. And, maybe, yes.’

  Leah raised her eyebrows.

  ‘Almaric—’

  ‘Ooh! You said his name!’

  ‘I know. I suppose it’s progress.’

  ‘It definitely is! And you haven’t immediately thrown up on the floor! And you’ve regained all that weight you lost after you and Matt broke up—I’ve gone too far, haven’t I?’

  Posy shrugged her shoulders. ‘He did say something interesting though.’

  ‘Oh yes?’

  ‘He said . . . he said he thought I was looking for my dad.’

  ‘Your dad?’

  ‘Uh huh.’

  ‘Oh. Mine’s usually in the shed.’

  ‘Thanks. That’s helpful.’

  ‘Sorry. So, is he right?’

  ‘I don’t know. What do you think?’

  ‘What do you think about your compulsion to cook all your boyfriends dinner at six o’clock every night?’

  Posy put four olives in her mouth thoughtfully. ‘I don’t! I don’t cook for Matt!’

  ‘That’s because he only eats mung beans and leaves.’

  ‘Yes, OK, that too. And I didn’t cook for Adam.’

  ‘You didn’t love Adam.’

  ‘Neh,’ said Posy. ‘I guess not.’

  ‘What about Almaric? Did you . . . How did you feel?’

  ‘Well,’ said Posy, ‘apart from the carnation in his buttonhole, and the girl in the big white dress—’

  ‘No way!’ said Leah, as Posy filled her in with all the details. ‘But I thought he absolutely definitely emphatically wasn’t the marrying kind.’

  ‘Yuh,’ said Posy, ‘it turned out he was just absolutely definitely emphatically not the marrying-to-me kind.’

  ‘Harsh,’ said Leah.

  ‘But funnily enough,’ said Posy, ‘once it was pointed out to me that he wasn’t ever really going to get back together with me . . .’

  ‘By getting married to someone else.’

  ‘Do you think it could possibly have been a cry for help? Like those fake suicide attempts people make?’

  ‘No,’ said Leah.

  ‘Okay. Well, once I realised that, I could kind of look at it objectively for what it was, do you know what I mean?’

  Leah nodded. ‘Like, how am I objectively the most single person on earth?’

  ‘Yes, like that.’

  Leah picked up her blue cocktail and sipped it mournfully.

  ‘Anyway, I realised . . . I mean, he was a lovely bloke, but just obviously having a bit of a laugh and so on, in London. What he really wanted to do was come back to Wales and make pots with a fat Welsh lass.’

  ‘Was she fat?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘I’m just . . .’

  ‘I understand.’

  They sat there in silence, nursing their drinks, until Posy - who’d been trying to restrain
herself on the grounds that it was a bit cruel - decided instead to spill all the beans about Margie.

  ‘And how’s Matt?’ Leah asked finally.

  ‘He wants us to sell the flat.’

  ‘No way!’ said Leah. ‘You’ll get about five pence for it!’

  ‘Thanks.’

  Posy looked up miserably. ‘I’ve ballsed it all up, haven’t I? I’ve ruined everything. Tearing about the country while all the time Matt was here waiting for me to sort things out and I just completely ignored it.’

  ‘It seems very sudden, this flat thing,’ mused Leah. ‘I wonder why now and not before when he was cross? I always just thought he’d come round.’

  ‘Me too,’ said Posy. ‘It’s just I could never get him on his mobile, then I went away, so I suppose he must have been doing all his thinking without me, and I guess he just came to all his conclusions on his own.’

  ‘Men never come to conclusions on their own.’

  ‘Oh no, they don’t, do they?’ Posy bit her lip. ‘So what do you think?’

  Leah shrugged. ‘You don’t suppose Matt would have . . .’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Well, while you were out and about . . . did he think he was single then, do you think?’

  Posy sat for a second, staring at her drink.

  ‘I’m sure that’s impossible,’ said Leah. ‘I’m sure just because you were going to see all your exes to blubber on about where it all went wrong, he still felt totally secure in himself and like he had nothing to prove.’

  ‘Oh, no, it can’t be,’ said Posy, thinking about his being out all the time. And had that been a new yellow shirt? She felt like someone had just stabbed her in the heart.

  ‘I’m sure it’s not,’ said Leah. ‘And the fact that you couldn’t raise him on his mobile and that he wants to sell the flat are just kind of coincidence.’

  ‘Oh fuck,’ said Posy. ‘No. Don’t be stupid. Don’t be daft. He won’t be doing anything, he’ll just be at work.’