Putting Alice Back Together

by Carol Marinelli

  Roz had bought American Tan stockings.

  I found them on the morning of the wedding laid out on the bed as she had her shower and I confronted her when she came out.

  ‘You’ll have to go to the shop,’ I said. ‘You need nude.’

  ‘I haven’t got time.’

  She was dripping wet and my hair was done (well, almost), and my make-up was on, so I hauled on some jeans and a T-shirt and coat and raced to a shop that I thought we might have passed.

  I was hyper-vigilant, just in case Hugh had run out of whatever it is that guys run out of a couple of hours before a wedding—nothing—so really I knew he wasn’t in there. I bought Roz some nude stockings and stood in the queue as the slowest cashier in the history of slow cashiers (I’m much faster, and I can smile while I do it too, and she had a bloody seat: I didn’t see what her problem was) took her time to scan some frazzled woman’s shopping. She had a baby strapped in the trolley who was wrapped up so tight that his arms stuck out in front of him, and he had one of those caps on which covered the ears. I just sort of glanced over him and then I saw her.

  She was about four, maybe five, and had the same affliction as me.

  Worse, even.

  She had a wild mop of ginger curls, all frizzy and knotty, and the poor thing looked as if she had the slap-cheek virus her face was so red. She had too the runny nose that often seems to come in red-headed children, and she must have been on her way to her ballet lesson because her coat was open and her little fat legs were in pink tights and she had a pink leotard on, which clashed badly with her hair.

  And I can promise you she hated the lessons and didn’t want to go, because beside the skinny, neat perfects she would stand out.

  She was lost in her own little world for now, as her mum packed up the groceries, hop-hop-hopping on one leg, and I knew what she was doing before I checked.

  Hop-hop-hopping on the floor tiles and trying to avoid the cracks.

  Bear in mind I had wedding hair (loads and loads of product and a hot wand through some of the curls) and a good layer of foundation to spare my blushes from Hugh, and I was, apart from the clothes, dressed for a wedding. But we afflicted kind of stand out, because when she looked up I saw her do a double-take. And then I felt her staring at me as I paid for Roz’s stockings. I glanced over and her little pale blue eyes were staring at my hair and my face.

  Normally I hate kids who stare; normally I’d have poked my tongue out at her while her mum wasn’t looking. But I did the strangest thing. I smiled.

  Not an embarrassed half-smile, but a proper smile.

  She looked at me closer, a smile on her (ugly) little face, and I could almost hear her mind whirring.

  She thought I was beautiful.

  She was looking at me and thinking, hoping, praying that one day she might look as lovely as me.

  I felt as if that pinched, embarrassed, cringing face that looked out of my photo was staring back at me too, that they were both pleading that one day it would all be okay.

  So I gave a little nod.

  That told her I understood.

  That told her she would be okay.

  Then I watched her mum yank her arm and drag her away and she kept turning around, staring and smiling, forgetting to avoid the cracks, and do you know what…?

  She wasn’t ugly. She was, I suppose, kind of cute, striking, curious and funny.

  Do you know something else?

  I felt a bit lovely and beautiful too—a little like Cameron Diaz.

  I felt as if I’d made it.

  Almost.

  Seventy-Six

  I did Roz’s hair. Karan had taught me a thing or three, and I did an excellent job, if I do say so myself. Roz ditched the linen pants and put on the nude stockings I had bought and the palest grey dress and make-up. With a little flowery feather thing in her hair that was grey, black and white, and a splash of pink lipstick she looked like a different person.

  I almost fancied her—well, not really, but she roared with laughter when I told her.

  So we took a picture and texted it to Karan and then she put on a dressing gown because she’s always spilling things.

  And it was my turn to get ready.

  I didn’t have much left to do with my hair; I’d washed it last night and put in loads of stuff and now I just ran my fingers through it and added a bit more serum. I did use a curling wand and took a few strays and added several heavy ringlets. And my make-up was done, so I slipped on my dress and I would have killed for a Kalma, but I’d have to settle for a pep talk from Roz instead.

  ‘You look great.’ Roz gave me such a proud smile as I came out of the bathroom she could have been the mother of the bride.

  ‘Thanks to eBay!’

  I was wearing an Emilia Hill fake—but a very good fake—willow-green, it clung in all the right places and had a sort of Spanish ruffle at the bottom, which matched the rather red ruffle of curls at the top. I’d put on weight and was feeling a bit of an Amazon, really, and was minus my usual spray tan—if Hugh actually recognised me he’d be prescribing iron tablets.

  My stomach was in knots, but it was only eleven a.m. and good girls don’t drink at that time.

  ‘Here!’ Roz pulled out a bottle of champagne and expertly opened it. The bubbles fizzed over my hand because it was shaking so much that she struggled to line up the neck of the bottle with my glass.

  ‘You said I couldn’t have a drink before—’

  ‘That was before I had to face Andrew.’ We sat on the bed, in our dingy little pub room, drank champagne before eleven a.m., and never had we been more clean or more honest.

  ‘I rang Lizzie while you were out and she told me that Trudy’s pregnant.’ Roz took a big swig of her drink. ‘Which is what I wanted to happen—I mean, I want him to be happy, I just never expected it to hurt. I don’t fancy him, our whole marriage was a sham, but…’ She screwed up her face and for the first time I saw that, despite a serious lack of effort on Roz’s part, despite the fact she was a Botox virgin, there was hardly a wrinkle. Roz, now she was actually taking care of herself, was a very beautiful woman. ‘I couldn’t figure out why it would hurt—then I realised that…’ She couldn’t finish, so I did it for her.

  ‘You love him?’ And I waited for her to laugh, because once again I’d said the wrong thing, only it wasn’t funny.

  Roz nodded.

  ‘Have you ever told him?’

  ‘Yes,’ she gasped, as if the word was choking her—the admission killing her. ‘We went out for a drink before I came away.’

  ‘And what did he say?’

  ‘That he loved me too.’

  I’d seen Roz cry—it was a regular occurrence—but she really cried now, huddled in her little white hotel dressing gown, with her party clothes underneath. She was all bunched up and she cried like the plug was being pulled, sucked in air and dragged it down the gurgler, then it came back out in a shrill wail. Like a Jamaican woman keening, she wailed a lament.

  ‘I don’t want to go back—not that he’d ever take me back—but I do love him, and knowing that he did love me… that it wasn’t all bad…’ She crumpled. ‘The good bits were good—like when Lizzie was born, like when he used to bring me home noodles when I couldn’t manage dinner, like when we laughed and we bitched…’ I was holding her shoulders as she ranted and raved. ‘When she was a princess in the nativity play. When we got so drunk we had sex on the beach… when my mum got ill and he cuddled me…’ Roz sniffed and dribbled on my beautiful Emilia Hill fake. ‘He cuddled me every night for a week when I was sobbing, even when I woke him… He loved me. Ninety per cent of me he knew, and he loved me—he just didn’t know the sordid, messed-up bit.’

  And I wasn’t a psychologist’s bootlace, but in that second I understood.

  He had loved me.

  In that moment, in our moments, even if he hadn’t truly known me, still he had loved me.

  ‘It wasn’t all a sham,’ Roz implored, but she was p
reaching to the newly converted.

  Whatever Lisa thought, I knew I had tasted—albeit briefly—real love.

  And I’d lost it too.

  And now it was time to face him.

  Seventy-Seven

  I hate weddings.

  More than that, I particularly hate good weddings—watching the happy couple and knowing it isn’t me. Knowing that someone has that other half—for now at least—someone to lean on, someone there. And I’ve never had that, or I did once, but Lisa said it didn’t count, that a few weeks was too short to call it a relationship.

  I beg to differ.

  My eyes scanned the pews for him, as if I was turning and looking to see if Nicole had arrived, but really I was looking for him—and he wasn’t here. Maybe he wasn’t coming…

  Maybe he knew I was coming and has feigned other plans.

  I have never stood at a wedding happy.

  I loathe being a bridesmaid—Eleanor’s wedding I don’t really remember, but Bonny’s was hell and so too was Nicole’s.

  Only it wasn’t hate and jealousy that filled me today—I was sad, a deep sadness as the organ played the background noise and the church hummed with chatter and colour and hats.

  ‘I hate weddings.’ Roz rolled her eyes and made me smile, made me feel less alone. ‘They always remind me of mine.’

  ‘They always remind me of mine too,’ I said, and, because it’s Roz, I didn’t have to elaborate. She picked up the service card.

  ‘Coffee-coloured,’ Roz said, and we smiled, and then, even before I glanced up, even before I heard or saw anything, I knew he was there. I knew that when I looked up I would see him. I was staring at the words of a hymn, my face was on fire and I knew that the next thing my eyes would see would be him. And I wasn’t ready—I would never, ever be ready to face him, to see him and to not have him.

  The King of love my shepherd is,

  Whose goodness faileth never

  I nothing lack if I am his

  And he is mine for ever.

  I just kept reading this verse over and over.

  ‘Guess who…?’ Roz started, but I shook my head. She didn’t have to tell me, I already knew. I could hear his lovely voice saying Excuse me; I could smell him. Despite all the cologne, the perfume sprayed on people today, I could smell the man who’d just walked past. Only it wasn’t a smell, it’s him, the carbon dioxide he breathed out that I breathed in. And finally I stopped staring down at the hymn and looked up. He was moving into the pew two rows ahead of us, dressed in a morning suit and looking stunning. Gemma was beside him, pale and dainty, and it killed that it wasn’t me.

  He knew everyone, of course. He was in the pew, shaking a couple of hands, and then a man tapped him and Hugh turned around and shook the man’s hand, leant over and kissed the cheek of a woman, and then his eyes met mine. Just for a fraction, as he pulled his head back he gave me, I don’t know what to call it, a short grim smile is the best I can come up with. It was a brief, polite acknowledgment, and I gave a very brief one back and then he turned his back to me.

  He went to sit but the bridal march had started so he stayed standing in a room that rose and Gemma rose to stand with him. We all turned around to watch Nic enter, but I didn’t turn quickly enough. I watched him lower his head as he said something to Gemma, I watched her hand slip into his, and I watched him hold it tightly, and my heart was shredded, but still beating.

  And I would get through this.

  This too will pass.

  Hugh sings loudly.

  Funny, the things you learn. Two pews in front of me and I could hear his voice, and even Roz nudged me and we shared a grin, ‘cos he really does sing loudly.

  It came to the verse I love, and I love music, singing, and if I closed my eyes I could hear only Hugh—a gorgeous deep baritone voice that I hadn’t known existed.

  ‘Perverse and foolish oft I strayed

  But yet in love he sought me

  And on his shoulder gently laid

  And home rejoicing brought me. ‘

  And I heard his voice waver for a second and I wondered if he was thinking about me, because when I had strayed (oft) Hugh hadn’t sought me; he had left me to it.

  Which was right and everything.

  I just wanted his shoulder now.

  But it wasn’t mine—so I let him go.

  I did what Yasmin said I should do ages ago, I stood there and cut the strings and sent him off with a smile—and I made a wish too.

  A sensible wish rather than an order.

  That when I was ready, when the universe thought I was ready, it would send me another perfect guy.

  The universe’s choice this time—I gave it full leeway—yes, even a redhead.

  And then it got to the ‘In Death’s dark veil’ bit…

  The bit I was dreading. And something happened—something I wasn’t expecting—and, given my history, you may put this down to a slightly manic moment, a teeny psychosis, even, but it wasn’t.

  I was past all that.

  I know there is a heaven, or a place like that, and that I will get to hold her again.

  I found out at Nicole’s wedding.

  I stood, sharing a hymnbook with Roz and hearing Hugh’s voice, and doing my absolute best to hold it together. I looked up to blow out a breath—that sort when you’re trying not to cry—and I heard the organ and the words, saw the sun on the stained-glass windows and felt the music vibrate and rise to the heavens, and heaven sent something back to me.

  And I know I will get to hold her again, because for a second, as that line was sung, I was holding Lydia.

  Sounds mad, I know, but it is my second clean-and-perfect memory and, even though I love the one with Hugh, if I only get one memory to take to the nursing home with me, I want it to be that one.

  When I got to hold her again.

  Fuck, I hate weddings, especially good ones, with bells and the organ and Nicole. And, yes, maybe Roz was right, because Nicole did have a rather large bouquet covering her, er, suddenly ample figure—and I especially hate that bit when you sort of got stuck in the crowd spilling out, and I ended up, for this clashing second, walking down the aisle next to my ex, or whatever I was supposed to define him as.

  And I loathe photos, especially watching Hugh, throwing his head back and laughing over something Gemma said. And it was freezing. Lovely and frosty and romantic—but freezing.

  Now just the night to get through—oh, and the speeches and dinner.

  Thankfully we weren’t at the same table. He was up with his mother, Aunty Cheryl and all the Watson clan, and Roz and I were stuck with friends of Paul’s who would make your eyes cross, they were so boring.

  We had bonbons.

  A little glass cup and saucer filled with not sugar-coated almonds but sugar-coated coffee beans.

  ‘Alice.’ Nicole fell on my neck later in the night and held me. ‘I love the hair.’

  ‘I love the cleavage.’ Nicole blushed and her mouth opened to tell me, to share, but she blew out a breath, and I know they’d probably decided not to reveal till after the wedding, but this was me.

  I didn’t want it in an email.

  I was happy for her, and I was sad too.

  I wasn’t jealous about her baby.

  I can say that is the absolute truth.

  I was sad for her for different reasons, but I hoped it was wasted—that she really was as ecstatic as she said she was.

  We chatted for a moment and all she gave me were details, details, details.

  About how they’d wanted the Billy Joel version but it had been Barry White who had sung ‘Just the Way You Are’.

  Why didn’t she listen?

  Not to me, or to Billy or Barry, but to the words of the song she had chosen.

  And then she got called away.

  ‘You’d think he’d discovered the shagging coffee bean!’ I was savage as Roz and I stepped into the cool night air. And the universe was supposed to be kind, but sometimes I w
onder. I mean, I am so much nicer now, so much less bitchy and judgmental, but the one time I allow myself a brief respite, the one time I let myself shine in a rather non-glorious fashion, Roz went red in the face and I was caught in mid-bitch with the man who thought I was the world’s biggest…

  ‘How are you doing?’

  ‘Great.’ I smile, cringing, cringing inside. ‘It’s a lovely wedding.’

  ‘Really?’ Hugh gave me a strange look. ‘It’s fucking awful—the cake is coffee-flavoured—she’s a lawyer and they’ve themed the wedding on coffee.’

  Thank you, universe!

  ‘I’ll go inside.’ Roz smiles, a few idle minutes of chatter later. ‘You stay and have another cigarette.’

  And I was alone with him.

  ‘It’s good to see you,’ I said, because it was good—and bad and horrible—but mostly bloody good.

  ‘It’s hell seeing you.’ He stared right at me and I could see his anger and it was merited.

  ‘I’m sorry.’ More sorry than he could ever know, in fact. ‘I really am sorry for what I put you through, Hugh.’ There—I’d said it. ‘I’m going inside.’

  ‘I thought you were having another cigarette.’

  ‘I don’t smoke any more.’

  ‘But Roz said…’

  ‘We still nip outside.’ I gave a thin smile. ‘When it gets too much it’s a good excuse to get away…’

  ‘You’ve really given it up?’

  ‘Yep.’ I just wanted away from him, couldn’t stand to be so close and not touch him.

  ‘Is it too much tonight?’ Hugh asked. ‘Did you need an excuse to get out of there?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Because of me?’

  ‘Because of me,’ I said, and I’d promised I wouldn’t cry in front of him, I’d promised I wouldn’t make a fool of myself, but I’d also promised to be honest. I could feel my nose burning, feel my throat tighten as I nodded, and I didn’t boo-hoo, but a couple of tears shot out as I answered him. ‘It’s hell to see you too.’

  ‘I’m sorry too. I just…’ He scrunched his eyes closed. ‘I was crazy about you, Alice, but it was too hard. I shouldn’t have said all that I said. I wanted to help you, but…’