by Fiona Gibson
‘It sounds as if you’re blaming yourself for everything,’ Hannah says, touching her hand.
‘I’m not. It’s up to me and Barney to make it work, but …’ Sadie’s eyes mist as she takes a deep breath. ‘I think,’ she continues, ‘if I had more in my life to think about, then I wouldn’t blow little things out of proportion …’
‘Are you thinking of going back to work?’ Lou suggests.
‘Maybe. I hadn’t planned to, but maybe in a few months’ time, I’ll look into going back part-time. I might even start designing again too.’
‘What, lingerie?’ Hannah grins. ‘You really should. You’re wasting your talents, you know …’
‘Well, I’ve been wondering,’ Sadie says, ‘whether there’s a market out for there for maternity and nursing underwear that’s not hideous, and bras that don’t look like awful satin hammocks …’
‘Would that mean moving back to London?’ Hannah blurts out. ‘I hope it does. God, I’d love it if you were near me. I need an ally …’
‘Well, a bit closer maybe, if I was teaching …’ Sadie tails off. ‘I’ll have to talk it over with Barney.’
‘Go on,’ Hannah urges her. ‘Use all your persuasive womanly powers.’
‘You should mention it on Han’s wedding night,’ Lou suggests, ‘at that hotel. And don’t wear your sensible nursing bra either. Dig out one of your hand-made corsets from the old days.’
‘You know,’ Sadie says, smiling mischievously as the waitress approaches to take their dessert orders, ‘I might do just that.’
‘I’ve got a proposition for you, Hannah.’ Felix places three tall glasses of inky liquid on their table and perches on the vacant fourth chair.
‘Felix, she’s marrying Ryan,’ Sadie teases, placing a conciliatory hand on his arm. ‘I’m sorry, but it’s all sorted …’
‘You break my heart,’ he declares with a shake of his head, ‘but listen – I’ve had an idea about those wicked little stepkids of yours, Hannah …’
‘What’s that?’
‘You need some space, right? Somewhere you can call your own, at least for a couple of hours or so …’ He pushes back his badly-cut choppy blond hair.
‘She needs a shed,’ Lou smirks.
‘Well, I was actually thinking of my flat. It’s in Bow, so not far from you …’
‘You’d be like Woody Allen and Mia Farrow,’ Lou exclaims.
Hannah laughs, fishing a perfectly-formed blackberry from her drink and popping it into her mouth. ‘Felix, I think you’re great, but I’m not so sure about you and me as flatmates, you know?’
‘Yes, but I’m up here for the next twelve days and later on I’m in Bath, scouting for premises for a new place. You could use it for a bit of respite.’
‘I can’t just use your flat,’ she exclaims.
‘Ah, but you’d be doing me a favour,’ he explains. ‘You see, I’ve hardly been there these past few months and it’s been empty for far too long.’
‘You’d like me to flat-sit for you?’ she asks.
Felix nods. ‘God, one of these days I’m going to come back and find a load of squatters lying pissed on my Heal’s rug.’
‘I’ll roll up the rug first,’ Hannah teases him, ‘if I’m planning on having a few drinks.’
Felix touches her arm, his cheeks flushed, his beady little eyes framed by pale lashes. ‘I can tell you’re a well-brought up girl, Hannah. But there’s another thing too. It’s a soulless place – I’ve only had it for a year, never had the time to do anything with it. And I’ve seen your paintings, had a good old prowl around on the web and I know this isn’t the usual sort of thing you do, but …’ He hesitates, smiling in recognition at a group of smart thirty-somethings who’ve swept into the bar, all toffee tans and Armani.
‘You want me to do your portrait?’ She sips the blackberry cocktail, heady and fruity with a potent kick.
‘God, no,’ Felix guffaws. ‘It’s traumatic enough having my passport photo done. No, I mean … I wondered if you’d paint a mural for me in the living room. Nothing huge – just something to personalise the space, give it some life. I was thinking of something around the window in the living room – it’s got a fabulous view and I’d like to make a feature of it. I’d pay you of course.’
‘I wouldn’t take any money from you, Felix,’ Hannah exclaims. ‘You’ve kept us in cocktails these past couple of nights and anyway, I haven’t painted for months and I need a project. So yes, I’d love to do it.’
Felix beams at her. ‘That’s fantastic. What time’s your train home tomorrow? I’ll have a spare key cut and meet you at the station.’
‘We leave at three.’
‘Okay, I’ll call you in the morning.’ Felix stands up, picking up the empty tray.
‘Felix,’ Hannah calls after him, ‘can I ask you something?’ He nods and heads back towards their table.
‘What is it, Han?’
‘I …’ She hesitates. ‘Why have you been so generous these past few days? There was all that champagne on the train and cocktails both nights. We must’ve cost you a fortune …’
‘Well,’ he blusters, and even in the dim light she can tell he’s blushing. ‘I guess I’m just the sharing sort.’
‘But there’s more to it than that, isn’t there?’ Hannah pauses. ‘I don’t want to seem ungrateful, but—’
Felix nods. ‘You’re right. I guess I was just lucky to meet you girls at a particularly, um … I don’t want to sound overdramatic but …’
‘A particularly what, Felix?’ Lou asks, frowning.
Looking around, he fixes his gaze on each of the girls in turn. ‘You remember I told you about my wedding that never happened?’
‘Uh-huh,’ Sadie murmurs.
‘Well, it was supposed to be yesterday.’
‘What?’ Hannah exclaims. ‘You mean … you’d only found about your girlfriend and that other man—’
‘Rashley.’ He nods. ‘Yep – the big announcement was on Thursday night.’
‘So, while we were all drinking your champagne on the train, you should’ve been getting married?’ Sadie blurts out. ‘God, Felix. I wish we’d known.’
Felix nods, pressing his lips firmly together. ‘I had to get away. They don’t need me here’ – he gestures around the packed bar – ‘in fact the place runs better when I’m not around, getting in the way, insisting on my ridiculous bespoke cocktails, which my staff reckon are the most ridiculous idea they’ve ever heard …’
‘Why didn’t you tell us it’d just happened?’ Lou asks softly.
Felix sighs. ‘I couldn’t, not with you all heading off to celebrate Hannah’s wedding. I didn’t want to put a dampener on your celebrations.’
‘You did anything but,’ Hannah says warmly. ‘It was lovely meeting you.’
‘And running into you three has got me through these past couple of days,’ he declares. ‘D’you know, I was all set to down all that champagne by myself. God knows what state I’d have been in if you hadn’t been there. I’d probably have ended up in the Royal Infirmary having my stomach pumped.’
‘Glad we could help,’ Sadie says, touching his arm.
‘You definitely did me a favour.’ He smiles now, absent-mindedly picking up Hannah’s glass and taking a sip. ‘Seriously, you took me out of myself and made me think, well, if I can meet three lovely girls who are happy to hang out with me and don’t write me off as a complete fuck-up …’
‘Of course we don’t!’ Hannah exclaims. ‘I just wish we hadn’t gone on about our own problems.’
‘Maybe that’s exactly what I needed,’ he says. ‘It helped to put things into perspective for me as if …’ He shrugs. ‘I don’t know. This sounds crazy but it was as if I was meant to meet you.’
‘Oh, Felix.’ Hannah puts her arms around him and hugs him tightly. ‘I can’t believe you were meant to be getting married yesterday.’
‘Me neither.’ He pulls away and smiles at her. ‘Perhaps I
had a lucky escape. Anyway, I’d better go hassle my staff. They’ll be wondering what’s wrong with me. And, Hannah, I’ll be back in London a week on Thursday … I know you’ll be busy with the wedding so I don’t expect anything finished by then …’
‘Well, I’ll see what I can do,’ she smiles.
‘I’ll leave it completely up to you.’
Hannah nods, draining the remains of the blackberry concoction, just as her old friend Johnny walks in through the door, bang on time at 10 pm.
SIXTY-FIVE
Lou wakes up on a hazy Sunday morning in a bed that’s not her bed. It’s not her bed in the hotel room, either. It’s an unfamiliar bed in an unfamiliar room.
She sits up slowly, studying the grey and cream striped double duvet and the pale blue blind filtering soft morning light. Lou’s entire body is tense and her eyes feel scratchy and dry. She studies the cream-coloured wardrobe and the framed film posters on the wall. One depicts a pensive Steve McQueen in black and white above a blur of cars with the film’s title, Bullitt, in red.
‘Why are you on the sofa, Dad?’ The child’s voice gives her a jolt.
‘Because a friend stayed over,’ comes the reply as Lou leans back against the plump pillows, closing her eyes as snippets from the previous night start to replay in her mind.
She remembers the four of them, crammed around the small circular table at Felix’s bar until Johnny checked his watch at ten to twelve and said he had to go. He didn’t usually use a babysitter on his Cal nights but, well, he hadn’t been able to resist coming along.
A small smile tweaks Lou’s lips as she recalls Johnny hesitating, clearly not wanting to leave, and something else – perhaps the effects of Felix’s blackberry cocktail, or that voicemail message from Astrid – pulling her out of her chair and across the floor towards him where she’d murmured, ‘Can I come with you? Just to talk, like we used to?’ And now she replays Johnny saying yes, of course, as she glanced back to see Hannah and Sadie grinning like mad and quickly trying to straighten their faces.
They’d come back here to Johnny’s flat where he’d let them in quietly and introduced her to Miriam, the babysitter with blazing red hair and colossal gold earrings dripping with beads.
Then … chatting. Nothing more than chatting late into the night until the sky lightened with streaks of mauve. Johnny said she could sleep in his bed, he wouldn’t hear of putting her on the sofa, not when she was travelling tomorrow. ‘It’s hardly going to be arduous,’ she’d joked. ‘I’ll just be sitting with Sadie and Han for three hours, drinking coffee.’ He’d insisted, though, whispering apologies for the state of the place as he hastily smoothed out the duvet.
And now, as Cal says, ‘Which friend stayed over?’ Lou recalls a kiss, brief yet head-swimmingly lovely, a goodnight kiss like she’d never had in her life.
‘Her name’s Lou,’ Johnny tells his son.
‘Lou’s boyfriend punched you!’ the child exclaims. ‘What happens if he finds out she stayed here?’
‘I don’t think he will,’ Johnny murmurs. ‘Anyway, listen, d’you want some of that chocolatey Weetabix?’
‘Did you get strawberry tarts yesterday?’
‘No, they didn’t have any …’
‘Ugghhh,’ Cal groans.
‘I know,’ Johnny says levelly. ‘You’re so deprived. You should probably get on to social services …’
Lou hears the clink of crockery as she steps onto the grey carpet. She is wearing a plain black T-shirt, man-sized, plus the sensible white cotton knickers that she often suspected Spike found faintly disappointing. What kind of underwear would Astrid wear for him? she muses. Complicated basques and corsets like the kind Sadie made for her degree show? Lou’s phone beeps with an incoming text, and she retrieves it from the pocket of her jacket, which is draped over a chair. ARE YOU ALIVE? reads Sadie’s text. Lou smiles and texts YES VERY just as there’s a soft knock on the bedroom door.
‘Hi,’ she calls out. ‘Come in.’ The door opens, and Johnny peers around it.
‘Sleep okay?’
‘Yes, really well.’
He pauses, as if fearing that he might be trespassing in his own room. ‘I’ll make you some breakfast. Feel free to have a shower if you like … there’s a dressing gown on the back of the door.’
‘Thanks. And … thanks for last night, Johnny. Sorry for keeping you up so late.’
‘Well,’ he says with a smile that warms her heart, ‘we had a lot to catch up on, didn’t we?’
If hearing about Josh and Daisy had made Lou wary of getting to know other people’s children, Cal dispels her fears in an instant. ‘I told Dad to go into that place and talk to you,’ he says cheerfully, shovelling Weetabix into his mouth, ‘but he wouldn’t. He always says to me to be polite and talk to people but he wouldn’t—’
‘Cal,’ Johnny says hotly, ‘it wasn’t exactly like that.’
Lou laughs, seeing him flush as he fills her mug with coffee. ‘Yeah it was.’ Cal grins at Lou. ‘Dad was spying on you.’
‘Were you, Johnny?’ She mock-frowns at him. ‘I’m very flattered actually.’
‘Yeah, okay, Cal,’ Johnny mutters, plucking toast from the toaster. ‘Anyway, you’d better hurry up and get dressed because we’ve got a few jobs to do at the allotment this morning. You’re welcome to come too, if you like,’ he adds, turning to Lou.
‘I’d love to,’ she says, ‘but I’d better get back to the hotel and pack. We’ve got to check out by twelve, and I think Hannah wants a quick whirl round the shops before we catch our train.’
‘Some other time then?’ Johnny asks.
Lou glances at him as he busies himself with screwing the lids back onto the jars of jam and Nutella on the table. ‘Yes, I’d love that.’
‘Are you coming to stay again?’ Cal asks eagerly.
‘Well …’ She shrugs and glances at Johnny. ‘Maybe. We’ll see.’
‘Or we could visit you, couldn’t we, Dad?’
‘Er, yeah. Sometime maybe …’ Clearly flustered, Johnny places the jars back in the cupboard.
‘I hadn’t finished with that,’ Cal reprimands him. ‘I was gonna have Nutella on toast.’
‘But you’ve had cereal …’
‘I’m still hungry.’ Cal fixes his gaze on Lou as his father hands him the sticky jar. ‘You live in York, don’t you?’ he adds.
‘Yes, that’s right,’ Lou says, surprised. ‘Have you ever been there?’
‘Yeah, we went on a school trip. We went to this massive church.’
‘It was probably York Minster. It is pretty massive …’
Cal wrinkles his nose as he twists the lid off the jar. ‘That was a bit boring. But then we went to a theme park and there was this motorbike ride and it went from, like, dead still to—’ He makes a whooshing noise and shoots his flattened hand across the table. ‘And I was sick,’ he adds gravely, ‘like, seven times.’
‘That’s awful, Cal,’ Lou exclaims. ‘What happened?’
‘It did something to my brain,’ he says with a trace of pride.
‘He got concussion,’ Johnny says, pulling up a chair and sitting beside his son. ‘Something to do with the velocity. He was fine, though. But if we do visit Lou sometime’ – he catches her eye across the table – ‘and go to that theme park again, we’ll maybe give the motorbike ride a miss.’
‘Awww.’
‘But there are loads of other rides,’ Lou reassures him. ‘There are at least three roller coasters as far as I remember, and one of them has a double loop.’
‘Will you go on them with me?’ Cal wants to know.
‘Yes, I love roller coasters.’ Lou takes a sip of her coffee and munches a slice of toast.
‘Dad hates ’em,’ Cal says darkly.
‘Well, aren’t I just a pathetic specimen of a father,’ Johnny says briskly, clearing the table as Lou gets to her feet.
‘Hardly,’ she says with a smile. ‘But look – I’d better get back. It was nic
e to meet you, Cal’ – he nods and licks the Nutella spoon – ‘and Johnny, thanks for giving up your bed for me.’
‘No problem,’ he says as sees her to the door. ‘Your train leaves at three, right?’
‘Yes.’
‘We’ll come and see you off …’
‘Oh, you don’t have to—’ She stops herself and looks at him, knowing she wants him to, very much.
Three suitcases rattle and bump along the pavement as Hannah, Sadie and Lou make their way towards the station. ‘What d’you think?’ Hannah asks, indicating a dress in the window of a chic wedding boutique.
‘It’s gorgeous,’ Sadie exclaims.
‘It’s got your name on it,’ Lou says, craning forward to read an imaginary label. ‘Hannah McShane, it says right here. And look – the shop’s open.’
‘Well,’ Hannah says, her blue eyes shining, ‘I’m sort of thinking …’
‘What – for the wedding?’ Sadie exclaims. ‘But I thought you already had a dress.’
Hannah pulls a wry smile. ‘I have but …’ She hesitates, turning away from the window to face her friends. ‘… I don’t know what I was thinking when I chose it. It’s plain cream – sorry, oyster…’ She winces. ‘And now I think I bought it because it’s the sort of dress I thought a sensible bride should wear. But it’s so … nothingy. As if I was desperate not to offend anyone or make the children think I was somehow trying to take their mother’s place.’ She shakes her head, conscious of how ridiculous she sounds. ‘It’s the kind of dress I reckoned Daisy and Josh couldn’t possibly find fault with, and now I’m thinking …’
‘… That’s not really the way to choose your wedding dress,’ Sadie offers.
‘But then,’ Hannah murmurs, pulling out her phone from her pocket, ‘Daisy is really good with clothes …’
‘But she’s only ten, isn’t she?’ Lou laughs.
‘Yes, but you should see the way she throws things together. Hang on a minute …’ Hannah steps towards the window, framing the searing red dress on the screen of her phone.