‘Because I thought you’d worry. Because I thought you’d tell me to dump Daniel. Because I couldn’t think of how to tell you without it sounding really bad.’
‘Is there a way?’
‘Probably not. It’s complicated. There’s still no excuse for what he did, but I understand why he reacted in that way. He’s really sorry. He insisted on meeting with Stevie so he could apologise in person.’
‘I know. Stevie said.’
‘Are you going to lecture me?’
Sarah shrugged and looked at me with pity in her eyes. ‘Do I need to? Do you want me to tell you that you’re playing with fire going out with someone who goes around punching people? Because I can do that quite easily. But I suspect you’ve lectured yourself enough already, haven’t you?’
I fiddled with a beer mat. ‘I know what I’m doing. He won’t do it again and he’d never lay a finger on me.’
‘How do you know that?’
‘I just know. There was a reason why he reacted the way he did. I know it doesn’t justify it. He was mortified, you know. But please don’t worry. He really won’t touch me.’
‘I hope not. Or he’ll end up with more than a broken nose!’
I smiled, but a battle raged inside me. Stevie thought I should dump him, Sarah thought I should dump him, and I’d already been questioning whether it was time to say goodbye before the incident, knowing that I liked him but didn’t love him. Since the incident, I wasn’t sure I even liked him that much. Why was I still clinging on by the fingernails?
Sarah placed her hand over mine. ‘It’s only because we care, you know.’
‘I know and I appreciate it. But I’m really okay.’
She removed her hand and sat back in her chair. ‘Okay. Subject dropped. I haven’t seen Auntie Kay since I sorted out that photography tutoring for her. How’s it going?’
‘Brilliantly.’ My shoulders relaxed and I put the part-shredded beer mat down. ‘She went out with Philip and Michael last Friday and I’ve seen her photos. They’re amazing. I think she may have a hidden talent.’
‘Who has?’ asked Clare, returning with our drinks.
‘Auntie Kay.’ Sarah explained about her photography interest and the tutoring she’d set up, then I told them about Michael’s photos and how talented he was.
All too soon, Sarah announced she had to get back to the shop. She hugged Callie goodbye and agreed to meet Clare at home later. As she hugged me, she whispered into my ear, ‘Are you sure you’ve picked the right brother?’ I stiffened. What was that supposed to mean?
‘Thanks for helping me choose the dress,’ she said to us all. ‘Please don’t scheme anything too embarrassing for my hen do. Callie, you may need to act as referee between these two so good luck with that.’
‘It’ll be grand,’ Clare said. ‘Go and do some work you big slacker.’
Was I sure I’d picked the right brother? My stomach churned as I twisted in my seat and watched Sarah walk back down the precinct towards Castle Street. Why had she said that? Probably because I’d just spent twenty minutes gulping down my wine and raving about how talented Michael was. What an idiot. It wasn’t like I fancied him. But then I pictured him looking out of the back of his dad’s 4x4 after they picked up Kay, answering the door with the towel round his waist, and whilst he talked animatedly about his photography projects. Oh my goodness, was that it? Was that why I was hanging onto Daniel, because it gave me an excuse to see Michael? Why else would I still be with someone I didn’t even like anymore? No!
‘Elise! Have you heard anything we’ve just said?’ I turned back round to face Clare.
‘Sorry, I…’
‘Will there be somewhere you’d rather be?’
‘No. Sorry. What were you saying?’
‘We were discussing whether Sarah had said anything she either did or didn’t want for her hen do.’ Callie shuffled in her seat as if embarrassed. I couldn’t blame her. But Sarah’s words and my subsequent thought pattern had completely thrown me and I was a little too distracted to fight with Clare.
‘Oh, right. And what did you conclude?’
‘Sarah told me last night that she doesn’t want any silly challenges like kissing loads of blokes or gathering pairs of pants,’ Clare said, ‘but she’s happy to dress up in a veil and L-plates.’
‘And I said I haven’t really chatted to her about it, but I know she liked the sound of what I did for my hen do,’ Callie added.
‘What was that, then?’
Clare tutted. ‘Jesus. Will you not pay attention? We’ve discussed that too.’
‘Do you want me to go?’
‘You might as well. Right now, you’re about as much use as a one-legged cat trying to bury a turd on a frozen lake.’
Callie’s mouth started twitching. She looked like a woman who didn’t know whether to laugh, cry, or flee the bar. I opened my mouth to say something snide, but instead, a bubble of laughter erupted. Callie clearly took that as her cue to join in. She had the most infectious laugh; long pauses in which her shoulders just bounced up and down followed by a high-pitched squeak. Soon we were all clutching our sides. Tears streamed down Clare’s cheeks and I got the hiccups.
‘I think I needed that,’ I said when the laughter finally ceased.
‘Me too,’ Callie said. ‘But my sides hurt now.’
‘Look, I’m sorry I wasn’t listening. You have my full attention now. Can we call a truce?’
Clare nodded. ‘Fine by me. I don’t fancy spending the rest of the afternoon arguing.’
‘So, Callie, what did you do for your hen do?’ I asked.
‘Hired a cottage in Wales for a week, did some sightseeing and a day in a spa with afternoon tea, but the main part was a two-day adventure experience. We went gorge-walking, laser clay shooting, tank driving… All sorts of stuff. It was amazing.’
‘And Sarah said she liked the sound of that?’ I asked, surprised.
‘All except the gorge-walking, I think. She said she’d done it once and hated it, but she didn’t expand on that.’
‘She did it about three years ago on a hen weekend,’ I said. ‘She only went to fill in the numbers and she’d never have gone if she’d known what was planned. She has this fear of ropes and zip-wires so she hated every minute of it. Then, to top it all, she met Jason while she was away.’
‘Jason?’
‘Her ex,’ Clare said. ‘Fecking eejit. She dumped him just before she moved here, but not before she’d wasted two years on him.’
‘Oh. Just as well she did dump him or she’d not have moved back and met my brother.’ Callie beamed. ‘We don’t have to do anything like gorge-walking. I’ve done some research and there’s a place in Northumberland called The Adult Playground. It’s a disused airbase and it’s got different vehicles like tanks, army trucks, racing cars, steam rollers, diggers. You name it, they’ve got it. They’ve also got things like laser clays, grass sledging, and this really wet, muddy assault course that looks brilliant.’
I smiled. ‘Sounds fun, but it sounds like something Clare would hate.’
‘Would I now? And how will you be coming to that conclusion?’
‘Look at you.’ I indicated the short, tight, navy dress, high heels, perfectly manicured nails and immaculate make-up. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever seen you in jeans or without make-up. Somehow I can’t see you driving a tank or scrambling over a cargo net.’
Clare leaned forward on the table and swirled the remnants of her wine around her glass. ‘And you’ve come to that conclusion purely from how I look, so you have.’
‘Yes. There’s no way you’d be seen dead in a boiler suit covered in mud.’
‘You’re saying that because I dress a certain way, get manicures, spend time on my hair and make-up, that it somehow defines me? That you know exactly the type of person I am?�
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I nodded. ‘Yes! The type of person who doesn’t like to let her hair loose and get covered in mud.’
Clare knocked back the last of her wine then stared at me. ‘Well no wonder,’ she said.
‘No wonder what?’
‘Given that you’re so quick to make assumptions about people and put them in boxes, it’s no wonder your poor husband didn’t dare tell you he was gay. No wonder he lied and found real love behind your back. Being married to someone as judgemental as you must have been hell on earth.’
I heard Callie gasp. In slow motion, she turned from Clare towards me, her mouth open and her eyes wide. ‘Oh, Clare,’ she whispered. ‘That was—’
But I didn’t stick around to hear the end of the sentence. ‘Excuse me,’ I muttered, then fled. I could barely breathe as I ran through the bar and down the stairs to the ladies. My chest felt tight, my stomach felt tight, my eyes were blurred. I threw myself to my knees in the first cubicle and vomited. Tears rolled down my cheek as I vomited again and again.
Confident that I was spent, for the time-being at least, I wiped my mouth on some tissue paper and flushed the toilet then leaned against the wall, limp and exhausted.
‘Elise? Are you in here? It’s Callie.’
I tried to shut the door, but wasn’t quick enough.
‘What are you doing on the floor?’
It was pointless lying. Why else does a person sit on the floor of a public toilet? ‘I’ve been sick.’
‘Ooh, not pregnant are you?’ she said.
‘Of course not. I’m struggling to shift this gastric flu that I’ve had for weeks.’
Callie nodded. ‘Sorry, I was only kidding. I talk too much. Open mouth, don’t engage brain. That’s me. Especially when I’m nervous. And I’m really nervous right now around you two. I told Sarah I could handle it, but I’m way out of my depth.’
I didn’t know what to say. Did she want me to say everything was okay because it really, really wasn’t and I wasn’t going to lie? I pressed down on the toilet seat and heaved myself to my feet. ‘What do you want, Callie?’
‘To check on you. What Clare said was way out of order and she knows it.’
I grabbed some more loo roll and blew my nose, wiped my eyes then flushed it away. ‘So she rushed down here to apologise, then. Oh no, she didn’t. She sent you to do her dirty work instead.’
‘She was coming, but I stopped her. I told her you probably wouldn’t want to see her right now.’
‘You’re not wrong there.’ I squeezed past her to the sinks where I washed my hands and splashed some cold water onto my face.
‘Are you coming back upstairs?’
I dabbed my face dry with a paper towel and turned to look at Callie. She looked terrified. Who could blame her? That had been an ugly scene upstairs; the worst ever exchange I’d had with Clare and poor Callie had been caught right in the middle.
‘I can’t live down here, can I? Give me a minute and I’ll be up, but I won’t be staying. I hope you understand that.’
‘And I hope you’ll understand this. It’s the same thing I’ve just said to Clare. I barely know either of you, but I do know you’ve got years of bad history between you. I don’t know what it’s about and I don’t really care. What I do care about is Sarah. The reason the three of us are in Minty’s this afternoon is because you two also care about Sarah. Or at least I hope you do.’
‘Of course I—’
‘I haven’t finished.’ Callie pushed back her shoulders, stood a little taller, and fixed her eyes on mine. ‘Sarah loves you both, but as I understand it, you’ve done nothing but cause heartache for her with your constant bickering and sniping at each other over the years. I hope the performance upstairs was not an example of how you usually behave when you’re together because, if it was, you must have put Sarah through absolute hell. If you were my friends and you behaved like that, I’d have ditched you both because what I’ve seen is toxic. It would wear down even the most patient person.’
I opened my mouth, but she silenced me with a raise of her hand.
‘I’ll tell you when I’m finished. Don’t say it’s all Clare’s fault. Yes, what she said upstairs was inexcusable, but I’ve seen you dish it too and she was right; you were being rude and judgemental about her just now. There’s less than four months until the wedding. I don’t give a damn whether you tear each other to shreds after that, but for the next four months, you’re going to act like the grown up mature women I know you both are and not the childish idiots you become when you get together. Sarah’s dreamed of this day all of her life and you’re not going to ruin it for her. When we go upstairs, I’m going home. I know you want to leave too, but I urge you and Clare to get a coffee, sober up, and talk instead. Really talk. Work out why the hell you hate each other and find a way to turn that around. Can you do that?’
I looked down at the woman who was a good head and shoulders shorter than me and six years my junior, and I felt ashamed. Weren’t you meant to become more mature and wise as you aged? ‘Give me two minutes,’ I said.
‘I’ll wait upstairs with Clare until you appear, then I’m off.’ She opened the door. ‘Did you know that Sarah toyed with not having any bridesmaids for her wedding? Nick told me that she had a panic about it. She couldn’t pick between you, but knew you’d tear strips off each other if you were bridesmaids together. She was in tears about it. That’s why they were late to their own engagement party.’
‘No,’ I muttered. ‘She didn’t say.’ Poor Sarah. Had we really caused that?
‘Of course she didn’t. She doesn’t want to lose either of you so she ties herself in knots trying to keep the peace. And did you know that she was going to turn down the December date at Sherrington Hall because she was devastated about what had happened with you and your husband? She was worried that you may think she didn’t care if she started planning her dream day.’
‘She did what? She said she was going to turn it down, but I assumed that was because it was so soon, not because of me.’
‘Sarah can’t wait to get married,’ Callie said. ‘You know that. The only reason to turn it down was because of your situation. Nick had to beg her to accept the cancellation because he knew they’d have to wait a couple of years if she didn’t. I know that what you’re going through right now is one of the shittiest things that could happen to someone, but don’t punish everyone else because of it.’ She visibly relaxed. ‘I’ve said my piece. I’ll see you upstairs.’
I rested my hands on the sink unit and drew a few deep breaths. That was me well and truly told. She was right, though. She’d told some home truths and it was finally time for Clare and me to do the same and address whatever it was that had caused a wedge between us for over a decade. Best get this over with…
Chapter 25
Clare stood up as I tentatively approached the table. Her eyes were red as though she’d been crying. Surely not. Sarah said Clare never cried. Callie stood up too and pointed to a pot of tea and a glass of water on the table. ‘On me. Clare says you don’t drink coffee. I hope you two can sort things out.’
‘Sorry, Callie,’ I said.
‘Don’t be sorry. Just sort it out. Now.’ She sighed, shook her head, then left.
Clare indicated for me to sit. My legs felt very weak so I was grateful to take a seat before they buckled. I gulped on the water, hands shaking. Were the shakes from being sick, my lecture from Callie, or the confrontation I was about to have? Probably all three.
‘Elise, I’m so sorry,’ Clare said. ‘I mean that genuinely from the heart.’ Her green eyes pleaded with mine. ‘I’ve no idea what made me say something like that. You hit a raw nerve and I lashed out.’
‘It hurt.’
‘I know. It was meant to. It’s a gift of mine. Or an affliction.’ She pointed two fingers to her head as if holding up an imaginary gun. ‘
Quick brain, quick to dish out insults, but also quick to regret them. Like just now.’
I’d need to accept her apology or we’d never move on. I took a sip of my tea. ‘You said I hit a nerve. I don’t follow.’
Clare picked up a beer mat and tore little strips off it. ‘I don’t have many friends,’ she said. ‘I have lots of acquaintances, but not many people who I would call genuine friends. I find it hard to trust people and very hard to let them in. Sarah’s the only person I’ve really let get close to me, but even then, there’s a lot I’m guarded about.’
‘About what? About your past?’
‘Yes. And I’m not going to confess all about it to you either just now.’
‘I wasn’t asking you to.’
Clare looked up for a moment and caught my eye. ‘Good. Because I don’t want to talk about it.’ She cast her eyes down and continued shredding the beer mat. ‘Let’s just say that some bad stuff happened when I was younger. I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life being the sort of person to whom bad things happened so I imagined the type of person I wanted to be, someone strong and confident who took no shit. I liked that person so I became her, particularly at work. It’s worked for me. I’ve just been promoted as a result. But that person’s not the whole me. Clothes, cosmetics, manicures… it’s just an image for that person, but it’s one that makes me feel comfortable and safe. It’s the one I want the outside world to see. It doesn’t define me, though. When I’m in on my own, I wander around make-up free wearing a Minnie Mouse onesie. That’s more the kind of person I am. But don’t you dare tell anyone that. Especially the onesie thing.’
I smiled. Clare in a Minnie Mouse onesie was not an image I found very easy to conjure up. ‘I’m sorry. As you said, I don’t really know you. I didn’t think.’
Clare pushed aside the scraps of beer mat and looked up. ‘Ditto. Must be an epidemic.’
I took another sip of my water. ‘I have a tricky question. Why are we like this with each other? Maybe addressing that will help us move on.’
Clare shrugged. ‘It’s how it’s always been.’
Getting over Gary (Whitsborough Bay Trilogy Book 2) Page 19