by Shari Low
Cue another, ‘Oh. My. God!’ This time said in the voice of Chandler’s girlfriend Janice.
‘That’s so amazing! And romantic! Oh Lou, I wish I was there. I think that’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever heard. It’s so . . .’
I hung up.
I know, I’m a terrible friend. But right there, right then, I couldn’t listen to any more. I needed . . .
Speed Dial 3.
‘What?’ The voice was deadpan and decidedly irritated.
‘Ginger, it’s me.’
‘Aren’t you in New York?’
‘Yes.’
‘OK, I just forgave you for calling at midnight then. Whassup?’
‘Marc planned a wedding here.’
‘That’s so cool. For when?’
‘Now. Today.’
‘WHAT???? What the fuck was he thinking?’
This was more like it.
‘He wanted to surprise me.’
‘Wanted to bloody take charge, you mean. Why would he think you wanted to get married over there with none of us with you? That’s crazy.’ She paused for a moment, obviously realising that her stance could be perceived as a tad inflammatory. ‘I mean, unless you want to do it in which case, you know, I suppose it’s OK. Do you want to get married there?’
‘No.’
There was another momentary pause before she blurted, ‘Oh thank fuck. In that case he’s a tit because he should have known that you’d hate it. And Josie will kill him. Does she know?’
‘No.’
‘Wow, there’s going to be blood. So what time are you doing it and where are you now?’
She obviously hadn’t quite grasped the full extent of the debacle that was the current situation.
‘In an hour and I’m sitting in a pizza joint. We were on our way there and I jumped out of the taxi at St Patrick’s Cathedral and bolted. And I lost –’ a sob caught in my throat ‘– a shoe.’
‘Bloody hell, I can’t believe I’m missing this. So what are you going to do?’
‘I don’t know. I love him, Ginger, but I just got spooked and freaked out and I . . . What have I done? Lizzy says it’s the most romantic thing that she’s ever heard.’
‘You’re taking relationship input from the woman who still watches Dirty Dancing every week and then calls her husband Johnny when she bangs him afterwards?’
‘Lizzy does that?’
‘I’ve no idea but it’s a great rumour so I think we should spread it. But anyway, don’t you dare beat yourself up about this. He should have known it was insane to spring it on you. You’re far too fucked up for that kind of thing.’
‘Thanks. I think.’ I sighed, and not just because my dress had just snagged on the underside of the table. ‘What am I going to do?’
Ginger was obviously struggling to summon up the sympathetic and logical side of her personality.
‘It’s up to you, honey. Do you want to marry him?’
‘Yes. Definitely. No. I mean, I do, but it’s just all so sudden.’
It was obvious from her voice that she was trying to be reasonable. Not one of Ginger’s normal traits. ‘Is it Marc that’s the problem or the wedding?’
Impressive. Perception wasn’t one of her normal traits either.
‘The wedding. I love Marc and we’re, you know, happy. Or at least we were until half an hour ago. I don’t think he’s going to be too chipper now.’
‘Then maybe it’s a good thing. Like pulling a plaster off. It’ll be over and done and then you can just get on with your life. If you don’t go through with it over there then you’ll end up coming back here, planning a huge big ceremony that will stress you out and cost you a fortune. Then we’ll all start avoiding you because all you’ll talk about will be dresses and cars and whether or not you should invite the old lady who lived next door to you when you were six.’
‘She was lovely.’
‘I know but I think she’s probably dead so that solves that problem.’
For the first time in the last twenty-four hours, I laughed. And meant it.
This is what I needed. I just needed to have a pal by my side, even if it was via phone and she was 1,764 miles away. I’d looked that up before I came.
‘You know, maybe Lizzy was right, Lou. Maybe this is romantic.’
I had no idea what to say so I chewed on my bottom lip instead.
She had a point.
‘Ginger, I . . .’
The hairs on the back of my neck stood up as Marc materialised in front of me, his face flushed, his tie pulled open at the neck, one hand clutching two hundred dollars worth of Jimmy Choo. The servers behind the counter were now nudging each other and pointing in our direction. For someone who hated being the centre of attention, I seemed to be playing the starring role on a regular basis these days.
‘What the hell was that all about?’ Despite the fact that he’d probably run the whole way, he was barely out of breath. That’s the kind of fine physical specimen that he was.
‘Lou? Lou! What’s going on?’ Ginger sounded as agitated as I felt.
‘I’ll phone you back.’
Slowly, I took the phone down from my ear and placed it on the table, never once losing eye contact with Marc. How could I do this to him? I loved him and he was standing there, nope, sitting now, and he looked so . . . wounded.
‘Lou? Who are you phoning?’
‘Ginger.’
His expression darkened. ‘Great. She’s always sensible in a crisis.’
‘I’m . . . I’m sorry. About the whole running thing. I kinda freaked out.’
‘You think?’ The words were sarcastic but his face softened and there was a hint of a rueful smile.
God, I loved him. I did. What was I playing at?
He reached across the table and took my hand – a pretty compassionate gesture given the circumstances. If the roles had been reversed I had a feeling that Marc would be sitting there wearing a thin crust, extra-large meat feast by now.
‘Babe, I love you. But I can’t keep doing this. I want to get married, have children, grow old with you but you’re still acting like this is some kind of student romance that means nothing.’
‘It doesn’t mean nothing!’ I was horrified that he thought that. But then, given today’s course of events it probably wasn’t exactly a stretch. ‘I want all those things too.’
‘Then prove it, Lou. Marry me today. Because if we don’t do it right now then I don’t think we ever will.’
Twenty-four
Lou
St Kentigern Hotel, Glasgow. Saturday morning, 2.30am.
‘Nightcap or bed?’ Ginger asked. ‘And by that I mean, let’s have a nightcap.’
The bar was much quieter now, and a very smart man in a suit had already checked that we were residents and therefore still entitled to order drinks without contravening licensing laws.
I was already feeling slightly queasy – I’m not sure if it was the wine or the memory of Marc’s face as he waited on my answer.
‘Do you ever regret your decision?’ Lizzy asked.
I didn’t even need to think about it. On the scale of ‘most pivotal and scary moments of my life’ it rated pretty high, yet when I’d calmed down the answer was obvious. ‘No. I just regret . . .’
‘Well, now what are three gorgeous ladies like yourselves doing sitting here alone at this time of night.’
A tourist. Obviously American. Obviously wealthy.
Obviously about to feel the wrath of Ginger if he didn’t cut the cheesy patter and move on.
I decided to intervene, for all our sakes. ‘We’re just leaving actually,’ I told him, picking up my handbag and gesturing to the others.
‘We are?’ replied Ginger, clearly not impressed with my sleaze-avoidance tactics.
‘We are.’ God bless Lizzy for reinforcing my point.
‘Now, now, don’t be so hasty. Champagne. How about I buy you girls a bottle of champagne and you can tell me all about Glasgow?’
Ginger knew when she was beat. Slightly unsteadily, she leaned over, picked up her bag and stood up.
‘Sorry, as my friends said, we’re just leaving.’
Texan Tourist wasn’t impressed. He, unlike us, obviously hadn’t quite mastered the art of cutting his losses.
Twenty-five
Lou
2001 – Aged 31
There was no doubt about it, Marc was definitely getting even more handsome as he aged. As I watched his reflection in the mirror, I could see that there were changes. A few more lines around the eyes. A few grey hairs. An easiness to his posture that conveyed that this was a guy who was happy with his lot. As the light glistened off the three diamonds studded into his platinum wedding ring, I felt a surge of relief. I’d done the right thing. Thank goodness I’d had the strength to go with my feelings.
I pushed his fringe back from his face and softly ran my fingers across the back of his head.
‘So how’s Emily?’ I asked, as I lifted up the first section and started to cut.
‘She’s good.’ His smile said it all. Actually, not quite all. ‘She’s erm . . . we’re . . . pregnant.’
I stopped cutting as the surprise took over. ‘You’re kidding! That’s amazing! Is it weird that for the first time in a long time I want to give you a huge hug and kiss you? Without tongues.’
His laughter filled the salon. ‘Not weird. I think it’s compulsory.’
‘OK I’ll pencil it in for before you leave. Is Emily thrilled? And when’s the baby due?’
‘She’s over the moon. It’s due next summer, beginning of June. We’re only beginning to tell people now that she’s just passed the three-month stage.’
‘I’m happy for you both, Marc, I really am. You’ll make great parents. So . . . names. I suppose Lou is out of the question?’
‘I’m guessing it is,’ he agreed. ‘Especially if it’s a boy.’
I had a vision of Marc, a few years from now, standing on a touchline watching a little mini-Marc playing football, a gorgeous tall, willowy blonde Emily standing beside him. They’d be like an advert for vitamins or shampoo or the latest healthy family cereal.
I paused to do a quick check . . . Nope, no stray little nuggets of regret or sorrow for what might have been. In the two years since that disastrous trip to New York we’d come to terms with everything that had happened. Sure, at first it had been tough. Moving my stuff out and saying goodbye had felt like the end of the world, but too many doubts and insecurities had been thrown up for us to carry on. We just wanted different things. He wanted the picture perfect family life and I wanted . . . I’ve no idea. All I knew was that the prospect of the picture perfect family life terrified me. So I said goodbye, went back to Mouthwash Towers and got on with my life, focusing all my energies primarily on the salon but also on spending more time with the important people in my life: Ginger, Josie, Lizzy and Bruce Willis. There had been flings – enough for me to still feel that there was a glimmer of hope in the happy-ever-after department, but not enough to gain a slapper badge. No one had made it past three dates and on to a deeper relationship yet. I just wanted to have a good time: no strings, no ties, no promises of undying devotion while my bruised heart recovered from Marc.
He took a slightly different approach to relationship recovery. Only weeks later he met Emily and they were married within six months, and suddenly my meltdown in New York went from being a devastating kick in the bollocks to a lucky escape for both of us. Emily was perfect for him. The love of his life. After years of trying to make me fit his image of perfection, she was the round peg in the round hole and, although he’d never be so brutal as to say it to me, I could see that they were happier than we’d ever been. Now we were friends. Without perks. I cut his hair, I kept Emily blonde and glossy and we all got along just fine. It was all very civilised and mature, but I drew the line at holidays and anything else that would compel me to be around her when she was wearing a bikini. There was only so much my ego could take.
‘So what about you? Met someone yet?’
I nodded and his eyebrows rose in surprise. I used to be able to do that before I overloaded on the Botox. I blame Lizzy. Her dentist uncle started doing cosmetic treatments out of the surgery downstairs and she persuaded me to try it. According to the upper half of my face, I’d been in a permanent state of shock and awe ever since. I couldn’t even wreak revenge by banging on her wall at obscene hours because she had finally moved out of the flat next door and into a lovely detached cottage on one of the picture-postcard lanes on the edge of the town. However, sometimes in my sleep I could still hear the shrieks.
‘It’s new though, so I’m not sure about it yet.’
‘How new?’
‘Third date tonight.’
I may have gushed and screeched just a little when I said that, but if dates one and two were anything to go by this one had promise of outlasting my three-date limit. He was . . . wait for it . . . a pilot. Now I know that shouldn’t matter but it does. It falls into the same category of sexy- occupation-desire as firemen and rock stars (with the exception of Gary Collins who was still both a rock star and a wanker).
‘Third date! Wow, that’s almost a long-term commitment for you these days.’
I smacked my non-paying customer across the back of the head with a vent brush. If I wanted to hear brutal truths I’d call Ginger.
‘So where are you going tonight then?’ Marc pressed on playfully. ‘Paris? New York? Milan? London?’
‘Glasgow. We’re having dinner with Peter’s parents.’
‘Peter? Peter the pilot?’
I laughed. ‘I know. Lizzy and Adam the Accountant thought that was hilarious too. Lizzy thinks it’s a cosmic sign that we’re destined to be together. But then she also thought that about Dennis the Doctor and that one lasted a fortnight. I’m still sure he was self-medicating – no psychiatrist should be that happy all the time.’
‘How are Lizzy and Adam?’ Marc asked. Now to anyone else that would seem like a completely innocuous question and I might have thought so too if he hadn’t broken eye contact with me and run his hand through his hair right before he said it. Marc only does that what he’s excited, sad, stressed or perturbed.
The answer was that Lizzy was great. Her life had turned out so perfectly: gorgeous husband, gorgeous kids, gorgeous home. She was happy. Contented. But I sensed that he’d asked for a reason and I wasn’t disclosing any information until I knew what it was.
I clicked off the hairdryer and caught his eye in the mirror again.
‘Why did you ask like that?’
‘Like what?’
‘Like there was something going on and you don’t want to tell me.’
‘I didn’t,’ he said in his very best ‘that’s ridiculous’ tone.
Caught! He only used his ‘that’s ridiculous’ tone when he was lying. And he was the worst liar in the world.
‘Marc? Is there something going on that you don’t want to tell me?’
He rolled his eyes. ‘I bloody hate it when you do that. Look, it’s nothing . . .’
‘But?’
‘But Adam was in the club the other night.’
‘Adam! No way. Adam hasn’t been in a club for the last decade. It must have been someone else.’
‘Nope, it was definitely him.’
That was bizarre. Of our crowd, Adam was always the one who went home when the rest of us crossed the alcohol threshold that transformed us from responsible adults to the highly embarrassing ‘let’s hit a dance floor and show those youngsters how it’s done’. Which invariably was renamed the following morning, ‘For fuck’s sake what were we thinking, someone’s playing drums inside my skull and I’m pretty sure I’ve pulled a hamstring.’
The dryer was still perched in mid-air while I pondered a new disturbing thought. ‘He wasn’t doing anything he shouldn’t have been was he?’
‘No,’ Marc answered. ‘He was in with another guy and they left alone. I promise. I saw
them go and they didn’t have a bevy of half-naked females hanging off their arms. Not even one fully clothed one.’
I waited for any obvious signs of lying. None. OK then. Thank God. Panic averted. I shrugged it off. ‘Must have been a work night out or something. Strange Lizzy never mentioned it though.’
But hey, it was a free world. Adam could do anything he wanted. Lizzy probably knew all about it. There was no point in making a drama about it. None. Nothing to see here. Please move away and go back to what you were doing.
‘So anyway.’ I flashed one huge, gleeful grin. ‘Have I told you that I’m dating a pilot?’
Twenty-six
Butterflies! I actually had butterflies in my stomach. That hadn’t happened since I charged out of a New York taxi in the marital version of The Great Escape.
‘OK, tell me again how nice your parents are and how your mother isn’t going to stab me with a steak knife for trying to steal her son.’
‘Do you want me to do it in my pilot’s voice or my normal one?’
I thought about that for a moment. Yes, to my eternal naffness, I’d been making Peter the Pilot say things in his ‘Hello, this is your captain speaking’ voice since we’d met. Even though we weren’t on a plane. Nor was he a captain. Thankfully, he still thought it was cute. I had absolutely no doubt that the novelty would wear off, he’d start to see me as some kind of demented bunny boiler and he’d be out of there quicker than you could say ‘One way Easyjet to Luton’.
‘Normal. No, captain. No, normal. Definitely normal.’ I had a feeling this vocal tussle wasn’t building my case for long-term girlfriend potential.
He pulled on the handbrake and leaned over and kissed me. ‘It’ll be fine, I promise. My mother’s been much better since the anger management classes. She hasn’t killed a single person this year.’
Did I mention that he could sometimes be quite funny? And he was a pilot?