There Goes the Bride

by Holly McQueen

“Yes, all right, I know it isn’t what you meant.” I can hear the irritability in my voice and make a mental note to reserve some of it for where it should really be directed, at Jamie. “It’s been a hard day, that’s all. The adoption visit was stressful. And OK, it went well, but I still think Samantha is confused by the fact that Jamie didn’t show up again, and …”

  “He didn’t show up? And it’s the second time? Bella!”

  I’m taken aback by the alarm in her voice. “Look, it’s probably not even that big a deal. It’s early days. Anyway, when he does show up, I’m sure Samantha will be so charmed by him that she’ll forget all about it!”

  There’s silence.

  I finish my glass of wine and pour another.

  “You know, Bells.” Polly breaks the silence. “I’ve been meaning to say this to you for a little while now. But have you thought, at all, about the possibility that you might be better off doing this on your own?”

  “Doing what on my own?”

  “Adopting.”

  I laugh. I can’t help it.

  “But isn’t that a huge advantage of it, in many ways?” she carries on. “That you get a child without having to get a man to inseminate you?”

  “Polly, please. I am nowhere near drunk enough to talk to you—or anyone else, for that matter—about insemination.”

  “But it just sounds as though Jamie can’t be relied upon. I mean, I’ve always thought so, but now it looks like it’s even worse than I thought.” Her words are coming in a desperate rush, the way they do when you’ve been storing something up for a long time and you suddenly get the chance to say it. “And you want a child so much, Bella—you deserve a child so much—that it seems the craziest thing in the world to risk it all for … well, for Jamie.”

  “I love Jamie.”

  And even if I didn’t, I can’t dump him. Not when I know what it’s like to be dumped after so much time together. I can’t have spent all the hours I spent hating my Evil Ex Christian—even thinking of him, still, as my “Evil” Ex—only to go and do to Jamie what Christian did to me.

  Not that I think it’s likely that Jamie would get in a car, sobbing, and drive into an oak tree, or anything.

  I mean, OK, there’s a chance (especially if Manchester United were holding steady at the top of the table) that Jamie wouldn’t be all that cut up about me dumping him at all.

  “I love Jamie,” I repeat, wanting to feel the words in my mouth. Just to be sure.

  “Will you love him if he doesn’t show up for this course, and the social services decide you’re not a suitable couple to go on their list? If he wrecks your chances by getting drunk the night before the home visits and sits there with a hangover, oozing beer from every pore?”

  “Polly!” I snap. I don’t want to hear any more of this. “This is none of your business.”

  “Of course it’s my business. I’m your sister.”

  “Yes, well, apparently that rule doesn’t apply when it comes to me delving into your life. When it’s me who’s concerned about you, it’s OK to fob me off. Spin me a line about not loving Dev anymore just so I get off your back and don’t pry into the real reason you’re not marrying him …”

  “What do you know about the real reason?”

  I almost drop my wineglass in shock. I’ve never heard Polly sound like that before. In all honesty, I’ve never heard anyone sound like that before, apart from possibly that creepy Gollum thing in the Lord of the Rings movies.

  “I mean, I’d be fascinated to learn what this so-called real reason is,” she’s carrying on, marginally less Gollum-like, but still in a low, aggressive hiss. “The one you seem to think you know so much about.”

  I’m starting to realize, through the alcoholic haze, that I’m on dangerous ground here. I never should have mentioned the words real reason, not seeing as it’s exactly the phrase she used in her email to Julia. “Dood, please calm down, OK, I didn’t mean anything. I just thought maybe you had some private reason between you and Dev …”

  “For the last time, stop trying to talk to me about Dev! Stop trying to meddle in things between me and Dev.”

  “How can I possibly do that,” I ask, “when according to you, there’s never going to be a you-and-Dev anymore?”

  She hangs up.

  I sit for a moment, too stunned to do anything but blink, blankly, at a stain Jamie has made on the carpet. I haven’t noticed it before. It could be tea. More likely beer. I’ll have to get the carpet shampoo out either way. It really would be nice if he didn’t leave such a mess behind him.

  Then, wobbly from my entire bottle, by now, of wine, I get to my feet. On autopilot, I go into the kitchen, open up my laptop, and navigate my way back to Polly’s email page.

  I’m going to check her emails again.

  Her overreaction just now—morphing into a creepy nutter from Lord of the Rings—has made me more determined than ever to get to the bottom of this.

  Whatever the real reason is, I’m not stopping until I find it out.

  From:

  PollyWollyDoodle@hotmail.com

  To:

  Julia247@yahoo.com

  Date:

  December 2, 2011

  Subject:

  Thank you

  Hi Julia,

  I know it’s only been an hour or so since we spoke, but I just wanted to say thanks for talking to me. I know how busy you are at work, and I know you have plenty of other people in your life that need you, too. I’m just not sure any of them need you like I do.

  If it helps, at all, talking to you did make me feel a lot better. A LOT. I don’t know what it was that got to me earlier—it was just supposed to be a nice trip to Selfridges to hang out with my adorable godsons—but honestly, Julia, if I hadn’t got you on the other end of the phone, I might have just gone out into the middle of Oxford Street and howled.

  Poor Grace. Poor, poor Grace. I don’t know if she knows just how miserable her life looks, trapped as she is on the inside of it. And I don’t know if it makes it better or worse that she doesn’t know. It’s like I said to you earlier—she’s just so different from the Grace I used to know. She was always shy, and never exactly self-confident, but Charlie has sucked every last bit of life out of her. She dresses twenty years older than her age, and she’s given up any hope of finding anything to do with her life that interest her, or excites her in any way. Like, she always used to talk about being an artist, or maybe even running her own little gallery. But these days her biggest goal seems to be getting in with the witches on school committees, who look like they’re only going to bully and belittle her as much as her husband does.

  But still, you were right earlier—I shouldn’t have started getting excited about the possibility of her taking a lover. (For fuck’s sake, who even uses the phrase “taking a lover”?) Affairs are dangerous territory, aren’t they—especially with everything I’ve done in that department? After all the hours I’ve spent with you, I should know that better than anyone.

  God, it was good to hear your voice, Julia, and to feel that you’re with me in spirit. I can’t tell you how much I miss our Thursday afternoons together.

  Thank you again. I’m OK now. I’m sorry I still need you as much as I do.

  P x

  Grace

  Friday, December 11

  Hector has succumbed to Tiny Tots’ latest outbreak of head lice, which means I’ve spent much of the last week rubbing tea-tree lotion into his hair and combing it through with an electrified nit comb. When I’m not doing this, I’m constantly prying his fingers away from his head and telling him that no matter how much it itches, it’ll only make it worse if he scratches it.

  Though maybe this is only the case for chicken pox? The Mirandas, I’m sure, would all know this kind of thing.

  But it’s a pretty general rule, isn’t it? That the more you scratch an itch, the worse it gets? Because the powerful itch I’ve had for the past couple of weeks has been the fantasy of having sex wit
h Saad Amar. And now that I’ve gone ahead and actually scratched the itch, it’s become more powerful than ever.

  I’ve seen him six times in the past ten days. And on the days I haven’t seen him—and even on the days I have—I literally have not been able to stop thinking about him.

  I was thinking about him during our family outing to the zoo on Saturday, though seeing as Charlie spent the entire two hours that we were there tapping away on his BlackBerry and snapping at Hector when he tried to get his attention at the monkey enclosure, I don’t feel quite so bad about my own mental absence. I was thinking about him while I simultaneously folded laundry and watched a feature-length Fireman Sam with the boys on Sunday afternoon. I’ve thought about him on the walk to school in the mornings and on the walk back from school in the evenings; I’ve thought about him while I’m making Robbie’s eggs Benedict and while I’m putting Charlie’s dinner in the oven to keep warm late at night; I’ve thought about him while I brush my teeth and while I shower.

  Oh, God, the ways I’ve thought about him while I shower.

  And—obviously—I’m thinking about him now, while I put the finishing touches to the boys’ lunchboxes, and while I steel myself for my first ever fund-raising committee meeting. It’s at Café on the Green, at nine o’clock this morning. Though even this isn’t making me quite so stressed and miserable as it might otherwise have done. The ripple effect of what I’m doing with Saad is cheering me up enough to be able to face the Mirandas with a bright smile and a spring in my step. Not to mention the positive effect it’s having on the boys’ lunchboxes. Admittedly this is mostly through sheer guilt—somehow I like to think that if I bake slightly wonky cupcakes rather than stuffing in a Cadbury’s mini roll, or cut their sandwiches into exciting star shapes rather than humdrum squares, maybe it will lessen the awfulness of the fact that I’m cheating on their father—but the end result is the same.

  I mean, Robbie and Hector are still so young, aren’t they? Homemade cake is a pretty good trade-off, at this stage, for the fact that their parents’ marriage is unhappy and insecure enough for me to be unfaithful.

  OK, who am I kidding? I’m not sure that there’s any amount of cake in the world that can wipe away the sins I’m currently committing. It’s just that right now—and yes, I am ashamed to my very bones to admit this—I’m so happy, for the first time in years, that I don’t even care.

  Super-dooper lunches packed, the three of us are just on the way out the door at quarter past eight (see—cheating on my husband also makes me on time for school for a change—another bonus!) when the boys suddenly both stare at the front gate, their eyes going wide.

  Thomas, Saad’s disapproving housekeeper, is coming up our garden path.

  He doesn’t look any less disapproving than the last time I saw him, I have to say. If anything, he looks even more so. This could be to do with the smallness of my house, the uncombed-ness of my hair, the uncombed-ness of Robbie and Hector’s hair, or, just possibly, the presence of Robbie and Hector at all.

  He stares right over their heads, pulling his usual trick of not quite looking me in the eye, and holds out a large, bright yellow Selfridges shopping bag.

  “Good morning, Mrs. Costello. I do apologize for disturbing you when you seem so busy, but I’ve been asked to bring you this little gift.”

  I blink at him. I’m quite literally lost for words.

  “My boss wanted me to let you know that he picked them out himself, and that he’d very much like you to wear them for your …”—his eyes flicker in the direction of Robbie and Hector—“… your meeting, later on today.”

  Oh, my God, it’s lingerie, isn’t it? “Them” must refer to some absurdly slutty knickers, the kind of thing I’ve seen on Agent Provocateur–type websites—OK, the kind of thing I’ve specifically searched for, these past few days, on the Agent Provocateur website—with ribbony bits to lace up the back, and see-through bits at the front. The kind of thing that makes my Elle Macpherson knickers and bra look like something a particularly uptight nun would wear on a fat day.

  And he’s having Thomas deliver them to my home? At school-run time, when I’m with my children? For God’s sake, fifteen minutes earlier and Charlie would have still been at home!

  Unless Thomas has been parked outside the house for a while, waiting until Charlie left and then until I finally emerged? Just to be sure he wasn’t encountering a nanny (ha!) or a cleaner (double-ha!) or something.

  Not that this makes the invasion into my home life any more acceptable.

  “Thomas, I can’t possibly …”

  “Turn down such a thoughtful gift? Of course you can’t.” Before I can stop him, Thomas has put the bag in my hand and closed my fingers around the handle. It’s not done with affection or pleasure, though. More with the air of a man who’s going to go and wash his own hands the moment he can. “I’m sure I’ll see you later, Mrs. Costello,” he adds, already turning to walk back down the path to the gate.

  A moment later he climbs into the biggest, shiniest dark-blue car I’ve ever seen—a Bentley, maybe, or a Rolls; I’ve not been Saad’s latest fancy-woman for long enough to learn to distinguish between all the different varieties of luxury British heritage cars just yet, but I know it was the same one that was parked outside MMA Capital that time I met Saad in the lobby—and, as the boys watch with saucer eyes, pulls it away from the curb in a stately fashion.

  “Mummy, Mummy, you’ve been bringed a present!” Hector squeaks, hopping on his feet with glee at this unexpected excitement on a boring school morning. “Who was that man?” He gasps suddenly. “Was that Santa?”

  If I weren’t still so discombobulated by what’s just happened, I’d actually laugh at the notion that chilly, judgmental Thomas could possibly be an incarnation of Father Christmas. “No, it wasn’t Santa.”

  “But he gave you this!” Hector prods at the yellow Selfridges bag, which I pull away from him like it might burn his fingers. “It’s like the bags when we saw Santa with Auntie Polly.”

  “Don’t be silly, Hector,” Robbie informs him, in his loftiest older brother tone. “Of course he wasn’t Santa.”

  “Exactly, Robs. Look, why don’t we all go back inside for a moment, just so Mummy can open her present ever so quickly …?” I just can’t wait until after the fund-raising committee meeting to see exactly what it is that Saad has endangered my marriage to send.

  “He works for Santa,” Robbie is carrying on as I usher them back indoors. “Isn’t that right, Mummy? He said the gift was from his boss.”

  Oh, God. “No, no, I think you misunderstood that, darling. Now, why don’t the two of you just sit down and finish off the last five minutes of Fireman Sam …?”

  The moment I’ve got them sitting down on the sofa, and got Fireman Sam performing his traditional rescue of naughty Norman on the TV, I hurry into the kitchen to open up the bag.

  It’s not knickers at all. It’s shoes.

  Black crocodile print, peep-toe, high-heeled Jimmy Choo shoes.

  It’s the sexiest present I think I’ve ever received.

  I take them out of the box, kick off my right-hand boot, and start to slip one of the shoes onto my foot. It fits like a glove. He got the size spot-on. Does that mean he took the time to examine one of my old shoes, kicked off at the foot of his bed, or is the art of knowing a woman’s shoe size just another of the many things he learned at international playboy school? Either way, it makes the whole thing even sexier still….

  “Mummy?” It’s Robbie, peeping around the door. “Hector is scratching his head again, even though I told him it would just make the nits get stronger, with bigger, sharper teeth …”

  I can hear the howling from the living room as I kick off the shoe and shove it back into its tissue and box.

  “Come on, Robs!” I say, with the kind of insanely bright smile a Miranda would be proud of. “Let’s go and cheer Hector up, and get the both of you—and the nits—to school!”

&nbs
p; At the Mirandas’ usual cluster of tables at Café on the Green, I arrive early enough to slide into a comfy seat by the wall. Then I busy myself checking my phone and pretending to update my diary to detract attention from the fact that nobody seems to particularly want to talk to me.

  I wonder just how much the Mirandas would ostracize me if they knew that not only am I Grace the Evil Husband-Snatcher but I have also recently become Grace the Even More Evil Extra-Marital Cheat.

  Well, thank God, none of them will ever need to know this, because it’s all going to be over before anyone has a chance to find out about it. My fling with Saad has lasted ten days, and I don’t need Thomas to tell me that obviously Saad is going to tire of me sooner rather than later. In fact, the more I think about the Jimmy Choos, I think they’re probably a kind of parting gift, the billionaire playboy’s way of saying It’s been fun but it’s time to take a hike. And anyway, even if it takes a little longer for him to tire of me, even if I have another few weeks of sexually acrobatic bliss in store, I can’t possibly allow it to continue. Absurd though it might sound that I should be the one breaking things off with a man like Saad, obviously that’s what I’ll have to do if it comes to it.

  I’m distracted, suddenly, by the fact that the armchair on my other side is being pushed sideways, and that there’s a waft of Chanel perfume coming my way. Someone sits down beside me.

  I’m astonished to see that it’s Louboutin Lexie.

  She’s looking effortlessly chic and as out of step with the Mirandas as ever: Charles Worthington’d of hair and Stella McCartney’d of outfit. And of course, Louboutin’d of foot—gorgeous leopard print court shoes today, worn with fishnet tights that give an edge to her slim gray pencil skirt and crisp white wraparound blouse.

  “Hi!” I blurt before I can stop myself, even though she’s giving off distinct signals that she’s not in the mood for conversation: head down and tapping at her BlackBerry, just like I’ve been doing. Except for the fact that I get the impression Louboutin Lexie does actually have meetings to plan and a diary to schedule. Still, I feel, somehow, now that I own my very own pair of luxe designer shoes, maybe I’m worthy of a few minutes of her consideration. “Amazing shoes!”