Not What You Think

by Melissa Hill

Maureen pursed her lips. “There’s no need to speak to me like that,” she said looking away piously, then added, “You’ve obviously settled in well to this kind of life.”

  Laura resisted the urge to roll her eyes to heaven. How could she win?

  “Joe, we’d want to be making a move,” Maureen said then, and Laura knew she had already lost the battle. Her parents weren’t here to see her, or the work she had done for the business; they were here to try and talk her out of it. And, of course, to talk her into inviting the Kellys to the wedding.

  Laura felt disappointed, manipulated, and very alone.

  Joe helped his wife on with her jacket.

  “So, there’s no convincing you to give up this whole thing then, is there?” Maureen asked, her disapproving eyes boring strongly into her daughter’s.

  “No, Mam.” Laura felt, as probably Maureen intended, that by deigning to do something a little bit different, she was stepping out of line. Laura was ‘lifting her chin above the windowsill’ as the villagers would say about anyone who thought they were that little bit better than they were, who tried to be that little bit better than they were.

  “Right. Well, we’d better go.” They went out into the hallway. “You’re finished work now for good?”

  Laura nodded. “The business will be officially open next week.”

  For a while nobody said anything, but eventually Joe cleared his throat. “Best of luck then,” he said kindly but to Laura’s ears, completely insincerely.

  Her mother uttered something unintelligible and, at that moment, Laura didn’t think she had ever felt so desolate and alone in her entire life.

  As if on cue, they heard Neil’s car pull up outside and shortly afterwards her fiancé bounded energetically into the hallway.

  “Hello, folks!” he said happily, not noticing the chill in the atmosphere. “Hey, you’re not leaving yet, are you?”

  “We have to get back before the traffic, Neil,” Joe said, looking at Maureen.

  “Oh come on, there’ll be no traffic on a Saturday. Sure you’ve loads of time!” Neil somehow managed to shuttle Laura’s parents back into the kitchen. “So, did Laura show you all the work she’s been doing with the business? Fantastic, isn’t it?”

  “Great, great,” Joe answered.

  One look at Laura’s face told Neil all he wanted to know. He gave a nearly imperceptible shake of his head.

  “So tell us, Maureen, are you looking forward to the wedding? I suppose you have a right snazzy number that’ll put everyone else to shame on the day?”

  Maureen beamed up at him, and not for the first time Laura marvelled at how easily Neil could handle her mother.

  “I got a gorgeous coral two-piece and a hat. I didn’t want to show it to you yet, Laura, so you’ll get a surprise on the day. Expensive, mind, but it’ll be worth it.”

  Laura smiled. “That’s fantastic, Mam. That colour will really suit you.”

  “Do you really think so?” Maureen was mollified. “Sure, I’ll soon find out when I see myself back on the video.”

  “The what?” Laura repeated, and she and Neil looked at one another in surprise.

  “The video.”

  “We’re not having a video, Mam. I already told you that.”

  Maureen waved her away. “Ah, I know you said that, but hasn’t your sister already ordered it for you as a wedding present? You have to have a memento of your wedding, Laura. It’ll be no good otherwise.” Maureen wasn’t about to have her visions dashed of watching herself over and over again in all her finery.

  Laura knew that Neil would be livid. He didn’t want to have the day recorded, as his mother was by now well into her chemotherapy, and to her distress had already lost most of her hair. Neither he nor Laura wanted Pamela Connolly feeling uncomfortable on her son’s wedding day.

  “Maureen, we’ve already decided.” Neil was firm. “My mother is feeling bad enough about her appearance as it is, let alone having the entire thing recorded for posterity.”

  But Maureen wouldn’t hear of it. “Sure, there are great wigs around these days?” she said artlessly. “Don’t you see them all the time on these popstars, and no one can tell the difference.”

  “Mam!” Laura said, mortified. She knew Neil was struggling desperately to hold his tongue. “Wigs for cancer patients are completely different. Neil’s mother is almost bald, and she finds wearing those wigs difficult – they’re itchy and warm and they just don’t look natural.”

  “Hmmph!” Maureen gave a dismissive shrug. “You’d think that vanity would be the last thing on their minds.”

  Laura’s mouth dropped open.

  “We should go now, Maureen.” Joe Fanning sensed – correctly – that they had outstayed their welcome, and he shepherded his wife towards the door. “Just think about it, love,” he said softly to Laura, while Maureen settled herself queen-like in the passenger seat, “and good luck with the other thing.”

  “Thanks, Dad.”

  Laura felt cheated. She closed the door behind her parents and went back into the living-room, where Neil sat red-faced on the sofa.

  “I’m so sorry,” she said, sitting down alongside him. “She has no idea. She just doesn’t realise.”

  “I know, Laura,” Neil took one of her hands in his and held it tightly, “but the hair loss is a big thing to my mother. It’s nothing to do with bloody vanity! How dare she?”

  “I know that, love,” Laura planted a kiss on his temple. He didn’t often show his feelings on the subject of his mother’s illness, but she knew he was like the proverbial swan, appearing to sail peacefully on the water, while kicking furiously underneath. “It’ll be OK,” she whispered softly, putting her arms around him, but uncertain whether or not she believed her own words. Neil’s mother had another five months of chemotherapy left, and even then the doctors couldn’t be sure it would have any effect.

  The wedding was only two months away, and the business would be open next week.

  Would everything be OK?

  At that moment, Laura wasn’t so sure.

  Chapter 13

  “OH, IT WAS just amazing, Lynne. Like paradise in your mouth. And I could feel the pounds creeping on as I swallowed it down! Oh, I know I’m not heavy, but I still have to be careful . . . I don’t want to look like a giant snowball on the day!”

  Hearing Dan come in, Chloe sat up. “Lynne, I have to go. Dan’s here and he’ll be dying to know how I got on with it. Talk soon!”

  Chloe hung up and turned to face her fiancé. “Dan, I picked out the most amazing cake for us today – it was just unbelievable . . .”

  She stopped short when she saw his face. “What is it?” she asked, taken aback by his bloodshot eyes and shaken demeanour. “Dan, you look awful!”

  “I feel awful,” he said, laying his briefcase on the floor and flopping down on the sofa. “I’ve just spend two hours in town in bloody bumper-to-bumper traffic, and my head feels as though a kanga hammer has been doing overtime in my brain.”

  Chloe bristled. “I take it that dinner is off, then.”

  “What dinner?”

  “Dan, we agreed!” Try as she might, Chloe couldn’t keep the whinge out of her tone. Dan was always tired these days. “You promised that we’d have dinner in the Four Seasons tonight – just to make sure that the food is up to standard before the wedding, remember?”

  “Ah, Chloe, we can do it another night, can’t we? I’m just not able for it right now. I’m sorry.” Dan loosened his tie, and ran a hand through his hair.

  “Right.” Her tone did nothing to conceal her annoyance.

  “Jesus. Christ, Chloe – I come home after a bollocks of a day, I’ve got a splitting headache, and now you expect me to get all trussed up, and go gallivanting with you!”

  “Gallivanting? Dan, this is our wedding – doesn’t that mean anything to you?”

  She had been looking forward to this for ages. Being fussed over in the Four Seasons, discussing the wedding prepara
tions so far . . . it would be better than sex! Well, almost. But now Dan had to go and ruin it.

  “Chloe, of course it means something! But if I had known how much hassle it was all going to be, I don’t know if I –” He broke off.

  “You don’t know what, Dan?”

  Dan relented. “Look, love, I said I’m sorry. What more can I do?”

  “Well, now that you ask, there’s a hell of a lot more you can do, actually. First of all, you could try showing just a modicum of interest in what is supposed to be the most important day of our lives.”

  “Chloe –”

  “But of course, I forgot,” she continued, putting a hand on her hip, “I forgot that this is all old hat to you – this is all just one big nuisance to you, isn’t it?”

  “For God’s sake, Chloe, calm down.”

  “Calm down? Calm down?” Chloe blinked as she desperately tried to stop the tears from appearing. “Do you think I don’t notice? Do you think that I don’t see how uninterested you are in all of this? Well, remember something, Dan, you were the one who proposed to me. You were the one that wanted to get married, to make it official. And up until a few weeks ago, everything was fine.” She stepped back, shaking her head from side to side, as Dan stood up to comfort her. “I don’t know what the hell is going on with you lately. Have you met someone else, is that it? Well, if that’s the case, Dan, you can go jump –”

  “Chloe, stop it, please. It’s nothing like that.”

  “Nothing like that . . . then there is something!”

  Dan nodded, and with a sigh, slumped back down on the sofa. “You’re right. There has been something on my mind lately, but it’s not what you think. I mean, I haven’t met anyone else.”

  “What, then?”

  “It’s Nicola, my ex.”

  Chloe felt her stomach constrict as she sat down beside him. She didn’t know much about Dan’s first marriage, other than the fact that he and his ex-wife had parted on unpleasant terms. Dan was loath to talk about it, and she wasn’t sure who had initiated the divorce, but reading between the lines Chloe knew that something major must have happened back then. She had always privately suspected that the ex-wife had been a bit of a bitch. But she had never been completely sure of Dan’s feelings towards this Nicola. Had she tried to contact him? Was she still in love with Dan, or maybe trying to get even more money out of him? There were no children, so what the hell was her problem?

  “What about her?” she asked, realising that she was holding her breath while waiting for his answer.

  “Remember the mix-up with our wedding invitations that time?”

  Chloe nodded, frowning.

  “Well, the ones we got by mistake, amazingly, were Nicola’s best friend’s invitations.”

  “What?” So much for Amazing Day Designs being original. Now the whole world and his mother were using them. She tried to recall the name. “The ones for that other girl?”

  “Laura, yes.”

  “And?”

  “And, because they mistakenly got our invites, there is a very good chance that Nicola – or at least Laura – knows about our wedding”

  Chloe shrugged. “And why is that a problem?”

  Dan began to knead his temples with one hand. “I haven’t told Nicola that I’m getting married again. I didn’t want her to find out like that, or to think that I was trying to keep it a secret.”

  Chloe was confused. “So what if you didn’t tell her? What does it matter now?”

  “I’m not sure it does,” he answered softly. “I just didn’t want her to be hurt by it, that’s all.”

  “And why would it hurt her? You two are divorced, for goodness sake! For all you know, she could be married herself. Jesus, Dan, sometimes you can be way too considerate.”

  “She’s not married,” Dan said quietly.

  “How do you know that?” Chloe asked, unsure as to whether she wanted to know the answer. Had Dan been keeping tabs on this woman? And if so, why?

  “Because, believe it or not, I came across an article only yesterday about her in one of your magazines. She’s back in Dublin, and she’s running a leisure centre.” Chloe saw him smile then, as though he was silently adding ‘fair play to her’.

  “What? What magazine?”

  Dan shuffled through some newspapers on the coffee table. He found a copy of Mode, opened the page, and pointed at a small head and shoulders photograph.

  “That’s Nicola.”

  “This is Nicola?” Chloe repeated, staring at the photograph. The famous Nicola was a fair-haired, pasty individual, who to Chloe looked as though she could do with a few sessions in the gym herself. Somehow, she had always imagined Dan’s ex as that bit more glamorous. The fact that Nicola was a bit of a plain-Jane was rather gratifying. “So why the big deal, Dan?”

  “What?”

  “Why is all of this bothering you?”

  Dan looked strained. “Look, I know it’s hard for you to understand, Chloe, but you don’t know how things ended with us.”

  “You’re right,” Chloe said, seizing the opportunity to find out what this was all about. “I don’t know how it ended with you. So maybe you’d like to tell me.”

  Dan’s expression clouded. “Look, like I told you before, we just grew apart – I don’t really like to talk about it.”

  “But why not? You’re divorced now. What difference is it going to make?”

  He wouldn’t meet her eyes. “Nicola and I . . . we . . . we just couldn’t make it work. I’ve never liked to talk about it because . . . well. I suppose I blame myself that we couldn’t make it work.”

  “But it couldn’t have been all your fault!” Chloe interrupted. “Surely she has to shoulder some of the blame too.”

  “Not really,” Dan said quietly.

  “Why not?”

  He was silent for a moment. “It was me – I was weak,” he said. “I should have fought harder. I should have been stronger, but I wasn’t . . . I was a bloody coward.”

  “It was a long time ago, Dan.” Chloe wasn’t sure she liked where this was going. Of course she was curious about the break-up, but she didn’t want Dan thinking that he should have ‘fought harder’ for his first marriage.

  She tried to move the subject along. “So if you’re so bothered about Nicola finding out about our wedding, why don’t you just set the record straight?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, the number of the leisure centre is plastered all over that article – they must be desperate for business – why don’t you give her a ring at work?” Chloe didn’t particularly want Dan being all pally with his ex, but if his conscience was giving him that much trouble, it would surely be better to get it over and done with.

  “You wouldn’t mind?” Dan looked unsure.

  Chloe was flippant. “Nope, go right ahead.”

  “OK, then – I think I will,” Dan looked relieved but, Chloe thought, a little nervous.

  While he showered and changed, Chloe studied the photograph in more detail. Judging by the state of her in that picture, Nicola was nothing to worry about. Unglamorous, pale and ordinary-looking – Chloe thought she was the last person you would expect to be promoting a fitness centre.

  Let Dan contact her and have it out with her. She didn’t like it, but what could she do? Better that he got it out of his system and stopped worrying about it, and then maybe she could stop worrying about it.

  Trust Dan and his principles. Sometimes her fiancé was too bloody considerate for his own good.

  Chloe picked up the phone, and redialled her friend’s number. “Lynne, hi, it’s me again – listen, I’m coming over.”

  * * *

  “I don’t understand it,” she said, sitting back on her friend’s luxurious Italian leather sofa. “Why the obsession with what she thinks – after all this time?”

  Chloe had gone straight to Lynne’s, all thoughts of wedding cake abandoned, leaving Dan snoozing happily on the sofa in front of the
television.

  Lynne poured milk into her coffee. “Well, maybe it’s just good manners on Dan’s part,” she said. “After all, it’s only right that he should let her know about you two. They were married for what – a couple of years before they separated?”

  “Yes, but if he’s that worried, why didn’t he let her know about me sooner?”

  “You said she was out of the country – maybe he didn’t have an opportunity.”

  Chloe sat forward. “Look, I wouldn’t mind, but you should have seen Dan these last few weeks. He hasn’t been himself at all. He has absolutely no interest in the wedding. I asked him the other day what he thought of the seating plan and he just blanked – as if he didn’t have a clue what I was talking about. He seems –” she paused, “I don’t know, obsessive or something.”

  Lynne raised an eyebrow. “I don’t like the sound of that.”

  “Me neither.”

  “Well, why did Dan and what’s-her-name split in the first place?” Lynne asked, echoing the thought that had been going around in Chloe’s brain, since she first learnt of this Nicola business.

  “I’m not entirely sure,” she replied, feeling silly as she said it. Dan had always been so dismissive about his first marriage. Chloe hadn’t asked, because up to now, she didn’t really care. As far as she was concerned, the former Mrs Hunt was well out of the picture and out of the country to boot. Why should she care? As long as it didn’t affect her, Chloe wasn’t all that interested. But now, Nicola’s return and Dan’s reaction to it was beginning to fill Chloe with a very strong sense of unease.

  “Well, I’m sure you could find out,” Lynne continued. “The official reason, at any rate.”

  Chloe sat forward. “What? How?”

  “Chloe, you work in a solicitor’s practice,” Lynne laughed, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. “If anyone is ideally placed to get their hands on legal documents, then you are. Find out from Dan, casually mind, who handled his divorce, and then phone around and see what you can find out.”

  “Lynne, you’re a genius!” Chloe would never have thought of that. In spite of her friend’s apparent dimness, there was a sharp mind at work in there somewhere.