It's Got To Be Perfect

by Claire Allan

  Fionn wasn’t laughing.

  “So apparently, surprise, surprise, she told him that she agreed postponing the wedding was for the best. She said it would be unfair to put Emma in a position where she could be hurt in the future and that if Alex had any doubts whatsoever he should take his time. If I loved him, I would be fine with this.”

  “So after you killed him, what did you do?” Darcy deadpanned.

  “Well, after he dropped that one on me, I once again asked why Rebecca had such a big say in our relationship. I asked why he couldn’t have talked to me about it, and that was when he really fecking pushed his luck . . .”

  “Oh crap, Fionn, what did he say?” I asked, sitting forward, my radar on full alert.

  “He said he couldn’t talk to me about it because ever since we got engaged I’ve become a big fecking Bridezilla obsessed with getting married, getting pregnant and planning the rest of his life . . .”

  I didn’t know what to say. If there is one thing Fionn wasn’t it was a Bridezilla. Sure she did have a certain glazed look on her face when she tried on her dress but the rest of the time she was as laid back as they come. As brides go. She didn’t care about huge floral arrangements, favours, buttonholes and chair covers. She just cared about marrying Alex. And as for obsessed with getting pregnant – of course she wanted to have a baby with Alex but she was happy to let that happen in its own good time.

  “What the fuck?” I said.

  “I know,” she replied. “I’m not a Bridezilla, am I?”

  I shook my head. “You’re not even a Bridezuki,” I said solemnly. “You’re the most chilled-out bride-to-be I know. He’s talking through his rear end.”

  “And I’m not obsessed about wanting children. In fact, we’ve hardly mentioned it. Just once, I think, when we agreed it would be cool when we’re ready.”

  “So where is he getting all this nonsense from then?”

  “I don’t know. I know Emma is desperate for a baby brother or sister and she has been rabbiting on about it a bit lately – but that’s her, not me. And suddenly Alex thinks I’m plotting how to poke holes in his condoms and flush my pill down the toilet!”

  “And I suppose you told him he was talking bollocks?”

  “You know what?” she said. “I’m fed up telling him he’s talking bollocks. He should know me well enough by now to know where I’m coming from and what I want. So I told him as much and went and packed up my bags.”

  “And did he try to stop you?”

  “No,” she said, sadly. “He went out. Slammed the door behind him. And I’ve not heard anything since.”

  “What a fucking asshole!” Darcy said, breaking her silence.

  And it was then that Fionn burst into tears.

  I looked at Darcy, slightly aghast at her outburst even if it had been what I was thinking. I kind of expected her to do her usual big-sisterly thing of putting her arm around Fionn and comforting her. But no.

  She just sat bolt upright in her chair and continued: “I mean, he’s supposed to love you. You’re supposed to be his everything and yet he’ll listen to some ex rather than you. Maybe he should just fecking marry her.”

  This, of course, prompted yet another bout of weeping from Fionn. “Do you think he will?” she asked, her large eyes pooled with tears. “Do you think that’s what he wants and he’s just trying to push me away? He hasn’t the balls to finish with me so he’s pushing me away and then he can set up home with Rebecca and Emma and have the perfect little family?”

  Darcy shrugged her shoulders while I reached out and gave Fionn’s hand a gentle rub.

  “Don’t be so silly,” I said. “If he didn’t want you then he never would have proposed.”

  “But that’s just the thing,” Fionn said. “He never did. It was me who did the asking.”

  Fionn had never told me this before. Fionn had told me almost everything else about her life but she had never mentioned that it was her, and not Alex, who had got down on one knee.

  She had just come into work one day and announced she was engaged and that he was taking her ring-shopping. Sure, when I asked her what the big proposal was like she had been hazy on the details. “It was really romantic, but if you don’t mind it’s kind of personal so I’d rather keep it to myself.”

  I had assumed that he had asked her during a sexy personal moment or something, not that she had actually been the one to pop the question.

  “He seemed happy about it,” she said now. “Genuinely happy.”

  “Yes,” I said, remembering how he had grinned his way through the engagement party. “He did seem happy.”

  “Let’s cut to the chase,” Darcy interjected. “Tell me, he did at least pay for the ring, did he?”

  Fionn blushed. “We went halfers.”

  “See,” Darcy, proclaimed, standing up and raising her wineglass in her own personal toast. “Proof positive that all men are bastards!”

  “No!” Fionn proclaimed, taking to her feet. “He’s not a bastard. I just wanted a really nice ring and he couldn’t afford the one I wanted and so I offered to help pay for it . . . I mean a lot of people buy engagement rings for their menfolk these days – I just did a double whammy on myself.”

  “Atta girl!” I declared. “Might as well keep the bling to yourself.”

  “Well, at least the bling won’t let you down,” Darcy said, sitting back down.

  “Are you okay?” Fionn asked my sister.

  “Perfectly fine,” she muttered. “Now don’t be deflecting the attention away from yourself. You can at least tell us the details of how you proposed to him.”

  Fionn shot me a look and I shrugged my shoulders. It was clear that Darcy wasn’t fine and that all was not well. Could it be that there was trouble between her and Gerry? It seemed unlikely – they were the most together couple ever. But I also knew my sister well enough to realise it would do me no good to ask her any more. She would tell me when she was ready to. That was her way and I had to respect that. Or, to be more accurate, I just had to accept that there was no way I could get Darcy to talk about such matters even if I begged and pleaded.

  Fionn sat back. “I need a top-up,” she said and reached for the bottle on the floor – sloshing cool white wine into her glass, then taking a long drink. “We had talked about it. A few times. Within months of being together he said I was the kind of woman who would make him break his no-marriage rule.”

  “There was a rule?” I asked.

  “Oh yes. He said he couldn’t ever bring someone else into a mammy role for Emma so he was going to be a confirmed bachelor forever more. He said that every woman he had dated since Emma was born had either been completely horrified at the thought of taking on another woman’s child or had become ridiculously gushy about children without ever even having met the wee pet.”

  “And you?” Darcy asked.

  “I let him introduce me to her when he was ready. And I didn’t spoil her – although I did watch those fecking Disney Princess movies two and a half thousand times. But leaving that aside, we fitted, all of us as a family, you know. I knew he loved me. Loves me,” she paused. “I know he loves me.”

  “Of course he does,” I soothed.

  “Just not enough to make a commitment,” Darcy said.

  I glared at her. “Jesus, Darcy, you really are in a man-hating mode at the moment, aren’t you?”

  “Well,” she said, adopting her best Lloyd Grossman impression, “let’s look at the evidence. We have Alex, who is a commitment-phobe who creates a hundred and one stupid reasons not to go ahead with his marriage to the lovely Fionn here but does it in such a way that we end up blaming Rebecca for it. That’s a clever kind of bastard if you ask me. And then, we have Pee-Arse. The most self-centred, up-his-own-hole, sanctimonious excuse for a celebrity wannabe there is, who thinks he can land every woman he wants just because he’s been on Ready Steady fecking Cook. I tell you what, I could shove his green pepper right up his ass. The alternative tho
ugh – well, what a catch he is! The kind of man who sends edible knickers to a woman’s work place!”

  “You said you liked him!” I protested.

  “Annie. I’ve not even met him. How the feck can I like him? All I said was that he might not actually be using you for sex but now, looking at the evidence, ya know what – he might just be after your body!” She reached into the box of goodies and extracted the edible knickers, then bit off some of the wee sweetie beads before sitting down and raising her glass once again.

  She was, I realised, more than a little pissed.

  Fionn, equally tipsy, was more than a little pissed off. “And what about you, Darcy? And the perfect Gerry? Surely you are not including him in this wee tirade? Are you immune to feckwit men then?”

  “No, not at all,” she said. “Not one bit.” She threw the knickers to the ground. “I’m going to bed,” she said, standing up and walking towards the bedroom.

  “You can’t leave it like that,” I said. “Darcy, talk to us!”

  She looked back. “No. Look, I’m sorry. I said too much and I went too far. I’m just going to sleep. Never mind me. Never mind me one bit.”

  She walked into the bedroom and closed the door behind her.

  “You should go after her,” Fionn said, lifting the sweetie knickers and biting off some of the g-string.

  “No point,” I said sadly. “There’s no point.”

  We sat in what could hardly be described as companionable silence for a little while. I tried to process what Fionn had told me. I thought of how she had proposed to Alex. How they had seemed deliriously, stupendously happy but how he might actually be a shitehawk commitment-phobe trying to sabotage his own wedding even though he did love Fionn. And I thought of Pearse and his shitey ways but I quickly pushed them to the back of my mind and thought of Ant. I had a longing to be with him. It wasn’t that I (God forbid) loved him or anything ridiculous like that – it was just that I knew that if I was in his arms – or in his bed – I wouldn’t be able to think about anything else other than being there in the moment. And my brain could use a break.

  “Penny for them?” Fionn asked, breaking the silence.

  “You wouldn’t really want to know,” I said, casually biting a sweet off the knickers. “It involved me, a hairy man and some very dirty things . . .”

  “There was me thinking you were going to say something deep and meaningful there, Annie.”

  “I’m too damn tipsy for deep and meaningful and it hasn’t got us very far tonight, now has it?” I stood up and stretched. “In fact, fuck it, Fionn. Balls to meaningful!” I raised my glass and walked to the sideboard where my iPod sat in its dock. “What do you fancy? Something to sing to? Something to dance to? Something to chill us out?”

  “Dance,” Fionn said, climbing to her feet. “But hang on a minute – we have to get the attire right.” She picked up the half-eaten knickers and pulled them on over her jeans. She looked like a weird, sexually depraved Superhero in the making and I couldn’t help but howl with laughter as she pointed one arm in the air and sang the Superman theme tune.

  “Now, music!” she said as she finished her lap of the room and I searched for something suitably upbeat. As the opening strains of “I Will Survive” blasted across the flat I lifted the now-empty wine bottle and adopted my best singing pose while Fionn conducted her very own Elvis style hip-swivel in time to the music – sweetie beads gyrating here and there.

  We were just launching into the chorus when the bedroom door opened and Darcy, in her pyjamas and with her make-up scrubbed off her face, stormed across the room.

  I braced myself for an outburst. I shielded the iPod from her fury. But she simply lifted her wineglass from where she had left it, took a long drink and shot us a glance which said “Let’s not ever talk about my big huff again” before launching into the chorus loudly and tunelessly and dancing with her trademark lack of rhythm. That was one of the things I loved so much about Darcy. She was physical perfection, with her long legs, glossy hair, flat stomach and amazing sense of style. She had boobs that could make grown men weep and grown women want to gouge her eyes out. She had skin that had never seen a spot or blemish – not even when she was fourteen and pumped full of hormones. She was one of those jammy bitches who could get away with not wearing make-up and not only did she not look any the worse for it – her skin was so damn peaches and cream perfect that no one really noticed. I swear she produced her own lip gloss naturally, secreting it from her Angelina-Jolie-like pout effortlessly. Simply put, she was gorgeous. But she couldn’t dance. Not even a little bit.

  As she flailed and flounced to her own beat while Gloria Gaynor got into full Disco-Queen mood, I smiled to myself. And then, I got funky.

  Soon it was the case that our conversation was behind us and we were just having fun – dancing, singing and ignoring any of the big issues which might have been holding us all back.

  The same shit would still be there to deal with tomorrow, as my mum would have said.

  20

  I groaned as I opened my eyes and tried to look at the clock. Light was poking through a gap in the curtains and I realised there was an awful ache in my back. I was on the floor. I had obviously fallen off the sofa again but had been too drunk to notice or care. It was 9.17 a.m. The flat was in silence. There wasn’t even so much as a hum from the road below. It was Sunday morning and everyone was sleeping. The room was spinning just that little bit. I looked to the dining table where we had lined up the wine bottles the night before. Six bottles. Two each. That was a lot, even for me, although I did have a hazy memory of pouring at least one full glass into my bamboo plant when I simply didn’t feel I could take any more.

  The elastic from the sweetie knickers was wrapped around my wrist like a sad little bracelet. I hoped Ant wouldn’t still want me to model them for him.

  I tried to sit up and groaned – half through the stiffness in my back and half because of the spinning room.

  Water. I needed water.

  I hauled myself to my feet and walked to the kitchen where the bright daylight hurt my eyes. I lifted my sunglasses from the worktop where I has discarded them on our return from Portrush the day before and put them on. I downed a pint of water, gagging slightly as the cold liquid hit the back of my throat and then I padded back to the living room, opened the curtains and threw myself back onto the sofa where I decided I would spend at least an hour moaning and groaning in front of the Hollyoaks omnibus.

  It was just getting particularly juicy when Darcy, looking flawless but proclaiming she was murdered with a hangover, came in. I looked at her and let out a particularly dramatic groan while rubbing my stomach and putting my other hand to my forehead.

  “At least,” she said as she slumped beside me, “you don’t have to do four hours on a bus to Dublin. I may die.” She put her hands to her face and took a deep breath.

  I reached out and rubbed her knee. “I would say soothing things but I’m rather afraid that if I said soothing things I might throw up. Not because they are soothing . . . just because I feel bleuurrggghh.”

  “Morning, lovely ladies,” Fionn trilled, walking into the room looking surprisingly wide-eyed and awake. “Are youse ready for a walk in the park and a sausage bap?”

  “Euuurrgh!” Darcy grimaced.

  I just shook my head, trying not to talk, while Darcy outlined the whole soothing-things-throwing-up scenario I had just explained to her.

  “You girls are no fun,” Fionn said. “No fun at all.”

  “Is she always like that?” Darcy asked me, eyebrow raised. “Is the woman immune to hangovers?”

  “Not usually,” I muttered, curling myself up into a ball and cuddling a cushion to my stomach. “She usually looks just like I look now.”

  “What has you so chipper?” Darcy asked her. “Saucy dream about Colin Farrell?”

  “Actually,” she replied with a wink, “I got a text from Alex. He wants me to come back to chat. He said he�
�s sorry.”

  “So are you going?” I asked.

  “Like feck I am. He can sweat it out for another while. I told him I needed a little time to think. He’s not the only person who can play it cool.”

  “Good woman, yourself,” Darcy said.

  “But, are you sure you want to be playing games?” I asked, hoping not to burst her little bubble of happiness.

  “I’m not playing games. I do need a little time to think. And I want him to know that I’m not a Bridezilla who comes roaring into view every time he calls. I did tell him I would call over later to see Emma – maybe take her for an ice cream – but I wasn’t ready to have any big conversations with him just yet.”

  “Well, as long as you’re careful,” I said.

  “I’m always careful,” she said with a wink before standing up and walking to the kitchen. “Fried egg sandwich anyone?”

  And Darcy and I both groaned in unison.

  Darcy got on the bus at two clutching a bottle of water, a bottle of Lucozade, a packet of Tayto Cheese and Onion crisps and a couple of spare Tesco bags just in case she was sick. She had her oversized sunglasses on and her iPod loaded with soothing tunes.

  “Just in case I don’t make it back to Dublin in one piece,” she said with fake dramatic emphasis, “you can have my Jimmy Choos. They are the only pair of proper designer shoes I have and I love you so much that I mind not a jot bequeathing them to you.”