by Brigid Coady
She went to bite her thumbnail on her left hand and noticed it was mostly gone. She started to gnaw on the right thumbnail instead. She turned her face to the wall and stared at a graduation photo. It was of her and her mum, her dad hadn’t been there.
“Suit yourself,” the Spirit replied.
Her mother’s voice suddenly came through from the kitchen. “It’s what I’ve always said, Maggie. Men are spineless, inconsiderate and useless. Can’t trust them as far as you can throw them,” she was holding forth on her favourite topic and it sounded like it was fuelled by a few glasses of wine. Or maybe it was gin and tonic. That always made her belligerent.
“Edie thinks this mediation thingy will make our divorce more amicable or even get us back together.” Maggie replied.
Or help you keep your mitts off other men, Edie thought as she turned her head to hear them better.
“Of course all we’ve done so far in the meetings is drag up every nasty thing we can about each other.”
Edie flinched.
“Mediation? Edie wanted you to try mediation? She always swore it was a waste of time. Only practiced by namby pamby lawyers,” her mother said. “You want it over and done with. Ripped off fast like a plaster. Get a lawyer like Hilary Satis. She’ll see you right.”
“What happened when you… well when you and Charlie…” Maggie stumbled over the words.
“What when we divorced?” her mother said, before making another drink.
“Yes,” said Maggie.
“Yes,” echoed Edie.
“You never knew what happened?” the Spirit asked.
“No,” Edie said pushing away from the wall and moving to the doorway so she could watch her mother at the kitchen table.
“One day I came home from school and they sat me down and said they were separating. I used to think it was because they’d had a massive row about me wearing make-up. Stupid really, the things you think when you’re a kid. As if the world turns round you.” She rubbed the spot over her heart; she still wondered if she’d been better behaved, would he have stayed? “After Dad left I got to see him on alternate weekends and then suddenly one day even that stopped.”
Without a phone call or a letter, a huge hole opened up in her life.
“Charlie and I hadn’t been getting on for a while,” Edie’s mum started to tell Maggie. “So I did agree, reluctantly I might add, that we should have a bit of time apart. Give us all a break from the arguing and crap like that. So he would come here and pick Edie up every other weekend. Sometime he would come over in the week if I made excuses about house stuff. I thought we would get it all back together,” Edie watched as her mother took a drink and then lean forward at the table.
Edie felt herself move forward as well. What had actually happened?
“And what stopped that?” Maggie asked.
Yes what had stopped it? Edie started chewing the nail on her right index finger.
“I asked you to have Edie one school night, I don’t know if you remember, and I decided that I would dress up nicely and go over to his rented place and persuade him to come home.”
“I drove up to the little cottage, you remember the one, out towards Great Hanningfield? Well there was a car in the drive I didn’t recognise. I didn’t want to burst in on him if he had work people round. How embarrassing would that have been? And in the pit of my stomach I wondered if… well. So I decided to drive the car a bit further down the lane, park it and walk back. When I got to the cottage I hid myself in that little clump of trees by the gate. And then I saw…” Her hand clenched the glass.
“What did you see?” said Edie.
“What?” asked Maggie.
“A woman. A very attractive woman. She was coming out of the house and he was behind her; they were laughing. It felt like the joke was on me. He hadn’t looked so relaxed and happy in years. He hadn’t looked at me like that in years.”
“And then what?” Maggie asked.
“Well then she got in her car and drove away.”
“He was having an affair?” Maggie asked.
Edie’s mouth opened and closed soundlessly.
“He swore he wasn’t. But I’d seen her in his house. I don’t know if you remember but you had Edie again that weekend. That was when I told him that we didn’t need him any more. That he could take himself and his fancy piece and leave us alone. Edie and I would be just fine on our own.”
“But I still needed him,” Edie didn’t realise how much she had needed him until she spoke.
“And he went? Just like that?”
“He didn’t go that quietly.” Edie’s mother looked furious. “He fought me in court for custody but in those days and with a lawyer like Hilary Satis, well… the mother always won big. Every year he sent cards and presents for Edie, trying to buy her love, I reckon. It stopped when she was twenty-one. Like she would ever need him. I keep them locked in the dresser,” her mum gestured behind her. “I couldn’t bear to give them to Edie, but then I can’t throw them away.”
“He sent presents?” Edie’s hands clutched each other for strength and to stop her from trying to wrench open the dresser drawer. She knew it was futile; she couldn’t touch anything here.
The room seemed to bend and lengthen to the side and then lurch once upwards. When it stopped Edie didn’t feel the same. Things had shifted. Nothing fitted in their place any more. She felt bigger but also emptier.
“How could she have done that? Cut him out of our lives?” Edie looked to the Ghost searching for answers.
“Some people want to score points when love turns to hate. If she couldn’t have his love, then he couldn’t have yours. That is called ‘putting conditions on it,’ and it sounds like you learned it early on.”
“Please,” Edie said. “No more.”
And she tumbled out of her mother’s kitchen and into her bed.
Chapter 13
She had one week to change things round. She would not become her mother or Ms Satis, she would turn herself into a fully functioning member of society or she would die trying.
Edie stared long and hard at herself in the mirror the next morning. Around her eyes she could see lines of stress. She rubbed the spot between her eyebrows where a groove was being carved from frowning. She smiled to pull her face into a different position. It felt odd. And she realised that she had no laughter lines, no creases from smiling.
This week would be a step up from last week. It had to be. She would show everyone.
“Cold bitch indeed,” she said.
She turned away from the mirror and carried on dressing.
Edie sat at her breakfast bar with a pad of paper in front of her and a pen.
How was it that everyone pitied her? Her, of all people? She was successful, heading to partner with a bullet and yet… what else was there? Marriage? She shuddered, that was the death knell of any successful relationship she had ever seen. And you couldn’t have everything, could you? A career and a relationship? Something or someone always compromised and then…
Compromise.
Her flesh crawled and she shivered.
Edie felt all turned around, as if she'd been flipped inside out and when she was put back the right way her stuffing had been lost and her corners were all puckered. It was not a feeling she liked. Order, precision and everything in its place was how she liked it.
But the Ghost? She supposed that was the only way she could describe the dream. It should’ve faded like all dreams do but it felt so real. No, it had to be a dream, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t act on it.
The blank pad stared up at her. The list. She would write a list of what she needed to do this week.
Number one:
She'd phone her mum and ask about her dad. Then she'd know if it was just her imagination. Just a left over yearning of her little girl dream where her dad hadn't really left her. It was amazing; no matter how old you got you could still be a slave to your childhood yearnings.
But
what if it wasn't a dream? What if her Dad had really wanted her? She rubbed her sternum to get rid of the pain. No, that was a fairy story; things didn't happen like that in real life.
No prince to wake you from your sleep. No fathers suddenly appearing to save you.
Actually, no, she wouldn't just call. She got out her phone and checked her calendar. If she left early from work on Monday she could make it to her mum's for the evening. This was the sort of conversation she wanted to have face to face. Or she could go this weekend… then she remembered the dress fitting. She wasn’t sure which was worse - the dress fitting or facing her mother. Either way she needed to put her armour on for both of them. And if she saw her mum on a weeknight she had an honest reason to leave; that house made her feel claustrophobic.
Number two:
Maggie and Doug. Somehow she had to fast track the mediation.
If Jack Twist would let her, the thought winged in straight away. And following soon after was the kick to the stomach that he thought she was a bitch.
But she had been. Hadn't she?
She chewed the end of the pen and contemplated adding number three; persuade Jack Twist I'm not a bitch.
But how would she do that?
A scene flashed into her head of him crushing her up against the side of the lift where they’d first met. Her hands splayed on his chest. The cerise lining of his suit the last thing she sees before her eyes close and he kisses her. His body is hard, and as she presses against him she feels every single glorious inch. And the scent of him surrounds her, making her dizzy.
Then as his mouth finishes exploring hers and as he moves to nuzzle her neck, she hears his voice in her ear.
"I'm going to melt you," he whispers and the heat that spikes through her could melt a thousand ice queens.
She shook herself out of the daydream.
Where the hell did that come from? She opened her eyes, which had drifted closed. She touched her lips, to feel if they were swollen from the imaginary kisses. Her heart was racing and she was burning up.
No, she couldn't deal with Jack Twist this week as well. It would be too much. She hurriedly scratched through the 'J' she'd started to write, almost tearing the paper.
What else did she need to do this week?
Something for Rachel, perhaps? She could try and be nicer and maybe stop sending those emails to HR. Edie rubbed her head. These disturbed nights were getting to her. She’d think about it tomorrow.
Today she had a dress fitting. Her life was on hold until this whole wedding thing was all over.
Why did they need another bridesmaid dress fitting? She’d done her research and told Mel that two fittings would be more than enough but now they were on number five. And what more could be done just a week before the wedding?
It was as if Mel was squeezing every last drop out of her wedding experience. Which would be OK if Edie didn’t have to join her for it.
She hadn’t meant to keep tally of the time spent on the wedding preparations but when you charged your clients by the minute for your time, it got to be a habit. It was as if a stopwatch in her head constantly measured out the minutes and hours and days.
The wedding dress search had clocked in at four full Saturdays and one manic, desperate trip to a wedding fair. There were also the two hours she had spent talking Mel out of flying to New York to ‘Say Yes to the Dress’ at the shop featured on some reality TV show. Edie had then made the mistake of relaxing and had been horribly sideswiped when Mel had quickly moved on to the bridesmaid dresses.
Really, how hard could it be to find a dress for three women to wear for a few hours on a Saturday?
Well she’d found out. The bridesmaid dress-a-thon was currently at five Saturdays for actually deciding on the dress style and colour. And on each of those Saturdays there had been at least two tantrums and a sulk, mostly from Sophie.
Edie had personally clocked up twelve hours and forty-two minutes in fittings. She'd even tried turning up late for a few and running off early. Maybe she could charge Maggie and Doug for those hours when she sent them the bill for the mediation.
And now she had this last one to suffer through, which brought with it the joy of facing the other bridesmaids or as she thought in her head, bridemonsters. To be fair, Jo was fine, well except that she seemed to have bought into all the wedding nonsense. And Edie hadn’t had to see the flower girl yet but Mel had promised she didn't have a permanently runny nose.
No, the real bridemonster was Sophie. There was no love lost between them before the hen weekend. And after… Edie cringed. It seemed Sophie was a rugby groupie and thought Jack should’ve been her property as she’d known him longer. And she was making it known that she wasn't taking Jack preferring Edie very well.
"I brought bubbles!" Sophie said and the squeals that greeted this went through Edie's head like an ice pick. Or maybe that was just wishful thinking. She was sure an ice-pick lobotomy might be marginally more enjoyable than this fitting.
She sat on the edge of her seat and hoped for it all to be over quickly. Or for death to take her. Whichever came first, she really wasn’t fussy.
This is what was wrong with the whole wedding thing. It wasn’t about the marriage itself, but it was about the production surrounding it. And the amount of money that people made out of them. At least her way of making money was a little more honest.
She looked around the dress shop they were in, whilst sat on a white painted wooden chair with satin white seats. Billowing swathes of satin and gauze hung from the rose in the ceiling and gathered up at the walls with big rosettes. Edie eyed the oversized chandelier that hung down in a cascade of crystals and wondered if she could get it to fall onto her.
She wished it even more when she caught sight of the poufy meringue of a dress in the window. It was white but had layer on layer of tulle ruffles that looked like they had been left in a smoker's room for too long and had been stained a brown yellow.
Nicotine chic.
But maybe it wasn’t the dress designer’s fault. The fact was that people were willing to spend obscene amounts of money on one day, and someone had to provide the goods.
"Oh my God! I've put on weight! I'm so fat." It was Sophie, the bridemonster. She’d been the one who had extended the dress search for at least three more weekends than necessary. She was the one who'd made a fuss about the colour of the dresses. So much so that by the end, the dress worked for her but not for the rest of them.
Edie looked over at her and sighed. Sophie looked amazing, and she knew it. Toned from spin classes and Pilates plus a rather unhealthy addiction to kale, the dress fitted her like a glove. But of course the other bridesmaids and Mel fluttered round her reassuring her. Edie exchanged looks with the fitting lady, the only other sensible person in the room. Which, considering she worked in a bridal shop, was worrying.
"And now you, Edie" Mel was flushed with excitement. “I can’t wait to see what it looks like on.”
Edie wanted to ask her why this was so important? Didn't she know this was all window dressing? These were trimmings that disguised the real thing, a marriage.
But as she looked over at her friend, she saw that Mel glowed, and her smile was wide. And superimposed on it Edie saw the younger Mel who had been a bridesmaid with her as a teenager, the girl she’d seen a few nights ago. This was her friend who'd been planning this wedding since that day; she’d picked out her wedding music before she'd found the groom. Ghosts of the girls they’d been swirled round the dressing room and Edie felt like Macbeth at the feast.
She rolled her shoulders and dredged a smile up from somewhere.
“Of course,” she said and grabbing her dress, she headed for the changing room.
Edie stripped off her clothes and without looking in the mirror she stepped into the heavy dress and pulled it up and over her shoulders.
It was very green, eye poppingly so. Edie's eyes hurt.
And, of course, green looked great with red hair, as Sop
hie hoped. But it was going to be hell to wear if the day was hot and it would show every sweat mark.
Attractive.
Edie longed for the forest green dress last night’s Ghost had worn.
The bodice wrapped into ruching under her breasts and then the dress fell, from a pleat at the front, to the ground. From certain angles she looked pregnant. She could be known as ‘the knocked up bridesmaid’. She imagined the gossip from that.
They probably thought she'd be giving birth to the anti-Christ.
She tried to pull the ruching down a bit, to minimise any billowing.
No, it just sprang back up.
She would never wear this again, no matter how many times Mel kept telling her how 'wearable' it was. Even knowing how much money Mel had paid for it, or rather Mel's parents. Who should really have been holding on to any money to pay for their divorce. She shivered. She needed to get them back together. Then maybe she could stop all of that.
It would be her present to Mel, the one she didn't know she needed and hadn't registered for at John Lewis.
She could hear the giggling outside and some whispers.
“Oi Edie, are you ready yet?” Mel called and there was a snigger, definitely from Sophie. They were talking about her.
What else was new?
She'd ignored their saccharine smiles when she’d arrived. None had reached their eyes. It had been the hen weekend; it seemed peeling people off people on the dance floor and saving relationships didn't help you make friends.
“I’m coming.”
She squirmed trying to get the right angle so she could do the top bit of the zip up. God, she hated dresses like this, dresses that couldn't be put on by one person. You needed someone else to zip you all the way up. It just highlighted that the world expected you to be paired up.
She yanked the dress down and held her arm higher and somehow got the zip up.
Yes, the dress did show marks when you sweated.
She took a deep breath. Smile Edie, she told herself.
She pulled open the curtain, causing the rings to rattle on the rail. Suddenly she was the centre of everyone's attention. She squirmed. She wished for the anonymity of her hauntings. Most of the faces staring at her were hostile. She could feel the heat of their stares.