‘Do you really want to know?’
‘Yes.’
‘It’s my ten-year anniversary.’
‘Oh, well, congratulations,’ said Grace, hesitantly. ‘Isn’t that supposed to be a happy thing?’
‘Not when someone died ten years ago, it isn’t.’
‘Oh Gideon, I’m so sorry. Who was it, your mother?’ Gideon had never, ever mentioned his family. He’d never really mentioned anything.
‘No. I’m afraid to say the old gay-bashing bag is still alive and living in Basingstoke,’ snorted Gideon. ‘No, my partner, Dominic.’ He did a gigantic sniff and balled the hanky in his fist. ‘The love of my life. My partner. For thirteen years. He died.’
‘Oh God, Gideon, how horrible for you. How did he die?’
‘Electric shock. At work.’
‘Oh, Gideon, that’s awful. I’m really sorry.’
She was. She realised she was actually really sorry about a lot of things, mostly that she had never tried to get to know him, as difficult as he had made it.
‘I really am sorry,’ she repeated. She tried to take his hand.
At first, he resisted, flinched and moved his hand away, onto his lap. Then he let her take it. They sat there for a while, in silence. She rubbed the back of his hand. It was soft, and surprisingly warm.
‘Do you want to go to the pub?’ she said, suddenly.
‘What?’
‘The pub. We could go for a drink. A chat. Get to know each other.’
‘What about the shop?’
‘We’ll close the shop. It’ll still be here tomorrow. Let’s just bunk off.’
She had been taking a massive chance here. She had half expected Gideon to fly into a sweary rage.
‘Okay,’ said Gideon. ‘I’d really like that.’ And he’d looked at Grace properly for what seemed like the first time ever.
She thought about it now. They’d had a good chat. A really good chat. He’d told her his entire life history – and there was a lot of it! – she told him about James, about Greg, about the whole sorry state her life had descended to. They’d got drunk on Baileys and it had been fabulous. A fabulous relief amongst all her angst and despair. She and Gideon were now friends.
A second text came through. Gideon again.
By the way, I’ve had some amazing feedback on you re. the wedding fair. You were a hit, girl! I’m happy to step aside and let you do them all on your own in the future.
She’d forgotten all about the wedding fair, with everything that had gone on since.
And don’t forget what I said to you. Don’t jump out of the frying pan into the fucking fire!
He had said that. She remembered now. It was after their seventh or eighth Baileys and he’d clutched her hands imploringly as he’d said it. She replied something about fires being warm and better than being out in the cold, but she considered his words now. It’s what Nancy, the girl from the wedding fair, had said too. Grace took a large sip of her pina colada, which had now arrived, through a bright pink straw. People had been saying a lot of things to her recently she’d been totally ignoring. Gideon, Nancy, Frankie, Imogen, even Greg. That she was amazing just as she was. That she could make it on her own. What had Nana McKensie said? Be a pioneer.
Why hadn’t she been listening to anybody? She’d been focusing on all the things she hadn’t got and none of the things she had. She had been blind, but not in the way she’d thought. She’d been wanting to plug the gaps of her life when a gap was exactly what she needed. She looked around the bar again, at her friends – so proud and single – and thought about her life. Friends, Daniel, a job with – finally! – a nice boss. She didn’t need anything else. She’d been to the school fundraiser on her own and survived. She’d done the wedding fair and been a ‘hit’. She’d given Greg what for, confronted Gideon at last and had shown James she could live a perfectly decent life without him, thank you very much. She could be a pioneer in her own life, couldn’t she?
She could make it on her own. With her friends, and Daniel – the very best thing in her life – she could make it on her own.
She was about to put her phone back in her bag when she remembered something else. Tim’s message. She had never replied to it. Now was the perfect time.
Hello, Tim. I’m sorry, but I’m not dating at the moment – I’ve had some shockers too and am taking a break! If you haven’t been snapped up, I may be free next January. Give me a try then?
There. Single for at least a year. Sorted. She smiled to herself and took another big sip of her cocktail.
Two pina coladas later, Nicholas re-emerged to take them all into The Summer Garden. Marcia was even more on heat, but Nicholas was wise to her. He attached himself to Grace and talked politely to her as they made their way through the hotel. At one point she helped physically steer him away from Marcia’s clutches. He was almost sprinting to keep a safe distance from her. Nicholas would be pleased to clock off tonight, Grace thought.
As they walked into The Summer Garden, Grace gasped. It was amazing. They were in a huge atrium, flanked on all sides by eight magnificent storeys of hotel. Each level was festooned with cute, shuttered windows, Juliet balconies and cascading foliage, and the atrium was topped with a stunning glass roof through which you could see the stars. It had elegant, marble pillars, wrapped in reams of twinkling lights. Huge palm trees, their glossy leaves gleaming in candlelight. White tables with silver candelabras. Blooms of the most gorgeous flowers in pale summer pinks and creams were everywhere. Peonies, sweet peas and roses spilled from huge, ornate vases and tumbled from rococo plinths.
In one corner was an enormous white piano where a tiny bald man was tinkling the ivories. They walked in to ‘Strangers in the Night.’
Nicholas showed them to their table with a flourish, pulling out their chairs for them, and he flamboyantly shook a huge linen napkin onto each of their laps. Imogen and Marcia were on one side, Grace and Frankie the opposite, and Tarquin looked proud to be head of the table.
Grace was almost transfixed by Marcia. First, she held Nicholas’ hand down on her leg as he laid down the napkin and he yanked it away, as though burnt. Then, after he’d escaped – with Marcia laughing and calling out, ‘Tonight’s the night, Nicholas!’ – she started an inordinate amount of faffing and rummaging in her bag. She finally unearthed her reading glasses and her Dictaphone and set them on the table next to her wine glass. Meanwhile, Tarquin was rearranging the ruffles on his shirt and pulling faces in the back of his knife.
Frankie was beaming, glowing. A little smile kept creeping up on her face. Single life was really suiting her, thought Grace. It was going to suit her, too, now she was properly ready for it. By contrast, the birthday girl looked miserable. She smiled when someone addressed her directly, but otherwise she just looked morose. On the train up, several times Grace had caught her staring blankly out of the window looking like her dog had just died, not that Imogen had ever had one. She was not a dog person, not with those floors.
‘I’m going to the loo,’ said Frankie, getting up and leaving the table. Marcia and Tarquin started bickering about wine.
‘White wine has me pie-eyed within ten minutes, Marcie,’ Tarquin was insisting. ‘I’ll be all over the place.’
‘You are anyway,’ said Marcia. ‘Well, I can’t drink red. It exacerbates my irritable bum.’
‘You have an irritable bum?’
‘Oh, grumpy like you wouldn’t believe, Tarqs! There’s things going on down there they’d be too squeamish to put in The Lancet!’
Grace stood up. ‘I’m going to the loo as well,’ she said. ‘All those cocktails.’
‘I’ll come with you,’ said Imogen. ‘Order some champagne, Marcia. It’ll make things simple.’
‘The bubbles will make me burp like a navvy,’ warned Marcia, holding her stomach as though she were shoring up a balloon, ‘but okay, that sounds like an excellent plan. We have got a birthday to celebrate!’
‘Another year w
iser,’ said Imogen, ruefully, as she got up from the table. There was definitely something up with her, thought Grace. All Imogen’s previous birthdays as long as she’d known her had been riotous affairs, with Imogen on top form. Her fortieth had been an absolute scream. Oh dear, she feared the returns tonight would not be happy ones. ‘Good God, those two are unbearable,’ hissed the birthday girl, as they moved away.
‘Aren’t they!’ said Grace. ‘Marcia’s even worse than you described her! Fascinating to watch, though.’
‘Oh, never a dull moment with our Marcia!’ said Imogen. ‘Great fun to work with, but by God, sometimes you just want to strangle her with a pair of tights!’
‘Ha, I bet. Are you all right, Imogen?’
She was now a few steps behind Imogen as they weaved through tables of laughing and drinking diners. It was probably not the right moment to ask. Imogen turned her head and called back over her shoulder, ‘I’m fabulous, honey’ but Grace wasn’t convinced. She would have to try and talk to her later, maybe she’d be able to get it out of her on the drunken train journey home.
Frankie was standing outside the ornate cream door to the women’s toilets. From the back, it looked like she was smoking. Grace knew that she and Imogen both did, as rebellious teens, until the legendary night they’d almost set their tent on fire with a packet of Camels Imogen had brought back from Spain. Grace knew all the stories.
As they neared, they realised Frankie was on her phone.
‘Give them all a kiss from me,’ she said, and her voice softened. ‘I love you too.’
‘Who are you talking to?’ asked Grace.
Frankie turned, blushed and stuffed her phone into her shoulder bag. ‘Er…no one,’ she said. ‘Well, Rob, actually…’ she added, sheepishly, lowering her shoulders and putting her hands in her jacket pockets.
‘You’re back with Rob?’ said Grace, incredulous.
‘Er…yep.’
‘Traitor!’ exclaimed Imogen, shaking her head.
‘Well, what about you and the gasman?’ Frankie countered. ‘And come on, tell us the truth! I couldn’t see much of his face, but I’ve never seen a gasman who looks like that. The one we normally get looks like Blakie from On the Buses.’
Imogen laughed hollowly. Then she tried and failed to look indignant. Then she just looked sad. ‘Okay, you’ve rumbled me. It wasn’t the gasman. It was a mistake.’ And her face fell further. She looked down at her fabulous shoes as though she wanted to disappear into the ground.
‘Do you want to tell us about it?’ said Grace.
‘No! I can’t. Not today. Maybe in about five years. When I’m over it.’ Imogen looked awful, Grace had never seen her look quite like that before. Imogen sighed, then raised her head. ‘We’re not doing very well, are we? Grace, you’re the only one who’s kept to the charter.’
That stupid charter. It wasn’t worth the paper it wasn’t written on. So much for her two best friends staying single. Then again, she’d hardly kept to it. Grace swallowed. Was it time to come clean?
‘Not exactly,’ she said.
‘What do you mean, not exactly?’ demanded Imogen.
‘Not exactly.’
‘What on earth’s going on in here, ladies?’ It was Marcia, looming behind them like a battleship. ‘I can’t sit and help Tarquin count his age spots all night! What are you doing? It’s like a scene from Macbeth. Are you plotting the downfall of the male species?’
‘Yes, we’re just sharpening up the birch twigs, Marcia,’ said Imogen. ‘And please don’t call us “ladies”, Marcia. I’ve told you that before.’ She shuddered. ‘It makes me think of misogyny and feminine wipes.’
Marcia hooted with laughter. ‘But you are ladies! Come on, back to the table! Chop chop! We can’t leave Tarquin there all by himself – before we know it he’ll be up at the piano doing a Liberace, Lord knows he’s got the temperament.’
They all went to the loo and headed back to the table, in a slightly inebriated troop. The truth will out, thought Grace. It always did. Frankie was back with Rob and she and Imogen had both been up to no good with men. So much for a year of being single. They should be ashamed of themselves.
Chapter Thirty-four: Imogen
The man on the piano finished playing ‘Moonlight Sonata’ and Imogen looked around her. The restaurant was crowded and buzzing. There were a lot of men with dates – their wives, their girlfriends, their mistresses? Mostly wives, she suspected. Marriage didn’t seem to be a dying art, no matter what anyone said. It was funny, she thought, how when men made a speech at a wedding reception they were always bursting with pride when they said ‘my wife’ for the first time – it always got an ‘aah’ and a round of applause – yet years later the same phrase become a mock-terrible thing that came with a tut and a grimace. My wife. The wife.
She wouldn’t ever be anybody’s wife, to be proud of in the first flush of marriage or affectionately scorned in the distant future. She didn’t even want to be anybody’s girlfriend now Richard had gone. She couldn’t see herself with a man again. She’d fallen in love, and she’d had her heart broken. She wasn’t planning on repeating either experience. Ever.
She’d have to tell Frankie and Grace everything. She couldn’t believe Frankie was back with Rob, and Grace had been seeing someone as well! They were all a disgrace. And she was a heartbroken disgrace.
Marcia had ordered three bottles of Veuve Clicquot and Imogen sipped slowly from her champagne flute as she surveyed the scene. She couldn’t bear to get drunk; she didn’t want to get maudlin and end up sobbing on anyone’s shoulder. Instead she’d taken solace in the amazing food. She’d had seared scallops with bacon and pea puree, followed by beef Wellington with dauphinoise potatoes and spring vegetables. She was halfway through a sublime chocolate almond fondant. This could be the way forward. The only way forward. She’d be fat and miserable. Happy bloody birthday.
The piano was still silent. There was a man with his back to the restaurant, half obscured by a palm and leaning down to the pianist. The pianist nodded. Imogen rolled her eyes. Some champagne-soaked idiot saying Play it Again, Sam, no doubt, or requesting something by Michael Bublé. Git. She put down her glass and returned to her fondant.
As she demolished the last mouthful, she looked up in surprise. She could hear the opening strains of a song she knew well. Blur, ‘The Universal’. That was strange. And quite a departure from Frank Sinatra and the hits of The Carpenters.
She looked over to the piano again and dropped her spoon. It glanced off her plate and clattered to the floor. A passing waiter picked it up and whisked it away into the front of his apron.
‘Sack the juggler!’ giggled Marcia.
‘Oops!’ said Frankie. ‘Butter fingers. Hey, are you okay, Imogen?’
‘I really don’t think I am,’ said Imogen, staring straight ahead.
‘Drink some water,’ suggested Grace. ‘If you’re feeling a bit sloshed it’ll dilute the alcohol.’
‘I don’t think water can help me,’ said Imogen.
Walking towards their table, in blue jeans and a white, open-necked shirt – his eyes glinting, his hair just right – was Richard.
She froze. Her heart was going like the clappers. She’d only ever seen him in a suit, or his birthday suit. In jeans he looked sublime. He was like a mirage before her – Colin Firth coming out of the lake in Pride and Prejudice, Brad Pitt sitting by the side of the road in Thelma and Louise, Tom Selleck being anywhere and doing anything at all…
‘Blimey, he’s good-looking,’ said Frankie, a quizzical look on her face as though she was trying to remember something.
‘Isn’t he?’ said Imogen in a near whisper. Damn, damn, damn him for being so gorgeous. What the hell was he doing here?
Marcia and Tarquin both flicked their heads round.
‘Christ on a bike!’ said Marcia. ‘Sexy man alert!’
‘What about me?’ said Tarquin, eyeing Richard up and down.
‘Yes, yes,’ sa
id Marcia. ‘Same meat, different gravy.’ The woman was practically salivating.
‘Is he coming over to us? Do you know him, Imogen?’ said Grace.
‘Yes,’ whispered Imogen. And there, suddenly, he was, in front of her. Her perfect man. Her imperfect man. If only he’d been what she wanted him to be. He was the best-looking man she’d ever seen.
‘Hello,’ said Richard.
‘Hi,’ said Marcia. She was both doe-eyed and fluttering her eyelashes like a camel.
Frankie was nudging Imogen, and hissing, ‘Who is he?’ Imogen ignored her.
‘Hello,’ said Richard, again.
‘Hello,’ said Imogen hesitantly. Then, accusingly, ‘How did you know I was here?’
‘Well, you wouldn’t answer my calls,’ he said, his rumbling American accent cutting through the clatter and chatter of the restaurant. She could hear nothing else. ‘So Nigel and I drove to your house.’
‘Oh,’ said Imogen.
‘Oh!’ said Frankie, agog. She was clutching onto Grace as though in the presence of a deity. ‘Hang on, are you the gasman?’
‘I guess I am,’ said Richard. ‘Are you Frankie?’
‘I am,’ said Frankie, looking pleased as punch.
‘I’m Grace,’ volunteered Grace. She started fluffing up her hair then seemed to think better of it and lowered her hand.
‘Hi, Grace,’ said Richard. ‘I’ve heard all about you.’ Grace smiled. Frankie grinned. Marcia was ramping up her cleavage with both hands and attempting a duck pout.
He turned back to Imogen. ‘So, you weren’t home – obviously – and I was about to leave when a couple pulled up in a car. The lady seemed pretty keen to find out who I was. She asked me a ton of questions.’
‘Fiat Panda?’ said Frankie.
‘I’m sorry?’ said Richard.
‘Were they in a Fiat Panda? A black one?’
‘It was a black car,’ said Richard. ‘And the lady had some sort of a plant on her lap, if that helps.’
‘Mum and Dad!’ exclaimed Frankie. ‘I knew it! Then what happened?’ she said, pulling her chair nearer to the table.
‘They said you weren’t home,’ said Richard, turning back to Imogen. ‘They said you were out in “That London”, for dinner at a swanky hotel. She couldn’t remember the name, but said it was somewhere five star. Nigel and I rang round them all on the way up here, until I found you.’
Year of Being Single Page 26