by Fiona Harper
‘Meg?’
It’s only his hand shooting out to grab my arm that stops me. As it is, my shoe – a rather old and ill-fitting suede ballet pump – flies off my foot and into the reeds. Seconds later, I hear a distinct plop. We both stare at where my shoe has just sunk below the surface of the dank water and then I turn to find Jude smiling at me.
I don’t smile back, not yet. I’m too nervous. There was me, hoping I’d dazzle him so much that he’d suggest running off to the South of France for the summer without the news of my impending marriage to spur him on, but any hopes of being poised and elegant and desirable have just disappeared into the duckweed with my shoe.
‘Hi,’ I say softly.
‘We must stop meeting like this,’ he says, the smile growing ever more mischievous.
My lips curve a little too. No, we really shouldn’t.
‘How are you?’ I ask, and I’m aware I sound a little breathless. I’m hoping he’ll think it’s because of the shoe incident.
‘Good.’ He looks me over. ‘That Dave isn’t doing a very good job of being your knight in shining armour.’
I turn to face Jude, still hanging on to him, because I’m balancing on one foot. ‘Actually,’ I say, looking him straight in the eye, ‘he’s applied for the position permanently. He asked me to marry him tonight.’
That wipes the smile off Jude’s face. He stares at me, and then it’s as if someone’s flicked a switch. I see the charm he turns on so easily for others beaming bright in my direction. ‘Well … congratulations.’ His perfect teeth are showing, but there’s no warmth in his eyes.
I take a breath. This is it. My moment. I can either let it drift past me again or I can grab it. ‘I didn’t say yes.’
Jude’s eyes widen. ‘You turned him down? Mr Perfect?’
I frown. Mr Perfect? Is that who he thinks Dan is? I almost laugh. Hasn’t Jude ever tried looking in the mirror? Or taken a really good look at Dan?
‘I told him I didn’t know, that I had to think about it.’
I’m wobbling harder now, as my leg muscles are starting to tire. Jude’s arm comes round me more firmly. ‘Come on, Cinderella,’ he mutters and, before I know it, he’s picked me up and he’s striding across the lawn towards the main house. He deposits me on a flagstone path under a portico. A dull-eyed statue of a half-naked woman eavesdrops on us.
Jude hasn’t let go of my hand, even though he could. He’s lost his don’t-care-about-anything sheen. Suddenly, he looks as if he cares very much. ‘And why would you say that to him?’
I swallow as my heart flings itself against my ribcage. It’s one thing to cheerlead yourself into ‘seizing the day’, another thing entirely to actually do it. ‘Because of you,’ I finally whisper.
‘I was hoping you’d say that.’
My heart starts to float like a helium balloon. ‘Really?’ I start to feel that giddy, heady sensation I should have felt earlier in the evening, after saying ‘yes’ to Dan.
‘I think I made a horrible mistake …’ he begins, and suddenly everything is back on track again, and he’s saying the words he said to me last time, only we’ve changed the scenery to somewhere way more romantic. He ends with, ‘I don’t think he’s what you need, Meg.’
‘And you are?’ I say, remembering my line well.
‘I’d like to try to be.’
I keep going with the script, and while I’m thrilled it’s all turned out the way it should, a little nagging feeling tells me it’s only because I engineered it, that there may be a price to pay for that. I swot that nasty little thought away. ‘But you’re supposed to be going off to France next month …’
He reaches out and grabs both my hands, and I get a sudden flashback to a couple of hours ago when I was standing with Dan by the river. The memory is so strong it almost wipes over the present moment and I have to fight to keep it in focus. ‘Come with me,’ he says.
I sway and then I stare into Jude’s eyes to anchor myself to him. Inside I feel as if something is pulling apart, like a piece of cloth being roughly torn, all jagged edges and loose threads. I feel my future unravelling.
‘OK,’ I say.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
I knock on the door of Dan’s shared student house and my knees are literally shaking. His mate Rick opens the door. Instead of giving me a hug, as he usually would, he just eyes me warily and leads me silently to the sitting room. I find Dan there, in just a T-shirt and boxers, staring at a This Morning segment on how to turn grunge into a wearable look for summer.
‘Hi,’ I say.
He stares at the TV for a full five seconds before turning to look at me. ‘Hi.’
‘Are you OK?’ I ask. I can detect the faint whiff of stale lager and Dan’s eyes look bleary, which is odd, because he’s not much of a drinker.
He shrugs.
‘What did you end up doing last night?’
He looks away quickly. ‘Not much.’
I see that look again, the same one he wore last night, the same one that knelled the bells of doom for our future marriage and is doing a pretty good job of messing up the possibility of this one too. Any pity I’m feeling for him evaporates.
He’s lying to me, and this just confirms it wasn’t a heat-of-the-moment, one-off incident last night because he was hurting. ‘You must have done something,’ I say, maybe a tad more shrilly than a girl about to break up with her boyfriend ought to, but his cowardice incenses me.
He talks to Judy Finnigan on the telly, not to me. ‘Rick and I had a few beers.’
Judy chatters on, not the slightest bit interested in Dan’s lacklustre social life.
I stare at him as he stares at her. This is already a habit, I realise – lying to me – and it started much, much earlier than I’d thought. I feel as if hot air is being puffed into my face as I consider how many other women there may have been, because that’s what he must be lying about. What else would he need to hide?
But then something clicks inside my head and I realise this is what I want. This makes everything so much easier, because I know I’m making … that I’ve made … the right choice.
‘I know I said we weren’t breaking up last night, but maybe we should.’
Dan’s head snaps round. That got his attention. ‘What?’ he says, although I’m pretty certain he heard every syllable.
‘I want to end it.’ Even though I’m trying to steel myself against it, I flinch inwardly as my words hit home and Dan’s face falls. All the righteous, disgruntled anger he’s been wearing as a shield melts away, leaving only confusion.
He stands up. ‘What are you saying?’
‘It’s over, Dan. You and me. It’s just not working.’
He shakes his head. ‘Last week it was working … A month before that it was working … What’s changed?’
I start to answer but the way his eyes have filled up arrests me. The backs of my eyeballs start to sting too and I will them to stop. You did this, I try to tell him silently as I look at him. Not yet, maybe. But you will. You have no one but yourself to blame.
He swallows. ‘Are you sure? Can’t we work on this?’
‘No,’ I say firmly. ‘Sorry.’
I can tell, in the midst of his confusion, Dan is finding my certainty off-putting. He scowls as he tries to compute my response, looking at the patterned carpet, complete with greasy kebab stain, for help. After maybe thirty seconds, he looks at me again, and there’s something different in his eyes. Something glittering. ‘Is there someone else?’ His tone makes goosebumps break out on my arms.
I nod. ‘Sort of.’
He lunges towards me, but stops just short of making any kind of physical contact. The look in his eyes is pure fury. ‘You’re sleeping with him?’
That’s when I take the shock and twist it into rage. Hypocrite! I want to yell at him. What you think is the moral high ground is actually stinking, boggy quicksand! And if Dan has one fault it’s that he occupies a whole mountain of moral high ground,
probably learned it from his dad. When he said he wanted to wait until marriage, I thought it was sweet and old-fashioned, if a bit frustrating. I thought it signalled up what an upright and honourable guy he must be. Now I start to wonder if the premature marriage proposal has more to do with the fact he’s panting for it rather than everlasting love. His sex drive clearly overrode his morals in our future life.
I pull myself up straighter. ‘No. It’s nothing like that,’ I say, and I try not to blush when I remember the night before with Jude, when it almost had been very much like that, until I’d come to my senses and remembered I hadn’t actually broken up with Dan yet. Even the fact I’d kissed him made me feel horribly disloyal this morning.
‘Then what are you flipping well talking about?’
Even now he can’t quite bring himself to say the F-word. Even when I’m prising his heart from his chest and crushing it in my fingers. A part of me despises him for it.
‘I’m saying that I have feelings for someone else. Feelings I haven’t acted upon – ’ Dan snorts but I carry on undaunted. ‘Feelings that I shouldn’t be having if I’m ready to marry you.’
‘Jude?’ he whispers and his long frame crumples into the armchair nearby.
‘Yes,’ I say, and my voice is hoarse.
Dan shakes his head. ‘I always knew that guy was trouble …’
‘It wasn’t him. It was me … or at least it was that I found myself thinking about him all the time, even when I knew I shouldn’t.’
This is the most honest thing I’ve said to my husband in about five years. I also realise that maybe if I’d told him this in the future, maybe if he’d had the guts to tell me the same when his eye had started to wander, that we wouldn’t have ended up in the horrible situation we did, lying to each other every day by omission, pretending we were happy when really we were just coasting.
We talk then. Properly. Honestly. It’s not comfortable and I’m not sure it makes either of us feel any better, but when he walks me to the front door, I feel as if we’ve reached a shaky kind of resolution. Only time will tell if it holds or not.
And then I walk out of Dan’s house, out of his life, and into my new one, full of the hope only a future full of blank pages can bring.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
I spend the rest of the day with Jude. Even though he should be revising and I should be putting the finishing touches to my final art piece. We catch the Tube into central London, wander through Portobello market hand in hand and then through Kensington Gardens. It’s odd, expecting to see the Princess Diana memorial fountain there then realising it isn’t because she’s still alive somewhere, miserable in her fabulous life.
As we amble past the spot it will one day occupy, Jude stops, turns and kisses me. I have the sudden urge to write to Diana, to tell her she only has one life to live and she might as well grab happiness while she can. No one knows how many days they have left. I also consider telling her to wear a seatbelt at all times, but as quickly as the idea comes into my head, I dismiss it. Even if I sent it, the letter would be intercepted and rammed into a shredder.
‘Come back to mine …’ Jude whispers in my ear. I pull away and smile at him. I feel like a different person today, someone to whom yesterday’s rules don’t apply. For the first time in years I feel free to do what I want instead of what I should. Number one on that list is Jude. I’m tired of being the good girl.
So that’s what I do. I spent a lazy, warm summer afternoon in bed with Jude, and as the sun starts to set I kiss him at his door and leave him. I’ve promised I’ll go and see Becca’s drama performance tonight.
She’s already left the flat when I get back. I’ve forgotten exactly what time she needed to leave for the studio theatre to get ready and I must have missed her. Since we hadn’t planned to go together but meet up after the show, I potter round the flat, changing into the dress I bought in Oxford Street and grabbing a cropped denim jacket.
Becca is too busy to come out from backstage before the performance, so I find a seat with a few of her drama friends that I remember being on a nodding basis with and I watch A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Becca is playing Titania.
Afterwards, I go and wait outside the main entrance. The small studio theatre is used by both the drama and the dance department and doesn’t have anything as posh as a stage door. Most of the rest of the cast have appeared, been told in megaphone-loud voices how wonderful they were by their friends and have drifted off to the bar by the time Becca appears.
She marches out, looking a little strange in her stonewashed jeans and hot-pink T-shirt but with her green-and-silver-glittery stage make-up still streaked across her face. She nods at me then sets off at a blistering pace down the narrow path that leads back towards the main buildings of the campus.
‘What’s up?’ I ask, trotting after her. ‘You were amazing! Best I’ve ever seen you do it! Don’t worry about that fluffed line in your first scene.’
Becca stops, turns and looks at me. ‘You think I’m worried about missing a line?’ she asks, placing her hands on her hips. The stage make-up has the effect of making her look even more ticked off.
‘Aren’t you?’
She shakes her head.
‘Unbelievable … So wrapped up in yourself you just don’t ever see!’
‘What?’ I say and my volume increases to match my level of confusion. ‘What don’t I see?’
Becca pokes me in the hollow between the top of my right boob and my shoulder with an acid-green fingernail. ‘You don’t know what I’m talking about? What planet are you on?’
I step back and rub the spot. It usually wouldn’t have been so bad, because Becca is a bit of a nail-biter, but she’s been adorned with long green plastic talons by the costume department. ‘Um … this one?’ I say tentatively. I’m getting that same reality’s-gone-screwy feeling I got when I first woke up here.
‘You broke up with Dan!’ she screams at me. ‘After he proposed, as well! What the hell’s wrong with you?’
I blink.
Oh.
I didn’t know she knew. I also didn’t know she’d take it so personally. It’s not her who’s broken up with him, after all! I stiffen and stand up straighter. ‘Nothing’s wrong with me, actually. Nothing at all.’
She throws her hands wide, shakes her head. My answer seems to have thrown her.
‘We’re not right for each other,’ I tell her, trying to keep my voice calm.
She gives me another one of those looks that tells me she thinks I’ve had an aneurysm or something. ‘Don’t be ridiculous! I’ve never seen two people more right for each other.’
‘Who told you?’
She inhales deeply through her nose as she stares at me. ‘Dan. He’s a mess.’
I feel a little kick of guilt down in my stomach, but I push it away. I’m being cruel to be kind, but I’m the only one who knows that. ‘He’ll thank me in the long run.’
Becca laughs, but it’s not her usual bubbly giggle. ‘What? For breaking his heart?’
I turn and start walking. ‘You’re just being dramatic now.’
I’m halted by Becca grabbing my arm, wrenching my shoulder in my socket. ‘What’s wrong with you, Mags? You’ve been acting really weird the last couple of weeks! You’ve changed.’
I pull my arm away from her and scowl. ‘How?’
‘You’re … you’re …’ She looks desperately at me, as if she really doesn’t want to let the next couple of words out of her mouth. ‘You’ve just started being really selfish.’
I blink again. Selfish?
Well, maybe it seems that way because I’m not being my usual doormat self – I’m not going along with what everybody else wants, letting life happen to me instead of taking it by the horns. I suppose if she wants to call that selfish then maybe I should let her. ‘You don’t understand.’
‘Then explain it to me.’
For a moment, I actually consider this. Could I tell her? Could I tell her everything?
But then I imagine the words coming out of my mouth and what her reaction will be. For all her wafting around like an unearthly being this evening, Becca is probably one of the most grounded people I know. She’ll just get even angrier with me, thinking I’m making fun of the situation. ‘I can’t.’
Her expression hardens again. ‘Or won’t.’
A sudden drop in my stomach alerts me to the fact that this is a crucial moment, that I have to handle it right. Dan and Becca are my anchors in this world, my only connections to the life I’ve left behind. I’ve cut one loose and I really don’t want to lose the other.
‘Remember that time we went to that gig at the Hammersmith Apollo,’ I say, ‘and we were a little bit tipsy, and we got on the bus and dozed off on each other?’
Becca looks warily at me. ‘Yes?’
‘How we woke up and realised we were going the wrong way, that we needed to get off and change buses, or we’d end up in Islington instead of Putney?’
She nods.
‘Well, that’s what I felt my life was life. The destination was fine and all that, but I had that same sudden shock in the pit of my stomach – I wasn’t going the way I was supposed to be going. I know it seems drastic and all, but I had to do something before it was too late.’
I look at her, begging her to understand. She sighs and then we fall into step beside each other, making an unspoken decision to change direction and head for the bar. I know she’s confused and angry but I also know she’ll stand by me. She’s only being like this because she’s trying to protect me, trying to steer me down the path she thinks leads to happiness for me. Somehow, I’m just going to have to convince her that path doesn’t always lead to Dan.