by Claire Sandy
DJ Dirty Tequila had warmed up the crowd for his father.
‘Yeah,’ said Fern, proud but baffled by what Ollie did. ‘He’s sick.’ She bit her lip. ‘Is that right? Sometimes I can’t make out a word Ollie says. I’m always half an hour behind with the jargon.’
As Layla boogied towards them, Fern took advantage of her BFF privileges to rub the bump that ruined the line of Layla’s cerise dress.
‘Junior likes Adam’s singing. She was leaping about for that last number.’ Layla looked down at where her unborn daughter hid inside her; since the amniocentesis had revealed the gender, Layla had been impatient for the birth, anxious to meet their little girl.
‘A Kinky Mimi fan in the womb!’ Fern lifted her head to see Adam over the heads of the adoring/pissed crowd. She saw him wink at Penny, who was singing along in the ostentatious way Nora sang the hymns at mass. As if to say, I know ALL the words and am going STRAIGHT to Heaven/the after-party. ‘Honestly, Layla, you wait ages for one baby, then a load come along at once!’
‘Are you OK?’ Layla slipped her arm through Fern’s. ‘You’ve put so much into today. Don’t spread yourself too thin.’ She lowered her voice, following Fern’s line of sight to where Adam was talking to Penny, their faces close together. ‘After all you’ve been through in the past year, I wouldn’t be surprised if this wedding created chaos in there.’ She tapped the side of Fern’s head.
‘More here, actually.’ Fern laid her hand over her heart.
The friends shared a shimmering moment the way friends can, when the mutual understanding and acceptance is total.
Luc, scrolling through a news website on his phone, said ‘Hey! They’ve found your monsieur Speed.’
‘Lincoln Speed?’ Fern looked over his shoulder. ‘Is he OK?’
‘He went feral in the Hollywood Hills,’ laughed Luc. ‘What a freak. It says here he kept himself alive by stealing picnics. He’s not ’andsome any more.’
‘Ooh-er.’ Fern recoiled from the mad-eyed, filthy face on the screen. ‘He looks like a museum model of Neanderthal man.’
Monsieur Speed had disproved the theory that all publicity is good publicity. The world had watched the live Roomies episode, shocked but unable to look away as a coked-up, blind-drunk Speed punched a co-star, groped an eighty-year-old audience member and sprayed the camera with urine. By the time he’d broken out through a fire escape and stolen a police car with a baby in the back, lawsuits were flying and networks of all nations had pulled the plug on Roomies.
Briefly, Adam had been on camera, rubbing widdle off his sleeve and wearing the expression of a man watching his royalty payments disappear down the plughole.
Now, in the garden, Fern bobbed up and down, peering through the crush to see Adam as he yelled, ‘That song was for an incredible woman. Penny, I couldn’t have done it without you!’ Penny’s upturned face shone; love spilled out of her. Adam was her One, all right.
This wedding was stuffed with Ones, it seemed.
Pulling a gossamer-fine pashmina around her shoulders, Fern enjoyed its embrace as she dipped like a swan over the tables, chit-chatting, checking all was fine, agreeing that yes, Nora did look very, um, bridal.
‘This is definitely the last number, and one you’ll all know.’ Adam strummed the first chord of the Roomies theme to a huge cheer of recognition. He shaded his eyes with his hand. ‘Anybody seen Fern?’
Fingers pointed. Tallulah shouted, ‘Over there Daddy! In the horrible wrap thing!’
Fern shrank. She lived in fear of hearing her name called from a stage. She couldn’t even watch audience participation shows on television; she had to leave the room in case the presenters somehow reached through the screen and roped her in. ‘Hel-lo!’ She waved awkwardly as all eyes turned towards her.
Including Penny’s eyes, which were shining with tears only just held back. Nodding encouragingly at Fern, Penny forced her mouth to arc; a poignant smile, there was nothing malicious in it.
‘This one’s for you, Fern.’ Adam found her face as he bent sideways, hand on hip like a Poundland Jagger. ‘I’ve taken a few liberties with the lyric.’
Feet began to tap. Bridesmaids were swung. Walter jigged a little.
Sometimes stuff just seems to get you down
Feelin’ like there’s no one else around
Everybody sang along. It was the end of an era; Roomies had died a sudden, very modern death on live TV.
But even in endings there are beginnings
I wish I could reach out and find my Fern
I want her today, tomorrow, until the bitter end
The singalong petered out as everybody listened to the fresh lyrics. Fern let out a gasp, as if she’d been holding her breath for a year. Which, in a way, she had.
Fernie – can I come home?
Fernie – can I come home?
Throw your cares away
I am here to stay
And our life’s a holiday
With Fernie!
The band stopped dead.
‘Come on, Fern!’ shouted Layla. ‘Can he come home?’
‘Yes!’ yelled Fern, jumping up and down in her pinchy new shoes. ‘Yes, Adam, yes!’
Adam threw his microphone in the air and leapt off the improvised stage. The crowd willingly parted as he raced towards Fern.
‘I love you.’ Fern was breathless as he closed in on her, as the whole glorious day and velvet night shrank to just them. ‘I love you stupidly and insanely and cosily and sexily and—’
He kissed her. ‘To shut you up,’ he told her later, but the kiss said different. The kiss was full of hunger, sad and celebratory at the same time. Despite the excitement it sparked, Fern relaxed for the first time in a year.
I’m safe, she thought.
Leaning against him, head buried in his shoulder, Fern enjoyed the sensation of being led as the crowd parted once again, clapping and cheering, to let Adam take her indoors.
At the kitchen table, hunched over, leaning in, her fingers plaited in his, Fern bent forward and kissed Adam again. Kissing Adam was permissible now. It was mandatory.
‘Are you really, truly, seriously back?’ Fern was afraid she’d fallen asleep; this dream, although better than her usual ones about being chased by a giant moth, would nonetheless break her heart when she woke up.
‘I’m really truly back. Cross my heart. Do you really truly want me back?’
‘Yes.’ Tears, springing from nowhere, meandered down Fern’s face. This was too much. She was overloaded.
‘I’m never leaving again, not even to go to the post office.’ Adam’s broad face was creased into a smile so wide he looked unhinged. ‘I’ll handcuff myself to you.’
The tears had a mind of their own. No man had ever said to her, ‘You’re so pretty when you cry’; they usually backed away into a taxi. ‘I’ll stop in a minute,’ she promised. ‘I’m just so . . . happy,’ she bawled.
‘While you’re crying, I’ll say my piece,’ said Adam. ‘The fridge magnets were wrong. I’ve never slept with Penny. Never even kissed her. Got that?’
‘I know you haven’t.’ Fern took one of her hands away to wipe her running nose before replacing it in Adam’s grasp; he pulled a face, but gamely kept hold of her slimy fingers.
‘But at Nora’s engagement party you and the fridge magnets accused me of having an affair.’
‘The magnets said I knew about you and Penny,’ said Fern, blinking as the deluge slowed. ‘I meant I knew that you weren’t having an affair, that Evka was wrong.’
‘Evka?’ Adam looked confused, as if he’d come in halfway through an episode of a complex political thriller.
‘She’s been spying for me while dusting your crevices.’ Fern tried to look remorseful but found she couldn’t. All’s fair in love and separation. ‘Evka carried home clues, like Binkie bringing in dead birds. She had my best interests at heart, but each one reinforced my suspicions.’
‘So, hang on, I’m confused, you did think me and poor old P
enny were at it?’
‘At first. Mainly because poor old Penny went out of her way to make it look as if you were lovers. I swallowed all her PR spin.’
‘When did you discover the truth?’
‘I had an epiphany.’ Fern felt almost shy explaining it. It was so delicate, a breath of intuition that had landed without warning, like a butterfly. ‘It was the way you looked at her at Nora’s party, when we were all eating and chatting. It’s not how you look when you’re in love.’
‘I see.’ Adam’s face softened. ‘You mean, not the way I look at you?’
‘The way you used to look at me, to be precise.’
‘Fernie, how am I looking at you now?’
‘Like you love me. But it’s been a while.’
They savoured the beauty of the new order (which was actually the old order), before Adam said, ‘Why’d you trust Evka? She’s a man-hater.’
With the benefit of hindsight, Fern could only agree; the trouble with hindsight is, it always turns up too damn late. ‘While I was changing Amelie, I poked around the master bedroom. Just like Evka said, it was full of Penny’s face creams and her robe and whatnot.’
‘Pretty damning evidence.’
‘Except . . . where was your shaving kit? Your Aqua di Parma aftershave? Your nose-hair clipper?’
‘You’re a right little Poirot. They were all in the spare room, where I slept. Alone.’
‘Then I saw something that clinched it.’ Fern wasn’t referring to the pregnancy test; the plastic stick played a central role in another love story, not Fern and Adam’s.
The life it changed was Evka’s; she’d taken the test while cleaning Adam’s flat, but was too fearful to read the result. ‘Please, Fern, you check, yes?’ she’d begged. Fern had been able to whisper ‘negative’ into Evka’s ear, just an hour or so before finding Patrik on the doorstep. His exquisitely timed arrival had saved Evka once and for all from a crazed promiscuity that had stopped being fun.
‘More accurately, I didn’t see something that clinched it.’ There had been no book by the right-hand side of the bed. ‘No way could you nod off without a few pages of a bedtime story about a hatchet-wielding reanimated Nazi. No book in master bed, no Adam in master bed. Case closed.’
‘You know me so well,’ said Adam, grave now, wondering at the importance of it.
‘Were you aware of Penny’s red underwear, by the way? And the PVC boots?’
‘Christ, no.’ After thinking for a moment, Adam looked hopefully at his reinstated partner and said, with a raised eyebrow, ‘Although . . .’
‘Not a chance, mate.’
‘Worth a try,’ said Adam with a wink.
‘It really wasn’t.’
‘So . . .’ Adam brought them back to the narrative of Fern’s epiphany. ‘Out you came, bursting to tell me you knew there’s nothing going between me and Penny.’
‘Or “Peni”, as I had to spell it.’
‘Unfortunately, Einstein, I had no idea that you suspected me of sleeping with her in the first place. So when you said that you knew about us—’
‘You thought I was accusing you?’ Fern let out a mock scream. ‘What are we like?’
‘We’re like fucking idiots,’ said Adam happily.
‘Tell me about Penny,’ said Fern. ‘I need to know. How far it went. How you felt. The lot, Adam.’
‘Right. So. Um. Well.’
‘In your own time,’ said Fern.
‘Look, after you chucked me out, or I left you, or whatever the hell happened, I was lonely. No, I was alone. I can’t find a word to do it justice. I’d always shared everything with you, and suddenly there was nobody to talk to.’
Me too, thought Fern with strenuous empathy.
‘When you and I did talk it was strained and catty. I was so proud of Kinky Mimi but you rolled your eyes about it. Penny was there. She was interested. She believed in the band.’
‘True. But Penny’s also one of the reasons we split up.’ Seeing Adam’s puzzlement, she said, gently, certainly, ‘How would you have felt if I’d fibbed about a new male friend? If I gave them a new, feminine name and lied about how often we met?’
‘I’d feel bad,’ conceded Adam. He sighed. ‘Very bad. It was dumb to keep her a secret. That made it look seedy, when in fact it was just business.’ Adam’s lips twisted the way they did when he was preparing to say something he’d rather leave unsaid. ‘It was exciting, Fern, to have, well, a fan.’ Adam winced. ‘I should’ve told you about the lunches and the coffees. Now I can see why you flipped when she moved in. I didn’t see it through your eyes.’
‘And I didn’t see it through yours.’ After all those months of blaming each other, Fern and Adam were rushing to claim all the blame for themselves. ‘I stopped listening.’ It was the biggest single regret of her life. ‘I stopped cheerleading. Kinky Mimi are bloody ace, Adam.’
‘We can come up with reasons why we fell apart, but for now I’m only interested in reasons why we should get back together, Fernie. Let’s clear up the whole Penny saga. At the time, I needed her. She was a fairy godmother. When Penny’s on your side, it feels like you can do anything, plus, sorry, but I liked her company. No, present tense – I like ol’ Pen. But sleeping with her . . . come on, Fern. Do you think I’m mad? There’d be a ton of small print to read the minute you got each other’s knickers off. If I’d known you were jumping to conclusions—’
‘There was no jumping involved,’ interrupted Fern. ‘Penny took me by the hand and led me to the conclusions. But, listen –’ she said, noting the slump of Adam’s shoulders – ‘I’m not out for vengeance.’ Fern had the imagination to put herself in Penny’s (considerably more expensive) shoes, and was compassionate enough to forgive her. Almost forgive her.
Adam looked uncomfortable. ‘At first I didn’t notice anything odd about Penny. I just thought we got on great, that we worked well together, that I had a friend I sorely needed. Now I see there was no rat problem at her flat, that when she moved into the master suite she expected me to share it with her, but it took ages for me to realize that she, well, liked me.’
‘You needn’t look so bloody pleased with yourself. Penny doesn’t like you, Adam. The woman’s in love with you.’
‘Is it love when it’s not reciprocated?’
‘Yes,’ said Fern emphatically. No love goes to waste; no love should be insulted by being told it’s something else. Especially not today, with love dripping from the midsummer trees and cocooning Homestead House in its non-judgemental, non-denominational embrace. ‘So, we’ve established that the woman loves you. Now tell me . . . does she know she can’t have you?’
‘I told her about my cunning plan to change the lyrics and throw myself at your feet. She was the only one who knew.’
Not quite. Fern remembered Nora’s comment about Adam being in love. She meant with me! ‘Were you gentle?’
‘I think so.’
‘You only think so?’ Fern hoped Adam had broken the news softly, with no faux naivety about the effect it would have. Apparently Penny had been gracious, supportive, even managing to listen when he rehearsed the updated lyrics. Penny could chew up anything – nails, barbed wire – if it meant pleasing Adam. ‘She smiled at me when you sang.’ It had been a flash of pure communication between the women; Penny had handed Adam over, all the fight gone from her. ‘I’ll be kind to her in future. Penny’s in pain.’
For now, Adam said, Penny would live in the apartment rent-free until a buyer was found. After that, she’d be released into the wild. Fern suspected that Penny’s history was littered with Adams; in all likelihood her future would be the same.
Tonight, though, was no time to dwell on Percy Waddingsworthington. ‘Sorry for spying on you, Adam.’
‘S’all right. It’s nice to know you care enough to be disgustingly underhand.’
‘I never stopped caring, Ads.’ Fern felt able to call him that now. ‘Not for one second. It was all front. I had to protect myself
while you flitted around, being a pop star, living the high life . . .’
‘I really, really miss Baked Potato Fridays,’ said Adam sorrowfully.
As Adam opened up, Fern was shocked at the turmoil beneath the surface. Adam had been jolted to his foundations, first by the unexpected success and wealth, then by the collapse of their relationship.
‘Not having to earn a living is liberating, yeah, but when you can do anything, what do you do?’ Head back, eyes closed, he said, ‘Without you and Ollie and Tallie, I was just a waster with loads of time on his hands.’
‘Yet you looked so cocky,’ said Fern. ‘I should have seen through it.’
‘How? Even I half believed my own hype. The only way was forward; going back seemed impossible. Even so, moving on – with Penny, with A. N. Other – was out of the question.’ Adam put his head to one side. ‘Unlike some people I could mention.’
‘Hal,’ said Fern heavily. It was inevitable that conversation had to turn in that direction sooner or later. ‘In a nutshell, I moved on because you’d moved on.’
‘Except I hadn’t.’
‘I know that now. I’m not saying it was revenge, or tit for tat.’ Fern wanted to do justice to Hal without upsetting her back-from-the-dead partner. ‘But, God, it helped.’
‘Didn’t help me much.’
‘I’m sorry. For hurting you.’ Fern couldn’t regret anything so lovely as Hal, but she could wish it hadn’t happened. ‘Will it be a stain, a blot on our copybook?’ She swallowed hard.
‘I won’t let it,’ said Adam. ‘I just won’t let it.’
‘Thank you.’ Love was up to its old tricks, doing the heavy lifting, working a minor miracle in a suburban kitchen.
‘Fern, let’s say Penny did mislead you—’
‘No, let’s not just say it. She did.’ This was an important point, one that had to be agreed upon before they moved forward.
‘OK, OK, but it didn’t work, did it, Fern? She couldn’t drive a wedge between us, however hard she tried. Because here we are.’
‘Where’s here, Adam? Is this really it? Should we talk things out, or make a deal, or take it slowly, or—’