Her eyes were on Sean and he turned around, almost as if he knew she was looking at him. Kate snapped out of her reverie with a start.
‘You OK?’ Sean mouthed, flexing a hand towards her.
‘I’m OK,’ she said nodding at him. She watched Mac at the end of the bar, saying his goodbyes to people, saw him push open the door into the dark, rainy night. She was glad he was gone, and she felt angry, too. How could he say that to her? The more Kate thought about it, the ruder it was, in fact, and she threaded her way through the crowd, who smiled kindly at the bride-to-be as she made her way towards her fiancé. Yes, that was what it was. Her engagement party. Her fiancé. Her life.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Planning a wedding, Kate discovered, was – like so much of life – not quite how it seemed in the magazines. In her time she must have written at least ten articles on the subject of being a blushing bride and how to organize the perfect wedding, but now she was planning one of her own, well – it was all rather different, and she didn’t quite know what to think about it.
For starters, she didn’t feel like a bride. Kate wasn’t the sort of girl who’d grown up dreaming of a big pouffy white dress, of a cake, of bridesmaids decked out in cherry pink, of coordination and happy families. For starters, her family had been effectively obliterated when she was fourteen. The limelight was left for her father and his genius, his fans, his amazing, wonderful life, and her mother and her beauty, her grace in every situation, her hysterical dramatic gene. And like basic genetics, the combination of these two people had produced one child, a daughter who actively ran from the limelight, to whom the thought of doing a first dance in a marquee in front of two hundred people was as terrifying as having to sing karaoke in front of people. It never occurred to her that she might have inherited anything from either of them.
That was what she liked about Sean: the limelight was his when they were out together. He was the genial, loud, funny one, the storyteller, the buyer of drinks. When they were alone it was different, they were the two of them, but out together he was the centre of attention. Kate liked it. She had her friends, she had a job where people listened to her, so what if occasionally she wished Sean would let her tell the story about the time they were on holiday in Crete and an unexploded mine went off in the garden next to their hotel? She’d been there, not him, she was the one who … Anyway, that didn’t matter, it was great.
The wedding was going to be in September, they’d finally set a date and, with a lump sum Venetia had given them as an early wedding present, they’d found the perfect flat, in a red-brick mansion block in Maida Vale. Her boss Sue had relatives in one such block, and she’d happened to mention to Kate that there was an auction about to take place on the flat below them as it had been foreclosed on. It was on the first floor; it had big bay windows, shiny glowing parquet floors, and the lobby was imposing and cavernous, with a great big heavy black door that squeaked loudly on huge old wire hinges and snapped shut after you like a trap. They moved in five days before Christmas, unable to believe they were finally there, in their own place.
On their first night they drank champagne, each sitting on a cardboard box, looking round at the bare but strangely cosy flat, and Sean clinked his glass against Kate’s. His legs were between hers. With his other hand he tugged the dusky pink scarf wrapped around Kate’s throat.
‘We did it,’ he said. ‘Can you believe it?’
‘No,’ said Kate. She grinned. ‘I can’t. At last. At last!’
He knelt on the floor in front of her, looking up at her with his impish, big generous smile, his arms on her legs.
‘This time next year,’ he said, resting his head on her chest, ‘we’ll have a big tree, and presents underneath it, and we’ll have been married for four months. We’ll be an old married couple by then.’
‘It’s weird, isn’t it.’
‘It’s not weird, that’s what’s so cool. It’s great.’ Sean kissed her. ‘Look, we’ll have all our Christmas cards lined up on that big windowsill there. And we’ll have the sofa here, with a big otto – what’s it called?’
‘Ottoman?’
‘That’s it. A big ottoman to put our feet on, and we can build some shelves here, what do you think?’ Kate nodded, watching him with pleasure and trying not to cry at the same time. She didn’t know why. She was tired.
‘We can put photos on the shelves, us on our wedding day. And you with your dad when you were little, and me and Doug on the baseball team. And we’ll have the computer here, and a desk for all your important office stuff, and the dining table can go here, and we’ll have all these dinner parties, you know?’
His enthusiasm was infectious. Kate could feel her face lighting up as she looked at him, the way she always did. ‘Go on,’ she said. ‘What else?’
‘What else. Hm …’ Sean frowned. ‘Well, next Christmas – on Christmas Eve, maybe – we’ll have Steve and Zoe round, with Harry and the new baby.’ Kate nodded, a cloud momentarily passing over her sunny world, the champagne suddenly tasting vinegary. ‘Perhaps Betty’ll be back from New York. Francesca and Pav –’
‘If they’re still together.’ Francesca was enjoying an overwhelmingly obsessive, secretive relationship with the trader next to her at work.
‘If they’re still together.’ Sean patted her knees, moving closer in towards her, so she could feel his breath on her neck. ‘Who else?’
‘Charly,’ said Kate carefully. ‘You forgot Charly.’
‘Screw Charly,’ said Sean, almost crossly. ‘I don’t wanna talk about Charly. Not tonight.’ He squeezed her shoulders, hard, and stepped back from her, tension suddenly thick between them. Kate watched him, angrily, hating the fact that their perfect night was being spoilt with this. The newly familiar feeling of hating things, hating Charly, this girl who had once meant so much to her, was inching its way into her mind again, and it was horrible. She didn’t want to feel like this, in their safe, beautiful new home together.
They were perfectly still in the centre of the room, a beam of light from the shadeless bulb hanging over them. Sean opened his mouth to say something, then didn’t, and Kate was afraid, suddenly.
‘I need to tell you something,’ she said, her voice small.
Sean nodded. ‘Mm-uhm. What, honey?’
‘It’s about Charly.’
It had happened three days ago, and even admitting she held the memory seemed deceitful, as if she were lying to Zoe, deceiving her herself … She and her ex-Woman’s World colleague Sophie had been visiting Georgina and her baby. Georgina had, slightly to everyone’s surprise, not least Claire’s, married Phil from the office (Charly had definitely not been invited to that wedding), and they were living in Hampstead, in a beautiful little house just off Keats Grove, behind the shops near the Heath. Sophie was a hearty type, now working for an off-the-beaten-track guide book publisher, who specialized in holidays through bits of the Amazon jungle that no human had ever been to before. It was she who’d suggested they walk across the Heath towards Gospel Oak station.
‘Fresh air,’ she’d said briskly, as they emerged from the once-chilly-now-frazzled Georgina’s house into a baby-free zone and each breathed an internal sigh of relief. ‘Do us good. Phew.’ She blew her short brown hair off her face. ‘Glad to be out of there, aren’t you?’ she said, slightly as if they’d just emerged from battle. Georgina, a super-efficient dynamo in the office, didn’t seem to understand why Ned, her sweet baby, didn’t want to organize himself in the same way her computer did, and wouldn’t stay silent when she wanted him to. All in all it had been a rather disheartening hour or so, and Kate and Sophie had both felt they were in the way. They were discussing this, and skirting by the Ponds, when Kate suddenly clutched Sophie’s arm.
‘What?’ said Sophie.
‘Nothing,’ said Kate. ‘Thought I was going to slip, that’s all. Sorry.’
Her heart was beating, she was red hot, she pulled her hat off, unwound her scarf and pret
ended to be listening as Sophie carried on telling her how she would deal with the apparently very simple demands of having a baby. But she wasn’t listening. No, of course not.
There, ahead of her, standing by a bench, facing each other, were Charly and Steve. She knew it was them, of course it was. He was holding her elbows, as if trying to restrain her, contain her, and she was yelling at him, her face angry, dirty with rage. Her beautiful brown hair was underneath a black crochet hat, a matching scarf wound round her neck, her long long legs still in her Charly wardrobe of jeans and high-heeled boots.
Kate watched as she broke free of his grasp and angrily kicked at the metal leg of the bench. She didn’t know what to do; they were walking towards them.
‘Ohmigod,’ said Sophie suddenly. ‘Shit.’
‘What?’ said Kate.
‘It’s Charly. Having some massive barney with some bloke. Oh god.’ Sophie turned to Kate. ‘Look, I know she’s your friend and everything, but …’
‘What?’
‘I really can’t face her, seriously, not while she’s in the middle of that, too. No way.’ She grabbed Kate’s arm. ‘Let’s cut through to the pond, go round the side. We’ll miss them.’ She shuddered. ‘Sorry, Kate. I’m being horrible. Do you mind?’
‘No,’ said Kate hurriedly. ‘Of course not.’
Steve was talking back to Charly. He tried to take her hand, to pat it, and Charly broke away, sobbing. He gripped her shoulders; she couldn’t see his expression, but she knew his voice, its pale undertones floating over to her. Kate tried to hear, but she couldn’t. And she knew what the conversation was, anyway. Of course she knew. She’d known Charly for four years. And then she heard just a snatch of what Steve was saying, a horrible, terrible confirmation of her worst fear as Sophie, her hat concealing her face, pulled her away.
‘It’s got to stop, Charly. I’m sorry.’ The thing that was to haunt Kate was Charly’s expression, of total, utter, blind – what was it? Intoxication? Obsession? She didn’t know. She only knew that here, crying like a madwoman, was Charly and, at home, looking after eighteen-month-old Harry and newly pregnant again, was Zoe. They were her two dearest friends. They had been.
Tears were running down Kate’s face as she finished the story, and Sean wrapped his arm around her, enfolding her in his big, bear-like embrace. He kissed her hair.
‘Don’t worry, darlin’,’ he said, his voice soft. ‘It’s nothing to do with you, honey –’
She broke away. ‘Of course it is,’ she said, angrily. ‘Sean, they’re my two best friends.’
‘I know,’ he said. He wiped his hand across his forehead. ‘And Zoe – little Zoe. Man.’
Kate’s voice cracked. ‘Steve’s going to be your best man, for god’s sake – what am I supposed to do?’
‘Nothing,’ he said, putting his arm around her again and drawing her close, till her breathing subsided. ‘Nothing at all.’
‘I can’t just do nothing,’ Kate said, pulling away from him, turning around the room.
‘I’ll talk to him,’ said Sean, holding out a hand to her. ‘It’s gonna be fine, Katy. It’s nothing. I know it’s nothing. I don’t want you worrying about it, OK? Come here.’
There, in the cold but brightly lit Christmassy flat, Kate suddenly felt fear for the future, a sensation she hadn’t felt since she’d got together with Sean. As if the life she and Sean and all her friends had built for themselves was just a house of cards, flimsy, impermanent. Kate had spent years searching for structure, order, security. Here, in her new flat, in her husband-to-be’s arms, a John Lewis catalogue on the table beside them, she suddenly felt in the midst of chaos, as if the wallpaper might start peeling off the walls, the china jump off the counters and smash, and the lights, suddenly, go out.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
July 2004
‘Steve’s got a day off today, you know,’ said Zoe, sitting with her feet up on another chair outside a café in Smithfield. ‘He said he might go round to yours, see Sean.’
‘What?’ said Kate, startled. She put down her menu, blinking at Zoe in the sunshine.
‘Do you know where Sean is?’ Kate’s face was blank, and Zoe said patiently, ‘The bathroom tiles in your flat. He’s doing them today, isn’t he? Steve’s helping him.’
Kate stared at Zoe. It went into her head, this nugget, another little piece of information. Kate wished she could connect them all in some way; but her brain didn’t seem to be working, lately.
They weren’t doing the bathroom tiles for another couple of weeks, Kate knew. The tiles were delayed, some problem with the manufacturers in Italy, due to Sean’s incredibly precise tile requirements, which had driven Kate practically up the bathroom wall itself. Plain white from IKEA was absolutely no good, no, they had to be from some tiny artisan shop near Modena, cut to the same dimensions as some Japanese designer from the Sixties. Kate just couldn’t have cared less. Having grown up with parents who barely knew one end of a hoover from another, Kate had learnt to be practical to survive, and it surprised her to realize just how good she was at organizing their finances, sorting out their tax returns, organizing the wedding, though actually, that didn’t interest her as much as other things did. Sean laughed at her, he thought it was funny he was marrying a girl who was more interested in tax returns than bathroom tiles or fonts for wedding invitations. He quite liked all of that, he told her.
He did, too. It surprised her, to realize what a homebody Sean was, to see how subtly both of them were changing. He wanted to be an old man with his pipe and slippers, sitting by the fireside. Kate couldn’t see big, strong Sean in slippers, at all – he was always doing something, always up before her, out getting supplies from somewhere, and yet more and more he wanted to stay in. He was out so often during the day for work, going to other offices, in meetings all over town, so when he was off he wanted to be with her and he liked her to be there with him, though these days, Kate’s job took up a lot of her time, and it was sometimes a real struggle to get away from the office, from the parties, the launch for a new fragrance, the preview of a new film. As she did better in her job, she became less of a homebody; the opposite of Sean. Sean had enjoyed doing up their flat so much, she found it really quite touching, though his zeal for home life was sometimes a bit overpowering, as if he’d tried on the coat for size and found it was too big but wanted to keep it anyway.
‘We should think about moving out of town in a year or so, though,’ he’d said, a few nights ago, as Kate was sitting on the sofa in her pyjamas, tapping away at her laptop, making some last-minute changes to an article she’d done.
Kate peered at him. ‘What?’ she’d said, not really taking it in.
Sean was squatting on his haunches by the fireplace, a palette knife in his hand. He’d found some antique ceramic tiles which exactly matched the period of the flat, and had removed the dull Seventies grey-green tiles around the fireplace, to replace them with burgundy, floral charming ones. Now she watched him, fondly.
‘I said.’ Sean heaved himself up. ‘We should really think about moving out of London in about a year or so.’ He put the palette knife in his toolbelt; Sean loved his toolbelt.
‘Why?’ said Kate, trying not to sound rattled. ‘We’ve only just moved in here.’
‘We don’t want to raise kids in the city, though, do we?’
‘What kids?’
‘The kids we’re going to have, Kate.’ Sean sat down next to her. ‘Hello?’ He patted her arm. ‘Don’t freak out.’
‘Oh,’ said Kate. ‘Those kids. Yes, but – Sean, I don’t want to move out of town.’
‘I’m not raising kids here in the city,’ said Sean. He sounded affronted. ‘Do you really want to do that? Wouldn’t it be better to be in a house? In a cul-de-sac? They can ride their tricycles, and … and stuff?’ he finished, rather vaguely. ‘Wouldn’t it be nice to live in an actual town?’
‘We already live in an actual town,’ said Kate. ‘I thought you liked it he
re. You’ve never said …’
‘Darling, calm down. This is way in the future,’ he said, putting his arm round her, and pulling her close. She could hear his heart beating, as she rested her head on his chest. ‘We won’t be in this apartment forever, will we? Or are you saying you want us to stay here for the rest of our lives, never move, never change anything, live here for fifty years, just like the Allans upstairs?’
He always did this; got her to agree with him by taking the piss out of her, driving her arguments into the ground with gentle hilarity. She couldn’t argue with him, never had been able to. He was like Teflon Man, nothing stuck to him, he just got on with it and did his own thing. Usually, she loved that about him.
‘I’d like to be like the Allans,’ she said. ‘They’ve got a great life.’
‘No, they’ve got a stupid life,’ said Sean, sitting up. ‘They should have realized the profit on their place years ago. Don’t they realize the market’s going to bottom out and they could have got a great little cottage in the country somewhere?’
‘I’ve never asked them,’ said Kate, moving away from him. ‘But maybe you should run up there now and make sure they’re aware of that.’ She poked him gently. ‘Calm down! Last week you wanted us to start going to the local church, now this. Is it the wedding, is that what’s making you freak out and act like Mr Suburban all of a sudden?’ He swung round towards her. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said softly. ‘I don’t need a house in Epsom somewhere to be happy with you. I’m happy here now.’
He frowned, looking annoyed. ‘Kate, that’s not what I mean. You know that.’
‘I don—’
‘Hey. You’re the one freaking out about the wedding. Ever since we got engaged, you’ve become Ms Career Girl in the City.’
She inhaled sharply. ‘What the hell do you mean by that?’
The Love of Her Life Page 22