My One Month Marriage

by Shari Low

  ‘I mean, like, what the fuck?’ one of them, the taller of the two with swishy blonde hair, a caramel tan, perfect skin and an air of cloying overconfidence, was exclaiming in an accent that was pure upper-class Chelsea.

  ‘Yeah, right? What. The. Actual. Fuck?’ the other one, same accent but swishy brown hair this time, retorted with exaggerated shock. ‘Like, seriously. He’s been seeing Araminta for months! She’ll be, like, so furious.’

  With that, and another synchronised swish of their hair, they finally climbed on to the adjacent treadmills and set them to a slow walk. The one on the direct left propped her phone on the dashboard so she could continue to peruse it while kidding herself that she was actually working out. Not at that speed. It would take three weeks to work off a digestive biscuit.

  Verity hadn’t meant to look, but it was unavoidable. She could see photos on the screen. Random faces that changed every few minutes when Swishy swiped the screen. It took a moment for her to realise it was some kind of dating site. Not Tinder though. She’d recognise that one from the time she’d signed up to check if Ned was on it. Of course, he wasn’t there. She hadn’t really believed that he would be – surely there was no way a guy as attractive and decent as him was into trawling for cheap thrills on a dating app? She’d deleted it, her faith in him restored.

  The girls were still giggling over the phone so Verity peered at the screen again, trying to make out the name of the site. It was called… She squinted to see it clearer. Your Next Date.

  Nope, never heard of it. But then that wasn’t really a surprise given that she wouldn’t go on a blind date if she was paid a million pounds and armed with a SWAT team and a large vat of antibacterial disinfectant.

  Her legs were aching now, the two girls next to her were irritating her with their accents and their inability to form a coherent sentence or one that didn’t include the word ‘like’ used in an entirely incorrect context. With a furious thump, she punched the stop button and jumped off, eliciting aloof gazes from Pinky and Perky.

  Grabbing the spray disinfectant from a nearby table, she methodically cleaned every inch of the machine, only feeling a slight de-escalation of her stress levels as she did so. Her mind was elsewhere, thoughts filtering, processing, changing, a possibility building, until she had absolutely no way of doing anything else until she’d checked it out.

  Maybe she was coming at this from the wrong angle. Instead of questioning Zoe’s feelings, perhaps she should shine a light on Ned’s. Was he really in love with her sister? Her earlier question resurfaced in her mind. Could he really be into easy pick ups and online hook-ups? She’d heard rumours over the years that he was… what did they call him in the staffroom? ‘A bit of a player’. But she was sure that was just bitchy gossip. Nope, she dismissed the notion for a second time. Ned was a decent guy. Didn’t the fact that he’d never once come on to her or made an inappropriate suggestion or comment in all the years he’d known her prove that?

  But… it wouldn’t hurt to double check, would it?

  Decision made, she finished cleaning the treadmill and tossed the towel in the large basket by the reception desk, then pulled open the glass doors that led to a deserted outdoor yoga terrace. Marina had joined the morning class at dawn, but Verity had opted for a hard cardio sweat instead. This wasn’t a weekend for peace and tranquility and no amount of attempting to connect with her inner serenity was going to calm her all-consuming irritation and bubbling fury.

  Out on the terrace, she squinted against the sun as she tried to focus on the screen of her phone. No use. She moved to a shaded corner and both the screen visibility and the wi-fi signal improved. Okay. Take a breath.

  Her fingers trembled slightly as she clicked on to her apps, then downloaded Your Next Date.

  Come on. Come on. How long did it take for a simple bloody… Ping.

  Damn. It was asking her to set up a profile. There was no way she was using her own details this time, so she put her imagination to work. Veronica. From Glasgow. A hairdresser. Voluptuous. Great sense of humour. Open to love, fun and brief encounters. The photograph was a random one, taken off Google. But, sticking to the theory that the best lies were the ones that most closely resembled the truth, she chose one of a woman a few years younger than her but with a very similar look – athletic, long red hair, green eyes.

  Another few clicks and her profile was complete. Okay, how to search? She completed the ‘ideal match’ parameters using Ned’s details. Male, 35–40. Location: Glasgow. Interests: Sport. Fitness. Enter.

  There were pages and pages of men who met the criteria and Verity quickly scrolled through them, heart thudding. Be there. Be there. Not that she was sure why she wanted that to be the case, but information was leverage and if he was on here it meant that he wasn’t really in love with her sister. She didn’t probe into the possibilities of what would happen if he were in fact cheating. She didn’t question herself as to whether she’d still want him if his infidelity then caused him and Zoe to split up. Nope, none of that factored in yet, so there was no point delving into the more unpalatable depths of her – or his – scruples. That problem could wait. Right now, she was still scrolling, still scrolling…

  Nope, nothing. He wasn’t there.

  Verity let the cool of the travertine stone on the walls bring her temperature down another notch. This was good news, wasn’t it? She should care enough for her sister to be delighted for her that her boyfriend wasn’t a duplicitous scumbag.

  She let that thought sit for a moment. Of course she loved Zoe, but this was so much more complicated than that. There was history. Barriers. Fundamental differences in the way they saw things. And, yes, if she was honest, maybe a lot of that was rooted in the past. They’d handled their dad leaving in very different ways. Zoe had used it to fuel and motivate herself, whereas it had forced Verity to shut down, to stop trusting, retreat into herself. For Verity, there would always be the resentment that was locked away when they were teenagers.

  Verity shook that one off. This weekend was stressful enough without going there. Focus on the present and the future, not the past.

  Another thought. Should she just tell Zoe how she felt? That idea was closed down by her self-esteem before it even grabbed hold. Never. There could only be two outcomes to that scenario. Zoe would stay with Ned and they’d be forever awkward in Verity’s company. Or she’d end their relationship, and if Ned really was in love with Zoe, then he’d resent Verity until the end of time. No, their fling had to end organically. Or at least in a way that didn’t appear to have any connection whatsoever to the woman sitting on a terrace in Ibiza looking nothing like a voluptuous hairdresser from Glasgow who was up for brief encounters.

  She was so busy contemplating the options that she hadn’t realised her thumb was still scrolling up and down until something jarred in her vision.

  Hang on – what was that? Swipe back. The photo was years old, taken when his hair was long and pulled back in a ponytail. The only reason she recognised it was because he’d shown it to her when they were surrounded by man-bunned hipsters at the climbing centre. How they’d chuckled over it. She wasn’t chuckling now.

  He’d used his full name too. Edward. Again, another little nugget of info that she’d picked up over all the time they’d spent together in the last few months.

  Yep, there you are, long-haired Edward Merton. There you bloody are.

  Had he been there the whole time he was dating Zoe? And what, exactly, was she supposed to do with this information? She’d expected to feel pleased, but now that she’d found it, it set off a riot of inner conflict and her mind was whirring through the possible actions, outcomes and consequences. She could go directly to Zoe, but that could lead to her sister shooting the messenger and she wasn’t sure Zoe wouldn’t be suspicious of her motives. She could show it to Marina or Yvie, but again, it could come back on her. And even if she went with either of those options, there were many ways he could potentially explain it away. H
e could say it was made by someone else pretending to be him. He could claim it was ancient history and he’d joined up before he’d met Zoe and then promptly forgot about it. Hell, he could even say it was some kind of school experiment to demonstrate the dangers of these sites to his twelve year olds. That one would have a line of parents at the headmaster’s office within the day, but still…

  No, there was only one way to make absolutely, completely, sure it was him, it was active and he was up to no good. If Ned Merton was cheating on her sister, she needed concrete evidence and she’d only get that if she had some kind of direct online contact with him.

  Verity took a deep breath. And swiped right.

  19

  Yvie – Ibiza Weekend

  ‘Are those two away exercising again?’ Yvie asked, with an eye roll of exasperation that necessitated taking her gaze off the bowl of olives that was strategically balanced in the dip of her cleavage. She picked one, tossed it in the air and caught it perfectly in her mouth, without so much as a slight tremor of the bowl.

  On the sunlounger beside her, Zoe put down her Kindle. ‘Verity is at the gym, but Marina is over there, sitting in the shade at the bar.’ She watched Yvie imbibe another small round fruit, before going on, ‘You know, that should be a certified talent. Or maybe a sport in the Olympics. Yvie Danton, gold medallist in oral olive catching.’

  ‘I’d be too busy defending my medal in Wotsit consumption to dilute my athletic prowess into another field,’ Yvie deadpanned back.

  A couple getting romantic on a nearby sunlounger gave them a disapproving glare, as Zoe’s chuckles disturbed their blissful ambience.

  ‘Ssssh, you’re upsetting Posh and Becks over there,’ Yvie hissed, only half joking. The couple did indeed bear a passing resemblance to the celebrity couple in their younger years. The woman was in her early twenties, exceptionally slender, with cheekbones that could double as speed bumps, while he had clearly been imprisoned in either a gym or a tanning booth for the last decade, given that he appeared to be concealing several watermelons under skin that was a gleaming shade of San Tropez Ultra Tan.

  ‘Is it still body shaming if I direct it at myself?’ she wondered out loud. ‘Only, I’m pretty sure that her waist has a smaller circumference than my thigh. I need you to ambush me and dump my body at the doors of the nearest Slimming World class on Monday night.’

  This time it was Zoe’s turn for a disapproving eye roll. ‘Yvie, will you stop. You’re gorgeous the way you are. And anyway, she’ll look completely haggard by the time she’s forty if she keeps up that sunbathing.’

  Yvie appreciated the support but pulled her leopard print sarong down just a little to make sure that nothing above the knees was visible. Of course, she should embrace her body and not give a damn what anyone thought. And she didn’t, really. Sometimes. Occasionally. She could go through spells of not giving a toss. But the big problem wasn’t other folks’ judgement, it was what she thought of herself. Almost twenty years of yo-yo weight gain and loss, and she knew what other people had yet to suss out. Her weight depended on so many things – her sleep patterns, her time management – both of which were currently wrecked by the amount of extra shifts she was pulling. Most of all, though, it was an indicator of how she was feeling inside, and the fact that she’d gained two stones since Christmas was confirmation – not that she needed it – that she was struggling with issues that ran deeper than her fondness for a biscuit.

  Even without her basic training in psychology, it was very obvious that it was rooted in childhood. Just flicking though family pictures proved it. Age nine – family photos showed a normal, slim child. Age ten – family photos showed she was still in proportion. Age eleven – family photos, now minus Dad, and Yvie was showing definite weight gain. Age thirteen – in the pics is a child who was severely overweight and already on a pattern of yo-yo dieting, interspersed with bouts of comfort eating that blew the diet out of the water.

  She wasn’t that pained teenager any more though. She’d conquered her weight demons before, losing three or four stones many times over the years. The problem was keeping the bastard demons away. Especially when hers seemed to live in her fridge, her freezer and her kitchen cupboards. She could fix it this time, though, she was sure of it. She just needed to get a grip. Get back in control. It was nothing that a good talking to herself, a bit of perspective, some internal reassurance, a bit of self-care and a large vat of willpower wouldn’t sort. In the meantime, she’d lie here in this luxury paradise, feeling completely self-conscious and promising herself that by this time next year, she’d be back here five stones lighter and wearing a lime thong bikini to show off her buns of steel and biceps like tennis balls.

  ‘I’m worried about her, you know,’ she heard herself saying, not even realising that her brain had switched from paying attention to her own woes over to her concern for someone else.

  ‘Who?’ Zoe asked, her Kindle now discarded beside her. She was also wearing leopard print, but unlike Yvie’s, it was in the shape of a size twelve swimsuit that clung to her every curve and with the carefree confidence of someone who had never had to worry about her weight in her life. Zoe was one of those freaks who ate like a horse and never gained a pound. If Yvie didn’t love her so much, she’d avoid her at all times.

  ‘Verity. Have you noticed that she’s become a little more… uptight than usual? And that’s the third time she’s been in the gym and we’ve barely been here for twenty-four hours.’

  A faint line between Zoe’s brows became deeper as she thought about it. ‘I hadn’t, but now that you mention it… Bugger, why didn’t I notice? It’s just been so long since the last time.’ Her words trailed off, neither of them wanting to say it.

  In college, Verity had become compulsive about exercise, to the stage that it had become almost unhealthy. Thankfully, a guidance counsellor had noticed it and addressed it, giving Verity the tools to understand that she was using exercise as a way to manage her stress. Oh, the irony, Yvie realised. One sister using a treadmill as an emotional crutch, the other using Greggs, a third one so controlled she let in no light for happiness.

  For a while, Yvie had wondered if it could be anything to do with Verity’s ancient crush on Ned. She’d even dragged her to Gino’s for dinner a couple of months before. They’d made it to the tiramisu before Yvie had felt Verity was relaxed enough to broach the subject.

  ‘Hon, can I ask you something?’

  Verity looked thoroughly distracted as she pushed her tiramisu around her plate, so Yvie ploughed on. ‘You know how you were pissed off when you called me that night Zoe started seeing Ned…’

  Verity’s response had been so sharp, it had taken her aback. ‘You haven’t told her that, have you?’ she’d snapped.

  Yvie knew she had to go gently. Of all of them, Verity was the most likely to bolt under pressure – Yvie empathised, Marina took charge, Zoe made a plan and worked through it, Verity shut down. It was the way it had always been.

  ‘No, of course not. You know I’d never repeat what you tell me. But I just wondered whether or not it was still bugging you?’ Even as she was saying it, her conscience was snapping its fingers in her direction and muttering something about hypocrisy. But Yvie’s feelings surrounding Zoe’s boyfriend weren’t important here. What mattered was whether Verity was having a having a hard time dealing with it.

  ‘No, of course not,’ Verity had insisted. ‘It never really did, to be honest.’

  Yvie had vaguely remembered reading something about when people used the phrase, ‘To be honest,’ it often meant they were being, well, dishonest. It was hard to tell in this case; Verity had always been the toughest one of them all when it came to sharing her feelings.

  ‘Really?’ she’d probed. ‘It’s just that even before that happened, I thought that maybe you had feelings for Ned? More than friendship?’

  ‘No!’ Verity had blurted, but her body language, her horrified expression, her defensive reaction, told Yvi
e, without a shadow of doubt, that she’d been right. And her heart sank, because now the truth about what happened on the night she’d gone out with Ned Merton could absolutely, definitely, hurt two of her sisters.

  Verity, trying to recover from the outburst, had blustered while pushing her tiramisu around a bit more. ‘I mean, sure, at the beginning, I won’t deny, I was a bit irritated because I didn’t want my sister dating one of my work colleagues in case it got awkward, but it was nothing to do with me having feelings for him.’

  Verity’s face had flushed bright red and Yvie knew her sister was rewriting history here. The problem had been Verity’s major crush on Ned Merton, nothing to do with some kind of potential family/professional conflict. However, for the sake of keeping Verity away from her tendency to be intolerant and defensive, she let it lie.

  ‘… But it’s absolutely fine. I’m happy for them. I really am.’

  Yvie wasn’t convinced, but as she began to argue, she’d felt the familiar quickening of her heart and a massive rush of anxiety coursing through her. She’d immediately cleared her mind and began to deliberately slow her breathing, silently talking to herself the whole time. You’ve got this. You’re fine. This is just biology. You can handle it. Thankfully, Verity was too busy staring at her plate to notice. The panic was just beginning to subside when Carlo had arrived with refills for their Chardonnay and by the time his relentlessly entertaining presence had left them again, her internal anxiety and tension over their conversation had dissipated.

  Yvie had resolved to keep an eye on her sister. Unfortunately, that wasn’t strictly possible on this trip because Verity had spent the whole time in the bloody gym. Either she was trying to outrun her feelings or she was in training for a marathon.