‘You stupid woman,’ says Cecily, shaking her head. ‘He was probably trying to kill you with the mochi. To get his hands on your money.’
‘At least my husband earned a lot of it.’
‘Well, I earned my own, thank you very much. Besides, what use is it to you now?’ says Cecily. ‘You’ll be the one who takes it with you? Sans teeth, sans brain . . .’
Totally bonkers, and scrappy to boot.
‘I think this gooseberry thing is wonderful, dear,’ says Bessie Burbridge, patting Kate softly on the arm. ‘It couldn’t be more delicious.’
‘Could if she’d used the correct fruit,’ says Cecily, pushing her bowl away as if she’s poking a dead rat. ‘Your gooseberries: too sweet.’
‘I’m surprised you can tell that without tasting them,’ says Kate, raising an eyebrow.
‘It’s September, is it not? They’ll be too ripe. I’d only use July’s in a fool: sharper.’
‘Oh, OK, interesting. Thank you, Cecily.’
‘Mrs Finn!’ says Cecily, her heavily lined brow creasing further. ‘Anyone who imagines that all fruits ripen at the same time as the strawberries knows nothing about grapes . . .’
‘OK. Yep,’ says Kate nodding. ‘Grapes ripen later, presumably?’
‘Paracelsus. It’s a metaphor,’ says Cecily, shaking her head in disgust.
‘Don’t mind her, dear,’ says Bessie. ‘This really is lovely, thank you. Won’t you even try some, Cecily? You’re always missing out.’
But Cecily has already stood up somewhat shakily and is heading to the door like a slow, determined warrior, her walking stick pointed sharply out in front of her like a spear.
Chapter Thirteen
FRIDAY IS PECAN DAY at Fletchers – one of the many acronyms the business uses that bares scant relation to the words represented. ‘Proud As Can Be’ day involves the food team sampling their latest products. New lines are brought out, greed and post-apocalyptic chaos ensue, and at 5.30 p.m. when people run for their trains, platters of dried-out chicken satay and sticky puddles of lime sorbet sit congealing under the fluorescent lights. Kate is usually keen to try whatever’s on the menu but today there’s a bad taste in her mouth and an ache in her stomach, anxiety about the impending restructure and heading to Christmas and forty without a job, plus her more immediate personal concerns.
A steady stream of colleagues has passed Kate’s desk balancing napkins of multiple beige bites. Kate remains welded to her seat. Pete’s wedding is tomorrow, looming like a storm. Rita is convinced Kate should take another guest, namely Rita. Kate shudders as she pictures Rita dragging her to the dance floor for ‘Let’s Stay Together’, the Al Green version, not the Bryan Ferry.
She could text Nick right now and reinvite him, except that she’s held out for thirty-six extra-long days already, she only has another twenty-two to go . . . And besides, to invite him to a glamorous celebration would send the message that what he’s done is acceptable when clearly it isn’t. No – she’ll draft him another never-to-be-sent email instead.
Nick,
Please up your game, because every minute you don’t fix this makes me hate you – and I don’t want to hate you. I refuse to believe you’re as crap as your behaviour.
No, far too aggressive. How about . . .
Nick,
I’m sorry you’re confused but I’m not. You are a good man but you’re having a crisis and you’re pushing me away and that hurts. We are a team – I am on your side, I always will be. Come to the wedding tomorrow and let’s talk. The food will be amazing – and apparently there’s an a-list star doing the music x
Nope, doormat. How is it she can find fourteen ways to describe a potato, yet when it comes to the important things in life she’s dumbstruck? It’s Nick’s fault – he’s trapped her in this space where she can’t find the words with which to escape, and this realisation makes her angry enough to delete both options.
‘Kate – you have to try these new Christmas canapés,’ says Kavita, returning to her desk with a napkin laden with putty-coloured pastry. ‘The soggy bottoms are out of control. You OK, doll? You look exhausted. You know, you should just call him. You can’t get on with your life while it’s up in the air like this.’
Kate figures Nick’s ongoing silence means there’s a greater than 50 per cent chance it’s over. Of course she told him not to call, but he’s meant to see through that; it’s the most basic of ruses. If she forces the issue and calls Nick now, though, she’ll remove any remaining delusions she can still indulge in – and while limbo is intolerable, at least in limbo there still lurks hope.
‘What are these, hon?’ says Kavita, picking up the stack of card strips from Kate’s desk. ‘Best of Bir-shit?’
‘October’s shelf-edge stripping.’ Kate blushes and takes them back from Kavita’s hand. ‘They’re meant to say ‘Best of British’, but Annalex signed them off wrong again and the printer didn’t pick up on it, so this lot are going in the bin.’
Kate tucks them discreetly into her bag; she has plans for these cards tomorrow.
*
‘So is Cinderella going to the ball or what?’ says Rita, entering Kate’s room without knocking, catching Kate flicking glumly through old photos of her and Nick.
‘Sorry, Mum?’
‘Am I your plus one?’ says Rita, cherry-red fingernails drumming against her hips. ‘Call Pete and ask, or I’ll call. They’ll have paid for Nick’s place, I’m sure they’d rather you brought someone than wasted their money.’
‘I’m not nagging Pete the night before his wedding,’ says Kate, who had been practising relaxing breathing, but at her mother’s appearance has regressed straight to huffy teenager.
‘Fine – if you’d rather be the only person there alone.’ Rita turns her gaze to the pile of bags still in the corner. She looks back sharply at Kate.
Unpacking will make this all too final. Kate will not let Nick’ s stupidity, his lack of self-awareness, his lack of consideration, his apparent ambivalence, his general and utter uselessness get in the way of their love.
‘It’ll be sorted one way or another.’ Kate glances quickly at the wall chart. ‘Soon enough.’
Chapter Fourteen
PETE’S WEDDING DAY HAS arrived. Kate must make it a happy day – she must. Pete has been her friend since school. While all their other friends married and some divorced, Pete has been her reassurance that she wouldn’t be the last man standing, but now he’s abandoning their merry duo and committing to Mia, a girl in her twenties who he’s only known for eight months. Mia comes from West London media royalty – her father’s a film producer, her mother works at Vogue; Mia is a beautiful, tousle-haired girl with size four shoes who dresses like a Parisian – she’d be hateful if she wasn’t so nice.
Kate could have done without the dream she had last night which has left her out of sorts already. In the dream she and Nick were getting married. Kate was at the altar, Nick beside her, missing his vows because he was too busy reading an article on his iPad about SpaceX rockets. Why does her subconscious have to be quite so unhelpful? Couldn’t she at least have dreamt it was Ryan Gosling missing those vows?
Outside the sky is stormy. It’s already hot and humid. Later it’s due to chuck it down.
*
Pete’s wedding is in Surrey – a train, bus and another bus away. Kate rummages through her pile of bags till she finds her favourite heels: three-inch, purple, suede. They bring good cheer every time she sees them – not least because they were reduced from £400 to £40 in the sales, and are implausibly comfortable. She puts them into a cloth bag, then puts her trainers on for the journey and gathers her essentials in her handbag: tissues, fags, phone . . . This phone will become a time bomb later. She scrolls to Nick’s name and changes it to DO NOT CALL WHEN DRUNK.
One final bag check – oh, she’d almost forgotten her shelf-edge stripping cards. There’ll be guests at the wedding who only know Kate as ‘Kate and Nick
’. On the back of the cards she’s written various communiqués in black Sharpie:
We’re on a break, I’m fine but sober, so let’s not spoil this lovely day talking about it.
We’re on a break and now I’m too drunk to discuss it.
Nick is a confusing, commitment-phobic man-boy.
These subtitles should head off any conversation at the pass. She is going to enjoy this wedding if it kills her. She grabs her two bags and heads out, her face as grim as if she’s funeral-bound.
*
Kate sits under the fluorescent glare of the Overground train, transfixed by the ugliness of the orange seat covers. She’s been on this train an hour already with two stops still to go. She rubs her diaphragm; it’s feeling particularly bruised today. She’ll start taking better care of herself tomorrow – stop drinking so much coffee, cut the fags – but today she’s allowing herself one final booze-soaked round of self-destruction.
It’s good she didn’t cave in and contact him. That would have been weak and she is not weak, she is strong – or at least it might look that way, though not if Nick could see inside her head. She should be proud of her self-control and she nods her approval, then catches sight of her reflection nodding violently like a mad girl on a train, and her face reddens.
She takes the wedding invitation from her bag. On the front is a patchwork collage of selfies of the happy couple – in photo booths, in the Glastonbury rain, kissing in Day of the Dead Halloween costumes. In every shot they look like there’s nowhere they’d rather be. Nick rarely takes photos, though he’s always the first to pull a funny face in a group shot. Rita had used the word ‘inauthentic’, and though Kate tries not to engage with her mother’s psychoanalysis of every boyfriend, she’d asked Rita what she meant: ‘It’s never Nick’s true self. He doesn’t know who he is.’ ‘Good grief, Mum, he’s just having fun.’ Kate is so anti-therapy because Rita’s always shoving it down her throat – but actually, perhaps a skilled counsellor might help crack Nick open. Maybe Kate should buy him a session, he’s too short-sighted to see the benefits without a push . . .
Shit, bugger, shit! She looks up to see the train doors about to shut, she leaps and runs for them, swerving a couple of teens who’ve just boarded, thank goodness she’s in trainers, she only just clears the doors before they close, her heart racing as the train pulls away.
Jeez, that would be pure Darwin Awards – dragged under a train by her own dress because she’d been too busy analysing what a moron her boyfriend was. She forces a deep breath. It’s OK, just two more buses in this sweltering heat. On the bus she tries hard to switch her focus to positive thoughts: she is losing weight, primarily through swapping fags for food. Has she remembered her lighter? Panic. She reaches, feels it at the bottom of her handbag: relief.
She changes buses and stands at the new bus stop, smoking and counting her blessings: she is fantastically lucky. She is healthy. She has a mum, a decent job – actually, best not to rely on her job for solace at the moment . . . She has a home, good friends. Perhaps even if it doesn’t work out with Nick, they can still be friends. It’s the nothingness, the void, that overwhelms her. Rita is right, she thinks, stubbing the butt under her trainer – why does Kate have to feel everything so much?
The second bus winds through the suburbs as Kate gets stuck in the cul-de-sacs in her mind. She almost wishes Nick had said it was over, at least then she could move on. Could she even get past this, though, if they did get back together? It feels like he betrayed her, it was so unexpected that punch to the gut – ENOUGH! She will go mad if she doesn’t stop this loop. She googles a meditation website, then spends the next five minutes thinking about Nick’s toes wiggling.
Next stop Halewood House – a beautiful eighteenth-century Palladian villa set in acres of manicured grounds. She walks towards the entrance pondering where to change into her heels, maybe in the car park, or the – oh no. No! She freezes in horror. A sudden nausea rises up as she remembers wedging the shoe bag beside her on the train, but not grabbing it when she dashed for the doors. It’s not even as if her trainers are cute plimsolls; they’re what Nick calls her ‘Florida tourist’ shoes – zinging yellow Nikes which embarrass her even when she runs.
Right: she’d passed a newsagent on that last leg of the journey. She still has twenty minutes before the wedding starts. It is conceivable that a newsagent in the height of summer will sell flip-flops, or a magazine with a free pair on the cover. She hitches up her dress and jogs back the way she came. Intense smoking has done her lungs no favours. The sun beats down. By the time she reaches the newsagent, she’s breathless, her hair damp at the temples.
Small independent newsagents in Surrey do not sell flip-flops, and this one doesn’t even sell cold water because the fridge is broken. Kate speed-walks back to the venue, panic rising, four minutes to get there but her phone says it takes six. She arrives glistening with sweat, decides that no shoes are better than trainers, stashes them behind an umbrella stand and is panicking trying to remove her socks when the music starts and she hops to a seat on the back row, still in one sweaty sports sock and here comes the groom!
Kate hears the opening bars of Cat Power’s ‘Sea of Love’ – one of her and Nick’s favourite songs – and bursts into tears. She is overwhelmed – happy for Pete, but heartbroken – and the tears flow freely. She gasps and swallows, making a gurgling splutter like a small frog being squelched under a DM boot. The guests in front turn to stare. She hangs her head in shame.
*
Kate stands alone on the terrace, surveying the sea of couples on the lawn below. Another glass of champagne should take the edge off this overwhelming loneliness. She grabs her third from a passing waiter, which means necking the glass in hand, which she promptly deposits on his silver tray with a loud clink and a ‘woops!’
This wedding’s like a Richard bloody Curtis film – in fact, Mia’s parents live on the same street as him. Mia’s father worked in music before film, and there is a bona fide rock star here whom Kate has loved since forever. Mia’s mother is formidable – stick thin, high-fashion, air kisses. Mia’s friends are like Mia – waifs who could pass off the shoeless look far more convincingly than Kate. And this venue is so unnecessarily romantic, terraced gardens leading down to a secret maze. Later there will be fireworks and coloured sparklers.
If Nick was here they’d be having a blast, but he’s not, so Kate lights up a cigarette and sucks on it like it’s oxygen. A woman passing in a gold fascinator turns to frown. Kate shrugs apologetically – cigarettes have become her medicine.
Kate downs the champagne. The humidity and nicotine are making her wobbly. The thought of canapés piling up in her stomach doesn’t appeal, though normally she’s the one hovering by the kitchen doors waiting to pounce. She will eat dinner and hear out the speeches – and then she’ll put her trainers back on and trek home, because no one will notice if she misses the dancing, but they will notice if she voms on the dance floor or immolates herself with a sparkler.
Kate walks back through the reception room and her eye is drawn upwards. Ten wooden hoops hang from the ceiling with pink ribbons criss-crossing them. Each hoop has a table number in the centre, and captured within the ribbons are smaller cards with the guests’ names. Kate scans for her own – Lettie and Matt, Vicky and Nathan . . . where is she? Oh, there she is, on table nine – Kate and Nick, suspended in mid-air. Damn Nick for turning this special occasion into an ordeal in which the metaphors are quite so in her face.
More champagne immediately. She grabs another glass, takes a swig and a flourish of bubbles burns up her throat. It’s too acidic, but Kate’s not going to leave this drink, no indeedy, she’s not a quitter.
She heads to the bathroom, ah, sooo good to sit down. But her feet, they need a scrub! In the sink, of course, that makes total sense! She has one leg raised when the door opens and a woman in head-to-toe Chanel enters and Kate dashes back into the cubicle. For some reason (ABV 12 per ce
nt) she decides to wash her feet in the toilet instead, but after washing her left foot she realises the process is ticklish and cold, and that the toilet flushes a violent blue bleachy water. Love isn’t patient, love isn’t kind; love is hopping out of a toilet, trying to muster the smile that says, Having one blue foot is all the rage in Milan.
By the time Kate heads back to the party the clouds that were threatening have turned into a downpour. Couples shelter arm in arm inside the conservatory. ‘Winter is coming!’ says one man, and his girlfriend giggles and nuzzles his neck. Kate’s winter is less than three months away now, her forties: becoming invisible to men, spinsterdom, cats, then death. She’d mistakenly believed she and Nick had agreed to shelter from that storm together.
Two of Mia’s friends, a couple in their twenties, suddenly burst out of the conservatory doors and run, laughing, into the garden. Holding hands they sprint across the lawn, shrieking with joy, their faces raised to the downpour, the girl’s long red hair streaming down her back. The entire wedding party gives them a massive cheer, apart from Kate, who thinks, show-offs.
This is why Nick dumped her – because she’s a mean, ungenerous person – that, and she has one most peculiar bleachy Smurf foot.
*
By the time they finally sit down for dinner, Kate is officially toxic. To Kate’s right is an empty seat with Nick’s name tag on it. To her left are an engaged couple, mouths glued to each other, the man wearing Nick’s distinctive cedar aftershave. It’s too much; the pressure in her head is making her crazy. She fears she’ll do or say something more shameful. Already behind her ear is a peony she’s snapped off a bouquet – first flowers Nick ever bought her, peonies. Her card strips now line the bottom of her bag, angry confetti. And there’d been that awkward moment earlier when she’d told Pete’s pre-teen nieces, who were busily discussing their own future sparkly wedding dresses, that they’d be better off investing in sparkly lab coats and a science degree, because it was only a matter of time before a man proved how utterly disappointing and un-Disney-like he truly was . . . Not ideal, but Kate’s right, isn’t she?
The Woman Who Wanted More Page 6