Chapter 29
Saturday 26 October
Gentleman’s Row, Enfield, on a crisp Autumn day. Eighteenth-century brick fronts looked out over a picturesque span of well-trimmed grass and willows bisected by a sleek black canal known as the New River. The sky was eggshell blue, the shadows on the lawn as neat as well-pressed trousers. Elaine sat on a bench by the canal, dressed in jeans, a beige rollneck top she once borrowed from Garfield and forgot to give back, and a brown duffel coat with big collars to drown in. A black beanie hat covered most of the top half of her head down to her eyebrows. Enfield Register Office lay on the far side of the canal. It was nineteen past one, forty-one minutes before Dan’s wedding. Her eyes were sore and heavy from lack of sleep, and she had no idea why she was here.
Did she plan on stopping the wedding? What would be the point? Elle sounded nice. She would make Dan happy. He might even grow to love her. Elaine was the problem here. Her presence in his memory was spoiling everything. So again, why was she here? Last night, while tossing and turning in bed, she’d convinced herself not to come. She could only do damage. He’d assume, if he spotted her, that she’d changed her mind, that she wanted to give things another try. He might terminate the ceremony, break his poor bride’s heart.
Whatever Elaine personally wanted at this moment was irrelevant. Obeying those reckless impulses, acting on the spur of a mad moment, had always led to trouble and hurt, sometimes with long-term scarring. She was dangerous and needed to be caged. Garfield had caged her. He’d found her a socially acceptable role in an arena where everyone knew the score, the heart bound in by legal contracts. Whatever she wanted right now was almost certainly the wrong thing. She was a creature of the present moment, a slave to current desire, with no sense of how she was going to feel in a week, a month or a year. Which was okay for cinnamon swirls, not so good when it came to men.
She knew all this, and yet she’d come anyway. Maybe she’d thought just being here would give her closure. She hadn't thought she needed closure until yesterday afternoon. She was doing pretty well, thank you, in her life as an emotional whore, until Dan had come along with his pretty words and ripped open the old wound, leaving her dizzy, heartsick and confused as all hell. But being here – seeing the smiling newlyweds having their picture taken on the little humpback bridge with the swans and all – that might just do the trick. After that, she could go back to her trivial little whorish existence and put this whole wretched car crash of an encounter behind her.
Was that what she wanted? Was that really why she was here? Or did she want to turn the car crash into a major effing motorway pile-up? Maybe she was tired of her cage. Was it so wrong to reach for your heart’s desire, even if your heart was a butterfly? Occasionally even butterflies can find a place to settle. It was possible. She loved him, didn’t she? That was different. That was new.
Elaine spotted four finely dressed figures approaching the Register Office. Elle, a tall, slender woman in her early thirties, wore a white wedding dress with a lacy top and narrow, flowing skirt. Sondra, in a simple, pale pink frock, had lost weight and looked very chic with her brown hair in a low chignon, a few stray curls around her face. Dan and Jeremy looked dapper in pale grey suits and white ties. Jeremy seemed to have gained the pounds his girlfriend had shed, and appeared happier and more relaxed than Elaine had ever seen him. Dan, by contrast, was as stiff as a robot, his face gaunt, the smile bolted on. Seeing him like that called to mind another reason why she was here – maybe the most important reason. She feared he was about to make a huge mistake, and she didn’t want to be responsible for that.
It looked like it was to be the smallest possible wedding, with no other guests, not even the bride’s parents. Dispensing with tradition, bride and groom would walk down the aisle together. It seemed appropriate as the foursome looked about as united as any couple in their body language. Elle, in the past few months, had apparently become one corner of an unbreakable quartet of love and friendship.
It felt obscene that Elaine should have the power to smash all that apart. She looked down at her ordinary legs in their faded jeans. She’d dressed down today not only for reasons of stealth but also to emphasise both to herself and Dan the absurdity of this power he’d granted her to play Russian roulette with his and his bride’s life. The thought of going into that Register Office, dressed as she was, and telling the officiator to stop the wedding was deranged – a scenario belonging to the wilder fringes of rom-com fantasy.
There were still twenty-five minutes to go, and the quartet broke apart as the bridal pair went inside the building, presumably to talk to the officiator, and Jeremy wandered over to the canal to check out the ducks and geese. Sondra stood watching him from a distance. This was, Elaine realised, her chance to get another perspective, and say hello to an old friend. Garfield would not have approved of such a breach in the walls of her new identity, but the damage had already been done when Dan broke back into her life yesterday. She could repair the fracture tomorrow – find a new name, maybe a new city to live in.
She rose from her bench, quickly traversed the little bridge and then the lawn to where Sondra was standing. Up close, she could see traces of her former colleague’s social awkwardness. She couldn’t pull off the stylish, self-possessed way of being alone in a public place, still exhibiting the nervous, restive manner of someone who’d been stood up. Maybe Elle had advised her on the dress and hair, but the make-up was all Sondra: too heavy on the blusher and eye shadow. Even so, she looked transformed. The 1950s librarian had nearly become cool.
Elaine took off her beanie, smoothed down her hair. “Hey Sondra. Remember me?”
Sondra looked at her sharply, then took a surprised step backwards. “Kay! What are you doing here? Wh-where have you been?”
“I haven’t got time to explain. Just tell me, do you think this is a good idea? Dan marrying Elle?”
“Of course!” she almost shouted. “They love each other. And I’m sorry to say this, Kay, but she’s a better woman than you’ll ever be. What are you doing here anyway? Are you here to make trouble?”
“No!” gasped Elaine, with a glance at Jeremy, who was crouched by the canal taking photographs of waterfowl with his phone. “It’s just that Dan came to see me yesterday. I don’t think he loves her. I think he’s marrying her as a way of blotting out the pain of losing me, and I don’t want to be responsible for that. Can you talk to him? Ask him if this is really what he wants? It seems very… quick.”
Sondra glared at her as she might a kid she’d just caught drawing an obscene cartoon in a library book. Her rouged mouth became quite stiff as she said: “I don’t know what Dan said to you – it was probably just pre-wedding nerves – but I can promise you he does love Elle and they’re going to be very happy together.”
“Are you sure?”
“Of course I’m sure. I know them both –far better than you do.” She paused, gathering her breath and her thoughts. “I really can’t believe you’ve shown up like this after all this time. And here of all places, on Dan’s wedding day.”
“I didn’t want to. As I said, Dan came to me. He found me.”
But Sondra wasn’t listening. She’d become quite emotional, tears threatening to ruin her mascara: “The way you disappeared so suddenly, it was very hurtful. I was scared you might have, you know… But there was nothing in the news.”
“I’m sorry to have caused you such worry, Sondra.”
“I assumed you must have felt ashamed, embarrassed or guilty. But then I don’t know if you’re even capable of such feelings. After what you did to Jeremy, and then going after his brother like that, you’re certainly not the person I thought you were. It took me a long time to come to terms with that, to realise the person I knew, the person I thought was my friend, was a fake.”
Sondra had started to cry. Elaine put a hand on her shoulder and then enclosed her in her arms. She consented to be hugged, seemed even to welcome it. Elaine whispered: “Our friendship, Sondra. That wasn’t fake.”
“Kay?”
She turned to see Jeremy standing a few feet away, staring at her.
“Hi Jeremy.”
“Why are you here?”
“I don’t know,” she muttered, letting go of Sondra. “Comfort your girlfriend, will you? And wish your brother all the best from me.”
She walked away to the sound of Sondra’s sobs, and consoling murmurs from Jeremy.
“Wait up, Elaine!” The voice came from further off. It sounded like Dan. She turned to see him racing towards her from the Register Office, leaping a low black railing onto the grass, the tail of his fancy grey suit flapping behind him. His bride stood on the cobbled forecourt of the building watching him go, her mouth a dark O of surprise.
He stopped a few yards from her, his chest rising and falling in quick breaths. “You’re here. Does that mean…?”
“I shouldn’t have come,” she said. “Look how I made Sondra cry, and Elle doesn’t look too pleased either. Go and be with your bride, Dan. Live your life. Be happy.”
“One word, Elaine. That’s all it’ll take.”
“Stop it!” she cried. “Stop it for God’s sake. Just leave me alone.” She turned and ran, recrossing the little bridge and taking the path that led to the bus-stop. If he tells me now that he loves me , she thought . If he shouts it in front of all of them, I’ll be helpless. I won’t be able to stop myself.
But no shout came.