The One Before the One

Chapter 1

1

Seven years ago, Kit, the love of my life, left me to go on a hike and never came back.

Today, I’m getting married.

Kind of.

I hurry up the path of number 37 Hilton Close: two bedrooms, white PVC door, neat square garden. I slide the key into the lock and step into the hall, memories of my childhood rushing towards me like an old friend.

‘Mum?’ I throw my keys into the bowl on the shelf above the radiator, taking off my coat and hanging it on the banister.

‘I’m here!’ she shouts.

Mum hurries into the hall from the lounge, her dark hair swept up into a chignon, a large purple fascinator balancing precariously. Her face is flushed with excitement and a tiny bit too much bronzer. ‘Happy wedding rehearsal day!’ She rushes forwards and pulls me into a Coco Mademoiselle-scented hug as I register the low murmurs of conversation coming from the lounge.

‘Nice hat,’ I say examining the purple lace .

She strikes a pose. ‘I know it’s a bit extravagant, but I am the mother of the bride and where’s the fun in being agoraphobic if you can’t use it to your own advantage now and again?’ She winks.

When James and I had decided to get married, we’d originally suggested having the ceremony here. But when I had told her our plans she was furious. ‘Absolutely not!’ She had shut down the conversation in an instant, holding my hands and looking at me furiously. ‘You will not sacrifice your wedding day for me. I won’t have it, Olivia. And besides, all those people, with their dirty feet and men who don’t wash their hands after they’ve been to the lav? I don’t think so.’

Mum has always batted her way of life away with an ‘it is what it is’ but it can’t be easy for her – to not go to her daughter’s wedding. A walk to the corner shop on a Wednesday is fine, as is taking out the bins on a Monday and mowing the lawn every other Sunday, but a wedding? Going in a car? Being around people she doesn’t know? That’s like asking her to walk on hot coals. Actually, scratch that, Mum would walk on hot coals for me, as long as they were in the hundred square metres of lawn inside her garden fence.

She grins broadly, the same wide mouth and straight teeth as my own. ‘Where’s James?’

‘He’s on his way.’

‘Fabulous. Now, go up to your room and put on your dress.’

I begin climbing the stairs as someone knocks on the door behind me.

‘Hurrah! He’s here!’ I turn to watch her open the door. She takes a quick step back, letting my husband-to-be through the door. ‘James! At last. In you come.’ She closes the door behind him swiftly, double locking it. He’s wearing a suit, a white rose in his lapel. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him in a suit before, but he looks like he should be in an aftershave advert, all dark hair, brooding eyes, open-necked shirt, California sand in the background, a beach-blonde beauty with tousled curls in his arms as he runs into the surf. Instead, he’s inside an ex-council house, about to ‘marry’ me, Liv Andrews: medium height, medium build, dark hair prone to frizz at just a whiff of humidity, mouth a little too wide, and a nose a little too long.

‘Ivy, you look gorgeous,’ he says. She shushes him but I can see she’s pleased at the compliment. He makes his way towards me.

‘Sorry I’m late, couldn’t find anywhere to park,’ he says as he climbs the stairs, stopping two below me so we’re face to face. He kisses me softly, his eyes on mine.

‘Will you two stop smooching? There’s plenty of time for that after. Olivia, go and put your dress on. The reverend has a dentist appointment at four. James, can you give me a hand in the kitchen? I can’t get the little plastic bottoms to stick on the champagne flutes.’ I head up to my childhood bedroom, although it’s unrecognisable from the room of my teenaged years. Back then, there wasn’t the world of online shopping; even getting a weekly shop meant relying on the Smiths from next door. But now, now , Mum has a whole new world that she can live in, a world where everything that was so hard to come by back then, can promptly be delivered.

Alexa is Mum’s closest friend.

Over the past ten years, the whole house has been redecorated. Whereas for most of my childhood and early teens this room remained wood-chipped and pink, now it’s all whites, oatmeal, and sage green; the thick white curtains swollen by the cool April breeze coming in through the open window. Another reminder of my childhood. Windows open as much as possible. It was like she wanted the world around us to come into the house, but only through the crack of a window that she could control. I close the door behind me.

I didn’t have an unhappy childhood. Yes, during my formative years, I didn’t leave this house, but this house was safe; filled with fun and laughter and smiles. And outside? Well my four-year-old-self suspected that it was a bad place, filled with bad people and bad things. But inside this house? I was safe. I had everything I wanted.

Mum would pretend that we would be going to the cinema, put chairs in the hallway, hold a saucepan as a steering wheel, make brrrrrrm noises until we parked the ‘car’. We would make tickets to hand to the imaginary desk. We’d close the curtains, arrange the sofas so they were directly in front of the TV. We’d have Coke in plastic cups, a straw to drink from and popcorn filled in cardboard candy-striped boxes that we’d coloured in ourselves.

On sunny days, I could play in the garden. We would have water gun fights with empty bottles of washing-up liquid. I would wake up and she would be standing there with gardening gloves, seeds, or chalks and paint. On rainy days we would splash in the puddles, make mud pies. It was only the days that were overcast, the kind of days that are grey and oppressive that were bad . The kind of day when my father had been hit by a car while fetching the newspaper, killing him instantly. I was two years old. But, you see, I didn’t have an unhappy childhood, entirely the opposite: I was loved; I was safe.

I yank the window closed. Lying on my bed is my dress. This is the dress I have always wanted: an ivory vintage, 1950s A-line tea dress. A neat belt cinches around the waist and a delicate lace tulle creates the illusion of a sleeve that will sit just beneath my elbow. I finger the material, a smile rising; it’s perfect.

My phone buzzes in my jean pocket.

Need any help? I’m drowning in small talk.

I snort. It’s his idea of hell. I can already guess the guests in the lounge: Mr and Mrs Smith, Reverend Vickers (I know, the irony ) and Patsy from number seven. People she knew before Dad died.

I may have problems with the buttons.

I reply, adding a winky face.

I sit on the bed, my heel kicking against something. I bend down and pull out an old cardboard box before lifting it onto the bed. Inside are my old schoolbooks from when I was at primary school. I smile as I open them, but there is a tug of memory, of not fitting in, of feeling like an outsider.

It wasn’t until I was seven, when the visits from social workers became more frequent, that Mum found the courage to let me go to school.

At first, I didn’t think that it was weird that Mrs Smith would walk me to school with her children. I didn’t think it was strange that my teachers would come to our house, bringing my books for parents’ evening, when everyone else’s parents came to the school. But soon I did. Soon I started to suspect that the way I had been brought up wasn’t the same as my friends. They would talk about going on holiday with family and friends; they would talk about trips to the park. But how did you stay safe, I had wondered, how did you escape the bad guys? The monsters on the bus? How didn’t you drown in the swimming pool? Why didn’t your plane crash?

Mum needed help back then. She knows it now; I know it now, but then? Why would she seek out help ? Our life was happy. We were happy, despite what teachers and social workers thought. That’s Mum’s biggest regret: that she didn’t get the help she so clearly needed. As she tells it now, in her mind, she was doing everything right. She had to keep me safe, and for her, that meant keeping me inside as much as she could. Until the day when I’d asked her why I wasn’t allowed friends. Was I a ‘bad girl’?

That was the switch for her; that was the moment where she realised that something had to change, that she had to let me go.

So she did. She did everything she could from the confines of her home to make sure I had every chance at a normal life.

And oh how I hungered for it, but everything was so big, so bright. The sounds overwhelmed me, and I would find myself with my hands over my ears, arms wrapped around my body, red fear thrumming beneath my skin. It took me a few years to adjust. But with the support of the school, I started swimming lessons, I learnt to ride a bike, I had a friend whose house I would go to for dinner.

It’s no surprise that I became a teacher. The head teacher of my junior school, Mrs Lee, changed my life. It’s only when I look back as an adult that I can see just how much she did to help me and Mum.

When I think back to those days, I wonder if with each fear I conquered, I became a little high on life, high on new experiences. They say that your school days are the best of your life, and for me, they were, despite feeling that I was different to everyone else, despite the fear that still stung beneath my skin. But the high I would feel when I overcame those fears was addictive.

It continued through secondary school: the first try of a cigarette, the first time I kissed a boy, the first time I got drunk and was late home; with each first time, the heat beneath my skin would cool .

But it still kept me close to home. When all of my friends moved to different cities for uni, I made a short forty-minute commute instead.

Five years later, with a first-class degree and a couple of years’ teacher training under my belt, I met Kit.

It was August. Two weeks of the lethargy only a good old British heatwave can provide had left me desperate for the relief of the River Wye, for the shelter beneath the thick trees surrounding it. I’d roped Ava into agreeing to a day at Waterways Adventure Park. It wasn’t far from us, and I had plans: canoeing, kayaking, indoor rock climbing with glorious air conditioning – the whole shebang.

When I began to live my life further from the clutches of Mum’s condition, I had been so awestruck by the world outside my house. The clutches of small villages, churches, forests – thick, dense and rich – painted in so many greens it would be impossible to capture them all on one palette. I had spent my entire childhood with only one tiny corner of our neighbourhood but the country surrounding our PVC windows was vast, vibrant, exciting. I still love it here.

We’d rock-climbed, zip-lined, and when the day was at its hottest, we kayaked along the river, the water deep and brown. It was humid. Thick clouds had gathered and the rain that we’d been hoping for began to fall in fat heavy droplets as thunder rolled behind the hills. The trees became heavy, moss-green leaves making them lean towards the water.

It all happened so fast, and at the same time in slow motion: the flash of lightning, the overhanging branch that had cracked into the water in front of us, the panic as we tried to manoeuvre, the perfect arc of the revolution as I fell out – gradual but at the same time, immediate – the impact, Ava’s voice screaming my name, the smack of the water, the clunk against my head, the sense of weightlessness as the river tried to pull me under despite my life jacket. But then I heard a voice: it’s OK, I’ve got you.

He’d swum me back to shore and when I came to, he was leaning over me. A droplet of water fell from his hair and landed on my lips. Long eyelashes, a line of freckles like a check mark on his cheek.

‘Hey there.’ He had smiled: light brown hair, his sea-glass-green eyes searching my face. ‘You’ve had an accident, but you’re going to be OK.’

Twenty years old and already convinced I’d met the love of my life. I had no idea that five years later I would lose him.

But that was then. And a whole lifetime has now passed.

The door opens.

‘So these buttons?’

I smile up at James as he joins me on the bed, reaching for one of the books, grimacing at all the red-penned crosses beside wrong answers.

‘Maths was never Mum’s thing, so I was quite behind when I started school. But look at my English!’ I point to a page covered with teacher comments like: Amazing Olivia, wow! Well done!

He puts his arm around me and pulls me in closely.

‘I can’t believe tomorrow’s our wedding day,’ I say quietly.

‘Having second thoughts?’ He makes light of my observation.

‘No,’ I say, tapping the dip in his broken nose, extracting myself, replacing the books and box under the bed.

‘Good, because’ – he looks at his watch – ‘in approximately twenty minutes you will be a fully rehearsed Mrs Palmer.’ His eyebrows furrow. ‘Um, just a thought, but if the rev performs it’ – he scratches behind his ear – ‘doesn’t that mean we’re actually getting married?’

‘No, I don’t think so. He retired last year.’

‘But he’s still ordained, isn’t he? ’

‘No idea, but we’re getting married tomorrow anyway so what does it matter?’ I plant a quick kiss on his lips, feeling the familiar scar in the cleft of his upper lip that he’d got in a fight.

‘True.’

We both turn our heads to the sound of Mum’s voice bellowing my name.

‘Right then, you’d better get down there and wait for me at the end of the aisle.’

He unfolds his frame, hesitating as he opens the door. ‘I love you.’

‘My Olivia,’ Mum says, tears in her eyes as I descend the stairs. ‘Have I told you today how beautiful you are?’ she asks, holding my hands at the foot of the stairs, repeating the words she said every day of my childhood. No, not today. I can almost hear my infantile voice, feel her arms around me as she would hitch me on her hip and cover me with kisses. I haven’t? she would say with a gasp and I would wiggle as she tickled me and told me I was the most beautiful girl in the whole wide world.

‘Well here I am, telling you, you’re the most beautiful girl in the whole wide world. Inside and out. Ready?’ she asks as I take her arm.

‘Ready.’

Mum walks me into the lounge, and we stand by the door as the wedding march begins playing through her Echo Dot. Standing at the window is Reverend Vickers and my fiancé.

She squeezes my hand and I feel a rush of love for her.

‘Lead on, Macduff.’

We walk slowly, and I keep my head down for fear of laughing. I know if I meet his eyes, I will lose it. This means so much to Mum, but I feel kind of ridiculous walking towards the bay window where behind it an Asda delivery van driver is honking his horn and the reverend is standing next to Mum’s TV where a scene from Four Weddings is paused.

She passes over my hand and I dare to look up. I expect him to be looking awkward, but instead, there is love in his eyes.

‘You look beautiful.’

‘You don’t look so bad yourself.’

The reverend jumps straight in, his voice so loud that we both jump, stifling the urge to laugh.

‘We are gathered here today’ – he looks down his nose at the lounge is if it’s packed to the gills – ‘to celebrate the special love between Olivia… or Liv as she’s known’ – he smiles at an imaginary crowd – ‘and James Palmer.’

I meet James’s eyes, as the rest of the words flow over me and I am lost in the unspoken conversation passing between us, the beginning of our story, the day we first kissed, the day we decided to get married, the day Kit went missing. The days when Kit never came home.

Our eyes didn’t meet over a crowded room. We didn’t have a meet-cute. Our love story began when we were looking for his brother.

Here is where I tell you that I’m not ashamed of falling in love with my first love’s brother. Really, I’m not. I don’t feel the need to justify it, to make excuses; it is what it is.

Our relationship grew from our love for Kit, true, but that doesn’t diminish the feelings I have for him or the feelings he has for me.

It just didn’t start the same way as most love stories.

Losing Kit upended my life, but James? James stabilised it, steadied me, like finding a familiar foot hole on the side of a cliff .

The reverend has almost finished talking about two souls becoming one, interrupted by the occasional sniffle from Mum.

‘Do you, Olivia Andrews, take James Palmer to be your lawfully wedded husband?’

‘I do.’

‘And do you, James Palmer, take Olivia Andrews to be your lawfully wedded wife?’

He looks into my eyes. They are the opposite of Kit’s in every way: dark, intense, serious. James opens his mouth to speak. ‘I do,’ he replies.

Mum claps and we all turn to her with smiles and laughter.

‘With the power vested in me, I now pronounce you husband and wife. You may— Oh, well righteo.’

James’s mouth is on mine, powerful, strong, yet tender. And as I let myself sink into him, as I hear the claps and cheers around us, I wonder if I’ve just imagined it.

If I just imagined the slight hesitation before he said I do.