35. Carly
Chapter 35
Carly
D az is all right. I’d thought he was a bit loud at first, a bit too full of himself, but he’s funny, and he’s kind, and he’s definitely flirting with me. It’s good to be with a man who isn’t trying too hard, isn’t riddled with guilt and indecision, isn’t married to somebody else.
Suze and Sean have moved off in search of beer, or somewhere to sit, maybe even back upstairs for a private snog. I’m still not convinced they were only up there trying to fix a button, or exactly what it was that had made it ping off in the first place. Since the surprise engagement they’ve become embarrassingly touchy-feely. But being left alone with a good-looking Aussie isn’t such a bad thing, and I quite fancy a bit of touchy-feely myself. The last attempt had not ended well.
I laugh when Daz whips out a bottle of chilled champagne from a cool bag he’s hidden under the table. How long has that been there? And why? He discreetly pops the cork, smothering it in the trailing edge of Rosie’s best tablecloth to muffle the sound.
I watch Jack go scuttling back to her outside, and I try my hardest to forget he was ever here. Easier said than done.
‘Can’t have a celebration without some bubbly,’ Daz says, oblivious to my discomfort, producing two plastic glasses and pouring us a good-size measure each. I take a sip. It’s still deliciously cold. Daz struggles to reinsert the cork and fails, so he slips the upright bottle back into its camouflage bag and props it against the wall to stop it from falling over.
‘Won’t there be some later, for the babies?’
‘Babies don’t drink alcohol, Carly,’ he says, trying to keep a serious face. ‘Second-hand maybe, via Rosie’s boob if she’s been at the booze, but generally they prefer milk.’
‘I know that.’ I giggle, swiping at his arm and almost spilling his drink. ‘I meant that Syd might open a bottle later, for everyone to toast the babies.’
‘You can’t toast babies, Carly,’ he says, a mischievous twinkle in his eye again. ‘Too wide. They’d get stuck in the toaster.’
This time I laugh out loud, snorting bubbles down my nose, and he makes a big thing of slapping me on the back so I don’t choke.
‘There,’ he says. ‘I’ve saved your life now, and that makes you forever in my debt.’
I don’t notice at first that Fran is standing next to me. I suppose it’s inevitable that she’ll find herself at the food table at least once every half an hour or so. Fran and food tend to go together like the horse and carriage in some old song, or bread and butter might be a better analogy. She’s watching me and Daz with an obvious curiosity that I know is going to lead to the third degree when we get home. Lights in the eyes, thumbscrews, the lot. But it looks like food is not her main reason for being here, for a change. She holds out her hand with my handbag in it.
‘Sorry to interrupt,’ she says, pointedly, but she’s smiling. I can’t help wondering how things are going between her and that girl outside. ‘Your phone was ringing in your bag, a couple of times actually, so I thought you might want to check it.’
‘Thanks, Fran.’ And thank you, thank you, to whoever has been ringing. That saves me the tricky how-to-rescue-my-bag-from-the-jaws-of-death dilemma.
‘I thought I saw your Jack outside,’ she says.
‘Not my Jack, but yes, he’s here. With his wife.’
‘Oh, right, I see.’ She gives me a strange look as if she wants to know more but I’m not about to give it to her. And certainly not in front of Daz.
‘Well, I might as well stay here for now,’ she says, clearly resigning herself to having to wait until later to interrogate me. ‘Rosie says they’re about to cut the cake. And you know me. First in the queue…’
That’s more like the Fran I know and love. But she’s right. Within seconds everyone seems to be swarming in from all directions, crowding round the table as Syd appears with the most enormous knife, its heavy handle decorated in big silvery swirls, the blade super-shiny. I suspect it’s the one they used for their wedding cake and that it has been carefully wrapped and hidden away somewhere ever since. It’s certainly not your usual everyday kitchen knife. A sudden image flashes across my mind, straight out of one of those old Agatha Christie TV murder mysteries. A fancy knife, dripping with blood, someone out for revenge, a body in the conservatory, a trail of clues…
‘Silence, please,’ Syd bellows, abruptly forcing my wayward thoughts back into the present, and I notice, just in those two words, how Australian he sounds. The acquired London edge to his voice fades away, and he is back to his roots, probably something to do with being surrounded by his own family for the first time in ages. He goes on to make a short speech about how proud he is, of his wife, his children, being here among all the people that matter to him, and I see Rosie wipe away a tear as she rests an arm across his shoulders. He thanks her for putting on such a wonderful spread, thanks us all for coming, thanks Molly for baking the cakes, and if he was even a tiny bit religious he would probably be thanking God by now too. I’m pretty sure he’s close to tears himself, but a few beers always did bring out the sentimental in him.
‘Now, where are the real guests of honour?’ he says, beckoning his mum to bring the babies forward. He takes one and Rosie takes the other, each simultaneously planting little kisses on the tops of their small fluffy heads. ‘To the little people who have changed our lives, who make our lives complete, who are our life…’ He cradles a baby in the crook of one arm and lays the tip of the blade on top of the white cake, the christening half of Molly’s double concoction, and slides it down into the centre. ‘To Jamie and Rebecca.’
Everyone cheers and Syd’s dad pops more champagne as Rosie gives the baby back to her mother-in-law, goes into the kitchen and fetches a stack of plastic flutes just like the ones Daz and I are already trying to hide behind our backs. I’m not sure jumping the gun and guzzling the celebratory champers ahead of the rest of the guests is quite the done thing.
Jack is on the other side of the room. It’s a small room so he’s actually only a few feet away, but it might as well be a mile. He accepts a small glass and downs it in one. His pregnant wife shakes her head. She has an unborn child to protect. Her eyes are on the cake, watching it being cut and handed round, waiting to see if people like it. She smiles to herself as the congratulations pour in. She steps forward and silently slips a few little cards onto the table, as if she’s hoping to attract more business but is too shy to make a big deal about it.
Jack leans against the wall, his eyes lowered. He can’t look at me. Or doesn’t want to. Suddenly, he feels like a stranger to me, a dream I once had, one I have finally woken up from, and I can’t believe I was so scared to come downstairs. If anyone’s scared, it should be him. The one with everything to lose if the truth ever comes out. It gives me a momentary feeling of power. That, at last, I am the one who has the upper hand. A few words in Molly’s ear and I could change both their lives forever.
But what has she ever done to deserve that? Nothing. So, I won’t say a thing. Won’t do anything to rock the boat. It would be vengeful and cruel, and I’m better than that.
Jack may be tall and good-looking and clever, but he’s far from perfect. I know that now. He has his faults, just like everybody else. If I’m looking for my Mr Darcy, then Jack definitely isn’t him. I think I may just have to stick to the fantasy screen version after all, go back to drooling over Colin Firth, dripping wet shirt and all. Real life has a nasty habit of letting people down. Of letting me down, when it comes to men anyway. If Darcy existed for real, I bet even he would have his faults. He’d snore or fart or something…
I watch Jack now, still sheepishly avoiding my gaze. And wait for that magnetic pull, the lurch of feeling that always comes, but this time it doesn’t. I realise that I don’t really know this man, or what his real life is like. And that Molly is just an ordinary, perfectly nice woman whose whole future I could so easily have wrecked, but didn’t.
No. We’re finished. Over. Done. He is standing there, waiting and, as his wife turns back towards him, I can see her shape, properly, for the first time. Her rounded waistline swells inside her dress, and she looks tired. She takes his hand, leans into him, then tilts her face up and kisses him gently on the very edge of his lips. There is an easy intimacy and a familiarity to it that has nothing to do with me. They are a couple, soon to be three. They fit. And in that moment, the what might have been disappears, just like that, quietly, with a little inevitable pop, like the cork coming out of a champagne bottle, never to be forced back in again. Jack looks across at me and gives me a tiny nod, then they say their goodbyes to Syd and Rosie and they leave. Together.
I pick up one of her cards. Secret Centres , it says, in small but fancy print. Celebratory and party cakes. Gender-reveal cakes a speciality . It gives her phone number, her website and email addresses, her Facebook handle, all those important details that, along with actually seeing her real-life-in-the-flesh face, I have tried to avoid for so long. I am tempted to slip it into my bag, to keep it, but I don’t. I put it back on the table with the others.
My bag! I suddenly remember what Fran said, that my phone had been ringing out in the garden. I fish it out from the depths and look at the screen. Two missed calls. Two text messages. All from my mother.
‘Let me give you my number while you have your phone out.’ Daz takes it from me and taps his number into my contacts, before I have a chance to say anything. Not that I’m going to stop him. ‘Maybe we could meet up while I’m still in England?’ he says, pressing a few buttons on my phone and finding my number, which he quickly saves on his.
I nod. ‘I’d like that.’
I take the phone back and open Mum’s messages. Short and sweet, factual, although I can only imagine how she must be feeling. It’s Pauline. She’s gone.
I didn’t know the woman but I feel a wave of sadness for her, and for Anthony. He loved her, and she was so young to die. It’s all so unfair, but then, life so often is, isn’t it? I make my excuses and go up for my jacket, which is buried halfway under Suze and Sean, but I grab it anyway. I have to go. Anthony will be needing Mum, and Mum will be needing me.
She’s sitting by herself in the dark when I get there. There’s a cold cup of tea in front of her on the kitchen table, and a mound of screwed-up tissues.
‘Oh, Carly,’ she says, reaching out and hugging me, so tightly I can hardly breathe.
‘I’m sorry, Mum. Anthony must be devastated.’
‘Yes. He knew it was coming, of course, but it’s still a shock, isn’t it? When it actually happens…’
She’s thinking about Dad. I know she is.
I ease myself out of her grip, flip the light on and refill the kettle. While it’s starting to boil, I walk into the dining room and find a half-empty bottle of cheap brandy in the sideboard. It usually only comes out at Christmas, to help set the pudding alight, but I think she needs it today.
I make her a mug of tea and pour a good-sized slug of brandy into it, then place it in her cold hands. ‘Here. Drink this. Or just hold it for a while. It will warm you up.’
‘I can’t help thinking of him all alone. If he’d had children, at least there’d be someone to share the burden, help him with the grief…’
‘But he didn’t, Mum, and you know why.’
‘Poor man. I don’t know what I would have done without you and Sam, when we lost your father.’
‘Let’s not go there, eh? Bringing it all up again is only going to upset you. And me, probably. Where is Sam anyway?’
‘Out with someone. A girl, I guess, but he’s keeping it all very close to his chest. I know nothing about her at all. I never do, with any of his girlfriends. He never brings them home, you know.’
‘Doesn’t want you overdoing the matchmaking probably, or putting them off!’
‘I don’t. Do I?’
‘Only joking, but you do tend to share your opinions quite… shall we say, generously?’
‘Which means I interfere, I suppose?’
‘You mean well, Mum. Now, come on, what are we going to do for Anthony? Give him a call, get him over here, offer him a bed for the night, or do you think he wants time on his own? We could make him a casserole so he doesn’t have to cook.’
‘I don’t know. I thought I knew him so well, but now I have no idea what he might want. I doubt if he’ll be thinking about food at all. Death changes things, doesn’t it? He’ll have so much going on in his head. All the practical stuff, the funeral arrangements, who to tell… and there’ll be all the memories too. The good ones and the bad. They play over and over in your head, you know, like a film on a loop. It’s a terrible time, those first few days. He’ll be needing a damn good cry too, but sometimes that takes time to come. And the last thing I want is for him to think I’m some interfering old woman, like you obviously do.’
‘No, Mum. You’re caring, that’s all. You want the best for everybody.’
She gives me a watery smile. ‘I do, Carly. It’s just that I don’t always know what that is. But I think we’ll give Anthony a bit of space, for tonight at least. I’ve spoken to him on the phone, but there’s not a lot more I can do for now, and he has a sister who’s driving down from the Midlands in the morning. He knows where I am when he needs me . If he needs me.’
We sit for a while in silence, until my phone beeps with a message. It’s Fran. She’s taking Miranda and her kids back to our place, and she’s going to cook them all a meal, as if she isn’t already stuffed full of cake! But I’m pleased for her, I really am.
‘Shall we watch a film?’ I say eventually. ‘To take our minds off things.’
‘But don’t you want to get off home?’ Mum looks up at me, and there’s an unspoken pleading there in her eyes. ‘I don’t want you to feel you have to stay.’
‘Fran’s got company, so I’m in no rush to get home, Mum. In fact, I may not live here anymore, but this house is my real home. Always will be.’
‘Okay then.’ She smiles properly, for the first time since I got here. ‘ Pretty Woman ?’
‘Yeah, why not?’ I say, leading her into the lounge. ‘Have you got any of those choc ices left? Or a can of cider or beer or anything? I’ve had a bit of a bad day myself.’
‘Want to tell me about it?’ She touches my hand. ‘No interfering, I promise.’
‘Yeah, I think I do, actually.’
‘Well, if it’s the same man you’ve hinted at before, the married one, and I’d bet anything that it is, then all I can say is he’s not worth it.’
‘As simple as that?’
‘Yes, sometimes it really is. If you love him and he loves you back, wonderful! Nothing you can’t overcome. But any other combination is never going to work. Equals, Carly. Or move on. That’s all I’m going to say. It has to be a two-way thing, like it was for your dad and me.’
‘And Anthony and Pauline?’
‘Maybe. I never met the girl, but from the way he spoke about her, it sounded like true love to me, despite all their problems. And that’s what I want for you, and for Sam. All I’ve ever wanted.’
‘I know, Mum. And it’s all finished, I promise you. I met his wife and I felt so ridiculously upset and unsettled, and guilty, even though we never… well, you know. And none of it’s her fault, is it? No, I’m done with married men, and pining for what I can’t have. It probably wasn’t worth having anyway!’
‘Good for you, love.’
‘But I met someone new today. Someone fun and uncomplicated. And single! He’s Rosie’s brother-in-law and he’s called Darren or Darwin or something like that, although everyone just calls him Daz. And we really seemed to get on well. It’s early days but if I do see him again, if I let myself get too close, then there could be a pretty big stumbling block up ahead, because he lives thousands of miles away… in Australia.’
‘Distance is irrelevant, Carly, and you’re making problems before they even exist. Take it a step at a time. See how you get on, and if it’s meant to be… well, just listen to your heart, and go where it takes you. To the moon and back, if necessary. At least you can get to Australia on a plane. No space rocket required! Now, get that DVD on. I’m in need of a bit of Richard Gere.’
‘Oh, yeah? Which particular bit?’
‘Carly! I swear I have no idea what you mean. I’m a respectable widow woman, I’ll have you know. I must say, though, I quite fancy a wedding on some hot sunny beach, with the sand between my toes, and a lovely new floppy hat.’
‘Let’s not get ahead of ourselves here, Mum. I’ve only just met the guy.’
‘Oh, I’m not talking about your wedding, Carly. I’m talking about me and Richard Gere. Well, we can all dream, can’t we?’ And then she curls her legs up on the sofa beside me and we settle in for a bit of much-needed romance.