Chapter 2 #2
‘Mum answered the door but Lyra and I had been watching from our bedroom window. Of course, Mum and Dad loved Joshua, even then. Anyway, Mum called for Lyra to come downstairs, so naturally, I followed. And when we got downstairs, Joshua was staring at me. Then he asked, ‘Is this your sister?’ to Lyra. Didn’t he, Lyra? ’
She stands by the group but doesn’t go to sit. I load ten full shot glasses onto a tray.
‘Long story short, it was me who ended up with the giant stuffed toy and now, thirteen years later, Joshua and I are both doctors in the same hospital and engaged to be married at Earl’s Castle in September.
’ Olivia holds up her left hand and wiggles her ring finger; a significant rock catches the light and makes for more dazzle than the disco balls.
‘How do you feel about that, Lyra?’ one of the group asks.
‘Pfft,’ she says, waving a hand. ‘Joshua and I were thirteen or fourteen then; we would never have lasted. Plus, he and Livy are perfect for each other. Both smart, both doctors, both beautiful.’
Olivia beams. She relishes being complimented, I can tell. But I’m far more interested in why she wants to belittle her sister. ‘You were nearly a doctor. Sort of.’
‘I dropped out of medicine at the end of my third year of uni,’ Lyra explains, as if she needs to. ‘It wasn’t for me.’
‘I don’t blame you,’ Red says. ‘It’s such a stressful job, and the hours we all work are ridiculous. The effort it took to all be in the same room for a few hours tonight was huge.’
‘I’d love a job like yours,’ another hen says.
‘I mean, no one is going to die if you take a bad picture.’ This woman looks around the group and reaches for a carrot stick from a platter on a coffee table in front of her.
‘Imagine having the time and space to have hobbies!’ She waves the carrot around.
‘Sure, one day we’ll all have money but we have to sacrifice a lot for it. ’
‘We work so hard,’ Olivia adds, nodding along with the amdram performance of A Stage Full of Twats.
‘You all deserve the world,’ Lyra says, right as I appear at her side with a round of shots. ‘It’s such a worthy profession.’ And I think she’s being genuine, which is remarkable, given how they just laid into her, passive aggressively at best, blatantly at worst.
‘Shots!’ the bride-to-be, Charlotte, yells, appearing from elsewhere in the room and, rightly, taking the first glass.
The second glass is taken by Lyra. She knocks it back unnoticed, not waiting for anyone else.
I lean into her ear. ‘Aren’t you driving?’ I ask, not that it’s my business.
I hear and see her sharp intake of breath. She turns her head so quickly, we’re almost nose to nose. Damn, she smells good. Pretty. Sweet. Like fresh flowers in a meadow. Subtle enough that I missed it beneath the smell of fish in the lift.
‘One won’t hurt,’ she tells me.
Except Lyra doesn’t have one. As I’m fondled and ogled, she moves around the room taking pictures. I think, honestly, hiding behind the two cameras she rotates. I notice her have at least two more shots. My guess is, to take the edge off this It Girl party.
Around eleven thirty, I extract myself from a woman called Donna.
She’s a fifty-seven-year-old retired GP from Whitley Bay, recently separated, best friend of the mother of the bride, who traces her gel nails around each of the tattoos on my biceps and chest with eyes hooded like she’s desperate enough to slum it for one night.
As I’m walking away from her under the pretence of making more drinks, she pinches my arse.
‘I think you’re onto a sure thing there.’ The voice belongs to Lyra, where she’s come to lean back against the worktop in the kitchen next to me. She still has her camera around her neck, where it’s been all night, more like a part of her than an accessory.
‘I’ll pass.’ I sound as grumpy as I feel – a monkey in a zoo. I’m ready to be done with this night. My enthusiasm for faking it is depleted and, given how drained Lyra seems to be, I don’t feel the need to play the cheeky butler for her.
‘I thought what happens on a hen is supposed to stay on a hen,’ I say, gesturing to her camera.
‘That’s what I thought! But the bride is a friend of my sister. An old friend of mine, too.’
‘She’s an old friend? Could’ve fooled me.’
She looks to her feet and I regret speaking my thoughts aloud.
‘Yeah, well, my sister and Charlotte are both resident doctors at the RVI now and I’m…
a wedding photographer, much to my family’s dismay.
So…’ She shrugs. ‘I was invited in my business capacity, not to help the bride bid goodbye to single life, or herald new beginnings.’
It’s none of my business and I don’t want to add to anyone’s misery, especially this woman who helped me out earlier. Nor my own. So I check my watch. Thank fuck, it’s eleven-forty-five. I’m off duty at midnight.
‘This is a room full of medics, from junior doctors to consultants, so I don’t think I’m going to capture too much scandal,’ she says, ignoring my observation. ‘Although I’m not heading out to the club from here. Who knows what trouble Donna and Jeanette will cause out on the town.’
I scoff. ‘It’s always the oldies.’
‘Horny as hell,’ Lyra says, making my lips turn up. It feels alien.
* * *
I step outside onto the pavement, leaving the hens preparing for a nightclub.
The cold, salty air is biting and I pull my coat on over my bare chest. Almost silhouetted against the bright lights of the Swing bridge, Lyra is standing alone, staring up to the sky, as if she’s asking the stars a question.
She didn’t seem drunk upstairs but she’s had too many units to drive. I don’t know where she lives but I do know she had a pretty rough time tonight, so I ask her, ‘D’you need a lift home?’
She startles, her gaze landing on my chest, then moving to my face as I draw up the zip of my coat.
‘Ah, no, thank you. I’ll just… I’m not actually sure how I’m going to get home, and back for my car in the morning, but this is what happens when I make ill-judged, impromptu decisions.’
‘You’re not gonna drive.’
‘No.’ She’s staring at my eyes so intently it makes me wonder what she sees. A man barely above rock bottom? ‘I’ll walk to the taxi rank; it’s only two minutes away.’
‘Where d’you live?’ I ask as she simultaneously asks me, ‘Do you wax your chest?’
I rear back from her question, caught off guard, as she slaps a hand across her mouth. I feel the faintest twist of amusement teasing my lips, again. Far from the distant memory of happiness but an improvement on resentment, bitterness, anger or regret.
‘Sorry, that’s really none of my business. Don’t even answer that,’ she babbles in a way that makes me fight back a smirk. ‘I live in a village near Beamish Museum, so I doubt you’re going in my direction.’
She’s much shorter than me in her trainers and flustered in a way that’s youthful. Lightness against my blackened mood.
She’s staring at me, again. Maybe because I’m staring at her, trying to figure her out, for some reason. ‘Your eyes twinkle more than the lights of the Millennium bridge,’ she tells me, which also tells me, she is, in fact, feeling the effects of alcohol.
‘The Millennium bridge doesn’t twinkle,’ I tell her.
‘Okay, lyric police,’ she says, dragging me back from whatever hold she just had me in, to reality. To being a lyricist. Or, at least, in a past life.
I want to get off the subject, so I change it. ‘Why do you let them treat you like that?’
‘Who?’ she asks, brown eyes widening.
‘Your sister and her friends? Why d’you let them put you down?’
‘They don’t.’ She looks to her feet and I want to nudge her chin up, but I put my hands in my pockets to stop me.
‘Really? So, you’re telling me you’re standing out here feeling good about yourself?’
She glares at me, her light dimmed by my words. Yeah, I have that effect on people.
‘Didn’t think so,’ I tell her. ‘Why do you let them get away with it?’
She swallows so hard, I know my question has hit home. ‘It’s complicated.’
‘Didn’t look it. It looked to me as if they think they’re better than you and you don’t set them straight.’
‘You don’t know anything about me,’ she gripes indignantly, with surprising fire.
‘I know you tried to distract me in that lift because you could see I’m claustrophobic. I know you care about the planet and that you’ve driven out of your way tonight to be at a hen party you didn’t want to be at just to please your sister.’
Her nostrils flare but she doesn’t disagree.
‘I’ve met people like them before,’ I tell her. ‘People who want to put you down to make themselves feel good. They’ll keep telling the same stories until you give them something else to talk about. Until you change their narrative.’
I’m waiting for her retort as she scowls at me, and I don’t know why but I like her feistiness. Something tells me she doesn’t display it often enough.
Before she responds, the door to Phoenix House opens and the sound of animated chatter escapes.
I glance the way of the other hens but my face is turned back to Lyra, her palms holding my cheeks. And she crashes her mouth against mine.
I feel my eyes widen as I wait for my synapses to catch up and send sensible messages to my brain. I meet her focused gaze and, in her look, I think she’s asking me to play along, to help her out. To help her write a new song for her sister to sing about her.
I hate bullies as much as I hate people who try to tell you who you are and who you should be. More than that, there’s something in Lyra’s kiss – warmth, passion, desperation? Fuck knows. But it makes me bring my hands onto her hips and walk her backwards, until her backside meets my parked car.