Chapter 14 #2
She scoffs. ‘In some ways, I guess he saved me from backtracking. I’d tried to speak to my parents about dropping out and each time, they persuaded me to stay, assuring me that one day, I’d look back and be grateful.
’ She shakes her head. ‘I was grateful for the opportunities I’d been afforded, I really was. I just…’
‘Felt like a square peg in a round hole?’ I offer, not understanding her story but able to empathise, I guess.
She fixes her gaze on mine. ‘Exactly that.’ Her lips twist into the kind of sad smile I’ve only seen on her once, shortly before she kissed me. The thought knocks my next breath out of rhythm. I’m aching to reach out and hold her face in my palms, to run my thumb along the edge of her soft lips.
‘I spent my third year on placement, with real patients. I wanted to help people. I still do. But I couldn’t hack being around so much pain and suffering every day. The bad seemed to outweigh the good and it was slowly draining the life from me.’ She shrugs. ‘Then I met karma.’
I have an urge to hold her and tell her she only deserves the good. But I don’t.
‘For what it’s worth, I don’t think that gives your sister and her friends a right to belittle you the way they do.’
She inhales deeply. ‘Well, that’s not how the story ends, unfortunately.
’ Her eyelids hold their next blink. ‘That same night, my dad had a stroke. From the stress of it all. That’s the reason my family are the way they are with me.
It’s the reason I don’t push back and the reason I don’t have a right to. ’
She looks at me now and her eyes are full of a sadness I wish I could take away for her. ‘Dad could have died that night, whilst I was high on my newfound freedom. Dreaming of studying documentary photography and travelling the world with a camera and notebook and pen.’
So that’s what she wants. ‘The wedding photography, is that… your penance?’ I realise how shitty that sounds as soon as the words leave my mouth. I quickly follow up. ‘I’m sorry, I just mean…’
She chuckles and I feel as if I’ve been let off the hook. I’m starting to get the sense that Lyra’s pretty good at letting people off lightly, though I know there’s a feistier side to her; I’ve witnessed it.
‘It’s okay,’ she says. ‘And no, not exactly. I enjoy photographing weddings and families, making people happy. It’s not what I dreamed of doing with my life but I like what I do and it means I can be around to help when Dad needs me. I’m no doctor, of course, but I’m… content.’
Content. That sounds both aspirational and depressing.
She rubs her index fingers against the corners of her eyes and I check she isn’t crying – that’s the last thing I want. Though, I did tell her, curiosity kills the cat.
I am 100 per cent curious about this woman.
‘You’re probably thinking I’m some whiny little rich girl, aren’t you? Fallen from grace.’
‘That’s not what I’m thinking, at all,’ I tell her. I’m thinking and feeling a thousand things, so I take a pause to decide how to respond. ‘Everyone’s story’s different. Yours sounds difficult and repressive. No one should be forced to feel guilty for being who they are.’
I can’t imagine that anyone who knows this woman would want her to be anything less than who she can be and who she wants to be.
‘Can I be objective, though?’ I ask, receiving a subtle, apprehensive nod in response.
‘I can also see that your family love you and want the best for you. They haven’t gone the right way about it and from what I’ve seen, they still aren’t going the right way about it, but maybe this isn’t about you not being a doctor.
Maybe they… don’t think you’re reaching your potential. ’
Her eyes narrow to slits and I know I’ve overstepped. ‘My potential is supporting my dad. Helping Mum balance work and life. Being there for my sister when she needs me.’
She slips down from the tabletop, hands on hips, and I hold up my hands in apology. ‘I’m sorry, I overstepped. I’m no good with words and?—’
‘You’re one of the best lyricists I’ve ever come across!’ Her words would be kind on paper but there’s fire in her expression and in her tone.
‘All I meant was, I know what it looks like when a family doesn’t love you, believe me, and, whilst I think your sister can be a twat, I don’t think?—’
‘You can’t call her a twat!’
‘Sorry, again, that’s your prerogative.’ I’m about to continue making my case when Lyra slaps a hand across her mouth and that twinkle I’ve seen in her eyes, that sparkles and dances in the dimmest of light, it’s back.
The sweetest sound of laughter replaces her irritation. ‘She can be a bit of a twat.’
I shouldn’t smile. I know I’m going to say or do the wrong thing again, but damn it, she drags my lips up.
Who’d have thought it? I’m trapped in this dungeon, with no way out, and my tortured soul has been repressed by a woman who is my opposite in every way.
From the way she loves and is loved, to her willingness to put others before even her own happiness.
She’s the sun to my storm cloud and she should be repelled by me, yet everything inside me is fuelled by her warmth. And I… Damn it, I want more.
Against all my better judgement, I take a step towards her.
Unexpectedly, she makes a move closer to me, where her rays are stronger, fire to my ice, and all I can think about is how gentle her kiss was the first night I met her.
How she feels like someone I’ve known all my life.
Someone I don’t deserve, someone I’ll hurt or fuck up somehow, yet a woman I seem incapable of taking a step back from.
I edge closer still, hearing her inhale, smelling or imagining the sweetness of strawberries on her breath.
Walk away.
I can’t.
Her glance from my eyes to my lips is the final undoing of any self-restraint I have.
One of us makes a move that presses our stomachs together and my hand reaches for her face?—
‘Lyra? Are you down here?’
The door to the dungeon is pulled open and light from the corridor beyond puts us under spotlight. Almost caught in the act. Or saved from it.
Lyra’s eyes widen, I think a match for my own, as if our bubble has been pierced by reality.
‘Mandy, finally!’ Lyra says, spinning away from me.
Finally. Right.
Go, Lyra, go back to helping people.
I follow Mandy and Lyra out of the dungeon, carrying both table frames we came down for. Considering the door as I go, I conclude that the only way we got stuck in there is for someone to have locked us in from the outside by placing the metal bar across the frame.
It’s not until I peer back into the black void that I realise the yearning to pick up alcohol and drink never did come. She took me to places in my mind that I hate going. I was locked in a dark, confined space. Yet, there was no part of me that wanted to drink as I sat on that table next to her.
* * *
Back upstairs, despite only being MIA for twenty minutes, the wedding reception is reset. Dave is set up and ready for me to take the stage.
The two table frames I carried are set up in the corner of the room but seem to have no purpose whatsoever and when I locate Lyra, her hands are planted on her hips as she gives Pearl what-for, albeit playfully.
Did we get pranked?
There’s no time for me to overthink because Dave is thrusting a microphone into my hand and telling me, ‘They asked for you to start with Lonestar’s “Amazed”. They’re ready for their first dance.’
Of all the songs, in all the world, why do brides love this one? It’s so cringeworthy.
From the middle of the stage, I say, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome to the dance floor for their first dance as husband and wife, Mr and Mrs Bailey.’
I sing the lyrics as if I’m interested but through the entire song and the Take That track that follows, I watch the only thing I’m actually interested in. I see every picture she takes, noting what interests her, wondering what she sees through her lens that makes it a moment to capture.
I watch the way she smiles at the newlyweds as they dance together.
How she beams as the youngest bridesmaid gives her best ballet moves for a doting audience.
How the loose summer dress she’s wearing still affords me an occasional glimpse of what lies beneath, the way her hips twist and turn, the flatness of her stomach and pertness of her breasts.
More than once, I think she feels my gawping and though I look away each time she catches me, I know she sees. She couldn’t miss that I’ve been fixed on her.
Would we have kissed in the dungeon if Mandy hadn’t come?
Lyra had a lucky escape.
I should return the kindness she shows everyone else and leave well alone.
Once I’ve sung for an hour, Dave gives me the signal and when I get to the end of Westlife’s ‘World of Our Own’, I announce a short break.
A couple of people ask me if I’ll sing something from The Hand Me Downs as I step down from the stage, but I give my usual line about the playlist. I speak quietly, to avoid the protests of the bride and groom because Dave has already forewarned me that they have some romantic connection to one of the band’s gigs.
I’m making a beeline for the rear entrance of the room to hide outside on the same bench I disappear to every night I sing here, tucked away from view on the lawn.
‘Guy?’ The sweet voice of the young bridesmaid makes me stop and I turn back to the room, looking down to her.
She’s maybe eight or nine years old. The ringlets in her hair now less than perfect since she’s danced her heart out for the last hour. She lifts up an Earl’s Castle notepad and pen, the kind that get left in hotel rooms by the old-fashioned landline phones.
‘Please can I have your autograph?’
I want to say no, you don’t want that, sweetheart. But she’s looking at me with the kind of expression I can’t refuse. Her mam is standing behind her now, hands on her daughter’s shoulders, and giving me the kind of expression that comes with a warning – DO NOT DISAPPOINT MY DAUGHTER.
Still, I’d really like to say no – I’m not that man any more.