Chapter Twenty-Three
Belle
I surface at the bar, and the music finds me before anything else does. I rub my eyes weakly as the bass vibrates in my chest. The lights are all wrong – they bounce around and strobe off someone’s sequins. They’re much too bright, or rather, I’ve just come from somewhere very dark.
The barman slides me a glass of water without me asking, and I take it, thanking him, so grateful I could cry. I take a long sip while I look around. Jake is gone, which means we’re done for now.
The rehearsal party is in full swing. It doesn’t need me to keep it going, which is both a relief and a small grief. When I lower the glass, I catch Timothy’s eye. Or rather, I catch him looking away. Quickly and deliberately.
He’s by the fireplace with his dad, the pair of them standing with that particular posture they share: shoulders slightly hunched, chins lifted, hands behind their backs – like they’re surveying a battlefield rather than a ballroom.
He won’t look at me. So I wait. I stand at the bar and wait, and eventually, because I know him and I know he will, he looks back.
And I didn’t get it wrong. Instead of smiling, he shakes his head.
It’s a slight movement, barely noticeable.
But I notice it. The way his mouth pulls to one side, slow and almost considerate, as if in thought.
I know this face. I’ve seen it multiple times.
It’s his face when he’s frustrated with me – for misplacing my keys for the twentieth time that week, for taking too long to get ready so we’re late to our dinner reservation.
He had that look when I turned up to his colleague’s Christmas drinks last year in a dress he didn’t think was quite right.
It’s disappointment written across his face, here, in this room.
I feel a heat rising through me, starting at my forehead and boiling its way down somewhere in my chest. Have I embarrassed him? I put the glass down. I need to get out of here … I need the bathroom.
The bathroom is empty. I lock the cubicle door, drop the lid, and sit down. I pull the paper from my bra. It’s soft at the folds now and slightly greying at the edges. I smooth it against my knee and look at what I’ve written so far.
We’ve had six visits so far and I’ve written six tidy little lessons. I put pencil the paper for visit seven.
Things I have learned, visit 7:
Some people will
I stare at the line for a long time. Then fold the paper back up. Tuck it away, wash my hands, and look at myself in the mirror. Bride Belle looks back at me and I’m not sure which one of us blinks first.
My hair is knotted at my shoulders, and my cheeks are the colour of the red wine I definitely wasn’t supposed to be drinking.
We’d made a pact – had promised each other: fizz and wine over dinner, then sparkling water.
Just sparkling water. In order to stay clearheaded and ready for the best day of our lives, he’d said, and I’d agreed, because it had seemed reasonable back in London, back when the wedding felt like a thing that was happening to a future, calmer version of me.
I ball up a tissue and blot my forehead.
This is not what I’d planned for this evening.
Which is so obvious, it’s almost funny, except I’m too tired to laugh.
It’s the night before my wedding. My husband-to-be is ignoring me in a room full of our nearest and dearest, and the person I currently feel the closest to in the world is a ghost. The ghost of Jake Marleigh, specifically.
I’m also sweating in a bathroom, by myself. I need a minute to process all of this.
I breathe in through my nose. Hold it. Then out. Like I learned on Instagram.
Here’s the thing. Reliving what Seb did to me … I know that’s why I needed the wine, the noise, and why I wanted to let my hair down. I’m not unravelling – I am, instead, just releasing some pressure. There’s a difference.
And maybe, if I’m being honest, in the privacy of my own head at least … Maybe Jake’s voice is in there too. I don’t want to admit that he knows me more than I want him to. That after ten years, after everything, he can still land something without even trying.
The way he’s able to make such casual observations, without realising how I take them to heart. You’ve changed … More uptight. How he said it so matter-of-factly, like it wasn’t hurtful, like he was just stating the obvious.
I just … I don’t want to be the woman who nurses a sparkling water at my wedding rehearsal dinner because I’m worried about what people will think. I don’t want to have to change myself for others. I vowed not to let that happen again – and I meant it.
And Timothy knows what I’ve been through in my past, and what I never want to go back to, which includes letting someone’s disapproval dictate how I hold myself in a room.
If he loves me as he says he does, he will understand that.
I’ve just talked myself into more wine, using feminism and trauma. That’s new.
I lift my head, blow out a breath, and go back out there.
It’s not a protest. It’s just a party – my party – and I intend to enjoy it.
As I walk through the hall, I try my hardest not to glance at Timothy, although I feel his eyes following me. I grab a glass of wine from a staff member holding out drinks on a silver tray, thank them with a small courtesy and continue towards the back doors.
The cold outside is physical – it hits me before the door is fully open. A gust of ice-cold winter air almost takes my breath away. It’s like walking into the Arctic. The frosty grass crunches under my heels. I look to the sky – no snow yet.
Above the treeline, Whitby Abbey is lit by a full moon, like a spotlight; it looks like the main character on a theatre stage.
It looks like a painting of a ruin, rather than an actual one.
Like something that chose to fall apart for beautiful effect.
I spot a group of smokers mingling under an oak tree and decide to join them.
I haven’t smoked for years but, man, do I crave one now.
It’s some of Timothy’s restaurant people, as well as Vik and his wife. Vik clocks me coming and lifts his chin. I can do this small performance of sociability.
‘Smoke?’ a guy asks, offering a pack. I vaguely remember him – Augie, I think his name is. A finance guy at one of Timothy’s restaurants.
‘Ugh, thought you’d never ask.’ I put one in my mouth and he lights it. The first drag does what I needed it to do. I tip my head back and exhale, let the sound of the sea nearby find me. Waves against rocks, relentless and soothing.
For so long, I couldn’t wait for my own wedding day – to experience that specific sort of attention: the feeling of the whole room being there for you and the person you’ve chosen. I used to think that sounded incredibly romantic, only to be gained when you found the one.
Now that it’s here, I can’t locate that feeling. Everyone watching Timothy and me, cataloguing us, deciding privately whether we’ll last … Or won’t we? I can feel it all happening in real time and it’s too much.
I’ve been in a room full of people watching me all evening. Out here in the dark, this smoke in my hand, chit-chat around me, I can be nobody for a moment. Eyes shut, head up to the moon, surrounded by small talk.
I feel him before I see him.
A change in the atmosphere, the group adjusting slightly, attention shifting. I’ve been with Timothy for three years – I know the effect he has on people. The way they gravitate towards him, the way rooms reorganise themselves when he enters.
I turn to face the manor and see him approaching. He’s smiling, but it’s pained. I know that look and I know he, too, is acting now. That’s his ‘I’m stressed because I’m not in control right now but don’t want people to see I’m freaking out’ look.
‘There you are,’ he says, coming to stand beside me. Hand at the small of my back. His voice is warm, easy, totally unaffected. He’s very good at this. ‘I was looking for you.’
‘Oh, were you?’ I smile up at him. I know you watched me walk out here.
‘Let’s leave you lovebirds to it!’ Vik grins, already stubbing out his cigarette, steering his wife and the others back towards the party.
When they’re gone, he doesn’t say anything immediately. He just looks at the cigarette between my fingers.
‘It’s one cigarette,’ I say. ‘It’s not heroin.’
‘I didn’t say anything.’
‘You were about to.’
He pauses and exhales, slowly, through his nose. ‘I’ve spent the last hour and a bit … I’ve just been—’ He stops. And starts again, but quieter now. ‘What’s going on? This isn’t like you.’
‘Which part?’
‘The shots. The dancing on the …’ He glances towards the manor. ‘All of it.’
‘It’s a party, Timothy.’
‘It’s our rehearsal dinner.’
‘Which is also a party.’
‘Belle.’
Here we go.
‘Everyone is here. My family, people from work. Luckily, the Fork Yeah team left before the party kicked off but … You have to understand how this looks.’
‘How does it look?’ I want him to say whatever he’s thinking out loud.
He considers it carefully. Looks around, then back at me. ‘It looks like maybe you’re not all right.’
‘I am completely all right.’ The words come out steady, which surprises me, because I feel anything but.
The problem is that I’ve spent the past few hours watching every version of myself that I’ve tried to leave behind, and some of it is still stuck to me and I’m hoping to God that he can’t sense that.
And if only he knew about my antics today – the ghost, the flashbacks, Seb’s face at that party – then he might not use the word ‘all right’ anywhere near me.
He might use ‘unwell’. He might think ‘not fit to get married tomorrow’.
He nods and then takes a step closer to me, whispering almost. ‘Are you getting cold feet?’
Cold feet? He thinks I’m unsure about us?
I tap the cigarette with my index finger, away from my dress. ‘Timothy, yes, my feet are cold. I’m wearing stilettos outside in mid-December. But I’m not getting cold feet for our wedding.’ Another lie.
He looks nervous, slightly panicked. ‘You’re sure?’
‘I’m excited. About tomorrow. You should want me to be excited! What would you prefer, that I sit quietly in the corner with your nanna Maude and her dodgy knee?’
I watch as his forehead creases. ‘I’d prefer—’ He stops again. He does that twitchy jaw thing. ‘I just want to know you’re okay. That’s all.’
‘I’m okay.’
‘Right.’ He nods, before leaning down and kissing me. It’s a flicker of a kiss. Our lips barely touch. It’s so polite, so managed, that I have to actively resist pulling back.
‘I’ll see you inside,’ he says and leaves. It’s only when he’s gone that I realise I wanted him to stay.
One final drag of the cigarette and I watch the tip glow.
The waves carry on below. White noise, which feels soothing.
One last look at the abbey, broken and all lit up.
A magnificent wreckage on display against the black sky.
It’s beautiful in the way that lonely things often are.
I wonder if that’s why Timothy is attracted to me.
And I wonder if that’s why Jake was attracted to me. I turn and go back inside.
I push the door open and Jake’s on the sofa, telly on, legs up. He’s got a pen between his teeth, tapping it against his bottom lip, staring at the ceiling.
I close the door behind me and lean back against the cool wood. Jake spots me, the pen disappearing as he straightens up.
‘There she is.’ He grins cheekily. I see he’s been working his way through a bottle of whisky he’s acquired from … somewhere. Impressively, he’s already made a bit of a dent. Recognising the look on my face, he stills. Raises the bottle.
‘Give me that,’ I say, collapsing into the cushion next to him, kicking off my heels. ‘We’re going to need that, I think.’