Chapter 22
? Near-miss kiss
Twenty years later
‘I never answered her question, Tom. And the weekend she was meant to come to Cardiff was the weekend the accident happened. I’ve never forgiven myself.’
I’d never said those words out loud before. I could feel my composure faltering so I stood up abruptly before I cracked, the chair scraping loudly against the mosaic floor of dormant coins.
‘I’m just going to nip to the loo. I won’t be a sec.’
‘Wait, are you okay?’ Tom’s eyes were locked on to mine.
I nodded once, my mouth fixed in a straight, hard line. ‘I will be.’
I asked a waitress to direct me to the toilet, which was nothing more than a broom cupboard-sized cubicle next to the bar.
I gripped the tiny sink and inspected my face in the mirror as I tried to regulate my breathing.
I looked at myself in the eye. I’d unintentionally told Tom about the worst thing I’d ever done.
What was I thinking? Mum, Dad and Josh had spent those early days and weeks trying to reassure me that my decision to cancel her visit wasn’t something I should tear myself apart over.
But I could always sense the permanent question mark that seemed to hang like an imminent snowstorm above every conversation we ever had as a family from that era onwards: What if Livvie had been where she was meant to be that day?
But my own internal question was much louder and harsher: What if I had been a better sister? A better person ? And now Tom knew who I really was underneath all the dry wit and self-deprecation and urge to help everyone all the time.
I took a few deep breaths before re-emerging, just as another platter of dishes arrived. There was barely any space left on the table now, nor in my churning stomach.
Tom waited until the waitress had departed before speaking. ‘Hey, how are you doing?’
‘Yeah, I’m okay. It’s just that you’re the first person I’ve spoken to about what I did.’
‘You didn’t “do” anything, Mal.’
I shook my head. ‘But that’s exactly it, isn’t it?
I could – and should – have done so much more!
I could’ve actually stood up to Elle when she guilt-tripped me into cancelling Livvie’s visit.
I could’ve got back to her instead of trying to bury my guilt – who knows what might have happened if I had?
I can’t believe I left her hanging and never replied to that final email. Well, not when she was alive, anyway.’
Wow, I was really going to tell him this as well – as if my previous confession hadn’t been shameful enough.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, that first Christmas after she’d gone, I finally did reply. And I’ve been emailing her every day since.’
Tom placed one hand on mine and cradled his own forehead with his other. His eyes were glistening with… something, or maybe it was just the reflection of the seventy-nine million fairy lights in the subterranean restaurant.
‘Fuck, Mally.’
I dropped my eyes back to the table.
‘Yeah, what a loser, eh? Trying to make up for letting her down’ – I swallowed the vibrating lump in my throat away – ‘by sending a load of pointless emails into the digital ether. They’ve shut down her account now, anyway.
I got an automated bounce-back at the start of the month. It’s probably for the best.’
‘Pointless? What are you talking about? This is, like, the saddest, sweetest, fucking loveliest thing I think I’ve ever heard.
Jesus, you must’ve loved her so much. You must miss her so much.
I’m so sorry this happened to you. To your family.
It breaks my heart to think you’ve been living your life thinking that you played any role at all in what happened to your sister. ’
I kept swallowing but my throat was burning with emotion.
For twenty years I’d truly believed that I’d been sending those emails to Livvie from the coldest pit of guilt and despair.
Never once had I even considered that they came from a place of warmth and love.
Or that those two seemingly opposing places overlapped in any way.
I’d always seen the emails as – shit – almost shameful , somehow.
But maybe they weren’t? Maybe they were…
okay? Special, even? Both of Tom’s hands were now on mine.
I looked up from the cooling food slowly, cheeks wet with tears that I’d not even noticed falling.
‘Thank you.’ I spoke quietly. And right then was when I felt a shift between us.
I had countless conflicting feelings rushing around inside me, and I could detect that Tom’s own emotions were whizzing about as well.
What he was feeling I had no idea. But I knew what my own feelings were as if they were shouting their names to me:
Pain. Loss. Fury. Safety. Hope.
Love.
I felt ripped open, yet fiercely alive.
Tom cleared his throat as we waited for our puddings after the final savoury plates had been cleared. I could sense he was scrabbling about for a less heartrending topic of conversation. ‘So, er, has enough alcohol been consumed to share your Spaghetti Tree story yet?’
‘Urgh, just about.’ I took another large gulp of my festive cocktail before continuing. ‘Buckle up. I guess I would’ve been fifteen and Elle would’ve just turned sixteen, as she’d gotten herself a Saturday job at Kooka? on the high street.’
‘Kooka?? Very trendy.’
‘And didn’t she know it. She was properly smug about it, especially when the only Saturday job I could find a few months later was at BHS.’
‘Ah, but you couldn’t get a decent fry-up at Kooka?.’
‘Exactly! Though Elle never seemed to quite understand why I thought the on-site self-service restaurant was such a bonus. But I digress. So I’m fifteen, and Elle suggests I meet her in town after work one Saturday for some late-night shopping and a bite to eat.’
‘Oh God, I think I can see where this is heading…’
‘Yup. So there I am on the bus into town early one Saturday evening, wondering why Elle told me not to wear a coat, despite the fact that it’s freezing out, but also feeling ever so grown-up for heading out for what I thought would be a fun shopping trip and girly dinner before we got the bus back to Scarnbrook. ’
‘You lived on the same street, right?’
‘Yeah, next door to each other. She moved in with her mum at the start of Year Nine. I’m surprised you remembered that.’
Tom tapped his temple to signal his excellent ability to recall information.
‘Anyway, as soon as Elle’s shift ended, we headed over the road to The Body Shop, where they used to give you free makeovers if you bought a couple of products.
So we bought some body lotions and lip balms in return for a full face of make-up each.
Then, in the shopping centre loos, Elle produces two “going out” tops from Kooka? – to this day I don’t know if she paid for them.
We got changed into those and zig-zagged our partings before making our way to the restaurant for this so-called girly dinner, and Spaghetti Tree was indeed the venue.
Not that I’d ever heard of it before then, mind. ’
‘An early adopter.’
‘Hardly. So as the waiter showed us to our table, I noticed that all the other tables also appeared to be occupied by teenagers our age, all of whom seemed to have ordered exactly the same pizza. Which no one was eating.’
‘The infamous margherita.’
‘Yes! And then, at eight thirty on the dot, the lights dimmed, and everyone started pushing their tables up against the wall.’
‘Oh God, these are just the cringiest memories, Mal.’
My lips twitched at the mention of ‘Mal’ again, before I continued my tragic teenage tale.
‘And – as you well know – all of a sudden, the restaurant had transformed into some kind of dingy, underage nightclub. I was in shock. And I suggested to Elle that we should get out of there, but she just laughed and told me to relax. She said there was a well-known legal loophole that you could drink alcohol in a restaurant aged sixteen, as long as you drank it with food, hence all the stacks of uneaten cheap pizzas. Which sent me into a spin because a) I was pretty sure you still needed an adult to actually buy the booze and b) I wasn’t even sixteen at that point anyway. ’
‘Blimey, what a way to be initiated into the Spaghetti Tree underbelly.’
‘Tell me about it. By now, we’re sat next to our table, pizzas untouched as that seemed to be the done thing, backs against the wall as all manner of things start happening on the dancefloor.
Elle’s swigging from her bottle of Metz, trying to look all aloof, but she wouldn’t take her eyes off the entrance.
Turns out some bloke had come into Kooka? the Saturday before, liked the look of her and had mentioned something about meeting him and his mates at Spaghetti Tree the following weekend. ’
‘So, she wanted you there as her wing woman?’
‘Wing child , Tom.’
‘Urgh, right. Did he show?’
‘Yeah, about an hour after the restaurant underwent its nightclub transformation. He was half-cut and had obviously forgotten who Elle even was. Though she had no problem reminding him the instant she clapped eyes on him.’
‘Was this meant to be a funny story? Because it sounds horrific. How old was this bloke?’
‘In his early twenties maybe? I found out later that Elle had told him she was nineteen.’
‘Well, he probably knew that was a lie, hence he suggested they meet up in a well-known underage drinking hole.’
‘Urgh, I’d never even considered that angle before.’
‘So how did the night play out?’
‘Well, I basically just sat in that little corner over there…’
I pointed to the opposite side of the restaurant where a group of four girlfriends were donning red and yellow paper crowns from their Christmas crackers and taking group selfies as they did so.
‘…nibbling away at our pizzas, which were actually quite delicious by the way—’
‘Yeah, I always did feel sorry for the chefs.’