4. Chapter 4
‘That was a good class,’ Jack said. ‘Until you wobbled over in tree pose and slid down the wall.’
Lucy snorted.
‘I didn’t slide down the wall!’ she protested.
‘How would you describe it then, Luce? Slipped? Slithered? Don’t say glided—there was nothing graceful about it.’ He grinned at her and shook his head. ‘Why didn’t you just put your other foot on the floor?’
Lucy wiped her eyes, laughing.
‘I think I thought I could regain my balance.’
Lucy chased a baked bean around her plate and stabbed at it with her fork. She missed, and it skated away from her in a sea of tomatoey sauce.
‘But the wobble had gone too far for me to correct it.’
Lucy and Jack were in their usual post-yoga brunch spot, in the corner of the little cafe, tucked in beside an overstuffed bookcase and a huge spider plant that skimmed the top of Lucy’s head. People jostled in the doorway as they waited for seats to become available during the Saturday morning breakfast rush.
Opposite her, Jack was inhaling his post-yoga eggs benedict.
‘You know, waiting to see what you’ll get up to each week is one of the reasons I never miss a class,’ Jack said in between mouthfuls.
Lucy rolled her eyes at him.
‘Good to know. What are the other reasons?’
Jack shrugged.
‘Bad posture from long hours hunched over my desk in the office.’
Lucy opened her mouth to ask him about work. She had seen the Herberts’ fiasco online and knew it likely meant he’d had a late night. But before she could ask, he said, ‘What’s this thing you want to talk to me about? You were very cryptic as we were leaving class.’
Lucy knew this was it. She took a sip of coffee to buy another few seconds before she had to go through with her plan. She put her cup down with a rattle and took a breath.
‘I want you to come with me to my brother’s wedding,’ she said.
Jack looked unfazed. They went to plenty of things together.
‘As my boyfriend.’
Jack stopped chewing and stared at her.
‘Fake, my fake boyfriend! My plus one. I already RSVP’d plus one.’ She hurried on. ‘It’s not as mad as it sounds.’
Jack’s expression told her it did, in fact, sound quite mad.
Jack swallowed and regained the power of speech.
‘You’re usually happy going to these things on your own—what’s different this time?’
‘The difference,’ she said as she slathered jam onto her toast and fingers, ‘is my family. I’ve told you all the horror stories.’ She gestured with her toast. ‘All true.’
Jack raised his eyebrows and watched Lucy attack her breakfast.
Lucy licked jam off her fingers and let out a weighty sigh. ‘It’s three whole days with them, stuck in a country hotel in Shropshire, and I just want to give them as little ammunition as possible and escape with my dignity intact.’
Lucy sipped her tea and picked at an imaginary hole in her leggings.
‘Heather and I only recently started talking again, and it’s all a bit…. fragile.’
Jack ran a hand over the dark stubble on his chin and leaned back to rub his belly, his shirt riding up slightly above the waistband of his jeans to reveal a fine line of hairs. Lucy’s eyes slid over the toned and tanned skin. A woman sitting across from them paused with a spoonful of yoghurt halfway to her mouth to take in the view.
‘I dunno Luce, you know I don’t like weddings, and there’s…’ He sighed. ‘There’s actually a lot going on with the company at the moment. It’s not a good time for me to be away. Can’t you ask Aaron?’
‘No, he’s got a new girlfriend, and I don’t imagine she’d want me asking him to hold my hand and fawn over me all weekend. You’re my only single male friend and therefore the only candidate for,’ she wiggled her eyebrows and grinned, ‘this exciting opportunity.’
Jack pulled a face.
‘Flattered as I am to be selected on the basis that I am literally the only viable candidate, I refer you to my previous points. I hate weddings and don’t go, and I have too much on to get caught up in what sounds like a family drama.’ He cleared his throat and leaned forward slightly. ‘Listen.’ He slid some dirty plates to one side. ‘I have something I wanted to talk to you—’
Oblivious to everything but her present predicament, Lucy had developed selective hearing and didn’t register what he was saying.
‘Oh, Jack, come on,’ she pleaded. ‘Do me this one favour!’
‘One favour?’ He raised his eyebrows so high Lucy thought they might disappear into his hairline. ‘You mean like the one favour when I drove forty miles to Leeds to pick you up in the middle of the night when your car broke down again? Or the one favour when I had to go round to yours when you thought you had a leak because you left the tap—’
‘Okay, okay,’ Lucy conceded the point. ‘Do me this other, extra-important favour because you’re such a good friend, and you might even be The Best Friend in the World, and you don’t want to see me emotionally scarred—wait—make that, more emotionally scarred, and in need of therapy. Or wanted for murder. And it’s an open bar. Did I mention that? And I will owe you.’
Jack appeared unmoved by her plight. She watched as he reached for his coffee, relaxed back in his seat, and took a deliberately loud and long slurp.
‘Aaaaah.’
‘Fine,’ Lucy sighed and gave up on her breakfast, pushing her plate away.
The coffee machine hissed loudly, and the bell rang on the door as more people crowded into the busy café, asking harried staff how long the wait would be and checking their watches.
Jack started re-examining the menu as if he didn’t know it by heart.
‘I don’t know why you’re looking at that,’ she grumbled. ‘We both know you’re going to order another portion of hash browns, like every Saturday. Even the waitress knows it.’
Jack pulled a face at her and strained to catch the attention of their waitress.
Lucy rubbed her temples and mentally slumped into the notion of going to the wedding alone. She shuddered as she thought of calling Ollie and explaining that she was very sorry, but actually, there wouldn’t be a plus one after all. Things had changed, she’d say, and she’d be coming on her own.
‘Oh no!’ Ollie would say, with genuine concern for her.
‘It’s all fine,’ she’d reply with her best cheery voice on. ‘No problem, I’m looking forward to seeing you!’
And that part of things would be okay.
And then, ten minutes later, her mother would call. Valerie Carmell would make no bones about letting her know what a problem this was and how it upset all the seating plans. She’d tell Lucy in tart tones that she would now need to be seated at some distant back table near the toilets, behind a yucca plant, and with one foot sticking out of the marquee so as not to lead to odd numbers and unbalanced tables. Lucy would practically be able to chew on the disapproval coming down the phone line.
Then, about ten minutes after Lucy extricated herself from that call—possibly by pressing her doorbell so her mother heard the chime and was forced to give way to imaginary visitors—her sister, Heather, would call.
Heather would have just heard from her mother that Lucy had done this terrible thing and would have bent Heather’s ear about it. Now Heather was calling to take her turn to berate Lucy for being such a pain. She would revel in being the perfect child her mother turned to for support whenever anything went wrong—which, in their mother’s strictly regulated world, was often. Lucy would sit on the phone and vacillate back and forth between biting her own tongue so as not to tell her sister to please, please just get lost, and wondering how to fake her own death. Or maybe just fully embrace her role as the odd one out in the family and attend the wedding dressed in black, swigging gin from a hip flask and smoking herbal cigarettes in a long black and gold cigarette holder.
In the end, she’d do none of these things. She and Heather would bicker but, having only recently started speaking after a painful falling out nearly two years earlier, both would leave much unsaid.
The call would dwindle to them both saying things like, ‘Well then….’ and, ‘Right, well….’ in starched tones, with long awkward pauses in between. And then they’d do the right thing and simply hang up and go to bed cross and irritated. Lucy would spend the next week thinking of all the things she should have said and being inspired, three days after the call, with wonderful comebacks to Heather’s remarks. She would promise herself that next time, next time, she would stand up for herself.
Although Lucy and Heather had started speaking again in recent months—coaxed by a pleading Ollie who wanted happy sisters at his wedding—it was a tentative truce. This would be the first time they had seen each other since the fight.
Lucy shuddered at the thought of the looming seventy-two hours of inescapable family time, and all that would be found wanting in her life. She glanced at Jack, who was draining the last of the coffee from the pot, and decided that if she needed to prostrate herself on the floor of the café in front of the Saturday morning regulars in order to get Jack to agree, that would still be better than dealing with her family alone.
She sighed, and absent-mindedly added more milk to her tepid coffee. Jack glanced up from his newly delivered hash browns.
‘Didn’t any of those dates you went on lead to anything? Nothing promising?’
‘Tuh, no,’ Lucy said, tearing off a corner of jammy toast. ‘There was that gym-crazed beefcake I told you about, who was more interested in his protein intake at dinner than me, and called me Louise all night—no thanks. There was that very timid guy who was renovating a barn to live in, which sounds great, except all his stories were about rising damp and the trouble with local planning regulations.’ She folded the jam-soaked toast into her mouth. ‘And then Trevor, who gave me unsolicited financial advice all night and explained the differences between assets and liabilities over dessert. I wasn’t sure if he wanted me as a date or a client.’ She sighed and licked a blob of jam off her finger. ‘I just want to meet someone I can grow old with.’
‘Doesn’t everyone want that?’ Jack said.
‘I’m even considering downgrading from fall in love with to happily tolerate, so long as they have an active social life that means they are often out of the house. Someone to measure out my daily meds for me when I get old.’ Lucy continued, scraping butter onto more toast. ‘Help me stagger to the loo, empty my catheter, roll me over so I don’t get bed sores—’
‘I think you’re mistaking husband for nurse.’
Lucy shook her head vehemently, chewing.
‘Nope, that’s why they make you take vows—in sickness and in health, until death do us part. It’s to make sure you look after each other. Come what may,’ Lucy said come what may in a voice of deep foreboding.
‘Oh, cheer up Lucy,’ Jack said. ‘You might die before it comes to that.’ He grinned at her. ‘Honestly, with your sunny personality, I don’t know why you aren’t fighting them off with a stick.’
‘Maybe I’m just really good with a stick,’ Lucy said darkly.
She threw down the last of the toast.
‘Okay, what will it take, Jack?’
She could hear the note of desperation in her voice and made no attempt to hide it.
‘This is the first time I’ll see Heather since the fight. Seventy-two hours with my oh-so-perfect sister while she and my mother let me know exactly what’s wrong with my life choices.’
Her voice cracked slightly.
‘It might be more than I can take. And if it is, the next time you see me, I will be in prison wearing a jumpsuit and ankle cuffs.’
Jack shrugged.
‘At least you’ll have time to focus on your poetry.’
‘No, I’ll need to join a gang to protect myself. Or start one. Or be someone’s bitch, or something.’ She shook her head. ‘Okay—I get it. I am a terrible friend. I have taken your good nature for granted, and I will—” she gazed earnestly into his eyes across the table of dirty plates, hoping she could will him to feel her plight, ‘stop doing that. But could you just do this one thing to stop me from chewing off my own hand?’
‘You haven’t even said the magic word yet, have you?’
Lucy frowned.
‘Yes, I-I did, didn’t I? When I said….’
She wracked her brain. Maybe she hadn’t said it. She sighed.
‘You want me to say please?’
Give the man what he wants.
Jack shrugged and poured more coffee.
‘As my father said, good manners go a long way.’
‘Wow. Says the man who just ate most of his breakfast with his fingers.’
Lucy ran her fingers through her tangled caramel waves, wincing as she caught a knot. She cleared her throat and then exhaled dramatically.
‘Jack.’ She winked at him. ‘Jacky Boy, Jack the Lad. My dear, good, kind, and supportive friend.’ Lucy was bouncing in her seat. ‘Won’t you pleeeaaase do this one—’ Jack narrowed his eyes, and she paused. ‘Do this other favour for me, for which I will be forever grateful, please and pretty please and thank you?’
Jack smiled and looked at her, his dark eyes inscrutable. He tipped his head to one side and rubbed his chin.
‘That’s better, thank you.’ He paused and sipped his coffee. ‘I’ll have to think about it.’
‘What?’ Lucy’s voice was nearly at a pitch only dogs could hear. ‘No, no, there’s no time!’
‘Lucy, I can’t just go away for three days at short notice. I have other important things in my life besides you.’
Lucy pulled a face. ‘You really don’t. And the wedding is in two weeks—that’s plenty of time!’
Jack started listing, counting things off on his fingers.
‘I have a business to run, staff to consider, football practice I need to go to, to work off Kathy’s cakes, Pete and Aislinn are doing a BBQ party for Riley—’
‘Wait.’ Lucy held up her hand. ‘A BBQ birthday party for a three-year-old? Happy to get you out of that one. You’ll practically owe me.’
‘Yeah, okay, that was a weak case…. But I really don’t know if I can take time away at the moment, not at such short notice. Like I said, there’s a lot going on at work.’
Jack shrugged and looked earnest as he took a sip of his coffee. Lucy wished he’d dribble a bit of it on himself.
Lucy could feel her face getting flushed. Impatient customers were eyeballing them from the doorway, spying the empty plates, willing them to hurry up and move so they could sit down.
‘Jack,’ she said, making one last attempt. ‘In all seriousness, won’t you please come with me? It’s not for two weeks. Surely you can get someone to cover things for you at work?’
She locked eyes with him as she urged him to take pity. If he didn’t say yes now, she’d buy a bottle of wine and then head home to make that call to Ollie and await her mother’s pained call to follow. She thought of her mother’s pinched expression when she showed up solo—no doubt wearing an outfit her mother would have something to say about, too.
She imagined Heather watching over her mother’s shoulder as Valerie explained to her middle child what dreadful trouble the late change in seating arrangements had put them to, and her father’s well-meaning but meagre efforts to head off trouble at the pass by making bad jokes to jolly everyone along.
Jack broke her gaze and beckoned the waitress, giving the universal sign for can I have the bill by scrawling with his hand in mid-air. He looked back at Lucy and grinned.
‘You had me at open bar.’
Lucy felt her eyes stretch wide, and she clenched her fingers into her palms.
‘What?!’
Jack grinned.
‘Sure, it’s not great timing for me, and it’s a wedding,’ he pulled a face, ‘but maybe it’s a welcome distraction at the moment.’
Lucy opened her mouth to ask him what he needed distracting from when the waitress, the same one who served them every Saturday, sashayed up, bill and card machine in hand.
‘Hiya there! Was everything all right for yourselves today?’
Lucy saw Jack’s mouth twitch in annoyance at the turn of phrase.
She stepped in.
‘Yes, thank you. It was great,’ Lucy said smoothly, as the waitress nodded, not really expecting any other response based on the scraped-clean plates.
‘Lovely.’ The waitress grinned at them both. ‘Is it just the bill now for yourselves, then?’
Jack, a muscle in his jaw twitching whenever the waitress said yourselves, reached for his wallet.
‘No, no,’ Lucy said, digging into her bag for a credit card with some room on it. ‘My treat. After all,’ she waved her badly abused Visa card triumphantly in the air, ‘you are doing me a massive favour….’