Chapter 12
At Sunday lunch the next day, Tam announced that she wanted to add a last-minute guest to the wedding breakfast.
‘Who?’ asked her mother, wrinkling up her nose in incredulity.
‘An old friend from uni. You remember Anna, the one who looked Swedish?’
‘Ah yes, I remember that one,’ replied her father in a way that suggested his memories of her were pronounced but not pleasant.
There had been no need for that comment.
Anna had been her usual wonderful, friendly self when she’d visited and was certainly more warmly polite to them than they had been to her, but they’d marked her according to her accent, her background.
Tam recalled that every time she said ‘Tam’, her mother had embarrassingly corrected it to ‘Tamantha’.
But Anna had been equally mortified at her own mum’s behaviour when Tam had gone to her home in Bolton.
We aren’t friends because of our families, Anna had said at the time, we’re friends in spite of them.
Neither girl was the sum of her parents – thank the Lord.
‘We’ve finalised all the seating plans,’ said Davina with a huff, as if there was no possible way of making any changes. Tam thought they would have unfinalised them if she’d wanted to bring Jack Cesaroni along. What a thought. Jack Cesaroni, who thought she was exceptional.
‘So how much notice have they given you in your job then, Tamantha?’ asked Jame, gearing up to gloat.
Tam delivered her line as matter-of-factly as she could.
‘They haven’t, actually, I’ve been promoted.’
Her brother’s expression morphed into that of a smacked cod.
Tam couldn’t resist giving them more. ‘The MD said I am exceptional.’
‘Exceptional?’ Hellen’s face wrinkled up. ‘What on earth is he talking about?’
‘Sure he didn’t say “questionable”?’ And Harris guffawed at his own wit.
Before Tam could respond, someone spoke up for her. It should have been Harris, but it was Meredith. ‘He must really value you, Tamantha,’ she said in her wavery, nervous voice.
‘Oh shut up, Meredith. You probably don’t even know what it means,’ said Jame, with a bark of rude laughter that withered her. ‘Oh, by the way, I’ve been nominat—’
‘I want to hear more about Tamantha’s promotion,’ said Meredith, cutting him off, and everyone around the table turned to her in surprise. This was the first time they had ever heard her stand her ground.
‘Thank you, Meredith,’ said Tam, happily supplying the info while trying not to register the same shock as everyone else about Meredith’s worm-turn. ‘I have my old job back with elevated duties in assisting the MD . . . with a very nice pay rise thrown in.’
‘I see.’ Davina’s tone was tight as she flashed her eyes to her son, who clearly hadn’t put her right about his future wife having the affront to continue pursuing a career.
Tam had no intention of following suit with Davina or her own mother, who had both given up their jobs as soon as the pregnancy test showed a positive reading.
‘And I would like to add my friend to the reception,’ said Tam. ‘I can ring the venue myself and—’
‘As Davina says, we can’t add people, the table plans are all complete,’ said Samantha adamantly. ‘Don’t interfere at this stage.’
‘Please no wedding talk,’ said Jame, feigning a yawn. ‘As I was saying, I’ve been nominated for an award . . .’
Later, when Tam was loading up the dishwasher, Meredith came through with a pile of crockery.
She smiled at Tam and Tam was reminded of how pretty she was.
When her brother first brought Meredith to meet them, Tam had thought then he was punching far above his weight.
Not that Meredith could compete with him in the job stakes when she was a receptionist in a doctors’ surgery and Jame was the top medic on the planet – at least, that’s what he believed.
Meredith had oozed a sweet, if quiet, charm and Tam had hoped it would soften her brother.
But it hadn’t; instead, every time she came over, it was as if a little more of her had drained away.
It wasn’t Tam’s place to say it, but now they were alone, she really wanted to scream at Meredith to run for the hills away from them all.
But Meredith stole the words from her mouth.
‘I think you’re more invisible than even I am here, Tam,’ she said, handing over the plates, with a smile that was really anything but a smile.
That evening, in Harris’s car, as he dropped her off at home, Tam asked a question she hadn’t asked before.
‘What is it that you saw in me that made you want to spend the rest of your life with me?’
Harris huffed impatiently. He wasn’t one for talking feelings.
‘What on earth are you asking that for?’
Because this week has made me think too much, she didn’t say.
‘Humour me, Harris.’
‘I don’t know. You’re attractive, bright. And the more I got to know you, I could see that we were a match.’
‘A match?’ A bark of laughter from her, but one without much humour. ‘Like a lab experiment?’
‘You know what I mean. We are both ambitious, driven. We would have a good life together, solvent, comfortable. I knew we had all the potential to fit together as life partners.’
‘Is that why you fell in love with me?’
‘Of course. And I knew that we’d be on the same page when our children came along.’
Her ears pricked up at that.
‘We haven’t decided if we’re having them, have we?’
‘I know, but . . . it’s expected, isn’t it, surely?’
Tam’s eyes rounded.
‘Expected?’ By whom, she didn’t ask, although she knew the answer to that one.
‘Natural, then.’
‘And would I be expected to be the one to give up my career to look after them?’
Harris gave a trill of laughter. ‘Well, it could hardly be me, could it?’
She wasn’t sure if it was that trill or his words that irked her more. They’d have a row if she continued with this line, so she changed tack.
‘It’s been a strange week. I just wanted to hear something settling.’
‘Okay, it was a relief to find someone to plan a future with. And the cherry on the cake was that our families get on so well. It was perfect. That okay for you?’
‘Thank you, that’s nice.’ She smiled and then kissed him goodbye. He didn’t want to come in, he had some prep to do for the morning. They’d have all the time in the world to spend with each other soon anyway, when they lived together.
Later, she lay awake, revisiting his words, which had initially made her glow, but the glow was fading quickly the more she looked at it.
It was perfect, he said, not you, not You were perfect.
And that word ‘potential’, it was what one might think of a house that needed to be moulded and shaped because it wasn’t liveable as it was.
And he said that it was a relief to find someone .
. . did he mean by that anyone? Anyone who might fit his list of prerequisites?
She rolled over in bed trying to escape all the questions missiling into her brain, but they wouldn’t leave her alone.
Nowhere in what he said were the words that he fancied her, wanted to rip off her clothes, wanted to make her happy and feel valued and treasured, because that’s what she felt about him and would have said as much if he had asked her why she wanted to spend the rest of her life with him.