8. Chapter 8
8
‘ I still can’t believe you’re going to this,’ Jess said as she lounged on Katie’s bed, watching her get ready.
Katie sighed. ‘Look, John and Belinda are like a second family to me. Belinda cried down the phone to me for nearly an hour when she found out Ryan and I broke up. She said she couldn’t believe a son of hers would do such a thing. Said he must get it from his father’s side of the family because no one on her side has ever behaved so badly.’
Jess, prim and delicate-looking in a cream blouse and white jeans, was the palest thing in Katie’s colourful bedroom. With Ryan out, any last restraint she had shown about her maximalist love of colour and pattern was gone, and she had pulled out her most colourful cushion covers and a teal velvet bedspread. A new pink sheepskin rug lay beside the bed, and scarlet twisty candle holders sat on the dressing table. Jess looked like a pale alien visitor to a land of riotous colour.
‘She said I should come if I feel up to it. She messaged me yesterday and again today and said she would even ask Ryan not to bring Melissa if that would help.’
Jess raised an eyebrow from her prone position, leaning into an orange fringed cushion.
‘What did you say?’
‘I said Belinda, it’s your day, he’s your son, don’t make things more difficult for you all. After all, Melissa might be your daughter-in-law one day. That,’ Katie turned to Jess, ‘sent her off into another bout of crying. She was practically more upset than me. I had to console her. I’m sure it’s supposed to be the other way around.’
‘You don’t seem that upset,’ Jess remarked. ‘You’re either dealing with it in a terrifyingly healthy way—which doesn’t seem quite like you—or you’re a ticking time bomb, and we should all be scared.’
Katie paused in her efforts to shimmy into the scarlet, body-hugging satin dress. ‘I am upset, Jess.’ She wriggled and yanked at the zip. ‘But you know what I am most of all? Absolutely fucking furious. How dare he?’
Katie could feel the heat rise to her face and glowered. Jess recoiled into the pillows.
‘I love John and Belinda, and this is their ruby wedding anniversary, which Belinda has been talking about for an entire year. I won’t disappear and ignore people I care about just so things aren’t awkward for him .’ She jabbed a finger towards Jess. ‘The cheating bastard,’ she added under her breath.
‘Okay, okay. I surrender,’ Jess grinned, holding her hands up.
‘Can you zip me up, please,’ Katie murmured in a more normal tone. ‘This dress is extremely well fitted, and I can’t squeeze my boobs in and do the zip.’
Jess hopped off the bed and stood beside Katie. Katie held the dress to her chest as Jess took hold of the zip and carefully slid it up the red satin fabric. It was a snug fit by design, and Katie sucked in her breath as Jess tugged at the side zip to get it all the way up.
‘Thanks.’ Katie turned to face her friend, slowly breathing out. ‘What do you think?’
The strapless dress hugged Katie’s figure from her knees to her breasts.
‘Wow!’ Jess wolf-whistled. ‘Are you trying to ruin his night or get him back? You look amazing.’
Katie grinned, pleased, and wriggled her hips. ‘Can’t I make him uncomfortable and jealous at the same time?’
Jess waggled a finger in the direction of Katie’s ample cleavage. ‘How much of what is going on here is real?’
‘Well,’ Katie reached inside the dress and adjusted herself. ‘I can’t lie—this dress has some sort of padded shelf,’ she wriggled, ‘that everything rests on. It’s like scaffolding for boobs.’ Katie looked at herself in the mirror. ‘I wanted to make an entrance.’
‘Well,’ Jess nodded, ‘I think you’ll manage that. And the girls are going to make their entrance a little while before the rest of you.’
Katie cackled, then wheezed. ‘Oh no—don’t make me laugh. I can’t actually breathe in this get-up.’
Jess shook her head, grinning. ‘So, tell me more about tonight. What dastardly plans do you and Tom have? Are you sure you want to go through with this? It’s not too late to change your mind, you know.’
‘Stop making it sound like we’re about to commit crimes. We’re just going to make life for Ryan and Melissa a little awkward.’
‘You could always just move on with your life.’
‘Ugh. Sounds like a terrible idea.’
‘So—what’s the plan?’
‘We’re just going to go, surprise the hell out of them—because there’s no way Ryan will think I’ll show up—be lovely to Belinda and John, then probably go and get drunk and throw darts at pictures of them both.’
‘Sounds really fucking healthy,’ Jess nodded. ‘You have absolutely no support from me for this crackpot plan, but I’ll be here to pick you up if it all goes wrong.’
Katie blew her a kiss. ‘Thank you.’
The doorbell rang.
‘Jess.’ Katie turned to her. ‘Could you get that, please? I couldn’t run from a tortoise in this dress.’
Jess chortled and shimmied off the bed. ‘My pleasure. I want to meet this Tim guy.’
‘You know his name is Tom.’
‘Sure, Jim, that’s what I said. I want to know who you’re making these unhealthy life choices with.’
‘Please be nice to him,’ Katie said as Jess padded out of the room. ‘He isn’t the one who cheated on me.’
‘Good point,’ Jess called from halfway down the stairs.
Katie shimmied the tight skirt of the dress up her legs a little way and sat down carefully on the bed so she could put her heels on. Her fingers suddenly felt like they were all thumbs. It took her a moment to manage the slender straps and clasps on each shoe. Standing, she smoothed the dress back down. Her auburn hair hung loose about her shoulders in big, bouncing waves, and large gold earrings dangled from her ears. She hitched the dress up around her cleavage and swallowed. She didn’t usually go out this gussied up. She had bought the dress two years ago and never found the right time to wear it. Ryan had said, more than once, that it was ‘too much.’
She looked at herself in the mirror. The freckles across her nose and cheeks were golden in the evening light, and eyes made big and wide with kohl and lashings of mascara stared back at her. She needed a finishing touch. Rooting in her makeup bag she pulled out a bright red lipstick and carefully painted it on. She stood back and surveyed the final effect. There wasn’t a bit of her that looked like she was nursing a broken heart.
She tottered carefully down the stairs, feeling a little unsteady. She held the banister all the way down and told herself it was the heels, not the nerves.
She could hear voices and then a laugh from Jess. A good sign, if Tom was thawing through Jess’s natural frosty suspicions already.
Katie took a deep breath—a surprisingly hard thing to do in her tight dress—and walked into the kitchen.
Jess smiled and said, ‘Here she is!’
Tom froze with a glass of water halfway to his mouth.
Katie suddenly felt shy. Making an entrance in high glam to show the world that she was happy and doing just fine, had seemed like a great idea in the confines of her bedroom. Now, she suddenly felt like throwing a shawl about her shoulders to cover up and grabbing a tissue to wipe off the lipstick.
‘Is it too much?’ she asked, her eyes flicking back and forth between Jess and Tom.
Tom had managed to put the glass down on the counter. He was shaking his head. ‘No.’ He coughed and cleared his throat. ‘No, not at all. You look…’ Katie met his eyes. ‘You look like a 1950s film star.’
Katie felt blood rush to her cheeks and let out a short laugh.
Jess nodded approvingly. ‘Doesn’t she? Even if the twins are jacked up on more padding than most mattresses provide.’
‘Jess!’ Katie groaned.
Tom was looking everywhere but at Katie, but the crinkle of his eyes told her he perfectly understood Jess’s meaning.
‘What about me?’ Tom asked then. ‘Is this okay? I wasn’t sure how formal it was going to be.’
He pointed to his midnight blue suit and off-white shirt. Katie hadn’t really taken him in before. When she had seen him the first time, she noticed he was tall and good-looking, but she was rather distracted by her efforts to spy on Ryan and her dodgy wig. When she met him at the brasserie, he had stood to greet her, but it was brief, and then they sat for hours. He had looked good in his rolled-up shirt sleeves and jeans, the moody lighting catching the strong angles of his jaw. Now, in the bright lights of her kitchen, she could appreciate how tall he was and how good his long legs and broad shoulders looked in the dark suit. From the corner of her eye, she was aware of Jess pouting and nodding approvingly from where she stood behind Tom, and Katie took care not to make eye contact with her.
Aloud she said, with a grin, ‘You look like an accountant,’ and shrugged.
‘Weird. I was gonna say you look like a technical writer,’ he retorted. ‘All the technical writers I know dress like that.’
‘You only know me.’
‘Exactly.’
Katie could sense Jess’s grin without looking at her.
‘So,’ Tom said, pressing his palms together. ‘Tonight is the ruby wedding of Ryan’s parents who are, remind me…?’
‘Belinda and John,’ Katie said. Jess was gathering her things to leave. ‘They are lovely. I think this party might actually be a bigger deal to Belinda than the wedding itself. I definitely,’ she locked eyes with Tom, ‘don’t want to upset Belinda. She’s distraught about the breakup and furious with Ryan, and she cried when I initially said I would be there.’
Jess was gathering her bag and waving goodbye, and Katie blew a kiss to her over Tom’s shoulder. A moment later, the front door closed after her.
‘Okay,’ Tom was reciting. ‘Charm Belinda for a bit, piss off Ryan and Melissa by our sheer happy presence, get the hell out.’
Katie nodded. ‘Pretty much the plan, yes.’
Tom stepped closer and his fingers brushed her hand. ‘Are you nervous? We don’t have to do this if you don’t want to.’
Katie met his gaze. There was no mocking in his expression, only concern. He had very dark grey eyes she saw now as they flicked between hers.
She took as much of a breath as her dress would allow. ‘A bit nervous,’ she admitted. ‘But you’d have to knock me out to stop me going there tonight.’
‘Well then, my lady,’ he held out his arm for her and she slipped her hand through it. ‘Are you ready to go and have some fun at our exes’ expense?’
‘Absolutely,’ she said as she grabbed her bag and they headed to the door. ‘Just so long as you know this evening can’t involve running, fast dancing, reaching for things,’ she hitched the dress back up over her chest, ‘or even too much laughing. And if I drop anything, it’ll have to stay on the floor til someone else can get it for me. This dress might look good but it’s basically a full-body corset.’
‘Understood,’ Tom said, grinning, as he stood back and held the door for her. ‘I have a great deal of respect for that dress and the brilliant work it’s doing.’
Katie tried to think of a smart retort but was too busy navigating the garden path to come up with one in time.
‘I should have worn dungarees,’ Katie mumbled, as she crowbarred her satin-clad body into the passenger seat of Tom’s car, doing her best to bend in the middle.
‘But what about the twins?’ Tom asked as he slid behind the wheel, face a mask of innocence. ‘Wouldn’t they miss their night out?’
Katie spluttered and pressed a hand to her chest. ‘Ha ha! Yes, poor things, they don’t get out much. And I think this could be a special night for them.’
‘Well, I am delighted to be taking the three of you out,’ Tom said, as he put the car into reverse. As he turned his head to manoeuvre them out she could see him pressing his lips together to suppress a smile.
‘Tom! I said not to make me laugh,’ Katie said.
‘What?’ Tom asked as he swung the car around. There was a devilish look in his eye. ‘Right, you know the venue. Tell me where we’re going.’
***
The cricket club function room was festooned in red balloons and curly streamers. Huge blown-up pictures of a much younger Belinda and John from their wedding day forty years ago were dotted around the walls. A guest book near the entrance invited guests to write their message to the long-married couple on this happy occasion.
Katie hesitated outside the doors to the event room, clutching her handbag and a carefully wrapped gift. She felt suddenly ridiculous. What on earth was she doing showing up there, even if Belinda had urged her to and said it would make her night? The figure-hugging dress and movie-star make-up felt like overkill as a stout middle-aged woman in a baby-blue twin set edged past her to the doors. Anger and defiance ebbed from her, and her shoulders sagged a little. Ryan and Melissa were beyond those doors. She thought of what she’d see—them holding hands, kissing, laughing at little in-jokes—and her resolve faltered, her hand holding the present dropping to her side. Maybe she should leave the card and gift and slip away. It was so busy—Belinda would barely notice that she wasn’t there.
As she wavered, the strip lights of the cricket club foyer doing a great job of grinding her back down to earth, Tom appeared behind her.
‘Car is parked,’ he said in a soft low voice near her ear.
Katie jumped.
‘Sorry,’ he said, stepping back. ‘Are you okay?’
She turned to look at him. His face looked concerned, his grey eyes darting back and forth between hers. She glanced once at the doors, the cheesy party music pounding through them, a glitter ball somewhere within bouncing lights over the glass.
He inhaled deeply and reached for her hand.
‘Katie, if this doesn’t seem like a good idea anymore, we can leave. Just say the word. You can say goodnight to the twins,’ Katie gave a half-giggle, ‘put your dungarees on, and we can go and get drunk, eat chips, and slag them off.’ He inclined his head towards the party. ‘Behind their backs.’
His hand, where it was holding her fingers, felt warm and strong. She looked down at their hands laced together.
‘Are you okay doing this?’ she asked, aware that this was the first time for both of them seeing Ryan and Melissa out in the world as a couple.
Tom’s thumb brushed over her fingers. ‘I think I want to pull the plaster off,’ he said quietly. ‘I don’t know how I’ll feel exactly, seeing them together, but it’s going to happen sometime so… might as well get it over with.’
She shook her head, flicking her hair over her shoulders. ‘You’re right,’ she glanced back at the doors. ‘We came here to make some people feel awkward, and I won’t leave until we have done that. And had some free booze.’
‘A woman after my own heart.’
They opened the doors, stepped into the room, and nearly crashed right into Ryan.
‘Katie,’ he nearly shouted, his jaw slack. ‘What are you doing here?’
Katie swayed on her feet. She had thought she would have a moment to gather herself, to look around the room, see where he was, and build up to this moment. She was glad that Tom still had hold of her hand. Ryan looked like he had seen a ghost, his mouth slack, the cogs in his head whirring to make sense of what he was seeing. Tom gently squeezed Katie’s hand and leaned into her side. Her heart was racing with nerves, but anger and something like scorn rose in her.
‘Your mother invited me,’ Katie said as she took in Ryan’s shocked expression. Over his shoulder she spied Melissa, watching from across the room.
‘But we’re not together anymore,’ he said in a panicked voice.
‘We aren’t?’ Katie said, feigning a look of surprise.
Beside her, she heard a faint snort.
Ryan stared at her, mouth open.
‘Ryan,’ she said slowly. ‘I am friends with your parents. Your mother urged me to come. I was happy to celebrate their day with them.’
Ryan was still gawking at her when Tom stepped in.
‘Ryan, isn’t it?’ he said in a low voice.
Ryan blanched, seeming to realise for the first time who Katie was with. Tom stuck his hand out, arm rigid. Ryan was frozen stock-still.
‘Good to see you with clothes on, mate.’ Katie lifted the card to her mouth to hide a grin. ‘You were a bit underdressed last time we met. Mate .’
Ryan just stood there, his mouth open like a guppy.
‘Oh, how rude of me!’ Katie chimed. ‘Ryan, you remember Tom?’ Her voice got a little louder. ‘He called by to see his girlfriend and found you there. In your boxers. I do hope the Chinese was good when it arrived, and you tipped that driver. What did you order? Wait! Don’t tell me—kung pao chicken, chow mein, and spring rolls, as usual.’
Katie could feel Melissa’s gaze boring into her from across the room, but the woman didn’t look like she could bear to enter the fray.
‘Ah, and there’s Melissa,’ Tom said in a cheerful voice.
He stuck his arm in the air and waved dramatically across the room. Melissa, horrified at being seen, shuffled backwards into a passing aunt. Katie watched and smiled as Melissa jumped and spilt her drink on herself.
‘Ryan, don’t forget to collect your things tomorrow,’ Katie said. ‘I’ll be in until 12:00. If you’re not there by then, I’ll leave them on the lawn for you. The forecast is rain.’
She lifted the wrapped gift. ‘I must drop this present off. Have a lovely evening.’
And they walked off.
She was trembling, adrenaline and fury coursing through her, and she concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other. Tom’s hand was on her waist, guiding her gently as they pressed through the crowds toward the gift table.
‘Are you okay?’ he murmured in her ear.
Katie carefully deposited the gift, a handmade ceramic duet picture frame she had made for John and Belinda weeks before, in a pile of presents. She turned and looked up at him. His dark hair was swept back away from his face, his grey eyes like charcoal turned to her face. Tearing her eyes away from his, she glanced back across the room. Melissa appeared to be remonstrating with Ryan, who kept shaking his head and grabbing for her wrists. After a moment, Melissa flounced off, and Ryan stood alone in the middle of the tables.
‘I’m okay, I think,’ she said, her voice coming in staccato bursts. ‘I didn’t know how I would feel. I can still remember what it was like to be together. And I have all the hurt…’ Her voice trailed off. Her breathing steadied. ‘But when I look at him now, I’m just angry. It’s like I don’t know him at all. As if the hurt I feel belongs to a breakup with someone else.’
Tom nodded, his gaze following hers to where Ryan was trailing across the room after Melissa.
‘I know what you mean.’ He paused. ‘I’m sad over someone who was never really who I thought they were. And I know that, I can see that.’ He sounded like he was trying to convince himself. ‘My head knows that.’ Katie watched his expression. ‘It’s just that my heart hasn’t got the message yet.’
Katie rested her hand lightly on his arm. She knew exactly what he meant—the tussle of trying to balance the new information about who this person was and what they had done with the months, years of feelings and memories that had worn a deep groove inside you, like a record played on repeat.
She opened her mouth to speak when a voice crooned, ‘Hello dear, so good to see you here,’ in the sort of tone you use when someone has just been released from hospital.
Katie turned to see Ryan’s Aunt Barbara and Uncle Malcolm.
With her head cocked to one side and a pitying expression, Barbara said, ‘Ryan told us you broke up. We’re so sorry to hear that.’
Katie turned to face them. ‘Yes,’ Katie nodded, ‘we did.’
‘Ohh,’ Barbara crooned, ‘a shame that you decided to go your own ways when you’ve been together so long.’
Katie tried to digest what Barbara was saying. ‘I beg your pardon?’ she managed.
‘Yes,’ Barbara rested a sun-leathered hand gently on Katie’s arm. ‘Ryan explained that you both just felt it was time to move on.’
Barbara nudged Malcolm. ‘Didn’t he Malcolm?’
‘He did,’ Malcolm nodded, his eyes lingering on Katie’s cleavage.
‘Oh, he did, did he?’ Katie caught Tom’s eye.
Katie felt rage build inside her. It hadn’t occurred to her that Ryan would try to whitewash what had happened. Though now that she was confronted with this additional lie, it made perfect sense. Ryan clearly didn’t want to admit any wrongdoing. So she would happily do it for him.
‘I think, Barbara and Malcolm,’ she said in a clear, clipped voice, loud enough for anyone around them to hear too, ‘what Ryan meant to say was that he cheated on me with Tom’s girlfriend, Melissa,’ Tom lifted his hand by way of introduction, ‘who is here with Ryan now. There was no mutual agreement. Tom and I caught them together. Post-coitus.’
Barbara looked startled and confused.
‘It means after sex, dear,’ Malcom whispered in her ear, enjoying the turn the conversation had taken.
‘Oh goodness.’ Barbara pressed a hand to her mouth.
‘Yes,’ Tom added, standing close beside her now. ‘Ryan was just in his boxer shorts. Very embarrassing for him.’
‘And then I kicked him out and, well, here we are.’ Katie grinned.