Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Eighteen
After the meal is finished I make sure I volunteer to help clear up. Frannie tries to lure me away to the balcony but I insist, having not helped at all either setting up the table or cooking the food. I collect plates and cutlery as people move around me to other parts of the house, some wandering into the garden and others going into the living room, or to sit out at the front.
I help the men pull chairs and tables back to where they belong and return to the kitchen to help with the dishes. To my surprise, many of the large pots have already been washed, and are drying on dishcloths that have been laid on the counter. At the sink I see George, who has started on the large stack of plates, carefully scrubbing at each in the water.
He hasn’t noticed me yet. It is just he and I alone and I stand in the doorway, unsure of myself. He has a look of serious concentration on his face as he scrubs away at the dish in his hands, the wet edge of the sink leaving a tiny line of water on the pale grey fabric of his shirt.
‘Hi,’ I say, suddenly aware of how bizarre it would be to just stand there, staring at him.
‘Oh,’ he looks round, his face, which usually breaks into a wide friendly grin whenever he sees me, is now cautious and slightly sheepish. ‘Hi, did you enjoy dinner?’
‘It was really good,’ I say, ‘I just wanted to help clear up as I didn’t contribute to anything else.’
‘Me neither,’ George says, ‘but I’ve got this. If you want to go and keep Frannie company I can finish up.’
I scan along the counter. He’s running out of room. Wet dishes are already balancing precariously against one another on his makeshift drying rack.
‘Let me at least help clear this.’ I say. I’m surprised by my own boldness, but I realise that when George is confident and accommodating, I take refuge in my own shyness. In the face of George being awkward, I find that I have the space to be assertive. I take a handful of clean, folded dishcloths from a basket on the counter and begin to dry off the large cooking pots and dishes.
‘Thanks,’ he says, as I open the cupboards, looking for the right places to put things. ‘I think that was all a disaster waiting to happen.’ I don’t look up but I hear him pause, and take a deep breath before talking again.
Speaking of disasters,’ he says. ‘I want to apologise again about that night a while ago. It was fun and I ruined it.’
I can’t help but laugh at him, speaking quickly when he looks put out. ‘Nice segue,’ I say, ‘it’s okay. Though Frannie tells me you’ve finally come clean about the breakup?’
George smiles. ‘Yes. I’m not sure why I held off so long. In the end they were weirder about it than they would have been in the first place.’
‘Well, that’s always the way isn’t it?’ I say, getting to work drying a stubbornly damp cast iron pot. ‘If you try to avoid something because you”re scared of it, you just end up running into a worse version later on.’
‘Very true.’ George says. ‘The quicker you face whatever’s happened, the easier it is.’
We lapse into silence, the stop and start of the tap, and the clinking of crockery substituting the rest of that conversation that we both know we should have. I crouch to open a low cupboardand carefully stack pans in size order, kneeling on the floor to reach inside. I can feel him wanting to talk about the last night we were together, and I cast around for a topic to manoeuvre us away from that subject. I open my mouth, planning to ask about the wedding tomorrow, but before I can say a word he turns, his face resolute, and says:
‘Is that why we never talked about Frannie’s birthday?’
I stare, completely stunned, looking up at him from the floor as though I’ve been hit in the face. He watches me for a beat.
‘Don”t look at me like that. Is that why you spent ten years avoiding me?’
For a few moments I reel at the moment that has finally come, out of the blue. And then something surfaces in my mind, and I realise the truth.
‘That night,’ I say, ‘that night when we went back to yours. You didn’t pull away because of some anxiety over my age. Or about Frannie, or even your breakup. You pulled away because of what happened all that time ago.’
He presses his lips together and I know I’m right.
‘That was years ago,’ I say, standing up, trying to keep my voice level.
‘And yet it’s hung over every second we’ve spent together since,’ George says, ‘not that there have been many as you literally evaporated afterwards.’
‘Because I was humiliated,’ I say, ‘because I was a little kid who’d just completely bared her soul to someone who’d said no.’
‘Of course I said no.’ George says, looking offended. ‘You were a child, what was I going to do? I tried to be as kind as I could. But there was no way of getting out of that without you being hurt.’
‘I know that,’ I say, ‘And I understand that you were as kind as you could have been.’
‘So why did you disappear?’ he asks, and I’m surprised to hear the hurt in his voice. It must show on my face because he crosses his arms defensively. ‘You weren’t just Frannie’s friend you know,’ he says. ‘Just because you were a kid doesn’t mean I didn’t care about you. You were still important to me. I saw how much you needed our family, and suddenly you just stopped being there. And it was my fault. I thought I’d pushed you away and now you were all on your own again.’
‘God, I’m so sorry,’ I say sarcastically, ‘I’m so sorry that you felt bad about it. You’re right, how you feel about this is the important thing here.’
‘I’m not saying that,’ he snaps, ‘I’m saying you’re not the only person who’s been carrying this round, wondering whether to bring it up. And when you were at mine I realised I couldn’t push it away any longer.’ He sighs. ‘I should have brought it up before anything happened. But how do you talk about something like that after all this time?’
I don’t know what to say. On the one hand, it’s as though a pressure valve has been released, a build-up of feeling I didn’t know I was holding is dissipating, but on the other, this conversation has caught me so unprepared for it, that any relief I feel is being eaten by a trembling sense of uncertainty about where we go from here. My new experiences with George had given me so much to think about that the old memories had started to feel like background noise. I had almost gotten used to them. It hadn’t occurred to me that George had been thinking about them all this time.
‘Are you two alright?’ Frannie asks from the doorway. We both jump and turn to her. ‘Am I catching you two having one of your little kitchen dialogues?’
‘Everything’s fine,’ I say, feigning brightness. George also switches on a smile.
‘Just complaining that we’re the only people who thought to do a bit of clearing up.’
‘Piss off,’ Frannie laughs, ‘I’m about to wave off Theo and the others staying in the hotel. Come say goodbye.’
Frannie marches in and helps us clear away the last few things, then we follow her in silence to the front of the house where all the families are crowded in the garden. Theo is holding his mother’s hand, and a gaggle of other relatives including Nisha and Lila have already started to make their way down the steps to the centre of town, where they’ll make their way across to the large hotel on the outskirts. Frannie’s Spanish relatives are leaving for their own homes, or crossing the road to the neighbour’s house, where Camilo’s family will put them up for the night.
‘See you tomorrow.’ Frannie says to Theo. She pulls him into a kiss, then pulls away laughing when somebody whistles. Theo waves to the crowd who cheer him off as he leads his parents away for the night, surrounded by a bustling crowd of his soon-to-be family.
‘Right,’ Frannie says, checking the time on her phone, ‘what do you reckon? One last look at the moon as an unmarried woman?’
She takes mine and George’s silence as agreement and leads us back through to the garden. The house, which was so full of people it was stifling just a few moments ago, has emptied so suddenly that it’s eerie. I hear shuffling above us of Frannie’s parents and grandparents going to bed and then it’s just me, Frannie and George, stepping out in our bare feet onto the smooth cool patio and sitting on the wide base of the French windows.
Frannie looks up at the sky, the moon full and bright and the clear mountain air scattered with stars. I watch her, her face so contented, like a woman about to open a door she’s been wanting to step through her whole life. I can’t imagine what it would be like to ever feel so sure of my choices. I often wonder if it’s the difference in our upbringings, or if there’s some kind of gene that allows some people to stride into the unknown with complete confidence that they’re going in the right direction. By instinct I look up and meet George’s eyes. He has been watching me while I’ve been watching Frannie. He gives me a small smile which I return, and we both turn our heads to the sky. I feel like we’ve silently agreed to a truce, to table whatever discussion we need to have until after the wedding.
‘Isn’t it scary?’ I ask, unable to help myself. ‘Tomorrow you’ll do something that will change the rest of your life. How can you be sure you’re making the right choice’
Frannie is silent, and for a moment I tense, worried I’ve offended her.
‘The thing is,’ Frannie says slowly, as though she is writing the words out carefully in the air. ‘I don’t think you should live your life thinking about whether you’re doing the right thing. You should try to be a good person. But there are no right choices, there’s only what you do in the moment. You can weigh your options and agonise over consequences as much as you like, but at the end of the day, you always have to move ahead without knowing how things will turn out. Maybe Theo and I will live happily ever after, maybe we’ll crash and burn and be divorced this time next year.’
‘Mum would murder you both,’ George murmurs.
‘But it will probably be somewhere in between. We’ll have good moments and bad moments, and things will happen that will fill us with joy and sometimes we’ll let each other down. But if we don’t make choices that force us into the unknown, we don’t get to create new paths for ourselves and discover what that life could look like.’
‘I’m sold,’ George says, looking out at the sky, ‘I’ll call Rowena and ask her.’
Frannie snorts and the two of them fall about laughing.
‘You will not.’ Frannie says. ‘You took that step and realised you weren’t happy. Things never felt right.’
‘It’s hard to know what the right feelings are supposed to be sometimes.’ he says. I hear a tinge of sadness in his voice. I want to reach for his hand, to touch the side of his face and comfort him. But I don”t move.
Frannie shifts her weight to tuck her arm into his.
‘The right person will feel like the right person,’ she says, ‘and I feel like that’s different for everyone. But with Theo, things have always been new and familiar at the same time. I”ve only known him a few years, but it feels as though he fits my whole life up to this point. Like he belongs in my past even though he wasn”t there. Does that make sense? ’
‘I don”t know. But it sounds very wise.’ George says.
‘I am very wise. Sometimes I forget I’m the youngest child.’ Frannie says smugly.
‘I don’t,’ George replies, ‘they’re always the most irritating.’
Frannie laughs again and shoves him with her elbow.
They talk about silly things, memories from childhood. Some I had been there for and some I hadn’t, but I”m content to sit and listen to them. Eventually the chatter slows, and Frannie looks at the time on her phone.
‘We should sleep,’ she says, getting to her feet, ‘I don’t want to oversleep for my own wedding.’ We all stand and step back into the dark, quiet house.
‘Thanks, you two.’ Frannie turns to us when we reach the landing. I”m conscious of the distance between me and George as I feel her taking us both in, standing as we are together. ‘I’ll see you in the morning.’
She goes into her room first, leaving us in awkward silence, the lynchpin of Frannie being removed leaving room for the earlier tension to flood back in. I pause with my hand on my bedroom door, wondering if I should say goodnight to George. He too pauses, and for just a beat we stand at each end of the hall, mirroring one another. I begin pushing open the door when I hear him take a breath, as though to speak, but I have already stepped through before I realise what I’m hearing, and the door shuts softly behind me, leaving only silence.
*
I wake to my alarm, set to a low volume and tucked beneath my pillow so as not to disturb others. I had gotten into bed with a racing mind, but had fallen asleep almost immediately. The morning is still pale and cool, and I enjoy a few moments of peace and silence. In a few hours we will be picked up by taxis to take us to the hotel, Frannie, her mother, Nisha, Lila and I will get ready there and be driven back up the chapel. Her father, Theo, George, and the rest of the families will join us there. When the ceremony is complete we will pile back into cars and drive down to the hotel again, where we will eat and have the reception. The day will be full of people, food and drink, laughing and dancing, and I enjoy the time spent lying by myself in the silence before it all starts.
I read in bed for almost an hour before I hear other doors opening, a shower turning on, murmurs from the ground floor and the balcony as people begin to get ready. I put on jeans and a plain camisole and sling on the same cardigan I wore the day before. I brush my hair and put on just enough makeup to feel presentable. The dresses are all at the hotel, and there will be a stylist for makeup and hair when we get there. Downstairs I find Frannie and her mother standing in the kitchen. Frannie’s mother is holding her hand and I hesitate, feeling as though I’m intruding, but they turn to me before I can move back out of sight. Frannie smiles when she sees me. She’s wearing the beautiful loose plum trouser suit she showed me at her house, her hair down and her skin makeup-free and golden.
‘Good morning love.’ Frannie’s mother greets me, and pulls out a chair at the little round table. ‘How did you sleep?’
I greet her as Frannie gets up to make coffee.
‘Where is everyone else?’ I ask.
‘Abuela is changing upstairs. Dad, George and Abuelo went straight to the hotel.” Frannie says ”It’s easier for them to all change and get ready there, rather than everyone queueing for the bathroom here. Nisha and Lila are there as well, so they should be ready before we arrive.’
‘All smartly thought out,’ Frannie’s mum says, ‘and gets people out of the way so we can have some peace before we go down there.’
I nod. Frannie brings the pot of coffee across to the table with a small jug of milk, and I get up before her mother can and pull three mugs from the cupboards.
‘Bring another if you can,’ Frannie calls, ‘Abuela will want one’
I dig out another and, holding them ungracefully, make my way to the table.
‘I hope you’re more adept at holding a bouquet.’ Frannie laughs as she pours coffee into each mug. Her mother picks up the milk jug and pours a thin spiral into Frannie’s, a more generous helping into mine, and somewhere between into her own.
‘Perhaps you take more now,’ she smiles at me, ‘but this is the coffee you would have when we had our pastry mornings on Saturdays. Do you remember?’
‘Of course,’ I say, ‘it was the first time I ever had coffee. I still take it this way, lots of milk and no sugar.’
I’m warmed that she remembers exactly the amount of milk that I take in my coffee. I’m about to ask if she remembers all our pastry orders too, a plain croissant for her, an almond croissant for me, and a pain au chocolat for Frannie, when her phone buzzes from the pocket of the jacket she’s hung on the chair. As she reaches around for it I realise that Frannie’s phone on the table has also lit up.
‘Who’s calling you?’ Frannie says picking up her own phone.
‘It’s Nisha,’ Sameera says, ”you?’
‘Theo. What about you?’
She’s talking to me, and I look down at the table where my phone is showing an incoming call. George is ringing me.
‘Oh for god”s sake,’ Frannie says, ‘something’s obviously gone wrong.’ She holds the phone to her ear as her mother answers her call.
I pick up my phone as I hear Frannie go ‘I don’t think this counts as seeing me before the wedding but this had better be important.’
‘George?’ I say into the phone, looking over at Frannie’s mum, who brings a hand to her mouth.
‘Hydie?’ he says.
‘What’s going on? Everyone’s phones are ringing.’
‘Are you still at the house? Is Frannie still there?’
‘Yes, we’re all still here, what’s happened?’
Somehow even as George begins to explain, I already know. There’s only one thing that could be happening to cause such a panic. Frannie’s mother grips the phone in both hands and begins shouting questions down the phone frantically at Nisha, Frannie has already hung up and has run to the hallway, I hear her picking up keys and pulling on her shoes. Shouting up the stairs in Spanish to her grandmother.
‘We’ll all be there, we’re coming as soon as we can.’ I say to George and hang up, stuffing the phone in my pocket as Frannie runs back in. We all stare at one another. We all know what’s happened, but none of us wants to say it, to say words that will shatter the quiet calm of the morning. Lila is missing.