The Starter Home

by Bryony Fraser

  Published by AVON

  A Division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

  1 London Bridge Street

  London SE1 9GF

  www.harpercollins.co.uk

  First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2016

  Copyright © Bryony Fraser 2016

  Cover illustration and Design © Emma Rogers 2016

  Bryony Fraser asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

  A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

  Source ISBN: 9780007477081

  Ebook Edition © September 2016 ISBN: 9780007477098

  Version: 2016-08-10

  Dedication

  This book is dedicated to all the great dames

  I know and love.

  And also to burritos.

  ‘They say marriages are made in Heaven.

  But so is thunder and lightning.’

  — Clint Eastwood

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  The End

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Acknowledgements

  Keep Reading …

  About The Author

  About the Publisher

  The End

  ‘We’re getting a divorce.’

  There’s a moment, just a single heartbeat of a moment, where no one says anything. Then Dad puts his arm around Mum, and my sister Kat starts laughing, and Liz is standing up, cheering, and Jack’s best man, Iffy, is raising his pint to us, and everyone else is chattering like am-dram extras. My other sisters tell off Kat for laughing, and Mum throws her hands up, and at the back of the room someone drops their glass, and Jack and I just look at one another.

  Thinking about it again, maybe our anniversary party wasn’t the best place to announce it.

  ONE

  Now

  I stirred my rum and Coke with one perfectly manicured finger and took a large gulp. I hadn’t smoked since my teens, but I’d have pushed a vicar through a stained-glass window for just a couple of puffs.

  ‘You alright, love?’ Dad sat opposite me, nursing his own rum. I blinked at him.

  ‘Besides the obvious?’ I said, gesturing with my glass at my outfit, our location.

  ‘We’ve got plenty of time, Zoe. Have a drink. Take a deep breath. Decide what you want to do.’

  That was what I needed to hear, ever since this morning, when I’d woken up in my old bedroom. Or when I was booking marquees. Or when Jack first asked me.

  I sighed and stared out of the window. ‘Did you and Mum never fancy this?’

  Dad shifted in his chair a little. ‘Did it ever bother you and your sisters that we weren’t married?’

  ‘No! God, no. It was quite cool, actually. But I’m just wondering, now … Why did you two never fancy it?’ I turned my engagement ring round and round on my finger, gold band … sapphire stone … gold band … sapphire stone …

  ‘Things were different. And it just didn’t suit us, back then. But we weren’t who you and Jack are.’

  ‘That’s what I’m worried about.’

  ‘The thing is, love … sometimes you just have to do what you think is right.’ He took a sip. ‘Even if it might seem like the hardest thing in the world.’

  I looked at Dad’s pale, smiling face, then knocked back the rest of my drink, stood up, and pushed my veil forwards over my face. ‘Let’s do this, Dad. Let’s get me down that aisle.’

  We stepped out of the Queen’s Head into the cold, thin January sunlight, where the wedding car was waiting for us, driver Al in the front with a Daily Express and a bag of salt and vinegar. As he saw us coming out, he started up the engine; Dad tucked me into the back seat, passing me the second-hand Chanel clutch he and Mum had surprised me with last night, as if it were a vaguely radioactive but very precious baby, then sat down beside me, trying not to crumple my outfit.

  ‘Fifteen minutes, Al,’ Dad said. ‘Do you think we can make it?’

  ‘Nooo problem,’ Al shouted over his shoulder, revving the engine and sweeping out into the traffic.

  Fortunately, having huge wedding ribbons on your car seems to make other drivers a touch more charitable – there’s no way we’d have made it in time otherwise – and we got to the register office to find Jack outside at the front, pacing with nerves at my delay, alongside his best man, Iffy, and my maid of honour, my oldest friend, Liz. My sisters were outside too: Esther watching Jack’s pacing with crossed arms and Ava standing with her arms around Kat, who was painting her nails, both of them huddled together in a tiny splash of winter sun, breath hanging in the air. The rest of the wedding party waited inside as the wedding before ours began filing out. As the car drew to a halt, Jack bounded over, reaching in to help me out of the car before it had even come to a full stop.

  As soon as I saw him, I thought, Yeah. This’ll be ok. I watched Dad climb out behind me and give me a thumbs up, and thought again, harder, This will be ok. I’m sure it will.

  Then Jack took my hand and smiled at me, and we headed inside.

  ‘You may kiss the bride!’

  There was a moment’s silence while we leant into each other, then my sisters started whooping as one, and as we kissed the whole register office applauded, and it felt alright for a moment. We pulled away and Jack looked like he was glowing, happiness pouring out of his freckles, and I thought, I wonder if I look like that?

  Then the registrar said a few more things, the music started up and we were back down the aisle, out into the sunshine and then … then we didn’t know where we were supposed to go. The car wasn’t there – Al wasn’t due back for a good while yet. He was probably sitting back in the pub he’d picked me and Dad up from, enjoying
a quiet drink before the happy couple spilt prosecco all over the back of his car. We milled about for a while, doubling back on ourselves to watch everyone trooping out, then we had to walk back in and out again so the photographer could get some shots of everyone throwing confetti at us on the stone steps.

  My shoes hurt and my eyes felt heavy from the fake eyelashes I’d let myself be talked into, despite my choice of natural hair, plain white jumpsuit and simple faux fur. I was happy enough at this precise moment – all these people! Jack’s face! – but I’d wanted us to just keep on walking when we got outside, just hit the road, no looking back until we’d had some time to talk about all of this. I squeezed Jack’s hand and he squeezed back.

  ‘Happy?’ he said.

  ‘I was about to ask you the same thing.’

  We smiled at each other, but neither of us answered.

  The photographer moved us around from car park to entrance steps to under the one tree in the vicinity not surrounded by cigarette butts and cider cans, in an attempt to get a satisfactory shot. I tried to avoid Dad’s eye, until our driver finally turned up again. I dragged Jack into the car, and we sat back with a sigh, his arm around my shoulders, and we stayed in comfortable, quiet stillness until we reached our reception venue twenty minutes later. Al didn’t attempt small talk either, just turned up the heaters in the back a little more.

  As we pulled up the drive to our hired manor house, the first arrivals of our wedding party, Jack stroked my handbag with one finger. ‘This looks fancy, Zo.’

  ‘Gift from Mum and Dad last night. More Mum than Dad, I expect. In fact, probably more my sisters than either, but still …’

  ‘You’ve always wanted one of those.’ I shrugged, smiling, and Jack went on, ‘And if everything else goes wrong in life, at least we know we can flog this and live like kings.’

  I clutched it to my chest. ‘You wouldn’t …’

  ‘Of course I wouldn’t! I wouldn’t dare, my dearest.’ He picked it up, and looked at it more closely. ‘It doesn’t matter how expensive it was – you deserve something this gorgeous.’

  Jack pulled me in for another kiss and I wondered if we could tell Al to go back down the drive. No one’s seen us. We could still escape, just me and Jack. Then I remembered Dad’s words this morning – sometimes you just have to do what you think is right – and swallowed the feeling down.

  ‘Looks great, doesn’t it?’ I said, in an attempt to distract myself from the thoughts running through my head, as the car stopped at the manor house. The marquee beside it, spread out over the small lawns and laid with hard flooring for the dancing later, was swagged with winter wreaths; huge thermal jugs of hot mulled wine waited for our guests under a smaller, flower-laden gazebo near the main entrance to the manor house. I could see through the doors that the photobooth was set up in the entrance hall; the unseasonal ice cream van played its chimes softly by the outdoor heaters, accompanied by the gentle pop pop of the vintage popcorn stand in the marquee. I could hear our pianist already playing soft jazz inside the manor house, so the guests could hear her while they milled about with canapés and cocktails. It was a perfect wedding, copied dutifully from the wedding magazines and Pinterest boards everyone had sent me. Hadn’t I done it right?

  Jack got out of the car and held the door open for me, then suddenly swooped me up in his arms and half ran with me towards the hot wine.

  ‘Quick! First toast. While everyone else is tagging along behind in the bus.’ He held out a glass to me before taking one for himself. A passing waitress smiled at us both – the happy couple. ‘It’s going to get busy any minute, and we’re probably not going to be able to talk until tomorrow. But I just wanted to say how amazing you look, how amazing this is, and how amazed I am that you’re now my wife.’

  ‘Don’t blow your whole speech.’

  ‘I mean it, Zoe. Sometimes I didn’t … I didn’t always know how we were going to end up, even though I always knew I wanted to be with you. And to look at us today, to look at all this …’ He was welling up.

  I chinked my glass against his. ‘Happy wedding day.’

  He smiled, and replied, ‘Happy wedding day, wife.’

  I drank my wine in one gulp, burning my throat.

  The rest of the reception was a blur. I noticed that Liz, my maid of honour, was there without her boyfriend. She hadn’t said that Adam couldn’t come, but she didn’t mention his notable absence, so neither did I, sensing it wasn’t something she wanted to discuss. Instead she cooed over my bag, gasping as I explained that Mum and Dad had insisted the bride should have a special gift on her wedding day. Esther, my responsible, married eldest sister, who had our dad’s smaller stature and our mum’s gentle stubbornness, had been clapping her hands with glee when Dad handed me the box last night, having received a Céline bag (also second hand) when she’d got married four years ago – it had swiftly become her nappy bag when William was born a year later. Ava, taller and quieter, the next eldest, looked on with peaceful, happy excitement, while Kat, the youngest of us four by four years, bold and foot-stamping ever since Mum and Dad brought her home from the hospital, had stood with folded arms and bright purple pursed lips while I’d lifted the layers of tissue paper to find an old, impossibly soft, black Chanel 2.55 handbag.

  ‘Now, it’s not brand new,’ Dad had said, apologetically.

  We’d all laughed. ‘Dad! It’s beautiful. Thanks, Mum. Thanks, Dad.’

  I hadn’t expected it. My wedding to Jack seemed so different, somehow, to Esther and Ethan’s, that I’d had no idea I’d get any kind of present. Their wedding had been all any of us had talked about for months – a happy event which had been a given since they’d got together – but ours just seemed to have arrived, surprising even me. I didn’t think anyone would take it as seriously, somehow. And yet this bag! I’d slept with it on my bedside table, intending it to be the first thing I saw when I woke up that day, but in the end that honour had fallen to the breakfast tray Mum had brought up to me, with her coral necklace from her own wedding day on the side plate next to the boiled egg.

  The wedding party bubbled on: speeches and toasts to us and to absent loved ones, tears, food and dancing, hugs and good wishes from some of Jack’s employees at Henderson’s, his shoe shop. All the while I was aware of Dad watching us, and Liz too, each wearing concerned faces when they thought no one was looking. My sisters were too busy to notice; flirting with the bar staff, even Esther, the Sensible One, hugging her toddler to one hip and ogling one of the hot barmen.

  Mum hugged me whenever she walked past, kissing me and saying how wonderful this whole day was, how perfect, how sorry she was that Grandma wasn’t alive to see it, but how much she would have loved it all – loved both me and Jack. Then she’d start to cry again, leaving Dad to come and steer her away and I would look at whoever I was with and laugh, loving my mum’s easy emotions.

  At one point I looked over to see Benni, my boss, on the dancefloor with Iffy, making wild jigging circles and calling out, ‘Chidinma! Philip! Get on here!’ as she tried to lure my parents into dancing too; Benni’s wife Gina sat with Liz, watching them all and laughing fondly, enjoying a night off from her and Benni’s twin boys. Later on, Benni and Iffy took the mic from the DJ to croon ‘Total Eclipse of the Heart’ at Jack and me. We joined in, far from embarrassed at their drunken serenade – it didn’t seem too different to an average night out for us. Liz was unusually quiet without her plus one; she’d not mentioned anything to me recently about problems between them, but maybe she’d thought the run up to today wasn’t the time. I wanted to return the countless favours of support and tact she’d given me over the recent months, but it felt like it would have to wait.

  Jack and I met occasionally throughout the rest of the reception party. We hadn’t wanted a first dance, so we mostly all danced together in a big group with our friends. I saw him at the bar; he kissed me while I was talking to his aunt. Then suddenly it was midnight, and our carriage awaited. I did
n’t want to go, didn’t want to leave the moment of this party, didn’t want to leave my sisters and our friends. I didn’t want this party to be over, to face what days and months and years came next. I loved Jack, but I didn’t want to start married life.

  A cheering crowd lifted us both up and carried us to our wedding car, driver Al looking more hangdog than ever, his vintage Triumph covered in foam and balloons. Whistles, hollers and cheers followed us back up the drive.

  ‘I’m sorry about your car,’ I shouted forwards to him. ‘About the foam and stuff.’

  He waved his hand over his shoulder. ‘Don’t worry, love, it’s all covered by the costs. Cleaning’s part of the package – it happens every time.’

  Jack gave me a look.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Nothing. Nothing. Doesn’t matter.’ He sighed. And I’d done everything I could to act the happy bride today. ‘Did you have a good time, Zo?’

  I smiled at him. ‘When do I not have a good time at a party?’

  ‘Good. Me too.’

  At the hotel we were too tired to do much more than sign in, which Jack did with a flourish and a grin. When I looked at the sheet, he’d filled in Mr and Mrs Bestwick and I felt a different kind of exhaustion when he gave me a jokey wink. Up in our room, we lay on our bed, vases of flowers from friends and family all over the sideboard and dressing table, and I reached out and put my hand on the small of Jack’s back. Then, with the lights still on, fully dressed, we both fell fast asleep.