The Girl I Was Before: 'A Fun Feel Good Read' (Lily McDermott Series Book 1)

by Izzy Bayliss

  “You better not puke on my carpet!” Frankie roared at me from her bedroom.

  When I had finished being sick, I brushed my teeth with the spare toothbrush I left in her place, went into her room and climbed into her bed beside her. “What were you thinking decorating the room in those colours, it’s killing my eyes.”

  “How are you feeling?”

  “I am dying.”

  “No you’re not, you’re hungover.”

  “No – I am pretty sure I’m dying.”

  “I’m not surprised.”

  “How bad was I?”

  “On a scale of 1-10?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “I’d say 9.5.”

  “Oh no,” I squealed putting my hands over my eyes. “I can remember singing D-I-V-O-R-C-E and then I go blank.”

  “So you don’t remember the tears then?”

  “Noooooh . . .”

  “Or falling off the stage on top of the poor karaoke man?”

  “Noooooooooh - okay you can stop, I don’t want to hear anymore. I’d say those lads thought I was a right mentaller.”

  “No they didn’t - they loved you, they thought the tears were all part of your karaoke act!”

  I cringed. “I am so embarrassed.” I grabbed a cushion off the bed and used it to cover my face.

  “Don’t be. It was a great night, and you’ll never see them again.”

  “Thankfully.”

  Frankie dropped me home later on, and I was still in bits. I had no food in the house, so I phoned the Chinese and ordered a chicken curry with chips, prawn crackers and Coca-Cola to help ease my hangover. As I walked past the hallway to get cutlery from the kitchen, the photo of Mam and all of us in the zoo beamed down on me from where I had hung it up. She was so youthful in it, but then again she was around the same age as I was now – by the age of thirty-two she was already married with two kids. Although the picture was black and white you could still see how flawless her porcelain skin was and the shine of her dark hair, which was neatly turned out just below her shoulders. I wondered what Mam would think of the way I had turned out. I knew she would never approve of the state I had got myself into last night – she was such a lady from what Dad told me. Here I was a hungover mess, separated and trying to scrape a living by baking because I had been fired from my last job. Would she be disappointed in me for the way my life seemed to have plummeted over the last few months? I wanted so desperately to make her proud of me, but I think I had managed to do everything but that over the last few months.

  “I'm sorry, Mam,” I whispered.

  Chapter 20

  I spent the next few weeks in a dark place. Never, ever, ever in my life had I been so angry. Never. The stupid, fuckedy fuck. The wanker, symbiotic bollox – I wasn't sure what that even meant but it sounded impressive, and Marc was such a thick that he wouldn’t even understand it. How could he raise my hopes that perhaps he was having second thoughts about leaving me and meanwhile he and Nadia were announcing their “baby joy” for the whole world to read? I felt like such an idiot. He had tried calling me a few times since but when I didn't return his calls, he finally seemed to get the message and I hadn't heard from him in a while. That was it, I thought. There was no going back. I had finally woken up to the fact that Marc was no good. We were done. I was separated by the ripe old age of thirty-two. I would have to wait the obligatory four years and then when that was done, I supposed we would have to get a divorce. To be separated and potentially divorced by that stage of my life was embarrassing. Then there was “The Fear”. What was going to happen to me? Would I be left on the shelf now? The thoughts of meeting someone new, getting to know them, moving in together, pottering around B&Q early on Saturday mornings buying sensible things like decking and radiator cabinets. Maybe getting a cat or a pot plant – well I was running out of time to do all of that all over again. Most of my friends bar Frankie were going out with people or getting married, and some even had babies now to show for their time together, but I was back in the starting blocks.

  I couldn’t even bring myself to bake, that’s how bad it was. I knew I needed to concentrate on Baked with Love – I had lots of orders coming in. My cousin Tina was getting married and she had asked me to do two hundred mini cakes all iced with her and her grooms initials with navy ribbon trimming to match the invitations and the bridesmaids' dresses. Then Frankie had phoned me to say that she had recommended me to a male client of hers who happened to be the CEO of First Ireland Bank, and they wanted me to do a tower of two hundred and fifty cupcakes to celebrate the opening of their 250th branch. I was really excited about this – the corporate market was huge, but notoriously hard to break into. There were so many bakeries doing what I was doing, all competing for the weddings, christenings and birthday parties, but the corporate market really was untapped. I just knew if I did this job well, then it could lead on to more. I had a meeting with his P.A. and she briefed me on what was required. It sounded like it was a really big deal – they were going all out, no expense spared. They had already ordered three custom made steel framed cake stands, made in the shape of the numbers, 2, 5 and 0 and then it was my job to make the cupcakes to put onto the stand. I was busier than ever, and I knew that if I didn't get my act together soon, I wouldn't be able to fulfil all my orders, but I just couldn't get myself in the right headspace.

  I had wanted every trace of Marc gone from the house so I set off on a blizzard of cleaning. I took a black sack from underneath the kitchen sink and went into the bedroom. I opened the doors of his wardrobes. He had taken a lot of his stuff already when he had left, but there were still some of his clothes in there. I took cashmere jumpers off their hangers. There were Paul Smith shirts. I lifted out a tailored Tom Ford suit – how in the name of God had Marc been able to afford that on what he earned? I stuffed them all into a black sack. On the floor there was a stack of vinyl records that he had been collecting – including an original Led Zeppelin one. I didn’t care if they were priceless – one by one I snapped them in two. “Whoopsie!” He had left his lotions and potions on the bathroom shelf – the man had more anti-ageing creams than I had. I poured his aftershave down the drain – the smell of it, of him, made me gag.

  Next I went around the house and gathered up every photo that had Marc in it, then I took a copy of VIP Magazine from the coffee table and cut out photos of all the good looking men. There was a photo of the Irish rugby team so I cut out Tommy Bowe and Rob Kearney’s faces. I flicked on a few pages and there was a photo of Bressie at an awards ceremony, so I cut the face off him as well. There was some guy who I didn’t know, but he was a gorgeous chunk of hunk so I cut him out too. Then I dismantled all the photo frames and stuck the faces on top of Marc’s. And for the pièce the résistance – our wedding photo – I stuck Ryan Reynolds’s photo over Marc’s. I put the photo back inside the frame and sat back on the couch and surveyed my new husband. Ryan and I looked quite good together actually - we were both beaming smiles at the camera, looking very happy together in fact.

  After I had de-Marc'ed the house, I had gone to Tesco with the black bag of Marc’s effects and given them to Piotr.

  “Hi, Lily.”

  “How are you today, Piotr?”

  “Good thanks.” He smiled up at me.

  “Here, I have something for you.” I handed him a huge bag of designer clothes. “There's some stuff that might keep you warm, you can sell the rest of it. ”

  There was a NorthFace jacket that Marc usually wore whenever they were shooting outside. There were also fleeces and sweatshirts in the bag that might come in handy for Piotr. The Tom Ford suit was in there too. To be honest I wasn’t sure what he would do with a Tom Ford suit – with its ruffled lapels, it would look a bit fancy for begging, and might even stop people giving him money and I didn’t want that to happen, but still I hoped he could sell it on and get a bit of cash for it.

  “Thank you, Lily that is very kind of you.”

  “Don't mentio
n it. It’s a bit dull today - do you want a cuppa?”

  “That’d be great thanks, Lily.”

  When I came home, I suddenly felt hungry so I decided to make myself some French toast for breakfast. I was just mixing up the eggs when I saw I had a message from Dad:

  "I'll pick you up at 12, Dad."

  He always signed his name at the end of his text messages.

  I groaned, I had totally forgotten that we were going to Clara's house for Sunday lunch. The thoughts of enduring her criticisms did nothing to help my mood. Plus I knew I would have to tell her about Marc and Nadia having a baby together.

  That afternoon Dad and I trudged over to Clara’s house for our dinner. Even though Tatiana should be off, Clara had her in the study preparing lesson plans for the boys for the week ahead. When she was finished, Clara would review the lesson plan and tweak if necessary. Even playtime had to have a learning element. As I walked down the hallway to the dining room, I stuck my head around the living room door, and miraculously the table was back in the centre of the room and the stain had disappeared. Either Clara had had the stain professionally removed or she had replaced the entire carpet with an identical one. Either way the room was restored to its perfect glory once again.

  The boys came in soon after wearing matching sailing jumpers with white polo shirts underneath, navy cords and deck shoes. They looked ridiculous – even Dad was dressed younger than them. I don’t think the boys even owned a pair of jeans. We all took our seats, and when Clara had finished serving out the starters of foie gras we began eating. Well everyone else did – I hated foie gras. I thought it was cruel. Clara gave me a lecture about being too fussy, and not opening my horizons to the range of flavours out there waiting to be discovered . . . blah, blah, blah . . . She was banging on about how the boys had eaten sushi since they were one year old, and now had the most rounded palates of all their friends. I wanted to tell her to get lost.

  Just then Joshua piped up, “I no like this.”

  “Yes you do,” Clara chided. “Come on, eat up now!”

  “But it’s yucky, Mummy,” Jacob chimed in.

  “Now, Lily, see what you’ve done?”

  “Me? What did I do?”

  “You and your faddiness are prejudicing my children’s tastes!”

  The dinner had started as it meant to go on. Clara had just served the duck à l’orange for our main course when I dropped the clanger that Marc had got Nadia pregnant, and that our marriage was definitely over. I thought Clara might just cry. Dad rubbed my shoulder hard, and told me it would all be okay, but Clara was stunned. “I can’t believe Lily is going to be a divorcée!” She kept repeating over and over again. There it was again, the d-word – I hated it. Dad and I decided to skip dessert, claiming we were too full.

  “I think Clara nearly took that worse than me,” I sighed on the way home.

  “She just needs time,” Dad soothed.

  “But she's not the one who actually has to get the divorce!” I wailed. Every time I uttered that horrible word, I was filled with a dread so strong that my stomach did a loop, and I would feel like getting sick.

  “You know what she's like, Lily. She's just worried about you.”

  “Well she has a funny way of showing it,” I muttered.

  Chapter 21

  The wedding for my cousin Tina came around quickly.It felt as though it was all engagements, weddings and babies these days. I suppose I was a bit more sensitive to it after everything that had happened with Marc, and working in Baked with Love didn’t help with all the cakes I seemed to be making for loved-up couples or for tiny babies on their christening day. Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t jealous of these people. I was so happy for everyone and felt honoured to be playing a small part in their special occasions – I just wished I had had a happy ending too.

  Tina's mother, Joan, was Dad’s sister, and Dad was looking forward to catching up with all his family again even though I knew that he found occasions like this hard on his own without having Mam at his side.

  I had been up until all hours baking the mini cakes because I had left it until the last minute and my blasted oven could only fit twenty-four in at a time. The panic I had felt at the thoughts of letting Tina down on her wedding day had been enough for me to wake up and realise that I needed to pull myself together. I had spent the last while crusading around in a sea of misery, and I had had enough. I wasn’t going to spend any more of my life getting wasted over Marc Glover. He had taken up enough of my life already and I needed to move on.

  By the time I had finally removed the last tray from the oven, I had only had two hours sleep before I heard my doorbell go at 7.30 a.m. I opened my eyes and groaned. Clara was driving Tom, Dad and myself to the hotel where the reception was on, and I was going to set up the mini cakes on the stand and then get ready in the hotel. She wasn't supposed to be picking me up until eight, but of course she had to be ridiculously early and was now depriving me of a valuable half hour’s sleep. I pulled back the duvet, put on my fluffy dressing gown and went out to answer the door.

  “Morning!” she sang brightly as she bustled in past me. “Are we ready for the day of weddingness ahead?”

  “Come in,” I grunted to them all. “You’re early!”

  “Oh you know me – I don’t like sleeping in late," she sang. "It’s not a good example for the boys.”

  At least she was in a good mood, I thought. Maybe I'd be spared one of her talks.

  “Hi, Lily,” Tom said with an apologetic smile coming in the door behind her. He seemed to be feeling like I was.

  “Morning, love,” Dad said giving me a kiss on the cheek. "I hope we didn't wake you?”

  I told them to help themselves to tea and coffee while I jumped into the shower.

  “Hurry on, Lily,” I heard Clara call into me as I was towelling myself off ten minutes later. I threw on a tracksuit and started gathering my stuff together to pack my bag.

  After I had boxed up the mini cakes, we set off in Clara’s SUV. Clara was driving – she never let Tom drive. The wedding was a two-hour drive away in the Tipperary countryside. She dutifully obeyed each and every speed limit sign that we encountered.

  If I was completely honest, I was dreading the day because the last time I had seen all my relations was at my own wedding. But what was worse was that I hadn't told them about what had happened between Marc and I since then. I didn't think they'd be big Social Importance magazine readers, but you never knew. I knew people would be asking where Marc was, and I wasn’t sure what I was going to say. Even though it was over for good, I wasn’t ready yet to admit to all and sundry that Marc and I were finito – it was hard to even admit it to myself.

  After I had set my cakes up, I had to admit that they looked impressive on the stand. The white icing was decorated with navy ribbon and each mini-cake had the initials of the bride and groom piped in silver on the top of it.

  “Wow, Lily,” Dad said, standing back to take a look at them. “You really have a talent, do you know that? I'm so proud of you. These last few months have been awful for you, but you still came here today and put on a brave face and look at what you created!”

  “Thanks, Dad,” I mumbled, feeling embarrassed. “I just hope Tina likes them.”

  “Of course she will.”

  I started to turn and tweak them slightly, making sure they looked perfect.

  “Leave them alone now, they look amazing,” Dad said.

  When I was finally happy with the cakes, I ran upstairs to my room to get changed. I was wearing an old silk dress that I had bought for a wedding last year. It was sage green in colour and I was pleased to find that it fitted me better now than when I had last worn it. I put on a necklace and a shawl to cover my shoulders, and then we headed to the church.

  The wedding itself was wonderful. As Tina and Oliver said their vows, their words weren’t lost on me – Marc and I had said those words too. Admittedly, I shed a few tears during the ceremony – tears
of happiness for Tina and her groom Oliver, and tears of sadness for Marc and I. No one said anything about my strange behaviour, they were used to my weepy eye.