For the last few years, wherever Maggie had been and whatever she’d felt, she had always known, always believed, that Christian was somewhere near because he was in love with her. Now, if she was to believe what Sarah had said to her, he was gone, and she was left here stranded in a room full of people who didn’t give a toss.
Maggie pushed the chair back from the table and reached for her coat, swaying slightly. She couldn’t let herself believe Sarah and her newsflashes. She couldn’t give up hope. She gently pinched Sarah’s hand, garnering the attention of one eye.
‘I’m going home, mate. I’m plastered and about to cry,’ Maggie told Sarah matter-of-factly.
Sarah signalled a stop sign and forcibly pushed the rugby player away from her, her face gleaming faintly with saliva and smudged lipstick.
‘Don’t go!’ she pleaded, her hand planted squarely in the chest of her conquest to keep him at arm’s length. ‘I don’t have to get off with, um, Wossit here. We can go clubbing, and then I’ll walk you home.’ She grabbed Maggie’s wrist. ‘Go on, this is an occasion! I’m sure if you hold your breath and have a tequila you can stop yourself from crying.’
Maggie smiled at her, touched at her readiness to drop Wossit and shepherd her through several more hours of therapy.
’There’s no point, Sarah. I’m fairly certain that gouging my eyes out wouldn’t prevent me from crying at some point in the next minute, and if I have to go through it again the very least I can do is minimise the audience.’
Sarah bit her lip and nodded in understanding.
‘I’d be miserable. You enjoy yourself. I’m working behind the bar tomorrow, so if you come in I’ll feed you free vodkas all night. Deal?’
Sarah smiled regretfully. ‘Can’t, mate. Sam’s presenting a fully staged version of “Beauty and the Beast” for his dad, and I promised Becca a girl’s night in with all the girly videos we can find. Anyway, I’d never get another babysitter. Come by the salon tomorrow and I’ll do your nails instead, make them long and red so you can scratch that tart’s eyes out.’
Maggie nodded seriously and slipped on her coat.
‘OK. I’ll see you soon, then,’ she said over her shoulder. ‘That’s if Wossit hasn’t sucked your face off by then.’
Maggie was fine as she pushed her way through the crowds. She was OK as she opened the door and stepped out into the cool of the night air. It wasn’t until she got two feet down the road that it knocked her flat. She was alone, she would always be alone, and maybe, maybe, Christian really did mean it was over and Sarah was right. And maybe he wasn’t going to change his mind … Suddenly Maggie couldn’t breathe any more. She couldn’t walk, she could only cry.
She found herself doubled up, crouching on the pavement, distantly aware of how she must look: drunk, ill, mentally imbalanced. Listening to the far-off sounds of her own rasping sobs in her ears, pushing her palms against the grit and dirt of the pavement, she pressed her head into her knees and waited. And waited. It should be fatal, she thought, this kind of pain. Surely no one should have to live through this.
‘Are you OK?’ A faintly familiar male voice bounced off her shoulder. ‘Come on, get up. Let me help you get up, please. You can’t stay down there all night.’
Maggie felt an arm grip her under her forearm and gradually she found herself straightened.
‘What’s happened? Do you need me to call someone?’
Finally Maggie unscrewed her raw eyes, lifted her face and looked at the man – the scruffy blond from the bar again, staring at her intently.
‘Do you get your kicks from following upset women around?’ she snapped, finding that once the moment had passed, she was usually able to carry off the pretence of being a normal human being more or less right away.
Pete shrugged, feeling as awkward as he looked.
‘I’m fine, thanks,’ Maggie told him, a slight slur blurring the edge of her businesslike tone. ‘Too much to drink,’ she amended, and followed up with a brisk smile, allowing the stranger to guide her to a nearby bench. ‘I’m all right now, just a bit pissed,’ she repeated, waiting for him to go.
Pete sat down next to her and thought of Stella in the middle of one of her benders. You couldn’t leave women alone in that state. They invariably did something stupid and usually with someone stupid. For some reason, after seeing her tears yesterday and again today, he felt he owed this woman something, some kind of protection at the very least.
‘You can go now,’ Maggie assured him with blunt impatience.
‘Take deep breaths,’ Pete told her, ignoring her invitation. She’ll be all right when she’s worked out I’m not hitting on her, he thought before saying, ‘I don’t think I should leave you out here alone. You were … sort of shrieking. At least let me call you a cab, OK? I mean, anything could happen. You could faint or collapse or …’
Maggie huffed out a deep breath. ‘I won’t faint!’ she told him shakily, her voice rising as she spoke. ‘I won’t collapse, I won’t have a seizure and die. OK? Because I’m not that drunk. I’m not even ill. I’m just chucked. I’m left. I’m abandoned. My boyfriend, who is no longer mine in any sense of the word, doesn’t want me any more and I can’t cope with the thought … with the thought that there is no point in being me any more, which is why I was crying like a baby in the street both earlier and now, OK? And several other times, which I’m assuming you didn’t bear witness too. I’m perfectly well, I’m just so fucked up right now that I know no boundaries to the humiliation I’m prepared to inflict on myself, as you must surely, by now, be able to tell.’
Pete blinked at her, and his hands dropped from the sleeve of her coat as he felt a moment of panic. For a moment he wasn’t sure he could cope with a woman this turbulent, but then he thought of Stella, who was turbulent even during sleep, and he steadied his nerve.
‘You weren’t crying like a baby,’ Pete said mildly. ‘More shrieking like a banshee.’ He half smiled. ‘I didn’t mean to embarrass you before with all that stuff about you crying. Social skills are not my forte, Stella, my fiancée, always says. She always says, “Pete, it’s a wonder you have any relations willing to talk to you, let alone friends or lovers, what with your lack of sensitivity.” It’s just that I don’t know anyone in St Albans except my new flatmates and they’re all a bit … different, to say the least. I only got here today, and socialising isn’t my best thing, and I recognised you, so in I went, two bloody left feet straight in the gob.’
As he talked, Pete found himself relaxing for the first time since Stella had left for the airport. Quickly he checked himself; he was supposed to be helping her, not blathering on about his own problems.
‘Oh, don’t worry,’ Maggie said, relieved about the reference to a fiancée. ‘At least you haven’t told me that I can’t make you happy any more, and that actually now you come to think of it, I never did.’ The man she now gathered was called Pete let her perpetual self-referencing slide silently by into the night.
‘Don’t worry,’ Pete told her. ‘I sort of know how you feel. I mean, I’ve not been chucked. Quite the opposite, actually. Although I must admit it’s hard not to feel like I’ve been … quality controlled?’
Maggie mustered up a smile, and turned to face him, only to find him examining the skies with a faintly bemused air.
‘Oh yeah?’ she said sceptically, feeling her earlier anguish recede once more to breathable background levels. ‘Call me jaded, but it sounds like a fancy way of saying chucked to me.’
Pete shook his head and turned his chin to look at her, the colour and quality of his eyes hidden by the absence of natural light.
‘No, I definitely haven’t been dumped. Stella’s gone away for a year. To Australia, the week before last. To decide things. The day after I proposed. I really miss her.’ He shrugged self-consciously. ‘It’s like I breathe in and I miss her, I breathe out and I miss her, I blink and I miss her and—’
Maggie interrupted abruptly. ‘I get the picture. You miss
her so much that you think you could die, but the big difference here, my friend, is that she loves you. She’s coming back to marry you in twelve months. Christian, on the other hand, doesn’t care if he never sees me again, and now I’ve gone from Company Director to redundant barmaid in one easy step.’
Suddenly angry, Maggie felt herself letting go of The Plan, and, picking up her bag, began to rub at the dark pools of mascara that had collected under her eyes. She peeled one fake lash off her cheek and dropped it to the ground.
‘I don’t think we should talk any longer,’ she told Pete kindly. ‘Because you obviously need sympathy and I’m not the one to give it. You should make friends with someone who’s still labouring under the misapprehension that happiness is more than just some flim-flam invented by God to keep us all quiet whilst he plots our excruciating demise.’
Maggie stood and shrugged in apology, but Pete only laughed, causing her to despair quietly to herself.
‘It’s not funny,’ she told him sulkily.
‘It is, sort of,’ Pete replied. Despite himself he found her distress distracting, like looking at a car crash, only messier. ‘And anyway, um, sorry, what’s your name?’
‘Maggie,’ Maggie grumbled, feeling the sudden chill of sobriety creep over her skin.
‘And anyway, Maggie, she’s gone to Australia to decide if she really loves me, to make sure that she really wants to marry me. To absolutely rule out the possibility that there might be someone better out there.’
Maggie sat back down with a bump, bemused by the expression of acceptance and, yes, even affection, in Pete’s eyes. She laid a cold hand on his arm, for a split second enjoying being the harbinger of doom, instead of the harbingee.
‘I don’t want to have to be the one to tell you this, Pete, but I’m fairly sure you are chucked.’
Pete shook his head, running his fingers though his roughly-cut fair hair, trying to shake off a look of discomfort. He’d preferred it when they were talking about her.
‘I know, I know how it sounds, but you see, it’s not like that.’ He tried his best to explain to this stranger what he had failed to explain to his closest friends and family. ‘I’m having the courage of my convictions, is all. I love her. I know absolutely that she is the one for me. I know it just as I know the universe is infinite and endless, and for me that knowledge is enough. I don’t need anything else, I have faith. But Stella needs … proof. So she’s gone away for a year to make sure,’ he finished with a brave smile, which slowly faded as he noticed Maggie gawping at him. ‘Come to think of it, it does sound rather daft when you say it out loud.’
Pete thought of Stella laughing and smiled to himself. It was something no one could understand unless they felt her love, although when he’d told his sister that she’d laughed, and replied that she imagined that by now there were quite a few men who’d earned that distinction. Maggie’s voice snapped him back to the moment in hand.
‘You proposed to this Stella and she nicked off to shag her way around another continent for a year?’ she said incredulously, strangely angry on this stranger’s behalf.
‘Well, seeing other people is part of the agreement, yes,’ Pete began. ‘Not that I will, I couldn’t. Look, I know you think I’m a stupid idiot and a gullible fool, like most people – my mum, my mate Ian, my sister Jess – but, you see, like most people, you’re all caught up with the small things in life, the minutiae, the detail. We, this planet, we are nothing, we’re just a speck of dust in an endless universe, one planet amongst billions. I see the big picture, and the big picture is that I love Stella. I always will, and one Earth year won’t make any difference to that. And if, when she comes back, she knows for sure she loves me too, then it will have been worth it.’
Maggie shook her head. ‘Pete, sometimes it’s the little details you should focus on, things like when your boyfriend’s working late at the office even though you personally cleared his in-tray for him that afternoon; or like when he smiles to himself when a song that means nothing to you comes on the radio, or when he starts deleting all the text messages in his in-and-out-boxes and puts a password on his email. They are the little details that I ignored, when there was still time to have done something about it – cut my hair, bought some new knickers or something …’ Maggie stopped suddenly, realising that once again she was making a spectacular display of self-obsession. ‘What I’m trying to say is that surely, if you have enough faith in this Stella then she should have the same in you, shouldn’t she?’
Pete shrugged and shook his head.
‘Well, you had faith in your bloke without testing him, and look where it got you,’ he said with a half smile.
‘Good point,’ Maggie said despondently, and then, with a tiny grin, she added, ‘you’re still chucked, though.’ She took a deep breath and wiped her palm under her nose. ‘Anyway, I have a plan. Well, at least I have the idea of having a plan to get him back. I’m just not sure what the plan is yet.’
Pete smiled at her. She was clearly barking, but he liked her air of optimism – and if he was so sure Stella would be walking up the aisle to meet him in twelve months, why wouldn’t her ‘plan’ work? Her hope gave his hope foundation.
‘Good for you,’ he said sincerely, and Maggie nearly fell off the bench.
‘Pardon?’ she said, in shock.
‘I mean, good for you. I hope it does work. You obviously love this bloke a lot, enough to put some effort in to keeping him. In my book that takes guts, and these days there’s not many of us about. Old-fashioned romantics.’ Pete laughed a little.
‘Bloody hell, if my mates could hear me now they’d kick me all the way to Bolton and back. But anyway, good for you and good luck.’
They returned each other’s smile for a moment in the darkness.
‘And to you too,’ Maggie said, heartened by meeting someone who understood. ‘Oh well, I’d better get off. My parents’ place is just up the road.’ She nodded in the general direction of The Fleur. ‘I hope you settle in all right, and maybe I’ll see you around.’ She stood up as she spoke and backed away a few steps.
‘Yeah, maybe,’ he said, and then, as he watched her go, he felt a sudden regret and kicked himself hard.
‘I never asked where I could find a decent Chinese,’ he murmured.
Chapter Nine
When Maggie woke up the next morning she thought she almost had a spring in her step. Not an actual spring, she mused, more like a sort of cheerful tremor, but it was a tremulously cheerful step in the right direction nonetheless. Somehow her brief encounter with the man called Pete had cheered her, given her hope and spurred her on. It didn’t matter that the only person thus far not to think she was a total fool for wanting to try and get Christian back was a stranger. He’d shown faith in true love, and right now Maggie desperately needed to see that kind of faith reflected back at her. That tiny glimpse last night had been enough to give her renewed impetus. And in the early hours of this morning, she’d even had an idea about how to begin.
As she walked through the bar she found her mum sitting at one of the corner tables staring blankly at a pile of papers. Maggie reasoned that it would be plain rude not to say hello.
‘Hi, Mum,’ she said, sitting on the worn stool opposite her. ‘I was just on my way out to see Sarah. What are you doing?’
Marion smiled at her daughter, and not for the first time Maggie wondered where she’d got her looks from. Her dad was big and pale – even in his youth he’d looked like a rotund Viking – and her mum, though slim like her, had reddish-brown hair and her eyes were periwinkle blue, intensely so, even if they were now embellished with unkempt laughter lines. Maggie was always amazed that her mum, pushing sixty as she was, was still described as pretty by most people who met her, a description she’d always thought didn’t apply beyond twenty-five. That was until she’d reached twenty-five, at which point she’d amended the limit to thirty-five, still hopeful that one day someone might think she was pretty. She’d bee
n called ‘attractive’ and ‘stylish’, and Christian had called her ‘beautiful’ and ‘sexy’, but somehow she yearned for the carefree weightlessness of being thought pretty. It wasn’t that she was paranoid about her looks, it was just that in this one respect she wouldn’t mind being like her mum.
During most of her childhood she had sincerely hoped that the explanation for her near pitch-black eyes and hair was that her mum had engaged in free love with a swarthy civil servant from Kensington and that he would arrive one day and whisk her away to a life of quiet (and rich) normality. As an adult it occurred to her that the former part of this scenario, at least, was entirely possible considering the policy of free love her parents’ generation had indulged in, but she chose not to think about it any more, except at moments like this when she was confronted with how different she was from them both.
Her mother glanced down at the papers.
‘Oh well, dear,’ she sounded forlorn. ‘I thought I’d have a go at sorting this out, while your dad’s resting. Try and see if we could budget a bit better …’ She paused, pressing her lips together for a moment’s consideration. ‘But actually our income is so low, the only thing I can think of doing is asking Sheila to retire early, and I don’t know if that’ll be enough.’ Her mum gave her a weak smile. ‘Oh Maggie, you know I’m no good at this sort of thing. I look at the numbers but all I see is pages and pages of gobbledegook. The more I try and concentrate the worse it gets. I don’t know, perhaps it will all just sort itself out,’ she finished hopefully.
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