After the Party

by Lisa Jewell

  The dress hated her. And Ralph was right. She was too thin. She sat down on the bed and dropped her face into her hands. She did not feel like a beautiful bride. She felt like a fraud. An emaciated silly little girl. What would her beautiful daughter say to her when she walked into the garden looking like a mad old lady wearing someone else’s designer dress? She would be letting her down. How had she allowed herself to lose so much weight? She hadn’t even noticed it happening. It was, she supposed, her way of taking back control after the sadness and confusion of losing the baby. She’d reclaimed her body as her own. And ha! irony of ironies, had ended up with a body that looked nothing at all like hers.

  She wiped some tears from beneath her eyes and then she rummaged through her wardrobe for something else. It was only a registry office, something else would do. She had lots of lovely clothes. She would find something else.

  And so she walked out into the garden a few moments later in a perfectly nice scarlet slip dress, one she’d worn to a friend’s wedding a few years earlier, before she’d had any children. It hung straight and square, neither hugging nor caressing any part of her but showing her elegant porcelain collarbones and her delicate bird-like arms. It matched perfectly the red silk shoes she’d bought to go with her Vivienne Westwood dress and everybody said she looked beautiful, that she’d always suited red, that it was a lovely choice. And none of them, not even her sisters, knew anything about the existence of the beautiful snapdragon and peacock dress now tucked back into the bowels of her wardrobe.

  Jem could not shake the sense of sadness and wrongness that possessed her as she and her family headed in a people carrier for the registry office at Camberwell. She looked at her sisters: beautiful, excited, happy for her. She looked at her parents, so serene and so together as they always had been, as they had been since a day like this forty-two years ago in a registry office in Paignton, and then she looked at her children: Scarlett resplendent in her layers of tulle and froth, a small tiara tucked into her curls, and Blake oblivious to the occasion, strapped into his baby seat, dressed like a very small man. Here it was, her wedding day. A day she’d never really imagined before. She was off to get married. To Ralph. Her love. Her destiny.

  The taxi dropped them all at the side of the road and her father was dispatched into the building to ensure that Ralph was already there.

  ‘He’s there,’ said her dad, smilingly, a moment later. ‘He’s with his dad. He looks very nervous.’

  Jem felt something at the pit of her stomach lurch at his words. This was it, she thought, here comes the bride. At two o’clock Jem, Lulu, Isobel and Scarlett entered the building and were shown to their room, the smallest in the building, seating fifteen. Ralph sat in front of the registrar’s desk next to his father. In seats to the right were Philippe and Smith’s mum and dad.

  On the other side of the room sat Jem’s parents, Blake on her mother’s lap. Jem felt her legs soften beneath her. Her brain needed sugar, desperately. She felt as light and insubstantial as a cloud. Everyone turned to smile at her and Jem tried to smile back but her face was rigid with fear. And then Ralph turned to look at her and he smiled and he looked like he’d looked at the art gallery that night all those years ago: smart in a suit, pale with nerves and handsome as hell.

  Beautiful man.

  Father of her children

  But.

  She looked from Ralph to her sister to her mother to her baby. She looked at Ralph’s father, her daughter, the registrar.

  A silent scream began to build beneath Jem’s ribcage.

  She wanted to escape.

  She couldn’t breathe.

  She did not want to be here.

  She did not want to do this.

  Her heart raced and she tried to bring herself back under control.

  Of course she could do it, she thought, of course she could do it. She was just nervous, that was all, nervous and hungover.

  She moved herself forwards towards Ralph’s side and smiled tightly at him. He smiled back at her and clasped her hand. ‘You look beautiful,’ he whispered. ‘That dress looks stunning on you.’

  ‘Thank you,’ she whispered back and squeezed his hand for reassurance.

  But still it was there, a panicky feeling in the pit of her belly, a feeling growing stronger by the second that she shouldn’t be doing this. She thought of the dead-again orchid on her windowsill, the baggy dress in her wardrobe, she thought of the ugly paintings in Ralph’s studio and the baby she’d chosen not to have. And then she thought of Ralph in a dank room at the Maygrove, calling out crazed prayers to Lord God Our Saviour.

  She thought of the few days she’d spent at the lido with Lucas, that sense that had opened up in her head that there might be another ending for her, not just the one she’d written for herself when she’d kissed Ralph for the first time eleven years ago on a blue sofa in Battersea, but something new, something not already written in the pages of her book of destiny. Another happy ending.

  And it was while these thoughts were stampeding through her desiccated mind like barefoot feral children that something altogether unexpected happened: Ralph put his hand to Jem’s cheek, then leaned down to kiss her gently on the lips. He smiled at her sadly and he said: ‘It’s OK. We don’t have to do this.’

  She looked at him, sharply.

  ‘Let’s not,’ he whispered, his nose pressed gently against hers. ‘Let’s not.’

  She continued to stare at him, mutely.

  ‘Go,’ he said. ‘I love you. I can wait. Just go.’

  ‘But I don’t want to go,’ she whispered.

  ‘Yes,’ he said simply, ‘you do.’ And then he kissed her again.

  PART FOUR

  13 July 2008

  Dear Rosey,

  I’m really sorry I never replied to your last e-mail. I’ve been finishing off for an exhibition and getting ready to get married and also been going to a lot of prayer meetings. I did get in touch with Sarah and I liked her very much. The group is great and the meetings have been amazing. They’ve really really helped me. I’ve been going through quite a tough time.

  I don’t know quite how to say this so I’ll just come out and say it: Jem jilted me on our wedding day. Seriously. Well, it’s not so much that she jilted me, rather that I let her go. She got to the altar and I looked at her and I just knew. It was all wrong for her. We’d had a big conversation two nights before and I’d told her all about the group and about finding God and she just totally didn’t get it. I didn’t expect her to. And she didn’t. We talked about other stuff too, about the ways we’ve both changed and how our love for each other has changed. At the end of it, it felt like we’d reached a good place, that we both knew where the other was coming from. Things were fine for the next day or so and then she walked into the registry office on Saturday afternoon and I looked at her and I just knew. I KNEW. She looked trapped, she looked terrified. The funny thing is, it didn’t surprise me. It was almost as though I’d been expecting it all along: like a déjà vu in reverse, I saw it happening before it did. So I just said to her: we don’t have to do this. And she just kind of looked at me, her eyes were full of tears, looked at me and nodded, very gently, and she kissed me and then she went. She just walked out of there, in front of everyone. There was this kind of gasp. It was an utterly shocking moment. Like a soap opera come to life. And as she left I just felt myself saying: Goodbye, Jem. Like I was letting her go. Like I had no choice. Everyone thought I was being so calm about it. Everyone was saying, wow, you’re taking this so well. And people were saying that they’d go and talk to her, get her to come back, that it was just nerves, that she’d come round and I was just saying: no, no, don’t talk to her, just leave her, she won’t come round. And she didn’t. So that was a week ago and obviously I’ve seen her since, I mean, we’re still living together. I’m hoping that we can pull back together, that it won’t go as far as either one of us moving out. I’m hoping that Jem will find whatever it is she’s looking for
and realise that it’s me.

  I can hardly believe it. I honestly thought Jem and me would be together for ever. Everybody thought we would be together for ever. We were one of those couples. But something happened to us, I don’t know when, maybe when we started our family, maybe after Blake was born, maybe when I went off to America in April, maybe when I found spirituality, maybe when we lost the baby, the last one, particularly the last one. I don’t know when it happened, but it happened. And I have never felt so sad in my life, Rosey. It’s the worst thing that ever happened to me. But I think she’ll come back. I really do. This isn’t just about me and the group, me and God. There’s more to this than that. I think there’s something she needs to do before she can come back to me and she just needs to find out what it is.

  Anyway, I didn’t mean this to be quite such a rambling and misery-laden missive. I just really wanted to say that I’m sorry not to have been in touch before and to say a big thank you for introducing me to Sarah. It’s been brilliant having them in my life these last few weeks and especially since the wedding fiasco.

  Love,

  Ralph

  Chapter 1

  Jem flopped down on to the small beige sofa in Lulu’s spare room and sighed deeply. She felt shell-shocked. The children were downstairs with Lulu, and Jem, surrounded by suitcases and holdalls and carrier bags full of toys, was only now feeling the full truth of her situation. She had moved out. She no longer lived with Ralph. Her children no longer lived with their father. This was now their home.

  This wasn’t, in any way, what Jem had expected.

  She had expected to marry Ralph.

  Regardless of what he had told her about finding God, regardless of anything that had been said between them that unexpected night two months ago, and in spite of the sick feeling in her gut as she stumbled towards her nuptials, Jem had thought that she would go into that room in the registry office and marry Ralph. How could it possibly be any other way?

  But then he’d said those words, just go, and she’d known he was right. Because it wasn’t just the fact that Ralph had found God that was wrong on that damp July afternoon. Everything had been wrong that afternoon. The dress, the weather, the mood, the nagging, aching suspicion in Jem’s heart that she might have another fate. She should not have been thinking of another man on her wedding day.

  So she’d gone. Walked out of the registry office and out into the street, her chest rising and falling, hyperventilating, nauseous.

  And then they’d gone home and waited. Neither of them was sure what they were waiting for. Waiting for normality? Waiting for an answer? Waiting for Ralph to change his mind about God? But they waited and they waited and nothing changed. They just felt awkward and uncomfortable. Jem drank more, ate less, Ralph spent more and more time at group meetings and painting with Gil. They grew further and further apart. The moment in the registry office had changed everything and it was impossible at such close quarters to work out how to come back from the shock of it.

  So Jem decided to do something about it. She decided to move out.

  Maybe, she thought, if we live apart, we can grow together.

  It was the hardest decision she had ever made in her life, but she was doing it for them, for her and Ralph, to give them a chance to find a way back to each other.

  Now she was here, in her sister’s house, the place she used to come to for tea and sympathy, but this time she wasn’t going home.

  This was her dream come true, living with her sister, a sprawling, unconventional communal family. Here it was. She was in it. But she didn’t feel like she’d made her way here in a gentle and measured manner, she felt like she’d been hauled up by the big fat hand of fate and dropped here, unceremoniously, from a great, great height. And she had never felt so miserable in her life.

  She remembered Ralph’s face as he’d said goodbye to them at the front door an hour earlier, the fake smiles and jollity, and as they tried to keep everything light for the children, pretend they were off on a great adventure. But there’d been one tiny, excruciating moment when their eyes had met across the tops of their children’s heads and Ralph had looked so lost, as bewildered as a small boy. At the sight of him, so beautiful, so scared, something buried deep down inside Jem suddenly bubbled up to the surface and she had physically to stop herself from jumping into his arms and saying, ‘It’s OK, it’s OK, I love you, I love you.’ But it wasn’t the right moment for I Love Yous. Just like it hadn’t been the right moment to get married. Jem had tried to smile at him reassuringly, but the smile had faltered and he’d turned away from her, tears shimmering in his blue eyes.

  And then they’d gone.

  And Jem had not looked back.

  23 August 2008

  Dear Rosey,

  Well, it happened, Jem moved out. I never thought it would come to this. I think I’d kind of assumed that we would get to grips with all this eventually and make it work. But if anything, Jem seems even more distant from me than before.

  She’s going to stay with her sister and I am going to stay here. And the children will move between us, half and half. It should work out fine. Jem will need more time to herself now anyway, as one of her clients is about to finish his soap contract and she’ll be focusing on his career, and then in November she’s off to Sydney for one of her other clients who’s going to be in a reality thing in the jungle. (Top secret, though – not that you know anyone who would give a shit!) And I guess I can take a break from working crazy hours now that the show’s in the bag and I’ve got some money in my account. I’m not ready to start a new series anyway. Everything’s changing so much, not just my life, but the way I feel about everything, the way I respond to the world around me. I’ve been spending more and more time with Gil. He’s this old guy from New Meaning, salty old Scots boy who paints scratchy old seascapes and growls a lot and asks blunt questions. He’s very open and real. He reminds me of you in a way (as weird as that might sound) but just in that you don’t have to wonder what he’s thinking. You can just be with him, just relax. And I feel like I’m starting over with my artwork, kind of regressing back to square one, a little like a Shakespearean actor pretending to be a tree in the wind, you know. It’s really liberating and I’m keen to see where it goes. I guess it could just end up with me doing graphic design for travel brochures again, but I just know that I can’t go back to where I was. It’s time for a new approach.

  Anyway, I’m holding up well. The night after Jem left was probably the worst night of my life, wandering all those empty rooms, remembering. To be alone, to know that my family was torn in half. I spent the whole night praying and I got through it to the other end. By morning I was feeling better about things. Feeling positive. Because I have to. Because I have to assume that this has happened because it is the right thing to have happened. I have to assume that, in the end, I will know why this happened and that I will accept it.

  Right now I’m just taking one day at a time.

  Thanks for your support and write soon.

  Love, Ralph x

  21 September 2008

  Dearest Rosey,

  First of all, I’m so sorry I’ve gone off radar. I moved into my new flat last week and it’s taken me an age to get reattached, as it were. Sorting everything out’s been a nightmare. We decided to rent out the house. I couldn’t stand being there any more, without Jem, without the kids half the week. So we’ve rented it out and I’ve got a new place. Two bedrooms, plenty of space for the kids, all their toys and stuff. No garden but they’ve got a massive one at Jem’s sister’s place. I feel better for getting out of the house. The flat’s pretty cool. It’s a conversion in a big house just round the corner from Scarlett’s new nursery. She started a couple of weeks ago, such a big girl now! So now it’s just me and Blake all day long on the days I have him. He’s nine months old now, coming up for ten. Crawling, at last, which is a blessing and a nightmare. It means he doesn’t need so much entertainment to be laid on, but it also m
eans I can’t just put him down in one place and get on with stuff – he’s off in a flash! But he’s a lot of fun and it’s good for me to have to take so much responsibility for him. I let Jem do everything when Scarlett was little, I regret that now, I really do.

  Relations between me and Jem are fine. We see each other twice a week. She looks good. I think she’s blossoming – it hurts me a lot to say that. She’s got a kind of glow. She didn’t have that when were together, not for the last few years, anyway. She certainly had it when I first knew her. I’m glad she’s happy, but I can’t say that I am. I feel lonely. I really do. x

  Chapter 2

  It was a dark November afternoon. The streetlights had come on and the pavements glowed dull gold beneath her feet. The children were with Ralph and she was on her way back to Lulu’s to get ready for a night out with Lulu and her girlfriends. No nursery run tomorrow, no hungry baby needing porridge. She could drink, stay up late and then lie in bed tomorrow until lunchtime. She hadn’t been out at night since she’d moved out of the house on Herne Hill, been feeling too bruised, but she was ready now, ready to make the most of her small freedoms.

  She took a different route back from the gym, via a side street off Herne Hill Road. Lulu had told her about a new boutique that had just opened up there. She’d said it was ‘very you’. And it was while she cutting through the unfamiliar backstreets that she saw a road name that struck her as familiar. Underwood Street.