by Karen Clarke
‘So, was that little outburst your not-so-subtle way of calling the whole thing off?’ Maura had clearly got her claws in, and wasn’t about to let go.
‘Of course not,’ I said, into the expectant silence, giving up all pretence at eating my dinner. I knew I’d choke if I took as much as a mouthful. ‘Everything I said has been taken out of context.’
‘Has it?’ Elbowing her half-empty plate aside, Maura looked at me coolly. Although she shared the same colouring as the rest of her family, she’d recently bleached her hair peroxide, and had it cut in a crop that made her jaw seem wider, and her eyes too close together. She looked older than twenty-six, with none of Sadie’s dreamy softness, or her Mum’s more obvious charms. ‘Sounded to us like marriage and kids are the last things on your mind.’ Another slurp of wine. ‘All you seem to care about is that bakery.’
‘I do care about it, you know that.’ I carefully put down my knife and fork. ‘But not more than I care about Sam.’ I glanced at him, but he was staring at his plate, jaws moving as he chewed. ‘I’m sorry if that didn’t come across.’
‘Don’t worry about it, love. You sounded fine to me,’ said Neil, reaching for the dish of rapidly cooling potatoes and spearing two with his fork. ‘I hope someone does put in an offer. We used to pop in there, if we were ever in Seashell Cove, don’t you remember, Bev?’
Bev clearly didn’t want to be reminded, and narrowed her slightly bulbous eyes at her husband. ‘That’s hardly the point, Neil.’
‘’S’cuse me,’ he said, giving a comical grimace that elicited a giggle from Sadie and a loud tut from Maura.
‘Whose side are you on, Dad?’ she said.
‘I didn’t realise we were taking sides.’ He spoke mildly. ‘We’re not at war, are we?’
I could have hugged him, but despite the Ryans’ code of loyalty, and oft-repeated declarations that ‘family was everything’ they didn’t go in for physical displays of emotion, which had come as a shock to me, brought up as a hugger.
Grabbing the bottle of wine, I sloshed the remaining quarter into my glass, at last drawing a look from Sam. Unfortunately, it was disapproving. Alcohol wasn’t allowed on his training diet, and he expected me to support him by not drinking either.
Suddenly, I didn’t care, and drank the wine in one long swig. ‘What did you think of the rest of the show?’ I banged my glass down, and gave Beverley a belligerent stare. ‘The bit where I wasn’t subtly calling off my wedding?’
‘Meg!’ She looked shocked, clutching her cleavage as though I was pointing a gun. ‘There’s no need to talk like that.’
‘Isn’t there?’ I stared around the table, as though seeing them all for the first time.
Only Neil had improved with age, despite the accident that had ended his career as a tree surgeon. He’d taken up as a carpenter, and had the air of a man grateful to have been given a second chance. If I’d had a dad, I’d have liked him to be like Neil, but Beverley had become more judgemental over the years, dressing up her opinions with endearments, as if to render them harmless, and Maura was going the same way – though she’d always had a bitchy side. Sadie was still forming, dreaming of falling in love with an actor while working as a make-up artist on a film set. Hopefully, she’d turn out more like her dad than Beverley.
‘I don’t know why you’re having a go at us, my lovely.’ Beverley made a big deal of pushing her plate away, her glittery nail varnish sparkling. ‘We’re concerned, that’s all, pet. You didn’t sound like the Meg we know and love.’
The Meg they were used to, she might as well have said. The Meg who did what was expected, right down to letting Beverley make her wedding dress, even though Mum had wanted us to choose one together.
‘You do still want us to be bridesmaids, don’t you?’ Sadie stopped moving her food around her plate, and gave me a sideways look. ‘I know you’ve got your two friends back now and that, maybe… you know.’
My anger evaporated. ‘Oh, Sadie, of course I do.’ She’d been like this since Tilly and Cassie had come back. ‘I don’t need any more bridesmaids.’ I didn’t add that Tilly thought traditional weddings old-fashioned, and Cassie had said she’d prefer a civil partnership. ‘And I still need you to do my make-up, remember?’
Her smile vanished when Maura glowered at her across the table. ‘Don’t you think it looks a bit desperate, you still hanging around the bakery every morning?’
‘I’m not hanging around there, I’m baking. It’s my job.’ I waited for Sam to say something, and when he didn’t experienced a drop of disappointment. ‘I don’t see you complaining when I bring a cake round.’
‘Oh, we love your cakes, peanut, you know we do.’ Beverley reached across to pat my fingers, one hand still pressed to her cleavage. ‘But there are more important things in life, and it seems like you’re a teeny bit obsessed with that place.’
Now she sounded like Mum.
‘And when you were talking about role models, you didn’t even mention Dad, even though you’ve known him for years, and he’s offered to walk you down the aisle.’ This was a sticking point with Maura. As the eldest daughter she felt that right was hers alone, which I completely understood. It was why I’d turned down Neil’s offer.
‘You know I think the world of Neil.’ I glanced at him and caught a wink. ‘But I’ve already explained that if anyone’s going to walk me down the aisle, it’ll be my mum.’ She’d already looked into which herbal supplements would help her relax on the day.
‘Let’s hope she can get out of the house then, sweetie.’ Beverley’s laugh was more like a snort.
‘Let’s hope the wedding’s still on,’ muttered Maura.
Tears rising, I gazed at the table I’d sat at so many times over the years, its polished surface as familiar as the house itself. ‘Look, I had a bad case of nerves on the show, and I’m sorry if I said things you didn’t like—’
‘You’re not sorry you said them though.’
‘Maura,’ Sam said, finally stepping in, but I’d had enough.
‘Thanks for dinner, Beverley, but I’m not feeling very well.’
I scraped my chair back, picked up my bag and rushed outside, not caring that I was only giving them more ammunition.
Sam caught up with me at the car. ‘You can’t drive, you’ve been drinking,’ he said. ‘And we haven’t even had pudding.’
I wheeled round. ‘Are you joking?’
‘I was, actually, but seriously, Meg, don’t let them get to you.’ He grabbed my hand. ‘They’re looking out for me, that’s all.’
‘I wasn’t trying to hurt anyone,’ I said, frustration sharpening my response.
‘Weren’t you?’ Letting go of my hand, he dropped his gaze to his navy canvas shoes. In his summer-Sunday outfit of combat shorts and T-shirt, he looked more like the Sam I used to know; when cycling was something he did to and from school, and didn’t absorb most of his time.
‘Why are you giving me a hard time?’ I blinked away hot tears. ‘You know I only agreed to be on that show to try and sell the bakery.’
He rubbed the back of his neck. Bending over handlebars made it ache and normally I’d offer a massage, but today felt far from normal. ‘So you said.’
‘You didn’t even stick up for me in there.’
‘Well, you have to admit they have a point.’
‘What?’
‘You do seem to care more about that bakery.’
‘Like you care more about your bike.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
I tipped my head to the basin of blue sky above. ‘I just think we should be supporting each other, that’s all.’
‘Cycling’s different,’ he said.
‘How?’ Lowering my head, I glanced at the cream-fronted house, where a plant with flowers shaped like stars cascaded down the walls. Catching a flash of Maura’s bright hair at an upstairs window, I guessed she was spying on us.
‘It’s not my job,’ he said. ‘I haven�
��t been on television, talking about it.’ His logic was flawed, but it was hard to argue with the firm certainty in his voice, and before I could begin to assemble a defence, he was glancing at his watch.
‘Anyway, if we’re done here, I might squeeze in a quick training session before tomorrow.’
Chapter Nine
‘Do you think he was giving you an ultimatum?’ Cassie’s voice was cautious. ‘That doesn’t sound right.’
I wiped away a tear with my finger. ‘I don’t think so,’ I said. ‘I just wish he understood why the bakery matters to me, and that he’d stuck up for me in front of his family.’
‘He should have,’ Cassie agreed. ‘But I suppose old habits die hard. Didn’t you say, he doesn’t like upsetting his mum?’
‘Oh, but it’s OK to upset me?’
‘No, of course it’s not.’ Cassie put down her bag. ‘I’m surprised he’s still gone to France, if things are a bit up in the air between you.’
‘He had to,’ I said. ‘He’s been training for months. I wouldn’t expect him to cancel, just because we had a bit of a falling out.’ I didn’t add that he’d started packing as soon he got back from his training session, as though nothing had happened – except he’d barely spoken to me, apart from to ask if I’d seen the sachets of energy gel he’d bought to keep in his backpack (they were already in his backpack). ‘He probably won’t give it another thought, once he’s over there.’
‘I still don’t get why he’s behaving as if loving your job is a crime.’
‘Because on TV I came across as being too passionate about baking, or something, I don’t know.’ Exhausted from a bout of weeping, after watching Sam leave for Paris with the air of a man who couldn’t wait to get there, I lay on the sofa and covered my face with a cushion to hide my burning eyes. I was supposed to be working after lunch, but hadn’t been able to face the café, so I’d called in sick, leading Gwen to speculate that I was ‘up the duff’. When I’d disputed this, she suggested I was scared to face the public because of my ‘rabbiting’ on television, and had assured me everyone was being supportive and I’d done the old bakery proud. ‘What abart your cakes, we’re running short?’
I told her I’d made a couple earlier and that Cassie would bring them over as she had customers booked in for her cartoon sketches this afternoon.
‘Why are you baking if you’re ill?’ Gwen had barked, contrarily. ‘We don’t wanna catch whatever you’ve got.’
I’d told her it wasn’t anything infectious, just something I’d eaten (not cake), which she’d grudgingly accepted. ‘Good job Tamsin needs some extra shifts. And that I don’t mind working me bleedin’ fingers to the bleedin’ bone while everyone else does whatever the ’ell they bleedin’ well like.’
I’d called Cassie afterwards, guilty at disturbing her, but she’d insisted she needed a break from a tricky commission she was working on; a series of paintings of someone’s back garden during different seasons.
‘I’m working from photographs, but they’re virtually identical,’ she’d said, after turning up in Sir Lancelot, the ancient green Morris Minor that used to belong to her nan. ‘When I mentioned it to the owner, she said there hadn’t been much variation in the seasons last year and to “use my imagination”. Add flowers to the summery one, and snow for the winter version, and when I asked what sort of flowers and where – there weren’t any flowerbeds or anything – she said, “Maybe some pink ones. Or red. In flowerpots. Or maybe round the edges of the lawn.” So, basically, no help whatsoever.’
Then she’d clocked my face and shepherded me to the sofa as if I was an invalid, before bringing me a glass of water and instructing me to ‘tell her everything’ – the same words we’d used as teenagers, when anything out of the ordinary happened.
It struck me now, as she whipped the cushion off my face, and opened the window above the sofa to let some air into the stuffy room, that I hadn’t appreciated her and Tilly enough towards the end of our time at Kingsbridge Academy where we’d met. I’d started seeing Sam in the fourth year – overjoyed that he’d asked me out – and had practically dropped them, barely noticing when Tilly left for Vancouver a couple of years later, and Cassie moved to London.
‘I’m sorry I didn’t stay in touch,’ I said weepily, not for the first time. ‘I was too wrapped up in Sam and his family, and when he went to uni I was lost. I mean, I made new friends once I started working, but not like you and Tilly. I was always too tired when I got home to go out, and I didn’t like leaving Mum on her own…’ I stopped. I’d told her all this before, but Cassie’s smile was gentle as she stroked my hair off my face.
‘You don’t need to apologise, Meg. None of us kept in touch. We all had our own things going on, but we’re here now, and that’s the main thing.’ She sat on the floor in a pool of sunlight and gave me a considering look. ‘What are you going to do now?’
‘Eat my own bodyweight in biscuits and watch back-to-back episodes of Friends.’
‘Oh my god, Meg, you and Sam are actually on a break.’ Her eyes brightened. ‘Like Ross and Rachel!’
I managed a weak smile. ‘That’s not really helpful, Cass. Remember what happened with Ross.’
‘But they got together in the end.’
‘Still not helpful.’
‘Sorry.’
I rubbed my aching forehead, trying to erase an image of Sam, strapping his bike to the back of Chris’s car before climbing inside and giving me a solemn look through the open window. No contact, he’d said. I need to stay focused. We’ll talk when I get back.
Watching them drive off had reminded me horribly of twelve years earlier when he’d left for Edinburgh, despite me having begged him to choose somewhere closer to home to study, so we could still see each other.
I want to spread my wings a bit, Meg, but it doesn’t mean we’re going to break up. I love you as much as I always have, and you can visit whenever you like. It’ll be good for us. We’ll miss each other, and our time together will be precious.
Only, I never did get to visit because a few weeks later, he’d met Andrea.
‘You have to let him go,’ Mum had said sadly, as I soaked her shoulders with tears, night after night. ‘If it’s meant to be, he’ll come back.’
His parents had been shocked by our breakup, but naturally their loyalties lay with Sam, and their pride that their son was at university – the first on either side of the family to do so – had quickly outweighed their dismay. I’d been welcome to drop by and I had, for a while, keen to hear what Sam was up to – and because I’d missed Sadie – but it had been agonising to hear about his partying, and the whispers about Andrea, and the pitying looks from Beverley became too much. I’d stopped going round after that – until the day Neil fell out of a tree and nearly died.
It wasn’t that I expected Sam to meet someone else on his cycling trip – apart from anything else, he’d have no energy leftover – but seeing him joshing with Chris as they drove away had fanned a flame of uncertainty. It was as if he’d already forgotten I existed.
Out of sight, out of mind.
‘If you could wave a magic wand, what would you like to happen next?’ Cassie said, wrapping her arms around her lightly tanned knees, her gaze encouraging. She was wearing paint-patterned blue shorts and a loose white vest top, and the tips of her fingers were green.
‘I’d like to get a call saying someone has bought the bakery and they want me to run it for them.’
She cast me a long and significant look. ‘I meant with Sam.’
‘Oh no.’ I pressed my hands over my eyes. ‘It’s true, isn’t it? I’m putting work before my fiancé. I should be deciding whether I want a scoop-neck or sweetheart neckline for my wedding dress, and freesias or lilliputs in my bouquet, not worrying about what happens to the bloody bakery.’
I peeped through my fingers to see a smile lifting Cassie’s mouth. ‘Lilliputs,’ she said. ‘I had no idea there was such a flower.’
‘You
can put them in your painting.’ I half-heartedly lobbed a cushion at her, and it shot over her head and hit the shelf above the fireplace, sending a framed photo tumbling to the floor. It was of me in Trafalgar Square with a pigeon on my head, which Sam had taken on our trip to London, not long after we’d got back together.
‘That feels like a sign,’ I said, as Cassie picked up the photo and studied it.
‘I thought you were scared of birds.’
‘I am, but I suppose it was pretty funny when it landed on my head, even though I weed myself a little bit, and Sam shooed it away once he’d taken the photo.’
‘Remember when Kath let her budgie out of its cage, and it flew through your living-room window while we were doing our homework?’
I winced at the flashback. ‘I didn’t think I’d sound like that when I screamed.’
Cassie hooted. ‘It was more of a prolonged wail,’ she said, doing an impression that made me shake with laughter, in spite of myself. ‘Your mum thought you’d been possessed, you looked so spacey.’
‘And then she saw Wilma – who calls a budgie Wilma? – on the mirror frame, and she started screaming as well.’
‘Oh god, those ear-piercing shrieks.’
‘And Kath came rushing round and said she’d called the police, not realising Wilma had escaped.’
We were both breathless from laughing and I sat up feeling better – until Cassie said, ‘No calls from Nathan?’
My smile faded. I’d expected him to drop by the bakery that morning, or at least to phone. I hadn’t even wanted to go in after Sam had left with Chris, but knew if I didn’t I’d end up crying in bed all morning, going over everything in my head. And I’d had to admit that a tiny part of me – in spite of everything – had been curious to know whether my TV appearance had prompted any queries about the bakery.
But although I’d checked twice that my phone was working, and had made sure to leave the back door propped open, Nathan hadn’t called, or put in an appearance.
I’d wondered whether it had anything to do with him overhearing me tell Alice that Sam was much cuter than him – I still winced, thinking about it – but he hadn’t struck me as someone who’d let a silly comment get in the way of business. Or friendship.
