The Idea of You

by Amanda Prowse

  Today was no exception.

  Everywhere she looked, people stood cosily in twos like bookends or matching pairs, one gently holding the elbow of the other, or subtly resting a hand on the small of their back, or grazing their palm against their partner’s. She found the displays a little nauseating.

  She shifted her feet inside her wedge sandals and adjusted her dress sleeve, lest she might be revealing more flesh than was deemed appropriate in this setting. Trying to smile sanguinely and nod occasionally, she hoped it looked like she was paying full attention. Her mind tuning in and out of the Reverend Anthony’s words, she stared at his face.

  ‘And today on this – Benedict’s special day – we should think about the words that Jesus said: “Let the little children come to me and do not try to stop them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.”’

  It might of course have been her imagination, but she was certain that the vicar saved his hard stares and meaningful pauses for when he was looking directly at her.

  Her imagination . . . now there was a rampant and illogical thing – that is, if she listened to Richard. ‘You are imagining it! You need to control this ridiculous unfounded jealousy!’ had been his exact words. And her particular favourite, which she conveniently remembered word for word, shouted at her as they drove up the motorway on a rainy Sunday morning: ‘If I was going to leave you for anyone, Lucy, it certainly wouldn’t be your cousin Davina – she’s bonkers! Wasn’t it she who locked you in the garden shed and told your parents you’d gone out with friends? An utter nut.’

  And as it transpired, Davina was an utter nut whom Richard would be marrying in a few weeks’ time on a sultry Caribbean beach with a handful of Lucy’s very own family present. All unsuitably dressed for the environment, no doubt, with grit in their sandals and sweat stains on their shirt collars.

  One thing she certainly hadn’t imagined was the scrolled gold-on-white invitation that was currently propped up on her mother’s mantelpiece. She suspected her mum had given it pride of place as a sharp rebuke, letting her know what she could have won if only she had been more like cousin Davina.

  This she already knew.

  Lucy had taken the invitation into her hands and held it against her chest as she cried. It wasn’t that she wanted Richard, not now that he had made his choices clear, but the rejection of her for another, no matter how justified, hurt just the same. She had loved him, and it was so nearly her name on the invitation, and this realisation only made her tears fall harder. This rectangle of fancy card was a reminder that she was losing a race she didn’t know she had entered; she hadn’t heard the starter pistol, and by the time she looked up, everyone she knew of a similar age seemed to be halfway around the track.

  It was a self-inflicted pressure, but whenever she looked at her peers she automatically totted up their age and their achievements, instantly working out how far behind she was. For example, Helen, forty-two, owns a holiday home in Portugal and has three kids, of which the oldest is eighteen – eighteen! Which meant that she, at thirty-nine, was already at least sixteen years behind Helen, who had married at the age of twenty-three – there was no way she could catch up! The realisation that she wasn’t even set for a bronze medal was disheartening. In fact, forget the medals – Lucy didn’t even know if she was going to be able to finish the race. If she did, everyone else would have left the arena long ago, meaning there would be no one there to witness her achievement, and so what would be the point?

  She glanced at Tansy, who looked lovely in her duck-egg-blue, fifties-inspired frock, as she rocked the sleepy Benedict in her arms, cooing ‘Shhhh . . .’ with a look of abject fear that if she stopped rocking, or indeed cooing, he might wake up fully and yell. And that would never do – not in a church on this auspicious day, when he was the star of the show.

  Tansy had what Lucy considered to be mum-like proportions: an ample bosom, sturdy arms and a broad back. Quite unlike her good self, who had for as long as she could remember been best described as scrawny. This was much to the chagrin of her friends and colleagues, who spent an age in the gym trying to emulate the very slender, lanky shape that she had been born with.

  Mum-like proportions or not, it was Tansy who stood with her beautiful, sleepy child in her arms, her teenage son Michael by her side and Rick, her tall husband, standing with an arm draped around her. Lucy saw the way he looked at his wife and then his boys with something beyond love. She felt the bunch of emptiness in her stomach, trying to imagine what it might feel like to have someone look at her that way.

  And just like that, she was once again acutely aware of her singledom.

  She swallowed and tried to concentrate, but as the Reverend Anthony spoke, her thoughts refused to stay anchored to the buffed flagstone floor and the old pitch pine pews. Instead, she stared over his head at the stained-glass windows high above.

  Richard and Davina . . .

  If she was being completely honest, his leaving had been coupled with an enormous and instant sense of relief. In the year since they had split, she had been able to breathe properly and laugh heartily and commit more fully to her job, which hadn’t gone unnoticed in her quarterly appraisal, where a directorship had been mentioned.

  She and Richard had clearly been mismatched, not least of all because she was a stickler for little things like fidelity and he, rather obviously, was not. But it was more than that. Richard wanted the finer things in life: a twin-engine speedboat, a Breitling watch, a VIP pass for a major sporting event and a healthy cellar bursting with burgundies. Whereas all she wanted was a baby. Not that she would ever mention this in the office, having been party to discussions with her male superiors who had spoken openly about other women they were nervous to promote, knowing there might be childcare issues. She hated the hypocrisy and flagrant disregard of the law that didn’t seem to bother them a jot.

  She found it quite ironic that her friends who leant on the window ledge and admired the view from her swanky London office, and who flexed her company credit card longingly between their fingers before trying on her enviable collection of Choos, the same ones who sat at home surrounded by a mess of baby paraphernalia, floors cluttered with baby gyms and soft toys, and whose worktops were crammed with sterilisers, bottles and baby wipes, these were the friends she yearned to trade lives with. And she would have done so in a single heartbeat.

  As her girlfriends bemoaned their lack of sleep and whined about cracked nipples while hunting for a semi-clean mug in which to make tea, with baby vomit smeared on their shoulders and their hair escaping in greasy tendrils from grimy scrunchies, trilling ‘Don’t look at me! I haven’t even had time for a shower!’, Lucy felt a surge of something in her gut that came very close to envy.

  Arriving home to her beautiful, spacious, neutral-toned apartment after any such visit, she eyed her immaculately plumped pillows with disdain. The smear-free, cold, hard, dark granite surfaces and the neat TV remotes, lined up on a dust-free shelf, were solid proof of her childless state. This was an environment that no big family could maintain, and she hated what it said about her.

  At these times, when loneliness threatened to engulf her, Lucy consoled herself with the thought that this life and this home were all temporary, and that her real life would begin when she met someone to love and became a mum. This would enable her to leapfrog her way around the track, putting her back in contention for a podium finish. It wasn’t that she didn’t appreciate what she had achieved in her career – she did – but she knew that total fulfilment would come when she could juggle this career with parenting. She would show her little girl how, with a bit of careful planning and a whole lot of hard, hard work, she, like her mum, could achieve anything.

  This she could never share – not while she was being held up as a shining example among her peers of how a woman could break through the glass ceiling and have it all.

  Only she didn’t have it all, not quite.

  As she neared forty, Lucy was
starting to think of alternative ways to make her dream of motherhood a reality and was considering all avenues, from getting her already slightly dated eggs harvested, to looking into adoption. She hadn’t given up hope, not at all, and loved nothing more than to read articles in the downmarket, thin-papered magazines that lined the racks at the checkout with headlines like ‘My Baby Miracle!’ or ‘Gran Gives Birth to Quads Shocker!’ These stories she read with a pinched mouth and a visible headshake of disapproval, just in case anyone might be watching. But the reality was, stories like these gave her hope. If an octogenarian virgin living on a remote Italian hilltop was able to pop out a whole gaggle of bambinos after nothing more than bathing in the local magic stream, then all hope was not lost for her.

  ‘Lucy!’ Tansy whispered from the side of her mouth. Tansy’s sister giggled and the well-groomed middle-aged man with a close beard next to her gave a small cough and blushed a little on her behalf.

  She looked away from the window and down at the crescent of people gathered around the font with their hands clasped and a measure of expectation in their stares, all directed at her.

  ‘Well, do you?’ Tansy prompted, her sigh indicating that she might be starting to regret her choice of godmother – and this before they had even left the church. It did not bode well.

  ‘What?’ she whispered, dry mouthed with embarrassment at what she might have missed, before tucking her long, dark hair behind her ear.

  ‘Do you?’ the Reverend Anthony repeated.

  ‘Oh yes.’ She nodded. ‘Yes, I do. Absolutely. I do.’ She beamed and stood up straight, wishing she had been paying better attention, hoping that she hadn’t agreed to something hideous, while simultaneously wondering when she might be able to get her hands on a glass of wine.

  That was the trouble with being a work friend of the child’s mother: it wasn’t like she knew the family that well, and there wasn’t anyone else from work here. She guessed it was a compliment of sorts, but right now, as she hugged the wall with one hand behind her back and cradled a passable chilled white with the other, she wondered what was the shortest possible amount of time it would be considered acceptable to stay after the ceremony. By her reckoning she could leave in about thirty minutes. After all, what was she going to miss? The cake would be cut with minimal speeches and her generous gift was already nestled in an envelope marked ‘For Benedict’ inside a white basket festooned with blue and white ribbons and placed, non-surreptitiously, at the end of the buffet. She smiled across the room at Michael, Tansy’s elder son, who looked just as awkward as she felt, pulling with his fingers at the shirt collar that sat stiffly against a neck that was more used to wearing T-shirts.

  ‘Forgive me, I’m a little bit out of practice at christenings, but is it the same as a wedding where the usher and bridesmaid have to dance and make out?’ The man’s question caught her a little off guard.

  ‘Excuse me?’ She twisted around, instantly recognising the blushing guy with the trendy beard from the church. She leant forward, wondering where this conversation might be going.

  ‘You know.’ He placed his hands on his hips inside his well-cut navy suit jacket and stood directly in front of her, smiling to show off his neat white teeth, which crossed ever so slightly in the centre. ‘It’s the rule at weddings, isn’t it? And the only reason so many ne’er-do-wells agree to take on any duty in a wedding party. It’s because they are almost guaranteed at least one smooch with a good-looking, tipsy bridesmaid.’

  ‘Really? I did not know that.’

  ‘Yes.’ He nodded encouragingly. ‘It’s practically the law.’

  ‘The law?’ She cocked her head to get a better look at him, noticing how he didn’t feel like a stranger. Taking in the spaces between his features on a face that was unfamiliar, she searched her mental database to see whom he reminded her of, matching him to faces she knew and loved. He had her dad’s sincere stare, her first love’s face shape, and George Clooney-esque eyebrows. This was all boding very well.

  ‘At least, it was the law at my wedding,’ he continued.

  And just like that she felt her balloon of happy anticipation deflate.

  ‘Oh! So you’re married.’ She took a sip of her wine, sucking in her cheeks, aware of the slight frost that laced her words, as if he had in some way misled her, which was ridiculous. He was only being polite; she had after all been hoping for someone to talk to. Her neediness and disappointment both angered and embarrassed her. She took another glug of her wine.

  Tansy whooshed past with a crying Benedict in one arm and an unfurled nappy under the other, on the way to the bathroom. ‘Don’t bother trying to chat her up; she’s my boss!’ she managed, as she passed by in a whirlwind of perfume, champagne and baby powder.

  He threw his head back and laughed quite loudly. ‘Charming.’ He bent his head towards her conspiratorially. ‘And for the record: no, I’m not married.’

  ‘So you just had the wedding to provide an afternoon of distraction for the ne’er-do-wells in your life?’ Lucy drained her glass, deciding there and then that the right time for her to leave was, in fact, now.

  Again he laughed before taking a step closer to her. Her face hovered under his chin.

  Just the right height . . .

  She had to look up to see his face.

  ‘No. I had the wedding because when it was in the planning stage, I didn’t have the faintest idea of how things would unravel. It was a big wedding – huge, in case you are interested.’

  ‘I’m not,’ she lied, folding one arm across her chest and holding her wine glass in the air with the other.

  He continued as if she hadn’t spoken. ‘And I mean huge, with all the bells and whistles, just as you might expect after hours and hours of discussion and no expense spared. A skyscraper of a cake, a crystal-strewn designer dress and doves. Oh yes, doves.’ He shook his head. ‘But it was just that, a wedding, and what I didn’t get at the end of it was a marriage. We lasted eighteen months.’

  And just like that her balloon reinflated.

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ she lied again.

  He seemed to be studying her face, drinking her in, and she felt as if time were suspended as she stared up at him, feeling his presence wrap around her like a warm blanket on a cold night. It was a second or two before he lowered his face towards her and spoke, not an inch from her ear. His words sent a shiver of delight along her limbs.

  ‘I promise you that when we get married, it will be a simple affair. Just you and me, without distraction. No bridesmaids, good-looking or otherwise, no gift list, no toasts, no doves released from a box, no three-tiered cakes and no fancy frocks. How does that sound?’

  She smiled. ‘It sounds perfect.’

  He reached up and placed his hand in front of her, putting it in the small gap between them. ‘And your name is?’

  ‘Lucy,’ she whispered.

  ‘And I’m Jonah, Jonah Carpenter.’

  ‘Hello, Jonah, Jonah Carpenter.’ She beamed and sighed, deciding, as he gently held her elbow, that there was nowhere else she would rather be than right here.

  So here it is, my letter to you. A letter you might never see, but one which I shall take great joy in writing nonetheless. Where to start? I suppose with a snippet of my current life. Every aspect of my existence changed when I met my husband. Up until that point, my life had been ordered, neat, a little sterile I guess, in retrospect, and this was how I pictured it continuing. If I looked ahead, I saw no break to the established norm of working hard and marking time, with pockets of happiness dotting an often hectic calendar. Day trips, glasses of wine and leisurely lunches with my girlfriends, even holidays to locations that provided perfect postcard-worthy landscapes to capture with my camera lens, snapping images in the hope that these pictures might help me bottle the wonderful moments of distraction. These were the things that I looked forward to: events that placed a big, joyous dollop of motivation on the darkest of days and helped quash any suggestion of
loneliness. And then I met him, Jonah, and the picture I had carried in my mind for so long changed. And I liked the way that this new picture looked. I liked the new me. This man I met – a wonderful man – picked up the snow globe of my life and gave it a really good shake, and just like that I started to enjoy ‘today’.

  TWO

  The one-year anniversary card sat on the mantelpiece. Lucy had kept it there for the last three weeks and was loath to put it away. Every time the thin wedding band on her finger caught her eye, it still sent a jolt of happiness right through her. To be this happy felt good.

  Their wedding had indeed been perfect. The whole event had been delivered exactly as promised, devoid of bridesmaids, gift lists, toasts, doves and three-tiered cakes, and not a fancy frock in sight. The temporary receptionist at work, Delia, had given up her precious lunch hour, along with a man from the accounts department at Jonah’s car dealership. Delia had been sworn to secrecy about her whereabouts, particularly if Tansy asked.

  The four stood awkwardly in front of a lady with a pair of spectacles resting on her pointy nose, who neatly filled out the blank rows on their marriage certificate before offering a perfunctory ‘many congratulations’ and tearing the numbered sheet from its gluey stays. The happy group exited the Camden Register Office in Judd Street, London, and hovered, as if uncertain what duty or tradition demanded.

  Jonah, who had very little interest in duty or tradition, shook hands with his witness, kissed Delia heartily on the cheek like she was an old friend, and grabbed his new wife by the hand. It was very clear that the two strangers were being dispatched.

  ‘Where are we going?’ Lucy had giggled, tripping along the pavement in her heels, which clattered over the flat, discoloured blobs of chewing gum that littered the path. He had looked back and grinned at her, speeding up, as if aware that they both had to be back at work in a wee while. Both had agreed that there was something exciting about taking only an hour or two out of their day to perform this life-changing act. Like a proposal in a busy street or dancing cheek to cheek in a crowded square, it was this slice of magic among the mundane that added to the thrill.