by Claire Allan
“Yes, Jules,” I sing-songed, knowing that when Jules was in protective sister mode there was no point at all in arguing with her.
“You know it makes sense.”
“Yes, of course. It makes perfect sense. I’ll make an appointment for the afternoon. I’m assuming you’ll want to stay over here and not at Mum and Dad’s?”
“Oh God, yes, of course, please.”
“I shall prepare the guest chamber in honour of your arrival then.”
“You do that. Now, take care, Erin. I love you loads, you know that.”
“I love you too,” I said, smiling and already looking forward to the weekend.
I hung up, feeling a little more positive and not quite so scared about the dress-buying, and the wedding and the whole cancer thing. I was smiling to myself when Paddy walked into the kitchen and wrapped his arms around me, kissing the back of my neck gently.
I turned to face him, kissing him gently, then slightly less gently. He kissed me back and for a split second I dared to hope it could become something more than just kissing. It wasn’t long though before he pulled away.
“You don’t mind, do you?” he said. “I’m just not ready.”
And I sighed and told him of course I didn’t mind because it would be wrong of me to say anything else and I did, after all, love the very bones of him and if that meant waiting until he felt comfortable enough to have sex with me again then I would. Even if it killed me. He went about making his breakfast, and I went about calling The Dressing Room and arranging an appointment for Saturday. It dawned on me that perhaps wearing white wouldn’t be such a big faux pas after all – as I was pretty sure whatever virginity I once owned was in danger of growing back.
Chapter eleven
Kitty
I knew the smell wasn’t good. Every time I turned over the whiff of three-day-old body odour hit me square in the nostrils. I just didn’t have the energy to do anything about it. It took every ounce of energy I had to get up and go to the bathroom when nature called. Showering, grooming and general cleanliness were a step beyond me. Dad had tried several times to rouse me. He had come into my room, pulled open the curtains, sat on the edge of the bedand tried to encourage me to eat something. He had given me hugs and told me I was his best girl, which was remarkably brave of him given the smell of me. He had said things would get better and he should know and I had nodded and shook my head at the appropriate moments. I didn’t want to hear that things would get better – not yet. I needed to feel how I was feeling.
I had tried to phone Mark a few times. When I say try to phone him, of course, I mean that I had lifted my mobile, scrolled to his number and looked at it, wondering should I press the call button and if so what would I say, before dropping back on the duvet and falling back to sleep.
What could I possibly say to a man I didn’t even feel I knew anymore? Who I wasn’t sure I ever really knew in the first place? He wasn’t the kind of man I ever would have thought would have lived a lie. Jesus, did people really do that? Have double lives? Put on one very convincing face at home and something completely different elsewhere? I wondered had he nuzzled her neck the way he did mine. Did he reach for her hand the way he did mine? The very thought made me want to vomit.
I hadn’t realised I had been living the plot of a soap opera without my knowledge. I always thought my life was pretty straightforward. Not boring but, you know, not out of the ordinary either. Not worthy of the EastEndersOmnibus anyway. We did normal things – shared meals together, went for walks, talked about work and laughed at old re-runs of Frasier together. It wouldn’t have set the page of a Mills & Boon novel alight, but I was happy. Genuinely happy. Not smug or anything. Well, maybe just a little bit smug. But why wouldn’t I be? I was in love with a man who had chosen me. He had asked me to marry him and we were content in our little suburban existence.
Except that – we weren’t. He certainly wasn’t. That thought would wake me from my sleep at three in the morning. And again at four. And again at five. And a few times in between. It would wake me and it would take the very breath from my body as sure as if he was in the room and had physically punched me in the stomach himself. But at least the pain from a physical punch would ease after a while. This pain didn’t ease. It just ebbed slightly until I fell into a dreamless sleep, only for the cycle to repeat itself.
Rose put her head around the door on Sunday night – or at least I think it was Sunday night – and in her usual calm and collected way asked me if I wanted clean socks and pants brought over from my house. I didn’t respond.
She returned an hour later with a small suitcase from home and sat it by my bed before kissing me on the head and telling me Dad was worried about me. Had I the energy to respond I would have told her I was worried about me too. But I barely had the energy to fart, let alone speak. So I grunted. And she left again.
She put her head round the door on Monday as well – bringing me some tea and toast which I didn’t eat and some water which I did drink. She didn’t ask me if I was going to work. I think she knew the bedraggled smelly hobo look was not going to sell any wedding dresses. Mondays weren’t particularly busy for us anyway – we usually spent them checking stock, following up orders, with Rose doing some alterations in the work room. Not that I was in a state that I could ask her if she would be okay. I didn’t care about The Dressing Room that day. I would have gladly burned it and its collection of sodding wedding dresses to the ground. If I’d had the energy.
Cara visited on Monday as well. She brought grapes and chocolates and some magazines as if I was in hospital. She stayed for an hour while I cried and left when I fell asleep having spoken hardly a word.
James sent about a million texts, which I just started to ignore. I didn’t get why he was the one apologising when it was Mark who had been the one in the wrong. In fact it was still Mark who was in the wrong. It was barely fathomable. It was Monday – four whole days since he had ripped our world apart and he hadn’t even tried to get in touch directly. I had never gone this long without speaking to him. From the moment we had met we had been inseparable. Surely he must have been feeling it too? You can’t just stop caring about someone. You can’t just switch off what you had.
If I had any talent at all for writing really bad poetry, I’d have written some corkers in those few days. I’d have made Sylvia Plath look like Dr Seuss. I was the lowest I had ever been and it was not a nice feeling.
On Tuesday, around noon, Ivy arrived. She took less of a pussy-footing approach than my dad, Rose or Cara. She marched into my room, opened the curtains and windows wide, hauled the duvet off my stench-ridden bed, ordered me to shower and dragged me into the bathroom.
“There are only so many times I’m going to do this,” she said, as she switched the shower on and let the water run to scalding hot.
I watched the curls of steam rise and wished I could float away on one of them – somewhere where Ivy was not forcibly removing my lilac jumper, hauling it over my head past my chip-pangreasy hair.
“There are only so many times I’m going to come over here and get you to pull yourself together.”
“Technically, you’ve not come here before to tell me to pull myself together,” I said, breaking my silence at last in a big way.
“Don’t be smart,” she said, hauling off one of my socks while I sat petulantly on the toilet and let her. “I know you’re going through a nightmare but you can’t lie down under it. You have to get up and get on with things. You have a business to run. You have a life to live.”
I shrugged my shoulders. Ivy made to try and unzip my jeans and I pulled back. Enough was enough.
“I can do this myself.”
“Well, why haven’t you then? Now get on with it. I’ll make some soup and see you downstairs in ten minutes. Don’t be a minute longer or a minute less. I’ll come and check. And you know me well enough, Kit, to know I will break down this door if I have to, should you not show your face. And don’t ev
en think about climbing back into that scratcher of yours. I’m taking the sheets and putting them in a boil wash. I’ll be taking your phonedownstairs with me too, so if you mess with me, so help me God, I will put it in the boil wash with your sheets.”
I wanted to stick my tongue out at her but felt tears prick at my eyes instead. I was in the horrors and she was shouting at me so I felt myself start to snivel, and I didn’t even have sleeves to wipe my nose on.
“Oh Kit, for goodness sake,” she said, brusquely but a little softer than before, as she hauled some loo roll from the holder and handed it to me. “You can’t lie down under this. He’s not worth it.”
“I loved him,” I managed. “I love him.”
“I know,” she said, sinking to her knees beside me. “But lying here festering in your own filth isn’t going to make things any better. It’s certainly not going to win you any friends – or keep your business going.”
“I don’t care about my business!” I sobbed.
“Oh Kitty, for goodness sake, of course you care about your business. You built it up from nothing. Don’t let him take that away from you too.”
I looked and her face was serious and bordering on cross. And Cross Ivy was scary. Cross Ivy had been an almost constant companion to me after Mum had gone. She was the tough-as-old-boots teenager who kept me and Dad going when we wanted to collapse on the floor and cry. Or when we drank ourselves stupid, which was Dad and not me, in fairness. She had to grow up pretty quick and she never let us forget it.
“I’ll get showered,” I said. “I promise.”
I couldn’t quite find the words to say ‘I’m sorry for being an emotional wreck and I’m sorry Mum walked out when we were younger and you had to pick up the pieces and that you feel like you’ve been picking up the pieces ever since.’ So “I’ll get showered” was a good compromise.
She nodded, stood up and left the room and I used what little strength I could find to stand under the shower and let the hot water wash over me. I even managed a quick wash of my hair.
I had dressed in fresh pyjamas and had brushed through my hair. I smelled more fragrant and the breeze blowing through my bedroom had cleared most of the sweaty fug away. Glancing out the window I could see it was a fine, bright day. It was the kind of day which normally put me in a pathetically chipper mood – where Rose and I would listen to the radioin work, loudly singing along with the latest tunes and doing the occasional impromptu dance routine. It was the kind of day where we could take our sandwiches out to the courtyard at lunchtime and speak in posh voices about “taking luncheon in the garden”. It was the kind of day where I would phone Mark and ask him to meet me in the pub after work and we would have a couple of cold beers before wandering home, hand in hand. You see, it was the hand-in-handbit that threw me. You didn’t cheat on someone you walked hand in hand with. The word cheat jarred in my head and I forced myself to take a long, deep breath. No, I had to pull myself together or Scary Ivy would come and kick my arse.
Padding downstairs the smell of chicken soup assaulted my nostrils. She was such a traditionalist – chicken soup for the stomach and the soul.
“You need to eat something,” she said, ladling some into a pink polka-dot bowl. Everything in Rose’s kitchen was pastel and floral and floaty. Bright and cheerful, just like the woman herself.
I sat down at the table and muttered a thank-you.
“I don’t mean to kick your ass. Well, actually I do mean to kick your ass. Your ass needs kicking.”
“You wouldn’t understand,” I said, thinking of her and her happy marriage to Michael –a very sensible and reliable bank manager who wore corduroy trousers and checked shirts from Marks and Spencer and who always had a pen in his top pocket.
“I understand,” she said. “Not that my husband has walked out on me, or anything. But she left me too. She walked out on us. She cheated on us. I know what it is like to feel betrayed and I didn’t let you lie down under it then and I’m not going to let you lie down under this now.”
“It’s just . . .”
“Just unexpected? Oh Kit, we have dealt with unexpected before. Don’t you remember?”
It started when Dad asked us to sit down. I turned off the television and sat beside Ivy, both us wondering why Dad’s voice was trembling just that little bit.
My stomach started to feel funny, you know in the way your stomach feels funny when everything in your life has shifted. You don’t even have to know there has been a change before it hits . . . the uneasy feeling.
“Girls,” Dad said, his eyes darting around the room as if he was looking for divine inspiration on what to say, “there is no easy way to say this.”
I looked atIvy and she looked atme. Neither of us spoke. I think we were too terrified to even begin to imagine what would come next.
“I’m afraid Mum has gone . . .”
Daddy looked funny. And not good-funny. His face had a kind of frozen, haunted, horrible look that, even though I was only thirteen and by dint of my age exceptionally self-absorbed, I knew I never wanted to see again.
“Gone?” Ivy said, in a high-pitched echo of what Daddy had said and it almost sounded funny. Almost.
I felt a strange mixture of a giggle and a cry catch in my throat. I knew he wasn’t going to end his sentence with ‘to the shops’ or ‘up the town’. I knew this was something serious and bad and I started to feel shaky.
“I’m sorry,” Daddy said, as if it were his fault. As if he was gone. As if he had done the hurting. As if he had walked out on us. “I’m sorry, girls. I don’t know . . .” his voice trailed off.
“What do you mean, gone?” Ivy asked, her voice still high-pitched and pained.
Daddy just shook his head and sat down in the battered brown armchair opposite and looked at the letter in his hands.
“Go and get her,” Ivy said, louder.
“She doesn’t want to be got,” he said, folding the letter and putting it in his pocket. “She says she’s sorry. Oh girls, I’m sorry.”
I always wondered what that letter said. Whatever it was, it was clearly not for our eyes. Over the years I imagined in turn it said all sorts of horrible things about how we were awful daughters and she never wanted us anyway, to saying she just had to be a free spirit. Regardless, we didn’t see her again for three months and even after that we only saw her sporadically and the bond was broken. We were broken. The trust was gone. And Daddy kept apologising, just as James had done that night in the restaurant, even though it wasn’t him who had left and it wasn’t him who had broken us.
“I know, Ivy. I know we have. I just feel lost and I know I should be up kicking arses and getting angry on it but I just . . . I just can’t help it. All I have the strength to do is mope. Don’t you just think I need to mope? Don’t I deserve to mope?”
“Do you want him to win?”
“It’s not about winning. It’s about me not understanding what the hell has just happened to my life.”
“Then ask him.”
“But he won’t take my calls. He’ll only talk to me through James.” There was a slight whine to my voice which annoyed even me.
“Then talk to James and tell James to tell his friend to stop being such a god-awful eejit and talk to you like a man. Is he four? Is he still at school? Wanker.” She blew her fringe from her face and slammed closed the dishwasher so I could hear the pastel-coloured plates inside rattle loudly.
I bristled at her calling him names. Okay, so she was right and he was behaving like an arse but I wasn’t ready to hear her say it. I wasn’t ready to hear anyone say it – I was struggling enough to come to terms with his betrayal in my own head.
“Okay,” I said. “Okay. I’ll try. I promise I’ll try. I’ll go to work and be a good girl and do what is expected of me.”
“And don’t make me come over here and kick your arse again?”
“I won’t make you come over here and kick my arse again.”
“Good woman,�
�� Ivy said, in an only mildly patronising tone. “When Mum left we said we could get through anything. We can still get through anything.”
I nodded and half smiled, thinking to myself that she didn’t have to get through any of this. This was something I had to get through myself. I was in this on my own.
Chapter twelve
Erin
Jules was hyper. She was so excited she was practically bouncing from one foot to the other, like a child desperate for a pee but too excited to leave the sandpit she was playing in.
“It’s so pretty. I want to buy it and work here and surround myself with pretty dresses,” she said outside The Dressing Room, puffing on a cigarette to steady her nerves as if it were she who was about to hand over a huge wodge of money for a dress she would wear only once.
“Those things will kill you,” I said, and she stuck her tongue out at me playfully before dropping the butt to the ground and grinding it with the heel of her impossibly pointy boots.
“Jesus, sis, don’t be going all cancer-preachy on me just because Paddy’s going through the mill,” she said, with a wink and a smile so that I couldn’t get mad at her.
Not that I ever got mad at Jules anyway – she didn’t have a bad bone in her body and apart from her dirty smoking habit was almost faultless.
“I’m not going all cancer-preachy on you. I’m just kind of fond of you. And besides, I’ve had enough of chemo to last me a lifetime so if you don’t mind . . . Besides, they stink.” But as I spoke she was already liberally spraying herself with a bottle of Jo Malone which she kept in her handbag for such occasions.
“Sure don’t I smell lovely now?” she said, grinning and slipping a Polo mint in her mouth before offering me the packet.
I shook my head and linked arms with her. “Are you ready to go in now?”
“Yes, ma’am,” she saluted.
