She stands up. ‘I’ll just leave you to it then,’ she says. ‘My washing’s done, and you know how funny Jon gets about leaving wet laundry in the machine.’ She takes another biscuit as she leaves, and I text Rachel to find out if she’s as hungover as I am.
By the time Monday morning rolls around the hangover has faded, but the hollow ache in my chest hasn’t. Mimi is already at her desk when I arrive at work. She’s nibbling on a cheese twist from the staff canteen. A mug of black coffee sits, steaming, beside her, with the rest of the сafetière next to her phone. There’s a little brown splash of coffee between the mug and the сafetière and she has a crumb of pastry clinging to her jumper. She beams as I sit down opposite her.
‘How was the hen do?’ she asks. She’s chirpy in that I-got-shagged-to-within-an-inch-of-my-life-last-night kind of way. Lucky Mimi.
‘Very, very messy,’ I say, cringing at the memory of my bird’s nest hair and the pink and silver star Mandy drew in eyeliner across half my face. ‘There’s a photo on Facebook.’
‘Any final snogs for the bride?’
‘Nah, she’s not like that.’
Mimi eyes me over the top of her monitor and raises one eyebrow, ‘Any snogs for you?’
I don’t meet her gaze. My computer boots into life with a white glow and a chimey chord. ‘No. Although someone I chatted to on a dating website showed up and gave me a pep talk. It was all very odd.’
‘What about?’ she says. She sips her coffee. She looks intrigued.
‘What happened with Jesse,’ I say. ‘He told me I still see him as a boyband heart-throb and not flawed like the rest of us.’
‘Good grief,’ she says. ‘Sounds like some sort of deeply awkward therapy. Did you go home with him? Best way to get over someone is to get under someone else.’
‘My housemate said the exact same thing,’ I say, slightly mystified. ‘But no, I didn’t.’
‘She’s not wrong,’ Mimi says, dusting off her hands and sipping her drink. ‘Can’t you try and talk to him? Jesse, I mean, if you want to. Otherwise, cut your losses. Life’s too short to carry this around with you forever. You’ll have to let it go eventually.’
She trots off to a meeting with Paula shortly after, and she’s excited when she returns. She’s almost skipping through the office.
‘I’ve had feedback about sign-off,’ she says. ‘They were very impressed. Said you were professional, engaging and knowledgeable about the products and about the “Beauchamp’s Direction.”’ She makes air quotes with her fingers as she says it. ‘On a similar note,’ she continues, ‘all your extra effort lately hasn’t gone unnoticed here, as well.’
I’m a little taken aback, but pleased nonetheless. I’d stayed late a few times to keep me distracted and stop me wallowing in bottles of wine and boxes of chocolates, but I didn’t think for a minute anyone had noticed.
I briefly feel hopeful, like I have something good and tangible to hold onto, then I want to tell Jesse about it, and immediately the hollow feeling returns.
‘Thank you, Mimi, that’s really good to hear,’ I say. My phone buzzes. A reply from Rachel.
Can you meet for lunch in the square today? 1pm x
She’s quiet and not her usual bubbly self. We buy our lunch; tubs of chicken pie with squares of puff pastry, like little flakey edible mortarboards, on top, and find a seat on a bench.
‘How did you enjoy Saturday?’ I ask, blowing on a forkful of my lunch.
‘Loved it,’ she says. She bites into a mouthful of pie. ‘Jesus, this is nuclear.’
‘Mandy was on form.’
Rachel looks at me for a few seconds. ‘Hmm yes. She’s a funny one.’
There’s no more talking as we both attempt to eat lunch without burning a hole through our soft palates, but it’s not our usual easy silence. Something isn’t right. She wrinkles up her nose. ‘You did kind of make it all about you, though.’
Oh here we go. I stab my fork into a piece of chicken and put the pot down on the bench beside me.
‘How did I do that?’
She shrugs. ‘Come on, Cass. Everyone just rallied around you. It was The Cassie Show. When you all turned up at my flat it was all, aww poor Cassie, how are you coping? And at the club after you looked like you might pass out and Mandy was all over finding your rebound guy. Where was my last-fling guy?’
‘I didn’t ask her to. I didn’t ask for any of it, and the reason I looked unwell was because that “Call Me Maybe” song came on a lot in Jesse’s car and we sang along and, hearing it again –’
‘You’re missing the point,’ she interrupts.
‘Am I really?’
‘Yes. You only get one hen do. And you made mine all about you. You can’t stand not being in the limelight, can you?’
‘Not true and not fair,’ I snap. ‘And by the way, you don’t get a last-fling guy because you have a for-life guy.’
I shove another mouthful of the hottest pie in the world into my mouth and chew furiously, whilst simultaneously trying to stop it searing off the roof of my mouth.
‘For fuck’s sake, Cassie. This is crap. You’re being crap! I knew this would happen.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘You promised you’d help me with the wedding, and I knew the minute you swanned off to America it wouldn’t happen.’
‘I’ve helped you loads, Rach. That’s not fair.’ I count everything off on my fingers, but she interrupts.
‘You haven’t been there. You haven’t been there since all this first started. You’ve turned into this selfish, distant person and I don’t even recognise you lately. You’ve kept stuff from me –’
‘What have I kept from you?’
‘Oh, bloody all of it. All the Jesse stuff. When you arranged to meet up. You didn’t tell me any of it until the last minute. Franko was our thing but you kept it all from me.’
‘Because Jesse was my thing. And you have other things. And this is fucking ridiculous, Rachel.’
‘No, Cassie, it’s not. I’ve needed to talk to you but you’ve always harped on about him. Every single time.’
‘Well, what do you want me to say? Sorry the shit hit the fan at such an inconvenient time for you. It’s not my fault George is being crap,’ I snap, and immediately regret it.
‘Unbelievable,’ she hisses, and shuffles down the bench a little. Half of me wants to flip her off, pick up my bag and my lunch and stamp off back to work. But the other, more rational side of me knows that doing that could unleash a bridezilla-shaped beast mere days before the wedding.
Anyway, she has a point. I have been wrapped up in my life, and Jesse, and me and Jesse, and what happened in California, and I could have made more of an effort to help after I got back. I can see that now. It’s my job as her bridesmaid to smooth everything over. I am like a palette knife on a dollop of icing. I am like a screaming hot iron on crinkled sheets. I am like a finishing trowel on freshly applied plaster. I’m going to have to eat some pie, all right, but it’s definitely more humble-flavoured than chicken.
‘That guy at the roller disco,’ I say. ‘He wasn’t just some random. We’d been messaging on Date My Mate for a while.’
‘And you thought it was okay to invite him along to my hen night? Because it was very much not okay. A gross lapse in judgement on your part, Cassie. So much for being heartbroken –’
‘Hang on,’ I say. ‘I most certainly did not invite him to the roller disco. It wasn’t some sort of BOGOF night out, you know. I was fully committed to your night. I turned down a date with him because of it. How was I supposed to know he’d show up?’
‘He just showed up? How did he know?’
‘I stupidly told him why I couldn’t go out with him that night. He must have researched it.’
‘Bit weird.’
‘I know. But this is what I’ve been dealing with on that website. And believe me, he was the best of a very bad bunch. You have no idea how lucky you are not to have to wa
de through the pool of single men in London these days, because it’s a fetid cesspit.’
‘But you spent a lot of time with him. Can you see how I thought it was planned? What did you talk about?’
‘I told him all about Jesse, and what happened. Harped on about him, in fact. He knew a lot of it anyway. Saw the photos I put on Facebook, and noticed when I deleted them.’
‘What did he make of it all?’
‘He had a theory. Said I still idolised him the way I used to. Said it probably clouded my judgement.’
Rachel looks thoughtful. ‘He’s probably right,’ she says.
‘When I got home, I sent him an email. Hugely awkward as there hasn’t been even a sniff of a reply.’
‘Why?’
‘How should I know? He’s probably off being dad of the year or something. I feel stupid. It was too much, wasn’t it?’
‘How can I know without seeing it?’
I hand her my phone. ‘It’ll be in the sent folder.’ She reads through it slowly.
‘Aw, babe,’ she says. ‘Not at all too much. Maybe he hasn’t seen it?’
‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘Let’s go with that.’
But not a single atom of me believes her. His phone pinged every single time he got an email, and he almost always looked at it straight away. She takes my hand and squeezes my fingers. She doesn’t believe her, either.
‘I’m sorry I messed up your hen night and brought all this drama just before your wedding. That was not classy of me. I wouldn’t blame you if demoted me from maid of honour. Marie probably deserves it more than I do.’
‘I wouldn’t give her the satisfaction,’ she says. ‘But, look, promise me you won’t mope at my wedding. I know it probably won’t be the easiest weekend for you, but please try and be happy. For me.’
‘I won’t mope,’ I say, and as soon as the words pass my lips I know I have to hold myself to it. ‘I want to help you. What do you need me to do?’
‘Well, since you ask,’ she says, and pulls a folder out of her bag. She’s typed out and printed pages and pages of instructions and notes, titled Rachel and George’s Perfect Wedding, in a scripty, flowery font. It’s very unlike Rachel. My name is next to a lot of the tasks: collecting the dresses, confirming the delivery time with the florist, delivering the order of service to the church. She goes through it all with me, item by item. On Friday morning we have a breakfast meeting with Eloise the wedding coordinator. Rachel’s gone so far as to type up an agenda, and on it are words like ‘wedding favours’ and ‘receiving line’ and ‘toastmaster’ and a lot of it goes over my head, but I’m so relieved to be back in her good books that I’m happy to be involved. It’ll give me something else to think about anyway. At least for the time being.
Chapter Forty-Six
Jesse
Hi, Rachel.
Jesse Franklin as I live and breathe. This is… bizarre.
Yeah. I know. I found you via Cassie’s profile. I know it’s a little weird for me to reach out to you, but on Saturday afternoon I got an email from Cassie and I don’t know what to do with it.
Yeah, I know you did. I’ve seen it. Thought it was pretty self-explanatory personally.
OK…
She loves you. She misses you. She wanted you to know that. What part of that don’t you know what to do with?
Wow. She’s a little frosty. Still, what am I to expect, all things considered?
Guess it’s more to do with the situation. Pretty sure you know.
Of course I know. I’m her Person. And now she’s panicking because you haven’t replied. Are you even into this? What’s the deal, heart-breaker? You didn’t seem all that fussed when it all ended between you two.
Definitely into it. Definitely fussed. I didn’t want things to be like this. But what am I meant to do? She said it was over. I didn’t want to accept it but at the same time it was her choice, you know?
I haven’t replied because I don’t know what the deal is. The email clearly says ‘if’. I don’t want to bug her.
Jesus Christ, Jesse! What’s the matter with you? BUG HER. She’s opened up the channel of communication again. She wants to hear from you. Are you always like this? Handle this better! Baby’s been born, right?
I don’t actually know.
You have to get in touch with Nicole and find out. Can you see why I asked if you were into this? I sort of feel like if you were, you’d be more on it.
I get it, but Nic made it very clear she doesn’t want to talk to me. Or any of us. Seems like she just wants to start over.
But if it turns out you did knock her up, then it isn’t just about her. You need to think about what YOU want, if that’s the case, and how you can step up. You cannot have this hanging over you!
I’m going to level with you, if we were having this chat face to face, I’d be shaking the shit out of you right now. Cassie is devastated. You should have been honest from the start.
I know that. On reflection it was not a good choice. But I still really think that if it was anything to do with me, Nicole would have been in touch. Which is why I didn’t say anything.
OK well I’m not particularly interested in excuses, but I do want to know if there’s a chance this can be salvaged. Because she’s miserable and I can’t bear it. Not sure if you’ve realised this, but she lives in her head, and you are her fairytale. And she’s adored you since she was 15. She probably won’t admit it now, but trust me, I was there, and it’s all true. So when it all blew up, it completely broke her. She wouldn’t have coped with being rejected by you.
She was protecting herself by running.
She did admit it, and of course there’s a chance. I didn’t want any of this.I wanted to be getting on a plane this week. I wanted her to stay so that we could figure it all out. I wouldn’t have asked her about any of the visa stuff if I didn’t think we were going somewhere. And I haven’t exactly been walking on sunshine either.
OK. Well, you know what you need to do, then, don’t you?
Yeah. Holly showed up where I was working and showed me an Instagram feed. It was vague though. Nothing substantial to go on.
Well then. WTF are you waiting for? I have to go. Interesting chat. May the odds be ever in your favour etc etc.
Right…
Uhhh, I feel like I’m going to regret getting involved but get back in touch once you know. We’ll take it from there.
OK. Thank you.
And then she signs off. And the foggy cloud of dread and panic is back, because I really have to face this now. There’s no putting it off any longer. It’s time to rip off the Band-Aid.
Chapter Forty-Seven
Jesse
The first thing I do is download Instagram.
Actually, that’s not even a little bit true. The first thing I do is chug a beer. And then I pace the house a while. And then I restring my Jazz bass and polish between all the frets. And then I throw some laundry into the spare room. I sleep on it, and then I download Instagram when I wake up in the morning. But I still haven’t looked.
It’s a terrifying predicament. I sort of don’t want to know, but at the same time, I don’t have a choice, and besides, I can’t change the outcome. Before he passed, Grandpa Nev used to tell us that worrying solves nothing and changes even less, and he was right. I held on to that when things were going to shit with Franko; when I could see us crashing and burning, and Dad was an asshole about it. And again, when Now or Never tanked. But it hasn’t brought me any comfort this time, and all my stress and worry has manifested as procrastination disguised as productivity. Apparently there’s nothing like the fear you might be about to find out you’re a reluctant parent with someone you don’t want to be with to make you super interested in getting shit done around the house.
Because I am reluctant, and it sucks to admit that, and it doesn’t feel good. But I don’t want this with her, and I’m absolutely certain the feeling is mutual. And it was while I was trying and failing to get to sleep
whilst mulling everything over that hindsight truly became twenty-twenty and I could see things for how they really were. Nicole and I bounced along, but it wasn’t hard for her to leave, and if I had been truly cut up, things would feel different. I just didn’t care enough. There would be no sickening sense of dread at what may or may not be waiting for me on Instagram, and all the things that felt unworkable, and like they mattered, wouldn’t have done. When she’d told me, that night, in her apartment, whilst the fireworks were starting to explode over the Queen Mary, that she was leaving, I’d have pushed to go too. When she said visiting would delay the inevitable, I’d have proved to her that it wouldn’t. When she’d said she wasn’t planning on coming back, my immediate thought would have been to figure out how to make it work, not to get up and walk out. I wouldn’t have accepted that we were done. I wouldn’t have been okay with her radio silence or felt the tinge of relief that was there when she blocked my number in July. I wouldn’t have taken that silence as my answer, and been happy not to press it any further. And I would have told Nicole that I’d be there. Anything she needed, I was good for it. Anything at all.
But the truth is, it wasn’t long after she left that I stopped thinking about her at all. And if Holly and I had never had that conversation, she’d only have come up fleetingly, in those conversations you have with your new partner about your old ones. The kind of conversations that cement it for you that you’re better off, that you’ve moved on. I don’t want to be linked to Nicole, and I don’t want her baby to be mine.
Call Me, Maybe Page 28
