The Late Blossoming of Frankie Green

by Laura Kemp

  ‘So, as you can see,’ Sasha said, leaping into action to draw everyone’s attention to her instead, ‘Floyd is using the medium of dance to express his joy at you all being here today!’

  Everyone laughed and Em exhaled through her mouth. Thank God for Sasha, what a saviour!

  ‘Clearly the excitement is all too much for him! Anyway, we’ll make this quick, but on behalf of the two of us, I’d just like to thank you all for coming to celebrate our engagement.’

  She held up her ring then – a rock the size of a sugar cube – to a whoop.

  ‘And no one look at Em but we’re all wishing you the very best and thanks for the amazing spread!’

  Everyone turned to her then and she gave an uncomfortable smile. While she hated being looked at, she was touched by Sasha’s thoughtfulness.

  ‘Right so you’ll all be wanting to know about the wedding details…’

  A murmur rippled around the room and Em squeezed her shoulders because she had been dying to know where they’d do it. They might relish surprising everyone with a church wedding and a formal sit-down reception, or perhaps they’d please themselves with a quirky ceremony on Penarth Pier, and then cross the prom to the open top roof restaurant for fish and chips and a DJ.

  ‘Floyd and I, we’ve decided that we’re going to do it barefoot and on the beach!’

  Applause broke out and Em nodded her appreciation: it was so very them.

  ‘On my travels, I went to a gorgeous little place in Thailand which I promised myself I’d return to if I was ever lucky enough to convince Floyd to marry me.’

  How romantic! She must be talking about the honeymoon, Em thought.

  ‘The thing is, we’ve decided to make it very low key. By ourselves.’

  Em felt her jaw drop. How could Floyd have agreed to this? Mum and dad would be absolutely gutted. She stole a glance at their faces and the pair of them had plastic smiles. And even if close family was allowed to go, Em wouldn’t be able to seeing as she’d either be massively pregnant or with a young baby. It was just unbelievable. She’d always assumed she would be there with Floyd on his big day – he loved family and he was so gregarious that only a big bash would do.

  ‘I know it’s a shock and I wish we could fit in with everyone’s wishes, but we want to do what feels right for us. We’ll have a party before we go, we can pretend it’s our wedding so don’t fret about missing out. Anyway, that’s all for now, we’ll let you know our plans. Thanks again. Oh and by the way, we’re all going to the pub now, to give Em some peace, so please join us there!’

  She didn’t want to acknowledge it, but Em felt wronged. She’d completely fallen for Sasha all over again and then off she’d gone at a tangent, like a rubber ball. How could she consistently read people so badly? No matter how far Em had come this last few months, it was damned obvious she would never understand the human race.

  Busying herself tidying up to hide her disappointment, Em didn’t show anyone to the door. Letty and Frankie silently collected the glasses and stacked the dishwasher in record time, then gave her quick pecks on the cheek before they disappeared.

  Soon it was just her and Floyd in the flat.

  ‘Aren’t you going to the pub?’ she asked him, as he held his head in his hands at the breakfast bar.

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I’ve had enough,’ he said, sinking a whisky in one.

  ‘Are you all right?’ she asked, more out of duty than concern. She would raise their inexplicable decision when she’d had a chance to let it sink in. And when he was sober – she was sick to the stomach of people acting oddly, and for now she wanted nothing more than to sit down with her new Lakeland catalogue.

  ‘No, I’m bloody not,’ he said. His eyes were bloodshot and googly from the booze.

  Em ignored him and turned to wipe the surfaces of sticky rings and crumbs.

  ‘I don’t know if I love her,’ he said.

  ‘Of course you do,’ Em replied, knowing he’d be collapsed on the sofa snoring within five minutes. He had to love her to go along with the plan to tie the knot away from home. It was just pre-wedding nerves.

  ‘You’ve always said she’s the best thing that’s ever happened to you. You’re going to be very happy together,’ she said, scraping at a stubborn stain, ‘marriage, living together and you’ll be an uncle too.’

  ‘No I’m fucking not. Slasher is like a sixth-form poet or an art student. She’s full of total and utter shit.’

  ‘Are you being serious?’ Em said, swinging around, unsure she could take another surprise.

  ‘Yes. She wants us to get married in Thailand so we can go to this island she likes to set up some kind of hippy backpacker hostel, where we’ll play flutes at dawn and do chakra meditation classes. That’s why she wants a party before we get married – we’re not coming back.’

  Em reached out for the counter because it felt like her Birkenstock sandals had become ice skates.

  Howling, Floyd broke down with his entire body. His chest heaved, he was gasping for air and grasping his hair tightly like a crazed lunatic.

  ‘Her version of settling down is running away and I was so looking forward to changing that little nipper’s nappies,’ he wailed.

  She wanted to go to him but she couldn’t trust her legs. It was a good job, she realised seconds later, because in a convulsion so severe, Floyd threw up a fountain of vomit so spectacular it went across the breakfast bar and splattered across the tiles.

  The Early Hours of Tuesday

  Letty

  ‘Come with you?’ Letty whispered.

  ‘Why the bloody hell not!’ Lance said sitting up in bed, his eyes shining like blue infinity pools, as if it was a eureka moment.

  Stunned, Letty realized that all she had to do was dive in and they’d have forever. But what he was suggesting, what he obviously wanted to do, was life-changing.

  ‘To Australia?’ she said, ‘You’re going to go?’ She needed him to spell it out.

  He shrugged. ‘What else can I do? I can’t live in a different hemisphere to Eddy. Saying goodnight to him when it’s morning there. I’ll be a stranger. But it doesn’t have to be the end of us.’

  Letty’s head whirled from two days of worry. Lance was in full ‘get your beach body’ mode, rising before she was awake to do early PT sessions and not returning until she was asleep. There hadn’t been a moment to raise Helen’s visit. It hadn’t stopped her wondering though: why he’d kept it from her, how they were supposedly in a serious relationship yet he knew nothing of her money problems. They both had secrets – it wasn’t how things should be. Their first chance to discuss it all came just after 10pm when he came in. Incredibly, they’d avoided a row. She’d understood she couldn’t criticise him for holding things from her when she had done the same.

  They’d both cried though: he hadn’t told her about Helen’s plans to leave because he was so in shock. He’d felt sick with the guilt of thinking of himself rather than Eddy’s dying grandmother. And of thinking Letty wouldn’t understand because she wasn’t a mum. This had set her off: she felt she was falling short of who he needed. Her anguish that their intimacy had gone. Then her debts came tumbling out and she heaved sobs of grief that she had filled the holes in her life with material goods. In an instant, he’d offered to turn her red statements black: they were in this together.

  Their make-up sex had been slow and adoring – they promised over and over never to let go of each other. But now Letty could see it wasn’t that simple.

  ‘Come with me,’ he repeated, taking her hands into his. ‘As my partner, you’d be eligible to apply for a visa if I acted as your sponsor. Or we could get married. Whatever you want, however you want to play it,’ he said, desperately.

  ‘Not the most romantic of proposals there… I dunno, babes.’ She shut her eyes and held her head. This wasn’t a tea or coffee, brown or red sauce dilemma. This was bloody massive.

  ‘It’s a great
life out there, beaut. The sunshine, the sea, the barbies. We’d have a pool and Sydney would be our doorstep. You haven’t lived unless you’ve had a barramundi fillet at Doyles On The Beach.’

  ‘I can go to Barry Island for fish and chips, you know.’ She needed a lot more persuading than a naff postcard from Neighbours.

  ‘Yeah but can you see the Opera House and the harbour from there? I think not. Then there’s the surf. Manly is the place. And the food – there’s pan-fusion-everything. Sydney is where every culture meets – you could have anything you can dream of. Vietnamese, Lebanese, Chinese, Japanese, American, Indian, Spanish.’ He was holding her in his arms now, begging her to picture it.

  ‘What about chicken curry half-and-half? I’d miss that Welsh delicacy of rice and chips from Dorothy’s. There is no better takeaway after a night on the pop.’ She couldn’t take it in.

  ‘I’m being serious,’ he said, cuddling her. ‘Stop making jokes.’

  ‘I can’t help it. It’s what I do.’ Even though she found comfort in him, she also felt the wrench of everything she’d leave behind. ‘The hills, I’d miss the green.’ The Valleys where she’d grown up, the parks of Cardiff and the countryside.

  ‘There are mountains a day trip away, you know. There’s the Botanical Gardens too, right in the centre. We’ve got cockatoos, galahs, kookaburras, flying foxes, lizards, yabbies’—’

  ‘SNAKES! Scary poisonous ones and big bitey spiders.’

  ‘Yeah, but they don’t like Pommies. You taste too bitter.’

  They shared a laugh, collapsing onto the bed on their backs.

  But she was troubled by the wonder of where she would fit in. ‘What if you’re only asking me along because you’d feel too guilty to go off without me after everything that’s happened?’

  ‘Look, I won’t lie to you,’ he sighed. ‘Eddy comes first. I won’t live thousands of miles away from him. End of. I have to be there to see him grow up.’ She got this, a million times over. ‘It’s hard to say that to you when I love you so much. But I’d be miserable without you. We can make this work.’

  ‘I’ve no money, you know that...’

  ‘I told you. I’d look after you.’

  ‘I just don’t know,’ she said, snuggling into him, hiding from the decision.

  ‘What’s stopping you?’ he said, smoothing her hair.

  ‘My friends. Cups of tea with Em, drinking sessions with Frankie, our pampering evenings, they would all end.’

  ‘Haven’t you said their lives are changing?’

  This was true – Em was going to be a mum, and in all likelihood Frankie would end up back with Jason. Where did that leave her? Single and a spare part.

  ‘They can visit, you can FaceTime and you’ll make new mates.’

  Damn him, Lance was setting out a very persuasive stall.

  ‘I don’t want to be trailing you around, depending on you. Like, I’ve made a promise to myself, that I was going to start being more assertive for myself, starting with my spending. Address my feelings of worthlessness. But how can I be independent when I’d be so dependent on you?’

  ‘You’d make your own life out there. You’d have a head start too being with an Aussie, you know, you wouldn’t be an ex-pat. And one day we might have a baby and that’s a social life of its own.’

  Letty’s heart leapt at his projection into the future, their future. Then it crashed when she thought of what she’d do all day. ‘But what about work? I’m just a PA.’

  ‘There’s college. You can get this qualification you’re after. You’d get away from that creep Ross too. Imagine telling him to stuff his job – you’re off Down Under.’

  ‘But I’d be running away.’

  ‘Nope, you’d be free.’

  But no matter what Lance said, no matter how amazing it sounded, she’d be going because of him not because she was doing it off her own back. Playing third fiddle to Eddy, Helen and Lance.

  She was facing an ultimatum. He would go whatever.

  Taking control, that’s what she’d promised she’d do, could that happen if she followed him? Could she make it her own?

  It was her choice to make: stay here and then what? Or make a go of it and start a whole new adventure?

  It all depended on one thing, she knew as their entwined bodies moved towards sleep, and that was whether their relationship was strong enough.

  That Morning

  Frankie

  Dad is bright this morning, Frankie thought as she watched him pacing a spot of carpet while he took a quick call on his ancient brick of a cordless phone in the lounge. Even though she’d only just arrived, he seemed less creaky and more lively, as if he was taking a role in life rather than watching from his armchair. It must be having her round, she thought, feeling guilty that she hadn’t been over sooner.

  ‘Clifford Rogers speaking. Oh hello, ye-es, yes…’ He winked at her with a creased hazel eye as he spoke. ‘…no… a bit later.’ He pulled a funny face to make Frankie laugh. ‘Okay, ta ta, bye for now.’ He examined his immaculate fingernails as he ended the conversation. Despite his DIY projects, Dad always had lovely clean hands. ‘Sorry about that,’ he said, turning to her. ‘Right then. Tea? Coffee? Fairy juice?’

  ‘Whatever you’re having. Who was that then?’ she said, perching on the worn sofa that had been around for as long as she could remember.

  ‘Gareth. We’ll be having a pint later. Tuesday night is Legion night.’

  Frankie’s smile hid her sadness that he hadn’t been talking to a lady friend. But she had suspected as much. That was why last night she’d asked if she could pop in for a couple of hours in between clients – to encourage him to try online dating. He had been stuck in the past for too long. Like the old her, he resisted change – the evidence was all around her; from the furniture and the shelves lined with crafts she’d made at school to the hideous orange clock above the fireplace dating back to 1983 when Mum discovered Habitat. But he had to move on from mourning, and she was in the right place to support him.

  ‘I’ve got you some new trousers,’ she said, jiggling an M&S bag at him.

  ‘Oh, God, they’re not those skinny what-nots are they?’ he said, holding his once-dark now greying short back and sides in alarm. ‘I’d be worried they’d cut off my circulation.’

  ‘No! They’re just trousers. A bit more up to date, though.’

  ‘And what’s wrong with how I dress?’ he said, crossing his strong and capable arms in mock offence. ‘I’ll have you know these utility shorts and this T-shirt are new. Ish.’

  ‘You always look nice, Dad, I didn’t mean that. I just think you could try something a bit different. Something subtle, but it will make you look younger, more trendy.’

  ‘I’m fifty-bloody-eight, love!’ Then when he saw her face had dropped, he promised her he’d try them on. But not now with an audience. He wasn’t one of those supermodels, you know, he added as he led them along the dark corridor into the light of his new kitchen, which he’d finally got round to finishing.

  ‘It’s only because I think you hide a bit,’ she said, to his back and bald spot. ‘It’s like you’ve given up on things. Fifty-eight isn’t old – you’ve still time to meet some— Wow! This is amazing!’

  She stopped to take it in: the terracotta-tiled back wall had been replaced by French doors which were pulled open all the way and led straight onto the sunny patio. On the right was a black two-seater sofa facing a wall-mounted flat-screen TV on the left. The grey floor tiles contained sprinkles of quartz which twinkled in the light. A wooden-topped island floated in the middle of a brand new country-style set of white units and there was even a vase of tulips on the side.

  ‘Given up, have I, love?’ Dad said, smiling from the sink where he filled the kettle.

  ‘Dad,’ she gasped, ‘when you said a bit of an update I didn’t think you meant this! How did you get it done so quick? I was only here…’ She stopped when she remembered she hadn’t dropped by for at
least a week. ‘I’m so sorry, I’ve been caught up with stuff,’ she said, explaining.

  ‘Oh, I had some help. And listen, you’ve got a life and I’m glad you’re busy. What do you think then? Look, I even kept a space for Judy. And there’s underfloor heating to keep her old bones warm.’

  Judy, who was lying on her back with her bent paws hanging in half on top of her chest, opened an eye and wagged her tail half-heartedly.

  ‘Don’t get up, old girl,’ he said to the dog, ‘her arthritis is getting worse, Frankie, I’m not sure she’ll be around much longer.’

  ‘Oh don’t say that,’ Frankie implored, then before she had time to think, her greatest fear spilled out, ‘You’ll be all alone.’

  Dad shook his head at her. ‘Now look, I’m very happy, don’t you start with all that.’

  ‘I’ve been thinking, Dad,’ Frankie said, seizing the moment.

  ‘Dangerous,’ Dad said, opening and closing cupboards because he couldn’t find the teabags.

  ‘Internet dating. There are loads of sites for older people, divorced people like you with kids and…’

  He laughed and announced there was no need for her to feel sorry for him. Honestly, he added, which meant he didn’t want to hear any more.

  Frankie sighed but having said her bit she respected his right to shut her up. If she went on, he would be even less receptive next time she mentioned it. She had to go softly-softly with Dad.

  ‘Why don’t you tell me about your stuff, love?’ Dad said.

  Frankie sank into the squishy settee and took a mouthful of tea. ‘Oh, it’s nothing really. Just Jason, as usual. We went out Saturday night and he stayed over,’ she glanced up at him to make sure he understood her coded revelation.