The Goodmans

by Clare Ashton

  “Just think, we could get a place in a village outside Bristol. A thatched cottage even. I could play Sunday league football in the sticks. You’d get your fix of countryside without having to trek up to Ludbury every week.”

  Nausea curdled in Jude’s stomach.

  “It’s ridiculous you coming back here every weekend. Let’s start a proper life together. Just you and me.”

  But that sounded desolate. No Ludbury? Unable to see her best friend? Not see her parents, even volatile Maggie? Life with Bill only?

  “Perhaps,” Jude stuttered, “Bristol might not be the best for us, and this isn’t the right time to–”

  “This hasn’t been very romantic, has it?” Bill slurred. “OK. Give me a bit of space here.”

  “Please. We should talk about this in private.”

  “Come on guys,” Bill continued, spreading his arms wide.

  Eli, Selene and Richard all stepped back, leaving Jude exposed. Bill made a great show of falling to his knee and stretched his arms towards her. A gasp rippled around the room and guests withdrew to the edges to watch the drama unfold.

  “Bill, please.” Jude wasn’t her mother or Eli. She didn’t like to be on show for something as personal as a proposal. He knew this. Before several glasses of wine he knew this.

  “Jude Goodman,” Bill bellowed, an expectant grin on his face, “would you do me the honour of becoming my wife?”

  The words cut through Abby with icy brutality. Every part of her being plunged into shock and she was numb from her hands to her cheeks. She clung to Celia, squeezing her arm, in the pretence of aiding the old woman.

  “Be my wife, Jude,” he boomed across the hushed room.

  Bill’s command was like another punch. But she mustn’t show it. Turn around. Put on a smile. Look at the happy couple. She’d managed it plenty of times before. When Jude had met Bill. When they’d moved into a flat together. Celebrating when Jude had found happiness. All the while dying a little inside.

  Abby raised her hands as if to applaud the inevitable acceptance and faced the couple. She stretched a smile across her lips, her cheeks aching with the effort. She swallowed her grief, gulp after gulp.

  It was for good this time, she realised. Thirteen years Jude had been there. More than a decade of constant friendship. A message or call every day. Companionship every weekend. Gone.

  Her stomach clenched so tight she couldn’t breathe and the smile was faltering. Celia’s warm hand wrapped around her arm and pulled her close. Abby had forgotten she was there and snapped her gaze down to the old woman.

  “This is killing you, isn’t it?” Celia said hoarsely. Her eyes were wide and she gripped Abby’s arm tighter.

  Oh God. Celia had realised. Abby stared at the old woman, stricken and mortified that someone had discovered her pain. She tried to laugh and pull back that celebratory face. She swallowed and swallowed, but the grief wouldn’t stay down long enough to dismiss Celia’s words.

  “Abby,” Celia whispered. “Dear, dear Abby. How long?”

  Abby stared at the horrible sight of Bill on his knees proposing to the love of her life. Then she was clapping, spurred on by the applause of the crowd, half to drown out Bill’s words, half to drown out her rising despair.

  Just another minute. If she could get through one more she could take her leave. She slapped her palms together, the force reverberating up her arms and pounding through her head. Just one more minute and it would all be over.

  Then Jude caught her eye and Abby faltered. The applause rang on but she was no longer swept up in it. Her friend stared at her, beautiful in the spotlight, and seeming such a long way away. Any resolve drained from Abby’s body and a flood of sorrow swept through her. She wilted next to Celia.

  “Dear girl,” the old woman repeated. “How long have you held this in?”

  “What do you say?” Bill shouted above the applause, his bravado unleashed by alcohol and the expectant crowd. “Let’s get married, Jude.”

  This wasn’t fair, putting her on the spot in public. Jude hated this.

  “I’d rather we talked about this privately,” she said, trying to pitch her voice for Bill’s ears only.

  “Come on, Jude. What do you say?”

  Everyone stared. Smiling faces ringed the scene, some covering their mouths in happy expectation, some clapping as if knowing the answer already. Except one – Celia. She pulled at Abby’s arm, staring up in anguish. Then Jude caught Abby’s gaze and any preoccupation with her own embarrassment switched to concern for her friend.

  Abby had panic and fear written across her face. What was Celia telling her? Was she trying to calm her?

  “Come on, Jude,” Bill said. He was less cheerful now. “Say something.”

  “I…” she looked him in the eye, all the while the same spot in the crowd tugging at her attention. “Sorry. Yes. We can think about it. Of course.”

  Where was she? Celia stared towards the garden, but Abby had disappeared.

  “Jude.” His voice pitched higher with irritation.

  “Yes, Bill?”

  “That’s your answer?”

  Still she searched the crowd. “Yes, of course we can think about it.”

  Bill tugged at her hand. He looked stunned and the crowd seemed to fall quieter.

  “Like you said,” Jude tried to cover up her distraction, “we could think about marriage sometime in the future.”

  Bill got to his feet. “But …”

  “Let’s think about it.”

  “But I asked you now,” he snapped.

  Jude looked at her partner of five years, the handsome man she’d spied in the cinema roaring with laughter at a romcom. The same man who had a penchant for fine food and whole list of commonalities she’d ticked through the years. At this moment she couldn’t feel the warmth of a single one of them. She only wondered at what distressed Abby.

  “Something’s wrong,” she said.

  “Yes, there is.”

  “We need to talk about this later. There’s something wrong with Abby.”

  Bill widened his stance in defence.

  “She could be having one of her attacks,” Jude implored.

  “OK,” Richard shouted and Jude was relieved to have her father’s arm wrap around her shoulders. People shuffled in the ring and the tension in the crowd eased as Richard stepped forward. “We don’t want to overshadow our happy couple.”

  He lifted his empty glass high in the air. “I’d like to raise a toast to Eli and Selene.”

  Jude blushed in humiliation, but still grateful for her father’s intervention joined in the toast. “To Eli and Selene.”

  At last the crowd broke into eddies of smaller groups. Her father and Bill stared at her expectantly, but she had no time for either.

  “I must find her. Don’t try to stop me.” And she peeled off into the crowd.

  Jude pushed through warm bodies and swept by small children as she searched the room.

  “Gran?” she called out, taking Celia’s arm. “Where’s Abby? What’s wrong?”

  Something weighed in Celia’s expression as she examined Jude. “You don’t know,” she said. “You really don’t know, do you?”

  “Is she OK?”

  Celia stared at her, searching her face, then answered. “She’s fine my dear. She’ll be fine.”

  “What’s wrong? She looked distraught.”

  “A touch of women’s troubles perhaps.” And she patted her abdomen as if to emphasise the point. “Give her a while. Abby will be OK.”

  “But she looked devastated.”

  “Please dear.” Celia was firm. “Let her rest.”

  “She could be having one of her attacks,” Jude insisted.

  “I will find her,” Celia said and she patted her hand. “Let me do it.”

  Jude watched Celia hobble into the crowd but had no intention of giving up her search. She stepped into the garden and the click of her heels echoed in the emptiness. Everyone must have
come inside to witness the commotion.

  “Abby?” Jude called out. All she could hear was the hum of conversation from the house and the trickling of water around boulders in the river. The darkness hung cool and heavy around her.

  “Abby, are you out here?” She squinted as her eyes adjusted to the lamplight, slowly making her way towards the river as she searched from side to side.

  “Please, Abby. If you can talk, let me know where you are?”

  Jude studied every dark shape in the garden for what might be her friend curled up in despair. She reached the river and tried one more time, “Please. Are you here, Abby?” before jogging on her toes towards the house.

  Eli and Selene hung inside the doorway. Jude opened her mouth to call for them when she heard Selene say, “Is that woman OK? Jude’s friend – Abby?”

  Eli shrugged. “Crying somewhere over Jude I imagine, after that oaf proposing.”

  “Really?” Selene responded with more sensitivity. “Abby doesn’t like Bill? She thinks Jude shouldn’t marry him?”

  It wasn’t news that Eli didn’t respect Bill. They were such different personalities. But it was a surprise Abby wasn’t favourable and Jude hesitated in the darkness of the garden.

  “Oh no, not that,” Eli said, a sadness softening his expression. “No. Abby’s in love with Jude. Always has been.”

  It was a moment that affected her like no other – as if the world stopped turning and everything careered out of control, all apart from Jude, stuck frozen to the spot and able only to watch.

  Everything was chaos. Nothing was what it had seemed just an hour before.

  Chapter 7.

  “Well. That had to be the worst party ever,” Abby muttered.

  She’d have to remember to say that to Celia. It would make her chuckle with its understatement. Abby closed her eyes. Her frivolity evaporated and warm tears seeped beneath her eyelids.

  “Shit,” she whispered, and she gulped back another sob.

  She’d run from the party without a word to Jude. Maybe no-one had noticed in all the celebration. And maybe Celia would let it go. Hopefully Celia would let it go.

  Abby sat up in bed, determined not to dwell, yet again, on the night before, because she’d spent the last five hundred minutes doing just that. She’d finally got to sleep around eight o’clock, which was, she squinted at the old mantel clock above the fireplace, about ten minutes ago.

  There was a tap at the door downstairs, and she vaguely remembered another which may have woken her. It was likely the postwoman, and although a surprise parcel or an exchange of witty comments would cheer her, Abby really, really needed some sleep.

  She lay down, pulled up the duvet and gave her small cosy room a sad smile. Her little cottage, in a terrace of similar colourful abodes on the south side of Ludbury, was her pride and safe haven. She’d always dreamed of a house in a country town, with exposed beams and a wood stove.

  One of her favourite memories was of being ten years old: curled up on the sofa with her mother, the view outside of grey sky, punctuated by blocks of flats identical to the one they sat in. Her mother cuddled her as they looked through magazine pictures and dreamed of homes as if money were no object. It was a little place like this they’d wished for – a cosy cottage in a picture-postcard town. Outside, the wooded hills of Shropshire were a stroll down the road, the Welsh hills, golden in the Indian summer, a little further. She lived near to people who cared for her. Abby couldn’t think of anywhere she’d rather be. And even on days like today, when she was sobbing with her heart all over the floor, this was the place she would have chosen to do it.

  Abby groaned. Her head was swirling and had the clarity of cotton wool. She was nearly too tired to cry. Nearly. Because, a choking pinch of sadness decided, just for fun, to make her hiccup one more time.

  “I’ve got to get some sleep,” she moaned. She was crying more from hysterical exhaustion than anything else now.

  She turned over, determined to take her own medical advice, when her foot encountered something warm. She wriggled her toes. Something warm and hairy. She wriggled her toes again. Something sizeable, warm and hairy. She lay quite still, eyes wide, wondering why there should be something hairy in her bed. Then the something purred. Her panic subsided a little. Not a great deal, because she didn’t have a cat.

  Abby flung back the duvet, to reveal a pristine white ball of fur, two disdainful green eyes, and a jewel-encrusted blue collar, all curled up at her feet.

  “Maximilian!” Abby cried. “You scared the living… What are you doing here?”

  The neighbour’s cat purred again and closed his eyes with an expression that suggested he either expected more pleasure-by-foot or intended to kill Abby in her sleep.

  Abby sniffed and wondered if more than tears were the cause. Damn that cat. How had he wriggled in this time?

  “You know I’m allergic to you.”

  She could swear he was smiling.

  “You know you’re not meant to be in my house.”

  He was definitely smiling.

  “Especially not the bedroom.”

  His teeth stuck over his lip when he purred like that. He was probably mulling over the best way to end her life so he’d have the cottage to himself.

  “Come on,” she groaned. “Let yourself out the way you came. Don’t make me get up.” The world seemed determined to kick her out of bed today. Abby looked to the ceiling and, imagining the universe beyond, muttered, “Could you give a heart-broken doctor a break today?”

  Maximilian yowled.

  “OK. How about tomorrow?” She sat up. “Come on fur ball. Let’s get you out.”

  She cradled him in her arms like a baby and stroked his head.

  “Ooo”, she cooed. “I’m a terrible lesbian. How can I be allergic to pussy, hmm?”

  She sniffed and smiled adoringly at his furry little face, rubbing his jaw line so he drooled and exposed his teeth. Typical the two things she wanted most in life she couldn’t have – the woman of her dreams and the cat of her nightmares.

  Maximilian suddenly jumped out of her arms, trotted into the bathroom and leapt from the window onto the garden wall.

  “Ah, little bugger. That’s how you got in.” She dipped beneath the door frame and trundled across the uneven floorboards to close the window.

  Her heart sank as she spied two beakers on the shelf above the sink: one hers, one for her regular guest. She stared at Jude’s pink toothbrush, forlorn. No Jude this sunny Saturday morning. No best friend slumbering in the spare room across the landing. Abby caught her reflection in the mirror behind. Her skin was pale and she could give a panda a good run for its money with those eyes.

  She pulled a face, sticking her tongue out and crossing her eyes. It’s what her mother did when she caught her in the mirror. Abby used to watch her put on makeup. Her mother never moaned about her looks. Perhaps because she’d been young, twenty-seven when Abby was ten, with no wrinkles to complain of. Abby bit her lip. She could do with her mother right now.

  She felt alone staring at her solitary reflection and standing in the bathroom, chilly in the autumn morning, especially because some silly bugger had left the window open.

  If she’d been grieving for any other reason, Jude would have been here in a flash, comforting her, distracting her in that playful way at which she was so adept. Or Maggie, blazing in, furious at the cause of Abby’s heartache, swearing at the world until everything felt right again. But for this? Who could she turn to? Who do you turn to when you’re in love with your best friend, and your entire support network is your best friend’s family?

  Her phone buzzed distantly from the bedside table and Abby groaned once more. Celia. She’d sent a stream of messages during the night. And after leaving the tenth one unanswered Abby had ignored them altogether. Yes, Celia would have been the other person she’d have talked to.

  Abby had never known her grandparents. Whoever her father had been, he’d not hung around lo
ng. And with her mother only a teen, her maternal grandparents showed their disapproval by being as absent as the father. So it was with a special fondness that Abby regarded Celia – a grandmother she’d never had. But today she was the last person Abby wanted to see, after her best friend and Maggie, of course.

  Abby shivered and tutted at herself again for leaving the bathroom window open. She slung a dressing gown over her pyjamas and padded down the stairs with the intention of lighting the stove. She allowed herself to feel a little pleasure as she stepped onto the luxurious carpet which softened the creaking oak staircase and tickled in between her toes. Today she was going to pamper herself. Without the comfort of her best friend she was going to resort to hot chocolate, a sinful amount of chocolate cake then plain chocolate on top of that. She might even indulge in a glass of a chocolate liqueur if that’s what it took to get through the weekend.

  It looked like a beautiful autumn day outside, just to rub it in. She peered through the back door window into her snug courtyard garden. The reddening leaves of the vine which grew up the back wall glowed in the sun and bunches of tiny black grapes glistened with dew. Maximilian was curled up on the round iron table, covering it with hair no doubt. She’d sit outside later, maybe, give the self-important little git some fuss and catch a glimpse of the sun’s rays before it arced over the house and left the garden in shade, which the abundant ivy on the remaining walls relished.

  On a positive note, downstairs was tidy, the flip side being she’d cleaned for Jude. Her shoulders slumped as she realised she would be reminded of her friend’s absence possibly until the end of time.

  The stove was ready with newspaper, kindling and logs. The world’s softest sofa was ready for two occupants to cuddle up for film night. The kitchen beyond was prepped to bake another batch of chocolate muffins. And through the nine square panes of the front door’s top half, the sun blazed in the colourful street outside. It shone even on a tuft of grey hair which peeked through a lower pane and fluttered in the breeze.

  “Wha…?” Abby screwed up her nose. “Who?” Who was the height of a four-year-old with grey hair? Oh. Had the grey-haired four-year-old been knocking at the door?