If We're Not Married by Thirty

by Anna Bell

  I step out of my car, trying to psyche myself up to ring Danny and explain when I hear him shouting my name. I really must be more tired than I thought, as I’m starting to hallucinate.

  ‘Lydia!’ he shouts again and I turn and see him standing by his car, which is parked three ahead of mine.

  I run up to him and plough straight into him, banging my head into his.

  ‘Aw, fuck,’ says Danny, as we both rub at our heads.

  Why is it things like that always look super romantic in films and on the telly? I bet we’re going to have matching bruises tomorrow.

  ‘Sorry for being so clumsy.’ I lean up to him slowly and kiss him gently, making sure that I cause no further injury. ‘What are you doing here so early? I wasn’t expecting you for hours.’

  ‘I know, but my meeting this afternoon got cancelled, so after I delivered the certificates to the registry office, I thought I’d come and surprise you.’

  ‘I’m glad you did,’ I say, wrapping my arms around him and kissing him again.

  ‘Get a room,’ shout some passing teenage boys, sniggering.

  We pull away and Danny raises an eyebrow, ‘They’ve got a point, shall we?’

  He leans over to his boot and takes a rucksack out before he looks at me expectantly. ‘I’m intrigued to see your place.’

  ‘Hmm, yes, I can’t wait to show it to you.’ All ten square metres of it.

  ‘You know I’ll have to have a proper tour of it. Preferably starting with the bedroom.’

  ‘Oh,’ I say pulling him along. ‘That’s no problem.’ Seeing as you see that as you walk in.

  I take his hand in mine and walk over to the house. We’re about to walk down the side to the entrance to my flat when I see a woman waving down the road. I try to drag Danny in more quickly, but he’s seen her.

  ‘Isn’t that Kerry?’

  I bite my tongue, wishing that I’d made more of an effort to tell him about my housing situation before.

  ‘Oh, so it is. Kerry and Olivia,’ I say, pretending that it’s a total shocker that they’d be on this road.

  ‘Aunty Lydia,’ says Olivia, practically bowling me over with a hug. She’s so excited to see me that I feel bad that I haven’t made more of an effort to see her since I got back. But I’ve snuck off for work early the last two mornings, and last night I came in from work late and fell straight to sleep.

  ‘I guess she’s missed me,’ I say to my sister as she reaches us. She’s all bundled up in a winter coat and her cheeks are red from a walk in the sea breeze. ‘Can’t blame her, I suppose. I’m her cool auntie.’

  ‘Did you bring me a present back from Spain?’ she asks the second she pulls away.

  ‘Ah,’ I say, feeling a lot less loved. ‘Of course I did, just don’t get your hopes up too much.’

  Kerry gives me a quick hug hello. ‘Happy New Year, Sis. And you, Daniel Whittaker, it’s been a while.’ She gives him a hug, too, mouthing over his shoulder at me that he’s looking pretty hot. I give her a quick nod to say I know. ‘Are you coming up for a cup of tea?’

  ‘Um,’ I say, looking at Danny, who’s rightly confused.

  ‘Yes, we’ll dump our stuff and be right up,’ I say.

  ‘With the present?’ asks Olivia.

  ‘With the present.’ I nod.

  ‘OK, see you in a little bit, then,’ says Kerry with a wink.

  She heads up the front stairs and I walk around the side of the house to the little staircase.

  ‘So,’ I say, turning to Danny. ‘Perhaps I should have mentioned I live under Kerry’s house.’

  ‘Um, might have been an idea.’

  I push open the door to my little granny flat and I look at it through Danny’s eyes, wondering what he’s going to think.

  ‘Ta da,’ I say, wincing a little as I walk over to the lounge curtains and open them up. ‘I know, it’s nothing like your comfy cottage in the Lakes.’

  I look around my little flat. I’ve grown to love it over the last few months. It might have been a little bare when I first arrived, with its whitewashed walls and wooden floors, but when I was going through my hygge phase, I added the white furry rug, comfy cushions, candles and throws and have made it feel like home.

  ‘It’s very you,’ Danny says eventually. ‘And it’s cosy. Why didn’t you tell me you lived with Kerry? All this time I’ve been writing to you here.’

  ‘I know,’ I say, perching on the arm of the sofa. ‘It’s just I felt a bit pathetic. When I broke up with Ross, I just couldn’t face doing another house share; I can’t really afford to buy, and if I rented by myself, then I’d only just be breaking even every month and I’d have no chance to save. I was toying with the idea of moving back in with mum, but then Kerry suggested this place. The people who had lived here before had converted the basement into a granny flat for their mother and Kerry and Jim had always thought they’d do it up one day and perhaps pop it on Airbnb. So we all worked on it for a week and put new flooring down and painted the walls. I sanded down the kitchen units and repainted them.’

  ‘You’ve done a great job,’ he says, looking over and nodding his head in approval.

  ‘Plus, I have the bonus of getting to see people’s feet as they go past,’ I say, pointing at the window at the front, which is made of frosted glass.

  ‘Bonus,’ he says.

  ‘It’s not quite a view of a lake.’

  Danny’s about to reply when we hear Olivia shrieking.

  ‘Auntie Lydia,’ she shouts, running down the stairs and causing us to spring apart.

  ‘I guess I’ve got to start locking the top door now. Yes, Olivia?’

  ‘Mum says the kettle’s boiled.’

  ‘Thanks, sweetie. We’ll be right up.’

  Olivia doesn’t move. And I realise that Danny and I are going to have to finish our conversation later. He doesn’t seem too angry with me, which bodes well for when I tell him later that I’m not moving up to the Lake District as quickly as we’d planned.

  Olivia is impatiently tapping her toe and I reach over to my half-unpacked suitcase and pull out a paper bag that’s been taped together with red and yellow ribbons.

  Her whole face lights up just like it had on Christmas Day and she rips the paper off in seconds.

  She shakes the tambourine noisily then looks puzzled at the wooden toy in her hand.

  ‘They’re castanets,’ I say, taking them off her and showing her how to clack them together. ‘They’re a Spanish musical instrument.’

  She starts to bash them together clumsily.

  ‘Lovely,’ I say.

  ‘Don’t forget the tea,’ she says over her clacking. ‘Come on.’

  She’s staring hard at Danny and I get the impression that she’s going nowhere unless we follow her.

  ‘Right, then, tea,’ I say, with an apologetic look at Danny.

  ‘Tea,’ he says, nodding, and Olivia takes us both by the hand and pulls us upstairs.

  Kerry’s in the kitchen pouring it out when we get there.

  ‘Ah, my sister and my soon-to-be brother-in-law,’ she says, patting Danny on the back and pushing him down into a kitchen chair. ‘Come and tell me how it all happened, then.’

  Olivia is exhibiting great skill playing the castanets with one hand and the tambourine with the other as she dances around the kitchen. I’m already regretting my present choices.

  ‘Have you said thank you for those, Olivia? Let me say thank you for those too,’ says Kerry, pulling a face at me.

  ‘Thank you,’ says Olivia.

  ‘You’re both very welcome,’ I reply.

  ‘Liv, why don’t you play that in your room?’ shouts Kerry over the noise.

  ‘But I’m doing it for Uncle Danny,’ she says, grinning at him.

  ‘Oh, that’s lovely of you,’ he says. ‘Uncle, huh, already?’

  ‘Well, it’s only four weeks until it’s official,’ says Kerry with a sly wink.

  ‘I want to impress him,’ says Ol
ivia proudly.

  ‘Perhaps he can impress you,’ I say. ‘Danny knows how to flamenco.’

  ‘What?’ he says, looking at me as if he’s misheard me.

  ‘What’s flamenco?’ asks Olivia, her eyes wide.

  ‘It’s a type of Spanish dancing,’ says Kerry. She perches down on the end of the sofa. ‘Come on, then, Danny, let’s see it.’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ says Olivia, jumping up and down on the spot. ‘I can play the music for you. Is it like this?’

  She shakes the tambourine to almost breaking point and Danny gives me a look, before he gently takes it off her.

  We all stare wide eyed as he takes to the middle of the floor, seemingly unbothered by the audience.

  ‘It’s more like this,’ he says, taking the tambourine up to the side of his head and rhythmically clapping along whilst doing a funny stompy walk around the kitchen.

  Whilst it wouldn’t be a ten from Len for his efforts, he’s not half bad. Yes, he’s out of time and he’s a little stiff in his movements (that car journey’s probably done him no favours) but there’s something about it that’s still quite masterful and sexy. I suddenly wish I had one of those swishy dresses that I could whip around me and strut about in.

  ‘Olé!’ he shouts as he lands on his knees.

  Olivia claps and shouts, ‘Again, again!’

  Kerry and I look at each other trying not to laugh, but clapping all the same.

  ‘It was a bit like the passey dobble,’ says Olivia taking back the tambourine.

  ‘The Paso doble,’ says Kerry, correcting her.

  ‘That’s the one. From Strictly,’ she tells me as she looks us in the eyes.

  ‘Where did you think I learnt that from?’ Danny says back with a broad grin.

  ‘Did you not learn it from your Fun Flamenco book?’

  Danny looks confused for a second.

  ‘Oh, God. My mum bought that for me for Christmas one year. We all went to a flamenco show in Spain, one that was really cheesy and touristy and I got dragged up on stage. I’d had way too much rioja and thought I was some sort of Ricky Martin and my mum thought I was a natural.’

  ‘Oh,’ I say.

  ‘Yes, pretty much all the books on that shelf are Christmas presents from Mum. Just to save any future embarrassment when we’re at a jazz club and you commandeer the stage or we’re in Vegas and you see a high-stake poker table – I can’t play the piano, and I’m pretty hopeless at Poker.’

  ‘Good to know,’ I say, secretly sad about the piano thing. I’d had all sorts of fantasies of me lying on the piano á la Pretty Woman.

  ‘I’m going to practise. There’ll be a show tonight,’ says Olivia to Kerry.

  ‘OK, then, we will clear a place in tonight’s schedule for it,’ she says, mock saluting.

  ‘And you,’ she says pointing to Danny, ‘you’ll have to come and practise too.’

  ‘Don’t you think it’d be better on your own? I hear you’re a wonderful dancer,’ he says.

  ‘Oh no. Everyone knows that you need two people for the passey dobble.’

  I try and stop myself from laughing.

  ‘Uncle Danny,’ says Olivia stamping her foot like a diva at the kitchen door. ‘Uncle Danny.’

  ‘You might as well go and get it over with. She’ll keep calling you until you go.’

  He looks at me as if I’ve got some magic pass to get him out of it.

  ‘Don’t look at me. You started it with your groovy moves.’

  ‘Didn’t you start it when you told her that I did flamenco, and when you bought her the instruments?’

  ‘Hush now, none of that logic applies when dealing with an almost seven-year-old.’

  ‘Just you wait until you meet Stuart’s kids; you think you’re feeding me to a lion here,’ he says with a slightly evil-sounding cackle. He leans over and gives me a kiss before heading upstairs, clapping to an invisible flamenco beat as he goes.

  I watch him go and I’m still grinning as I hear him stomp noisily around the lounge. I realise that Kerry is staring at me.

  ‘You have to tell me everything. I mean, what the bloody hell happened? You went on a holiday to get some space and you’ve practically come back with a husband,’ says Kerry.

  ‘I know. Can you believe it?’

  ‘No, I bloody can’t. I’m happy for you. I am, truly. I think that Danny’s a great guy. I just worry that you’re rushing things a little. I mean, you’re getting married in a month. What’s the hurry?’

  ‘Why wouldn’t we hurry? I love him, Kerry. I think I always have.’

  ‘I know you were close when you were younger, but people change.’

  ‘But we’ve been writing to each other for all these years.’

  ‘I thought you just sent each other silly presents. Do you talk about real things in your letters too?’ She’s got that superior older-sister look on her face.

  ‘No, but we got together once. At your wedding, actually,’ I say a little sheepishly. I’ve never told anyone in the family that. ‘It didn’t work out then, the timing was all wrong. But I’ve always wondered what would have happened if we’d tried harder.’

  ‘At my wedding? So that’s why you were looking so weird during breakfast the next day. Keep you up all night, did he?’

  ‘No,’ I say shaking my head. ‘We only kissed.’

  ‘That’s good to hear. I would have been peeved if you’d got action on my wedding night when I didn’t. God, Jim and I were so drunk I don’t think I even got out of my wedding dress.’

  ‘Classy.’

  ‘It’s funny, though, as I thought that if you were going to get together with one of the Whittaker boys at the wedding it would have been Stuart. I thought I saw you flirting outrageously with each other over the meal. But I guess I got that wrong.’

  I scald my mouth as I try and drink my too-hot tea.

  ‘I just don’t understand. Why couldn’t you have got together then?’ she asks.

  ‘I had that job up in Newcastle and Danny went off travelling before he went back to London. But by the time I moved to London, he’d been sent to work in Tokyo,’ I say, giving her the edited highlights (or lowlights) as they really were.

  ‘Hang on, is that why you moved from Newcastle to London?’ asks Kerry, as if it’s all suddenly fallen into place.

  ‘Part of it.’ I shudder at the thought of that job, that cold, dank bedsit by the tube station. ‘I thought the job in London was better for my career and it was just a bonus that he was there too. He told me he was moving to Tokyo the night I went to tell him I was moving to London.’

  There’s a bang from the lounge and instinctively we both look up the hallway as if to see the walking wounded appear.

  ‘Do you think he’s OK?’

  ‘I think he’s just fine,’ says Kerry. ‘She’s probably roping him into doing some sort of elaborate lift. She’s obsessed with Strictly. She’s devastated that it’s not on again until the autumn.’

  I try and imagine what chaos is going on and I can’t help smiling to myself.

  ‘So, you think the timing is right now, with Danny?’

  ‘Yes,’ I say nodding my head. ‘I’m not letting him go again.’

  ‘So, we really are losing you from the basement?’

  I shift a bit uncomfortably in my seat. We’d already told our families that I was moving up to the Lakes; it’s not only Danny that I’ve got to break the news to that I haven’t given up my job just yet. But I can’t tell anyone until I’ve told him. ‘I’ve really loved living here. I honestly can’t thank you and Jim enough for letting me.’

  ‘Don’t be daft, if it wasn’t for you we never would have pulled our fingers out and got renovating. Plus, now we can put it on Airbnb in plenty of time for the summer.’

  ‘Summer,’ I say nodding, thinking that gives me at least six months. That should be enough time to get into my promotion, shouldn’t it? And I’m sure Danny would understand if we had to do long distance until then
. It’ll go by in the blink of an eye.

  ‘We’re really going to miss you,’ says Kerry. ‘It’s not even like you’re moving just around the corner.’

  ‘Tell me about it,’ I say, the long train journey fresh in my mind, and now that we’ll be doing long distance for months, I’m going to be doing it a whole lot more. ‘I bet you’re going to miss your on-tap babysitter more.’

  She laughs. ‘I certainly am. That and the impromptu girlie nights when Jim’s pissing me off. I’ve loved having somewhere I could storm off to.’

  She comes over and gives me a hug and I can feel tears glistening in my eyes.

  ‘I’m pleased for you, Lydia, I really am. The only thing that worries is me is that Danny’s so impulsive and he’s always chopping and changing what he’s doing. Are you sure this is for real?’

  I think of him over the last ten years. Yes, he’s lived in London, Tokyo, Singapore, New York and the Lakes, but he’s settled now, isn’t he? He’s got a house and a business.

  I nod.

  ‘What Danny and I have, it’s so hard to explain. It just feels like the right thing to do. I’ve got all these butterflies in my stomach.’

  There’s a pause and Kerry stares hard at me.

  ‘You know marriage is about more than butterflies?’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘It’s hard work,’ says Kerry. ‘You have to love someone despite them at times seeming like the most irritating person on the planet. Like when they continuously leave their dirty socks next to the washing basket as if it’s too much effort to lift the lid. Or when they put bottles of beer in the freezer to chill and then forget and they explode, leaving beery-smelling ice all over the inside.’

  ‘Or when they pee on your rhubarb,’ I say grinning.

  ‘Exactly. Believe me, husbands can be pretty damn annoying. But you’ve still got to love them despite all of that and they’ve got to love you when all the mystery has gone. When you’ve let your bikini line go au naturel or you’ve had food poisoning at the same time as each other with only one toilet in the house.’