The Guilt Trip

by Sandie Jones

  ‘Yes, we walked back to our halls together,’ says Rachel.

  ‘Yet I don’t remember meeting you until at least a month later,’ says Noah. ‘So, I think that clearly demonstrates how sober you were, and how pissed I was.’

  ‘I can remember many a night where you got me out of a fix because I was too drunk to look after myself.’ Rachel says it as if it’s a badge of honour to prove how cool she really was, but she can tell by the mischievous look on Noah’s face that he’s about to kibosh her claim.

  ‘That’s because that’s what you get like after two beers,’ he teases. ‘Don’t fool yourself into thinking that I wasn’t off my head when I was holding your hair back while you vomited. I’d had ten pints by then and was still able to hold it together.’

  ‘Children, children,’ says Paige in her best schoolmarm voice. ‘That’s quite enough bickering.’

  Noah pokes his tongue out and Rachel throws a packet of sugar at him.

  ‘So, what’s the plan if they don’t make it back in time for the flight?’ asks Noah.

  ‘Can we all go home?’ asks Paige hopefully. ‘I’ve got a ton of work I could be getting on with.’

  ‘Don’t be so bloody ungrateful,’ scolds Noah, laughing.

  Rachel tracks Jack on her phone. They’ve been gone over half an hour, but don’t appear to have left the airport.

  ‘I’ll give him a call,’ she says. ‘See where they’re at.’

  ‘Got it!’ shrieks a vision in pink from across the concourse.

  ‘Blimey,’ says Paige as Ali, dressed head to toe in a magenta jumpsuit, toddles towards them in towering heels, holding her passport aloft. ‘Woo-hoo! We’re back up and running.’

  Several people in the busy coffee shop turn their heads in her direction. Such is the Ali effect. But Jack, Rachel can’t help but notice, is trailing several steps behind, with a face like thunder, pretending not to know her.

  ‘Where was it?’ asks Rachel.

  ‘It had somehow dropped into the footwell in the car,’ says Ali breathlessly. ‘It must have fallen when I was checking I had everything. Ironic really.’ She turns to Paige and Noah. ‘Sorry, I’m such a klutz. Hiiiiii.’

  She makes a show of greeting them like long-lost friends, with exaggerated cuddles and air kisses, before loudly proclaiming how exciting this all is as she jumps up and down and claps her hands together.

  Rachel has to stifle a giggle at Paige’s bewildered expression: everything about it screams, ‘Get me out of here’.

  She can’t help but feel guilty; if it weren’t for her encouragement, Paige wouldn’t be here, and knowing the part she’s played to cajole her best friend into doing something she’d rather not do, momentarily sits heavy on her chest.

  When Will had come over to see them a few months ago to ask Jack to be his best man, they’d both been surprised to hear that Noah and Paige had made the proposed guest list. Not that they weren’t good friends of his – Will and Noah often got together for a game of golf, much to Jack’s chagrin, as no matter how hard he tried, hitting a little white ball with a long stick just wasn’t his forte.

  ‘I thought you said you wanted to keep it intimate,’ Jack had said.

  ‘Yes, there’s only forty guests,’ said Will.

  ‘But Paige and Noah are more our friends,’ said Jack. ‘I don’t think they’d be offended if you didn’t invite them. Plus, you’re asking them to take four days out and travel to another country. I know Noah’s taken on more work at the university and didn’t you say Paige had a big case coming up?’ He’d looked to Rachel for back-up.

  She’d been about to nod in agreement, but then she’d been struck by how a weekend of imposed purgatory could be turned around if Paige was there too. Instead of spending four days making small talk with strangers, they could eat, drink, dance and pretend they weren’t responsible mothers for once. Suddenly, and selfishly, Rachel could see its potential.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ she’d said. ‘Noah and Paige really like Will and Ali, so I’m sure they’d be flattered to be asked.’

  Jack had looked at her with raised eyebrows, silently questioning whether they were talking about the same Paige, who was always so quick to denounce Ali’s shortcomings.

  ‘Why did you have to push for Noah and Paige to come?’ Jack had said later, after Will had left.

  ‘Because it might be an opportunity to spend some time with them,’ said Rachel. ‘We haven’t been away together for a while, and faced with the prospect of spending four days with your family, they might be just the distraction we need.’ She laughed to soften the sideswipe. ‘We could all get a villa together and make a holiday out of it.’

  Jack groaned. ‘Why can’t he get married here, where we’d all only have to endure each other for the afternoon before going home?’

  ‘Don’t be such a miserable old sod,’ she’d said, going up to him and wrapping her arms around his neck. ‘Noah and Paige are our friends.’

  ‘I’m not talking about them,’ he said. ‘I’m talking about my bloody family. Boxing Day takes enough grit and mettle to survive – why would Will want to impose this on us?’

  ‘Because. He’s. Not. Been. Here. For. Most. Christmases,’ said Rachel, punctuating each word with a kiss on Jack’s lips. ‘So, maybe this is his way of making up for it; a chance to get the family to spend some quality time together.’

  ‘But four days in Portugal,’ he moaned, sounding like a spoilt child.

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake!’ Rachel laughed. ‘Listen to yourself. Your family will be there. I’ll be there – if Noah and Paige come, we’ll have a good laugh.’

  He’d looked at her petulantly.

  ‘You never know,’ Rachel had said. ‘You might actually enjoy yourself.’

  Now, as she looks at his obvious frustration and the strained greeting he gives Paige and Noah, she feels she’s manipulated them all into doing something they don’t want to do.

  ‘Okay, we’d better get checked in,’ Jack says briskly, grabbing hold of two suitcases and wheeling them away.

  Rachel abandons her half-drunk coffee as she follows him – and a sense of foreboding – across the concourse.

  2

  Despite Rachel trying her best to deter Ali from drinking on the plane, by the time they arrive in Lisbon two and a half hours later, she’s four gin and tonics down and has trouble negotiating the steps onto the tarmac.

  ‘I’d have to drink three times as much to behave like she does,’ Paige says to Rachel as they follow a swerving Ali onto the waiting bus.

  ‘That’s because you’re hard core,’ says Rachel, smiling.

  ‘No, it’s because she’s putting it on.’

  Rachel looks at Ali as she swings herself around a pole. If this is what she’s like when she’s pretending to be drunk, what on earth will she be like when she really is inebriated? She remembers Ali telling her that she’d once spent a lost weekend in Amsterdam, going out on the Friday night and not remembering anything until she woke up on Monday morning. She’d boasted that she had to rely on her friend to tell her that she’d danced in a podium cage in a nightclub, tried to put herself in a shop window in the red-light district and had almost been arrested as the first person in the country’s history to consume too much space cake.

  ‘It was the most fun I’ve ever had,’ Ali had said, although it sounded the exact opposite to Rachel. She couldn’t think of anything worse and suspected that Ali would probably agree if she were being honest, but she liked to shock. There was never a simple story where she was concerned. Even an innocuous visit to the dentist recently had resulted in her talking a man out of jumping off a bridge – apparently.

  Rachel pulls herself up, ashamed of herself for thinking, even for a second, that Ali may have lied about something like that. But then she remembers what Jack had said after listening to what he was convinced was yet another tall tale. ‘I think we can safely say she embellishes the truth,’ he’d said.

  Half of
Rachel wondered where the harm was in that. Perhaps she did see a man who looked like he was about to take his own life, otherwise where would such a story come from? But maybe instead of talking him out of it, she’d merely seen emergency services in attendance and wished she’d been an instrumental part of the action.

  ‘She’s had four G&Ts,’ she whispers to Paige, giving Ali the benefit of the doubt. ‘I might start pole-dancing after that.’

  Rachel knows that would be the last thing she would do. She’d have been leaning her head back on a toilet-cubicle door until that swaying feeling passed, or splashing herself with cold water well before now. She hates to admit it, because it makes her sound boring, but Noah’s right: even when they were at university together, she was never a great drinker.

  ‘She’s had two,’ says Paige, without worrying who can hear her. ‘The third she took to the toilet with her and came back mysteriously empty-handed, and she spilt most of the fourth onto Noah’s trousers.’

  Rachel can’t help but laugh. ‘I didn’t know you were keeping such a close eye on her. What are you, the fun police?’

  Paige pulls a sarcastic grimace. ‘You’ve got to have eyes in the back of your head with that one.’

  ‘Aw, come on, we were young once,’ says Rachel.

  ‘You make it sound as if we’re ancient,’ says Paige brusquely, her advancing years always a bone of contention.

  ‘We are compared to Ali.’

  ‘She’s not exactly a spring chicken,’ says Paige.

  ‘She’s twenty-nine!’ exclaims Rachel. ‘If that’s not a spring chicken, I don’t know what is.’

  ‘Well, we wouldn’t have behaved like she does at that age,’ huffs Paige.

  ‘God, I can’t even remember what we were doing then,’ says Rachel thoughtfully. ‘That was thirteen years ago. It feels like a lifetime away.’

  ‘We,’ says Paige, ‘were being responsible mothers. What would Josh and Chloe have been then? Five and three?’

  Rachel nods. ‘But, looking back on it now, isn’t there a part of you that wishes you’d waited a bit longer? I was just twenty-four when Josh was born. I was still a kid myself.’

  ‘Are you saying you’d have done things differently if you had your time again?’ asks Paige.

  The loaded question is impossible to answer. Rachel would never have wanted her twenty-three-year-old self to be having a baby, but sometimes life throws you a curveball and you just have to run with it.

  ‘I wish I hadn’t got pregnant so young,’ she says thoughtfully. ‘But I would never have done anything about it once it had happened, if that’s what you mean.’

  ‘But imagine how differently things might have panned out if you hadn’t have got pregnant,’ says Paige. ‘Imagine how different my life would have been if you hadn’t.’

  Rachel looks at Paige quizzically. ‘How has me getting pregnant back then had an impact on your life? We didn’t even know each other.’

  ‘Exactly! But if you hadn’t fallen pregnant, you and Noah would have gone off on your gap year after university, as you’d planned. God knows how long you would have travelled the world for. God knows who you might have met along the way. Jesus, the pair of you might have even ended up together.’

  Rachel pulls a face, but her heart is beating double-time. ‘Well, that would have been weird,’ she says. ‘He was my best friend.’

  ‘I know,’ says Paige. ‘But you don’t know where that journey might have taken you. Either way, he would have been unlikely to have found his way to my door.’

  Rachel hasn’t ever thought of it like that, but she supposes Paige might be right.

  ‘So, I’m very happy that you had Josh when you did, says Paige, smiling, as they join the queue for border control.

  ‘I can’t find it,’ slurs Ali.

  Rachel hopes she’s misheard her, but Paige’s eye-roll tells her otherwise.

  ‘You can’t find what?’ whispers Rachel, always on edge whenever she’s in any kind of authoritarian environment; she’s the type to go red when she’s walking, empty-handed, through customs.

  ‘My passport!’ says Ali, far too loudly, as she pats herself down. ‘I think I’ve left it on the plane.’

  Rachel looks at Jack, wide-eyed.

  ‘If you think . . .’ he starts.

  ‘What else do you suggest?’ says Rachel. ‘We won’t get through without it.’

  ‘They’re not going to let me back on the plane,’ snaps Jack, but Rachel knows it’s not aimed at her.

  ‘Alison Foley!’ shouts a voice over the din of three hundred passengers huddled into something resembling an aircraft hangar.

  ‘Yes!’ responds Rachel, automatically raising her hand.

  A flight attendant, who Rachel recognizes as the woman who discreetly refused to serve Ali another drink, cuts through the queue. She doesn’t seem surprised when she reaches them.

  ‘This was found in your seat pocket,’ she says to Ali, holding up the passport.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ says Rachel, sounding like Ali’s mother. ‘I should have checked.’

  ‘Do you have any other proof of ID on you?’ says the pursed-lipped air hostess.

  Ali looks at her, momentarily confused, before the penny drops. ‘Oh, yes!’ she blurts out, rooting in her oversized handbag. She pulls out her purse but has trouble with the zip.

  ‘For God’s sake,’ huffs Jack impatiently.

  ‘All right, Mr antsy-pants,’ says Ali. ‘Keep your hair on.’

  Rachel feels her insides coil up like a spring, pulling back, ready to launch into action, though she’s not yet sure whose defence she’s going to have to jump to.

  She takes Ali’s purse from her and finds her driving licence in the side pocket, then presents it to the woman who’s inadvertently deciding whether Will and Ali get married in two days’ time. An overwhelming sense of relief rushes through Rachel’s body as the flight attendant hands Ali’s passport back.

  ‘Be careful where you leave it in future,’ she says, as Rachel lets out the breath she’s been holding.

  ‘Thank you,’ says Ali begrudgingly, as if she’s been told off by a teacher. Rachel wills her not to say anything more.

  ‘I honestly can’t be held accountable for my actions if this is how the whole weekend is going to be,’ says Jack ominously as he sidles up to Rachel at the baggage carousel.

  ‘Cut her some slack,’ says Rachel, reaching up to give him a kiss. ‘She’s over-excited.’

  ‘You make her sound like a puppy,’ says Jack, managing to smile.

  ‘In some respects, that’s exactly what she is,’ Rachel says, laughing. ‘She’ll calm down once she sees Will.’

  ‘I don’t know how he does it,’ says Jack, shaking his head. ‘She’s a freaking liability.’

  ‘I don’t want to state the obvious, but this is all your fault,’ says Rachel, with a withering expression. ‘You employed her. You introduced her to Will . . .’

  ‘Unwittingly!’ he exclaims.

  ‘Ssh!’ Rachel laughs, looking around to check if Ali’s in earshot, not that she’s got the wherewithal to hear.

  ‘She never used to be like . . . this,’ he says, waving his arm about. ‘It seems to me that she’s got a drink problem. She doesn’t know her limits and then becomes this caricature of herself, who spouts garbage.’

  ‘Is that all that’s bothering you?’ presses Rachel, keen to get to the bottom of his disdain for a woman he used to quite like.

  He shrugs his shoulders, as nonchalantly as he can. ‘I just don’t think she’s right for my little brother and it pains me that he might be about to make the biggest mistake of his life.’

  Rachel takes hold of his hand. ‘But I’ve never seen Will this happy,’ she says. ‘And it’s your duty as both his brother and best man to play your part and make this weekend the best it can be.’

  Jack kisses her on the nose. ‘You’re far too accepting,’ he says.

  ‘It’s easier than being cynical a
ll the time,’ she says. ‘That must be exhausting.’

  He playfully smacks her on the behind.

  Despite standing up for Ali, Rachel can’t help but feel relieved when she spots Will at the end of a long line of holiday reps holding clipboards in the arrivals hall. Thankful that she no longer has to be the responsible adult, she points him out to Ali and watches her zig-zag over to him, feeling like she’s handing a naughty child over to their long-suffering parent.

  ‘There’s my baby,’ shrieks Ali as she runs into Will’s arms.

  They all stand there awkwardly as Will and Ali exchange saliva for far longer than feels necessary.

  ‘Give it a rest,’ says Jack, jokingly, but Rachel can hear the tension in his voice. If Will knows his brother well enough, he’ll hear it too.

  ‘Sorry, it’s been a couple of days,’ says Will, breaking away.

  ‘It’s been three!’ declares Ali, as if it makes all the difference.

  ‘Hey, bro,’ says Will, hugging Jack and looking at the group. ‘How are we all? Good?’

  Jack smiles half-heartedly.

  ‘Well, I will be when I get out of these trousers,’ says Noah, laughing.

  ‘Had an accident, have we?’ asks Will, clearly amused by the wet patch spread across Noah’s groin.

  ‘Don’t even ask.’

  ‘So, are we all set?’ asks Jack. ‘What’s the villa like?’

  ‘You wait until you see the place,’ says Will, his eyes dancing. ‘Man, it’s insane.’

  The tension in Rachel’s shoulders dissipates. When Will had told them one of his surfing mates had offered him a villa, so the six of them could stay together, her initial reaction was, Hell, no. She’d rather be in the hotel with all the other guests than with an already hyperactive Ali in the build-up to the wedding. But Ali had insisted that Rachel be there, ‘as the sister she never had’, to help her get ready and keep her calm. Without a valid excuse that didn’t come across as petty, Rachel had resigned herself to it. But her next worry – not wanting to sound like a snob – was that the villa on offer wasn’t going to be of the standard she and Jack were used to. He had a rule that they never went on holiday to anywhere that wasn’t as nice as their home.