A Hundred Pieces of Me (32 page)

‘I’d be feeling sorry for her if she were,’ said Rachel. ‘Having a kid with a man who’s still married? That’s never a good start.’

‘I wouldn’t make it hard for them,’ said Gina, decisively. ‘I’ve got a list of clichéd things I swore I wouldn’t do during the divorce, and being vengeful is right at the top.’

Rachel chucked the tennis ball one last time for Gem. ‘Did your ex make a list, though? Because from what you’ve said it sounds like he’s working through a cliché list of his own. Has he got a leather jacket yet?’

‘No.’ Gina considered: Stuart in a leather jacket. ‘But it’s only a matter of time.’

Rachel turned, raking her hair back with a hand. ‘My advice, for what it’s worth, is to let it all go,’ she said. ‘Be as kind as you can bear to be, and let karma take care of things. You can’t grab hold of new opportunities if you’re clinging to the past. You need those hands wide open.’

Gina reckoned Rachel had spent too much time amid the fridge magnets in the charity shop. ‘You think?’ she said.

‘I know,’ said Rachel, and hurled the ball – ‘One last time, Gem!’ – into the bushes. The collie raced joyfully after it.

Chapter Fourteen

ITEM
: pair of hand-blown champagne flutes

Longhampton, June 2008

Gina sits at the table in the gastropub and tries to focus on all the sweet things Stuart is saying about her. His voice is rising and falling, and he’s injecting a lot of effort into his delivery, but it’s not really going in, mainly because everyone is looking at her and trying not to cry.

‘. . . special woman . . . Knew as soon as I tried her cottage pie . . . For better or for worse . . . Matlock . . .’

I should be remembering this, Gina thinks, through a muzzy haze of pink champagne (she shouldn’t be drinking but, come on, it’s her wedding day). She stares at the flute in her hand, smooth and so fine she’s scared she’ll snap it. I won’t forget how the bubbles in this wine are so perfect. Fragile but determined, directing drunkenness into her bloodstream while Stuart rambles on, filling up the gaps where Terry’s speech would be, and where his best man’s speech would be, if Olly had had time to get back from his holiday in Australia.

It still feels like it’s happening to someone else. Even though she’s had the operation to cut the cancer out. Technically, it’s gone. Realistically, it’s only starting.

She waits for Stuart to come to the end of his speech, then rises to kiss him, to drink in the too-loud applause, and excuses herself to go to the loo.

Gina gets about ten seconds of peace before the door opens and Naomi comes in. There’s a pinch between her threaded eyebrows that not even her new fringe is hiding. ‘Are you OK?’ she asks lightly. ‘You’re not feeling sick or anything?’

‘I’m fine. Why are you looking so tense?’ Gina asks recklessly. ‘Is it because I’ve had a civil wedding and you’ve had to wear a fascinator?’ Weirdly, she doesn’t feel any compunction about being so direct with Naomi. Normally she bites her tongue, considering all possible offence, but now she’s just saying exactly what she thinks to people. They seem to expect it – and it gives them something to forgive, some concession to make towards an illness that turns everyone she tells white, then blank with internal shock.

Naomi stares at her, and the ostrich feathers tremble on her head. They really don’t suit her, and say more about Naomi’s state of mind than anything else. Stuart’s whistle-stop organisation hadn’t given her much time to find the wedding outfit she’d dreamed about shopping for ever since they were teenagers. It feels like no time has passed since they were shopping for Gina’s bridesmaid’s dress, but it’s already in a different chapter of Gina’s life.

The appropriately mournful honking of Adele filters in from the bar as someone pushes the door open and goes into the Gents opposite. Gina doesn’t blame Naomi if she’s pissed off about her hat. The Vivienne Westwood suit isn’t what she’d have chosen to get married in either, and she can’t imagine she’ll ever wear it again, but the assistant talked her into it, and for a second, it was exciting to be someone else, the sort of woman who blows eight hundred quid on a suit because why not? This is the best she’s going to look for a while.

‘I can’t believe you can even think that!’ Naomi smiles too brightly. ‘Today’s all about
you
. I don’t care about my fascinator!’

‘Then why have you got that face on you?’ The champagne has gone straight to Gina’s head; she probably shouldn’t have had it. ‘Please try to look happy. I feel like I’m at a party before the Battle of the Somme. Everyone looks as if they’re about to burst into tears.’

‘No, they’re not!’ Naomi’s determinedly shiny mood is making everything she says come out with an exclamation mark. ‘They’re thinking about what a great couple you and Stuart make! Because you do!’

‘They’re not, Nay,’ says Gina. ‘They’re trying to work out how happy it’s polite to be in the circumstances. I don’t blame them. Maybe this was a mistake. It’s hard enough for me and Stuart. I mean, maybe it’s
easier
for me and Stuart. At least we know what’s going on.’

Naomi starts to speak, but her words come out as a gulp. She blinks, struggling to maintain the encouraging expression she’s been wearing all day. In the salon, in the car, doing everyone’s makeup round at Janet’s – Naomi’s been the one taking happy snaps, dishing out the compliments, cheering everyone along. It’s not the elaborate wedding they’d planned as teenagers, but Naomi’s done her best to keep up her end of the deal as chief bridesmaid.

‘Don’t, Gina,’ she says, smiling brightly again. ‘Come on.’

‘Sorry.’ Gina glances at the doors, worried someone will come in. Her mum, barely holding it together as it is, or Stuart’s sister, who’s very drunk. Everyone is drunk. They’re all knocking it back to avoid talking about the elephant in the room.

The bridal elephant in a velvet suit and an ironically elaborate hairdo.

‘Look, I’m really sorry about jumping in and stealing your wedding thunder,’ says Gina, trying to make a joke of it, like they always do. ‘There’s still a few months to sort out a new bridesmaid, if you want. I don’t want to be the bald bridesmaid who upstages you at the altar . . .’

Naomi turns away, but her control finally slips. ‘I don’t care about my wedding! I’ve told Jason we’re going to move it till you’re better, sod the deposits.’ She yanks at the roller towel, making it crunch loudly. That silences the pair of them, and for a moment, they just stand there, staring at one another in despair, because all the normalities that their lives had pivoted on last month now seem like toy boats bobbing on a huge, unknown ocean.

‘All I care about is you getting better,’ says Naomi, in a broken voice. ‘I don’t want to lose my best mate. That’s really selfish, isn’t it? But I don’t. I can’t imagine making another friend like you ever again.’

Gina smiles, despite her brimming eyes. ‘Don’t tell Jason that.’

‘He knows!’ Naomi’s own eyes are full. ‘He knows what you mean to me.’

Gina reaches out to touch her arm, and Naomi struggles not to burst into tears. They both blink frantically to avoid mascara run, and the blackness of the situation gives them hysterical giggles, balanced right on the very edge of sobbing.

Gina’s never felt more grateful for Naomi than at this exact moment; she’s the thread that links all the parts of Gina’s life together. Good bits, bad bits, secret bits, ugly bits. And knowing she does the same for Naomi gives her something to hold on to.

‘We can’t cry,’ Gina half laughs, half sobs. ‘If they see the bride and the chief bridesmaid crying it’ll set them all off!’

‘Don’t worry, I used waterproof mascara. I knew this would happen.’

They blink and flap and try not to catch each other’s eye because that’ll be the end.

‘The thing is,’ says Gina, in a rush of honesty, ‘I just want to get on with it now.’ Now she’s here with Naomi, she can get this off her chest. Stuart’s being lovely, but she needs to be a certain way with him and with Janet. She finds herself reacting to fit in with their roles of supportive partner and devastated mother; it’s easier to let their reactions shape hers. She fits into the space created by their concern.

If she thinks about how she actually feels, a cold black gap opens up inside her.

Gina grips the cold edge of the sink. ‘Don’t you think that . . . sometimes the universe balances things out?’

‘What?’

‘You know, we all get our share of good luck and bad luck, eventually.’

Naomi frowns. ‘You’re not making any sense, love.’

‘I mean . . . I’ve been lucky, Naomi. When you think what
could
have happened to me . . . And it’s like Kit’s mother said, what goes around comes around. I—’

‘No!’ hisses Naomi. ‘
No!
That is such bullshit, Gina, and you must not think it.’ She grabs her arm. ‘
Tell
me you don’t believe that.’

But Gina does think that and secretly it’s what’s giving her the calmness people keep going on about. There can’t be anything worse than this in her life now; the sword hanging over her head for what happened to Kit has dropped. And how much bad luck can one person have? Dad, Terry, Kit . . . Surely this is it now, for ever.

She just has to get through it. The thought of what ‘it’ might be makes the cavern open up again beneath her, and she wobbles.

‘I’m going to be fine, Nay,’ she says. ‘We’re going to get through this.’

Naomi looks as if she’s about to throw up, but she forces another of her smiles, and together they go back into the private room, where everyone else’s smiles suddenly reappear too, as if a switch has been flicked.

On Thursday, Gina heard, via Rory, that Stuart would be coming to collect his box of things from her flat the next day, after work.

She and Stuart exchanged brief texts directly about the collection time: he was going to call round on his way to football practice, but he made no reference to any reason for the sudden change of heart. In addition to the items he wanted, she’d decided to give him the set of Murano bowls. They were nice, and he’d bought them after all. Looking at them now didn’t give Gina the pleasure they deserved; she wanted Stuart to have something beautiful to remind him of their marriage. Maybe one day he’d see in them what she had.

Gina was thinking about the bowls when she arrived at the Magistrate’s House at lunchtime, wondering what sort of treasures had once been displayed in cabinets when the Warwicks had held court there. She headed round the back into the kitchen, drawn by the smell of toast. There was a crowd around the table, and as she knocked and let herself in, various heads turned.

‘Ah, good,’ said Nick. ‘Someone who’ll know what to do.’

Kian, one of the builders’ lads, was sitting at the kitchen table, his head turned away from his outstretched hand. Lorcan and his apprentice carpenter, Ryan, were hovering behind him, looking worried, and amused respectively.

‘What’s happened?’ Gina asked, reaching into her pocket for her mobile to call an ambulance. Kian’s face was milk-white. ‘Lorcan, I thought you were the designated first-aider on site.’

‘It’s not an ambulance job. We’ve just got a bit of a jewellery incident.’ Nick stepped back and revealed that he was trying to get a ring off Kian’s finger with a bar of soap. The camera on the table next to them was a clue as to what had just happened.

‘Cold water,’ said Gina at once. ‘Ice cubes, if you’ve got them. And, failing that, we can try butter.’

Lorcan nudged the sniggering apprentice next to him. ‘You heard the lady, Ryan. Bowl, cold water. Chop chop.’

Ryan went over to the brand new fridge-freezer, a lone white column of modernity in the ramshackle kitchen, and rummaged for ice cubes while Kian stared at his diamond-encrusted little finger.

‘Suits you,’ said Gina, and he looked mortified. Kian was one of the non-speaking apprentices.

‘I’m afraid that’s your hand-modelling career over, Kian,’ said Nick. ‘But if it makes you feel any better, I got some lovely photos.’

‘Your regular hand model not back from Paris yet?’ Gina raised an eyebrow, and something passed across Nick’s face.

‘No, but my reserve hand model has just arrived.’ He raised a hopeful eyebrow. ‘Would you mind ? It’ll only take a few minutes.’

‘It’ll have to wait until we’ve had a chat about plastering.’ Gina tapped her folder of notes. ‘I’ve had a couple of quotes in from the contractors I showed round last week and I need to talk through some of the specialist repairs to the cornices in the—’

‘Can we talk about them while I photograph some bracelets, please? I’m already late on this. I can’t cope with you
and
Amanda
and
Charlie yelling at me.’

‘Lorcan?’ Gina looked at him. ‘Aren’t you yelling?’

‘Me?’ Lorcan pretended to be affronted. ‘Do I ever yell? Listen, I can’t risk any more of my lads to jewellery-related injuries so this one’s all yours. That plaster isn’t going to come off by itself.’