Authors: Alexandra Potter
Opening his mouth, Hugh started flossing his teeth, tipping his head backwards and forwards as he moved between each molar, flicking out bits of leftover tuna sandwich from lunchtime. Frankie watched him. Hugh was obsessive about his appearance. Always plucking, shaving, tweezing, brushing, he spent longer in the bathroom than anyone she’d ever met.
‘Hugh . . . did you hear me?’
Gargling with mouthwash, he sloshed it from side to side, and spat the blue liquid out into the sink. ‘Yes, I heard you. And no, I’m not telling you. It’s a surprise. Wait and see.’ Wiping his mouth on a towel, he flashed a smile at himself in the mirror and, pleased with his reflection, marched out of the bathroom.
Wait and see
. Frankie grinned to herself and, wiping the froth off the rim of her wine glass, drained its contents in one go.
‘You can’t look yet. Two more minutes and we’ll be there.’
Hugh sat in the back of the cab barking directions to the taxi driver and covering Frankie’s eyes with the palm of his hand. Frankie leaned back against the PVC seats, the floor heaters warming her bare legs, and wondered where they were going. At first she’d tried to work out if they were heading towards Soho, Chelsea or Notting Hill, but orienteering had never been her strong point and after a couple of minutes of turning left and then right she’d become totally confused and given up.
Suddenly the cab swerved and, braking hard, screeched to a standstill.
‘We’re here. I’ll go first. Keep your eyes closed.’
Hugh opened the door and she could hear him paying the driver. Frankie pulled a face. Hugh could be so bossy sometimes, she thought, grasping his hand and stepping tentatively out of the cab. The air felt cold and damp and she shivered in her high heels. Stumbling slightly, she leaned on Hugh, who led her briskly up the concrete path. Then she heard the sound of a door being opened. Suddenly she experienced a jumble of warmth, light and noise.
‘OK, you can look now.’ He took his hand away from her face.
There was a chorus of voices: ‘
Surprise!?
’
Opening her eyes, Frankie was greeted by the sight of Hugh’s old school chum, a ponytailed advertising executive called Adam, and his much younger girlfriend, Jessica. They were grinning like clowns and wielding two huge black shiny balls. Frankie’s mouth went dry as she took in her surroundings, her excitement escaping like steam from a kettle. It was replaced by pure, 100 per cent proof horror. This wasn’t a candlelit, white-linen-tableclothed, champagne-serving restaurant. It wasn’t even a restaurant.
It was a ten-pin bowling alley
. Her face plummeted like a bungee-jumper. She was in the middle of a bowling alley on her twenty-ninth birthday wearing a dry-clean-only Karen Millen outfit and a pair of hideously expensive Pied à Terre slingbacks. Suddenly aware that everyone was staring at her, her face bounced back like elastic and into a glassy grin.
‘Jessica, Adam, what a surprise!’ Struggling to sound enthusiastic, Frankie gave them a kiss on each cheek.
Jessica started giggling. She sounded like a flat battery. ‘Isn’t this totally groovy? I knew you’d love it when Adam suggested it.’ Standing on tiptoes, she kissed Adam on his nose and grinned like a lovesick teenager. ‘Isn’t he clever?’
Frankie tried hard to swallow the lump, the size of a bowling bowl, which stuck in her throat. ‘Adam’s idea?’ Not having a clue what was going on, she looked desperately at Hugh for an explanation.
Oblivious of her crushing disappointment, he nodded in amusement and began one of his anecdotes. ‘Well, I’d booked a restaurant and was going to take you out for dinner – as I always do.’ He puffed out his chest slightly, as if proud of this fact. ‘But then Adam had this rather fabulous idea of coming to a bowling alley. He arranged it for Jessica’s twenty-first birthday last year and she loved it.’
‘It was brilliant,’ piped up Jessica, putting her arm around Adam’s spare tyre, which he’d tried, and failed, to conceal underneath a vintage Hawaiian shirt. ‘A totally wicked idea.’
Frankie tried hard to silence the scream within. Wicked wasn’t the word she would have chosen. Dreadful. Awful. Hideous. They were more like it. She gave Adam, the pleased-as-punch instigator of this heinous crime, a withering look. This couldn’t be happening. Surely it was some kind of practical joke. Wasn’t it?
It wasn’t.
‘Keeping secrets can be difficult, but Hugh must be pretty good at it.’ Adam chuckled loudly and looked at her high heels. ‘You didn’t have any idea, did you?’
Forcing a ventriloquist’s smile, Frankie muttered through gritted teeth, ‘No, I guess not.’
5
It was the bitterest pill she’d ever had to swallow. Standing in her red, white and blue lace-ups, Frankie felt she was doing a bad impersonation of Paul Weller in his Jam days. She looked at Jessica, flicking her curtain of glossy blonde hair around as she skipped to and fro in her cut-off logo T-shirt, hipster jeans and pierced bellybutton. Tiny, Kylie-esque Jessica could make even Union Jack shoes look cute. Next to her, Frankie felt like an old frump. Three-inch snakeskin stilettos had given her designer outfit a sexy edge, but a pair of scuffed, rented laceups made her feel as if she were a Volvo-driving mum on the school run.
Things couldn’t get any worse. Or so she thought, until she saw Jessica in action. Not only did she look the part, but she’d obviously been a champion bowler in a former life. Wiggling her hips, she strutted daintily to the line and, with a flick of her wrist and a toss of her hair, scored a perfect ten each time. Every male in the bowling alley was mesmerised by her technique: cardigan-wearing OAPs out on their weekly bowling night drooled over her ball control; young lager-drinking trendies salivated at the power in her fingertips. Yep, there was no doubt about it, Jessica had them well and truly by the balls.
If only the same could be said for Frankie. Like a loose cannon, she flung her ball half-heartedly down the alley, trying not to fling herself with it, and cringed as it veered off to one side, missing every single skittle.
‘Better luck next time,’ giggled Jessica, who giggled at everything. When she wasn’t giggling she was, well, giggling.
Fighting back tears of disappointment and frustration, Frankie glanced across at Hugh for support, but he was being the absent boyfriend. Drinking beer with Adam, he was thoroughly enjoying himself, halfway through a witty anecdote of how he’d just gazumped an offer on a four-bedroom semi. Frankie sighed. Boyfriends were always the same, always leaving you to chat to their friends’ girlfriends while they discussed business/golf/rugby scores. Not that there was anything wrong with Jessica, unless you counted the fact that all she talked about were clubs, DJs and her collection of underground garage and hip-hop CDs. Frankie tried to look as if she knew what Jessica was going on about, but her clubbing days had finished when her pension contributions had started and her CD collection was made up from the easy-listening section: Elvis, Frank Sinatra and Abba. Two dead crooners and a retired Swedish import. Hardly cutting edge.
After sixty minutes had ticked painfully slowly by, Frankie could no longer pretend she was enjoying herself. She was bored, knackered, completely fed up, and to make matters worse she was lucky to be in even fourth place. Every skittle was standing, every fingernail was broken. And while Hugh had hardly spoken to her, preferring to discuss endowment mortgages and interest rates with Adam, Jessica hadn’t stopped. Thankfully she’d finally come up for air, complained she was ‘totally starving’ and dragged Adam to the neon-lit refreshments booth.
It was time to leave. Frankie collared Hugh, who was standing with his hands in his pockets by the Coke dispenser. ‘I want to go home,’ she muttered, miserably sitting on one of the fold-down plastic chairs and rubbing the bruise on her shin that was working its way through all the colours of the rainbow.
‘Why?’ He looked surprised.
It was the final straw. ‘Why do you think?’ she snapped. ‘It’s my birthday and I’m in a bowling alley. I’m bruised, bored, my fingers hurt, my feet hurt, and on top of all that you’ve hardly spoken to me all night.’
Silence. Hugh ran his fingers through his gelled quiff and looked at the floor.
Frankie softened. She always did when he played with his hair. ‘Look, if you’ve got something on your mind, just say it.’ He hadn’t given her a present yet, so no doubt he was waiting for the right time to bring out the ring. Obviously he wanted to do one of those wacky kinds of proposal – the hot-air-ballooning, scuba-diving, in a bowling-alley type that people have to show they’re not boring traditionalists. But, to be honest, although she appreciated his ingenuity, she’d rather have had the boring old-fashioned candlelit-dinner proposal any day.
There was an awkward pause. ‘Well, actually there is something I’ve been meaning to say for a while, but this probably isn’t the right time or the right place . . .’ Hugh sat down. Not in the chair next to her.
It was like somebody playing a piano chord in a minor key. It jarred ominously. But Frankie didn’t hear it. All she could hear was the sound of wedding bells. Mistakenly thinking he was nervous, she tried to help him along.
‘Look, if this makes it any easier for you, I know what it is you want to say.’
‘You do?’ He wrinkled his forehead, his thick blond eyebrows blocking the light from his eyes.
‘Yep.’
‘Oh.’ He looked taken aback. ‘And you’re not upset?’
Frankie gasped and, slipping off her seat, crouched down by his knees on the dusty floor. She rested her hand reassuringly on his. ‘Hugh, what are you talking about? Why would I be upset? I love you. Of course I want to marry you.’
Silence.
‘What did you just say?’
Frankie rushed over the words. ‘I’m sorry, I know I’m jumping the gun a bit. You see, I didn’t mean to snoop, but I found the receipt for the engagement ring in your pocket.’ Her words came out in a jumbled gabble.
Hugh went ashen. Moving his hand away from hers, he stood up and paced around in a circle. Frankie watched him, feeling bewildered. She wasn’t exactly a seasoned pro when it came to marriage proposals, but even she knew this wasn’t how it was supposed to happen.
‘I think there’s been a bit of a misunderstanding.’ His voice was clipped and flat. As if he was talking to a client, not his girlfriend, not someone he was supposed to love. He looked at her. His face was drained of blood and emotion. Hard and colourless. It was a look she would never forget.
‘What?’ Her voice was almost a whisper.
There was a commotion behind them. With disastrous timing, Adam and Jessica burst upon them.
‘Hey, guess what, guys!’ trilled Jessica breathlessly. ‘Look what Adam just hid in my hotdog!’ Waving her hand under Frankie’s nose, she flashed a beautiful Tiffany’s engagement ring. ‘Isn’t it wicked? We’re going to get married!’ She jumped up and down like Zebedee, the diamond sparkling under the harsh glare of the illuminous strip-lighting.
Frankie didn’t say anything. Neither did Hugh, apart from a half-hearted ‘Congratulations’ to Adam, who was standing to one side, grinning modestly.
Turning to Hugh, Adam fell serious for a moment. ‘Before I forget, I think I’ve left the receipt in the pocket of that overcoat of yours – the one I borrowed one lunchtime last week when it was raining. Better have that, just in case . . . Insurance and all that. Good job I remembered. It could have got you in all kinds of trouble with the missus.’ Winking at Frankie, he nudged Hugh in the ribs before putting his arm around his over-excited fiancée. ‘This calls for a drink. Better see if they sell champers in this place!’
Whooping like a chimpanzee, Jessica snogged the side of Adam’s face, leaving behind a trail of berry lip gloss. And nuzzling Jessica, who was clinging to him like a life raft, Adam led her back into the crowd.
Frankie’s eyes began to well up with tears. She was suddenly aware of the sound of her heart beating really fast. In the background she could faintly hear Hugh – the steady hum of his voice. She caught snatches of words, phrases, strings of vowels, but nothing registered. It was like listening to a voice-over in a foreign language . . .
‘. . . things aren’t working out between us. Not for me, anyway . . . I don’t want to settle down yet . . . I’m not ready for this level of commitment . . . I feel claustrophobic . . . I need space.’
The last word registered. Space. He wanted space. Looking up at him, she saw his face through a bleary film of tears.
‘What are you saying? Are you saying you want me to move out?’ Her voice broke as she struggled to bear a sudden overwhelming pain.
It was the longest pause. Finally he spoke. ‘I’m saying it’s over.’
For a split second time paused. Until someone pressed play and the impact of his words hit with the force of a bowling ball. And, like a dozen skittles, her life came crashing down around her.
6
The journey home passed in a blur. Frankie lay huddled in the back of the car, shock seeping through her body like an anaesthetic, dulling the pain, fuzzing the edges. She vaguely remembered running out of the bowling alley, the bewildered look on Adam and Jessica’s faces as she bolted past them, knocking the bottle of cheap plonk flying out of their hands, mumbling apologies as she stumbled into the drizzly car park and fell into the back of a minicab.