These Days of Ours (4 page)

Kate leaned back against the Tampax machine and caught her breath. The powder room’s fussy blinds and gilt mirrors were a respite from the frenzy of the ballroom. The
people who’d warned that her wedding day would fly by were wrong; it seemed to have been going on for half a century.

The service had been overwhelming, a tsunami of emotion. Repeating her vows in the festive shadows of stained glass felt significant in a way that very little else ever had.

Since then she’d shaken countless hands, eaten a vast meal without tasting a thing, smiled through speech after speech, taken the microphone to thank her parents, danced, drunk, eaten
again, made nice with the youngest bridesmaids, and posed for snaps with relatives she’d assumed long-dead. All while wearing a veil.

Spotting herself in the mirror she wondered who was that drag queen in white. Her lips were blood red. Her eyelids were three different shades of bronze. The make-up artist had said airily
Lots of my brides ask for ‘natural’ but they’re glad I didn’t listen when they see the photographs.
Although her dress was simpler by far than Becca’s corseted
extravaganza, Kate felt as if the white satin was wearing
her
. The train stalked her, the headdress bit into her scalp, and the lacing crushed her ribs like a murderous lover. She wanted to
tear everything off and flee through the cutesy latticed window in her undies.

‘Jesus!’ Becca appeared and backed against the door as if a lynch mob was after her. Her streaked hair high and wide, she gleamed and glinted, every inch of her tanned or glossed or
studded with diamante. ‘I need a ciggie, Kate.’

She clambered via a sink on to the high window ledge. It was a curiously un-bride-like thing to do but Kate had discovered that almost anything, apart from standing still and beaming
angelically, looked inappropriate in a wedding dress. It was the least practical item of clothing she could imagine and that, she supposed, was its point.

Puffing smoke out of the window, Becca gasped, ‘Granddad’s drunk. He’s doing the twist. At least I hope it’s the twist. Maybe he’s having a series of strokes.
Mum’s desperately engaging Father Gerry in conversation so he doesn’t notice.’

‘Father Gerry,’ said Kate, ‘is drunker than Granddad. And Charlie’s mum is drunker than both of them put together.’ She’d tried to steer the elder Mrs Garland
away from the bar but it was beyond her; Kate’s new mother-in-law had last been seen propositioning one of the best men.

‘Isn’t it time you told your mother and your . . . husband that you smoke?’

They both pulled a face at ‘husband’, as if it was a forbidden phrase they suddenly had licence to use.

‘I don’t smoke. Not really.’ Becca blew a perfect ‘O’. ‘Just the odd one now and then.’ She flung the cigarette out into the dark and slithered down,
shedding sequins. ‘God, you look stunning, cuz.’

‘It’s just expensive fancy dress.’

‘I never want to take mine off.’ Becca pirouetted, almost toppling over in her platform heels. The brief she’d given the designer had been precise:
imagine Jennifer Aniston
was a Spice Girl
. ‘It’s past 1am. It’s nearly over. Isn’t it extra spesh,’ she said, taking Kate’s hands, ‘that we did this together?’

‘That was lovely, what you said in your speech.’

‘About you?’ Becca pouted in the mirror and checked out her cleavage. ‘I meant every word.’

‘I could tell.’ Kate knew it was heartfelt because Becca hadn’t cried.

‘And to think,’ said Becca, catching Kate’s eye in the glass, ‘you and Charlie always said you didn’t believe in marriage.’

A knock at the door, and Kate’s dad peered sheepishly in. ‘Mum’s on her way,’ he said, unaware that his top hat had left a ridge in his greying curls. ‘She’s
a bit upset, so . . .’ He darted out of the way as the womenfolk bowled in past him, jabbering.

‘She might be OK for all we know.’ Aunty Marjorie shredded a tissue between her fingers.

‘They said
he’s
dead.’ Mum wailed, ‘Dead, Marjorie!’, as if this was her sister’s fault.

‘Who?’ Kate and Becca straightened up, alert.

‘Di.’ Mum’s voice shook.

‘Di . . .?’ Kate couldn’t recall even a third cousin called Di.

‘
Princess
Di?’ Becca comprehended and her hands flew to her face.

‘There’s been a car crash in Paris.’ Dad looked at his wife as if she was a suspicious package which might blow up at any moment. ‘Princess Diana’s in hospital and
her young man was killed.’

‘She’s cursed, John!’ Like all Irish women of her vintage, Mum both loved and feared a curse. ‘I was only thirty when she married that auld two-timer Charles, and you
girls have grown up with her, and now . . .’

‘There’s hope, Mum,’ said Kate. It would be easy to mock the middle-aged suburban woman’s devotion to an aristocrat but Mum had aped every flicky hairstyle, every
cumbersome hat, every patent court shoe her beloved princess wore.

‘Who,’ keened Mum, ‘will look after the Aids patients if my Di goes?’

‘Princess Di can’t die.’ Becca was brisk, no-nonsense. ‘She just can’t.’

‘She can.’ Aunty Marjorie was fatalistic.

‘Let’s say a prayer and trust in Him upstairs.’ Kate knew her mum’s bunions were suffering in her new satin shoes and, judging by the older woman’s face, her
control tights were misbehaving. ‘Our Father, who art—’

A loud banging on the door interrupted the pious scene. ‘Open up!’ shouted a deep voice.

‘No way!’ Becca ran to the door, surprisingly fleet for a woman whose dress weighed the same as a small car. ‘Grooms aren’t allowed, Julian! Brides only!’

‘Too many bloody brides at this wedding,’ laughed Julian from the other side of the door. ‘Charlie, mate,’ he shouted. ‘Give me a hand here.’

Squealing, enjoying herself, Becca tried to hold the door against the intruders but she gave in and the grooms half fell into the powder room, both miraculously holding aloft an unspilled
tumbler of whisky.

‘So, wifey,’ said Julian, straightening up, his cheeks a little red, his blond hair a little tousled, ‘how does it feel to be the new Mrs Ames?’

‘It feels great.’ Kate bent backwards as Julian threw an arm about her waist and pulled her to him, kissing her hard. ‘Whisky breath.’ She crinkled her nose.

‘You love it,’ he said.

‘I do.’ Julian was manly in all the textbook ways and Kate was constantly surprised by how much it turned her on. Throughout her teens she’d mooned over fey boys, boys who read
poetry and looked into the middle distance thinking big thoughts. Boys like, well, Charlie, who was now submitting to having his cravat straightened by his new wife. Julian’s swagger, his
hunger for life and his blithe expectation that things would go his way were an exotic cocktail after a lifetime of tea drinking.

‘Ow.’ Even though, at times, he could go a little far. ‘You’re squeezing my whalebones,’ complained Kate, feeling small against Julian’s expanse of
waistcoated chest.

‘Sorry. You smell bloody divine.’ Julian kissed her hair, her immovable hair which Kate couldn’t wait to comb out.

Standing back to survey her cravat handiwork, Becca seemed satisfied. ‘God, Charlie, I fancy you in tails.’

‘I look like an idiot.’ Charlie had been anti-top hat, anti-cravat, anti-fuss throughout the wedding planning tornado.

‘No, you look nice,’ said Kate shyly, as if they’d just been introduced. The road back to something akin to friendship was long and full of potholes; much of what they said to
each other came out awkwardly.

‘It’s not a wedding without top hats,’ said Becca, a variation on a theme.
It’s not a wedding without a floral arch/a harpist/an eight tier cake.
To avoid
tantrums, the others had, separately and collectively, given in. Even so, the mistake on the invitations – only noticed
after
all one hundred and fifty had been mailed – sparked
a fit.
It looks as if I’m marrying Julian and Kate’s marrying Charlie!
Becca had raged.
As if we’ve all gone back in time!

As if they’d gone back two years, to be precise, to the fatal row that hindsight pinpointed as the moment when the music changed.

The argument that ended the Kate and Charlie show had seemed trivial, little more than a tiff. During one of their long, meandering phone calls, Kate had prodded her boyfriend about his decision
not to come home that weekend from Keele University.

Like most arguments, that wasn’t what they were really fighting about.

‘I have to catch up. I’m really behind.’

Kate pictured Charlie’s digs on campus, a rectangular box made cosy with Pulp posters and collages of photographs. She imagined him lying on his ethnic bedcover, surrounded by books and
stained mugs and CDs as he said, with patience that was somehow patronising, ‘Staffordshire’s a long way from London, darling. I come home a lot, you know. This weekend I have to buckle
down.’

Usually, Kate was understanding. She knew Charlie’s shambolic home life had given him a thirst to make his own way. If he studied hard he could expect a First, the key to unlock his
literary ambitions. That evening, however, Kate was less concerned with his literary ambitions than she was with the collage on the cork pinboard above his head.

Each time she visited a few more photographs had been added. Snap after snap of ‘mega’ nights out, of Charlie huddled over a bottle-strewn table with his new best friends all caught
mid-guffaw by the camera’s flash. Kate was glad – sincerely glad – that the decision to study so far from home had worked out, that her boyfriend was making friends and having
fun.

But.

As Charlie would ruefully say, ‘There’s
always
a but.’

But . . . did all these new friends have to be girls? Girls with shampoo-advert swingy hair, an endless wardrobe of strappy tops and a complete ignorance of bras?

The pinboard had been on Kate’s mind as she went in and out to work. Her desire to leave sixth form and find a job had astonished Charlie. He saw higher education as an opportunity it was
rude to refuse but Kate was impatient to launch herself on what she thought of as the real world.

Working in retail (‘You mean you’re a shop girl, pet,’ Mum would correct her) was frustrating and rewarding and hard graft. Kate, despite her family’s misgivings about
‘missing out’ on a degree, was playing a long game. She had a head for business: surely the best way to develop it was in a hands-on environment, learning something practical every
day.

The real world turned out to be banal. Early starts. Clocking on and clocking off. Naively, Kate had assumed that working in a party supplies shop would be ‘fun’ but retail was
retail: it certainly didn’t merit a collage of party snaps, like Charlie’s work hard/play hard life on campus.

‘How’s the book coming along?’ She changed the subject.

‘Slowly.’

‘Maybe it’d go faster and you’d have time to come home if you didn’t party so much.’

Charlie’s answering ‘OK, Grandma!’ would usually make Kate laugh but that night her insecurity called the shots. The thought of his lissom new friends with their girly names
– each one an Emma or a Sophie – made her feel like a careworn character from a Victorian novel:
Poor Kate, the Humble Shopgirl who dies of consumption in an attic.

Instead of laughing, Kate banged down the phone.

Dismayed at herself, and wishing she hadn’t done something so, well,
Becca
, Kate stared hard at the phone, then jumped when it rang.

‘Hi,’ she said, sweetly and full of trepidation, relieved that Charlie had diffused the situation.

The relief vanished when her gentle, peaceable Charlie spat, ‘So, let me get this right. I do what I’m told, yeah?’

‘No, listen,’ began Kate. She closed her eyes as the curdled conversation slipped away from her. ‘I just—’

‘I’m not a poodle, Kate. I don’t come when you click your fingers.’

‘I know that!’ Kate took a deep breath. Slamming the phone down was what Charlie’s mother did when he called home to check she was all right. To check she was
alive
. She
should have foreseen the traumatic connections it would spark. ‘I didn’t mean to—’ She stopped. ‘Hang on. Who’s there with you?’ she asked, as a female
voice murmured in the background.

‘Nobody,’ said Charlie.

Kate assumed she’d heard a stray snatch of radio until Charlie amended his answer to, ‘Well, just Ellie.’

Just
Ellie. Just a glossy haired, big eyed model-in-training. ‘And you think it’s OK to have a private conversation with
just Ellie
in the room? I’m talking to
you
, Charlie, not some silly tart I’ve never even met.’

The silence was thick, like soup. ‘Actually,’ said Charlie, ‘you’re on speakerphone.’

It was the girlish giggle that did it. Down went Kate’s phone for the second and final time.
He let me embarrass myself
.
He aired our dirty linen in front of a stranger. He
doesn’t care how I feel.
A thought that had been gestating for a while rose up fully formed.
Charlie’s changed since he went away.

In the white heat of her annoyance, Kate felt like a glorious martyr, a latter day Joan of Arc.
I’ve been supportive
.
I helped him move in to his digs. I never moan about how
much I miss him.

When he rang back, she’d let him have it right between the eyes. Or she’d cry. Kate folded her arms and waited; her Charlie wouldn’t hold out for long.

Kate fell asleep with her bedroom door open so she could hear the phone in the hallway, and woke up to its sulky silence in the morning.

Despite her confidence in him, a day passed.

Then two.

Foolishly, Kate allowed herself to believe that Charlie had a cheeky plan to show up at the weekend. For forty-eight hours she watched the front door like an abandoned dog. Becca, an expert in
Kate behaviour, guessed something was up, but her ‘all men are pigs’ rants made Kate feel worse.

Not all men were pigs. Charlie in particular was lovely. After the first rush of fury, Kate beatified him: St Charlie, patron saint of Good Boyfriends. He was kind, he was thoughtful, he was
easy-going. But was he still hers?