‘Whoops, sorry, Lucy.’
‘Anyway, how are you?’ I ask.
‘We’re brilliant! Thank you soooo much for the flowers! That’s why I was calling. It was so thoughtful of you.’
She fills me in on their trip to Bali. Five minutes later: ‘Then this great big bloody elephant stepped backwards and we were like, whoa!’
I laugh at her story, thinking of Nathan. I wonder if elephants will always remind me of him.
‘So how about you? What’s it been like being back there?’
‘Not too bad.’
‘Work okay?’
‘Yeah, work’s good actually.’ I tell her about the Luigis. She doesn’t keep up with European football and didn’t even bother to watch Australia in the recent World Cup so she has no idea who I’m talking about. ‘Tell Sam, he’ll know.’
I want so badly to ask about Nathan but the words just won’t come.
‘How’s James?’ she enquires.
‘He’s good. Sleeping. Well, trying to.’
‘I’m sorry. I just can never remember the time over there.’
‘Don’t worry.’
‘You sound a little down, Lucy. How are things with James? Are you two okay?’
‘Pretty much,’ I tell her. ‘It’s been a bit weird coming back after having such a nice time with you guys. I felt quite heartbroken leaving, if I’m honest, but it’s not so bad now.’
Eventually I give in to my urge. ‘How are Nathan and Amy?’ I ask, settling for a compromise.
‘They’re really good actually. They were over here earlier.’
I can’t bear the thought of them together.
‘Were they? Are they back on again?’ I ask tentatively.
‘Who knows? They were here when your flowers arrived actually. They said to say hi.’
‘Did they?’ I feel pleased, even though she said ‘they’. I want to know more but I’m perfectly aware I shouldn’t be thinking about him at all. Anyway I assume he will have seen the card from ‘Lucy and James’.
‘Yeah. Oh, Nathan said to tell you something.’
‘Really?’ I hold my breath.
‘Damn, I can’t remember what it was.’
I wait for her, willing her to remember.
‘Was it a joke?’ I ask.
‘Hey? Oh, no, I don’t think so. Sorry, it’s gone. I’m sure it wasn’t very exciting.’
I’m so disappointed I can barely breathe.
‘Well, I guess I’d better go.’ She wraps it up. ‘We should talk more,’ she says, and I agree. We really don’t speak very often at all–once every few months if we’re lucky.
‘Say hi to Sam for me. And Nathan,’ I slip in sneakily. ‘And Amy,’ I add as an afterthought.
James calls me back through to the bedroom. ‘Was that Molly?’ he asks. ‘Why can’t she get the time right?’
‘Oh, James, give her a break.’
He humphs. ‘Come back to bed.’ He holds his hand out to me.
‘I might go and get us some breakfast from the café.’
‘No. Come back to bed.’
I walk over to his side of the bed, hesitantly. He takes my hands and pulls me down.
‘I’m hungry,’ I moan.
‘Lucy…’ he says sternly, and starts to kiss my neck. He’s not going to give up, so in the end I give in.
I don’t cry this time.
Chapter 13
It’s the Thursday night before Easter and I’m on a packed train on my way to Dunster in Somerset to stay with Mum and Terry. Even Tom and Nick are coming home for the weekend. Tom is bringing his new girlfriend, Meg, and threatening a gruesome murder if we embarrass him too much. This is going to be hilarious! I can’t imagine him with a serious girlfriend.
This evening I passed up after-work drinks with Gemma and Chloe. I keep meaning to go out with them and I’m sure they’ll stop inviting me if I’m not careful but I genuinely couldn’t help it this time as I’d already booked my train ticket. The great thing is, Mandy’s agreed to let Chloe come on the Milan trip with me next week. She is dying of excitement, whereas poor Gemma is dying of jealousy.
It’s dark by the time I arrive at the station so I can’t wait to wake up tomorrow morning and see the countryside. Mum and Terry are standing on the platform and they smother me, one after the other. I love Terry dearly now–he’s like a father to me. Certainly more of a father than I ever had, that’s for sure.
‘So your mum was telling me about this Lugee account, Lucy?’ Terry says from behind the wheel. Mum’s insisted that I take the front seat beside him.
‘Luigi,’ Mum butts in. ‘You know the Luigis, Terry!’ she reprimands.
‘Oh, yes, dear, I just keep forgetting. Memory not quite what it used to be, you know…’
Terry is twenty years older than Mum which makes him sixty-five. But he’s an old sixty-five.
Mum was only nineteen when she fell pregnant with me. I’m sure I was an accident. My dad was a bit of a hopeless case. Probably still is. I haven’t seen him in years, but the last I heard he’d left his home town of Dublin and was living in a crummy flat in Manchester. Mum left him when I was just a baby. I suspect that under the influence of alcohol he could be quite violent. And he was under the influence of alcohol practically all the time. That I know, at least. Although Mum rarely talks of him.
‘So come on, love, when do you go to Milan?’ Terry asks. I fill them in on my forthcoming trip and by the time I’m done we’re home. Mum puts her arm around me and hugs me tightly as we follow Terry up the path to the front door. It’s a chilly evening, so she goes straight into the kitchen and puts the kettle on top of the Aga.
I love this house. It’s incredibly cosy despite its size. Five bedrooms, three floors; I’m on the top along with Nick and Tom, Mum and Terry are on the first floor with the living room and the spare bedroom, and on the ground floor is a dining room, which we rarely eat in, preferring instead the large country kitchen.
‘I was thinking we’d have a nice brandy,’ Terry suggests. ‘Would you rather a brandy, Lucy?’ he asks me.
‘Actually I wouldn’t mind a Baileys…’
‘Oh, you two.’ Mum smiles. ‘Well, I’m still having a cuppa.’
Nick is down the pub with some friends. When I hear him stumbling in at midnight, I’m tempted to get out of bed and go and say hi to my little stepbrother. Well, not so little, actually. He’s eighteen now and tall, with very, very short dark hair. A bit of a stud with the ladies, so I hear from Mum.
Meg, Tom’s girlfriend, is beautiful. Medium-length, light blonde bob and dark brown eyes. She’s a trendy city girl from the looks of her, in skinny jeans and a funky top which I recognise from All Saints. Tom is tall and gangly, with shortish, light brown hair. He’s skinnier than his younger brother, who I suspect has been doing a few weights in his bedroom because he looks more grown-up and manly every time I see him.
‘Alright, bro?’ Nick mumbles from the breakfast table. He seems very hung-over.
Meg stands shyly next to Tom in the doorway. They’ve just arrived from the station. Nick holds his hand out to her and introduces himself. She steps forward and takes it timidly.
‘Right!’ Tom says, quickly putting his arm around Meg’s shoulder. ‘Shall I show Meg up to her room?’
‘I’ve made up your bedroom for the two of you–is that okay?’ my mum asks. Bless my mum. And bless Tom for not simply expecting to be allowed to sleep in the same room. Even though that’s plainly what they’ve been doing for the last four months.
‘Brilliant. Thanks, Diane,’ he says, leaning in and giving my mum a kiss.
She blushes and hurries him away. ‘Off you go!’
‘Big bro’s done alright for himself,’ Nick drawls after they’ve left the room.
‘Oi, you, keep your hands off!’ Terry admonishes him.
‘As if I would,’ he objects.
‘Ah, I’m only joking, kiddo.’ Terry laughs, reaching down to pat his younger son on
one of his broad shoulders.
Terry and his wife, Patricia, had a messy divorce a year before he met Mum. To have a break from it all, he took the accountancy job in Australia, but a couple of years away from his boys took its toll on him, which is the reason we moved back to England. Tom and Nick have ended up spending more time with their dad, while Patricia moved to Cornwall with her new husband. Tom and Nick don’t like him very much, and I think that’s probably why their mum doesn’t mind them staying with their dad.
That night after we’ve all finished arguing over why Terry shouldn’t let Nick off the £6,000 rent for landing on his Park Lane Monopoly hotels, I head upstairs to my bedroom.
This was my bedroom for only a couple of years before I went away to university. Mum and Terry have since done it up so the walls are the palest pink and the curtains are blue and white Laura Ashley. Hardly ‘me’ but at least I’ve got a double bed.
I try calling James. He doesn’t answer his phone and it goes straight to voicemail. I try again. Voicemail. That’s odd. I could have sworn he said he was having a night in tonight. I nervously press redial one more time. Still voicemail.
I go to the bathroom to get ready for bed, then try him again.
And again, just as I’m dozing off.
Eventually I give up and fall into a troubled sleep, where I dream about my mum telling me she has cancer and Terry draining the blood from her sick, white body. I wake up sobbing at around six in the morning. My heart is pounding and I can’t get back to sleep so eventually I go downstairs in my dressing gown.
I look out of the kitchen window. Spring is well and truly here. The pear tree in the front garden is bursting with pinky-white blossom and there’s a misty haze over the pale blue sky. I can hear a blackbird trilling away somewhere and I have a sudden desire to go outside. I step into Mum’s wellies; our feet are almost the same size. Then I pull on her warm Barbour jacket and unlock the back door, walking off down the garden path. Tilly and Tonker, our brown and white goats, bleat at me as I approach. ‘Hello, boys.’ I hold out my hand and Tilly, the brown one, comes over to nuzzle his face against it. I open the door to the chicken coop and let the hens out. Smiling, I watch them as they make their way out into the garden. How I love it here.
Back in the house, Mum is already dressed and in the kitchen. She looks up, startled, when I walk in through the door.
‘Lucy, you frightened me! What are you doing outside at this time?’
‘Couldn’t sleep. Bad dream.’ I don’t elaborate.
‘Oh, that’s no good. Do you want a cup of tea?’
I resist the urge to show her how to do it Nathan’s way. She’s too much of a purist.
After a little while, Smokey, our grey cat, comes in through the cat flap with a dead field mouse and plonks it at Mum’s feet.
‘Smokey!’ she berates.
‘Ew.’ I leave her to it. I head back upstairs and try James again. His phone just rings and rings. I feel sick. Where is he? What is he doing? I distract myself by taking a shower but as soon as I’m finished, I call him again. He answers, finally.
‘James! Why haven’t you been answering your phone?’
‘Shit, have you been trying to call?’
‘Only about twenty bloody times!’
‘Sorry. I left it here last night,’ he moans.
‘What do you mean, you left it? Where are you?’
‘I’m at home now. But I went out last night. Bit of a late one.’
‘I thought you were having an early night.’
‘Lucy, please keep it down, my head hurts.’
I take a deep breath before speaking again. ‘Where did you go?’
‘Some of the guys from work dragged me to a party,’ he answers.
‘Kicking and screaming, I bet.’
‘Hey?’ He sounds confused. ‘Lucy…’ Now he’s weary. ‘What’s the problem? If you were here, you could’ve come too. What’s the big deal?’
I don’t want to nag him but I can’t help myself. ‘Why didn’t you answer your phone?’
‘I left it here by accident.’
‘I was ringing at midnight,’ I say.
‘Yeah, and I was out until one,’ he answers reasonably.
‘Oh. I called this morning too.’
‘Christ, was that you? I thought I was dreaming. I am knackered!’ He sighs.
‘Okay, well, now I know you’re alright, I’ll let you go back to sleep.’
‘Thanks, baby,’ he says sleepily down the receiver.
I’m not happy about this at all. Why does he always have to go out with his sodding mates? I can’t stand them!
Mum and Terry’s tea shop is a cosy place with red and white chequered tablecloths, wooden chairs and a few knick-knacks on shelves around the walls.
‘I’ll be with you in a minute,’ Mum calls out to me when I go to see her in the afternoon. A few minutes later she re-emerges with tea and sandwiches for the lunchtime stragglers.
It’s 2.30 and we’ve probably got half an hour to an hour before the afternoon tea brigade turns up. It’s Easter weekend and Dunster, with its medieval castle and picturesque high street, is predictably busy. Mum brings me over a pot of tea and two bone-china cups, plus a couple of currant scones with jam and clotted cream.
‘Aw, thanks, Mum.’
‘Freshly baked this morning by Terry.’ She smiles. ‘So how are you, Lucy? You don’t seem quite yourself.’
‘Don’t I?’ My mum knows me better than anyone else.
‘No,’ she shakes her head, ‘you don’t. So what’s up? Is everything okay with James?’
‘Erm…’
She waits patiently, gazing at me intently over her teacup. Suddenly I find myself telling her everything.
Everything.
‘Do you love him?’ she asks, when I’ve finished. She’s talking about Nathan.
‘I don’t know,’ I answer truthfully. ‘I don’t think so, but when I was leaving, I felt like I did. Maybe it was just another one of my obsessive crushes.’ She knows all about my love-triangle past.
‘Well, at least you’re over Sam…’
‘Yeah, I know. I mean, honestly, what is it with these bloody Wilson brothers?’
She smiles, then becomes serious again. ‘And you’re still in love with James?’
‘Yes.’
‘Have you told James how you feel about Nathan?’
‘No, Mum, are you mad? I could never do that, he’d hit the roof!’
‘Well, Lucy, you’re going to have to figure out what you want, my darling, because you shouldn’t be stringing either of these men along if they’re not the ones for you.’ She looks at me pointedly.
‘I’m hardly stringing Nathan along, am I?’ I’m frustrated. She says it like she sees it, my mum.
‘Maybe not Nathan, but what about James?’
‘But, Mum, what if he has cheated on me?’ I ask.
‘And what if he hasn’t? What evidence do you have, apart from the text?’ She eyes me questioningly. I don’t answer. I’m beginning to regret telling her anything, but I usually appreciate her honesty once I’ve had a chance to think about it.
‘Lucy,’ she says gently. ‘How would you feel if James was having the thoughts about another girl that you’ve been having about Nathan?’
I pause for a moment and think. Nausea sweeps through me as I put myself in his position.
‘Don’t you believe thinking about cheating is almost as bad as doing it?’ she persists.
I know she’s right. But I don’t know what to do. Apart from the uneasy feeling I sometimes get about James when he goes out with his friends, Mum’s right: I don’t have a lot to go on. And I do have a tendency towards paranoia. At least I do with James. And I haven’t had another proper boyfriend who I can draw experience from.
‘Just have a think about it,’ she tells me. ‘You’ll know what to do when the time is right.’
‘I hope so, Mum. I really hope so.’
C
hapter 14
‘I can’t believe we swung this trip to Italy together!’ Chloe laughs, as we perch on stools at a trendy bar in the Porta Ticinese area of Milan and order a couple of vodka sours with passionfruit–or vodka sour alla maracuja, as they soon become known to us. Italian barmen show off their cocktail-mixing skills in front of us. We want to ignore their posing but they are quite pretty to look at.
It’s a sunny, late Saturday afternoon and Chloe and I arrived in Milan this morning. We’ve been wandering around the cathedral and the Galleria for a few hours and have just been at our hotel getting ready. We’re going for the full works tonight. I’m wearing a knee-length, dark green dress which skims my curves and Chloe is in tight black trousers and a sparkly silver top. We’re both wearing kitten heels. My hair is curling loosely just below my shoulders and Chloe has partially tied her long blonde hair back with a couple of clips. We look pretty hot, even if we do say so ourselves. And judging by the looks and wolf whistles these Italian men are giving us, we can’t be too far off the mark.
‘Thank you for asking Mandy.’ Chloe beams.
‘You’re very welcome,’ I reply. ‘It wouldn’t have been any fun on my own and I’ve been meaning to come out with you and Gemma after work for ages.’
‘Have you really?’ She looks pleased.
‘Yes, truly. I’m sorry, I just never seem to get round to it.’
‘Too busy going home to your lovely boyfriend.’ She grins.
‘Mmm.’
Actually, it was odd with James last week. He seemed a little distracted after Easter and wouldn’t open up to me about it. To be honest, I’d been feeling preoccupied since my chat with Mum, so I didn’t really want to press him. He did say his dad–a lawyer too–is trying to persuade him to retrain as a criminal lawyer. I hate the idea of him defending rapists and murderers and the like.
‘More likely petty thieves,’ James said, but I didn’t feel at all reassured. I hope he tells his dad to piss off, interfering old sod.
Two drinks later, Chloe and I are still at the first bar, and haven’t yet set off to meet the Luigis.
‘Shall we bother with dinner?’ I ask. We had planned to go for pasta but we’ve been too busy stuffing ourselves with the free aperitivi.