Читать книгу Amanda’s Wedding - Jenny Colgan - Страница 7

All the way back on the tube we yabbered and yabbered, genuinely thrilled to see each other again. He told me about his trip across America: the larks he got up to in New York; the English pop-star he bumped into in a deserted part of Montana and what great mates they became; his awful jobs and the amazing characters he’d met. His voice had taken on a new American tinge. I didn’t mention the fact that I hadn’t changed jobs, or flats, or, despite appearances, got it together at all since he went away, instead embroidering wildly the love lives of several mutual acquaintances, some boring parties and a hilarious imaginary cat of Fran’s (I was getting desperate by that stage). Neither of us mentioned the inauspicity of his leaving; it was as if he’d simply been away, perhaps on business, perhaps for a fortnight, perhaps in prison.

We turned up at home at half past midnight. The flat was ominously quiet, which meant that Linda was wide awake, listening to our every move. However, it was a special occasion, so I pinched her bottle of vodka anyway, called in sick with a midnight vomiting fit (unpleasant but effective), and fell into bed with my big – OK, slightly smelly – darling, who managed to make me buzz all over before passing out for fourteen hours.

The following day I watched him sleep, and the time just drifted by. Maybe they should put beautiful sleeping males in airport waiting rooms.

He woke up dazed, stared at the ceiling for a second, then rolled over and grabbed me with a grin.

‘Oh, Mel, darling. I will be yours for ever …’

This was more like it.

‘… if you’d make me a bacon sandwich. Two bacon sandwiches. And some fried eggs. I am starving.’

‘That’, he said twenty minutes later, after I’d emptied the fridge of Linda’s food, ‘was the best bacon sandwich I have ever had. Americans just cannot make a bacon sandwich. They put it in brown bread and cover it in crap.’

‘What, like vegetables?’

‘Yeah!’

‘You’re right – bloody Americans and their healthy eating! That’s why they’re all in such fantastic physical shape.’

He giggled, then took my face in his hands. Here it came.

‘Gee, Mel, it’s good to be back. Americans … they never mean what they say. I never feel I can talk bullshit with anyone as much as I can with you.’

‘I think that’s possibly the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me,’ I said gravely.

He laughed, and ruffled my hair.

‘I mean … I behaved like a complete dork, Mel. I’m sorry. I really am. What I did to you, it really bit. You know, I had no idea what I was doing. With all my parents and stuff … I can find it really hard to open up … and I got scared. I was so worried you were going to … just ignore me. Which I would probably have deserved.’

‘Yes, you would.’

‘You’re special to me, you know.’

‘I do know. And if you ever EVER do anything like that again, I’m going to impale a testicle on each arm of a pair of scissors and start snipping.’

He winced. ‘Is that nice?’

‘You’ll see.’

And that was it. I was very happy.

The next week passed in a blur – a dirty-sheeted, stupid, giggling, New York-time blur. I finally got it together to go into work, but was so glowing and smiley that I got away with more murder than usual. Even the secretaries couldn’t hurt me. No one in the world had ever been as happy as us, ever, and in fact could have no idea what it was like. I floated around, occasionally stopping to pity people for not being as happy as me.

At home, I stopped answering the phone and made Linda do it, which was mean of me as she hated doing it and my friends hated speaking to her. Fran eventually stomped round in a fury, having gleaned, accurately, that things weren’t exactly going the way she’d planned. This surmise was confirmed when she came to the door and Alex opened it, clearly in possession of both kneecaps.

‘Hey there, Fran,’ he said winningly. ‘Good to see you again.’

I wondered what she was going to do. For a moment she looked as if she would completely ignore him, then she shook her mane of hair and smiled.

‘Hello! Great to see you – you complete bastard! How nice!’ she said, walking straight past him to kiss me on the cheek.

Alex grimaced at me, but I shrugged. Even if I hadn’t been able to give him a hard time for what he’d done, I had no objections to Fran doing it.

I put the kettle on. From the other room I could hear Fran’s trained voice, devastatingly polite.

‘So, did you stay in lots of interesting places … cocksucker?’

‘Well, yeah,’ Alex stammered. ‘Yeah, I moved around a bit, saw a few states. Bumming around, mostly.’

‘Really? How unusual … for such a rampant arsehole.’

‘MEL!’ shouted Alex, coming through to the kitchen. ‘How long do I have to put up with this?’

‘As long as it takes … buttcheeks.’

‘Buttcheeks? That’s complimentary, surely?’

I blushed. ‘Shut up and take in this tea. And try and make it up to Fran.’

‘I didn’t do anything to Fran.’

‘What, you want to get on her bad side? Be nice.’

He sighed, hung his head, and we carried in the tea.

‘I like knobchop’s new fake accent,’ Fran said to me. ‘Do you remember when he came back from Goa? He talked about his karma all the time and wanted to be a hippie. Gosh, wasn’t it jolly funny! What a wankfox!’ And she laughed a tinkly little Amanda laugh.

‘Fran, give me a break!’ said Alex. ‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry, goddamnit.’

‘Gimme a break! Ah’m sawry, gawdamnit.’

‘Oh, for God’s sake, stop it!’

‘Stawp it!’

‘OK, OK, OK.’ He got up and made to leave the room.

Fran wasn’t finished. ‘So what are your plans now, worthless anal wart?’

He looked at me and then at the floor.

‘To make it up to Melanie and never leave abruptly again and be a good human being and find a good job and become respectable, SUH!’

Fran nodded slowly, winked at me, and smiled at Alex, who gradually sat down again. Then she launched into filling us in on the gossip. It looked like things were going to be OK.

And they were. Alex and I swanned about London, doing all the things we normally couldn’t be bothered with, like Art and Culture, for example. I cooked us fabulous meals, to which I politely asked Linda. However, she didn’t seem to fancy them. She’d had another big parcel, anyway, and stayed in her room a lot, not really giving me a chance to thank her for doing the washing-up.

Alex did have some plans. This pop-star bloke was apparently lined up to get him some work here in the record business, so it was all going to be cool and he might even try and get a band together. I nodded supportively … For the moment, I was simply happy to keep playing Hide the Trousers and didn’t really care.

Eventually, I phoned Amanda back about the party. OK, I was happy, but it didn’t stop me feeling an urge to get a gloat in, given half a chance.

‘Darling, hi. I’ve just got a call on the other line – give me a second.’

Crap. This meant she must already have heard and had gone into defensive mode, which meant I wouldn’t have the satisfaction of relaying the news.

‘There,’ she said, ‘now what’s all this about Alex? I couldn’t believe it when I heard. Really, Melanie, haven’t you ever thought of playing hard to get?’

Every time.

‘No, it’s great,’ I said. ‘We’re really … happy to be back together, get everything sorted out, you know. We worked out we wanted to be together.’

‘Oh!’ she squealed. ‘Tell me you’re going to get married too! We could have a joint celebration.’

She knew damn well I wasn’t.

‘No, of course not. That’s for grown-ups. Which reminds me, we’re coming to your do on Saturday night.’

‘OK … well, Alex will know everyone, I suppose. You know it’s black tie?’

‘Uh huh.’

‘OK, darling. Well, improvise as best you can. Must dash! We’ve got a Teletubby stuck in a lift! Bye, darling!’

By the following Saturday, I knew for a fact that everything was all right with the world and I was ready to hit Amanda’s engagement do. I had it all worked out. No doubt there’d be a lot of nudging. Someone might even say, ‘Hey, it’ll be you two next!’ and I’d blush modestly and do a shy smile, and Alex would look at me tenderly and say, ‘Well, you never know … maybe one day, if I’m lucky!’ and that’d get all round the party and I’d be the queen! By the time my imagination had supplied a huge circular staircase down which we could descend to mass applause, I had to pretend to be Fran and tell myself not to be so silly. But, oh – look how wonderfully compatible we were! We hadn’t fallen out once, all week. He’d grovelled, he’d done his bit. He was home again, he was beautiful, and he was mine. Everything was brilliant.

Amanda’s party turned out to be a pretty swish affair. Fortunately, what with all the shagging and healthy gourmet meals, I could get into last year’s grey silk frock. And if I kept my right-hand side to the wall, the wine stain scarcely showed. Alex had shoved on his usual T-shirt and jeans, but looked gorgeous anyway.

I’d begged Fran to come, but she’d absolutely declined, on the grounds that I would be snogging Alex all night and everyone else would be horrible.

The party was in an exclusive club on the Thames: all noisy gravel and ginormous bouquets of unnaturallooking yellow flowers clustered around a bunch of braying men and sharp-lipsticked women. Everyone was taller than me and knew everyone else, and before I was two steps through the door, my carefully groomed confidence started to plummet, until once again I was Melanie Pepper, unruly loudmouth of 2C, worrying about puppy fat and what would happen if George Michael didn’t want to marry me after all. (Well, who knew?)

This was definitely not my race, this mob of anorexic, complacent, poshtastic freeloaders. I caught sight of myself in the enormous gold-tinted mirror opposite, surrounded by the glitterprati. I looked like I was wearing my mother’s shoes, en route to the dentist.

I turned round for the consolation of having the handsomest man in the room on my arm. But my heart sank again. How could I forget? Alex’s hair flopped! He went skiing! His parents couldn’t remember his first name! He was One of Them! Even before I had grabbed my first free glass of champers (Don’t grab, Mel! You have a right to be here, remember?), he was practically being mobbed.

‘Al! Al, darling! Where have you been?’

‘Alex! Sara said she bumped into you in LA – had a few fantastic days, I hear?’

‘Oh, come over and see Benedict and Claire – we haven’t seen you since the pool party!’

I too had been at the pool party, having a thoroughly miserable time. I too hadn’t seen any of these poncey poseurs since then. I pretended to look politely interested and waited for Alex to re-introduce me.

‘Guys, you remember Melanie, don’t you?’

A blonde horse glanced at me cursorily, and I wished – for God’s sake! – that my name was a little less common.

There was a short pause in the conversation as they gave me simpering nob smiles and enquiring looks, then they fell back into loud guffaws as Alex recounted his adventures yet again, cast me one apologetic glance, then hurled himself into dissecting the rugby season and knocking back the ’poo.

So much for the grey silk dress. The entire circle, defying the laws of physics, appeared to have its back to me, and I felt out in the cold. Deflated, I wondered what had happened to my fantasy big night at Amanda’s party. I would have made my excuses and left, but there was no one to give my excuses to. So I wandered off, pretending to be in search of a toilet, and wondering whether or not to go and have a little cry by myself.

Weighing up my options, I spotted Amanda. After all, she was the hostess, she had to talk to me! I wandered up to her group in my best ‘I’m not at all desperate to talk to anyone at this party, ha!’ manner.

‘Hello, darling!’ air-kissed Amanda. For once, her shallowness was pitched at precisely the right level for me, and I was extremely grateful for it. She was wearing a Barbie doll-sized dress made of some pastel, girlie, lacy thing that was almost, but not quite, see-through. ‘That’s flaunting it a bit when you’re meant to be celebrating your union with someone you’ll love for the rest of your life,’ I thought nastily as a waiter did a full body-swerve trying to make out her nipples – but I decided not to mention it.

‘Ehmm … are you having a nice party?’ A stunning social opener from me.

‘Darling, it’s fantastic! There’s a Hello! photographer here.’

There was social success, and there was social success.

Amanda was looking even tinier and more cutesy than ever. Her sly little features glowed in the gold of the room as she checked her reflection again in the mirrors and – I swear to God – simpered at herself.

‘Ho!’ I said heartily. ‘Maybe he’d like to photograph me and Alex, back from the grave!’

This was meant to be a weak joke, but as I would so patently never be Hello! magazine material, it just came out as a bit sad.

‘So, tell me all about it!’ pouted the minuscule radiant one, while doing a quick scan of the room to make sure no one could see her talking to me.

I did start to try and explain, but other people’s happy love lives are so unbelievably boring – we shagged, we stared deep into one another’s eyes and, hey, we had this really funny private joke whereby we turned the pillowcase into a singing animal – and Amanda hid her boredom less than most. It also didn’t help that the other half of this indivisible team was guffawing his head off, miles away. I found my voice trailing off into a litany of hmm, so, it’s great, yeah, fine. Then there was a bit of a pause. My shoulder was being looked over. I knew I should have paid my homage and left by now, but I could hear big roars of laughter from Alex’s clique – laughter I simply could not share (I was tending towards the melodramatic by this stage) – and my options remained either clinging desperately to Amanda like a limpet or bursting into tears in the toilet.

‘So,’ I stalled, ‘where’s Fraser?’

‘Hullo thair,’ lilted the Scottish tones behind me. I turned round, with the only genuine smile of pleasure I’d felt all evening. He must have remembered me after all.

‘Frase!’

Despite the kilt, however, this character wasn’t Fraser. He wasn’t even looking at me – he was looking at Amanda, who returned a rather icy stare. I felt a complete fool.

‘Angus,’ pronounced Amanda beautifully, ‘have you met my old schoolfriend, Melanie? Melanie, this is Fraser’s baby brother.’

I looked at him like a surprised fish.

‘Hullo there,’ he said again.

A rather ruddy-faced boy stared back at me. He was as tall as Fraser, but didn’t share any of his features. His hair was reddy-brown, and he had freckles. Hmm.

‘Hello,’ I said casually. ‘Are you the best man?’

Whoops. Patently not the thing to ask. Ongas, or whatever his name was, blushed to the roots of his – almost ginger in this light, really – hair and mumbled, ‘Ehm, well, I don’t think so … erm, no.’ Amanda looked cross. ‘Well, we had to make all these decisions for the church and so on!’ This was so meaningless I took the point and didn’t enquire further. Amanda had, however, managed to say this in transit and had already made her exit, leaving us with ‘Unpopular at Parties’ syndrome. We both knew we were the leftovers, so we certainly didn’t want to be speaking to each other, but we didn’t have anyone else to talk to.

‘So, what do you do, Angus?’ Jesus, I sounded like the Queen.

‘I’m a mechanical engineer.’

‘Oh, like your brother?’

‘Ehm, no, it’s a bit more boring than that.’

As if in cruel mockery, this remark was punctuated by yet another enormous laugh from Alex’s group, who were obviously having the best time any one group of people had ever had, in any place, ever. Someone had a napkin tied on as a blindfold, I noticed.

Another long pause. Every fibre of my being screeched for Fran to mince in, or for Alex to run up declaring, ‘I’m so sorry to have been parted from you, my darling. God, these awful bores, they just won’t leave me alone. Come, let me ravish you in the gazebo, you amazing raunch-puppet.’ Maybe then I could find out what a gazebo was.

‘So, did you come down from Scotland?’ This remark was pointless before it came out of my mouth, judging from the kilt. Actually, I was dying to ask why he and the lovely Fraser clearly didn’t get on, and why they had fallen out, but looking at his face as he failed to hide his disbelief at the idiocy of my remark, I decided against it.

‘Yes. Yes, I did.’

We dabbled, excruciatingly, in the myriad available modes of transport from Scotland to London, before lapsing, once more, into an uncompanionable silence. Finally, I decided that Tears in Toilet beat this hands down and, preparing to make my exit, I laid down my last small-talk tool:

‘So, what do you think about your big brother and little ‘manda then?’

Suddenly he faced me full on and, for the first time, managed to look cold and cross without going red. His eyes were a very bright blue. Out of nowhere he said, ‘I think he’s being a twat. And I’m sorry, but I think your friend is a witch. Excuse me.’

I really looked at him then. So much for party chitchat.

‘Care to elaborate?’ I asked, in what I hoped was a casually wry manner, and not the kind of thing middle-aged women said when their husbands announced they were having an affair.

‘She treats our mother like a skivvy, she treats Fraser like dirt, she treats that bloody title like a cure for cancer, and she wants to re-do the old place like some fucking King’s Road bam-pot house. So, I apologize, but I’m not quite in the mood to meet her pals. Excuse me.’

And with that he stomped off, deserting me! Bloody hell, what a pig.

Secretly, I was quite impressed. It was kind of true. Amanda was a witch. Fraser was being a twat. But even so! There was I, trying to be nice to the poor bloke, who obviously didn’t know anyone. He’d hardly needed to be so rude as to march off at the first opportunity. He could have at least waited for me to do so first. I stared after him, then examined the chandelier very hard in case anyone thought I was staring at someone who’d just walked away from me as opposed to doing some hearty chandelier-spotting.

Well, at least there were deliciously expensive hors d’oeuvres. I stuffed my face and wished I’d brought a magazine – I could almost enjoy myself.

Alex’s group were by now completely plastered and utterly hysterical over nothing – well, not nothing, something about a chap called Biffy and an imaginatively cruel PE teacher – but, to be honest, I couldn’t follow the details. Alex slung a drunken arm round me and hollered, ‘Totty!’ I pretended to laugh and inadvertently caught Fraser’s brother’s eye. The look on his face plainly showed that he thought we were all a big bunch of wankers. Over in one corner I could see Joan, Amanda’s distinctly tipsy mother, pawing Alex’s old flatmate, Charlie, who was clearly drunk himself but doing his best to reciprocate. It was not a pretty sight.

The speeches came and went as a welcome distraction, because everyone had to be quiet, and not just me. Fraser was eloquent, Amanda fluttered and blushed attractively. Then Amanda’s dad said something, but God knows what – it was lost in the car crash of his new-posh and Estuary vowels. And then they brought on an Irish samba band, which was apparently the latest thing on the snooty party circuit. There was a mass screeching noise as three hundred people who could all ride horses scrambled for the dance floor. I decided to feign illness.

I sat down and tried to look pale and a bit brave, hoping someone would come up and ask me what was wrong and I could complain of feeling faint and not wanting to ruin anyone’s night, thus drawing lots of sympathetic attention to myself. I was sitting there for quite some time until – AT LAST! – Alex came up to me when the crowd had dispersed on to the dance floor, and grabbed me under the arms.

‘Having a good time, pumpkin pie chicken thing?’

I struggled to escape. ‘Mm hmm …’

He ignored this blatant message of despair and started to tickle me.

‘Come on, come dance with me.’

Perhaps the evening could be salvaged after all. However, my image of a romantic smoochy dance-floor show of togetherness in which I could show everyone (well, that poxy brother of Fraser’s) what a successful character I was lasted about two seconds, till I remembered that Alex was one of the world’s all-time worst dancers. He counted out the beat, wrongly, while bouncing from foot to foot. Not only this, but he was so pissed that he got distracted and forgot who he was dancing with, so that he was bouncing around the room like Tigger before he takes his medicine, while I was left bopping along on my own, like a girl in a Human League video. I checked the clock and it was only midnight.

Cursing the fact that I didn’t go with the feeling ill thing twenty minutes ago when I could still have caught the tube, I leaned over and, gently but firmly, grabbed Alex’s attention.

‘I’m going home.’ I smiled sweetly.

‘What?’

It was impossible to hear a damn thing.

‘I’M GOING HOME! I’M HAVING A SHIT TIME AND I’M GOING HOME!’ I hollered, exactly as the music stopped, and everyone turned around to play ‘Spot the Harpy’. I flinched, tried a half-hearted grin, and decided to scram.

‘Thanks, Amanda, it was wonderful, lovely to chat, speak to you soon, bye!’ For once, I was the one doing my socializing on the run.

Heading out the door, an extremely puzzled and drunk Alex staggering behind me, I practically bumped into Fraser, who’d been saying goodnight to guests.

He looked at me for a second, quizzically. Fuck it. I wasn’t going to remind him yet again how insignificant I’d been in his life.

Alex scrunched warily ahead down the gravel drive. Of course, the pre-booked taxis wouldn’t turn up for hours yet, so it was a mile-long walk down the drive, then out into fucking Fulham to try and catch a black cab on a wet Saturday night just after pub chucking-out time.

‘Melanie?’ I heard behind me as I stomped off.

I turned round. He was wearing the same kilt as Angus, but with a less porcine effect, and his curly hair had fallen over his eyes from dancing. I resisted the urge to run up and give him a huge hug and rub him painfully on the head to show him how pleased I was to see him again.

‘Hi,’ I said, coolly. ‘Ehm … great party.’

‘I suppose. Yes. Yes, it was. I’m sorry I didn’t recognize you on the phone.’

So, bring it up again whydoncha?

‘Oh, no, I didn’t recognize you either,’ I stuttered.

That’s why I shouted out ‘Frase!’

‘Well, I suppose it’s been a while.’

‘Yes, it has.’

‘So, I’ll see you around then.’

The beautiful grounds were quiet. Silhouetted against the big house, taller but less of the long streak of piss he used to be, Fraser looked both extremely familiar and, now, extremely foreign to me.

‘No doubt.’ Scintillating.

‘C’mon, darling!’ hollered Alex, sounding a bit worried. I smiled weakly at Fraser and followed him down the path. After being hustled out of the building, he wasn’t sure whether or not he’d done anything wrong – and neither was I. After all, who was I cross at? Him? His friends? My parents, for not being better off? My parents’ distant ancestors, for not being friends with the king? I could see his fuddled brain trying to work it out. Fortunately, he plumped for the former, to be on the safe side.

‘Are you OK?’

I had to work out my strategy quickly. What I wanted to say was:

‘No, I hate your friends because they’re all horrible to me. Well, they’re not even horrible, they just ignore me because I didn’t go to the right school and have a crap name, so actually I’m jealous more than actual dislike, but I don’t like it, waaaaaaah.’

Being an independent nineties girl with her own opinions, though, what I actually said was:

‘Yes, gorgeous, I just couldn’t wait to get you home – I had to get you out of there somehow.’ And I added a girlish giggle for effect.

As the blazing golden lights of the illuminated mansion dimmed behind the trees and I looked at my big, strong, placated, slightly wobbly man, I felt better again.

We spent a wonderful Sunday morning in bed the next day, ‘nursing’ his hangover. Then – after he saw I wasn’t too interested in dissecting what a fantastic night it had been, ‘particularly the bit when Barfield stuck the napkin up his arse, ha ha ha!’ – he went out to see his mates.

I lolled around with the papers all day.

Back late, he barged in loudly, waking Linda, probably, and certainly me. After bouncing around the kitchen looking for something to eat (I never seemed to have any food in the house after my first week of being a show-off chef, so God knows what he found, although Linda was looking, if anything, even more fucked off these days, so it might have been that. You’d think she’d like having a man around the house – God knows, I did), he came in, sat on the end of the bed, kissed me squarely on the nose and announced, ‘Hey, guess what! I’ve found a flat! Or rather, I’ve found my old flat – Charlie’s forgiven me and I’m moving back in with him!’

I sat up. I hadn’t rationally thought about it, but now he’d told me, I realized that I had planned our future out, after all, in my head. We would go find a room together somewhere nice, and eventually get our own place, once he had this music company job. Or we would both stay where we were – Linda wouldn’t mind. Perhaps she’d even move out – oh no, she couldn’t, it was her flat. Either way, I hadn’t seen us being apart so soon, nor the decision so gleefully made on his part. Despite it being only two weeks, waking up next to him every day already felt a necessity of my life, something I didn’t want to do without.

‘Ermm, great!’ I said casually. ‘So, is Charlie still living in …?’ As if Charlie and I had had tons of in-depth chats about our personal lives.

‘Fulham, yeah. It’s a great flat.’

‘But it’s bloody miles away! And it’s in West London … you hate West London!’

‘Well, I can’t stay here pestering you for ever, can I?’

Actually, that’s exactly what I’d been planning on.

I pouted prettily, in what I hoped was an appealing manner. ‘I wouldn’t mind.’

He looked at me and ruffled my hair again. But not as enthusiastically as before.

‘It’ll be fine. You’re still my favourite pumpkin, aren’t you?’ I was. We dived under the bedsheets. End of matter. Well, apart from when I got up to get a glass of water at three o’clock in the morning and found myself inexplicably staring at my reflection in the kitchen window and starting to cry. I went back to bed and tried to forget all about it, clinging on to him in the night.