Читать книгу The One Before The One - Katy Regan - Страница 11

After a bus ride, where Lexi goes on about how I am so much prettier than Polly and how Martin wanted me back, she could see it in his eyes, we end up in a Mexican on the King’s Road.

Lexi studies me over her menu, twiddling her fringe. ‘Are you all right?’ she asks.

‘Me? Fine.’

‘Are you upset about Polly?’

‘No. No,’ I say, totally unconvincingly. ‘It was going to happen sooner or later.’ Although I didn’t expect it quite so soon. We only split up last September. That’s nine months ago. Nine months to get over a fourteen-year relationship? I thought I might have made a little more impact than that.

‘Can I ask you a question, then?’

‘Fire away,’ I say, forcing a smile.

‘Was I right?’

I scour the menu, pretending to be making vital decisions between a burrito and a taco.

‘Right about what?’

‘The dress.’ She puts the menu down now and folds her slim, tanned arms. ‘The wedding dress? Look, I know it’s none of my business but I think the reason you were wearing your wedding dress when I turned up and that you were drunk …’

I wince at the drunk bit.

‘… and sh-mok-ing …’

‘Now you’re just rubbing it in.’

‘… was because you were upset about Martin, you know, and the fact –’ she cocks her head to the side sympathetically, which makes me feel even more terrible – ‘the wedding didn’t happen?’

‘If only it were that simple,’ I say, in a you-wouldn’t-understand-you’re-only-seventeen kind of a way.

But clearly she does understand, because then she says, ‘Caroline. How many times have you had that dress on?’

‘Why? What’s it to you?’

‘Come on, I just wanna know. How many times have you had it on in, say, the past six months?

I don’t know how the wedding dress thing happened, it just did, a self-indulgent little ritual that got out of control. It was a bit like how some people feel the need to get all their hair hacked off when a relationship ends, or go out and get drunk.

That dress was gorgeous, too, a vintage-style gown with silk sleeves sliced to the waist and a four foot train. I pictured myself walking down the aisle, smiling and radiant on my wedding day, arm in arm with Dad, who, for just that one day, would be there for me. Just me. I would be a success story. Because someone wanted me and loved me enough to marry me.

But, in the end, that dress, which was supposed to represent My Future, just smells faintly of cigarette smoke and regret and sits at the top of my wardrobe only to be brought out after another romance bites the dust, so I can wallow in could-have-beens.

Of course, Lexi’s right; the first time it came out was two months after Martin and I finished, which was one month after the wedding that never happened, which, like I say, was almost a year now and I’m still wracked with guilt …

‘Hello?’ Lexi says. She’s got her ‘computer generated’ voice on. ‘Calling Caroline Steele to planet Earth. Calling Caroline Marie Steele—’

‘Three times, okay? I’ve had the dress on three times.’

She raises an eyebrow.

‘Okay, possibly five. And, yes, if you must know, I did once put it on and get drunk and listen to Pat Benitar because I was upset about Martin – but that wasn’t really why I had it on when you arrived.’

‘Right, got yer,’ says Lexi. ‘So who were you crying about, then?’

Who was I crying about? It’s hard to tell. Since Martin and the first outing of the dress, there’s been a wake of casualties: Nathan – a Kiwi I met on a client do who I fancied like mad but who then asked me if I wanted to come and visit his mum in New Zealand three weeks after I started seeing him. I made a sharp exit in the opposite direction. There was Mark – I had hopes for him, could have really fallen for his green eyes and penchant for obscure French films, but then I realized he was just pretentious. In the end, I could no longer tolerate him calling me Carol-eeen (if he had actually been French that would have been fine, but he wasn’t, he was from Walsall). And of course there was Garf, lovely Garf, who I dumped at his sister’s wedding, which was held at Walthamstow Dogs Track (not that his family’s love of dog racing was a deal-breaker or anything). He was the sweetest of the lot and he could have really loved me, but I couldn’t love him, probably because I was already falling for someone else by then, I just didn’t know it yet.

So, a pattern emerged. Every time a relationship ended, I would find myself getting sentimental and morose and drinking alone in my wedding dress. But really, I wasn’t upset about Nathan or Mark or Garf, I was just upset that, at thirty-two, I was no closer to finding The One, and asking myself whether I’d made a huge mistake letting Martin go. After all, I still loved him, even if he was a bit middle-aged, had over-bearing parents and could spend three hours making the perfect pesto. I just don’t know whether I was ever in love with him, that’s all, not after the first few years anyway. But the older I get and the more complicated life becomes, I am beginning to wonder whether I could settle for ‘love’ rather than ‘in love’, which everybody knows is the solid, reliable concrete that remains beneath your feet, when the sparkling snow has melted away.

Still, I reasoned, it could be worse. At least I had the book club …