Despite a few minor disasters, Lucy’s party appeared to be a success for mother and child alike. I was able to see some of it happening live, thanks to Alex and Miranda both streaming separate feeds to me (and of each other, at one point). Alex was the point man for the children’s side, and Miranda the parents’ (or really, adults’, since Miranda, Will and Amanda are in no danger of reproducing any time soon, unless Julian gets his claws into Amanda).
Alex was more than happy to relieve Minty of hostess duties and spend the afternoon wrangling 12 six- and seven-year-old children, with Will as his somewhat-able assistant. He helped seat little girls on ponies and submitted to having his face painted like Spiderman at Lucy’s request. He even agreed to play a starring role in a short skit put on by the hired fairy princess. Alex had set up his iPad on a table so I could watch through FaceTime. (“I’m no actor, so this will be… embarrassing, and unlikely to be worthy of an encore. You need to see it for that one reason.”)
In the scene, the Evil Lord William (who was more than happy to put to use his dramatic skills, honed in a North London Gilbert & Sullivan troupe) cast a sleeping spell upon the handsome Duke Alexander from which he could not be awoken. Alex lay in perfect repose on a flower-strewn card table, a solemn scene but for the fact that he was painted to look like Spiderman. Every child got the chance to try to wake Alex up — some shook him, some shouted at him, one pinched his stomach, but none could awake him.
From behind a rose bush emerged the fairy princess, resplendent in her glittering lavender gown, her tiara slightly askew after hugging a dozen children. “Awake, Duke Alexander!” she cried. “The Evil Lord William’s curse has no power over you!”
I saw Alexander’s lip twitch as I heard Will crack, “Lord William’s curse doesn’t seem to have any power over girls at the moment either, constantly striking out now, total dry spell,” for which the fairy princess gave him a hard princess stare. (Will was perhaps ill-advisedly drinking champagne by this point.)
The fairy princess cleared her throat. “My magic is not powerful enough to break this spell! Who will save Duke Alexander from his terrible fate?” Eleven tiny heads swivelled as they looked for the duke’s savior, but none appeared. The fairy princess fluffed out her skirts and said, a little louder, her brow furrowed in frustration, “WHO WILL SAVE DUKE ALEXANDER FROM HIS TERRIBLE FATE?”
From behind the rosebush, I saw a flash of golden tulle before Lucy leaped out, screaming, “I WILL!” She ran over to her father’s motionless body, brandishing a large plastic pirate’s sword, her black curls bouncing on her shoulders. “I will save Daddy, I mean, Duke Alexander!”
Will walked up to her, patted her on the back. “Clever girl, you can do it. Like the sword.”
Lucy beamed up at Will and hugged his gut, which I could see is just starting to droop over his waistband (all those beers). “Thank you, Uncle Will.” She released him and sliced through the air with her blade, yelling, “YAH! Take that! Daddy says I can help him kill monsters with it.”
Keep it sharp. We’re going hunting.
Will kneeled down to Lucy’s height, and pinched her ruddy little cherub’s cheek. “Good girl. Your father definitely needs help doing that. Now go wake your monster-hunter papa up.”
With eleven sets of eyes watching in delight, Lucy shouted, “I WILL SAVE THE DUKE!” as she jumped upon the edge of the table. She’s a tiny thing, clearly takes after Alex’s lean and spare physique rather than her mother’s more… rounded figure. (“Of course she’s put on weight, you ninny,” Miranda told me once, when I admittedly was comparing myself favorably to Minty at a time I thought she might take Alex back. “She had a bloody baby. So stop putting her down to make yourself feel less insecure.”) But the impact of Lucy’s leap onto the rickety card table was enough to topple the whole thing over. Alex landed in a tangle of tablecloth, freesia and sparkly netting.
“FUCK!” Alex’s voice roared out from under the damask tablecloth, which was now draped over his head. Sitting up slowly, he resembled a shroud-wrapped corpse arising from the grave to hurl expletives at children.
Lucy looked on in shock, her little face frozen. She’d slipped easily off the side of the table as she’d upended it, and appeared to have suffered no injury, not even to her dignity. She plucked at the sword now hanging limply at her side. “Sorry I fucked it up, Daddy,” I heard her say. 11 children started chanting, “They said ‘fuck’! They said ‘fuck’!” The fairy princess had understandably sloped away from this debacle towards the open bottles of champagne.
5,000 miles away, I didn’t know whether it was okay to laugh. I muted my microphone and did anyway, so hard I could scarcely breathe at times.
Will pulled the cloth off Alex’s head and slapped him on the back. “Well played, old man. Couldn’t have composed a better finale myself.”
Alex grinned up at his old friend as Lucy ran into her father’s arms, the sword tucked in the sash of her dress. He kissed her cheeks, right then left, right then left, then a peck on the lips and a nuzzle of her forehead. “Now then, poppet, you know you aren’t supposed to say that word. Mummy will be very, very unhappy with you and me. I shouldn’t have said it either. So can we say we’re sorry to each other and to your friends?”
“Yes, Daddy. I’m sorry I said it.” Lucy kissed Alex back quickly, then turned around to face her friends, who had let the chanting die down somewhat. She kicked the ground with the toe of her silver slipper. “Everyone, we’re very sorry we said ‘fuck.'”
Alex turned toward the camera, with a look of complete satisfaction, his Spiderman-face lit with contentment and a slightly glassy-eyed glee. “Melissa!” he shouted to me above the children’s resuscitated chants. “I made a perfect little human!”
***
Earlier, Miranda had been my operative on the adults’ side of the party. Dear God, no wonder Alex has been living on food from the work kitchen for the past month. His food budget must be completely bust. As Miranda took me on a tour before the guests arrived, I counted 15 bottles of Perrier-Jouët Blanc de Blancs behind the bartender (who has a bartender at a child’s birthday party?), five each of what Miranda described as “perfectly serviceable” white and red wine, two bottles of Stoli, two of Bombay Sapphire, and a bottle of Pimms. In the kitchen were trays of mushroom puffs and mini beef wellingtons and tiny quiches lorraine, finger sandwiches for the children, and six cakes (three little exquisite fantasias in lemon and raspberry and chocolate, a tiny croquembouche and a Paris-Brest gâteau, plus a sheet cake for the smaller guests). It was all executed with a fastidious eye, and far more appropriate for a very boozy bridal shower than a six-year-old’s party.
“Of course, Minty and Amanda have been polishing off a bottle of Belle Époque on their own inside, little cows won’t even share. Amanda is going to be completely sozzled by the time the guests arrive. Minty at least had the common sense to eat a proper breakfast this morning.”
Miranda flipped the camera around to face herself again. She pulled her Anna Wintour-sized sunglasses off her face and tapped the stem of the arm on her cheek. “I don’t know how Minty can bear living out here. It’s so ridiculously picturesque, gently rolling hills, thatched roofs, all that tosh, like someone thought up a perfect English village and constructed it as a set. And it is so fucking boring. No wonder Minty wants out.”
Crap. Not this again. I remind myself, it’s not my money, I have no right to tell Alex what to spend his money on, whether it’s £150 bottles of Belle Époque for his ex-wife and her obnoxious “bestie” Amanda, or yet another Grand Seiko for himself that he might wear once a month when he fails to flip it as promised, or a luxury rental villa on the Côte d’Azur for a “family holiday” from which Alex is excluded, as he no longer is included in Minty’s definition of “family.”
Around the time Alex moved to San Francisco, Amanda had placed and fostered a germ of an idea in Minty’s imagination that the Bosworth-Carr family needed to return to London, putting their exile in Dorset at an end. Much like I have my “squad” with Jen and Jenn, Miranda and Amanda (the tediousness of their chiming names grates at times) have the “MAM” — Miranda-Amanda-Minty. The first two of these three had convinced Minty to let Lucy stay with her grandparents in West Lulworth so that the full MAM could have a weekend together in London. It was supposed to involve shopping on Saturday afternoon, dinner that night at Hawksmoor in Spitalfields, followed by some clubbing, and recovery on Sunday at Miranda’s parents’ house for brunch. However, once the MAMs had converged on Amanda’s flat on Friday, they didn’t move much of anywhere for the weekend, settling instead for having food and booze delivered.
Unknown to the Ms of the MAM, Amanda had set up the weekend as an intervention to get her exiled friend back in town. “You’ve been there long enough,” Amanda told Minty over a jalfrezi on the Friday night. “It made sense to go back to Dorset and be with your parents when Alexander had cast you and Lucy into ruin.” (So melodramatic.) “Where else were you to go? But it’s been so long, Minty. Almost two years. I miss you. Rand misses you.”
“Of course I do,” Miranda had said. “But Mand, Lucy’s settled in now in reception at the village school. She has friends there, and she can’t possibly have a memory of London. I won’t be so presumptuous to say I know better than Minty about parenting, but it doesn’t seem like leaving now is a terrific idea.”
Amanda did not like Miranda undercutting her plan. “I genuinely thought she might take the fork she was stabbing her chicken with and turn it on me,” Miranda told me afterwards. “Amanda and Julian really were a suitable couple — both so charming and so erratic. Amanda is far less vicious than Jules, though she does have her moments.”
Over the course of the evening, as they sank deeper into inebriation, Amanda badgered Minty relentlessly about the unsuitability of life in Dorset for a young and still lovely single mum. The only single men worth having, apparently, were those who made enough money to take care of Minty and Lucy in the manner they had been accustomed to before Alex’s colossal mistakes. And the only place to find such men was in London.
I can say few good things about Amanda. She took an immediate dislike to me, as I have mentioned before, simply because her ex-boyfriend set his cap at me. I don’t even think Amanda wanted Julian back when he started pursuing me — I think she just didn’t want him to want anyone else. We both took the same course on Figurative Art of the English Diaspora, and the week I came down with a terrible cold and missed class, she refused to share her notes with me until Julian begged her on my behalf. “I doubt it’s a cold,” she told him while sullenly printing out her color-coded outline of the lecture. “More likely it’s chlamydia, Jules. I see the way she looks at Alex and God knows where he’s been sticking it, as I frequently tell Miranda. Get yourself checked.” (He did, a source of utter embarrassment to me.)
But I will say this for her: she believed that what was best for Minty and Lucy was to be in a place where they had greater opportunities — Minty to find a new partner, and Lucy to see a grand, wide metropolis full of wonder and diversity. Amanda may be a snob of the worst variety, but she disdains provincialism and is an unapologetic anti-Brexit European. If anything dooms a rekindling of romance with Julian, it will be this stance. She draws the line at Americans being acceptable, however. (“You’re all just so… brazenly crass.”) Over time, Miranda came around to this line of thought as well, and sought my influence on Alex to get them out of the country and back into town. I refused — it is not my place to tell my boyfriend where he can and cannot spend his money, though I give my opinion if asked. And when Alex asked, I told him no, his budget is stretched as it is, and the support order was based on Minty living in Dorset, not in a nice two-bed flat in Chelsea as Minty now preferred.
Not taking the camera away from her face, Miranda walked up to the bartender and asked for a glass of champagne. “Just a drop before the great unwashed arrive, and I don’t mean your man, San,” she teased. She downed the glass and I could see part of her arm extended for a top up. “A bit more will do me, Carlos. Thanks.”
“Jesus, Rizz, take it slower.” I yawned and stretched back on my bed. It was barely 5 a.m. where I was, and the first cup of cold brew was only just starting to hit my bloodstream and bring me into consciousness.
“Yeah, yeah. What else am I supposed to do with all this free liquor? Speaking of which, Alex didn’t have a drop last night. Will and Al are bunking up at a B&B in the village, and Will says your man refused — flat out refused! — to go to the pub. What have you done with my dear, sweet, drunken Alex?” Miranda slapped her cheek with her free hand in mock concern.
“Clean California living,” I responded smugly.
“Feh. Overrated. Hey, Mel, can we talk about something?” Miranda was walking away, drink in hand, from the bar area set up in the garden, out the gate and into the lane onto which Minty’s home fronted. I felt a prickling in my neck, like the charge in the air when a thunderstorm’s about to break. Like when a panic attack is imminent, but you haven’t tipped over the edge yet, before the borders of vision tunnel in and the sweat dots your forehead, but you know, you just know, you’re about to be sent into a place in which you doubt you have much control of yourself or your surroundings.
I didn’t want Miranda to know any of that, though. I wrapped my hand tight around my mug and took another sip of coffee, forcing a smile. “Of course. Talk away.”
Miranda was fiddling with her earbuds and soon I was off speakerphone. “Melissa, Alex is asking me what ‘Seattle’ means.”
As my pulse throbbed in my temple, I swallowed down the bilious taste that filled my mouth. Peripheral vision reduced to a small aperture, I saw only the cup of coffee in my hands before me. Of all the secrets I have held over the years, this is the one I have clasped tightest, tucked away most firmly, shared only with Miranda. Not with Jen or Jenn, who would have wanted to be there with me, who never would have understood why I had not taken them into my confidence, either back then or in the years that followed.
“Seattle,” I mumbled. “He told me he didn’t want to know what ‘Seattle’ means.”
“Why would he even mention this to you? In what context did this even come up? You should know I deflected him, feigned complete ignorance. I think I said something like, ‘Isn’t that where that foul Starbucks stuff comes from?’ and left it at that.”
“Thanks, Rizz.” My mouth was so dry from the adrenalin it came out as a whisper. I took a long sip of my rapidly cooling coffee. “Julian said it to him the other morning, told him to ask me what it means, that Al would enjoy the story.”
“In one of those 4 a.m. calls you were telling me about.”
“Yeah.” I distractedly scratched my right arm where a sprinkling of stress hives had started to bloom. “I can’t figure out how Julian knows. It was so long ago, and I didn’t keep any… proof lying around. You’re the only one who knows — I never mentioned it to anyone until we spoke of it at Lucy’s christening.”
Miranda had found me in the vestry that morning, crying over a fairly recent copy of Hello! magazine that someone had stashed under a stack of hymnals. (William and Kate, backlit in an ethereal light, welcomed the infant Prince George who was apparently a “rascal” already despite being basically only a blob.) Miranda had come in search of a place to change her tights — Minty’s younger cousin had purposely stuck a jam-covered finger through them when Miranda had the child on her lap.
“Fuck me, San, what are you doing in here? Oh wait, can I say ‘fuck’ in church? Eh, too late.” She sat down next to me and stuck her face in mine, frowned when she saw the tears wobbling in my eyes and the redness of my nose.
I waved her away: “It’s nothing, nothing. Julian and I had an argument about….” I struggled to choose which of the many arguments we had had over the past 24 hours I would blame my appearance on. “About me going back to work full-time. I thought we had an agreement back in May but he… he thinks I am ruining our chances at having a baby.” (All of this was completely true, but not why I was hanging out amongst the vestments.)
“That fucker. I’ve never understood his obsession with procreation. It’s so strange for a man of our age.” She tucked one of the waves I’d managed to curl into my hair semi-successfully behind my left ear and took my hand. “I get it — ‘baby fever.'” (She made little air quotes with her free hand and wrinkled her nose in disgust.) “Minty managed to pop one out with Alex’s assistance, so why not you and Julian? You’re not helping yourself looking at that.” She pointed at the magazine, open to a particularly nauseating family portrait of two future kings and a queen in waiting.
I wiped my snotty nose with my forearm and nodded vigorously. “Yes, that must be it. I’ll be fine. It’s all so silly.”
“Sweetie, it’s not silly if it’s important to you. And it’s simply not on for Julian to place it all on your shoulders. For all you know, it’s his swimmers that aren’t up to snuff. Ugh, he’s such a little arsehole. I wish you would have listened to Al when you chucked Jules the first time, and stayed away.” Miranda put her arm around my back, and I rested my head on her shoulder.
“I didn’t want to listen. Julian can be so persuasive.” Persuasive with his money was the sentiment left unsaid.
“You know Alex still loved you back then, right? He couldn’t stop talking about you, it was so revolting. After you read Julian the riot act, I told Al to make his move, but he wouldn’t. Even then he had this ridiculous fealty to Jules.” She paused for a moment, kissed my hair. “Never tell Minty this, but you would have made a great couple. It’s my fault you aren’t.” She rearranged herself a little on the bench. “But things didn’t work out that way, and now we’re here.”
But I wasn’t. I was back in that hotel room in Seattle, looking out over the Puget Sound, waiting for Alex to arrive from London. Waiting to see if there was a chance for an us without Julian, and if this time, both of us had the courage to make it stick.
meandering again 