Google is a great enabler of so many poor decisions. Think about the last time you had the itch to look up an old love or childhood enemy or a gorgeous dress that you already knew cost too much money the first sixteen times it was shoved onto your screen by a targeted ad. So you click on the dress, again, and decide against it, again, but up it comes the next time you have to disable AdBlock to read an article in the Independent. You spend half an hour on some sketchier version of PeopleSearch trying to locate that girl who called you fat in fourth grade — wherever she is, you hope she’s saddled with at least fifteen pounds she can’t shake despite her fourth round on Nutrisystem. And that old love? Well for me, that involves regular check-ins on Josh’s current media posture, and my cup runneth over with envy and disgust. (Currently, everyone’s re-reading First Flush because some wag at Vulture said she saw echoes of “the first millennial bildungsroman” in “Normal People,” which of course everyone’s watching right now, except me because if that’s true, hard pass.)
Sometimes those decisions aren’t poor, so to speak, they just make you squirm a little with the conflicting emotions they engender. The ick of watching Dr. Pimple Popper go for a juicy one in a video you found when looking for something unrelated is simultaneously satisfying when the pus or sebum extrudes in a purulent gush. Searching for a cat-themed t-shirt for Lucy (a special request for her birthday) turns up a whole stream of Kitten Lady videos in which she saves tiny babies from near death again and again, and I cry with worry as much as joy for seven minutes, exhorting in the catharsis of my sobs.
And sometimes you go on Google Maps and you walk around old haunts from college and zzzzzzzzip! there you are again, a 20-year-old you, full of life and a bit broken by the world, but not nearly as much as you are by now. You can walk inside some of the old buildings if you’re lucky — you plunk the little yellow man down on a light blue dot and oh wow that narrow violin shop still looks the same, down to the sticky counters! Or you scroll through user photos on the left hand bar to see how that pub you used to haunt in the late afternoons has changed, or not, over the years. Or you walk up and down the hills and across the quads and the past the parks you wasted hours in, because there were always more hours, so very many of them to spend as you wished, most often with the people you wished.
For those places, more often than not, are made special not just for a favorite shabby velveteen booth or the verdant canopy of a tree dappling the sun on your young skin or the sense memory of the January bone chill ache in your hands when you forgot your gloves on your way to History of French Art, as you often did back then. It is the souls that populate those recollections as much as the tiny mise-en-scènes. Whose joke was it that made you shoot that vodka tonic through your nose? Who convinced you she knew how to cut bangs, and that you’d look good in them? Who held your hand and passed you tissue after tissue when you swore it was a mistake, only a mistake? The scenery is nothing, it’s static without the players.
To reach into the honeyed tones of the past is to reassemble the original cast — actors who were a family, by chance and circumstance, and then by choice, who when drawn together created a glimpse of the sublime made human — “lightning in a jar,” as my Grandma Sullivan calls it. One of life’s cruelties is that we are often too deep into our roles to see the brilliance we create around us in these singular moments. The radiance and perfection exist only in memories, which we shine and buff ’til they glow mellow and golden. No jagged edges, no threads to tug at. Even recollected pain and anger have lost their power to wound — the punctures and gashes have crusted and healed, leaving a shiny scar you might touch once in a while to remind you of youthful agonies.
But the past is best left there, tossed up high in the canopy of memory. Reunions are bittersweet and never run quite the way you’d wish them to go. That charming boy has become an insufferable bore, your roommate from sophomore year is now flogging leggings and moisturizer and expects you to buy them. The Rezoomion the other week showed me age had treated Josh well — those cherub cheeks had hollowed slightly, but they only picked the planes of his face into greater, more exquisite relief, and his lips had not lost their rosy bounce — when I’d begged the universe so many nights that he might lose every mark of favor in his life.
Yet as the wheel of life spins and lands on the markers of life — the births, the deaths, and the in-betweens of marriage and landmark birthdays — the players climb down from the catwalk and strut once more upon the same stage. But something’s off, something’s changed. You miss your beat, you flub a line, you walk stage left when it was always, always stage right. Oh, it might look okay from the outside, maybe for a while, maybe only in the beginning, but as the performance plays out the troupe is left in squabbling disarray, unable to recall why anyone ever thought this could work again. You can’t catch lightning in a jar.
That’s not to say that we’d expected any miracle at Jamie’s wedding reception, that the ruptures of the past four years hadn’t taken their toll on the bonds between our once-tight clutch of friends. The Terrible Ten, Jamie had dubbed us once I’d been fully subsumed into the Noxious Nine, their earlier incarnation.
“We kind of were terrible,” Minty conceded on the coach from St. Denys to the party at the barn.
“Mmmm,” Sasha concurred, unscrewing her pink-enamelled flask to tip the last of its contents into her mouth. “And noxious before that. Particularly Al.”
“That dressing gown!” Miranda and I gasped in unison before she punched me in the arm with a shriek of “snap!”
“Horrible,” concurred Minty, who gently shoved a drooping and snoring Amanda against the window of the coach to give her own coat a break from her best friend’s drool. “Never could get the pong of Lynx out of it. Any success with that, Mel?”
I shook my head in defeat with a wry grin, but didn’t miss her miniature shimmy of satisfaction in knowing that her successor could not best her in any domestic feat. The previous few days had been the most time I’d spent with Minty since Lucy’s christening, and I was fast realizing that the image I had of her — steady, competent, mild and docile — didn’t reflect who she’d become since she and Alex had split. To be sure, the fairy-cake-baking, magical-birthday-throwing, just-whipped-this-simple-summer-skirt-up-it’s-so-easy woman was still there. She’s a doting, thoughtful mum to a little girl who’d puzzle many others, what with Lucy’s gleefully gothic tastes and unending questions about the mechanics of the universe. But there’s a vicious streak in her now, a mordant snap to some of her jabs. The bubbling envy I’d always suspected in her has plipped! its way to the top of the goblet.
By the time I passed under a grand garland of autumn leaves to enter Jamie and Bex’s wedding reception, the bubble had plipped into a pop! of spite.
But before we even got there, after Julian had swaggered back up the church aisle to join an increasingly sweaty Jamie, I wasn’t about to pass up nibbling at the breadcrumb Miranda had tossed my way earlier. “So what exactly do you think Minty’s problem is?” I mumbled, though I really didn’t need to — Minty was absorbed in taking selfies with Amanda, duckfaces and all. “The past year she’s been all jolly… what’s that phrase you use?”
“Jolly hockey sticks? HA!” Miranda chortled. “Quite. I suspect she’s been rather that way most of her life.”
The brim of Sasha’s oversized plum hat nearly toppled my headpiece as she swung round to stick her nose in. “Oh, sorry, darling. Clumsy of me. If this is a bitch session about those two hags, let me in.”
Miranda hissed a sharp shhhhhh! “Yes. In particular, the one in green who wouldn’t say boo to a goose, unless you paid her. Pass me your flask, Mel.”
As two of the young Fairleigh cousins trudged down the aisle to reopen the doors to the church for the bridal party to begin their steady procession towards the altar, Miranda let me in on what she thought was behind Minty’s unexpectedly maudlin moping over the death of her marriage to Al. “There’s a quite simple explanation, if you think about it,” she explained as I glugged back a tot of booze from Sasha’s flask. (Miranda had emptied mine.) “Careful with that, darling, or you’ll be too ratted to make it through whatever dreadful hymn Ruth Fairleigh has lined up for us to sing.” (She wasn’t wrong.) “As I was saying, what’s often behind people acting suddenly… odd in our set?”
It popped out of my whisky-lubricated mouth before I’d even thought it, or perhaps that’s only how it felt. “Well, for you it’s usually sex. Shit.”
I’d not seen Miranda scowl at me like that since before Min and Alex’s wedding, when we’d gotten thoroughly tired of being at daggers drawn over a man who’d gone and married someone else who was utterly not us. “Money, you twit. I suspect Min’s moaning over how Alex has started paying attention to what she racks up on that Barclaycard has drifted Julian’s way via Lady Can’t-Shut-Her-Gob over there. “
“What, Amanda?” I glanced over to where Amanda was trying to urge Minty into rethinking Tom Gregory as a potential new husband. (“Well, he may be a bit of a wankstain, but he’s not completely repellent and he’s a senior vice-president at HSBC. You could work with it.”)
“Who else? Not that I think she meant much of anything by it besides trying to flatter Jules by making him feel like a generous ex-husband. You know how he adores splashing about in shallow praise like that.”
“Generous?” I snorted. “It took a forensic accountant and a court order to get him to pay me what was only fair. But what does this have to do with anything?”
“Think about it: what does Min want? A bit more in her pocket, some mad money –“
“Mad money?” I whispered. “It makes me mad, if that’s what you mean.” The September Barclaycard statement had arrived in Berkeley after Alex had left for London, and whoops I’d opened it. I can only come to the conclusion that Minty is opening a small franchise of Harvey Nicks in deepest, darkest Dorset and needs to lay in stock.
“Temper, San. What I mean is, how unlikely do you think it is that Jules might push a little money her way to cause a spot of bother for Alex?”
“Not completely unlikely,” I admitted. “But really? It smells more like regular old jealousy to me.”
Sasha jabbed me in the ribs with her iPhone. “Shhhhhhhh,” she ordered through clenched teeth. “I think we’re about to start. And I bet they can hear every word we’re saying now so ixnay on the inty-May. Until the ocktail-hour-cay.”
Up at the altar, the vicar had seen sense and placed Tom Gregory between Alex and Julian, both of who were studiously avoiding giving the semblance of even inhabiting the same realm of existence as each other. Julian had slapped his “everything you’re saying is utterly fascinating and I’m not thinking about my girlfriend naked” look on his face to chat with Felix, and Alex was scanning the pews to look for me. At least I thought it was only me until I caught sight of Minty raising one gloved hand in greeting in unison with my own bright wave, though to his credit it looked like Al returned only my gesture. (I think I’m right.)
As one, the congregation rose to strain for our first glimpse of the bride floating through the weathered oak doors of the medieval church in her creampuff dress of lace and tulle. Barely restrained from sashaying down the aisle by her flush-faced father, Bex radiated triumph and joy in equal measure. If I felt like an interloper for being American, at least I had the saving grace of being middle class. Bex didn’t give a shit that her mother-in-law thought she was trash, or that most of Jamie’s friends had warned him she might be a golddigger (myself included, sadly). Jamie had been the loneliest of us in many ways for too long, a man whose soul mate was Sasha, a woman who could never be attracted to him. But Bex was naughty and frisky and just plain fun in the ways Jamie needed. It was a match, a good match between friends.
I tried not to think of how I’d said much the same of the match between Alex and Minty when they’d paired off. Different situation, of course — Alex’s motivations were not exactly pure, even if he did love Minty, in a way. As Bex was sailing by our pew, she paused to acknowledge the timid wave Sasha offered. “Peace in our time, Sash?” the bride chuckled through the net of her veil before continuing her bold tread up the aisle towards her increasingly queasy-looking groom.
Trailing by only a few feet, marched the bridesmaids, in what Amanda later described as “fanny-scraper” burgundy satin minidresses; the maid of honor’s was distinguished only in being the bright orange of a barnyard pumpkin. The organ began to swell to the strains of… “Good god,” Miranda muttered to my left. “Is that Bette Midler’s ‘The Rose’?”
We were definitely in for a hell of a ride. I just had no idea where I could strap in.
***
“Trust Jamie to have a signature cocktail that looks like it might kill us.” Sasha’s grey eyes were partially obscured behind the murky, swirling plumes of dry ice whirling from her martini glass. “That’s my Jim,” she sighed before tossing back the remainder of her drink.
Minty prodded at the fresh green apple slice perched on the rim of her glass with her pinky. “Are you sure it’s safe? It looks awfully… dark. Are cocktails supposed to be black?”
“It’s a poison apple martini, you moo,” Miranda chided. “Bex’s Nana has had at least two of them already and I just saw her goose Tom Gregory, so I think you’re unlikely to expire.”
“Be careful, it’s quite boozy,” I warned as Minty took two tentative sips. She shivered out a “brrrrrrrrr!” before slurping the rest through her peachy-pink lips.
I’d been keeping my eye on her since we got off the coach, ever since Miranda shared her slightly dubious conspiracy theory about Julian’s bribing Alex’s ex-wife to make trouble. Personally, I thought it was bullshit — while it did seem a little odd that Minty was alternating between bursting into tears at the sight of Alex and batting her lashes at him, it made more sense that she was just plain jealous of me.
It’s not like I hadn’t observed it before, heard it before, the passive-aggressive jabs over the speakerphone I wasn’t supposed to hear. “Allie, why don’t you let Mel take care of you for a change? It’s not as if she’s hurting for money, and then you’d be able to find just a little more for Lucy and me,” or, “Maybe if Mel were a single mother, she’d understand how hard it can be to budget.” (I know precisely how much of Alex’s salary barely pauses between his bank account and hers, and it’s not exactly chump change.)
Miranda picked two mushroom tartelettes off the serving tray of a passing waiter and pushed one in my mouth. “Eat, Sandra Dee. You’re terrible about that when you’re stressed.” She pushed her cloche back slightly to wipe her brow; etiquette dictated no woman’s hat could come off until the mother of the bride doffed hers, and Bex’s mum was still processing wedding guests in the receiving line. Despite the soaring beams of the rafters and the ominous boom of thunder in the distance, the room was too warm and slightly muggy. The stuffiness hung low, as if dripping like sap from the drooping garlands of leaves, moss and pinecones that wrapped the lower beams.
“Am I stressed?” I mumbled through a mouthful of morels. Where the fuck was Alex? As an usher, he’d been spared reception line duties, unlike Jamie and Felix, who were still squeezing the hands of arriving guests itching to get in a stiff drink and a tiny beef wellington canapé. Tom Gregory was easy to spot — he was currently positioned in front of the maple-leaf ice sculpture, sizing up Miranda like she was one of the mini-quiches he kept swiping whenever a tray passed by. Charlie and Will were stuck in a huddle with a couple of their former rugby teammates, though it wouldn’t be until much later in the evening that an impromptu, sozzled mini-scrum was attempted on the dancefloor to the strains of “Chelsea Dagger” by the Fratellis. (I couldn’t tell who won, if anyone, which is basically my experience of watching scrums in any non-drunken rugby match.)
Julian was over by one of the bars, old-fashioned in one hand, the other looped around Amanda’s trim waist while she reached up to stroke Jules’ beard. All four of us stopped, spellbound, while Julian pulled her closer and sucked her into a kiss sloppy enough we could practically feel the spittle flying from across the room. Minty looked away but I couldn’t stop watching — had it really looked like that when he’d done much the same with me? As his hand wandered down to cup her bottom through her bandage dress, I knew: yep, it probably did.
“Ew,” Sasha groaned. “I feel like I need a post-coital smoke after that display. Anyone? Ran?”
Over Minty’s shoulder, Tom Gregory looked ready to take a bite into Miranda as soon as he hoovered up his asparagus galette. “Christ,” Miranda hissed. “You date a chap for a month 15 years ago and you’re forever the unfinished symphony in his life. I’m coming with you.”
I passed on a Dunhill — until I found Alex, I didn’t want to leave the barn. Minty pushed a harvest gold cocktail napkin into my hand. “Might need one of these, Mel. You’ve got mushrooms…” She tapped at the corner of her mouth. “Have you seen Al?” She straightened her spine and swiveled her head for a gander round the room, like a plump meerkat in sensible pumps and green crepe.
“No.” I didn’t like wherever this path was leading. “Why?”
“All that nasty business last night. Alex just can’t let it go with Jules, can he?” She picked at the shoulder of my dress and flicked a piece of lint away with a soft tut.
I swatted her hand away. “He was trying to protect me. He’d have done the same for you. He’d do the same for you now, Min.”
“The best of husbands,” she sighed, before collaring a waiter passing with another tray of rabbit liver and apple compote canapés. “Take one of these, Mel. I convinced Bex to serve these, my own recipe. Alex always loved them.”
As little as I wanted to admit it, it really was a star of an amuse-bouche: a slick of creamy, earthy, fatty rabbit cut through with a glossy stripe of compote studded with tart, finely diced apple. I’m a good cook, able to pull off an airy souffle or a spanakopita from layer upon layer of featherlight phyllo. But I’m no chef, no kitchen genius — as in most of my life, I thrive when there’s a plan, when I can consult the map of someone else’s recipe. It would never occur to me to whip up a tiny gourmand delight like Minty had with these. I’d never be as good a wife —
Stop it, Mel.
“I’ll send you the recipe,” she rattled on, fishing in her bag for her phone and pulling out packets of Kleenex, a strip of Nurofen and an ace bandage out of her Burberry purse (this season’s, I noted). “What’s your email? He must miss them terribly. I always served them –“
Whether or not Julian had paid her off, even stirred the pot, there was no mistaking her game. “Stop it, Minty,” I ordered with more force than I’d intended. “We’re not in competition for Alex.”
The dark green saucer of a hat obscured her face as she paused, mid-hunt. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she squeaked, fastening the gold clasp of her bag before straightening up to meet my glare with a frown. Whomever she was paying hundreds of pounds to for that perfect Gisele Bundchen-caramel bronde hair color was probably worth it — mousy Minty was no more, even with that intractable roll of post-baby fat around her middle.
The perfect English rose, as Cora had described her to me, and I hadn’t understood it at the time. Araminta Bosworth-Carr was modest — in dress, in aspirations, in speaking of her own achievements — and dainty. She was kind to ugly babies and all of her horrible brothers; her potted shrimp and country pork terrine were divine but not pretentious, just delicious. (I dreamed of her lemon drizzle cake for three years after we stopped living together.) And despite living in a multi-million pound home in the heart of Knightsbridge when she and Al were together, she took pride in cleaning every room herself, in addition to chasing after a toddler and knitting wool caps for cancer patients who’d lost their hair to chemo. (“10 a month, which seems a lot, but I can go from casting on to binding off binge-watching three and a half episodes of Downton.”)
But to me, Minty would forever be the spotty-cheeked girl whose idea of dressing up involved a shapeless, pull-on black jersey skirt and sensible heather grey crewneck sweater, both from Boden. When her dull, muddy brown hair wasn’t scraped up in a ponytail, it was pushed back with a navy Alice band. Sensible, reliable, ready with a needle and thread or a plumber’s snake, apparently. Yet she could be a hell of a lot more fun than she looked: she was the one who got me hooked on scrumpy, after all, and took me to Ann Summers to buy my first vibrator (sparkly pink).
By the time Uncle B had singled her out on Facebook as the perfect mark, I mean, wife for Alex, she’d been nagged by the other two of the MAMs (as was) into what now might be termed “glowing up.” Besides that dalliance with the Latvian postman in 2008, her only other foray into the life romantic had been a one night stand a year later with Miranda’s second cousin Carlos. “A real life Marxist!” she wrote to me in an e-mail, about a week after I called off my engagement to Julian. “He said he liked my ‘utilitarian chic,’ whatever that means. And he was quite tender, no matter what they say about Marxists.” After an intervention involving trips to Charles Worthington (highlights), Harvey Nicks (total wardrobe clearout and restock) and the Sanctuary (RIP), and six months with a balls to the wall Serbian personal trainer, Araminta Bosworth had been buffed and tastefully tarted up to be somebody’s wife. It just so happened that the somebody was Alex.
And now she was somebody’s ex-wife. “If it’s not that,” I snapped, “what exactly is going on with you? I mean, I heard you crying at the kitchen table, I heard you telling your mother you’d have him back if he asked. He’s not going to ask.”
The perfect English rose blushed from peach-pink to a glowering rose-red. “You shouldn’t eavesdrop, Mel. It’s incredibly rude and you sound awfully jealous.” With an ostentatious sniff, she accosted a passing waiter for two glasses of wine. “Glass of sauv blanc, Mel?”
Even in a temper, Min’s default setting was “overweening politeness,” and I let her press the stem of the glass into my hand. The show of conspicuous civility was quite impressive, but I wasn’t going to let her disarm me with that “don’t mind me over here” charm. The little dun bird may have more than a few tricks tucked under her wing that continue to dazzle Alex, but I see through the subterfuge.
“Jealous?” I bit out. “Hardly.” I took a gulp of the wine, even though I knew more booze was just going to make things worse.
And things were looking worse, or at least she was looking worse, as tears pooled in the inner corners of her amber eyes. “I’d have thought you of all of us would have a little more compassion,” she whispered, dotting at her eyes with her free hand. “We can’t always control when… when…” Minty’s voice cracked, a rough pull in her normally sweet and mellow alto tone. “When we feel something again. What it was liked to be loved by someone, someone in particular. When we remember how very much joy there had been, all the plans and the kisses and the shared hopes and now? Now there’s nothing.” She peered down at what was left of the duck and apple on the tiny napkin.
She’s good, I thought. Despite her protests that she was never destined for the stage, three years in the drama department had left a mark on her after all, like gold leaf rubbed on some iron candlestick. And she wasn’t wrong — I’d felt the uncomfortable, itchy throb of it when Julian had grasped my shoulder the day before, when I’d felt his hand on my bare shoulder.
With a wisp of a sigh, she pushed the last of the canape into her mouth. “I was unfair to you,” she continued after a sip of wine to wash it down. “When I kicked you out of the Palace on the Hill, I mean. It was just as much Alex’s fault as yours, and you at least had the good grace not to lie about how you felt about him.”
“Min, that was years ago.” Which was true, but it still smarted. I’d had to scramble to find a landlord who would take me on for just a couple of months, and if it hadn’t been for Julian’s open wallet to pay for that overpriced holiday flat on Cobham Hill, I’d have been living on Sasha and Jamie’s couch for 10 weeks.
“Maybe, but it was poor form on my part. I thought it was best for Miranda, but it really wasn’t the best for me.”
When she reached for my hand, I let her take it. Whether this was manipulation, sidestep and bullshit, or the great brave truth of Minty, I didn’t mind. It was hard to stay grousing and unhappy with someone who’d radiated motherlove for as long as I’d known her. Being near Minty was like being folded into your mom’s arms when you were five: nothing bad could ever happen here, even if danger swirled around.
And I didn’t drop her grasp when I finally spotted Alex at the other side of the room, his arm draped over Will’s broad shoulder, their bright laughs carrying over the din of 200 guests slowly working their way to gentle, fuzzy inebriation. Charlie wasn’t far behind, and I watched as he nudged Al in the side and pointed with his bottle of Budvar towards Minty and me. Al’s head shot from left to right, looking, looking, until he saw me. Me. The easy smile of a shared joke with his friends spread into an incandescent grin, glowing tawny-hot with his love for me. For me.
“You’re welcome to him,” she said with the lightest squeeze to my hand as we watched the men approach, Alex nearly breaking into a run. “He does tell some awful fibs about how happy we were, but I suspect you’ll do better with him than I did.”
Al didn’t break his stride before grabbing me by the waist and thrusting me up along his body to meet his lips for a kiss. “Sweetest,” he whispered into my ear. “I didn’t mean to take this long.”
I breathed in the sweet scent of his face, tinged with the slightly acrid note of the Poison Apple martini he must have been drinking before. “Al, you’re being a bit rude to Minty,” I muttered back into his curls.
“Christ, it’s only been 30 minutes since you’ve seen her, Al,” Will tutted as Alex set me back down and smoothed my dress. (It might have been an excuse to feel me up in public, too, but I was sozzled enough to be all right with a stray grope.)
To my left, Minty cleared her throat. “It was a lovely ceremony, and you and Jules were very well behaved, Al.”
“Ah, Min,” Alex chuckled. “You always have been good at making me feel like I’ve accomplished something when all I’ve done is not be an utter disaster. I’m nearly thirty-fucking-five years old, I hardly deserve a gold star for not punching Jules in the gob during a wedding ceremony.”
Charlie cocked an eyebrow. “I would think that should be baseline, but in the circumstances, I agree. Well done.” In his immaculate navy pinstriped suit, his cowlick tamed into submission with the hairspray I’d loaned him earlier, it seemed impossible Charlie was still single. Two years before, his boyfriend Terry had left him for a much older, less responsible, and far wealthier man, and it had dinged his self-confidence, hard. I’d thought about trying to introduce him to Ben for a long-distance romance, but Amanda had given me the side eye for that one this afternoon when I mentioned it in passing. “Just because they’re both gay doesn’t make them compatible,” she’d lectured me, quite rightly.
“Where were you three?” Minty prodded. “Miranda was looking for you, Will.”
“More likely she wanted to prod me about Kath some more,” Will grumbled, poking at the bacon-wrapped fig he’d grabbed on his way over to us. “Where is Jules, anyway?”
I should take a moment here to commend Sasha on something. While Minty may be the most modest of the Terrible Ten, followed very closely by Charlie, Sasha is by far the most capable of being quiet — when she chooses to be. Like Rachel, Sasha became an expert on sneaking into and out of her teenage bedroom to go to clubs and take E and shake her ass in a tight dress well before the age of maturity. Unlike Rachel, Sasha had a full-bore asshole of a father — what do you think of when you hear the term “Ukrainian oligarch”? Probably not someone like my dad, who back then was watching “Politically Incorrect” and nodding his head along to Bill Maher’s barbs. Sasha had to be far more careful, and she certainly didn’t have a well-behaved little sister to blame for late-night commotions in the kitchen when she came in through the servants’ entrance at 4am.
I certainly hadn’t heard Sasha’s steps — she has perfected the art of silencing the tappity-click! of stiletto heels, even on a polished walnut floor like the one Will was Alex was setting me down on as she approached. I’m pretty sure none of us knew she was around until I heard behind me, “Ran! Ran! Get your arse over here! Miss K’s named ‘Kath’!”
Will nearly choked on his fig. No, quite literally choked, until Minty gave him a swift thwack on the back and the partially-chewed morsel popped from his throat and skidded across the gleaming wood of the floor. The chunk landed precisely at Miranda’s right toe where she had scurried in front of him.
Charlie thanked Minty (I think Will was too stunned to pass a single word from his mouth) but she dismissed it with a breezy wave. “Done it enough times with Lucy, it’s amazing what a child thinks is food.”
“So, ‘Kath’?” Miranda ignored the occasional blustery cough that continued to explode from Will’s lungs. “Is she a Katherine? A Kathleen? Where did you meet her? Is she another postgrad? Is she in London? What’s her family like? Have I met her?” She circled a crimson-red Will like a raptor circling prey slightly oversized for its maw, but completely determined to get the kill.
I felt awful for Will, who’d by now flagged down a server for a glass of champagne and was tugging at his burgundy, blue and gold old school tie. I’d had good reason to hide my relationship with Alex both the first and second times — hell, even the third time, for quite a while — we’d come together. If we’d been ready to talk about the connection we knew we had, we would have, but it was like a jigsaw puzzle where the pieces look like they should go together, but you can’t make them fit. If you tried to force them in, they’d look utterly wrong, even if it seemed to make sense in your head.
Alex dropped his hand from my waist and stepped forward to face off with Miranda. For a moment, their postures looked so similar to the ones they’d assumed the first night I’d seen them spar — he towered over her barely five foot frame (she says she’s that tall, but I have my doubts), and she tilted her pert chin up with a determined set. They have always felt like a matched pair to me, twin dark stars. Equal parts buoyant and snarling, wearing their brilliance lightly, never showy, no. It’s far more fun when it’s natural than forced, when it doesn’t demand genuflection but earns a mouth dropped in awe at the ease of it all. It would never have worked for them in the long run, but there is a thread that binds them, a thread that she tugs at occasionally, a thread that sometimes worries me.
“Miranda, that’s enough.” Al didn’t sound furious as much as exasperated. “Will doesn’t need to tell you everything.”
“Who said he has to?” Miranda gritted out. She pushed up the cloche which was slipping down her brow.
Alex blinked; Miranda did not.
“Kathryn.” Will’s voice was steady again, the bright crimson bloom in his face receded to its usual pale pink, and he ran a large hand through his light brown hair. “With a ‘Y.’ And both of you –” he jabbed one pudgy pointer finger at Alex and Miranda in turn “– are fucking twats. Twats I love, but fucking twats all the same.”
Miranda punched the air; another triumph for her, I suppose. I could only think of how my own quest to uncover Jen’s mystery lover involved a 500-mile journey, black clothing and hiding in the back of a car in Pasadena. Highly baroque and far more expensive than nagging, though Miranda and I had arrived at the same destination. Not only that, Will was already showing Miranda and Alex pictures of the enigmatic Miss K — Kathryn — on his phone like there had been no moment as tight and sharp as a tripwire mere minutes before.
And in my left ear, bright and clear: “If I were you, I’d put a stop to that before it ends up somewhere you don’t like thinking about, darling.”
I should have known better than to realize something like the postures of a classic Miranda vs. Alex showdown wouldn’t catch Julian’s eye eventually. He sounded almost chummy, an oily lilt to his tone, which didn’t bode well, but unlike Alex, he didn’t look like a student undertaker aching to rip off his morning suit. (Also unlike Alex, he didn’t seem particularly tipsy.) He did, however, look far more handsome than he deserved to be — I could tell he’d brought the suit to his old tailor in Jermyn Street for a slightly better cut than the rental Al had said was “good enough for a few hours getting rat-arsed in.” The jacket nipped in at the waist and I knew if he turned around, the trousers would hug his ass just slightly, enough to show that he paid attention to keeping himself in shape. And from what Amanda had been nattering on about earlier to Minty in the pew, that shape was exquisite. (Probably true.)
I had assured myself while we were on the coach from the church that no matter what Julian said that afternoon, I would take every lesson I’d painstakingly absorbed in therapy recently and not rise to whatever chum he speared through his hook. “Everything’s fine now, Jules,” I told him, more to assure myself than anyone else. “Nothing to see.”
Amanda had looped her arm through Julian’s again, and looked to be attempting to surgically seal herself to his side. “Is that so?” she smirked. “Jules said it looked awfully like they were going to snog.”
“What’s that?” Alex whipped his head around from chatting with Sasha so quickly the curls bounced on his forehead. “Oh, Cranford. Piss off.”
Now it was Amanda’s turn to go toe to toe with my fiance, shimmying herself and her breasts (tethered satellites of herself) up close to Alex. “And who do you think you are to tell him where to go? He’s been nothing but polite and concerned about your happiness since he’s been here.” She reached forward and stuck a finger right in the divot of his tie, on the odious little moonstone stickpin. “And you? You tell him to piss off, you throw him against a wall. For fuck’s sake, Alexander. He’s worried about you, he told me. Isn’t that right, sweetums?”
Poor Al. Unlike her old roommate Miranda, Amanda was about five foot eight in her Louboutins, and looking down at her meant looking straight into the abyss that was her cleavage. There was simply no way for him not to look like a creep — and I admit, he did for a moment, even though it really was transfixing, a marvel of tit tape technology — when he attempted a hard stare, so he stepped away to take my hand.
“Quite right,” Julian drawled. “And I’ve come over to say I’m — to apologize. To you both. Will set me straight on the notion that those cheating spouses ads resulted necessarily from Mel’s browsing. I was only concerned, Carr. Best to know such things before you get your feet wet, I say.”
“See?” Amanda pouted, safely glued to Julian’s side once more. “Jules cares, Alex. Cares enough to make sure you go into marriage again with your eyes open, and for the right reasons this time.”
Minty froze, her mouth pulled into an “o” of sorrow before she let rip a great wail that drew the attention of the bride and groom to where our group had pulled together. The green and gold eyeshadow the makeup artist had smudged around her brown eyes now streamed south in fat tears towards her cheeks. Will shoved a handkerchief in her hand as Sasha and Miranda shuffled and shooed her towards the ladies’ parlor room. Excusing herself from shaking the hand of the last arriving guest to tear after them, Bex lifted high her ivory tulle skirts and threw her chapel-length veil around her neck like a winter scarf in hot pursuit.
“Poor form, Man,” Charlie clucked as Jamie’s long stride cut the distance in the barn between where Bex’s mum was now removing her hat (a periwinkle Seussian explosion that embraced maximalism in ascending to the heavens in three stages, like a Papal tiara fashioned from satin and crepe) and what remained of our crew.
Taking a cue from Bex’s mum, Amanda tugged at the comb holding the teal fascinator to pull it from her long red waves. “That was a bit of a whoops, wasn’t it?” she pondered, turning the tiny hat in her hands. She didn’t look abashed in the slightest, which should have bothered me more than it did.
Julian patted her shoulder indulgently. “She’ll be all right, poppet. It only hurt because it was true,” he assured her. I followed his line of sight directly to Al’s now squinting glare.
“What’s wrong with Minty?” Jamie panted, pulling at his collar. “God, can we just skip to the disco bit when I can take this sodding thing off?”
Will gulped, and both Julian and Amanda were uncharacteristically silent. I delivered a light kick to Alex’s shins, hoping to distract him enough to stave off what I could see was the red mist hovering on the edge of steaming down, but Charlie stepped in where none of us dared to tread.
“She’s having a bit rougher time seeing a wedding than she thought. I’m sure she’s more mortified that everyone peeled their eyes away from Bex for a bit, you know Min.” I didn’t miss the shakiness in his hands when he clasped them together — I suspected he was feeling his own moment of what-might-have-been thinking about the marriage that didn’t happen to Terry.
“Completely my fault, bit too much sauce, I’m afraid,” Amanda said brightly, touching one taupe-manicured hand to her chest (of course), and miming tipping back a drink with the other. “Al was here and I mentioned their marriage in passing. Awfully thoughtless of me.”
“Liar,” Alex snapped at Amanda, who stepped back in shock.
“Steady on, old boy,” Will chided, pushing an advancing Alex back towards my outreached hand. “Didn’t sound untrue to me. Chaz?”
Charlie nodded vigorously; his cowlick popped up from where I’d helped him stick it down with some Elnett. “Just a bit of a misunderstanding all round. Right, Jules?”
Julian looked stunned but mumbled a brief concurrence — rarely does anyone come to his aid these days, I knew, out of friendship. (At least now he has Kayla, but of course #coronabesties wasn’t even a wisp of a dream yet in a pre-COVID reality.) Charlie had stepped in and defused what I knew Jules sought: a swift and well-landed punch from Alex, simply so he could strike back and lay Al low while simultaneously preening in martyrdom. He hit me first, what else could a man do?
With my headpiece slipped beneath my arm for safekeeping, I tucked the crown of my head beneath Alex’s chin, never dropping his hand which flexed and tightened. I could feel his jaw grind, feel the storm rising but not breaking within him.
Will puffed out his cheeks and let go the air he gathered there with an exaggerated sigh. “About time we all start acting like mates again, if you ask me.”
“Be easier to act like mates,” Alex ground out, “if we actually were mates. I know what you’re up to, Cranford, and I’m having none of it.”
Jules looked around him, left to right, even inside his jacket, in a pantomime of a hunt. “What? Me? Let bygones be bygones, Carr. Even Mel’s been lovely to me these past couple of days, haven’t you, darling?”
I had?
“You have?” Alex’s body stiffened behind mine. “When?”
Oh you little shit, Julian, I thought, my mind racing to think if Alex had seen or might suspect more conversations than when I’d told Jules to shut up back at the other Airbnb. My back was against the wall, much like Jules’ had been when Al had thrown him against an actual wall hard enough that a framed picture nearby had tumbled to the floor.
I had the option, of course, to push back, much as Julian had. And much like Julian, the push had the potential to hurt Alex. “Oh, do you mean when you demanded to see me yesterday when Alex was in the shower? If you thought that was me being ‘nice,’ you must have a short memory of what ‘nice’ on me looks like.”
“Wait, what?” Alex whirled me around by the shoulders to face him. The cold blankness in his face, the confusion writ in his eyes and the droop of his mouth, was even worse than the red mist. “I’m sorry, Mel, what? When were you going to speak with me about this?”
“Mel, Mel, Mel,” Julian chuckled, shaking his head in the dismissive condescension at which he excels. “‘Demanded’ is hardly what I’d call it, and how was I to know he’d be unavailable? Carr, don’t know why she wouldn’t have told you about it, quite anodyne. I wanted to assure you both I intended to let our… disagreements pass today.”
Fucker. I’d snapped at the bait and he’d reeled me in.
“Is that right, lovely?” Alex asked me, looking into my eyes as if in there he could sort the lies I’d tucked in amongst the truth. He’s never been as skilled at that trick as Jules, thankfully.
Will cleared his throat. “I was there, Al. Outside the room, but there. Mel came storming in in her dressing gown and… well, I thought it was best if I left. But never heard a raised voice.”
“See?” Julian spread his arms wide. “It was a very civil little chat, even if Mel did surprise me by bursting in the room en déshabillé. Quite unexpected to see one’s ex-wife in her lingerie, but you know our little spitfire.”
“Fuck off, Cranford. Mel? What the fuck were you thinking? In your bra and knickers?” Al raked his gaze up and down my scarlet dress.
“No, I was in my dressing gown. And…” I fumbled for words, anything to save myself here. “Jules is right. He said he’d behave, and he wanted my promise to do the same. I didn’t mention it because I… I knew you’d be upset. And it seemed so inoffensive.”
Alex stepped back from me. “You know better than that, sweetest. What the fuck actually happened? If it was as chummy as you’d have me believe–“
“Al, give her the benefit of the doubt,” Charlie urged, clapping his hand on Alex’s shoulder, but Alex shook it off. “How much will it cost you?
“I think,” Amanda piped up, “that we should all just be able to get along. And as Jules was generous enough to make the first offer of peace, you should be polite enough to accept it, too, Al.”
“Oh, I could get along with him,” Alex sneered, straightening his spine so he reached his full height where he now faced Julian. “I could get along with him just fine if he could come to terms with the fact that he broke up his own marriage all on his own. Not her. Not me.”
“Al,” Charlie warned. “Walk away.”
“I see you’ve opted to place your role down the memory hole then,” Julian objected. He looked every one of his four inches shorter than Alex, and the damp and slightly fusty, overly-cinnamoned air around us crackled with the dread of what next. “Who was it on the phone every day to my wife, drunk as a lord, crying about what a failure he was. How his wife left him, how he’d duped the woman he’d promised to love and honor into marriage to save a… what did you call it, Man?”
“An oversized, manky crofter’s cottage,” Amanda (un)helpfully volunteered.
“Shut it,” Alex hissed.
“Hmm, not a bad analysis, poppet. And he must have sounded so very, very sad to my tenderhearted wife. Must have sounded like he needed someone to just love him like his wife had, before she wised up and walked out. And — oh, do correct me if I’m wrong, Liss, but didn’t he encourage you to leave me? Wouldn’t have been the first time. I can think of…”
Julian ticked away at his fingers with long strokes. “Four. That I know of. Bristol, of course, when he snatched you away without waiting to learn if we’d even broken up. Then that ridiculous nonsense with that picture on the forum — who was there to egg you into breaking my heart? And when I’d nearly won you back again, I come to learn you’re swanning about in Seattle with him. Of course, though, his magnum opus has to be convincing you that your happy marriage was a prison. Brilliant work, Carr. Bravo, maestro.” Julian’s slow clap felt hollow, made me feel hollow, like a wooden cup struck with a stick.
“You say another word to her, I’ll fucking kill you, you controlling piece of shit,” Alex seethed. If I thought the mist was retreating, I’d been terribly wrong. It was not so much descending now as pouring buckets.
“Controlling? Please. I’m in control of myself, and that included my marriage until you started fucking with her head, breaking her down when you know how delicate she can be. You broke her so she’d finally give in to what you could never deal with. I won. I won her that very first night, and you never got over it. For all you know, you’re nothing more than a pity fuck that she got a little carried away with.”
No one said a word, but the buzz of the other wedding guests kept us from feeling cast completely into the deep silence that had dropped upon us. I’d been hoping Minty would reappear with the others to halt the rancor Jules and Alex were happily building before us before they tore into its edifice — and into each other. But there was no Minty ex machina. Now or never to intervene, Mel.
“Al,” I tugged at his sleeve, pulling back his arm where it was already starting to rise as if to draw back and land a jab to rub out Julian’s mocking smirk. “Nuh-uh. Not worth it. He’s not worth it. Let’s go find Min, see how she’s faring, okay?”
Alex grumbled in agreement, and pulled me by the waist close to him. “We’re done for now, Cranford. You want us to be civil? Be civil yourself, you little shit.”
I let Al steer me towards the relative quiet of the cloakroom, where women were now eagerly dropping off their hats on bales of hay draped with peach and gold tablecloths. “I’m sorry about not telling you about yesterday,” I said. “I was trying to prevent… to prevent what just happened anyway.”
“No secrets,” Alex scolded, a harsher tone than I could recall him using with me in many years. “You promised no more secrets.”
I lifted my hand in greeting to the advancing gaggle of Minty, Sasha and Miranda. Minty’s smile — real or not — beamed back at us as she clasped the hands of two of the women who had put her back together. If she’d been bawling earlier in the ladies’ room, there was no sign of it on her peachy complexion. Not an eyelash out of place.
“No more secrets,” I repeated, as Miranda reached forward to take us both in her arms.
It was a promise I still can’t keep.
meandering again 