The Wedding Date (13 page)

‘Yes,’ I manage to squeak.

‘Good.’ William nods. ‘That’s how it should be. Mum, Dad and kids. Not Mum, Fuck-wit and kids with Dad on his own in a shitty little flat.’ William screws up his face and balls up his fists, which he hammers on the table, rattling the jar with the tea light. ‘She left me with nothing, you know. Nothing. Fuck all. Took the house, our kids.’

‘But you still see them. Your girls.’ William had told me all about the time he spent with his daughters. In fact, until tonight, I’d got the impression that he had custody of the twins.

‘Once a fucking week. She won’t even let me have them overnight. Bitch!’ William lifts his fists and brings them down onto the table. His fork flips into the air before clattering to the ground.

‘Sir.’ A waiter has approached and I can’t help feeling relieved that I’m not alone. My eyes dart around me and I’m reminded that I’m definitely not alone as dozens of eyes are upon us. ‘I’m going to have to ask you to calm down.’

‘Sorry.’ William clears his throat. ‘Sorry.’

‘I’ll bring you a new fork.’ The waiter starts to back away.

‘And my drink. Please.’

Great. Just what this situation needs. More alcohol.

Slowly, the eyes start to turn away when it becomes clear the drama has ended. William’s drink arrives, shortly followed by our meal. My appetite has vanished, along with any sort of conversation. William and I haven’t exchanged a word since his outburst and I can’t think of a single word to say to him. Not one.

‘I’m sorry, Delilah.’ William suddenly thrusts out his hand and I flinch away. But William simply grasps hold of my hand. ‘I’m so sorry. It’s just that I love her so much. So fucking much.’ William drops my hand, laying his arms across his dinner and dropping his face into the crook of his elbow. His shoulders start to shake moments before the howling begins. William is crying, unrelentingly, unabashed, uncontrolled. He doesn’t see the wide eyes turning to stare. Doesn’t see me rising from my seat. Doesn’t see me scuttling across the restaurant, pressing money into the hand of a passing waiter and instructing him to knock it off our bill. William is so busy howling into his sleeve he doesn’t see me escape, running from the restaurant as fast as my legs will take me.

Chapter 14

Justin

Text Message:

Delilah:
Can you go to prison for murdering your little brother if he REALLY deserves it?

Lauren:
Yes

Delilah:
Even if the little git wrecked your Christian Dior eyeliner for his art project?

Lauren:
Speaking as a solicitor, that isn’t a valid reason for murder. Speaking as your best friend and fellow woman, throttle him. Throttle him good

I was nine when my little brother Justin came along. Mum and Dad had sat me and Clara down one Saturday afternoon a few months earlier, Mum beaming at us while Dad spoke the words. The palm of his hand rested on Mum’s stomach, where there would soon be a bump (and pretty sizeable too. I’d had no idea skin could stretch so much. I was pretty damn scared by the end).

I quite liked the idea of having a little brother or sister. I’d get to play with it when Francesca and Ryan were busy and we could gang up against Clara when she wanted to watch EastEnders instead of cartoons. We could play dolls and Frustration (which were lame, according to Queen of Cool Clara) and I’d teach it to play ‘Twinkle Twinkle Little Star’ (the only piece of music I could play) on my keyboard.

Clara wasn’t quite so enthusiastic upon hearing the news. In fact, she was downright disgusted.

‘You mean you still do it?’ Her face was all scrunched up and I shifted away slightly, scared she was about to vom. ‘That is gross!’

Clara was mortified. She was fourteen and only just coming around to the idea of sharing Mum and Dad with me. She didn’t want to have to start all over again with a new kid. She’d put up with my appearance, had somewhat tolerated my squawking, and they expected her to do it all again?

‘No way. You can’t do this to me!’

But they did. Justin arrived one cool March afternoon while Clara and I were at school.

‘You have a brother!’ Dad had tears in his eyes as he made the announcement as soon as we arrived home and he didn’t even bother to hide them. ‘Handsome little sod he is as well. And the best bit is, I’ve got more hair than him!’ He held up his palm, which I high-fived while Clara rolled her eyes and slumped onto the sofa.

Dad took us to the hospital after tea and we got to meet Justin for the first time. He was wrapped up in a soft blue blanket, his eyes tight shut and wrinkling the skin around them. Mum beamed at us. She looked exhausted but happy.

‘You have a little brother,’ she said before promptly bursting into tears. Dad assured us that she was ok, that she didn’t hate the new baby (as Clara had asked rather hopefully), that it was simply hormones and extreme tiredness.

‘Do you want to hold him?’ Dad asked Clara. She was still standing on the outskirts. If Dad had swished the curtain shut around Mum’s bed, Clara would have disappeared from view.

‘No, you’re all right.’ She shoved her hands in her pockets, just in case Dad tried to dump the baby in her arms against her will.

‘Oh, go on. He won’t bite. He hasn’t got any teeth yet.’ Dad winked at Clara but her face remained stony, her feet remaining planted on the floor. ‘Come on, love. He’s your little brother. Have a proper look at him and you can help pick a name. He hasn’t got one yet, poor mite.’

‘I wanted to call him Dylan,’ Mum said, already reaching for a tissue from the box on top of the locker beside her bed. ‘But he doesn’t look like a Dylan at all.’ She burst into tears again and I rushed towards her, hopping up onto the creaky bed and nestling myself into her. She felt different without the hard bump. Soft and squishy like a giant marshmallow. I was half afraid the blob of skin would envelop me and swallow me whole like in the cheesy horror film Clara had made me watch a few weeks earlier.

‘I’m ok, Delly. I’m ok.’ Mum gave a sniff as she dabbed the tears from her cheeks. ‘See?’ She smiled at me, but it was kind of wobbly. Before the baby, she’d beamed. Before the baby she always wore makeup and brushed her hair nice. Now she was wobbly (in face and body) and her skin was grey and sort of saggy. Her hair seemed to be both frizzy and greasy at the same time and was piled up on her head, making her look like a big, grey pineapple.

‘Can I seriously pick his name?’ Clara was moving towards the little plastic cot. Slowly, but it was a start.

‘You can help. We don’t want him to end up with a name lifted from EastEnders.’ Dad draped an arm around Clara’s shoulders and guided her towards the baby. ‘We don’t want a Lofty James, do we?’

‘Who’s Lofty?’

Dad gave a wave of his hand, more interested in the slumbering mound in the cot. ‘He left years ago. I’m glad you don’t remember him and his daft name.’ Dad and Clara stopped in front of the cot. ‘Well? What do you think?’

Clara peered into the cot and she shrugged. ‘He’s small and wrinkly, isn’t he?’

‘All babies are.’ Dad lifted the baby from the cot and nodded at the bed, where Clara begrudgingly sat, arms open to receive the child. Dad placed our brother ever so gently into Clara’s arms, shifting the blue blanket a little so she could get a better look at him.

I saw it happen. The shift. One second Clara’s face was its usual frosty self, moody and withdrawn, lip curled as though there was a bad smell wafting about the place (which there could have been, now I think about it. I’ve found that bad smells usually follow babies, especially Justin). The next second her face opened – quite literally. Her eyes widened, surprise and wonder shining through, and her lips parted, making a little ‘o’ of her mouth.

‘He’s quite cute, isn’t he?’ Clara looked up at our parents, watching them in turn with her wide, wonder-struck eyes.

Mum burst into tears. Again.

Dad agreed wholeheartedly.

I comforted Mum, who insisted she was absolutely fine.

‘I think he looks like a Justin,’ Clara said, her eyes back on the baby.

‘Justin,’ Dad said.

‘Justin James.’ Mum mopped up her tears. ‘I like it. What do you think, Ray?’

‘I think we have a name for our son.’

Nobody asked me. They all settled on Justin and I didn’t get a say. I pointed this injustice out to Mum and Dad a few days later, when Mum and the baby were settling in at home. As a consolation, they let me pick Justin’s middle name. I chose Peter, and although I could tell Mum didn’t really like it and was ready to burst into tears again, they felt guilty enough to agree to it. I didn’t tell them that I’d chosen Peter after Smelly Peter at school. Smelly Peter stunk of wee (and sometimes poo) and nobody would play with him.

Back at the hospital, Clara was beaming at the newly-named Justin. She cooed at him and eased his tiny fist from under the blanket so he could grab hold of her finger, which seemed to melt her even more.

‘Do you want to hold your brother?’ Dad asked me.

I unhooked myself from under Mum’s arm and slipped off the bed. ‘No. I don’t think I do. I’m going for a wee and then I want to go home.’

I eventually got over my dislike of Justin. Mum stopped blubbering every three seconds and after the initial few weeks of broken sleep, she started to look more like the Mum I knew and loved. She remembered to shower and brushed her hair almost daily and after a year or so, she rediscovered her lipstick. I got to know my little brother and it turned out he was pretty cool. He was cute and giggly and Mum let me push his pram when she took me to school. I started to feel guilty that I’d named him after the smelly kid at school (although he did live up to his name, stinking the house out with his nappies. Years later I’d feel guilty about thinking of Peter as Smelly Peter too. Kids are awful sometimes). Justin was such a joy to have around. As he grew he became a mischievous little tyke, but he made us all laugh until our stomachs ached.

Now he just makes my head ache.

My feelings towards my little brother made another U-turn about two years ago, coming full circle to the day he was born and I took against him again. It seemed to happen overnight. One moment he was a mischievous but sweet boy, the next he was a mischievous and malicious little git. He became mean, lazy and disgustingly weird and yet Mum, Dad and Clara still see him as the cutie pie boy that is long gone.

‘Get out.’

I’m sitting on my bed, my laptop resting on my knees when Justin barges into my bedroom. Probably on the hunt for my property to steal or destroy.

‘Do I even want to be in here? Er, no.’ Justin flops onto my bed and I flick out my foot to nudge him off again. He grabs my foot and tugs my sock off, tossing it across the room. ‘Mum says you have to come downstairs. Clara’s here.’

‘So?’

‘She says you have to come and say hello.’ Justin grabs my other foot and, despite my wriggling, he tugs off that sock and throws it onto my dressing table, purely to wind me up. ‘What are you doing?’ He nods at the laptop, which I instinctively bring closer to my chest.

‘Nothing.’ I close the lid. ‘Just some work.’

The truth is I’m looking at the Love Today website but I’d rather lick a flea-infested rat than admit that to Justin. It took a few days to get over the trauma of my date with William and I hadn’t even logged onto the Love Today website or opened the app on my phone before today in case he’d got in touch. For all I knew, he was still stationed at the restaurant’s table with tomato and basil sauce congealing on the sleeves of his shirt as he wailed.

‘Right. It’s time to move on.’ Lauren told me earlier this afternoon as we sat in The Farthing. ‘Yes, your date with William was terrible.’ Putting it mildly there, Lauren. ‘But it’s been almost a week and you’re wasting time. Francesca is getting married in less than five months so you need to stop moping and get dating.’

‘Hey! I am not moping.’

‘You are a bit,’ Ryan said, which I found unhelpful. Mainly because it was going against my opinion. ‘And Lauren’s right. You need to dust yourself off and get back out there. They won’t all be like William.’

‘You mean some will be normal?’ My tone is sceptical. I’ve been on three dates so far and they’ve all been a disaster in one way or another.

‘Yes. Completely normal. Come on, let’s have a look.’ Lauren picked up my phone and opened the Love Today app, biting her lip as she tapped away at the screen.

‘What are you doing?’ I leaned over, trying to get a look, but Lauren moved the screen from my view. ‘Are you sending messages to people? Who are you talking to?’

‘Nobody.’ Lauren brought the phone back towards her body so that I could see the screen again. ‘I was just deleting a few messages. From William.’ She blew air from her cheeks and shook her head. ‘Boy is he unhinged. You did not want to read what I just read.’ Of course now I wanted nothing more than to read what Lauren just read. ‘But don’t worry, I’ve blocked him. You won’t be hearing from Willy again.’

I snorted at the name, being so grown-up and everything.

‘Right. You have five messages left.’ Lauren passed the phone to me. ‘Let’s read them and see if we can move things along a bit.’

One of the messages was from Vincent, the insurance consultant. It was nothing important, just a nice how-are-you type message.

‘Ask him if he’d like to meet up,’ Lauren suggested as I started to reply.

‘No.’ I almost threw the phone down, as though it could act out Lauren’s wishes without my control. ‘I can’t. I don’t want to.’

‘Do you want to turn up to Francesca’s wedding on your own?’ Lauren asked and I shook my head. Of course I didn’t. ‘Then ask Vincent out. It’s why you’re paying nearly thirteen quid a month for the service.’

That was true. And Vincent did sound like a laugh and I was sure he didn’t have any unresolved issues with his ex.

‘Fine. But I’m not doing it here with an audience.’ I finished my pint and packed up my stuff. ‘I’ll text you later and tell you how it went.’

I’ve been sat with my laptop for the past half an hour and I still haven’t plucked up the courage to send the message to Vincent.