A Bad Bride's Tale (23 page)

she wasn’t about to grow old childless and alone.

Katy tossed her contraceptive pills in the trash. As she did so, her answering machine clicked on. She stood up, but didn’t intend to get the phone—she couldn’t face speaking to anyone, unless it was Seb. It wasn’t.

“Hi, hon. It’s Louise. Hope you had a fab holiday. I have to tell you . . . this is so exciting . . .” Laughter in background. “Me and Hugh are getting married! I can’t believe it! We’re having an en- gagement party at the Lonsdale next month. Invite to follow shortly. Lotta love.”

Katy walked over and stared at the machine with its red blink- ing devil eyes. For one second, she hated it as much she’d ever hated anything. Nonetheless, it was harboring another message— surely, Seb—so she depressed its button again.

“Hi, gorg. Dom here. As honorary gay godfather to be, I am inviting you to Liz’s baby shower. Thursday the twenty-third. Liz’s house, Primrose Hill. Bring lots of heinously expensive presents, obviously. Ciao.”

Oh, God. Was there some kind of fucking conspiracy going on? Couldn’t one of her friends just get divorced or something? Katy picked up her fertility kit and threw it across the room, where it slammed against the flat-screen television. “Bollocks!” she shouted.
“Bollocks!”

She slurped back the dregs in her wineglass, realizing as she did so that she was already drunk and could hear the hissing rush of her own misery, which, up to this point, she’d managed to contain like bubbles in an unopened bottle of champagne. After all the preen- ing and scheming and cajoling in Thailand, here, alone in her Not- ting Hill flat, without a witness, she could finally sink to the dark depths of a French film noir heroine, hair ratty, makeup rubbed wild, heron-thin long legs. Yes, she was fucking miserable. And

unseemly drunk. Because what was the point? What was the point in anything? She pulled her fingers through her hair manically and stumbled to the bathroom cabinet. Riffling through the aspirins and painkillers, Katy suddenly got a very dark thought indeed, a blacker than black thought. For one crucial minute it made perfect sense.

sometime later, she
awoke on the bathroom floor. And she awoke to a foul smell. Bleary-eyed, she looked around her. Yuck. Lakes of acidic liquid vomit splattered across the tiles. Revolted, she pulled herself up. What was that thing rolling around by her feet? She kicked it. Oh. No. Pill bottle. Empty bottle. Only then did she remember.

Katy managed to drag herself to the phone. She didn’t call Seb. He couldn’t hear her like this. So she phoned the only person in the world she wouldn’t mind hearing her like this, praying the call wouldn’t go to voicemail.

“Jez? Is that you?” she slurred, the words thick and hairy in her mouth.

“Who’s this?”

“It’s me. Katy.”

“Oh. Oh, Katy. I’ve been thinking about you. You got back okay?”

“Jez . . .” Katy started to whimper. “You’ve got to help me. I’ve done something very silly.”

“Huh?”

“I’ve overdosed.”

“What? Where are you? Katy? Katy? Are you there?” “I’m at home.” She sniffed back tears. “Alone.”

“Right,” said Jez, his voice becoming officious. “I know your ad- dress. You’re just down the road. Now. What did you take? Think carefully, sweetheart.”

“Wait a minute.” Katy scrabbled around on the floor for an empty pill bottle. How long did she have left? Was this how it was all going to end, in a vomity heap on her limestone bathroom floor? “Katy, Katy?” Jez sounded desperate. “Please talk to me. Are you

still there?”

“Hang on. Found the bottle.” She read the label with rheumy eyes.

“What is it, Katy. Tell me.” “Saint-John’s-wort.”

TWENTY-EIGHT
Æ

rita lay on the sofa, her furry slipper-shod feet
on its arm, Typhoo in hand, cucumber slice on each eye, a fuzz of hair—white and wiry as thistle—poking through her hairnet, a re- run of
A Place in the Sun
blaring. Still here! Stevie couldn’t quite be- lieve it. Rita had kept her word and stayed in their London flat while she and Jez were away. Okay, fine. Rita, understandably, could not face being in the old marital home right now. And, as Jez had pointed out, they had houseplants that needed watering. But they’d both been back a week, and Rita had yet to make any “leav- ing soon” gestures. Every day Stevie came back from work—late all this week because they were putting the magazine to bed—with the intention of chilling out in front of the Channel 4 news with a glass of icy Pinot Grigio, only to find her space squatted by a bovine woman in beige slacks and faux-sheepskin slippers, smelling of talcum powder. The front door banged.

“Hi, girls!” shouted Jez.

“Jez,” Stevie said, relieved to have Rita’s company diluted. “You’re back from the hospital. How is Katy?”

“Being very brave,” he said solemnly. “On a twelve-step program yet?” “That’s very mean-spirited of you.”

Yes, it was. But at this moment, she didn’t want to work at her marriage, as her mother had advised—she wanted to fire it. She was seriously pissed off that while Jez had not yet found time to accom- pany her on a visit to the hospital to see Tommy, he’d been to St. Mary’s to hold Katy’s manicured hand, who while scarcely ill, had been kept in for observation after her comedic suicide attempt. No, Jez hadn’t done much to allay her post-honeymoon doubts. Buoy- ing up any kind of belief in the marriage was increasingly difficult. Rita removed the cucumbers from her eyes. It did not improve her appearance. “Stevie, I’d kill for a refill. And would you be a dear

and pass over the
Daily Mail
?”

Stevie rummaged through Rita’s pile of newspapers and cheap weekly magazines. She handed her the paper and hoped it might absorb her for a few minutes.

Jez walked over to the fridge, drew out a packet of thick-sliced ham, dropped each slice into his mouth, loudly grinding his teeth like a rubbish truck pulverizing discarded bits of plywood.

“What’s for dinner tonight, dear?” asked Rita, not looking up from her newspaper.

Knowing the question to be directed at her, Stevie turned to Jez and looked at him quizzically. “Jez?”

Rita stabbed violently at her
Daily Mail
. “It says here, I quote . . .” She assumed her posh, reading-aloud voice. “Goodness me. Only a shocking three percent of today’s working women be- low the age of forty know how to cook Quiche Lorraine. Can you imagine?” She shook her head. “Goodness me.”

Stevie howled a silent Munch-style scream behind Rita’s back.

Jez noticed. “Shall we pick up takeout or something?”

“A lot of saturated fat in that, you know.” Rita looked disap- provingly at Stevie. “Home cooking is best.”

“Quite. Feel welcome to use the kitchen whenever you like,” replied Stevie, as politely as she could manage.

Rita ignored her and rubbed her left foot vigorously. “This foot is still not better from the wedding. I’m just not sure I’ll be able to manage on my own at home, you know, Jez.”

“You take as long as you need to recuperate here, Mum.”

As long as you
need
? That could be decades! Stevie didn’t think she could stand it any longer. “Actually, Jez. I might have something to celebrate. VIP Magazines have been in touch, wondering whether I would meet the art director of this new magazine project—you know the new launch scheduled for next year I mentioned? No. Of course not. Oh, it doesn’t matter.” After the extravagances of the honey- moon, especially Jez’s spending after she’d gone, they could use a good cash injection. He should be pleased, especially since he lost out on the last round of promotions at YR-Brand.

“But at what cost?” interrupted Rita. “Working so hard doesn’t suit women. Stress eats away at fertility. Goodness me, look at these statistics!” She shook the paper.

Stevie tensed, sensing something was coming. A tightness in the head, like the minutes before an electrical storm.

“You poor modern girls,” Rita continued. “It’s no wonder you’ve still got that rash on your neck. And it’s no wonder you haven’t conceived yet, dear, really it isn’t.”

How the hell would you know? Stevie felt a surge of love for her own mother, a gratitude that she’d been harvested in such a differ- ent womb. At least she could talk to her. She didn’t understand lots

of things, but she understood the need to escape from Rita. Stevie turned to glare at Jez. “I thought we could go out for a meal, to cel- ebrate.”

“I don’t think living in a polluted city like London helps either,” Rita added.

“Fancy eating out, Mum?” Jez looked at his mother for acquies- cence.

“Just the two of us,” Stevie hissed behind Rita’s back.

“Oh.” Rita sniffed loudly. “Don’t worry about me, Stevie. I’ll just have some cheese on toast or something light. My bowels have been giving me no end of trouble since I’ve been eating your fancy organic food.”

stevie absentmindedly snapped off
another shard of pa- padum, even though she was already stuffed. “As I’ve not got any work lined up for next week—I’m in between shifts—I should go to New York then, you know, while I can. Don’t you think?” The question was rhetorical. She was going, whatever he said. “It would give you and your mum some quality time alone together.”

Jez wiped his mouth on the back of his hand and grinned. “But I don’t want you to be away. We’re still newlyweds.”

Stevie laughed weakly. “I’m still waiting for my period to come.

It’s a bit late.”

“A bit late?” Jez dropped his fork with a clatter.
“Yes!”
he ex- claimed like he’d scored a goal, leaning back in the chair, raising a fist. Diners stared. “Turbo sperm! Babe, that is so fucking
fantastic
!”

“Shhh. It doesn’t mean anything. I did a test and everything.” Jez looked hurt. “When? You didn’t tell me.”

“No. Sorry. You were in Thailand. It was negative.” She shrugged apologetically. “I didn’t want to disappoint you.”

Jez looked at Stevie hopefully. “But your period’s late?”

Stevie nodded. She wondered how he’d react if she couldn’t have kids. He’d never even considered that as a possibility. Nor had she.

Jez picked at an ingrown hair on his neck. “I tell you. It won’t be long. Not with my equipment.”

they left the restaurant,
habitually hand in hand. The night was clear and cold, the pavement dry, the smell of summer lemon-sharp. At that moment, it couldn’t be any other month but June, she thought. Other couples passed by them on West- bourne Grove, trailing expensive perfumes and tidbits of conver- sations. All were good-looking, as if they’d stepped out of the pages of a magazine. It was as if attractiveness was a requisite of the postcode, thought Stevie. Like a kind of geographical dating agency.

Six months into the relationship, Jez had saved her from a rented one-bedroom flat in Shepherd’s Bush, where she was regularly woken by her neighbor and his girlfriend having sex on the floor above in the early hours of the morning. And once by a mouse in her underwear drawer. When Jez had asked her to move in with him, it was a no-brainer.

January seventh, last year. The day she moved into her new life. Jez had hauled all her stuff out, incredulous at the amount of clothes and shoes and “crap” she’d managed to squeeze into such a small space. Without her things, the flat had looked dusty, empty, and soulless as a vacant cargo box. She’d felt little sentimentality as they’d driven away from her single life in that rented van, just re-

lief that her life was moving on, finally. When she arrived at his flat on Moscow Road, it was baking hot. She’d opened the door to his—
their!
—bedroom and found it full of red long-stemmed roses, many still budded, which was why he’d turned the heat up, to make them bloom. She imagined then that this was a taste of things to come, a payoff for her more miserable single-girl-dwelling mo- ments. It hadn’t been quite like that.

“Hey, dreamer, sure you don’t want a nightcap?” asked Jez, just before they turned onto Moscow Road.

Stevie shook her head.

“I shouldn’t be encouraging you anyway. Don’t they say you shouldn’t drink even if you’re
trying
to get pregnant?”

“Obviously the fun starts here, then.” Stevie hadn’t realized they were trying as such, which after decades on the pill still felt pretty revolutionary. And right now, she wasn’t even sure they
should
be doing that.

When they returned back to the flat, Rita was standing in the kitchen holding a steaming cup of hot chocolate, her vast bulk swaddled in a pale pink bathrobe, hairnet on, like a witty wax- work installation you might find in an East End art gallery. “Hot chocolate, Stevie?”

“No thanks. I’m going to crash.”

“Good night, then.” A neck flush betrayed Rita’s pleasure at her daughter-in-law’s departure. “Right. Jez, come here. . . . I’ve dug out some old pictures of your father I want to show you.”

Stevie was still awake twenty minutes later, wondering why she couldn’t sleep. It bothered her that she and her husband seemed to be experiencing the marriage in two entirely different ways. While the honeymoon appeared to have cemented Jez’s certainty about their future—he certainly didn’t want to waste any time getting

her pregnant—it had made her uneasy about their marital compat- ibility, to say the least. In fact, her doubts were smashing into each other like cars in a nasty pileup on the M25. The very things that she used to love about him—his loud enthusiasm and bombastic boyishness—were the very things that now irritated the hell out of her. She sighed and dug her hands beneath the pillow.

Perhaps, she thought, a little more kindly, the groan of these thoughts was merely the sound of a relationship shifting onto more mature ground, like the creak of wood expanding. Perhaps all good relationships changed as they developed, and trying to hold on to the relationship’s past reality was as futile as trying to stay forever a teenager. Yes, perhaps that was it. She must ask Poppy. She knew about such things. Damn it, she wanted to sleep. She had that meeting at VIP Magazines tomorrow. She needed to pack for New York. Her brain was like Oxford Circus, a constant crowd of thoughts, barging past each other. Or perhaps she just needed to pee. Yes, she needed to pee.