A Bad Bride's Tale (37 page)
the phone?”
Poppy smiled infuriatingly coyly and sucked milk froth off the back of her teaspoon.
“I hate it when you have that secretive look.” Stevie stroked the warm curve of Tommy’s back.
“Lara e-mailed me.” Poppy cocked her head to one side and laughed. “Very interesting indeed. Don’t look at me like that! We have conferred.”
“Oh, no. Really?” Stevie put her hand to her mouth. “Don’t worry, she’s totally cool about
it
.”
“And what’s
it
?” But she could guess. Her heart started to pump. “You and Flowers.” Poppy sipped her coffee. “I have something to tell you, Stevie. I hope you’re not going to be horribly cross. You
probably have every right to be.”
“Sounds ominous.” Stevie kicked her legs out, removing her hot- pink Havaianas and tilting her head into the late afternoon sun- shine.
“You’ve got two hours to go home, pack, and get to Heathrow.”
“What?”
Stevie sat up. “What on earth are you talking about, Poppy?”
“Your flight to JFK leaves at ten
p.m
.” Beaming triumphantly, she handed her a crumpled Post-It note. “Your e-ticket reference numbers. Don’t lose them.”
Stunned, Stevie stared at the note of paper, pressed her hands to her mouth. “Oh, my God, I can’t . . . I can’t just turn up. I haven’t spoken to Sam or anything. You don’t understand. I’ve totally screwed it all up.”
Poppy held up Tommy, whose head lolled back, milk-drunk, and pressed him to her lips. “You’ll screw up worse if you don’t go.”
“I said some vicious things. And he hasn’t phoned me since he heard about Lara and Seb. If he wanted me, he’d have called me.”
“Duh. That’s not how men work!” Poppy rolled her eyes. “He feels rejected.”
“But . . . but . . .”
“Stop being scared, Stevie.” “Scared?”
“Scared of following your instincts.” Poppy stroked Tommy’s fuzz of hair gently. “I always used to think I was the more conser- vative one. Come on, that was my role in the family, wasn’t it? We all had roles. But actually I think
you
are the conservative one.”
“Maybe.” Stevie shrugged. “I always wanted to be like you.” “You thought I was boring.”
“Only a little bit.” She laughed. “Until you grew out of your pony fixation. That was
very
boring.”
“You know what I think?” Poppy leaned back against the café window, her delicate features converging in thought. “I think you chose someone you didn’t really love. So they couldn’t hurt you. So it wouldn’t hurt if they left.”
Stevie winced with recognition.
“And you did a Dad. You put your head in the sand and hoped everything would resolve itself.”
“Okay, okay. I’m not paying you a therapist fee.” Stevie looked up, eyes gold in the sun. “How do you suddenly know this stuff, clever clogs?”
“I’ve had a bit of time to think. Newborn babies are less fasci- nating than you might imagine.”
Stevie dropped her head into her hands. “So I can’t really blame Jez, can I?”
Poppy kissed the top of Tommy’s head. “Nope.”
so this was brooklyn.
Carroll Gardens. Nice. She liked it. It reminded her of home, or an idea of home, with its small shops and
diners and its breathtaking view of the East River. Stevie admired the trap of the sky caught in the sludgy mass of river.
Drawing on the city’s energy, she bounced along the street, feel- ing as if the concrete were rubber beneath her feet: a youthful woman in her thirties, a mere seedling, life stretching out deli- ciously before her, years and years of it. She dug her small red ad- dress book from her bag. Its thin pages fluttering in the wind, she flicked through to F, where she’d written Sam’s address all those months ago in careful handwriting. Her phone vibrated. A beep. A text message. She flipped it open.
job interview at my mag mn- day aftrnoon. p.s ticket is one way l x
What? Stevie crushed her hands to her mouth and walked along Hicks Street, grinning stupidly, checking building num- bers. This was it. Deep breath. She stood outside for a few min- utes, finger hovering above the bell, frozen on the doorstep, immobilized by an overwhelming sense of vulnerability and ex- posure. Coming to New York unannounced suddenly felt like a girlishly impetuous and risky thing to do. She leaned against the door, eyes shut, as if trying to extract strength from it. Then it opened. Stevie fell forward into the outstretch reflex of Sam’s arms.
“Stevie!” He looked down, astonished at his catch. “What the hell . . .”
“Hi.” She righted herself, blushed, mumbled, “Um, just passing through.”
Sam stared at her, speechless for a few seconds. “Come in.”
The apartment was on the first floor; small, sunny, and sparsely decorated, a few bits of modern furniture, some serious pieces of sound system, and stacks of vinyl records piled up in the corner. Black-and-white photographs—including a print of the defiant-
dandelion picture Sam had given her last time she was in New York—lined the walls. A tabby cat, presumably the homosexual one, basked haughtily on the fire escape. “It’s very nice,” she man- aged, walking to the window, unable to take her eyes from Sam even for a moment.
“I love it.” Sam tried to look casual in a rigid approximation of a slouch. His bare bronze feet tensed.
Stevie parked her small wheelie suitcase. A warm breeze, ruf- fling in through a large open window, filled her throat with the feeling of summer. There was a pause, the surrealness of jetlag adding to the magic of the moment, as if time had indeed reversed and here, in New York, she actually had the chance to reclaim lost hours and replay part of her life again. “That day at Port Meadow? When the phone rang it was Lara telling me she was pregnant,” she blurted.
“Oh.” Sam’s face seemed to clear, breaking into a cautious smile. “Okay.”
“That’s why I said what I said.” She lowered her head, breaking the intensity of the eye contact by glancing at the stripped pale wood floor. “I thought it was your baby.”
“It’s not.”
Stevie looked up. “I . . . I’ve made a lot of mistakes.”
Sam stepped forward one step, two, three. Then, there he was, the whole solid muscular reality of him, his dark eyes ablaze. “This isn’t one of them.”
“I know,” she whispered, her voice beginning to fail.
“Come here.” Sam lifted one hand and cupped his palm against her cheek, just as he had on Port Meadow, as if he wanted to finish what they’d started. “You’re not scared, are you?”
“Not anymore.” She was surprised at how easy it was to lift her
face and open her mouth. Finally, she was in the exact place she wanted to be. He pulled her toward him, his breath hot and hy- draulic against her neck. She reached for the soft skin beneath his T-shirt. They fell onto the floor, kissing hungrily, peeling off each other’s clothes slowly, stopping to admire each newly exposed plane of panting flesh, until they were naked and laughing. Sam pressed her fingers to his mouth. “Look up there, Stevie,” he said softly, nodding to the open window. “Blue skies.”
A CKNOWLEDGMENT S
Æ
A huge thank-you to everyone who supported this book and the last. Special thanks go to my editor, Sarah Landis; my publisher, Ellen Archer; publicist Beth Gebhard; and all those at Hyperion who’ve worked so hard on both my books. Many grateful thanks also to my agents, Kim Witherspoon and David Forrer, at Inkwell Management. I’m also immeasurably grateful to my husband, Ben Chase, for keeping me sane and productive. I’m very grateful to you, too, Mum. To all my girlfriends for their hilarious and de- spairing tales from the thirtysomething dating-and-mating play- ground. Finally, thank you to my dear friend Tess McPherson, for returning home and making Oxford come alive again. All our walks and talks over the years are embedded somewhere in the pages of this book.
Polly Williams
is a journalist who writes for
In Style
,
Marie Claire
, and
The Sunday Times
, as well as other publications. She lives in London with her husband and two sons. Visit her website at www.pollywilliams.com
ALSO BY POLLY WILLIAMS
The Yummy Mummy
Design by Nicola Ferguson
A BAD BRIDE
’
S TALE
. Copyright © 2008 Polly Williams. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non- transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of Hyperion e-books.
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