A Hundred Pieces of Me (21 page)

Gina looked at the pearly eggs, cupped in her hands. It was beautiful. She could see it on the white wall in her flat, like a miniature.

Nick smiled. ‘Consider it your model fee?’

‘Thanks,’ she said, and put it into her bag.

Chapter Nine

ITEM
: a pair of cats’ eye sunglasses

Derbyshire, September 2007

Stuart’s back is sweating in the shape of a heart. One large damp heart forming in the top centre of his orange Lycra T-shirt.

Which is ironic, because hearts are the last thing on Gina’s mind. Instead, she thinks, watching it grow larger and darker as they struggle up the fourth hill of the morning, I’d like to punch him in that exact spot. Bloody cycling holidays. Is he saying I’m fat? Or is courting cardiac arrest really his idea of
my
idea of a good time?

This is not what Gina had in mind when Stuart announced that he was sweeping her off for his birthday weekend. She’d offered to arrange it for him, thinking of Rome (he loves the bloodthirsty TV miniseries of the same name; she loves art and coffee), but Stuart insisted on doing it himself. ‘It’s going to be perfect,’ he assured her. ‘You’ll love it.’ It is perfect – for him. The B&B they’re staying in even does organic full English breakfasts.

Gina thinks she should have guessed not to pack her bikini when Stuart told her to bring suncream but didn’t mention her passport. Still, she notes, already reordering today into a hilarious anecdote about her optimistic treat of a new pair of sunglasses that’ll make Naomi laugh next weekend, at least the passport’s in my bag. I can still make a break for it and go to Rome. How long would it take me to cycle to Manchester airport from here?

Gina eyes Stuart’s muscular back, and her stroppiness melts a bit. Naomi would point out, once she’d stopped laughing, that men like Stuart aren’t mind-readers. She should have told him Rome was what she wanted. Not outright, but maybe by leaving a few brochures out. Getting a
Rough Guide to Rome
. Dressing up in a bed-sheet toga.

But Stuart wouldn’t have got the toga. He’d have wondered what she was doing with the laundry.

‘Come on!’ yells Stuart. ‘Last push!’

A line of cars has been trailing up the hill behind them, the drivers’ resentment boring into Gina’s back like Xenon headlights. She can imagine what they’re saying about them, Stuart in his cycling shorts and her with her brand-new helmet rammed awkwardly on top of her corkscrewing curls.

She forces herself to think of something else, just to get to the top of the hill. Naomi’s official engagement party invite arrived before they left. What’s she going to wear for that? The blue dress Stu likes? Something new? How much weight can she lose in four weeks?

Gina half regrets telling her mum Naomi’s news: Janet has stopped hinting that Gina should think about settling down and has moved on to telling her direct. She’s twenty-seven now, she shouldn’t hang about. Tick-tock. Men like Stuart don’t hang around for ever.

Burning lungs aside, Gina doesn’t feel done with her twenties yet. Her life doesn’t seem to have passed through any significant starting gate into proper adulthood, and yet all around her, friends are hurtling into premature middle age like lemmings. Baby announcements in the paper, everyone buying houses, the weddings of her few uni friends and, most recently, her first grey hair, found this morning in the unforgiving B&B mirror.

Her brain automatically calculates the numbers: if her dad were still alive, he’d be fifty-six this year. Terry, fifty-eight. Kit, thirty-one next month.

Thirty-one. Gina pokes the sore spot, pretending she’s distracting herself from her aching calves. Married? Probably. With children? Two blond children with golden limbs and a cool taste in music and baby love-beads.

No. Probably not children.

The taste of this morning’s fried breakfast rises up the back of Gina’s throat. Baked beans, bacon, tomato and a sour sense of her own life disappearing down a different track, out of sight, while she goes on cycling holidays in Derbyshire instead of driving across Death Valley in a convertible.

A car honks behind her, then another, as if in psychic agreement, and Gina jumps so hard her foot slips off the pedal.

Mercifully, at that exact moment Stuart swings out his left arm and indicates that they should pull over at the panoramic viewing spot ahead. Gina finds a final shred of energy to reach the lay-by and tries not to look as the cars stream past them, back-seat passengers gawping. Her legs are burning. Only dignity stops her bending over and gasping for air like a landed salmon.

I need to get fitter, she thinks, staring at Stuart’s lean thighs.

‘There!’ He offers her his water-bottle, gesturing over the rolling Derbyshire countryside with the other hand. He’s not even panting, and the faint sheen of sweat on his tanned brow makes him look like an Olympic rower. Something heroic, anyway. ‘Isn’t that worth the climb?’

Gina wants to say, yes, it’s beautiful, but the sweat running into her eyes has mingled with her suncream and is stinging. She takes off her beautiful Sophia Loren sunglasses and wipes it away.

‘Are you all right, Gee?’ says Stuart, peering more closely.

No. I’m not all right, Gina roars in her head. I’m worn out. I’ve been working solidly for seven weeks without a break because my boss is waging war on unauthorised double glazing and I’d rather have spent the weekend asleep at home, or at the very least at a spa hotel in York drinking cocktails, and I’ll be thirty before I know it and we still haven’t discussed what’s happening when our lease runs out at the end of October . . . ‘I’m fine,’ she says, and takes a swig of water.

Water. Who knew it could be so delicious?

‘Good.’ Stuart smiles and his face is kind. ‘You’ve done really well today, considering you don’t cycle much.’

‘Thanks.’

‘Look, um, there’s something I want to say.’

‘Is it to do with my outfit? Because if you’d told me to pack gym kit I’d have . . .’

‘No, it’s not that.’ He swallows. ‘It’s about us.’

Her stomach plunges.
Us
. He’s going to finish it, she thinks. He dragged me up a hill, and got me so breathless I won’t be able to cause a scene.

‘Gina . . .’ Stuart clears his throat and – oh my God – he takes her hand in his.

Gina’s heart thuds in a different fast pattern. For the first time in ages, she really has no idea what Stuart’s going to do. The whole point of Stuart is that everything is beautifully smooth and predictable. Like East Anglia. You can see things coming from miles away with Stuart. Her throat feels tight as he fumbles in the pannier on his bike.

No, thinks Gina. Surely not.

He drops to one knee, then lifts his face up to her with unexpected seriousness, and with the countryside spread around him, like a puckered green cloak, dotted with stone churches and toy-box farms, he looks like a tousle-haired landowner from a Gainsborough portrait.

A car honks behind them, and Gina feels sick at the speed at which this moment is hurrying her towards a decision, but at the same time giddy with a thrill she doesn’t recognise.

‘Gina, I want to spend the rest of my life with you. Will you do me the great honour of marrying me?’ he says in a rush, and offers her a box.

It’s spontaneous and romantic and everything Gina’s always wanted in a proposal (apart from the lycra shorts, but she can forgive that).

‘Yes.’ She hears a voice, but doesn’t recognise it as her own. She’s floating somewhere above this scene, seeing the sweet film romance of a proposal on a hill in the English countryside. A car will stop soon to offer to take a photo of the happy couple, so they can keep it on their mantelpiece. Tonight someone will be telling their wife about the adorable proposal they witnessed on the way home.

‘Yes?’ he repeats, unsure, and her heart melts at the touching shadow of doubt in his voice.

Gina smiles. ‘Yes.’

Stuart’s face brightens with relief, and he’s kissing her, his arms around her, strong and warm.

Gina tastes Boots’ Soltan, and hears a car honk behind them, and she wonders if this is it, the moment the starting gun goes on her adulthood.

Yes, she thinks. It probably is.

For sale:
Scott Sportster Women’s hybrid bike £700 Lots of gears, knobs, what-have-you, barely used. Was a present, cost £1500

‘Obviously I’d need to take it for a test run before I make you an offer.’

Gina folded her arms, and steeled herself for the argument, the same way she steeled herself against builders who wanted to remove ‘just this one beam’.

This man – he’d called himself Dave on the phone – had been examining her pristine, top-of-the-range, ten-miles-on-the-clock mountain bike for half an hour now, making occasional
hmm
noises as if it were a clapped-out Fiesta in a back-street garage. She’d have booted him out as a timewaster twenty minutes ago, if he hadn’t kept asking her very specific questions to which she didn’t know the answers.

Gina hated not knowing the answers to questions, but she also hated seeing the bubble-wrapped bike in the hall every time she went out, reminding her of the chain (ha!) of events that had led her to this cramped upstairs flat-for-one. Stuart had bought it for her the day after they’d got back from the cycling holiday; they’d spent the whole afternoon in the cycle shop, which Gina hadn’t minded at the time because she’d convinced herself that she needed to get fit for the wedding and cycling was as good a way as any.

Apart from one arse-aching trip round the Forest of Dean, it had never left their garage.

Just seeing that saddle stirred up a giddy mixture of regret and relief in Gina, and she had to fight an impulse to tell Dave to take it and go. But then reason kicked in: the bike was worth at least seven hundred quid, and seven hundred quid in her Something Beautiful Fund went a long way, especially since Naomi still hadn’t got round to helping her with the growing pile of SELL items.

‘I’m not accepting offers,’ she said firmly. ‘I know what it’s worth.’

‘Do you?’ Dave looked at her, and so did the scrawny greyhound sitting between him and the door. It hadn’t made a sound since arriving, and Gina was starting to be unsettled by its unblinking gaze. It had eyes like black marbles and a white throat like a bib over its brindled grey coat. She kept forgetting it was there; it seemed to have a knack of making itself seem very small.

Another reason to get this over and done with. She hadn’t wanted a dog in her new flat either, but Dave had been going to tie it to the door and Gina couldn’t let him do that. The high street was really busy.

‘Yes,’ she said, raising her chin. ‘It’s got thirty gears and Shimano hydraulic disc brakes. Barely been ridden. Kept in a garage.’

He rubbed his face. ‘But I’d still need to ride it.’

‘It’s a woman’s bike!’

‘It’s a present. For my girlfriend.’

‘Good luck with that,’ said Gina, before she could stop herself. ‘You sure she wouldn’t rather have a nice diamond necklace?’

Dave grinned and revealed a surprisingly nice set of teeth for a man who’d arrived with a skinny dog wearing a cheap-looking collar. Even so, she decided, this would be the last sale she conducted from her hallway. Something about the exchange was making her feel uncomfortable – something about putting a price on her own past, and being alone with a stranger.

She kicked herself inside. Stuart would be going ballistic if he knew she was doing this. So would Naomi. Not just selling the bike but letting people into her flat. It had been really stupid to give him her home address, especially now the people in the shop had gone home. From now on, buyers could meet her in the café over the road.

The annoying thing was that it was something her mother had been right about: when Gina had arranged to meet ‘Dave’ she’d sort of forgotten she’d be alone. Subconsciously she’d assumed Stuart would be there, like he always was when the electricity-meter reader came round, looming capably in the background, awkward questions at the ready. She’d only gone ahead with it to prove something to herself and now she rather wished she hadn’t.

She glanced at the greyhound, and it turned its head away.

‘I need to take it round the block and back,’ Dave went on, ‘check the suspension hasn’t rotted.’

Gina put her hands on her hips. ‘How will I know you won’t nick it?’

‘I’ll leave Buzz.’ He nodded at the dog.

She tried to think what Stuart would do now. Or Naomi. Neither of them was a pushover. Neither of them would accept a dog as collateral for an expensive bike. ‘Haven’t you got a wallet? Or car keys?’

‘Ah, no, I never let my wallet out of my sight. Very dodgy people out there now, copying cards and that.’ He looked boldly at her. ‘Anyway, I can’t cycle and keep hold of him.’

‘That doesn’t work for me,’ said Gina. It was something she’d heard Naomi say. A lot.

There was a long pause. Then Dave sighed.