After Ever After (48 page)

I feel it then, the last thread that holds us together snap and wither away

‘You don’t understand,’ I say finally, exhausted, defeated. ‘I told myself it was my fault, that I let it happen, but that it was nothing, nothing when I compared it to how much I love you. I knew you could make it into nothing when you came home, and you did.’ I step back from him. ‘Maybe I was wrong. I must have been wrong about us, because if I’d been right, if we’re really meant to be together, then I know one thing for certain.’

‘What?’ Fergus shrugs.

‘That you’d believe me when I was telling the truth,’ I say.

As I head on to the boiling drive Fergus calls after me.

‘I want Ella tomorrow. Mum’ll pick her up at ten, okay?’

I stop for a second, almost unable to hear him.

‘Fine,’ I say without turning back, and I head back into the valley. It’s only when I’ve crossed Shooter’s Way that I realise I’ve only got one flip-flop on.

‘He didn’t believe you!’ I notice the tiny crinkle of disbelief between Camille’s brows, and blink, sweat stinging my eyes. Since I stumbled in through the front door both of my friends have been looking at me as if they are hoping I might be lying. I didn’t cry, I think to myself absently. That’s strange. Normally I can cry for England at the drop of a hat. My husband calls me a liar and a whore and I’m dry as the Gobi desert. Weird.

‘He’s got my flip-flop,’ I say stupidly, examining the filthy sole of my bare foot and musing on its significance. There isn’t one, of course.

Dora helps Ella build up her recently demolished tower of bricks again, shaking her head.

‘But … I mean, what?’ she says, incredulous.

‘He said I was making it up to try and get back with him,’ I shrug. The walk in the near-noon sun on the way back has melted all of my fear, frustration and anger into one messy stupor. I can’t be sure what I’m feeling any longer.

‘But … but Fergus loves you. He has to believe you.’ Camille says, returning from the kitchen with a glass of cold water. ‘I mean, it’s you and it’s Fergus and he loves you! This is the wrong ending. It’s got to be. Things like you and Fergus don’t end like this, over something like … a stupid mistake. That’s not how it’s supposed to be!’ She looks around the living room as if she can pluck the answer out of the dust-moted air.

‘I know,’ I say slowly, methodically. ‘That’s what I thought too. I thought, “Oh well, Kitty, you’ve fucked up big time, but it’s okay because Fergus loves you and you love him and love conquers all, etc. etc.” But it turns out it doesn’t and he didn’t.’ I smile wanly at Ella as she holds out one of her beloved bricks to me in a rare gesture of magnitude. ‘Who would’ve thought it, hey?’

Dora shakes her head.

‘Well, I don’t think it. I know that this world is a different place now. I know that awful things happen to good people, but I know that Fergus loves you, I know he does. He might not believe you for whatever fucked-up reason, but he still loves you because that kind of love, Kitty, doesn’t just evaporate into thin air.’ She crosses her arms thoughtfully. ‘All we’ve got to do is show him that you’re not lying, somehow.’

I smile at her.

‘Dora, you don’t get it,’ I say sadly. ‘If he doesn’t believe me it doesn’t matter if he loves me or not. It’s over.’

Camille and Dora look at me and then at each other and I pick up Ella off the carpet and hold her close for as long as she can bear.

‘There’s no way back from this.’

‘What do you mean?’ Camille asks me cautiously, as I set the struggling baby down.

‘I mean that the whole point of us, the whole point of Fergus and me was that he was supposed to be The One, you know, my perfect match, my other half, my soulmate like in all those books. He was supposed to be the end of the rainbow, and together we were supposed to be perfect.’ I looked at Dora. ‘You’re right, awful things do happen to good people, but in all of this I never really expected, I never
really
thought, he would doubt me. I thought somehow he’d always be on my side, by my side no matter what happened. I was wrong.’

I kick my remaining flip-flop forcefully into the corner of the room. ‘There’s no way back from this. It’s over.’

‘Good girl,’ Caroline whispers in my ear. ‘Just try not to think about anything but the show and you’ll be fine. Remember, the show …’

‘… must go on, yes, Caroline,’ I say irritably. ‘Yes, I understand that, but at the time I didn’t think it had to go on with me wearing a costume that had been altered for a mystery person who is two sizes smaller than me and quite a few feet shorter!’

The murmur of the crowd behind the heavy curtains subsides and Bill’s five-piece band, consisting largely of hungover and ironic sixth formers, begins to play the overture.

It’s the last five minutes before the first night of the Berkhamsted Players’ Summer Festival production of
Calamity Jane
, and it seems that Clare has wreaked her revenge by altering all my costumes once more so that they don’t fit me. In fact, so that they fit so badly that every inch of spare flesh I have (which is many) is bulging out of them in ways I never knew possible, ways that conceptual artists would find inspiring for installation pieces. Why am I still here? Why am I taking the disintegration of my life so blithely? I think it’s because I’m not in the least bit surprised.

I always knew it couldn’t be me that had the happy ending.

I don’t
want
to be here. The moment Fergus threw me out of his mother’s house I sort of assumed that I wouldn’t
have
to be here, that emotionally and physically wrecked people don’t have to perform in local musical productions. I thought I’d have an automatic sick note, like the kind that Dora forges for a small fee. But it turns out that I was the only one who thought that.

For starters, Caroline phoned me and said, ‘The show must go one, my dear.’ In actual fact she spent about an hour giving me a motivational pep talk, clearly amalgamated from a combination of women’s magazines and a sports mistress, but in essence what she wanted to say was, ‘Terribly sorry and all that, but blah, blah, blah.’

Somehow, without the aid of an invitation or even a phone call, Mr Crawley had turned up that Saturday evening and brought
Madam Butterfly
on CD and cooked Italian for all of us before telling us about the night he met his wife.

‘Was it in Italy?’ Camille asked him, already starry-eyed.

‘No, it was in High Wycombe, but the town’s first pizzeria had just opened and, well, ever since then we loved all things Italian. We went to Tuscany for our twenty-second wedding anniversary.’ He smiled at the memory. ‘Less than a year later she was gone, but every one of the twenty-two years was a gift.’

I twirled my pasta languidly around my fork.

‘Twenty-two years.’ I said wistfully. ‘I’m not sure that we made twenty-two months …’

‘Well, of course you haven’t,’ Mr Crawley said robustly. ‘Not yet.’

And not for the first time I wondered why everyone but me refused to see that Fergus and I were over. Surely I was the one supposed to be in denial while they all gave each other ‘poor deluded soul’-type meaningful glances over the top of my head. Then I realised that Fergus and I were some kind of flagship of hope to these people, even loved-up Camille and cynical Dora. I realised that maybe they needed the fairy-tale ending even more than I did.

‘Perhaps he’ll come on Monday, to the show,’ Dora said. ‘And then everything will work out fine.’

I looked at her, wondering if it were possible for Doris to somehow possess the body of my best friend, but I couldn’t see any hint of her lurking in her brown eyes.

‘Dora, this is real life not a Judy Garland musical,’ I said wearily. ‘Firstly, why would my soon-to-be-ex-husband come to watch a show starring his loathed soon-to-be-ex-wife? Secondly, even if he did, how could that possibly translate into “And everything will work out fine” …’ I trailed off.

‘Well, once,’ Dora said seriously, ‘I had a date with the guitarist from a goth rock band and he wasn’t very attractive to me personally – piercing, penis-shaped nose, and on top of that he was a bit of a sexist twat who sprayed fake spider web around his bedroom when it wasn’t even Hallowe’en. So anyway, I went to this gig he was playing at, specifically to dump him, and funnily enough when I saw him up on stage for the first time I was suddenly overcome with desire for him. You know, the aphrodisiac of fame and all that. It’s the reason why people sleep with any old celebrity. Oh, I know it was only pub-band fame, but you never know.’

I considered her thoughts for a moment and then chose to ignore them for fear that I might actually implode if I admitted to myself and the world that she wasn’t joking.

‘And thirdly,’ I said defiantly, ‘I’m not going to be in the stupid show now anyway.’ I sulked. ‘I only did it to try and be part of this godforsaken town, and now it looks like I’ll be moving back to London very soon, so bollocks to Calamity Fucking Jane, I’m not doing it.’ I sank my glass of wine and then the rest of Camille’s in two easy steps. Mr Crawley fixed me with a very intimidating hawk-like gaze, and for the first time in our acquaintance I realised just how formidable he could be, particularly if you got on his wrong side.

‘Yes, you
are
going to be in the show,’ he informed me. ‘You might be in some personal difficulty, but that does not give you the right to ruin weeks of hard work and preparation by all the other Players. They gave you the chance to
be
part of this “godforsaken town” and you can’t throw it back in their faces. Besides, if you go out on to that stage you’ll be showing everyone, maybe even Fergus, whether he’s there or not, that you have done nothing to be ashamed of. Understood?’

‘Understood,’ I said meekly.

‘Good.’ Mr Crawley topped up Camille’s wine glass, passing over mine with the air of a headmaster. ‘Now, as for everything turning out all right on the night … Well, let’s just say that things have a habit of doing that when I’m around, so we’ll just wait and see, shall we?’

‘Yes, Mr Crawley,’ Dora, Camille and I said in unison, and so here I am waiting to see.

Of course I hadn’t bet on Clare’s woman-scorned act or the gut-wrenching fear and pounding of my already faulty heart, possibly exacerbated by the extremely tight clothing which is cutting off my circulation. I look into the wings for Mr Crawley, but he must still be getting his make-up done. Instead I see Clare, her face white and pinched, and behind her Gareth grinning at me from the shadows, his face thrown into sharp relief, making him look like a Punch puppet. I force myself not to look, though for a second holding on to his gaze with every ounce of anger and fury I have. If he wants me to be his victim, then he’ll be disappointed. I’ll show him that he means nothing to me.

‘Anything else you’d like to throw at me,’ I say to God through gritted teeth as I climb up on to our kit version of the deadwood stage.

‘Yes I have actually,’ God says as the curtains creak back, and the first thing that I lay eyes on is Fergus, two rows back, seated firmly between Dora and Camille. It looks like Dora is attempting to put her plan into practice after all.

‘Oh Jesus Christ,’ I say under the music.

‘Exactly,’ says God.

The rent in the rear of my suedette trousers as I tip over the side of the deadwood stage is not audible above the music, but it doesn’t have to be: the audience’s roar of laughter and a quick exploration with my hand is all I need to tell me that approximately half of my arse is now exposed and an unscheduled eclipse of the moon is threatening. That’s the bad news. The good news is that it appears everyone thinks it’s part of the show. I think of what Doris would say, apart from ‘Wear a girdle!’ and I’m fairly sure she’d tell me to ham it up. I think of my mum, the living-room net curtains draped over her head like a veil when she made me hysterical with laughter as we sang songs from
The Sound of Music
, and I think of Fergus, probably frog-marched here by my two dear misguided friends in the hope that, quote, ‘everything will be all right’, and I think, bugger it, if I’m doing this I might as well do it the best that I can.

I can’t sing. I can hardly move in these clothes, but it doesn’t seem to matter too much. Okay, so the audience are laughing
at
me rather than
with
me, and, okay, so Barbara’s secret Botox session only hours before the curtain went up has meant that although she looks the ten years younger than Katie Brown that she should, she can no longer pronounce consonants (a ’ooman’s ’ouch is all ’oo ’eed’), and, okay, Bill’s sixth form sextuplet seems to be playing the chill-out version of the score, which means that the cast finish each number about two minutes before the band does. But even if half of the audience have their camcorders out in anticipation of a fast £250 from Lisa Riley, they really are enjoying themselves.

Just before act one’s curtain, I allow myself to look at the seat where I know Fergus is sitting, hoping against hope that I’ll see the same indulgent smile on his face that has let me know so many times in the past that he loves me. Hoping against hope that Dora could be right after all and that mending ruined relationships really is this ea—

His seat is empty and I catch Dora and Camille in the midst of a heated exchange just as the dusty curtain crumbles to a close.

Oh well, it looks like sometimes even Mr Crawley can’t work enough magic to fix everything.

I stand in the star’s dressing room, which is actually the delicately fragranced disabled loo, and pick out my first second-half costume, the dress. This time Clare’s gone the other way and made it too big so that it flops off my shoulders and ignores my approximation of a waist, to skim over my bum and hips. As I try it on and turn around I realise she’s made it to fit her. On Clare it would look lovely, on me it fits in exactly all the wrong places, making me look too big for a too-big frock. I shrug and look at the ceiling.

‘Bring it on,’ I tell the fluorescent light fixture. ‘Come on, I’m ready.’

‘I’m sorry.’

I turn swiftly on my heel to see Clare looking me up and down, suppressing a smile.