Amanda's Wedding (5 page)

I blocked out the bad thoughts from my head, and decided that this time there were definitely going to be ground rules. If he wanted to come back, it was going to be on my terms. This time, Fran would be proud of me.

OK: we'd have lots of togetherness. No more him vanishing with the lads … But then, what if I was just being all clingy and wouldn't leave him alone and he got really, really bored and I did too and we ended up just staying in and saying things like, ‘Err, do you want to go to the cinema then?' ‘Errr … don't mind …' ‘What do you want to go and see?' ‘Don't mind …' until we both killed ourselves! Maybe nitch that one then.

OK, we'd have lots of open public affection. Not snogging, necessarily, but a bit of hand-holding wouldn't go amiss, so he didn't look like my cousin from
the attractive end of the family if I ever met anyone I knew.

And he could at least try and get on with my friends. Although they all hated him.

I phoned Fran again.

‘Leave me alone. You are no longer my friend. You fraternize with the untouchable ones.'

‘Fraaan.' My genuine panic was beginning to show through.

‘OK. Here's one test. He's been away for ten months, right?'

‘Yep. I've had my hair done.'

‘Oh, that's pretty subtle … Anyway, he's been away for ten months. After vanishing completely and never contacting you again …'

‘Apart from the postcard.'

‘The postcard you got two days ago when he remembered he'd left Charlie in the shit and needed to find somewhere else to stay.'

‘Mmm.'

‘OK. Those are the facts. You are dumb enough to be there waiting for him. As a hypothetical test, one might think it would be the least little considerate thing he could do to buy you a present, right?'

‘Oh, Alex doesn't really believe in giving presents. He thinks it's bourgeois.'

Now what was she sighing for?

‘God, Mel, what are you doing? Tell me you're not putting him up.'

‘Mmm.'

‘Fantastic. Have you told Linda about the new addition to your jolly little Kennington family?'

‘Oh, she'll be fine. She won't say anything.'

‘That means the same thing, does it?'

I was getting too upset to talk. I mean, what did my best friend since age four know about my life anyway?

‘Mel, you know I wouldn't say anything if I wasn't worried about you and if I didn't care about you, don't you?'

‘Yes,' I mumbled ungratefully.

‘Give me a ring when he gets in then. When's that going to be?'

‘Ehmm, anywhere in the next fifteen hours.'

‘OK. Cool. Bye.'

It was true. Alex did a horrid, horrid thing to me. It's just, oh, Alex's problems – where to start? Public school, weird distant parents who divorced early, that whole deal. I was psychologically-tastic when it came to Alex. When I'd met him he'd just emerged from his last finding-his-own-anus phase in Goa. Well, I wasn't going to be his doormat any more.

Oh good, only six hours to go.

Wanting to avoid another ear-bashing, but desperate for someone to talk to, I phoned Amanda. Some bloke picked up the phone.

‘Hello, is Amanda there?'

‘No, she's not. Can I take a message?'

I recognized that accent!

‘Frase! Hi, it's Melanie!'

There was a pause.

‘Melanie …'

‘Melanie Pepper. You remember! Mel!'

Jesus.

‘Oh, hi, hi there. Yes. What are you up to these days?'

Oh, I'm just sitting in Heathrow Airport, where I've turned up fifteen hours early by mistake, having my hair set and waiting for my selfish ex-boyfriend who left me in shit nearly a year ago, and whom I still haven't got over, to – possibly – return from America, having walked out of my job this morning with no explanation.

‘Oh, you know … usual stuff.'

‘Right, great.'

God! Could we be any more scintillating?

‘So, congratulations!' I said heartily. ‘You're marrying my old buddy!'

I tried to imagine him bending over to kiss Amanda, but I couldn't make it fit. His curly hair would fall in her eyes. She'd hate that.

He laughed nervously. ‘So it seems.'

‘And you're a laird!' I added, helpfully.

‘Yes, right, yes. Anyway, can I give her a message?'

‘Ooooh … no message, actually. Just phoned for a girlie chat.'

‘Right. OK. Bye.'

I often had romantic dreams of what it would be like to bump into an old crush from the past, when their eyes would be opened and they would see me anew: suave, sophisticated and thrillingly desirable.
Although played out in a variety of exotic locales, the two things the fantasies had in common were that they normally included the crushee remembering who I was, and then giving a shit. Me, and my hair, were starting to flop.

Stuff it. I was going back to basics. I called my mum. I owed her a call. Well, about nine, actually. My mum was sweet – really sweet; I mean, she bakes – but definitely a traditionalist in every sense of the word. She had looked like Miriam Margolyes since even Miriam Margolyes hadn't looked like Miriam Margolyes. I was convinced that really she was only about forty and deeply frivolous but put an old mum costume on every day and got the rolling pin out. It was the only way to explain me, anyway.

‘Hi, Mum. How are you?'

‘Melanie, I've just this second been talking about you.'

Given that talking about me and Stephen, my elder brother, was my mother's favourite thing after baking, this wasn't surprising. Other non-surprising things she could have been doing: watching television, playing bridge, talking non-stop to my father, who could only grunt. I seldom spoke to him on the phone, as the grunts couldn't be accompanied by comprehensible gestures (macaroni cheese; beer; remote control – really, my dad's Homer Simpson without the deep self-awareness) and was therefore pointless.

‘Is it true what I hear – that Amanda Phillips is getting married to that nice young man you brought home?'

‘Yes. Oh, and Alex is coming back.'

‘Well, he was a lovely boy. Scottish, wasn't he? Such a nice smile. And so well behaved.'

‘He's not four,' I said crossly. ‘He doesn't have to be well behaved. Anyway, Alex is coming back.'

‘… it's sure to be a big wedding – that family never do things by halves. You should see the new swimming-pool extension Derek's put on the manor house. Of course, I haven't seen it, but apparently it's nearly as big as the house!'

‘That sounds great. Anyway, Alex is coming back.'

‘Are you going to be a bridesmaid? Maybe there'll be more polite Scottish boys there and you could meet a
nice one
.'

My mother didn't mince her words.

‘I'm not going to be a bridesmaid. I might not even get invited. But I'm at the airport …'

‘Of course you'll get invited. Great little friends at school, you three were. How is Fran? Met a nice man yet?'

‘No. But …'

‘Well, maybe the both of you can go to the wedding and
get lucky this time
. OK, darling, have to go, I've got bath buns on the go, and you know their temperementiality. Speak to you soon. Bye, darling.'

It drove me mad when my mum used the word
temperementiality
. It wasn't even nearly a real word. She did it to annoy me. Perhaps, I thought, musing on the conversation, she did everything to annoy me. That would explain a lot.

One of the cleaners, whom I'd noticed earlier for
some reason, came past and caught my eye. He stared at me, a tad suspiciously, I thought. I wanted to run up to him and explain that, yes, I did have a home; no, I wasn't a terrorist (though I'd be strangely flattered if he thought so), but really I was choosing to be here to make some friendly phone calls, shop for consumer goods and WAIT FOR SOMEONE WHO LOVED ME, DAMN IT! So I grinned ingratiatingly. I checked the ongoing ladder in my tights. Shit. Where on earth was I going to find a pair of tights in an airport shopping mall?

Another three hours and I'd thought ‘stuff it' and done the whole credit-card thing. I was top-to-toe coiffed: hair, Clinique lipstick, new top, poncey pants, hold-ups (the nineties girl's compromise, as far as I was concerned) and, sadly, the same old flat shoes, as even I couldn't bring myself to go that far. Unfortunately, the perfume ladies didn't see the shoes in time, checked out the posh togs and did a mass ambush on me, so I smelled like a tarts' annual general meeting.'

Another two hours and I had managed to spend more than the clothes' total on coffee and nasty Danishes, and I was sitting uncomfortably, staring out of the window and reading ‘What your man really means when he shags all your mates and has started to look at the dog – is this how the new soft new lad has to express himself?' I was ready to a) kill myself; b) go play in the arcades; c) buy the damned shoes. I'd been tempted to try and make friends with the cleaner, but
he'd wandered off shift, still staring at me and shaking his head.

So I bought the shoes. Then I went and played in the arcades.

Five hundred years later, it seemed a reasonable time to start going to meet planes. I bought a toothbrush and toothpaste, and prepared myself.

Four New York planes later, and my fixed smile was starting to look a bit desperate. How did travel reps do it? Must be the drugs.

I started to think that maybe I'd missed him. Maybe he'd disembarked already and was on his way somewhere – he'd phoned one of his mates and been whooshed off in a taxi to some expensive postcode. Maybe he'd walked past while I was looking at the girl carrying the enormous stuffed elephant. Maybe when all that bloody coffee made me go to the loo again. Oh Christ. More than a whole day in an airport for absolutely nothing.

My anxiety levels were reaching their peak and I was about to put a call out for him over the intercom so I could at least attempt to head him off, when, at last, at last, at last, he loped out of the by now extremely familiar automatic doors.

My stomach hit the floor. He looked gorgeous. I arranged my face into a suitably affectionate, wry look and pointed myself in his general direction. He didn't see me (it must have been the hairdo), so I ended up having to run after him in my new super-sexy
high-heeled shoes and attack him from behind like a mugger.

He jumped round as if he was about to kung-fu me, then gradually took it in.

‘Mel!'

I was out of breath from running and out of breath from seeing him.

‘Heh … heh … Alex!'

He gathered me up in his strong arms and gave me a huge movie-star bear hug. I wished the cleaner was still around to see.

‘You … you complete and utter fuckhead,' I choked.

He buried his face in my hair.

‘God, I missed you.'

All the way back on the tube we yabbered and yabbered, genuinely thrilled to see each other again. He told me about his trip across America: the larks he got up to in New York; the English pop-star he bumped into in a deserted part of Montana and what great mates they became; his awful jobs and the amazing characters he'd met. His voice had taken on a new American tinge. I didn't mention the fact that I hadn't changed jobs, or flats, or, despite appearances, got it together at all since he went away, instead embroidering wildly the love lives of several mutual acquaintances, some boring parties and a hilarious imaginary cat of Fran's (I was getting desperate by that stage). Neither of us mentioned the inauspicity of his leaving; it was as if he'd simply been away,
perhaps on business, perhaps for a fortnight, perhaps in prison.

We turned up at home at half past midnight. The flat was ominously quiet, which meant that Linda was wide awake, listening to our every move. However, it was a special occasion, so I pinched her bottle of vodka anyway, called in sick with a midnight vomiting fit (unpleasant but effective), and fell into bed with my big – OK, slightly smelly – darling, who managed to make me buzz all over before passing out for fourteen hours.

The following day I watched him sleep, and the time just drifted by. Maybe they should put beautiful sleeping males in airport waiting rooms.

He woke up dazed, stared at the ceiling for a second, then rolled over and grabbed me with a grin.

‘Oh, Mel, darling. I will be yours for ever …'

This was more like it.

‘… if you'd make me a bacon sandwich. Two bacon sandwiches. And some fried eggs. I am
starving
.'

‘That', he said twenty minutes later, after I'd emptied the fridge of Linda's food, ‘was the best bacon sandwich I have ever had. Americans just cannot make a bacon sandwich. They put it in brown bread and cover it in crap.'