Let's Call the Whole Thing Off (2 page)

Of course it seemed unfair. I had my Happy Ever After to look forward to, but what did Sophie have? A bit of afternoon delight when it suited her fancy man. And however good he was in the sack, it couldn’t be worth all the sneaking around, the lies and the hurt. She probably felt miserable that she couldn’t bring him along to the wedding. That she couldn’t show off her new man to all her friends, but no doubt he went running back to wifey at the weekends. And now, despite all his promises, he’d dumped her for good. But for goodness’ sake, what was she doing with a married man in the first place? Wasn’t that regulation No. 1 of the girls’ club – no married men?

Had I really been so preoccupied with the wedding that Sophie had felt unable to confide in me? I stretched out my arms behind me, my hands resting on my best friend’s bed as I looked for answers in the Artex ceiling.

I cursed inwardly. If only I’d picked up on the signs earlier and had the chance to sit down with Sophie and counsel her on the futility of dating a married guy then I might just have been able to make her see sense and all this heartbreak could have been avoided. Okay, I’d been manic busy these last few months, but never too busy to listen to Sophie’s problems. We’d always been there for each other and now I felt absolutely dreadful! Like the worst friend in the world. In all my bubbling excitement for the big day I’d completely neglected my friend’s needs.

I would have to talk to Sophie, coax it out of her, hold her hand while she told me all the gory details about this man and their torrid love affair. And then, being the good friend I’d failed to be lately, I’d make it up to her by seeing her through these next few weeks (barring the honeymoon, of course, although I would make an effort to counsel her by text). Yes, I’d help her get the no-good scumbag out of her system once and for all.

The diary felt heavy in my hands. I really ought to get on and make some of those phone calls, but now I knew about Sophie’s troubles I had a moral responsibility to make sure she was okay. She’d sounded completely and utterly distraught in that last entry and unrequited love can do funny things to you, can tip you over the edge. I didn’t want Sophie to do anything stupid.

I just needed to check. Make sure she was absolutely okay.

Tuesday 12 March

Mmmm, mmm. Only twenty minutes today, but when they are the most exciting moments of my week, what does it matter!? No, scrub that, the most exciting moments of the last month, the last year, my entire lifetime! My insides are still zinging with excitement and my legs, oh God, I’m not sure they can even function any more. They’re all wobbly, a bit like my heart. Xx

Oh good grief, Sophie! What’s happened? One minute it’s off, the next it’s on. What on earth are you doing? Why, why, why? You’re such a glutton for punishment. (What exactly is the guy doing to you to turn your legs to jelly?)

Hurriedly, I ran my fingers back through the pages.

Friday 9March

I knew it! He turned up on the doorstep looking dreadful, really awful, standing there with dark rings around his eyes and I just couldn’t turn him away. All my anger and disappointment disappeared at the sight of him and all I felt was complete relief that he was back again. I’m sure my heart literally swooned. We fell into each other’s arms and oh, he made soft, sweet love to me and it was as if we’d never been apart. I’m not sure what it means for us, what we’ll do, but none of that matters now. All that matters is that he’s back.

Why did you have to fall for it, Sophie? I punched my clenched fist down on the bed in frustration. He turns up on the doorstep with puppy-dog eyes and in an instant you’re eating out of his hand again! This wasn’t the Sophie I knew; the independent, vivacious, self-assured woman who wouldn’t take crap from any man. What was she doing putting her life on hold for the sake of a two-timing rat? It was obviously why Sophie hadn’t been able to confide in me. She probably felt ashamed that she’d got herself in so deep and knew that I’d give it to her straight, tell her she was acting like a complete and utter fool and the sooner she got the creep out of her life the better.

Thursday 15 March

He bought me a present! A solid silver trinket box in the shape of a butterfly. He knows how much I love butterflies. It’s so beautiful and I’ve put it on my bedside cabinet where I can see it. I’ve doused it with his aftershave as well just to have his delicious scent around me. Every time I look at it I’m reminded of him, although that’s not difficult because I think about him every single moment of the day. I just can’t get him out of my head and all I’m doing is counting down the minutes until I can get to see him again, although Lord knows when that will be now!!! Oh God, I don’t know how I’ll get through these next few weeks. He said he’s got to lie low, he’s got too much on and it’s far too risky for us to meet, but when it’s all over then we can pick up where we left off, that’s if I want to. If I want to!? NO!! I don’t want to. Doesn’t he get it? I don’t want to be someone he picks up and drops off just when he wants to. But what can I do? The alternative is far too horrible to even contemplate. Those weeks without him were the worst time of my life. I can’t live like this and yet I can’t live without him. I love him too much. I want this whole horrible situation to end. I don’t know why he can’t just come to his senses and call the whole thing off…

It was like picking up the final piece of the jigsaw but still being unable to fit it into the picture. I leant over and picked up the butterfly box, my fingers tracing over the intricate design. I pulled off the lid and raised the trinket to my nose, that familiar scent sending a stabbing pain to my chest, my stomach into free fall and bile rising at the back of my throat. My breath came in heavy, laboured motions. For a moment, I thought I might actually forget how to breathe. That I might stop doing that whole breathing thing, there on the bed.

He can’t really love her. Not if he can’t give me up. I just don’t understand it. It won’t last, I know it won’t. But he insists on going through with it. My only hope now is that she gets run over by a bus or that she has a sudden blow to the head and decides that she wants to join a nunnery. Or maybe she’s struck by Cupid and meets her soul mate who’ll whisk her off into the sunset. Sigh. To be honest, the nunnery is looking like my best option. Whichever. I’ll be waiting for him at the other side. However long it takes.

Furiously I hurled the silver box across the room, the lid parting company with the base and ricocheting off the wall, before spinning onto the carpet. I took a deep breath and returned the diary to its spot on the cabinet, before standing up, my legs wobbly like Sophie’s had been, but for entirely different reasons. My breathing laboured, I leant down and picked up the silver box, reuniting it with its lid, the familiar scent making me retch. I replaced it very carefully next to the diary.

Chapter Two

Somehow, despite my wobbly legs, I made it downstairs, ignoring the palpitations in my chest and the ringing in my ears until I realised that what I thought were brain cells playing Space Invaders in my head was actually a phone. Somewhere. Outside of my head, demanding attention.

I snatched up the handset, only registering at the last moment that I wasn’t sure if my mouth still worked. What if it was Sophie or, worse still, Ed? What words were there?

‘Hello?’

‘Oh hi, Anna, it’s Louise Bailey here.’ The woman chirruped, actually chirruped, like an annoying little bird.

‘Sorry?’

‘Louise Bailey from St Michael’s Manor. How are you?’ What did she have to sound so goddam happy about? Chirrup, chirrup, chirrup. ‘Not long to go now. You must be so excited?’

‘What? Oh yes.’ The slow realisation of who this annoying woman was spread through my veins as my mouth operated on auto-pilot.

‘I just wanted to confirm the final numbers for Saturday. I think we’d pencilled in three hundred.’

Oh shit. Oh bum. Oh bust.

I scrabbled for the ‘folder’, flipped open the cover and looked at the papers clipped to the front. A lifetime’s work. Well, not really, but at that moment it seemed that way. Eighteen months’ work, at the very least. The list of names ran over three pages, some had ticks against them, others had been scratched out and at the top I’d circled the magic number in red.

‘Two hundred and eighty-two,’ I said more to myself than to the tweetering bird on the other end of the phone.

‘Two … hundred … and … eighty … two,’ repeated Birdie, as though she was announcing the winner of the Golden Globe. ‘That’s fabulous. Well, just to reassure you that everything is in hand at this end. We are very much looking forward to welcoming you and Ed to the Manor this weekend and making sure your special day is as wonderful and memorable as it can possibly be. Now, if there’s anything else you need, any worries you might have, then just feel free to ask. We are here to help.’

‘Help?’

‘Yes. If there’s anything, absolutely anything, then you only need ask.’

I thought about it. She was so frigging organised and efficient. She probably had a section in her wedding bible for ‘dealing with cheating intendeds’. A master plan for such eventualities, but I had a feeling I was way beyond anyone’s help now.

‘The doorbell,’ I heard myself say.

‘Sorry?’

‘The doorbell. It’s ringing. I need to go.’

‘Oh right, yes, of course,’ Birdie said, losing some of her tweet. ‘I’ll let you go. And we’ll look forward to seeing you at the weekend.’

I put down the phone with a sigh, deciding to ignore the doorbell, but not knowing what, if anything, I could do beyond that. My whole body had gone into an elaborate non-functioning state. I should have been crying or screaming or throwing even more things across the room, but I had neither the energy nor the inclination to do any of those things. Instead, I keeled over on to the sofa, arms wide, sacrificing myself to the wedding God.

Only half an hour ago, my life had been perfect. My future mapped out like a Cath Kidston photo collage, full of impossibly cheerful moments in a perpetually sunny, floral vista. And now – well, it wasn’t.

‘Open the bloody door.’ A muffled voice wafted down the hallway.

I jumped up in my seat, fear racing through my body. I slipped the backs of my hands beneath my knees, bit on my lip and held my body tight with tension, hoping if I stayed like that for any length of time the annoying person ringing my bell would get the message and leave. Then I might think about breathing again. And decide what the hell I was going to do next.

‘Anna, I know you’re in there. Come on, open up. I need a coffee and a piss. Hurry up.’

Ben! After Ed and Sophie, he was possibly the last person in the world I wanted to see.

‘Ben!’ I wailed, putting on my most sickly, leave-me-alone, I-really-am- dying voice. ‘I’m on the sofa. Feeling rough. Really rough. Sickness, diarrhoea. Virulent and catching. Sorry! I can’t … I can’t … I’ll call you.’

‘Open the door, Anna.’

Aaargh, God. I prised myself off the sofa with a huge effort, my body suddenly taking on super-heavyweight proportions and lumbered towards the door.

‘You took your time.’ Ben breezed into the flat, looking like he just wandered in off a Boden menswear shoot. In fawn-coloured cargo shorts and hot-pink polo shirt, the collar popped, he cast his gaze over me, scratching his head distractedly. ‘Christ, you look rough. What’s up?’

‘Ill. Very ill.’ I braved a glance at his concerned expression and immediately wished I hadn’t. Ben represented everything that was familiar and reassuring in my life, only now he’d taken on an altogether different appearance. I’d known him for ever, or for what seemed like for ever, ever since we’d started senior school. It seemed only natural when we ended up at the same university too. We shared everything together, all those angst-ridden teenage traumas, all the highs and lows. I’d seen him through his break-ups with various highly unsuitable girls, and he’d seen me through all the boys I’d just been practising on before I met Ed. And then when I met Ed, everything fell into place and Ben seemed to like Ed, almost as much as I did. So much so that their bromance developed to such an extent that Ed asked Ben to be his best man. That had to be a good omen, didn’t it? But now, uncovering the secrets of that wretched diary, our merry little band was about to be blown into tiny smithereens.

‘You need to go,’ I said, clutching my stomach as though I might just die. ‘You might catch it.’

‘What? And leave you like this? No way. I’ll take my chances, thanks. Let me make you a cup of tea. It’s probably all the stress of the wedding finally catching up with you. Hey, I’d be throwing up all the time too if I knew I was getting married at the weekend. Back in a mo!’ he said, dashing off to the bathroom.

I jumped up, fired by an urgency to do something, anything, but most importantly to get Ben out of the flat. And me too, I decided, in that instant. I needed to get out of the claustrophobic confines of this God-awful place .

Just being here was suffocating me. I couldn’t be here when Sophie came back or if Ed turned up. Although that looked unlikely. They were probably holed up somewhere together, shagging each other senseless.

‘Hey, what are you doing?’ Ben was back, standing in the doorway, brandishing a mug of tea in his hand.

‘I’m just going to pack up a couple of bits, that’s all. I need to get away for a few days. Take a bit of a break.’

‘Whoa, whoa, whoa.’ He put the mug down on the coffee table and dashed over to where I was rooting through my handbag. ‘What’s this all about?’

‘It’s nothing.’ My whole body prickled with suppressed emotion. When he took hold of my arms, gazing deep into my eyes, I knew I couldn’t hold it together a moment longer. Tears rushed down my cheeks, short, shuddering breaths escaping my mouth. Ben peered closer, but I pushed him away, grabbing my bag.

‘Leave it, Ben. Don’t worry. I have to go. Please don’t say anything to Ed, will you?’

‘What? No. I won’t. But I’m not letting you go anywhere. You’re ill.’ He tilted his head, peering into my eyes. ‘You are ill, aren’t you? Or is there something else that you’re not telling me about? Come on, Anna, what’s going on?’ The tenderness in his voice broke what was left of my heart into smithereens. He put an arm around my waist pulling me into his side, my breathing still ragged. He mopped away my tears with the back of his thumb, tidying away the stray strands of my newly highlighted blonde hair behind my ears.