London Calling (30 page)

The song had just finished when I saw mum and dad walking in with a card and gift in their hands. Mum had been thrilled with the evening invite and had been chattering about the night for weeks now. I told her two days ago I was bringing Lucy – perhaps that’s why I saw a touch of apprehension on her face as she scanned the room for us. She was dressed in my favourite outfit though, a coral floaty number. Dad had opted for his trusty grey suit, his thick hair looking newly trimmed.

I whispered to Lucy they’d arrived and took her hand, walking over to where Shirley and Ian had halted their progress. I waved and mum waved back, relief flooding her face as she saw someone she recognised. She knew Julia’s mum too, seeing as we’d been to school together, so she was next on my list to introduce them to.

“Hiya,” I said, kissing mum on the cheek and reaching up to do the same to dad. Lucy had dropped my hand and was standing at my side smiling.

“Mum, dad, this is Lucy,” I said. I looked at my girlfriend who held out her hand and gave my parents a full-beam smile.

“Really lovely to meet you. Jess’s told me a lot about you.”

“Oh, I hope not too much!” mum said. She looked relieved that Lucy was a normal human being, one head, no scales.

As Lucy shook my dad’s hand, I mentally stepped back and took a snapshot in my head of this historic moment: my parents meeting their first girlfriend. The room began to slither around me as I wiped out all background distractions, everything else a blur as I clicked my mental camera and saved the crystal clear image to disc. I snapped another just for good measure, then focused back on the whole room, the noise levels revving up as I floated back. Smiles all round, nobody had died and mum was asking me a question which my ears were not attuned to.

“Sorry?”

“I said has it been a lovely day?”

“Great,” I said. Lucy was giving me a strange look but stepped in to cover my tracks.

“It’s been amazing – the food was great, the speeches short and the toilets have proper hand towels,” she said. “Plus the weather was amazing too, I’m sure they got some great shots in the grounds.”

“So lovely, isn’t it, love?” mum asked dad.

“Grand,” dad said.

I guided mum and dad to the presents table to leave their gift then manoeuvred them through the crowds to Julia’s parents, Christine and Dave, who were thrilled to see them.

“They seem really sweet,” Lucy said as we left them.

“They have their moments,” I said. For all their past misdemeanours they’d been gorgeous to Lucy and my doubts about tomorrow, about them meeting Lucy, about them integrating her into their lives all melted away. Perhaps change was possible, for me and for them.

“You really look like your mum too,” Lucy said.

“Well take a good look because that’s your future,” I said, the words tumbling out of my mouth before I could stop them. Lucy was still smiling at me though, clearly not that easily scared off.

“Well, she’s not bad for an older woman…” she said.

“You’re not finishing that sentence,” I said, my brows shooting upwards as I dragged her to the dance floor.

***

An hour later and we were still twirling with Matt and Natalie. Jason and Andy had retired injured – sore foot so Jason said, although I had a sneaking suspicion it was more to do with the free bar.

I looked at my watch as Aretha demanded a little more respect and considered what a perfect evening it had turned out to be after such an inauspicious start. After some sweet-talking Lucy seemed to have gotten over the whole Karen debacle and I was hugely relieved. I looked across at her now and grinned at her screaming out every word of the song along with the rest of the crowd. As I looked over her shoulder I spotted Ange at a table at the back of the room, sipping white wine in a red dress and chatting to a woman with short cropped hair. Ange. Super. Time stopped and the music went muffled in my ears as panic surged through my body with torrential force. I was going to kill Julia.

Lucy caught my gaze and swivelled to look. I tried to grab her arm to dance with her, but too late – she’d already turned, already seen, and was now already turning back to face me, her face hardening by the milli-second.

“What’s she doing here? I thought you said Julia had told her not to come?” she said.

Matt and Natalie danced on, oblivious to what was happening as I took Lucy’s hand and escorted her off the dance floor in the opposite direction to where Ange was sitting. We stood on the edge, literally and metaphorically, one foot on hard wood, the other on plush carpet.

“She told me she had but it looks like it slipped her mind.”

Lucy stopped and assessed the situation. She could see the anguish on my face and I hoped she believed this was definitely not in my plans for a fun night out. On the contrary, Ange had been the furthest thing from my mind. However, I had to take charge of the situation now.

“I can’t very well go and tell Julia off on her wedding day, so it looks like we have no choice other than to be grown-ups and ignore it.”

The look on Lucy’s face told me she didn’t like this plan and that right now, she didn’t much like me. I swear, if she’d had her shoes on, she’d have shown me a clean pair of heels and been out the door. I gave up a silent note of thanks for lady shoes.

“That’s your plan? What if she comes over?”

I looked pained and tried not to shrug even though I had no control over Ange’s movements.

“If she comes over we’ll deal with it. She’s nothing to me Lucy and you… you’re the opposite of that.”

She wasn’t going to be coerced into smiling that easily.

“Let’s not let it ruin our night. I say we get a drink, have a chat with the boys and then dance some more. Look at it like we’ve just run into her in a lesbian bar by chance, which could easily happen.”

Lucy seemed to like this approach and I could see her assessing this new tack in her brain. I ran with it.

“It’s a big bar, granted, far bigger than usual but what can I say – lesbianism is getting more and more popular these days.”

She looked around to where Ange was sitting engrossed in chat, then looked back at me.

“And yes, you might not think that every woman here is a lesbian,” I said, indicating some aunts and a granny in front of us, “but looks can be deceiving. I guarantee you everyone here is a lesbian. Even those that look like men.”

Finally, a smile and a laugh. I grabbed her hand.

“Come on,” I said. “Let’s get a drink. What do you want?”

“I’m coming with you, you’re not safe going to the bar on your own,” she said. I smiled wryly.

“And I just need to know before we get to the bar, are there any other of your exes waiting in the wings to pounce? I just need to mentally prepare. Karen this morning, Ange tonight – we haven’t had the big ‘this is how many people I’ve slept with and this is how many actually meant something’ conversation. So please do let me know if I’m missing someone crucial who’s about to jump out of the shadows and seduce you.”

She paused for breath and held me with a penetrating stare. For a second it felt like there was nobody else in the room but Lucy and I, her waiting for an answer, my mouth dry and unresponsive. She frowned.

“I don’t know about you but I need a stiff drink. Tequila?”

It was more a statement than a question so I nodded meekly and we walked to the bar.

“Yes, love?” asked the bartender. Lucy turned and ordered two tequila shots and two beers.

“Make that three tequilas,” chimed in Julia, draping her left arm around my shoulder as she leant her weight into me dramatically. Lucy adjusted the order while I put my arm around Julia’s extremely skinny waist.

“Hello bride,” I said. “How you holding up?”

“Surprisingly well. And this whole centre of attention thing? I could really get used to it.”

“You seem like a natural.”

“It really is amazing. Everyone wants to talk to you, everyone pays you a compliment, this is what being famous must feel like. So I’ve told Tom that has to be our first goal as a married couple. To get famous and then people will be nice to us and take our pictures all the time.”

“Did he agree?”

“He had to, I’m the bride!” She looked especially pleased with herself.

“Here we go, ladies,” Lucy said. She put tequila shots in our hands along with a lemon wedge each, then licked her left hand just below the thumb, sprinkled salt on it and grabbed her own shot. She waited for us to do the same and then proposed a toast.

“To love,” she said, looking directly at me.

“To love,” we both chorused back, before licking, drinking, sucking.

“So how’s it looking from a guest perspective? Eight out of ten? Nine? Six?”

“Eleven,” Lucy said. She swigged her beer to wash down the tequila. “It’s been a great day.”

Julia grinned broadly.

“I think so, too. Tom told me we have to go soon but it seems weird leaving our party before everyone else so I told him to bugger that – sod tradition, I want to dance. So we’re staying. Shall we dance?”

I looked over to the dance floor and made out Ange shuffling in the far corner so decided to give it a miss.

“You go, your public awaits. We’re just going to check on mum and dad.”

Julia nodded and then looked sheepish.

 “Oh, and by the way, Ange is here.” She grimaced at us both. “Sorry, in all the rush I completely forgot to un-invite her. My fault but can I request you kill me later?”

“We know, we’ve seen her.” I couldn’t quite keep the irritation out of my voice but tried to disguise it with a smile.

“On that note, I’m going to run away like I was never here. Thanks for the drink,” she said. She kissed us both on the cheek before bolting towards the dance floor where Bon Jovi were singing about Tommy and Gina holding on to what they got.

I looked at Lucy, still looking gorgeous in her dress, her hair slightly more dishevelled than earlier.

“We good?” I said.

She blew out a breath but nodded too.

“We’re good.”

“I like your forgiving side you know,” I said, rubbing her arm.

“Forgiven, not forgotten. You might owe me more than one posh dinner now to completely erase the memory.”

“However many it takes.”

I leaned forward and kissed her.

“Shall we?” I said, holding out my hand. She took it and we stepped onto the dance floor together.

CHAPTER FIFTY

We got in at 2am, drunk, happy, drama-less. Somehow, we’d managed to avoid Ange all night, although we did come perilously close at one stage during the slow dance portion of the evening. Luckily, Julia and Tom had seen the danger and stepped in between us – seeing as it was the first slow dance Lucy and I had ever had, I was lost in the moment.

And somehow, despite a stack of evidence to the contrary, it had been a good night. Great, even. It had also sparked my internal romance fire, so that by the time we got back to Lucy’s place, images of the evening kept flicking through my mind like an old-fashioned picture book: Jason and Andy, Matt and Natalie, Julia and Tom, Lucy and I. But mainly Lucy and I.

Now the next morning, despite everything that happened I’d made it through and here I was lying in Lucy’s bed gazing at her sleeping form. The past few weeks had meant me swimming against the tide, like a salmon battling upstream. The odds were against me but there was no way I was stopping because this was my stream, the only one I had. I hoped I’d seen off the other fish because all along, there was only one other I wanted and this was crystal clear. I loved this woman and I was such a ridiculous textbook case I almost laughed out loud. As if sensing my swell of love, Lucy slowly opened one eye and peered out.

“How long have you been staring at me?” she said. I laughed.

“Only since I woke up.”

“And when was that?”

“About two hours ago.”

“Liar,” she said. She stretched out her left arm above her head. I leaned in for a quick kiss and she moved in closer.

“Okay, definitely no longer than half an hour.”

“I could have you done for stalking.”

She wrinkled her nose to stop a sneeze. It didn’t work. I decided her sneeze was adorable.

“Only you don’t normally spend half the night having sex with your stalker, do you?” I reached behind me for a tissue. She took it gratefully and sat up to blow her nose.

“Only if you’re that woman from Abba,” she said.

“What?”

“She married her stalker. The blonde one.”

“A blonde stalker?”

“
No
– the blonde one from Abba whatever her name is.”

“Did she?” I said.

Lucy nodded. “She was a recluse, though. He was probably the only person she ever met,” she said.

“Well that makes it all fine then,” I said. “Anyway, all ready for today?”

“Totes.” She grinned.

“Glad you are.”

She laughed and rolled her eyes at me. “You give your parents a bad press you know – they both seemed lovely to me.”

“First meeting, best behaviour.”

“You’re terrible, Muriel.”

I stretched my left leg under the cover and yawned.

“It was a good night last night though, wasn’t it?”

“It was.”

“Romantic.”

“Uh-huh, especially the last bit,” she said.

“That bit was definitely my favourite.”

“The wedding bit wasn’t bad either.”

She trailed a finger up my arm and I felt a tingle down my whole body as she leaned in to kiss me deeply, thoroughly, expertly. After several minutes passed we pulled back and I stared into her lucid gaze, emotion flowing between us. I went to speak but the words slipped around in my throat. I felt a rush of love and knew I was about to put my heart on the line. Goddamn my romance Tourette’s. With no impediments in my way, the way forward appeared clear, direct, a lawn freshly mown. All I had to do was launch myself onto it. So I did.

“I love you, babe,” I said. Pure and simple, my eyes never leaving hers. I’d known it since I first laid eyes on her all those months ago, since she lit up my life. And so it was out there, a weighty three-dimensional declaration, fully formed with sharp edges. We both froze, me caught in her full beams and wanting to duck, her assessing the situation. After what seemed like an eternity, she ran her thumb down my cheek and kissed my lips gently, before pulling back.