The Way It Never Was (25 page)

‘You know, I’ve wanted to do that so many times but I never had the guts,’ he said.

Pfeiffer beach, the noisy surf, my delicious tan, his hand in mine, Dan beckoning us to get back on the bus (hopefully to a campsite with decent bathrooms) – the last day went by in a romantic blur. The format had completely changed. At London Heathrow, having watched three romantic comedies in a row on the flight home, I walked back through arrivals with Stan feeling something close to ‘amazing’. Things were different and we were different. For me it was going to be an exciting new chapter that I hadn’t anticipated, one I would be able to explain quite simply for a change. ‘We went on holiday and we fell in love,’ I was going to say to anyone who asked. Now, there was just the question of seeing what happened next.

Then Stan let go of my hand to pick up a bag and didn’t take it again. I wasn’t imagining it: Something between us had shifted and not in a good way. The imprint of his touch was still there but the moment was over.

CHAPTER 33 -
HOUSE PARTY

As I stand there naked, contemplating what on earth I’m going to wear, Claire pops her head round the door with the same universal dilemma – and that is, how on earth does one enter into the spirit of fancy dress without looking like an absolute minger. The thought of a fancy dress party tonight causes me to feel neither celebratory nor happy, just rather put out.

‘I just don’t want to look awful, I like looking stunning,’ Claire moans as she dramatically sprays a can of hairspray over her head hanging upside down. Coughing, I nod, while attempting to preserve my modesty with a towel the size of a postage stamp. Apparently, Wayne has put an open invitation on Facebook, a somewhat risky premise given the newspaper articles I’ve read about kids inviting four hundred people into the family home. I’m also curious as to whether he’s going to host the party the same way he did the last time – as in leave his own event to go to a better one.

As a very big haired Claire turns to go, she pauses. ‘Kate, can I ask you something?’ she says. ‘I was singing in the bathroom just now and I heard my voice echoing back at me. And you know what? O to the M to the G, I sounded absolutely terrible! Why have you never said anything?’

I shrug. ‘You enjoy it, who cares? Just don’t appear on a talent show ‘cause I won’t be in the audience with your face on my T-shirt.’ Holding onto my towel for dear life, I then make urgent gestures with my head for her to leave my room, just as the doorbell goes.

The American holiday with Stan changed everything and it changed nothing. After several weeks of radio silence, he finally rang me to find out what I was doing by way of birthday celebrations. Having then skirted around the subject by making the worst small talk ever in the history of small talk, he then attempted to explain his motives for ending the holiday that way.

‘I don’t know what happened, I freaked out,’ he stuttered. ‘You don’t want to date someone like me. The way I see it, if we stay friends we’ll still know each other in ten years.’
If
we
stay
friends
,
we
might
not
know
each
other
in
ten
days
.

At that moment I truly resented Stan – for making me feel like I’d already been dumped when I had plucked up courage to let go of Joe and take a chance on the unknown; for implying that moving forward like this had to be a mistake; for putting a stop to ‘something’ that might be ‘everything’. Most of all, I resented him for making me feel below par, as though I didn’t possess the right qualities for a girlfriend. I had never properly entertained the idea before until
he
kissed me, and now he had made me feel like I’d failed to make the grade.

Only now do I realise that by putting ourselves so firmly in the platonic category from the very beginning, we might have preserved our friendship over the years, but it had simply gone on to define all my experiences with men. After all, if compatible qualities and a degree of attraction don’t guarantee falling in love, then what criteria could I go on – and when would I ever be able to count on my instincts? Perhaps, if Stan and I had had that slow burner of a love story at school, I would never have looked twice at Joe in Oz and misinterpreted the ‘thing’ we had for something real. Who knows? Most importantly, how on earth do you go forward in a friendship when this happens, when to all intents and purposes you really are going backwards? However, instead of saying any of this to Stan, I let my autopilot take over as my fear of losing him as a friend was far greater than venting my frustrations.

‘Listen,’ I said in a rather perky fashion. ‘Why don’t we chalk this down to us both being single? Let’s leave it as it is. Let’s put it down to far too much holiday sun and sangria.’

Seeming openly relieved at my breezy dismissal, he amicably signed off and the next time I saw him was at my birthday. By then, I had come round to the conclusion that any notions of us having fallen in love seemed ridiculous, as it had to be understood in a wider context. That night he took a real shine to Anna as though she was proper girlfriend material. So I put my heart back on the shelf to do what I do best, resuming my friend role as though I had never questioned it.

Having tried on a number of outfits, none of which comes close to entering into the spirit of things, I’m going with my original idea and putting on my navy blue dress. If money was no object, I’d hire an enormous period costume like they wore in
Dangerous
Liaisons
, but alas, I’m going to have to think cheap. I chuck a load of glitter dust over my skin and smudge a bit of toothpaste onto the front. Squaring my shoulders, I then go in search of Claire to help me do my zip. I find her in the lounge, dressed in a red and gold bustier with blue shorts – and several colourful hair feathers chucked in for good measure.

‘That was Dan at the door. He’s going to see you at the party,’ she says, applying her lipstick in the reflection of the window. ‘He’s picking someone up.’ Claire then turns around and looks me up and down with such a puzzled expression that I’m obliged to explain who I’ve decided to go as. ‘Haven’t a clue who this Monica Lewinsky is but you look great – well, apart from the mark down your front,’ she says, looking nonplussed.

‘Like your outfit Kate,’ says Wayne, greeting us at the front door, wearing only red boxer shorts and layers of fake tan for coverage, accessorised with goose bumps and those odd shaped toes that I can now pick out from a line-up.

‘Like your outfit too, Wayne, you look a little chilly though,’ I say, unable to avoid staring at his purple nipples. I’m a little perplexed as to why he’s dressed as Mitch Buchannon from
Baywatch
, when he has neither the physique nor the skin tone to pull it off.

‘Who are you supposed to be?’ he asks and I look at him with a puzzled expression, just as some girl dressed as Pocahontas takes my bottle of wine from me and disappears into the front room.

‘Monica Lewinsky?’ I sigh, thinking this is going to be a long night if nobody knows any current affairs beyond what happened in
Big
Brother
. Wayne and Claire truly are soul mates. ‘Wayne, I have to ask why’s that girl taken my wine off me and gone into the front room?’ I say, gingerly tapping his very oily chest.

‘Take no notice of Carmella. My workmate is a little crazy,’ Wayne says tapping the side of his brain. He then halts what he’s doing to take in his girlfriend’s outfit. ‘Wow,’ he mutters under his breath and goes in for a very long kiss.

‘You two, get a room. Or pay me more rent! Your choice,’ I groan and wander off in search of Carmella and my wine.

You know those parties you see in
Brat
Pack
movies – with cool people wearing tops that fall off their shoulders while they roller-skate backwards, drinking cocktails and slurping on curly straws while some guy break-dances in front of them. Well, this isn’t one of them. This is a party that has far too many family photos lying around and could do with a few more people to create an atmosphere. Wayne has opened up the entire house like it’s the Playboy Mansion.

‘People seem to be having a good time,’ Wayne shivers, looking like he’s in need of a fur gilet. ‘Thankfully, no-one has touched my Mum’s
Lilliput
Lane
Collectibles
yet,’ he says solemnly, pointing to an elaborately lit glass cabinet housing miniature cottages depicting a perfect life. ‘Touching wood. So far so good.’ Wayne crosses his fingers at me and leads me through two rooms containing a skeletal number of partygoers, including one poor man who clearly wishes he hadn’t dressed up as a condom, with no hands available to hold a drink, or a way of scratching his nose.

‘Wayne, lover, where did you go?’ says Claire in this really annoying baby voice that she’s been perfecting over the last few weeks, putting her arms round him just as Stan appears in a tuxedo dressed as James Bond, clearly having too decided to work the fancy-dress theme to his advantage.

‘What the hell have we done coming here?’ he whispers to me, gently resting his hand in the small of my back.

I’m thinking of something witty to say in response when I hear a familiar voice behind me. ‘Hey everybody!’ I turn around and there stands Anna, looking surprisingly self-conscious in a head-to-toe PVC catsuit, clearly out of her comfort zone. She looks pointedly at Stan, who responds by immediately asking everyone if they need a drink, before removing himself from the scene.

Earlier today, I got a text from Stan to inform me that Anna was also coming down for the party, news that threw me a little. Now that they are over, it does seem a little odd for her to want to come onto his patch. Perhaps, she wants to say goodbye to us all as she’s off to California again to do another round of auditions, but knowing that my friend gets a nosebleed if she so much as heads out of London, she must have an ulterior motive. I am a little suspicious.

I haven’t spoken to Anna very much of late, unless you count her ‘doing’ friendship on Facebook and the odd text telling me she’s ‘crazy busy’. I haven’t quite got round to telling her about being a fully paid up member of the Globe café community, as it’s finally dawned on me that there is a direct correlation between me moving forward and not seeing her. And as I’m still trying this new me on for size, I don’t want the likes of her raining on my parade.

Wayne walks over and gives Anna a peck on the cheek. ‘Who have you come as?’ My culturally ignorant friend has clearly spent too much time tickling Claire’s tonsils of late and needs to get onto
Wikipedia
fast.

‘Cat woman you fool,’ I say on Anna’s behalf, laughing despite myself as she leans into air kiss me. The ice has been broken.

‘We have too much to discuss,’ she says to me, ignoring Claire and Wayne who are now snogging each other with the enthusiasm normally reserved for a cinema showing. ‘I hear you’ve been working full-time in that caff!’

Like a record needle being scratched on the player, any good feeling from my end promptly disappears.

‘Anna, leave it out. Now,’ I interrupt, to which she looks a bit shocked.

‘I can’t believe you’re happy to be a waitress!’ she exclaims. ‘All those admin jobs and you’re a
waitress
!’ Her tone is so patronizing, it sends me into a tailspin of protectiveness over everything I now hold dear.

‘Anna, stop. Just stop!’ I snap, to which she shrugs by way of saying she doesn’t care. ‘I need the loo.’ I then walk away, only to bump into a very bored looking Dan, dressed as Batman stifling a yawn.

Next to him stands a rather beautiful Liv who’s channelling the Marilyn Monroe subway grate scene really well and flashing her knickers periodically. Dan and I know all about parties in suburbia, having spent our formative years holed up in the TV room flicking through four channels of rubbish telly while our parents had lots of dinner parties involving melon boats and steak. This one’s a first.

‘What’s the theme again?’ he asks me. ‘There doesn’t seem to be any consistency. It’s all a bit random isn’t it?’

Liv, dressed in her white halter-neck dress does a twirl. ‘Who cares huh! I’m up for a partayyyy. Mr Happy has got Rory overnight for the first time,’ she grins, looking across at Dan who purposely blinks twice at her in that way you do when you know someone well enough to communicate without using words.

‘Well, if it isn’t the single mother!’ sneers Anna, clearly having decided to abandon any pretence to like Liv. ‘How’s watching your life going down the pan?’ she says.

Just as Dan steps in to say something, Liv puts her hand up in Anna’s face. ‘You’ve clearly not met my son. He’s worth more than a million shitty TV auditions,’ she says. ‘You know what’s sad though Anna? You will never ever change. You will always be the mean girl.’ I take a deep breath, humbled to be witness to Liv’s perfectly timed rhetoric that only ever happens to me after the person has been and gone. As she walks away, closely shadowed by Dan who’s tailgating her like a car that’s run out of gas, Anna just looks after her with her mouth open.
How
do
you
top
that
?

Stan then pops his head round the door, his gaze drifting towards me, only to then see Anna and disappear again. Thankfully, she has now apologised for her disparaging comments and dropped the subject of the café, in preference for talking about herself.

‘Stan is totally avoiding me isn’t he?’ she sighs and downs her glass of wine. ‘He’s bound to be messed up though,’ somehow implying that the natural reaction to being rejected by her would be to put one’s head in a gas oven.

Once again, I say nothing and just stick to safer territory, by way of commenting on our fellow partygoers and guessing the outfits that range from the sublime to the ridiculous. Whereas I used to feel obliged to share with her every conversation I ever had with Stan for fear I would look like I had an ulterior motive, now there’s no pressure to give her updates or issue her with thanks, or amuse her with disastrous anecdotes at my expense. I can’t tell you how good it feels.

However, minutes later I can’t help myself from going there. ‘I have to ask, why did you finish it?’ I say. ‘I thought you and Stan were happy.’ Up until now, I’ve never had much confrontation with Anna as I am normally too keen to fit in with her but I’m too curious.