You Can’t Fall in Love With Your Ex (Can You?) (21 page)

I
thought, what the fuck? How entitled was he, imagining that I was free on the
morning of my birthday to play his ridiculous games, and not in a spa
somewhere, being pampered? Or away on a luxury weekend paid for by my generous
husband? Or spending quality time with my precious children?

But
actually, he was bang on the money. He’d seen enough of me in my new life to
know exactly what I’d be doing, thinking and feeling. He had guessed, only too
accurately, that what I wanted and needed was an escape, an adventure, a bit of
mad silliness to make me take myself and my life a bit less seriously.

“YES,”
I texted back.

All
through that summer, I felt as if I was under an enchantment. Every morning, I
woke up with my body intertwined with Felix’s, the sheets tangled and smelling
of sex. Even if we’d been out the night before and only slept for a few hours,
I sprang up to greet the day and sang in the shower until Roddy laughingly told
me to shut up that fucking horrible noise – and then the next morning I’d wake
up feeling so happy I’d do it all over again.

Even
though I was eating more than I had since – well, for as long as I could
remember, really, weight dropped off me. It was impossible to eat dry Ryvitas when Felix was ordering takeaway curry, impossible to say
no when he brought me bacon and eggs in bed on Saturdays. But the long Sundays
spent slumped in front of the telly with Mel were a thing of the past. Felix
and I never stopped moving. If we weren’t working, we were out exploring London
together, or going to gigs or shagging. Mostly shagging, to be fair – but there
was a lot of the other stuff, too. I was never still, but never tired.

And
I was dancing better than I ever had. I’d always suspected, deep in a part of
my mind where I never allowed myself to dwell for long, that I was mediocre. I
was talented, obviously – that was given, having got as far as I had. But I
lacked Mel’s instinctive musical ability, Suzanne’s creative flair, Briony’s
athleticism. And until now, I’d been coasting, hoping that my big break would
come, but not doing much to chase it.

All
that had changed – I was in love, and for the first time in my life I was
filled with confidence. I still felt nervous before performances, but I didn’t
have time, now, to sit for hours worrying that I was going to fuck up, and if
Felix saw me looking anxious, he’d distract me by cracking a joke, or taking me
up on to the roof for a cigarette and a snog, or buying silly presents and
hiding them in the flat for me to find.

Sometimes
Roddy tagged along with us on our adventures, laughing with us, getting drunk
with us, showing off in clubs by doing the splits on the dance floor. I loved
having him around – there was no sense of him being a third wheel. At first, we
told Mel where we were off to – a museum, the cinema, rowing on the lake in
Regent’s Park, checking out a new rock band in Camden – and invited her along.
She always said no, though, and after a bit we stopped asking.

That
was the only cloud on my happiness. Mel and I had been friends since we started
ballet classes together when we were six. Even if it was chance that had
brought us together, I believed that what sustained our friendship was deeper
than that. When I’d started boarding school at White Lodge, I hadn’t been
afraid of leaving home, because I knew Mel would be there with me. Throughout
our teens, she’d been the one I giggled helplessly with over nothing, confessed
the heartbreaking enormity of my crush on Justin Timberlake to, begged to tell
me honestly, no really, if she thought I was pretty.

When
I was given Mel’s part in
Swan Lake
, I knew she’d mind. Of course she
would – anyone would, in her position. She’d always worked harder than me; she
was the one tipped to be a star, the one our instructors criticised most
fiercely and praised most warmly. I was the other one of the two of us, aware
that I was thought of as Melissa Hammond’s friend, not as Laura Braithwaite.

Mel
got over her flu, but it took two weeks. She spent them in bed, morose and
miserable, while Felix and I gloried in the first heady days of being together,
sleeping together, dancing together. I tried to fuss over her, but she didn’t
want fuss. I brought home the flowers I was given on my first night, a huge,
fragrant bouquet of pink lilies, but she didn’t change their water and they
withered and died after a couple of days.

I
was in love and I loved all the world, but I don’t think it’s true that all the
world loves a lover. When you’re swept up in the giddy joy of romance and sex,
you think everyone’s your friend, revelling in your good fortune as much as you
are. But Mel didn’t revel. She took the antibiotics she was prescribed for the
chest infection she developed, she rested as she’d been ordered to do, then when
she came back to work she trained harder than ever to make up for lost time.
She was civil to Felix, snappy with Roddy, and almost entirely ignored me.

It
hurt. Once I realised that she was blanking me, rather than just still not
feeling herself, I made pathetic, puppyish attempts to win her back over. I
always put her washing on when I did my own. I offered to sew the ribbons on
her shoes for her while I was doing mine, even though she was neater-fingered
than I was and would get it done in half the time. I told her how brilliantly
she was dancing.

But
none of it worked, and in due course I stopped being hurt and started being
pissed off. One day, one rare afternoon when Felix and I weren’t together
because he and Roddy were watching the QPR game in the pub with some of the
other guys from the company, I tried to talk to her.

I
was lying on my bed, leafing idly through the new issue of
Vogue
, which
Felix had bought me as a present because there was a free sample of Issey
Miyake scent in it, when I heard Mel’s light, distinctive tread on the stairs
and her key in the lock. I heard her come in and switch on the kettle.
Immediately, I felt the tension, a buzz like static electricity that I’d become
conscious of whenever she and I were alone. She mustn’t have felt it though – I
heard her humming as she opened the fridge, and realised she didn’t know I was
there.

I
got up and padded quietly through to the kitchen. Mel was leaning against the
counter, staring out of the window. There was a small, private smile on her
face – she looked happy, for the first time in ages. This is your chance,
Laura, I told myself.

But
how wrong I was.

“Hey,
Mel,” I said.

The
kettle snapped off, and so did Mel’s smile.

“Hey,”
she said stonily.

“Are
you making tea?”

“No,
I’m doing a spot of origami. What does it look like I’m doing?”

“Make
a cup for me, please?” I said. Back in the day, I wouldn’t have needed to ask.

Grudgingly,
with an almost imperceptible roll of her eyes, she took another mug out of the
cupboard and dropped a teabag in it. She added boiling water and a big slosh of
milk, even though she knew I liked my tea black. Then she handed the mug to me,
without a spoon and with the bloated teabag still swimming in it.

“Anything
else you’d like?” she said.

Now,
I’d know to back off, leave her be and not fuel what was certain to turn into a
row. But I was so happy – I was incandescent with joy and optimism, and I
genuinely couldn’t understand why, in this wonderful world that had people as
wonderful as Felix in it, she didn’t feel the same.

“Mel,
I really want to talk to you,” I said.

“Do
you?” she said.

“Yes.
Look, Mel, I’m sorry. I really, really am sorry I got your part. You deserved
it more than me – everyone knows that. You would have been heaps better than
me. It wasn’t your fault you got ill – I could tell during rehearsals that
Marius wished it was you he was working with, not me. And you haven’t lost your
promotion – you’re still a First Artist, you’ll get a solo when they cast
Sleeping
Beauty
.”

I
hated how needy I sounded. I knew I wasn’t in the wrong, so why did I feel that
way?

“I
already know that,” Mel said. “I’m the Lilac Fairy.”

This
stopped me in my tracks. It was – perhaps not unheard of, but certainly unusual
for anyone to be privy to the details of a cast before the list was posted on
the notice board, and that wasn’t going to happen until tomorrow. I’d been in
agonies of alternating hope and despair about what my own role might me – could
I dare to hope to be one of the fairies, or would I be relegated to the chorus?
But then, Felix was almost blasé about his chances of a leading role, and Roddy
had said he clearly had Prince Fleur de Pois written all over him. So why
shouldn’t Mel be confident too? And one thing was for sure, I didn’t want to
challenge her, not when she was in this mood.

“That’s
awesome!” I said. “Congratulations! But how did you…?”

“I
don’t know, know, obviously,” Mel said hastily. I could tell that she was
regretting speaking out of turn, revealing her hand too quickly in whatever
battle we were fighting in her head. “I just think… I’ve been rehearsing some
of the dances, a bit. Marius seemed pleased.”

Marius
seeming pleased was akin to anyone else throwing bundles of roses at your feet
and then kissing them. Your feet, callused and smelly as they were, not the
roses.

“Wow!
Did you make him actually, like, crack a smile?” Mel’s sudden, relative
expansiveness encouraged me to try and recapture the mood of easy friendship
that we’d lately lost.

“He
seemed pleased, that’s all,” Mel said stiffly. “Anyway, Laura, I was planning
to spend a couple of hours studying the score, so if you’ve got something you’d
like to say to me, why don’t you say it?”

This
wasn’t going according to plan. She’d opened up, then immediately frozen me out
again. But I’d made up my mind to try and make things right between us, and I
wasn’t going to let her obvious reluctance stop me coming out with the script
that I realised I’d been rehearsing in my head.

“Mel,
you’re my best friend,” I said. “I’m really sorry if I’ve done something to
offend you, or hurt you. I hate how things are between us at the moment, and I
want to make them right again. So whatever I’ve done, please let me apologise.
I don’t know what it is, but I’m sorry. Okay?”

I
held out my hands in a pathetic little gesture of supplication, and tea slopped
out of my untouched mug on to the floor.

Mel
grabbed a cloth and dropped to her knees.

“For
fuck’s sake, Laura, can’t you be more careful? Jesus Christ, living with you is
like living with a child sometimes. Or, now that Lawsonski’s installed himself
permanently in our flat – ours, for the three of us to share, remember – like
living with a teenage boy who’s just discovered wanking and leaves crusty socks
all over the place, like my big brother used to do.”

I
recoiled from the force of her anger, feeling myself blushing to the roots of
my hair.

“Mel,
that’s really unfair.”

She
squatted back on her heels on the floor, the tea towel still in her hand. Her
face was white and tense.

“Maybe
you should think about what’s fair when you’re fucking at three in the morning
and screaming like a banshee. Maybe you should consider how fair it is when you
leave condoms floating in the toilet for me to fish out. And just how fair is
it when you turn up to class in the morning stinking like a hooker and can’t
keep in time because you’ve had no sleep? How fair is it to steal a part you
don’t deserve and then swan – sorry,
cygnet
– around like you’re the
best thing that’s ever happened to this company? You aren’t, you know. You’re
the only person who doesn’t know. People are saying…”

I
couldn’t listen any more. My hurt had turned to shock and then to rage so
strong it made my heart pound in my chest.

“God,
you utter fucking bitch,” I said. “I thought we were friends, but you only want
someone you can feel superior to, and as soon as I do one tiny little bit
better than you, you can’t handle it. You’re just jealous, and bitter. Frankly,
I feel sorry for you.”

I’ve
never forgiven myself for what I did next. I should have known – I did know,
really – that Mel was desperately insecure, frightened and vulnerable, that she
saw my success as a threat to her own and my relationship with Felix as an
abandonment of our friendship. She must have felt like I’d left her alone on a precipice,
with crashing a more probable outcome than soaring. I should have sat down and
given her a hug, like I do with Owen when he’s having a paddy because life all
seems too huge and complicated and the only way he knows to deal with it is to
scream about me peeling his banana all wrong.

But
I didn’t.

I
tipped the mug of tea – tepid now, thank God – over the floor so it splashed up
on to her face and said, “Clean that up. You’ve started, you may as well
finish.”

Then
I slammed out of the flat, blinded by tears, and went and found Felix and Roddy
in the pub. Through my distress, I was conscious that I needed to get my story
of what had happened in first, before Mel could tell hers. I was bitterly
ashamed, and said so, but I desperately wanted them to be on my side, to have
my back when we eventually returned home to the inevitable fallout.