Page 93 of The Woman in the Middle
‘Please, Mum. It’s what I want. Really.’
She wasn’t sure if he was trying to convince her or himself.
Shay, Courtney and Mort went over to Merriment Close to pack up Roberta’s house. Builders were back at the Balls’s house, undoing the damage the hooligans with the digger had made, although there was no sign of the dastardly duo themselves. Dagmara wandered over with a box of butterfly buns, some apple tea and her best gossip. One of the builders had told Derrick that Balls had instructed them to do only what they had to in order to make the property safe as he was thinking of selling up and shipping out. She told them that Derrick’s son was still interested in Roberta’s bungalow. Errol was as decent and amiable as his father. He wanteda quiet backwater dwelling for him and his wife and, as head of his own security firm, was definitely not the sort of person you’d want to get on the wrong side of. Shay told Dagmara to tell Derrick she was ready to talk to him about it and to give him her number.
Courtney was looking lovely, thought Shay. She was wearing jeans, a Varsity sweater and sneakers and thought that if this was a new American student phase of hers, then it suited her very well. She knew that Mort wouldn’t be the sort to try and change her daughter, he’d loved her through every hair colour of the spectrum and every wardrobe variation. It was early days, but there was a change about Courtney that she liked. As if she’d grown up years in weeks. And Mort was his same happy-go-lucky self but with extra grins. Reciprocated love really was the stuff that made the world go round.
Shay folded up her mother’s clothes carefully, helped by Dagmara. It was hard, so hard, to take them out of the wardrobe knowing they would never be put back in there again.
‘You aren’t throwing your mama away, you know,’ said Dagmara, patting her chest. ‘She’s in here always, in your heart and your memories and your blood of course. You don’t need dresses and cardigans to remember her by.’
She was right of course. And the clothes were too lovely and bright not to be worn by other old ladies who’d be grateful for a cheery bargain; who’d go out just to show off their new apple-green mac or a pink and cream swirly-patterned suit, feeling like the bees knees in it.
Shay had sent Paula a text asking if there was anything she wanted from the house. She’d received a curt reply that she wanted her mother’s collection of Royal Doulton figurines, her Mont Blanc pen, the silver paperweight… a listof sellable valuables. She wasn’t prepared to come and do any of this hard graft, but she’d take the spoils, thank you. If she turned up to Sunny’s wedding, as invited, Shay thought that might be the last she ever saw of her sister. The presumption did nothing to upset her.
There were so many of her mother’s possessions which would be unwanted by anyone else, but were her treasures. Only Roberta knew why she had never thrown away the broken jewellery box with the torn satin lining and the ballerina who didn’t turn any more. Only she knew the significance of the saved postcards sent to her from people whose names Shay didn’t recognise, or the curl of dark brown hair in a matchbox.
In Mort’s car on the way home, Shay told Courtney about her meeting with Sunny. Her verdict was concise, detached and strangely wise.
‘Maybe he’s just happy being miserable with the horrible cow,’ she said, stuffing the last of the butterfly buns in her mouth. ‘And no point in getting close to the sprog because we’ll never see it. How much do you reckon hitmen are to hire?’
Standing back was an acquired art all right; no wonder Roberta had had difficulty with it.
Chapter 43
Shay stood in front of the mirror and checked herself from all angles. Her pale green suit was the most expensive outfit she’d ever bought in her life but she wanted to look better than her best for her son’s wedding. She looked Italian today, very Sophia Loren, if that wasn’t ironic. The mobile make-up lady had pinned her long dark hair into a chic French pleat, just like her mum used to wear hers. She’d gone for smoky eyes and dark rose lips, silver jewellery. Funny but she couldn’t get used to her wedding ring finger being bare; the imprint of the rings had taken days to disappear.
She felt sick, not at all excited in the way she would be if she were gearing up to see Courtney marry Mort and she now understood the full extent of what her mum must have been going through on the day of her wedding, contending with instincts too strong to deny, refusing to be rationalised away yet having to finally accept that her daughter knew best because she’d said as much. She’d tried to ring Sunny on a few occasions since she’d seen him a fortnight ago, but he hadn’t picked up, just replied by text that he was perfectly fine and she wasn’t to worry. Last night she’d senthim a text wishing him luck and love and received only a ‘Thanks Mum x’ by way of reply. She had read all sorts into those two words.
She wondered what she’d feel like seeing Bruce again, and if he’d bring Les to the wedding, though that would take some brass neck, flaunting their debut outing with the family today of all days. He wouldn’t, surely, but then she didn’t know this version of him and so he just might. She’d bite her tongue till it bled if necessary and be a bastion of dignity and civility, however much she might feel like pushing him into the cake and battering Les with her stiletto. Jonah had offered to come with her for moral support. He’d sit at the back of the church and just be there, he said, and she’d thanked him, but declined. They spoke regularly and she looked forward to seeing his name flash up on her mobile when he rang. They talked about nothing in particular, touched base, answered the ‘how are you’ questions, like friends. She missed him, like she had before when they’d been separated, and she was scared of that.
She’d already started clearing out her own house, after finishing with Roberta’s. It was cathartic – decluttering. People gathered so much stuff to themselves, like armour, validations of love, symbols of self-worth. They kept old love letters and cards, freezing themselves in the moment of being desired. She’d squirrelled away all Bruce’s cards for birthdays and anniversaries since the beginning. When she’d looked through them, she’d noted how the messages written inside became shorter, lost degrees of warmth with passing time. ‘All my love, to my darling Shay xxxxxxx’ from fifteen years ago had become ‘Love Bruce x’ last year. They’d limped on past their natural end which had been disguised by habit, by family, maybe even by the inertia that stoppedthem doing anything about it, or the fear of loneliness. But she would never have disrespected him the way he had her by how he’d drawn a final line in the sand of their marriage.
Karoline’s parents had booked Crastley Manor, which charged seventeen pounds fifty per head to use the toilet so lord knows what they’d charge for chuffing nosebag, so said Bruce when he’d heard Angela Stannop’s venue plans at the engagement party.
Shay hadn’t pictured her son’s nuptials being this way. She would have loved to help arrange the day, be on hand to advise about the food courses and who to invite, without treading on even the smallest toes of the two whom the big day belonged to. She had wanted to pop open a bottle of champagne the night before, have a little weep on his shoulder on his last day as a single man, enfold her soon-to-be daughter-in-law in her arms and tell her to have the best wedding day ever. And she wanted to whoop that a little baby was on its way, a fresh plump new life, another generation of her family. Instead she had been left in a cold hinterland, admitted to join in the celebrations for a mere hour or two before the doors would be shut on her again. And when the baby came along, to be grateful for the merest crumbs on the table.
She sniffed, tilted her head back because crying was not an option, not with this expensive foundation dabbed on. She imagined Tanya at the side of her, telling her she’d been watching too many happy-ever-after films with Hugh Grant in them. She’d remind her that wedding days rarely fitted an ideal template and were more often than not powder kegs of stress, expense, family fuck-ups that not even Kofi Annan with his diplomatic skills and Nobel Peace prize would be able to diffuse. Then she’d reel off some of the weddingsthey’d been to like their old friend Sharon’s where her maid of honour threw up in the church over the bride’s train, and Les’s wedding where Morton’s dad goosed anything on the dancefloor in a skirt.
A cheery pip outside broke her reverie. Her taxi had arrived. She picked up her handbag, took a deep breath and sent up a prayer that when she got to the church she’d see her son smiling happily at the altar and all would be well.
The church had more flowers in it than Kew Gardens. Frothy pink and white arrangements with ribbon tails were pinned on the end of every pew and blowsy displays spewed from ornate stands on the altar. Bruce would already be totting up the cost of them alone and be sending up his own silent prayer that they hadn’t been asked for any financial contribution. Shay could see the back of his head in the third row as she wended her way very slowly down the aisle. He was sitting alone, no Les beside him head to foot in Prada, for which she breathed a sigh of relief. Bells were ringing from the tower and, in front of an impressive backdrop of pipes, an organist was playing the traditional muzak one associates with the preamble to a wedding main event. Unlike the organist at her own wedding, a decrepit member of the regular congregation who couldn’t hit the right notes with a heat-seeking missile, this woman was on a par with Elton John.
She’d thought that Sunny might have had his pals as ushers, but no, distributing expensively printed orders of service and hymn books were middle-aged men in grey morning suits, corporate looking, as if they’d just come out of a meeting at the bank. The bride’s side of the church was full and had spilled out into the groom’s side presumably,because Shay could recognise hardly anyone filling their assignment of seats. Markedly, none of Sunny’s old pals were present: the two Marks, Daz, Pete and the rest. Mort Jagger was in the row behind Bruce, looking like a fridge in a dark grey jacket and beside him, Courtney, hair in peacock-feather colours, and a fascinator with an actual peacock feather standing proud from the top like a lightning conductor. In the pew behind her daughter was Paula, in that same black spaceship hat she’d worn to their mother’s funeral. The lumpy, sweaty frame of Chris her husband beside her, no doubt poised and ready to sweep up some money from the collection plate when it was passed to him. Then Shay’s eye was drawn to the front right, when her son stood up to do something strategic to his trousers. He didn’t turn but sat immediately down again, facing forward, staring ahead at the altar as if it were a slaughter table and he were a lamb. He looked so alone; lost, even. Where the hell was his best man? Considering it was such a massive church with a high-vaulted roof and cross-shaped construction, Shay felt almost claustrophic.
Karoline’s mother Angela Stannop was talking to the vicar, giving him orders by the look of it. She had a bright yellow suit on with pink shoes and a pink hat and looked not unlike an oversized Mr Kipling’s Battenberg.
‘Mrs Bastable.’
A light hand on her back as Jamie, Sunny’s best man surprised her out of her musings.
‘Hello, love,’ she said, pleased to see his perma-jolly face, except today his smile of greeting looked strained. Shay drew the obvious conclusion. ‘Nervous?’ she asked. ‘Hard job being the best man, keeping the rings, doing the speech, I think—’
He cut her off. ‘Can I have a quick word with you? Outside?’
‘Yes.’ She felt a low rumble of foreboding in her centre that she didn’t want at all.
Shay followed Jamie down the aisle, out into the blazing, cheerful September sunshine that was at odds with his expression. He walked around the side of the church, asked her if she minded if he smoked. She didn’t. He lit up and sucked the cigarette as if it was supplying him with the oxygen to breathe.
