www.ariafiction.com
A tender, funny and haunting coming-of-age novel which asks if the past can ever be part of your future.
Twenty-one and insecure, Vicky Hope comes up with a plan on the eve of travelling the world with her high flying friend, Kat Lloyd: if she isn’t married by the time she’s thirty, she’ll marry her geeky best mate Mikey Murphy.
Fast-forward eight-and-a-bit years, Vicky, now Vee wakes up on her thirtieth birthday in Brighton, expecting a proposal of marriage from her arty boyfriend Jez. Instead he tells her their relationship is over and she has no choice but to return to her parents’ home.
Devastated and alone in her childhood bedroom, she decides she has nothing to lose and tracks down her two old mates. With shock, she discovers Mikey, now Murphy, is a successful app designer driven by his tragic upbringing. Kat, or Kate, never made it – but she hides a devastating secret, which threatens the happiness of all three.
For LK, who has my unyielding devotion – in other words, I’m totes devotes
Cover
Welcome Page
About Whatever Happened to Vicky Hope’s Back Up Man?
Dedication
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Epilogue
Acknowledgements
About Laura Kemp
Also by Laura Kemp
Become an Aria Addict
Copyright
Lying flat on her back, Vicky Hope screwed up one eye and waited for the orangey night sky to stop spinning.
When it didn’t, she groaned, reached out across her parents’ manicured lawn for Mikey Murphy’s hand and squeezed it hard.
‘Ow! What in the name of Britney Spears was that for?’ he said, yanking back his arm.
‘Everything’s whirling and I can’t stop it,’ she wailed as the street light in the top right of her vision pogoed up and down. This was not how she had wanted to look back on the farewell barbecue held in her honour for family and neighbours the night before she left home and travelled the world. She’d intended to behave seeing as Mum had pulled out the stops, having bought the posh burgers from the supermarket.
‘That’s five hours of sinking everything in your Dad’s drinks cabinet, that is,’ he smirked, splayed out beside her, blowing smoke rings into the for-once still Indian summer air. ‘Maybe you shouldn’t have had that last one. The green concoction that tasted of melon with an umbrella and a glacé cherry. That made you sick. That ended the party.’
‘Not helping,’ she gulped, panicking at the prospect of her six-month tour with their friend Kat Lloyd, beginning with boarding British Airways flight 548 from Heathrow to La Paz, Bolivia via Miami at 11.25 a.m. tomorrow. Twenty-one hours in transit – not including Dad’s painfully sensible driving from Cardiff to the airport – was bad enough when you’d never gone further than the Mediterranean but with a hangover? Vicky felt panty and light-headed at the thought of Kat in bed already after a tame family supper. ‘And I’ve got to get up in about four hours and Kat says she’s taking far less than me and that I’ve overpacked. But I think five pairs of shoes is fine, don’t you?’
Mikey gave a loud snort.
‘What?’ Vicky said, turning her head to face him.
Mikey, being Mikey, deliberately kept looking upwards, his face expressionless, the profile of his heavy brow, strong nose and defiant lips as inscrutable as Snowdon.
But having been best mates with him for eight years, Vicky knew exactly what he was thinking: she was ridiculous. So she elbowed his skinny ribcage.
‘Oi!’ he barked, making to sit up before giving in to gravity and collapsing alongside her. Vicky watched as he stretched to stub out the last burning embers of his fag on the edge of the patio. Knowing the drill, he pocketed the butt – funny how he followed the rules here at Mum and Dad’s but nowhere else.
‘It’s not enough to leave me – yet again. Oh no, you have to go and duff me up,’ he said, pouting for effect, which sent Vicky wild.
‘You were invited!’ she screeched. ‘Me and Kat always said we’d go travelling after uni and we always asked you to come.’
Vicky’s indignation evaporated then when she realized it was no longer an idea but an actual happening. She was frightened of the food, the toilets, the language barrier – and of being The Plain Friend. Vicky loved Kat dearly: they’d wished they were twins in primary and that the corridors would swallow them up in secondary. With Vicky’s ginger hair and puppy fat and Kat’s towering height and thick specs, they’d stood out in Cardiff High for all the wrong reasons. Then when Mikey had turned up from a rough estate in Llanedeyrn with long black hair in Year Nine he’d had no other choice but to join their gang.
Now though, Kat wasn’t the square in glasses anymore. She had contact lenses, a thigh gap, perky boobs and glossy Angelina Jolie hair as well as a first-class degree and a career in banking waiting for her when they got back. With her pale podge, ‘strawberry’ blonde hair, a 2:2 and that clueless gawp if asked what she was going to do for a job, Vicky was still hoping to have her ta-da moment of transformation.
Whenever Vicky admired her friend’s new looks, Kat would make sure she returned the compliment: Kat knew what it was like to feel unattractive. But that didn’t change the fact that Vicky was going to spend the next six months in Kat’s shadow.
If only Mikey was coming, he always made her feel special. Sort of interesting, funny, clever, kind and not the big idiot she considered herself to be. Oh, God, she thought, shutting her eyes, she was going to miss him madly. He was her constant, her ally and her teammate – even more so than Kat, who’d been put in a different form and was whisked off at home-time to her smart semi overlooking the park for after-school tuition, leaving Vicky and Mikey to deal with the bullies alone.
He’d been moved by his mum and dad from the ‘interfering’ catholic school at a time when she was having one of what Mikey called her ‘mad attacks’. With drainpipe school trousers and both ears pierced, he stood out a mile and from day one he was ‘a poof’ and ‘a queer’. A mouse of a student who, at best, was called a plodder, Vicky had no hope: hanging out with him meant she was tainted by association.
When everyone else had been sorting themselves into their tribes, whether they were indie kids or trendies, she and him had been on the periphery, united by not being like everyone else. They paired up because no one would sit next to them. That was when they bonded; over their pencil cases scrawled with Pulp and the Manic Street Preachers; class war; and their hatred of Tony ‘Tory’ Blair. Being singled out as weird, they took it and turned it on its head, thriving on their otherness: there was comfort in their in-jokes, secret codes, latest activist causes and understanding that they were different. Kat, or Katherine back then, flitted in and out of their world when she had a second away from her heavily scheduled ‘free’ time of music and maths. Everyone else followed the crowd: the girls all had Rachel from Friends haircuts while the boys tried to look like Baywatch extras with blond highlights.
Those clones had no hope: Mikey and Vicky however were destined to make it, whatever ‘it’ was. Vicky would listen enraptured, her heart beating wildly, as Mikey talked of the future, desperate to get away from his drunk of a dad: how he’d tread the roofs of the identical new-build estates like stepping stones and pick his way to London, paving the way for a better life. The others, he’d scoffed, could only see as far as ten minutes up the A48.
Vicky didn’t have the same motivation – unlike Mikey, her family was boringly normal. The weekly shop was always done on a Wednesday. Dad drove an executive Ford. Mum dreamed of having a side-return extension to their Victorian terrace round the corner from Roath Park. And her big brother Gavin was scaling the grades in the finance department of the National Assembly for Wales.
But that was precisely why Vicky yearned to fly. Because she was so ordinary, she had an emotional need to make herself stand out, be accepted, be someone. To be interesting.
Disappointingly, Reading Uni hadn’t done that for her. Mikey was supposed to have gone with her – she was going to do sociology while he did computer science, Kat, of course, was going to Oxford – but he’d spectacularly failed his A Levels after yet another bout of ‘trouble at home’ and as soon as she left home, he started working nine to five at the phone shop. It was a horrible first in Vicky’s life, leaving him behind and going it alone.
She’d felt on the back foot right from the start. There’d been plenty of going out and all that, the girls in her house ‘loved a giggle’ and ‘I Will Survive’ by Gloria Gaynor, but there was no one she clicked with on such a level as Mikey. When she’d pop back home for the weekend to see him, people would ask her why they weren’t together as a couple. But it was never like that: they were best mates, she’d explain, they didn’t fancy each other. Boyfriends and girlfriends let you down – bezzies didn’t. They’d seen it first-hand with each other’s rubbish relationships, which generally lasted a fortnight, much to their relief: for who would the other hang out with? And while Vicky had never admitted it, she didn’t like his attention going elsewhere - it wasn't out of jealousy, definitely not, it was his choice of heavy eye-linered girls who she thought looked ‘tarty'.
When Kat came home for the holidays, it was obvious to Vicky and Mikey that she had blossomed at Oxford, where she was reading maths. She was out of her mother’s control and so she began to learn her own likes and dislikes. Here was a girl who’d only known set bed times and curfews and then discovered she could stay up as late as she liked. While she didn’t go the whole sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll route, Vicky saw when she visited her that she was dabbling a bit with boys, booze and gigs. Her work didn’t suffer though because she was conditioned to study, she had an innate thirst for knowledge, it was just that she’d found her own voice.
When they’d graduated in July, Vicky had got swept up in Kat’s desire to see the world: it was her reward for getting a first and having a job in the City lined up.
But Vicky had no plans – she would go because she had nothing better to do. Neither a career nor a calling; not even a pleading boyfriend asking her to stay. Unlike Kat who’d ditched the sporty spunk, who’d ruined it all by getting needy, a few weeks before their departure.
Vicky had got caught up in the excitement of reading up on their route during quiet times at the bar at Dad’s golf club where she’d worked to save up. She hadn’t really thought about the consequence of being thousands of miles away in a different time zone from Mikey. She’d assumed he’d get swept along in their travelling chatter, jack in his job and come for the ride. But he never cracked.
Now, Vicky was overwhelmed by the realization of not being able to pop home to see Mikey until March. For he was, and always would be, the most awesome person in the world.
‘It’s not too late, you know. You can get a ticket and join us. Go on, please come,’ she begged.
This time he turned to her. In the warmth of Mum’s new garden pathway lights, bought especially for Vicky’s farewell barbecue, she saw his eyes flicker with emotion.
‘No, ta,’ he said, covering it up with his bored voice as his fingertips fiddled with the sweep of his thick black bob.
‘Come on, Mikey, this is our chance to escape!’ she implored, ‘Like we always said we would. To get away from suburbia. To cheat death by conservatory. To beat everything we’ve always raged against – crisp packets on the pavements, grey multi-storey car parks, people washing their cars on Sundays, anonymous shopping centres, beer guts, gravy with a wrinkled skin, service stations, people talking about the weather.’
‘Don’t. I’m still going to have to live with all of that.’ He spread his sarcasm thick but she knew he was speaking from his heart.
‘Exactly, so come! You hate working in the phone shop! Think of that stupid corporate red tie they make you wear. And hey, guess what? You might not die if you swap your Doc Martens for flip-flops. We’ll find ourselves. Together.’
‘I can’t think of anything worse,’ he spat, still the rebellious teenager. ‘Toffee-nosed kids having experiences when all they’re doing is going on an extended package holiday, conforming. Plus I hate the sun.’
Vicky clamped her mouth shut into a thin line. He didn’t have to make it sound quite so, well, conventional. But when his voice cracked she recognized his regret at snapping at her.
‘My mam… my sister, I can’t leave them with Dad.’ His eyes blinked slowly, protectively.
‘I know,’ she said, laying a reassuring hand on him but feeling terrible that she’d forced him to admit what she already understood. There, that tug between them then was what only they had.
‘It’s just…’ Vicky said, ‘I’ll have never been so far away from you, for so long, and I wish I could take you away from all of this.’
‘When I leave here I don’t want to be running away.’ His glassy stare had focused on something behind her left ear. It was his ‘thinking things’ face.
Then he fixed his eyes on her: the excitement, a rarity these days, made them glow like conkers. ‘I’ve got plans. There’s this thing called an iPhone,’ he said, waving his hands. ‘It’s just come out, and it’s going to change the world. Mobile applications. The Internet. And I want to be in on it, I think that might be the way for me to get out.’
Vicky hadn’t a bloody clue what he was on about. She had a pay-as-you-go phone and was the only person apparently in the world not on Facebook. But he definitely had enough intelligence, wit and techie skills to make a go of whatever it was – he’d been stripping and reassembling computers ever since she’d known him. And the dark techy side of things gave him camouflage: it was somewhere he could hide, create, be anonymous or anybody. She just hoped this iPhone thingy worked out and was worth it.
‘God, I wish I had the same ambition as you,’ she said. All she’d ever desired was to find something that inspired her, but she didn’t know what. She suspected that the something might actually turn out to be a someone and babies, but she would never admit it, what with her being a feminist and all. ‘That’s why I’m going. Because I’ve got nothing else. No direction. That’s what… Pete said when he dumped me.’
Tears came to her eyes then and her shoulders began to shake.
Pete. The so-called dependable scientific boyfriend she’d spent her final year with at uni. They were going to live together. She’d come home from some job or other to find him cooking a wholesome meal after he’d spent the day examining hamster populations in the Sahara or whatever it was he was going to be researching for his Masters. Then they’d get married and have kids. But unfortunately she hadn’t discussed any of that with him. And now he was going to a university in Scotland. And she wasn’t invited. He loved her but he wasn’t sure they’d make it when real life started.
She’d been crushed. It wasn’t because she was convinced he was The One. It was because he was her only chance of a relationship. He’d been her first proper boyfriend after two rubbish blokes, one of whom had treated her mean while the other had been overkeen, in a suffocating, clammy palms kind of way.
Now the worry that she’d never find anyone, that most private thought which haunted her, which she wasn’t supposed to feel because she was young and carefree, came dashing to the surface.
‘I’m going to be alone forever, Mikey,’ she blubbed into his shoulder, her tongue loosened by the drinks cabinet.
‘Pete was one boring fucker, Vicky,’ he said into her hair as he put an arm around her. ‘He did you a favour.’
Mikey had disliked him from the off - an awkward introduction when she brought him home at Easter ended up with both of the men in her life moaning about the other.
‘But what if that’s it? What if I never meet anyone else? That’s what I’m scared of.’ Loneliness – or being left out – was what she wanted to run from: she’d had enough of it through school, always the last-but-one to be picked for anything (thank God for Terri ‘Smelly’ Matthews). It was made worse because her parents were so loved up: they did everything together, from popping out for a few bits of shopping to going upstairs to bed. It made her feel in the way at times, which she knew was dumb, because as twee as they were, it was sweet how they followed each other around. But it set the bar too high on relationships and some days seeing her parents smooching made her feel that she would never find her perfect fit.
‘It’s better to be single than in a shit relationship.’
‘You say that but what about Sundays? The worst day of the week. Everyone else is coupled up and you’re in your pyjamas in front of Hollyoaks with no one to talk to.’
‘What? So you’d rather be like my mam and dad, would you? Fighting over how much he spends in the pub and the bookies? Bringing out the worst in each other?’
Vicky shuddered and, with it, blades of grass poked her where they touched her skin, emphasizing Mikey’s point.
‘Course not. But imagine getting really old, like thirty, and being on the scrapheap.’
She could see it now: having a meal out at the Harvester with just her biological clock for company while happy paired-up strangers gave her pitying looks.
‘Fucking hell, Vicky. You’re being irrational now. You want to be in love, that’s all this is. We’ve got years ahead of us.’
Vicky hummed a concession into his armpit – this was the trouble with someone knowing you back to front, they always called you out on dramatics. But still she felt the grip of fear.
Sensing it, he added softly, ‘Look, believe me, there is no way you’ll end up on your tod. You’re too amazing for that. If anyone’s going to be all alone, it’ll be me, all right?’
His compliment bounced off her: her natural reaction was to big him up instead.
‘Oh hardly! You get asked out, which is more than can be said for me!’
This was true. Not that he bothered with most girls, which pleased Vicky - none of them were good enough for him. His clouded eyes and jagged cheekbones were more tortured than boy band, he loved gaming rather than Match of the Day and he drank Guinness not premium wife-beating lager – but he got away with it because girls read him as brooding and mysterious.
But Vicky’s equivalent wonkiness of ‘interesting’ clothes, wishing she’d gone to Hogwarts, lusting after David Tennant as Doctor Who and preferring Stop The War marches to Saturday shopping trips just wasn’t sexy.
‘Alone by choice, I meant. Girlfriends are too high-maintenance. Whatever mood I’m in, you’re about the only person I can hang out with. I couldn’t be bothered to have to explain myself to someone.’
This time, his words hugged her.
‘Aw, me too. At least we’ve got each other.’
‘Yeah, defo. Although don’t think you can get away with making me listen to Coldplay when we’re in the old people’s home together, sipping hot cocoa.’
‘I do NOT like Coldplay! That CD was Pete’s, not mine.’ Then she realized what he’d said and a ping went off in her head. ‘But it’s a good call, that.’
‘What is, like?’
‘Well, why don’t we make a pact? You know, if both of us are still single by the time we’re thirty and ancient, we get together.’ This could be the solution, she thought, suddenly feeling sober, the security she needed to get on with the rest of her life.
‘You must be joking! I am never getting married. Not to you nor anyone. Not even Lara Croft.’
Oh, he was so infuriating.
‘Can’t you just say yes, because I’m really worrying about this,’ she said, heaving herself onto an elbow so he could see how much this meant to her.
‘We’re mates. Being girlfriend-boyfriend would be… odd.’
‘Right,’ Vicky said, whispering now as she lay back down. All of the breath inside her had been punched out by his definitive refusal. She hadn’t meant it. Not really. Not much. It was just a bit of insurance; to know if it all went tits up, they’d at least have each other.
‘Tidy. Glad we’ve cleared that up,’ he said, putting an arm behind his neck. ‘Sometimes, Vicky, you are mental.’
But she was stewing now: it wasn’t such a bad offer, was it? She began to feel offended then, that he considered the idea of her as his partner so ridiculous.
‘Fine,’ she said, sternly, inching away from his body, defensively pulling down the hem of her slightly too-tight Barbie T-shirt, on which she’d written in fabric sharpies ‘Screw you, Ken’.
‘Vicky?’ Mikey shifted his head to work out what was going on inside hers.
‘What?’ she said, prickling from his rejection.
‘Are you in a strop?’ he said. Vicky could hear his eyebrows shifting like tectonic plates.
‘No,’ she said, bristling, looking away from him.
‘Oh dear God,’ he said, amused. ‘You are in a strop. You. Are. A. Nutter.’
‘Well. For feck’s sake…’ she huffed.
‘What?’ he said, his voice arcing.
‘I thought we were best friends. We’d do anything for each other.’
‘Are you Meatloaf?’ he said, flicking his fingers against her arm, singing ‘I’d Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That)’.
‘Go on then, have a laugh, take the piss. I’m off tomorrow, you better make the most of it.’
She felt his chest rise then as he took a breath. He held it as though he was weighing it up. Finally, he blew out of his cheeks and squeezed her tight.
‘All right,’ he surrendered, ‘all right. Have it your way, you ludicrous person, you. If we’re both single when we’re thirty, I’ll be your back-up man. Okay?’
At first, she was annoyed because he’d practically yawned it. But then, that was his way: he was guarded with his emotions because it was always a risk to him, to show he cared. Hadn’t he always been like this? Reserved and self-sufficient because no one had really looked after him. This was the closest she was going to get to an agreement. Bite his hand off, she told herself.
‘Really?’ she said, staying very still to make sure she’d hear his confirmation.
‘Really. I swear on Jarvis Cocker’s life.’ Again he delivered it in a fatigued voice.
Vicky had a little wiggle to celebrate, not even caring about the wobble it set off down her body.
‘You’re mad, you know that don’t you?’ he said.
Vicky giggled: he was bound to be rolling his eyes at her. ‘But don’t you feel better knowing that whatever happens now, we’ve got a plan B? I know I do. I feel all secure now.’
‘Good, good. You looney.’
‘See, this is why I love you, Michael Patrick Murphy. You know what it means to me.’
‘I do, Victoria Anwen Hope, I do,’ he said wearily, but she could tell he’d spoken with a grin. Her snow globe of worries began to settle: having Mikey in reserve steadied her.
‘You’ve just got to pray I meet someone now!’ she laughed.
‘Our Father, who art in heaven…’ he began.
‘Cheeky git,’ she said, letting him pull her in, which moved her towards his neck. She smiled as she anticipated breathing in the boyish salty smell she’d known forever. But in its place, and to her surprise, there was a musky manly scent.
Just then, Vicky had a moment. A shivery split-second thing which seized her and made her reach out and place her hand on his chest. Beneath his ripped Pulp T-shirt, she felt his heart thumping as fast as her own. She had actual butterflies.
A question appeared in her head… but it was one which she dismissed before it had even fully formed.
Because Vicky had her plan B. If it all went wrong, then this time in nine years if neither her nor Mikey were in a relationship, he would be there for her.
Right now though, I’m twenty-one and the world is waiting, she told herself as she tried to imagine a place where the sky hadn't been fake-tanned by the lights from the M4.
This was it, Vee thought waking up on her thirtieth birthday, the day that Jez would propose.
This was the moment she’d been waiting for and had not just hinted heavily and repeatedly at but explicitly spelled out over the last few years.
Jez knew what was expected of him: to ask for her hand in marriage.
This was the one concession to their avant-garde living: after all, hadn’t she always supported his art and gone along with his lifestyle in this freezing rattily windowed warehouse flat in Brighton and the dismantled bicycles in the hallway and veganism? Indeed, she’d even thrown herself into it because she found it all quite entertaining. Apart from the secret cheese she had behind his back. By doing what he did, it gave her some purpose and concealed her own jellyfish act of floating here and there, unable to find any sort of calling in her work life or hobbies or anything.
Once, he’d tried to argue against marriage: we are all masters of our own fate and no one was forcing anyone to do anything, he’d said. Besides, he’d disagreed with it on the grounds that property was theft. But as far as this matter was concerned, she had refused point blank to even address his view. For this was the one and only condition she had placed on their relationship – and she was putting her foot down. It was non-negotiable. End of. And anyway, who said a proposal had to be predictable or naff? You’re an artist, Jez, she’d said, think outside the paintbox!
It was only when Vee had spied her slippers that she darted out of bed, which was a mattress on a floor of concrete. Carpets and floorboards were out of the question – ‘too bourgeois’ – so for warmth she relied on a pair of grey alpaca wool booties which dated from her travels in Peru. Sometimes, when she put them on, she’d wonder whatever had happened to Kat, but today her past was far from her mind: it was all about the future.
Sticking on one of Jez’s holey jumpers, Vee dashed in to the loo then nipped down the spiral metal staircase to their open-plan lounge-kitchen-diner which was bathed in sun during the spring and summer but murky as a mine now in winter, even at 11am.
‘Hello?’ she shouted, her voice echoing off naked brick walls, hoping he’d have taken the day off because it was important to her. Surely, he knew? She swallowed her disappointment at the silence, telling herself that he had had to go to the studio as soon as the sun was up to make the most of the daylight. With his exhibition coming up, he’d been working really long hours. Instead, yes, instead, he’d have left her something, a teaser of his intention.
Weaving her way through sculptures and tyres, casts and tools, she looked around the room for a sign of her surprise. What form would it take, her proposal? Perhaps there’d be a treasure hunt of clues? Or maybe he’d have made her something like he usually did, which wasn’t because he’d forgotten her birthday – no, it was a heartfelt and unique personal expression of his adoration.
Lost in thought, she banged backwards into a six-foot iron tor, a piece entitled ‘The Angst of Man’, which on the quiet she thought resembled a penis, and it tottered dangerously from one edge to another.
‘You clumsy cow,’ she said aloud, holding out her arms to catch it should it fall. Oh Christ, she thought, imagine being cheated out of a proposal because she’d been squashed to death by a metal cock.
Thankfully, the structure settled down and Vee continued past the brown cord retro sofa and the beach driftwood coffee table towards the table, which was an old door balanced on four metal beer kegs – her present had to be there! Because he wouldn’t have forgotten. Would he?
Could there be a little sparkly box on it? she wondered before berating herself for being so dull and uninspired. As if Jez would go to H Samuel! As if she’d want a rock from H Samuel! Well, she wouldn’t refuse it if there was one.
But Jez was far too imaginative for that. A diamond nose stud would be much more up his street! Now that would be both edgy and romantic. Bugger, she thought, why hadn’t she asked for that? Not that Jez liked her suggestions a great deal. God knows how she was going to get him to agree to all the bits and pieces that she wanted for their wedding.
But she had it all planned: it’d be traditional with a twist. The sort of wedding the artist Banksy would approve of, that’s how she’d sell it to Jez. Their ushers would tell people to sit wherever the hell they fancied, the photos would be Victorian-style with no smiling, they’d ride to the reception on a tandem, guests would pick their favours out of lucky dip boxes and the centrepieces on the tables wouldn’t be flowers but collection boxes for their favourite charities. She’d just have to present it to him as an installation, that’s all.
Just then, in amongst the detritus of his breakfast, she saw an envelope marked ‘V’.
Here it was! She hugged herself, wanting to savour the moment because within an hour she’d be slaving away at work. If she had a wedding to plan it would distract her from that awful bloody place.
She was sick of Hello Daaling, the budget veggie bistro where she was supposed to be a member of the waiting staff but had been the de facto manager for two years, ten hours a day, five days a week on shit money. It was damp and cramped and the student waiters and waitresses were completely unreliable. How had she ever thought that slogging it in that cafe was The Answer? It was just the latest in a long line of dubious ‘career’ choices she’d made since returning to the UK with Jez from Thailand seven years ago. Her six months of travelling had turned into eighteen when life - and love - got in the way. She’d come back with a nose piercing, an empty bank account and a 6ft blond dreadlocked artist boyfriend, but no clearer sense of direction.
There’d been the yogi course which she’d had to quit because she couldn’t get her leg behind her neck. She’d tried jewellery making, but she was too heavy-handed with the pliers. Having a stab at training to be a counsellor, she’d realized it wasn’t for her when she kept drifting off during the classes, too busy thinking about her destiny or whether she was going to cook falafels or puy lentil parsnip risotto for tea. If only she’d become a teacher as she’d wanted to when they moved back. But it was too late.
Now, she realized, in terms of her working life she was no better off than years before when she’d paid for her simple and uncomplicated existence of food, bed and fun by handing out beach party flyers to backpackers on Koh Samui.
Thank God then for Jez. Her relationship was the one thing she’d invested in.
And this proposal would prove it: it’d be a signpost to the security of a soulmate, to move from the stinking North Laines to Hove where they’d get a dog, then have kids, loads of them. They’d start trying as soon as they were married for a child called Star - his choice but she'd work on that. He’d be such a great dad, she knew it, all hands on and playful: theirs would be one big beautiful scene of chaos and love. She’d home educate and never have to go back to honking of onions courtesy of Hello Daaling. And that future was waiting for her in this envelope.
Her fingers trembled as she reached out to pick up the envelope, which stood against Jez’s bowl of chilli avocado porridge. Shaking drops of almond milk off it, she anticipated some act of ingenuity: he was all about making memories. Even though he was thirty-three, he never let life suck him dry. His inner child brimmed over: his big brown eyes were often hopping boyishly with excitement. In fact he looked a bit like a jester with his spongey dreads and colourful clothes! But then he could afford to be, thanks to mummy and daddy who, out of guilt for nobbing off to the South of France to be near his sister and their grandchildren, had bought him this place and signed over two of their London flats to him so he could live off the rent - justified by him as a sacrifice he had to make so he could create rather than work for The Man.
At least it meant minimal contact with his plummy parents, who had neither a microwave nor telly in the kitchen.
But Jez’s spirit, his joie de vivre, his refusal to let the details get him down were what attracted Vee to him in the first place on the night they met on a Cambodian beach. Kat had long gone – and this was Vee’s last hurrah before heading home. She couldn’t believe that the handsome topless double-barrelled public-schooled fire juggler liked her back. But by then she had buried her suburban self: Vicky had become Vee after she got in with a bohemian crowd. Her hair was long and bleached by the sun; she’d finally got a healthy colour; she had a fake tattoo of a Buddha on her lower back which she religiously had reapplied because the real thing would be too painful; and she was skinny after a persistent bout of Thai tummy (which still troubled her, probably irritated by all the lentils they ate). Jez had been impressed with her voluntary work at a children’s home and taken with what he called her quirky Welsh ways. The way she spoke in reverse, like Yoda, ‘Coffee, I need’, and celebrated St David’s Day wherever she was. She had been his ‘sweet little rarebit’. Six years on, it had come down to this moment.
Tearing open the envelope, she saw the card inside wasn’t birthday-related, which didn’t surprise Vee. A golden 3 and 0 was not his style. Instead, the card was one of the promos he’d got made up of his works of art to sell at the exhibition, which Vee did think was a little bit ‘me, me’, me’. But she was prepared to overlook it… until she read inside.
Vee,
I’m so, so sorry but it’s not working. We’ve had an amazing time, AMAZING, but recently I’ve felt there’s something missing. It’s not you, I just need to be free. I need some authenticity, to find meaning. Existence precedes essence – I’ve forgotten that I’m an individual and I need to throw off the labels that have defined me for too long.
The absurdity of it all though is that my quest will not be done alone – there is someone else, a sort of soulmate, like I had no say in it. I never wanted to hurt you.
Do not be sad, rarebit. Fly, like me, and embrace the beauty of the world.
Jez
The shock was like a blow to her head with a cast-iron Welsh cake-baking stone, robbing her of breath and balance.
Vee followed her stomach and dropped to the floor, taking a spoon and a hammer with her. In slow motion, they somersaulted down and clanged and clattered at a deafening volume as they hit the dank concrete.
Holding her ears, Vee’s head exploded and she began to fight for air. He was ending it, he’d met someone else. But no, it couldn’t be. She refused to believe it.
The card had fallen from her hands and she scrabbled at it desperately, her fingers numb and clumsy. Reading and rereading it again, she raged at his crass employment of existentialism to justify his philandering – had he forgotten she’d done sociology at uni? That she was damn sure Sartre and Camus hadn’t wrestled with what it was to be human to assist spineless men dumping their girlfriends?
The lively black swoop of his handwriting came alive, swimming at first then crawling, threatening to suffocate her. Terrified, she threw the snakes across the room.
On her hands and knees, she began to heave from the pit of her insides. It’s over, her brain said, he’s leaving you, there’s someone else, that’s why he’s hardly been here. For his ‘soulmate’, a word he had always mocked for its suggestion of perfect love. There was no such thing, he’d always said. What he’d meant, Vee knew now, was he hadn’t felt a perfect love for her.
Delirium told her to talk him round – that’s what she’d do. He was just having a bit of a crisis, he was an artist, for heaven’s sake. And with all her talk of marriage, maybe it wasn’t the be all and end all. They could go for a walk on the beach and she could get him to throw his worries into the sea like stones. She had to, because after seven years of him, there was nothing else in her life.
Her surroundings drained to grey as she blinked hard to focus on a spot of paint on a chair leg, which squirmed until she could bear it no more. She slumped down into the foetal position as the blow to her heart infected her bloodstream and poisoned her all over.
She wanted Jez. But it was useless, she realized. He didn’t love her. It was over. Her plans incinerated, she wanted to die. Paralyzed by agony, she lay still for she didn’t know how long, listening to the stampede of terror of how things would now be. She tried to shut it out, but with eyes closed the frenzy became louder, hotter, sharper. Then the shakes came. Still alive but it was a living death as the tremors rattled her body.
Lurching up to her knees, she had to get out. She had to do something. But what?
Go to the studio and confront him? A blurry movie of screams and recriminations played out before her. She didn’t have the strength nor the desire to be humiliated in person. His artist friends would close ranks, tell her to chill out, cool it, babe, which would make her want to beat Jez in the chest until she was dragged off. Instinctively, she knew whoever ‘she’ was would be there too – she searched her mind for who she’d be. But these muses, these young up-and-coming artists, they were all the same, lithe and fresh, and Vee couldn’t bear facing up to a new model: she would forever have her face scalded into her mind.
She could wait here until he returned. But her hurt would be a million times worse. Because it would expose what she understood now was a complete daydream of their togetherness: this was his home not hers – they owned nothing jointly. They each had their possessions, there was no TV and their ornaments were cheap trinkets from their travels. Jez had always said ‘who wanted stuff when you had everything?’. Vee gave a strangled howl at the broken mess of her naive delusion.
She needed to go to a friend’s. Yes, that was it, that was she had to do.
But who? She mentally ransacked her list of contacts on her phone but most of them were old work colleagues or those she’d lost touch with, not people you could spill your guts on. As for trusted friends, well, her best friend had been Jez, she’d had no need for anyone else. There was Bex, who used to work at Hello Daaling, but had she said she was moving to Devon or somewhere? Vicky had meant to respond to her texts to meet up three times before Christmas but she never got round to it because of her life with Jez. Jemima? But she was Jez’s best mate’s wife and they had a baby and, oh no, she’d have known all about his betrayal. Jem would feel compromised, Vee would be mortified. Unmistakably, she had no one to turn to. There was not one person ‘on her side’: their friends were either mutual or his, she thought, ashamed of her stupidity. All her eggs, and ovaries, were in one basket – she had nothing of her own. It had been all she wanted, to be allowed into his gang. She was stripped of dignity, naked and needy.
Thirty and dumped. No money, no home and no mates. And it was all of her own doing. She’d nearly got away with it – but he’d found out she was still that chubby ginger kid.
She needed to leave. And quickly because the panic was giving her palpitations, which she needed to outrun.
Burning all over, she forced herself up to standing.
She groped her way up the stairs and saw an old crone in the broken mirror glue-gunned on the landing wall. The beginnings of wrinkles, a mess of pink strands in her bleached hair, a red nose with a tiny ring piercing and two swollen eyes: It was a far cry from how she thought she’d look the next time she saw Mum and Dad, all sparkling and engaged.
That was how she admitted to herself that she had nowhere else to go but to her parents’, the house she’d grown up in, aged thirty. What a birthday this had turned out to be.
She threw off his jumper and found her rucksack at the back of the wardrobe and began to chuck in anything that seemed essential, like knickers, bras, clothes, make-up and her craptop, her battered old laptop. Surveying the messy room, guttural gasps rose from her chest as she saw how one-sided their so-called love nest was. His paintings and arty prints were up, the standard lamp was angular and male, even the grey duvet covers were masculine: what little of hers there was, such as postcards and books, were laced with his influence as if she had been following a guidebook on How To Be Jez’s Girlfriend.
In her attempt to be accepted and to feel like a somebody she had sinfully subverted her very self. She had no idea who the real her was. She’d been a parasite, that was clear.
Looking down, the only thing that remained of life before Jez was the fraying Jarvis Cocker T-shirt she was wearing as a nightie. Gazing down on his black and white pixellated face of specs and beard, she thought of Mikey. What she’d give to see him but it was impossible – the Mikey she’d adored was a memory. She hadn’t thought of him in yonks. She hadn’t needed to. When she had it’d been with an ‘oh well that’s life’ smile, thinking back to her crazy innocence, when she’d asked him to be her back-up man: yet now she realized she was no more grown up than she had been then. Humiliating herself, she imagined arriving at his door, telling him that she needed him now after all. But he wouldn’t be the same: he’d obviously changed when she’d gone travelling. The old Mikey would’ve at least replied to her heartfelt letter from Thailand, made a joke of it or soothed her. Oh, she’d got over the fact he didn’t feel the same way as her, when she’d said that perhaps her feelings towards him weren’t just platonic. But she’d never understood why he hadn’t responded. Not even when she’d tried to friend him on Facebook when she’d got back from travelling even with Jez in tow – she’d been ready to forget things – he clearly hadn’t. Anyway, she thought, wiping her eyes, people grow apart, they change and harking back was not the answer.
Vee threw a hoodie over her T-shirt, pulled on leggings and boots then galloped downstairs to throw on her fake-fur lapelled three-quarter-length coat. She tied the belt tight to stop herself falling apart and scraped her hair back into a bun.
She took out her petite nose stud, letting it drop from her hand onto the table, and then she hoisted her backpack up onto one shoulder.
Looking round the vast cluttered room, which seemed the emptiest place in the world right now, she had a surge of pure fury and she kicked out at ‘The Angst of Man’, which rocked on its feet before toppling to the floor with several metallic bangs as it broke up. The destruction made absolutely no difference to how she felt.
Defeated, she opened the door and stepped outside, not feeling the icy sting of the February downpour.
Oblivious to the puddles and car spray, she was able to cry unnoticed, protected by the veil of rain which merged with the tears rolling down her cheeks, all the way to the coach station.
‘Cardiff, please,’ she said to the ticket lady who didn’t bother to look up at her.
‘Return?’
Vee shook her head. Then remembered she was invisible.
‘One way,’ she croaked, ‘I’m going home.’
Murphy flinched in his seat even though the gunshot of the cork came nowhere near his body.
Dodging the spill of the fizz, some of the lads shouted ‘wahey’ above the thud of tunes which filled the huge luxury chalet right up to its snow-lined windows.
‘Wahey nothing, lovely boys,’ he called from the leather sofa and jerked his head to the side to get someone to bring the bottle over.
His body was pounding with the after-effects of too much… well, too much everything in the last couple of days – make that the last six years. But this was what he was here to do – there was no point calling it an early night, if it was in fact early.
He had no idea of the time: it was dark outside but that didn’t mean anything because the night fell fast here in the wintry mountains. It seemed like hours ago that they’d eaten, yet he had no hunger. It could be 7 p.m. or 2 a.m. and, to be honest, who gave a shit? Only when they were too trashed to walk would they crawl to their beds.
Savouring the warmth from the heated wooden floor which rose up through his naked feet, the only bit of him which ached in a good way were his thighs: the snowboarding here was immense. The trouble was, the après-ski was even larger.
The bottle banged as it made contact with the coffee table and again Murphy felt the impact.
He paused his trembling hands, catching sight of the scar on his ring finger, always there, inescapable, and poured himself a drink. Then put the bottle on the table for Hugo, who was chopping charlie for champagne supernovas.
It’s all okay, he told himself, you’re with your mates in this fuck-off fantastic log cabin in the French Alps and you’ve earned it. He nodded in time to the dance track to confirm this was gospel and slowed it right down, scanning the spoils of his success.
On the right, the glass doors were indecently flung open onto the steaming patio, where Beats and Flo were neck-deep in the hot tub.
Dave and Jonesy were in the high-gloss kitchen, knocking back a single malt whisky. Shell and Orla were Tomb Raiding on the PlayStation lying in sheepskin-rug gaming chairs right next to a roaring fire. And on the left, Potts was on the climbing wall – whoever had designed this place had known just what would give international playboys a hard-on.
But Murphy silenced his sneers because he was here, wasn’t he? If he listened, he’d have to admit he was a sell-out and that was the worst thing he could be. He hated the irritating whine of his conscience that mocked him. Hated it because it always asked what on earth would Vicky make of him? Whatever happened to your politics, Mikey, to your compassion, to your sense of injustice?
He answered it back: she’s not here so do one.
He watched Hugo run half a lemon around the rim of some champagne saucers, dip them in coke then pour the bubbles. Murphy got up and took one outside.
‘Not having one?’ Beats said from the hot tub as Murphy handed it over then lit a fag and rested on the glass balcony wall.
‘Nah,’ he said, his breath smoking skywards as snowflakes started to fall. Not his scene, he wasn’t some posh boy even though his surroundings suggested it.
He turned around and stared out at the twinkling magical cabins dotted around the valley. With a pang in his heart, he thought how much Mam would’ve loved it here. The air, which was so cold it hurt to breathe after a while, was the definition of clean and fresh. As for Dad, Mikey would be tempted to push him down a slope.
At least Orla was here to witness how beautiful it was: his little sister who’d come along for the ride when one of the squad dropped out. She knew everyone anyway: they all hung out together in Hackney in London and he had no trouble paying for her. It was nice to be able to treat her when so much of her life had been shit. He liked having her here: it kept him grounded. Ish.
‘Don’t stay in that hot tub too long,’ he said, suppressing the desire to flick his fag into the blackness to watch it Catherine wheel into nowhere, ‘it’ll make your dick shrink.’
It was a crap joke but Beats laughed because he was off his tits. As usual.
He chucked his butt into a bursting ashtray and went back inside, realizing what a tip they’d made of the place. The surfaces were littered with glasses, cups and wrappers. Magazines and a set of massacred playing cards were spread over one of the settees. Snowboots, bits of outdoor clothing and wet towels covered the hall.
How could eight adults make such a mess in the few hours since maid service? He doubted anyone but him and Orla noticed – the rest of them had been brought up on hotel holidays and privilege. It wasn’t their fault: you only understood about tidying up after yourself if you’d had to share a minute caravan in Tenby in the pissing rain for a week.
He’d do a whip-round for the chalet girl later, wait until they were all a bit mashed so they’d give more. They could afford it anyway: apart from Orla, this rabble were all techie geeks who were coining it in.