You Can’t Fall in Love With Your Ex (Can You?) Page 15

  “I’ll see what my work schedule looks like,” Jonathan said, and with that I had to be content.

  My birthday that year fell on a Monday – hardly an auspicious start to my thirty-seventh year. It was official, I thought gloomily as the alarm clock went off at its usual horrible hour – I could no longer claim to be in my early thirties. Middle age was fast approaching, it was raining, and I’d plucked several grey hairs from my eyebrows the previous night. I wished for a moment that I could turn back the clock – or even just opt out of the whole process of growing old, keep my children the ages they were, just press pause on the whole depressing business.

  But Darcey and Owen were too little to look on birthdays as anything other than exciting opportunities for presents and cake. With Jonathan’s help, they’d assembled a little pile of gifts on the breakfast table, together with a slightly battered carrot cake and a vase of overblown roses from the garden. The state of the cake was explained by the Co-op box I spotted in the recycling, a large orange ‘reduced to 99p’ sticker on it.

  “Open presents, Mummy!” Owen said.

  “I will in a second, just let me make some coffee first. And you’re not allowed cake at breakfast time, you’ll have wait for tea this afternoon – and so will I.”

  I remembered how, as a small child, I would have thought that cake at breakfast-time was the ultimate in heady indulgence. Now, the idea made me feel slightly queasy. When did that happen, I wondered? There must have been a day, perhaps at some point in my teens, when the prospect of cream cheese icing at seven in the morning ceased to seem like a good idea – perhaps round about when I went through my brief phase of eating nothing but apples and rice cakes with fat-free cottage cheese. I’d grown out of that, certainly, but never quite regained the idea that sugary food was a treat rather than something to be regarded with suspicion that bordered on fear.

  Sipping my coffee, I turned to the small pile of presents. There was a pair of cashmere socks from Sadie, a card and a Selfridges voucher from Mum and home-made cards from the children, Darcey’s encrusted with glitter and Owen’s with pasta shapes stuck to it. More works of art to add to the collection on the fridge, I thought. When the children weren’t looking, I’d have to get rid of some of the older, more curly-at-the-edges paintings to make room for these.

  Jonathan said, “Hadn’t you better open mine now?”

  “I was saving it for last.” I ripped the wrapping paper off the small box, and opened it to find a pair of simple, beautiful pearl earrings.

  “Thank you,” I said, kissing him and sliding them into my ears. “I’ll do the school run in style this morning.”

  “Don’t forget the card,” Jonathan said.

  I slid a knife under the envelope flap and took out a shiny card with pink roses on it, and “To my wife” in squirly gold writing. I suppressed a giggle – Jonathan had always had appalling taste in cards. Then I opened it and unfolded the A4 printout inside. It was a booking confirmation for a return trip to New York.

  Inside the card, Jonathan had written, “We’re staying at the Waldorf Astoria. I’ve upgraded to a suite – you deserve a treat. Happy birthday. I love you.”

  I felt tears sting my eyes and a lump fill my throat.

  “Why are you crying, Mummy?” Darcey demanded, her eyes huge with concern.

  “Because I’m happy,” I said. It was the truth – but not the whole truth. This time last year, a holiday with my husband to the city that never sleeps would have seemed like the best idea ever. It still did – but there was a nagging sense of doubt and guilt overshadowing my excitement.

  “Right, I’d better be off.” Jonathan straightened his tie and put his jacket on. “I’ll try not to be too late tonight. If I can get away, I’ll take you out for dinner.”

  “Great,” I said. “Try and let me know in good time, though, so I can get a babysitter sorted, okay?”

  “Of course.” He kissed me and wished me happy birthday again, and I thought, not much chance of that, is there?

  “Right, come on, you two – time to get ready.”

  The specialness of the day forgotten, I launched into the morning routine – getting the children dressed, attempting a French plait in Darcey’s hair, hunting for book bags and hats and raincoats, which always seemed to get misplaced no matter how hard I tried to find reliable homes for them.

  The children dropped off, I knocked on Zé’s door, but there was no reply, and I remembered that Monday was the day she worked out with her personal trainer. Disconsolately, I walked home again and made myself another cup of coffee. The day stretched before me – special in name, but in every other way just like every other Monday – and Tuesday, and Wednesday, and…

  I fought back tears again, and checked my phone for birthday messages on Facebook to cheer myself up, thanking the magic of social media for allowing people to let you believe they were thinking of you, even if all they’d done was set up an app to send each of their friends an identical “Happy birthday, have a fab day x” once a year.

  I went upstairs and put on some make-up, suddenly determined not to spend the day mooning about at home and desultorily doing housework. I’d go into town, I decided, and wander around the make-up counters like Mel and I always used to do, trying endless samples of products and walking out looking as garish as clowns. Maybe I could spend Mum’s voucher on some miracle snake oil or other that would promise to make me look five years younger overnight.

  So I got the train to Waterloo and then the Tube to Bond Street, and was hovering eagerly outside Selfridges, waiting for a gaggle of tourists to make their agonisingly slow way through the doors, when I felt my phone vibrate in my handbag.

  It was a text from Felix. My heart hammered when I saw his name on the screen.

  “Happy birthday, Laura. Your challenge for the morning is a treasure hunt. Text YES if you accept.”

  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.

  Chapter 13

  October 2001: Casting

  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.

&nbs
p; 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.