Can We Still Be Friends (26 page)

‘So do you want to explain?’ she asked, her back to Gioia.

‘Explain what?’

‘Everything. It strikes me there’s a lot to explain. You could start with why you, obviously, haven’t told your mum about us. You’ve watched me dealing with my parents and how they feel about this but you haven’t even tried to sort it out with yours.’ It was rare for Kendra to feel this way. Most of the time she paddled in the shallow waters of acceptance. Confrontation made her feel ill. She watched Gioia decide not to approach after all, instead walking over to the table, where she found her pouch of tobacco in the drawer, and then sitting to roll a joint and saying nothing until she had had several deep tokes.

‘Hmm.’ She exhaled, waving the spliff in offering to Kendra, who was not about to accept anything that might constitute a peace token at this point.

Kendra tried another line. ‘And why didn’t you tell me about your mum?’

‘What about my mum?’

‘Well, that she’s Jamaican, or something.’

‘Antiguan … but that’s probably all the same to you.’ The way Gioia said that, as if she couldn’t really care less, provoked Kendra further.

‘What’s that meant to mean?’

‘What does it matter where my mum was born? Whether she’s Jamaican, Antiguan, Dominican or Martian? She’s not the same as you, is she? That’s what you mean.’

‘It’s got nothing to do with her being the same as me, you know that. I live here with you. I’m your girlfriend, or that’s what I thought I was. What matters is I didn’t know. You never told me. That’s a big gap in my knowledge of you. My understanding. I thought she was Italian, and it feels strange, as if you kept it from me.’

‘It’s not my fault that you got it wrong.’ Gioia leant back in her chair, reaching her arms out behind her head in a deliberate display of casual stretching. ‘Fine. Here’s the history lesson. Dad came to England from Italy after the war and met Mum in Liverpool. She’d come from the island with her brother. She and Dad moved to Glasgow a few years later, and he worked in restaurants and the ice cream biz, like they all did. Then he had enough cash to set up the shop, and that’s where they stayed. There was trouble with each other’s families to start – the Italians don’t much fancy the darkies and, so she tells it, Mum’s lot didn’t go a bundle on her shacking up with an
Itie
, but they stuck it out and everyone got over it. They got over it. Why don’t you? Why don’t you get over whatever it is that you’re all tight-arsed about? I haven’t told her about you. No. But I haven’t not told her – I just keep my personal stuff private. It’s not what she wants to know about. My folks aren’t thick. They’ve got it sussed, I guess. But they’ve learnt: sometimes it’s easier to turn a blind eye. It doesn’t always make you feel better to know the truth. It doesn’t make you a better person.’

She got up from the table, moving towards Kendra but stopping inches from her, not touching. ‘You’ve got to work out where you’re
at, Kendra. You have to decide who to trust. If you love me, you have to trust me.’

Kendra knew she had to decide whether she was going to let Gioia get away with this or continue to probe the topic, which, previous experience had taught her, probably wouldn’t get her anywhere. It had been such a difficult day. Sitting there with Annie, who she had been so close to but now felt as if she was losing … and then coming back to this. She knew that she was making a fuss. That it didn’t mean that Gioia didn’t love her. But as she looked at her girlfriend, she couldn’t help wondering what else she might not know.

‘I want to trust you. Of course I do. I always have trusted you. Completely. Why wouldn’t I? But imagine if you came back like I did and found out that all this stuff wasn’t how you thought it was. How would you feel?’

Gioia shrugged. ‘Hard to tell. We can only deal with what’s happened, and all I’m saying is that nothing’s changed about us, about the way I feel about you. So don’t let it mess us up. We’ve got to stick together. That’s all I know.’

The church at Little Sponswood was set at the furthest end of the village, just past the row of red-brick new-builds. A pair of cedars of Lebanon swooped over the small graveyard. It was, everybody agreed, the perfect day for a wedding. The dusty heat of August had been ended by a storm that had brought freshness to the air and ensured that September arrived sunny but freed from the stale dog days of summer.

Both Annie and her mother had been preparing for this day for most of Annie’s life and, although in almost all matters Annie allowed Charlie to take the lead, on this wedding day her wishes were dominant. It was not in Charlie’s nature to collaborate, and on being informed that the wedding was to be a morning service at St Mark’s, Little Sponswood, followed by a lunch in the garden, he had stepped aside from the whole proceedings, saying only, ‘I’m leaving it up to you. It’s your party. There’s no point asking me about this and that when I haven’t been in on the game plan from the start. But we’ve got to have something proper to drink. I’ll stand us the champagne before lunch so we avoid that stuff from M&S that your mum rates so highly.’

There had been the odd moment when Annie wished that Charlie weren’t quite so cut and dried about everything and that they could have a discussion about some of the details: should the top table be long, or round like the others? Was an hour enough time for drinks before they ate? But, mainly, she accepted that with the conviction that she found so attractive came an inability to share deliberation. She got enormous pleasure from spending hours over the decision as to whether the menu should feature an illustration of vine leaves or wheatsheaves or both, but it was immediately clear that this kind of question would have to be resolved between her
and Letty, not her and Charlie. She was surprised to find that Sal was unexpectedly helpful too, having firm opinions on matters such as the colour of the tablecloths and even suggesting that, due to the time of year, they could theme the whole day along the lines of the harvest festival.

When the engagement had first been announced there had been a discussion about whether Charlie should take Annie to Ramatuelle in the South of France, where his parents Josh and Suzie had decamped after finally selling their small estate in Rutland (which had, for many years, been a financial drain). Charlie, with his sense of order, his interest in making money and his unswervable drive, appeared a curious fellow to his parents, who lacked any of these qualities.

‘Suze would love to get to know her prospective daughter-in-law,’ Josh had suggested when Charlie called with the news. ‘We could take in a night in Saint-Trop if you liked. The harvest here’s shaping up nicely, and last year’s vintage, though I say it myself, is more than drinkable.’ But, somehow, a date had never been fixed and the wedding day approached without Annie having met her in-laws. It wasn’t how she had expected it would be. She had always thought that she would have a close relationship with a mother-in-law. Annie would completely understand if her mum-in-law wanted to spend time alone with her son, for example, but it seemed that the Sethringtons had a semi-detached attitude when it came to family.

Her own mother was a different matter, treating the wedding as the culmination of a lifetime’s ambition. Her hair in rollers, she walked into her daughter’s bedroom on the morning of the wedding to find Kendra and Sal seated on the small bed watching the bride’s hair being backcombed so as to be able to support the garland of Michaelmas daisies that would hold the veil in place.

‘I must say, I do wish the caterers would get a move on.’ Letty’s brow creased in concern. ‘It’s nearly ten o’clock and there’s only one dim-looking girl standing around with a clipboard while those chaps in the van just chat. It’s beyond me where Penny’s going to
put her floral arrangements, when they haven’t even got the tables up …’

‘Once they start, they can do this kind of thing really quickly, Letty,’ Kendra offered reassuringly. Letty glanced at Kendra, who was wearing a tunic with an enormous scarf pinned over her shoulder in the manner of a Highlander. It was clear that she doubted Kendra had a huge amount of expertise in this particular arena.

‘Do you think I should use powder? I’ve got this red bit, just here.’ Annie touched an imperceptible blemish below the corner of her mouth. ‘But I don’t normally and, when you get powder wrong, it can look awful.’

‘I don’t think you should.’ Sal flicked through the copy of
Brides
on the bed. ‘In here they say the important thing is to create, and I quote, “a dewy look of love”. They say moisturizer is the key. And who are we to disagree?’

The previous evening, they had all strolled through the garden with Freddie Bishop, who had been chosen to give Annie away, Letty taking the view that, with no father alive, somebody with whom Annie had spent every Christmas Day since she was a small child was an acceptable surrogate. The girls had complimented Letty on her immaculate herbaceous borders, with their array of silvery-green foliage and early autumn colour, which surrounded the marquee pegged out on the lawn.

‘Yes,’ she had replied. ‘I must say I had been worried about them. September can be difficult, you know. Not as bad as August, of course, but June’s really the month they’re at their best.’

By 11.45, the church was almost full of couples, who had entered two by two, just like they did into the Ark, thought Sal, as she watched Charlie, in his pale-grey morning suit, talking to his best man.

‘He’s chosen Mark because he says he’ll know what’s what and won’t forget the ring,’ Annie had told them the day before. ‘He’s not really his best friend. But that’s Charlie for you. He likes everything to go smoothly. And it makes sense, doesn’t it? You don’t want your friends mucking things up.’

Sal assumed that the couple beside them were his parents. The dad was shorter than Charlie and deeply tanned, and Charlie’s mum must have been very pretty when she was young. She had some kind of cream lacy thing on. Weren’t people, especially mothers, meant to steer clear of white at weddings? Maybe cream was OK. And that must be his younger sister beside her. There was a woman behind them with plastic hair with a flying saucer of navy balanced on it. She must be Mark’s wife, the one Annie had had such a tough time with that weekend.

At the opening chords of Vivaldi the congregation rustled to its feet, turning collectively to catch its first sight of the bride. Annie really did look beautiful as she walked slowly up the aisle on Freddie’s arm. The dress, which she had designed herself, had been made by an old friend of Letty’s who used to work with Hardy Amies. It succeeded in making her appear simultaneously ethereal and sexy. They had discussed that last afternoon on the roof how she wouldn’t be seen dead in one of those Princess Di meringue numbers. She didn’t want Charlie to bolt at the altar.

Sal was finding it hard to believe that she was at Annie’s wedding. It just didn’t seem real. She’d tried to be enthusiastic from the moment Annie had broken her news, but now that they were all here in the church she allowed herself to acknowledge that it was difficult not to feel that Annie was slipping away. It wasn’t the marriage, although there was something about marriage that did mean you were different. It was that neither she nor Kendra could really get the point of Charlie, and it wasn’t hard to work out that this was mutual. It wasn’t what he said but more that, during the few times they had all been together, he had made his lack of interest in them so obvious. But then she supposed that Annie mightn’t much take to Pete if it came to that. She had spent a lot of time with him over the summer. He was certainly different from Charlie and that guy he had as his best man.

The service passed quickly and in what appeared to be no time at all the couple were signing the register. Letty, smiling below her aquamarine feather-trimmed boater, stood beside Josh Sethrington
as they served as witnesses. Sal recognized a man desperate to have a fag when she saw him.

‘I haven’t been to many weddings,’ Kendra said, as small groups clustered afterwards outside near the cedars. ‘Are they always like this? A bit his and hers?’

‘I suppose at some weddings a lot of people know each other, but at this one we’re all a little strange to each other. After all, Annie didn’t meet Charlie’s parents till the other day. Maybe it’s because it happened quickly.’ Sal waved over at Lee, who she could see talking with Tania and what must be other colleagues.

Lee stood out in a loose cream suit worn over a flamingo-dominated Hawaiian shirt. He knew it was naff, but he had developed a thing for
Miami Vice
and, though this wasn’t a look he’d usually be seen dead wearing, a country wedding where nobody much knew him struck him as the perfect opportunity to indulge. The rest of the Torrington flock had chosen en masse to adopt a uniform of Rayban Wayfarers and long coats worn over tapered trousers. Tania’s was made by Scott Crolla, although she was beginning to think the damask might be a bit heavy for this mild weather.

‘Happy day, happy day,’ she flapped enthusiastically, wiping her forehead. ‘In my day, we didn’t go in for all this white-wedding stuff. It was a see-through Ossie down Chelsea Register Office and then a knees-up at San Lorenzo. But my, how conventional you lot are.’ She turned to Gioia, who appeared surprised to be the recipient of the observation. ‘I’m always telling my gang that we didn’t make such a blinding fuss of everything at their age.’ Gioia nodded. ‘I know you’re not ancient like me,’ Tania continued, ‘but I bet you’ve been to your fair share of events. People like us. We’ve seen it all – or, at any rate, a lot of it. How times change. We’re back in a much more conventional period now, that’s for sure.’ Kendra wasn’t certain how Gioia would respond to being bracketed with Tania but, to her surprise, she simply smiled, as if she agreed.

‘Tell you what, Gioia,’ Tania continued. ‘There’re those Pottert-ons talking to no one, which they won’t like one bit. Better do our stuff. They come out in hives if they have to spend too long with
just the other for company, but we must remember they
were
the matchmakers.’ She waddled over to where Tony and Trish stood in a cloud of Tony’s cigar smoke, Gioia following obediently behind.