Life and Soul of the Party (9 page)

I chalked the whole episode down to a drunken lapse in judgement. She was young, she was pretty, and it had been an awfully long time since someone like that had even noticed I was alive, let alone considered me worthy of attention. With me feeling this way and Polly looking the way she did, and most importantly of all, with Vicky at home looking after William, the best way forward was to never talk or think about Polly ever again and so I opted to put it all behind me and focus on the future. Things were good between me and Vicky, William was getting more wonderful with every passing day and barring the occasional lapse in control when I found myself reliving that moment with Polly, I was convinced that I’d moved on. Then one moment when I was least expecting it, as if from nowhere she popped back into my life and things were never the same again.

It was getting late, I was tired and the warm fuzzy feeling I’d achieved through an evening’s drinking was beginning to wear off to be replaced by a knot in my stomach about the essay that I had to hand in on Monday. Making my excuses to a group of Charlotte and Cameron’s friends I’d been talking to for a while, I went to seek out Paul (last seen talking to some of Cameron’s rugby-playing friends) for a kiss and a cuddle.

I spotted Paul through the crowd of bodies. He was standing by the open front door with his mobile to his ear. I waved to get his attention but he didn’t see me so I lingered in the hallway waiting for him to finish his call. Bored, restless and experiencing the weird sensation of missing someone who was less than twenty feet away from me I took out my phone and typed out ‘I love you!’ in a text message and then pressed send. Even as I returned my phone to my bag I was regretting my actions.

With no way of retrieving the text, the next best course of action seemed to be to send another message saying something self-deprecating along the lines of: ‘Please ignore: drunk while text messaging’, but at that moment Paul ended his call so I decided I’d tell him myself.

By the time I reached the front door though, he was nowhere to be seen. I scanned the smokers lined up outside Charlotte and Cameron’s bay window to see if, after eight years as a non-smoker, he had been tempted to have a crafty one for old times’ sake, but he wasn’t there either. Now I was really confused. It was only when my attention turned towards the road as a car drove past blaring loud music that I caught a glimpse of Paul’s green parka heading in the direction of Wilbraham Road. I tried to tell myself there were a million and one legitimate reasons why he could have left the party without telling me. I tried to tell myself that everything would be okay. But the more I tried to calm myself down the more I could feel myself reverting to my natural fall-back position of doubt and fear. So, without even bothering to head back inside and get my coat I followed him.

It felt weird trailing Paul in the darkness like I was some kind of poor excuse for a private detective. Weird and ridiculous and wrong. After all, what was I doing with him if I didn’t have it in me to trust him? The longer I followed him the more obvious it became that he wasn’t doing anything out of the ordinary or sinister and gradually I persuaded myself there would be some kind of straightforward explanation. Maybe it was a prank that one of the boys was pulling. Or he was heading to a late-night off-licence to get more drink. Or he was taking a short walk to clear his head. Or even that he was going to get a surprise for me and by doing what I was doing, not only was I ruining the surprise but also showing him first hand that I didn’t believe that he had really changed. I was almost ready to turn back when he suddenly came to an abrupt halt near the bus stop less than a hundred feet away from me. From his body language I could tell that he was nervous, and when a woman got out of a car parked on the opposite side of the road it looked as though he was preparing for a confrontation.

The woman and Paul began talking, their breath rising into the air and mingling overhead. I wanted to get nearer and so continued up the road but the closer I got, the fewer places there were to hide.

As soon as I stepped out of the shadows I recognised the woman immediately. There was no mistaking her. The slim figure. The shoulder-length hair. The grey coat that I’d admired the first time Paul had introduced us. Paul was still seeing Hannah. Or maybe he was going to start seeing her again. That made more sense. The way they were acting seemed like the beginning of something rather than the end. Perhaps he had called her. Told her that he’d changed his mind about me. Maybe he’d even told her that he still loved her.

I had no idea what I was going to say but I didn’t doubt for a second what kind of force I’d use to say it. I just couldn’t believe Paul would do something like this to me again. Worse than that, I couldn’t believe that I was still falling for his lies.

‘What’s going on?’ I yelled once I was within earshot. Paul and Hannah turned to look at me. Paul’s eyes widened in surprise but then he just closed them, his head hanging down like a worn-out boxer against the ropes. I was crying, which hadn’t been part of my plan at all. ‘Tell me what’s going on,’ I demanded. ‘Tell me what’s going on right now or I swear I’ll make you regret the day you met me.’

Paul opened his eyes. ‘It’s not what you think,’ he said. ‘I swear on my life it’s not what you think.’

‘Then what is it?’ I replied. ‘Stop scaring me, Paul! What’s going on here? Just tell me the truth.’

‘I’ve fucked up, Mel,’ he said quietly. ‘I’ve really fucked things up this time.’

A feeling of dread overcame me. I didn’t even want to blink in case I missed some microscopic change in his demeanour that might telegraph in advance what I was about to discover.

‘She’s pregnant,’ he said, looking away. ‘Hannah’s pregnant with my baby.’

I was leaning against the wall at the front of Charlotte and Cameron’s house, halfway through my cigarette and already contemplating having another when I heard the front door open and someone come outside. When I saw that the someone was Polly I looked away but could sense that she had come outside specifically to find me.

‘I saw you come out here a while ago.’

I nodded but said nothing.

‘Come on, Chris, I really did try my best to get out of tonight. I promise you I did. I told Tony I was feeling ill but he insisted we come.’

‘Don’t worry, it’s not your fault. It’s the price you pay for having people in common.’

There was a long silence.

‘How are you?’

‘I’m okay. You?’

‘I’ve been better.’

There was a hesitancy in her voice as if she had something further to say and I looked straight at her for the first time.

‘What’s up?’

‘Nothing,’ she replied. ‘It’s just . . . it’s just . . .’

‘It’s just what?’

‘I just met your wife. I didn’t mean to. Tony started talking to her. I didn’t know how to escape.’

Something deep inside my chest snapped. The two worlds that I had put such effort into keeping separate had collided and were spilling over into each other.

‘It really was an accident,’ said Polly.

This information didn’t make things any easier.

‘She seems really nice,’ added Polly.

‘That’s because she is.’

I threw my cigarette on the ground and stubbed it out with my heel.

‘Where does Tony think you are?’

‘Getting my phone from the car.’

‘Is anyone watching us?’

Polly turned and looked up at the house. ‘No.’

‘Still, though . . .’

‘You know this is difficult for me too.’

‘It’s difficult for everyone.’

Polly gently grazed my hand with her fingertips.

‘I love you, you know. I’m not expecting you to say it back. I just wanted you to know. I’d better go. Maybe I’ll see you inside later.’

‘Yeah,’ I replied. ‘Maybe later.’

‘She’s pregnant?’ I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. ‘She can’t be. It’s not true. Tell me it’s not true.’

Paul reached for my hands.

‘It’s true, Mel. I wish it wasn’t. But it’s all true.’

‘But how?’ I cried. ‘How can it be?’

He looked over at Hannah. ‘She called me while I was at the party. She said she needed to see me right away. She sounded upset. I didn’t want to come at all. But I felt like I owed her. I thought I could find out what she wanted and be back at the party before you’d even noticed I’d gone.’

I found the courage to look directly at Hannah. The moment our eyes met she looked away. There was over a decade between the two of us. A whole decade. When I was her age I was having the time of my life. Going to parties, bars and clubs with Paul, Vicky and Chris, with nothing more pressing on my mind than the ever-constant search for the next party. And yet here was Hannah, supposedly with her entire life ahead of her, embroiled in a ridiculous love triangle with a pair of jaded idiots old enough to be her significantly older siblings. For a few moments I almost felt sorry for her, but then I recalled my life was falling apart and that if anyone deserved sympathy right now, it was me.

It all happened just under two months earlier.

I work in legal recruitment. And that year my boss decided that rather than take us all out for a meal, like he usually did, he would book tables at the Midland Hotel for a joint office Christmas party along with several other companies.

Standing at the bar in the main ballroom, waiting to buy a round of drinks for the team that I managed, I felt a tap on my shoulder and turned to see Polly standing in front of me.

‘You don’t recognise me, do you?’ said Polly.

‘Of course I do,’ I replied. ‘You’re . . . what’s-her-name aren’t you?’

Polly laughed. ‘Now I
know
you don’t remember me.’

‘You’re Polly Matthews,’ I replied, ‘you’re twenty-eight, you work for a marketing consultancy specialising in food branding, you were born in Lincoln, you went to university in York and your middle name is Louise.’

It was all stuff that she had told me that night we’d first met and of course by referencing these facts I was also referencing in as roundabout a manner as I could manage the fact that we had kissed.

‘So you
were
listening?’ She asked.

‘Just to the interesting bits,’ I replied.

She told me that she was here at the hotel with her company and that her colleagues had been drinking since just after lunchtime; although she had only joined them around five, she had more than made up for lost time.

‘Well, you look sober enough to me.’

‘Believe me, I’m not.’

Just as we’d reached the end of the conversation, the DJ played an old Take That song and the whole ballroom erupted in collective euphoria.

‘Relight My Fire,’ she said, almost squealing with delight, ‘I love this song. You have to come and dance with me.’

‘I don’t dance,’ I replied.

‘And I don’t care,’ replied Polly. She grabbed my hand and led me to the dance floor.

We ended up dancing for over an hour: camping it up to boy bands, disco tunes and cheesy Eighties nostalgia – channelling the flamboyance of the music as an excuse to initiate physical contact: hand to hand, hands to waist then lower back, hips together swaying in time to the music. When an unfamiliar dance song came on and the dance floor emptied Polly led me out of the ballroom. We kissed in the foyer and only stopped when someone from Polly’s office passed by. Nervous and jumpy at nearly being caught out we made our way separately to the cloakroom to get our things and leave. Outside a waiting taxi, we were momentarily baffled by the driver’s question about where we wanted to go. For the first time that evening I took the lead and called out the hotel near Piccadilly station where we sometimes put up important clients. The only room they had left was a junior suite which cost a fortune, but I booked it on my credit card without hesitation. And as we made our way across the city centre I made sure I didn’t think about Vicky, William or even my friend Tony.

In fact, I made sure I didn’t think at all.

A bus pulled up at the stop where we were all standing. Before its hydraulic doors had even fully opened a trio of teenage boys streamed onto the pavement shouting and yelling abuse at the driver. The driver, a young guy with a shaven head and pierced eyebrow, refused to let the fact that he was in uniform get in the way of taking some form of retribution and coolly brandished the middle finger of his right hand in their direction. The boys, unsettled by his action, jeered him in an attempt to save face. But it was too late. The bus was already pulling away and the driver was no longer looking in their direction. Stubbornly refusing to give in to defeat they chased after the bus but gave up after twenty yards before changing tack and hurling abuse at the back of the bus until it had disappeared from view.

‘I’d better go.’ Hannah hazarded a brief glance in my direction but I said nothing. I wondered if Paul wanted to say something reassuring to her. That he’d call her. That they would talk later. That somehow this mess would get sorted out. But I knew he wouldn’t say a thing for fear of appearing disloyal. Hannah must have understood his predicament because she waited for a mini-cab to pass by, then crossed the road towards her car.

Suddenly every movement she made seemed to be imbued with some extraordinary significance. I could barely take my eyes off her as she opened up the car and put on her seat belt. It was almost as though I was expecting something out of the ordinary to happen now that the laws that governed the everyday activities of life had been irrevocably broken. But nothing out of the ordinary happened. A pretty young girl simply turned on the ignition of her car and cast a last glance across the road at us before driving away.

It was getting late and a fair number of people had already made the decision to go home. Chris, Laura, Cooper and I searched around for Melissa and Paul without success, then came to the conclusion that they must have left and right now, as Cooper tastefully put it, ‘were probably at Melissa’s going at it like there was no tomorrow’. Chris hadn’t seemed his usual self since I’d met up with him after my conversation with Tony, and when I asked whether he thought I should send Melissa a text to see if she was okay, his response was to shrug and tell me to do whatever I wanted. I made a mental note to text her when we got home just to be on the safe side.