Once in a Lifetime (9 page)

A lie, but a white one to make Lizzie feel better. Natalie’s stepmother, Bess, was a seamstress who made a lot of wedding dresses and Natalie had grown up hearing about bridal anxiety.

‘No you don’t,’ Lizzie replied, but she was smiling as she tried on her hen-night regalia.

As part of her preparations for the evening Natalie had dutifully bought pink fluffy horns, Tshirts emblazoned with Bride on Tour and had booked a booth in Laguna, a happening club where the karaoke machine got turned on at eleven and poles were put up on stage for anyone wanting to try pole dancing and willing to sign the insurance waiver first.

It was ten to eleven now. Lizzie knew there was a still long night ahead.

She was thrilled her friend was happy. Steve was such a nice guy: kind, polite, decent. But Natalie couldn’t help recalling how, when they were younger, the three of them had had such dreams about conquering the world. And now they were twenty-three and suddenly it seemed as if the world had shrunk. Anna was dating a guy who was perfect on paper but slightly dull in real life. Gavin worked in the bank, owned his own flat, played rugby with his old school friends at the weekend and wore rugby jerseys with the collars turned up. Give him another ten years and he’d have golf club membership and a rowing machine with clothes thrown over it in the bedroom. They used to laugh at guys like him, the safe guys, and now Anna was enraptured.

Lizzie was getting married in a week to the sweet and kind Steve - and she wouldn’t be wearing bright red, the way she’d always promised: ‘I’ll never go down the aisle in white: the roof of the church would fall in!!’

Instead, her dress was creamy lace with a bustier top to make the most of her assets; her dark curls would be covered by a demure veil, and the guest list included all the various horrors of relations that she’d sworn blind would never get invited.

‘You have to ask them,’ she’d said when Natalie dropped by and found her fretting over the seating plan. Great Aunt Mona couldn’t sit with Uncle Tom or they’d kill one another.

They hadn’t met without rowing in fifty years and it was unlikely they were about to stop now.

‘Why do you have to ask them?’

‘Because, that’s why.’

‘You never see any of them, except at other people’s weddings and funerals. I thought this day was supposed to be about you and Steve, not the usual outdated cliche of a wedding with ninety awful second-cousins-once-removed.’

Lizzie grimaced at having her words quoted back at her.

‘My mother would die if we didn’t have a big wedding,’

she said. ‘You-know what she’s like, Natalie. Anyway …’

Lizzie paused. ‘I know it sounds strange, but I like the idea of having them there. It makes it real when all the cousins and aunties show up. Like we wouldn’t be properly married if we did it on a beach somewhere without them all clucking over the waste of money spent on the flowers or giving out about the bones in the fish.’

Natalie laughed. ‘Point taken. But when they’re all squabbling because you’ve sat them too far from the top table, don’t say I didn’t warn you.’

‘Mum will sort them out,’ laughed Lizzie.

Once, thinking of Lizzie’s mum might have upset Natalie.

When she was a child, she’d felt different because she didn’t have a mum. She wasn’t the only kid in her class to have an unusual family set-up. There were two kids whose dads lived elsewhere, and one boy who had two families: his mother and stepfather, and his dad and stepmother, plus assorted brothers and sisters. And there was Eileen, a quiet mouse of a girl with long strawberry blonde hair she wore like a curtain hiding her eyes. She lived on her own with her mother and went mute whenever any event came up that involved dads.

Eileen might not have had a dad, but she had a mother.

Even when Natalie was seven and her mind was gently exploring such things, even when Eileen was by far the strangest kid in the class, even then Natalie knew that Eileen had something she didn’t: a real mother.

Dads sometimes got involved in other things or worked all hours, but mums didn’t. Mums were there. Except for Natalie Flynn’s. Her mum was dead. She had Bess instead, her stepmum, who was wonderful, and so kind, but still wasn’t her real mum. She’d said Natalie didn’t have to call her ‘Mum’, so Natalie hadn’t; and that simple thing, that name, had strangely made all the difference. Other kids had mums and dads: Natalie had Dad and Bess. And Bess, no matter how wonderful, wasn’t Mum.

Natalie forgot loads of things: the sheer pain of writing her thesis had burned off so many brain cells, but she’d never forget the first time she was asked: ‘What’s it like not to have a mum?’

Toby - now grown up and cute, and always friendly whenever she went to the garage he ran - had been a teacher’s nightmare at the age of seven: hyperactive and overfond of the word ‘why?’

Why does the sun go down at night?

Why are the people on the television so small?

Why do we have to go to school?

Why did your mum die? Are you still sad about her being dead?

Natalie could see her seven-year-old self: a skinny little thing, with those matchstick legs poking out of the grey-and-white school uniform and her dark hair tangled and coming out of its ponytail no matter how carefully Bess did it before she went to school.

‘I’m not sad,’ she’d said defiantly. Toby obviously wanted her to say she was sad, so it was important to say she wasn’t. Toby said girls couldn’t climb trees and she’d shown him he was wrong.

She’d skinned her knees in the process, but she’d shown him.

‘I’m never sad.’

Had she stuck her tongue out at him then? That she couldn’t remember. Probably. Sticking out your tongue was a vital way of winning arguments when she was seven, akin to pulling wimpy girls’ hair and jumping on to any bit of wall to dance along it.

She’d gone home and told Dad and Bess what Toby had said, and they’d exchanged that look that grownups did when they didn’t want to answer the question.

She had no memory of what her father had said, although she could remember subsequent conversations: God takes people sometimes, we don’t know why.

God’s responsibility had shifted vastly when the ten-year old Natalie had said: ‘I hate God.’

Bess hadn’t missed a beat. ‘We don’t always understand what God does. We just have to accept it.’

Natalie had never accepted it.

There were so many pluses in her life: a lovely family with Bess as the centrepoint, Dad being sweet and just a little bit not-of-this-planet, her half-brothers Ted and Joe, and good friends like Molly. She had so much, particularly when she looked at the disadvantaged kids whom Molly worked with. Compared to them, she was rich in every way.

Yet Natalie felt as if there was a part of her missing.

Lizzie and Anna seemed to think that any missing bit could be fixed with the right man. Natalie felt it was more than that. But what exactly?

‘Hi, beautiful, can I buy you a drink?’ she heard the guy with the skull-and-crossbones earring ask Lizzie.

Natalie could see him reflected in the bar mirror. He was tall, and good-looking enough for one of Lizzie’s model cousins to be giving him a hard, appreciative stare. Natalie took in the tousled fair hair and the honed body. She also saw Lizzie’s lustful look.

‘No thanks,’ Natalie broke in as politely as she could. ‘It’s a hen night. No men allowed.’

‘Spoilsport,’ murmured Lizzie, leaning on Natalie and smiling up at the guy.

‘No, really, no guys allowed,’ Anna said firmly, hauling Lizzie away.

He shrugged and walked off.

‘He was cute,’ Lizzie sighed. ‘I could take him for a test drive …?’

Anna and Natalie exchanged a look. It was indeed going to be a long night.

It was nearly two when Anna and Natalie realised that Lizzie was missing. The group had been dancing non-stop, so each time Natalie came back to their booth and didn’t see Lizzie,

she assumed her friend was dancing with the other girls.

‘I thought the same,’ said Anna, shouting so they could hear each other over the music.

Nobody else had seen her for an hour.

Natalie found Lizzie first. At the very back of the club, in a dimly lit spot beside the fire exit, she was perched on a man’s lap with her arms wrapped around his body and her mouth clamped to his as if they were giving each other mouth-to mouth resuscitation. One of his hands was tangled up in Lizzie’s dark hair, the other was burrowing up under her flirty dress, so her thigh was totally bared.

Natalie’s first thought was that her friend must be comatose to be behaving like this, but then she looked again. Lizzie was as ardent as the guy: she was writhing around on his lap, plunging her tongue into his mouth. It was the same guy who’d made a move on Lizzie earlier, the one with the denim shirt and the skull-and-crossbones earring. Lizzie had wanted this, Natalie realised: she was a willing partner.

‘Lizzie!’ shouted Natalie, trying to be heard over the throbbing bass notes of the music. ‘Lizzie!’

She shook her friend’s arm and Lizzie turned round, the crimson lipstick almost gone from her lips, leaving nothing but a giant red Munch-like scream smeared around her mouth from kissing. She smiled lazily at her friend, snuggled close to the man’s chest. Her eyes glittered with raw excitement.

It was the smile that hurt Natalie the most: a knowing, satisfied, mocking smile.

‘Lizzie, we’ve got to go,’ Natalie said, trying to stay calm in the face of this unrecognisable Lizzie.

‘Not yet,’ said Lizzie, still with that smile plastered across her face. She nuzzled into the man’s neck. ‘We’re having fun.’

Natalie decided that she’d have to try another approach.

‘This is her hen night,’ Natalie explained to the guy. ‘She’s getting married in a week. Her fiance’s a cop. He’s on the drugs

squad.’ This was, of course, entirely untrue, but she guessed it might be a deal-breaker.

Sure enough, alarm flickered in the guy’s face and he got up at speed, letting Lizzie fall unceremoniously to the floor.

‘Ouch!’ she roared.

Natalie and the guy ignored her.

‘For real?’ he asked. He meant about the drugs squad.

Natalie nodded grimly. ‘For real.’

Without a backward glance, the guy shoved the bar of the emergency exit and opened it. Cold wind and a gush of rain blasted in as he vanished out into the dark. Natalie shivered.

She glanced at Lizzie on the floor. Lizzie looked sulky now. She had a big tear on one side of the bodice of her dress where her admirer had been trying over-enthusiastically to access her boobs.

‘Home,’ Natalie said.

‘You ruined it all, Natalie!’ shrieked Lizzie.

‘Yes,’ Natalie agreed, ‘I ruined it all. Come on, let’s go.

Where’s your stuff?’

When Natalie hauled her back to their booth, there was no sign of her bag or coat there.

‘Is she OK?’ asked Anna.

‘Oh, fine,’ Natalie said brightly. No point in telling Anna what Lizzie had really been doing. ‘She’s tired and emotional.’ The too,’ sighed Anna. ‘And I’m exhausted. Can we go home now?’

‘Sure. I need to find Lizzie’s things.’

Lizzie’s coat was found in a heap on the floor under the table, but her bag was nowhere to be seen.

Lizzie was too out of it to be the slightest bit worried about this.

‘Cheap bag!’ she kept saying loudly. ‘Cheap bag.’

‘What’s inside it is what counts,’ Natalie said: ‘your wallet, keys and phone.’

‘Cheap, cheap ‘

Finally, Natalie gave up looking. The club was heaving by

now and she was tired. ‘Home,’ she said to Lizzie, then realised she couldn’t send Lizzie back to the flat she shared with Steve in that condition. ‘You’d better come with me.’

The next morning, Lizzie woke first and ran to the bathroom.

Natalie could hear retching, and the bedroom reeked of stale alcohol. Even the bed smelled of boozy sweat. Natalie got up and began stripping off the sheets. She couldn’t wait to wash them, to get rid of the memory of last night. There had been something disturbing about seeing her friend in such a terrible state. Lizzie had been more than drunk, she was out of control.

The pillowcase from her side of the bed was striped with make-up. Skin-cleansing hadn’t been high on the agenda when Natalie had finally got her back to the flat. She’d had enough trouble getting Lizzie into bed in the first place. It had taken a lot of cajoling. And then, in bed, Lizzie had shouted that nobody understood her and how horrible Natalie was being, when all she wanted was to have some fun. Then, suddenly, she’d lain down on the bed and fallen asleep in an instant.

‘Don’t do the bed,’ moaned Lizzie, staggering back into the bedroom looking like a representative of the undead. ‘I need to lie down, pleeese.’

‘You can lie down on the couch,’ Natalie said shortly. ‘This place stinks and I need to wash the sheets.’

‘Oh nooo.’ Lizzie lay down on the pile of dirty sheets and curled up into a ball. ‘I can lie here. I’ll wash them later.’

‘Later, if you remember,’ Natalie reminded her tartly, ‘you’re meeting Steve’s friend from San Diego. The one who went with them on the stag night - the wild one, remember? The one you were scared was going to take Steve to all manner of unsuitable clubs to meet unsuitable women.’

Lizzie was chalk white as it was, but at the mention of her fiance, her face began to look even more ghostly. ‘Shit.’

‘You can say that again,’ Natalie said.

‘Don’t, please don’t,’ begged Lizzie.

‘Don’t what?. Remind you about last night?’ Natalie thought of how she’d hauled Lizzie out of the club after giving up on the handbag, and of the people Lizzie had drunkenly bumped into on the way, threatening to start a fight over it, even though she was the one who’d bumped into them. Lizzie!

Funny, normally gentle Lizzie.

It had been a nightmare. And then the guy, the guy Lizzie had been with, poor Steve totally forgotten. That was the worst.