The Waitress (31 page)

She started attacking her moules with gusto, hardly tasting anything. Dan looked at his parents for support but they both frowned their disappointment at him. How had this all turned sour so suddenly? He had to rectify the situation; there was a whole meal to get through. He gave a little cough and turned to Geraldine. ‘Go on then,’ he said. ‘Tell them whatever you want to tell them.’

‘Oh goodie!’ cried Harriet. Dan unclenched his buttocks and listened to what Geraldine wanted to say.

Her face lit up. ‘It’s nothing official,’ she prefaced quickly, wiping her hands on her serviette. ‘And this is strictly between us four . . .’ she looked round at them all before whispering, ‘I’ve been looking at some rings.’ She said ‘rings’ as if it was a magic word, and so it appeared to be, because suddenly Dan found himself watching his life unravel before him. Harriet and Albert jumped to their feet quicker than if royalty had arrived and started exchanging hugs and wiping lipstick marks off cheeks. It felt like an hour of this went on before he found his voice and started insisting that Geraldine was just
looking
and instructing them not to get too excited, but it was just doggy paddle in the face of an incoming tidal wave.

‘Oh darling!’ insisted Harriet. ‘Don’t spoil the moment!’

‘It’s not a moment,’ Dan said in a shrinking voice and he was absolutely right; it wasn’t ‘a’ moment, it was ‘the’ moment. It was the moment his mother had been waiting for ever since she’d met Geraldine. And the moment his father had hoped for ever since they’d packed him off to Oxford. And the moment Geraldine had dreamed of ever since she first saw Dan. Everyone was having the moment of their lives, and there he was, not realising it was one at all. How wrong could you be?

Albert ordered champagne, and in the meantime poured more wine for everyone.

‘A toast!’ He announced. ‘To the happy couple.’

Dan downed his wine in one and when he glanced at his father found himself basking in his proud beam. He felt a fork of lightning momentarily light up his insides, and then, when his father looked away, all was dark again. The next ten minutes passed in a blur, but by the end of the hors d’oeuvres he was sure of one thing. It was official.

And by the end of the main course, he was sure of another thing. Geraldine had eaten a dodgy moule.

19

Dan had not noticed his wife-to-be disappear to the Ladies because he was in a bit of a daze, but after his parents had finished their main course, and hers still lay untouched, he began to suspect. This had happened once before at a May ball. She hadn’t been able to resist eating the oysters and then her body hadn’t been able to resist bringing them up again. Her ball dress, which had impressed 250 drunk Oxford students, had then made an impressive £7.50 for Cancer Research. He excused himself and found the Ladies. He waited outside for a while until he was fairly sure no one else was in there and crept surreptitiously inside.

He could hear very feeble sobbing.

‘Gerry?’ he whispered.

One of the cubicle doors moaned.

‘Dodgy moule?’ he asked it.

Another moan.

‘Do you think you’ll be able to get to the car?’

Silence. Then a large sniff.

‘I can’t bear it.’

‘Hey hey,’ he coaxed gently. ‘We’ll get you home in no time.’

‘No!’ she cried. ‘I mean why me? This was not how I pictured celebrating the news about my engagement.’

Dan couldn’t agree more. ‘Come on,’ he said, ‘you’ll laugh about this one day.’ Geraldine responded by being violently sick and Dan took her point: He didn’t believe it either. In the silence that followed, he found he had absolutely no idea what to say to make it all better. Then, after the briefest pause, some slightly different noises from behind the cubicle door began all too vividly to convey that the moule was not only affecting his chosen one’s upper digestive tract and he decided he had to get out of there before they were both sick. He told Geraldine to come out as soon as she could and they’d go straight home. She groaned an agreement.

He joined his parents and told them what had happened, trying very hard not to remember the noises. Harriet was devastated. She’d had the moules too, but hers had been fine. Albert pointed out that it usually only took one. But if only they’d swapped bowls, Harriet explained. It was just too bad. It was more than too bad, it was very upsetting.
Very
upsetting. She was devastated. Poor Geraldine, was she
very
bad? Albert snapped at her not to get so upset which upset her. This upset his equilibrium, so he started demanding to talk to the maître d’. Dan hoped that Geraldine would come out of the toilets before the maître d’ came out of the kitchen. He’d rather see her projectile vomit across the restaurant than see his father lose his temper.

To his relief Geraldine appeared. He jumped to his feet
and
collected their coats as she approached. Her face was grey and her hair hung in damp, limp strands. She couldn’t even speak to his parents but just gave a pathetic wave goodbye and followed Dan out. She was sick twice on the journey home and from the way she ran upstairs Dan suspected that more was going on than she’d let on. He didn’t know legs could do that.

She rushed straight to the bathroom while he got undressed and lay in bed waiting for her to join him.

Two hours later, he woke up and looked at his clock. It was midnight. He looked over to Geraldine, but the bed was empty. Oh no, she hadn’t been sick again, had she? He would go and make her a hot drink, or just be with her . . .

Four hours later, he woke up and looked at his clock, then looked over to Geraldine, but the bed was empty. Not again? Blimey, that was one bad moule. It had probably been a druggie and alcoholic. He chuckled to himself and then stopped. Poor Geraldine. She was going to feel awful at the wedding. He wondered if Katie would be staying at the same hotel as them. His eyes opened wide. Was Katie actually going ‘with’ Hugh? He heard a sort of low bellowing noise from the bathroom. Ah, Geraldine must be feeling better now. He’d check that she was OK when she came back. He turned over and plumped his pillows.

Four hours later, he woke up and looked at his clock. Eight a.m. Bloody hell. Time to get up. He wondered if Geraldine would be up to it or if she’d rather have a little lie in. He looked over to her, but the bed was empty. Poor thing. She must have been sick again. He got up and took
a
shower. He’d make her a nice strong cup of coffee. He checked his post while waiting for the kettle to boil. Then he pulled down Geraldine’s favourite mug, made her a pot of coffee, made her some plain toast as well – good for the stomach – and went to find her.

He opened the bathroom door and stopped. Geraldine was sitting on the floor, still in last night’s clothes, her back curved against the bath, eyes staring at the floor. Her dress was damp with sweat; her lips were white; her face was green. It was an ugly sight and Dan was suddenly very afraid.

‘Bloody hell,’ he whispered. She gave a flicker of recognition. ‘I-I brought you some breakfast,’ he tried. Another flicker. ‘Come on,’ he knelt down beside her. ‘It’ll do you good.’

She whispered something inaudible.

‘What’s that?’

‘Go,’ she breathed hard, ‘away’.

‘Why?’ he asked. ‘What have I done?’

She bent her head down and started crying. When he put his arm round her she shrugged it off.

‘I have been sick –’ she managed.

‘I know –’

‘
All
,’ she whispered, ‘night.’

‘Oh my God! I had no idea –’

‘No. You were too busy sleeping.’ She took a breath. ‘Bastard.’

‘You should have woken me.’

‘I couldn’t stand up!’

‘Oh my God.’

Neither spoke for a while.

‘Shall I call a doctor?’

She shook her head.

‘Good way to lose weight for Sandy’s wedding, eh?’ he whispered. ‘You’ll be thinner than the bride.’

She moaned. ‘I can’t go to the wedding.’

‘Why not?’

She looked at him. He inched away and looked back at her.

‘Do I look ready for a wedding?’ she asked.

‘Not at the moment, but you’ve got make-up, haven’t you?’

She dry-retched and immediately shuffled down into a foetal position, moaning. She let him stroke her hair, then he helped her sit back up again.

‘God,’ he said, ‘I’m really sorry, I had no idea.’

She managed a weak nod.

‘I won’t go,’ he said suddenly.

She looked up at him with sudden focus. ‘Oh no,’ she said. She took a piece of toast and gave it a tiny bite. ‘You are
going
to that wedding,’ she breathed, after the toast had gone down. ‘
And
you will explain exactly how bad I look
and
you will take the present I spent four hours hunting down and wrapping.’

‘But I can look after you,’ he implored.

‘Hah!’ even without any bile left of her own, she could still fill the word with enough of it to unnerve him. ‘I needed you last night. Not now.’

Dan scrunched his eyes shut, waiting for the feeling of wretchedness to go. ‘I’ll never leave you alone again,’ he said. They both started at the sound of the phone. He jumped up. ‘Back in a mo.’

When he came back, she had finished the toast and started the coffee.

‘Great news,’ he said. ‘That was my mum. She’s coming right round. She said it’s only what your mum would have done if she lived in the country and she’s going to be your mum too now.’

Geraldine started really crying.

‘What’s wrong?’ he asked.

‘I’m so happy,’ she replied.

When Dan appeared in the café kitchen later that morning, Katie was so surprised to see him that she asked what the hell he was doing there. The weather was so good today that the café was exceptionally quiet. They were overstaffed as it was, so even with Sukie at an audition, Katie could easily have taken the day off without Dan being here. She’d been feeling more and more frustrated as the weather had got more and more glorious and the café more and more empty. So seeing Dan unexpectedly – now making the ratio of staff to customers an impressive five to one – was the icing on a cake made of spleen.

Even so, she hadn’t intended to sound quite as aggressive as she did, and would have happily apologised if Dan hadn’t answered her back quite so sharply. Her only possible response to that was to up the aggression and add knobs, and before she knew it they were rowing. The row took a turn for the better when she found out that Geraldine had been ill all night while he had slept, and was now laid low at home. Now she really had something to stick her teeth into. She was appalled on behalf of
women
everywhere. Poor Geraldine. How would he have felt if Geraldine had slept through an entire night of him being sick? (But if she’d woken him –) She shouldn’t have
had
to wake him (But he wasn’t bloody psychic –) And why on earth was his poor mother having to travel across London to look after his girlfriend? (Because she had volunteered to –) Would Geraldine’s father do the same for him? Dan was momentarily bamboozled. Hah.

‘My mother and Geraldine are very close,’ he said, ‘especially now.’

‘“Especially now”?’ repeated Katie. ‘What, now that Geraldine’s vomiting from both ends? Your mother sounds fascinating.’

‘You wouldn’t understand,’ he said.

‘Well, I am only a waitress.’

‘Talking of which, don’t you have work to do?’

‘Ah yes,’ said Katie, looking round the near-empty café. ‘I’m here instead of being driven down a winding country lane in a convertible to a gastro pub.’

Dan slapped his forehead. ‘I forgot!’ he cried. ‘You had a date with Hugh! But you’re covering Sukie because I wasn’t going to be here. I thought we’d be understaffed! And now I’m here anyway!’ He scrunched his eyes shut, to stop the feeling of wretchedness that was beginning to feel a part of him. He opened them again and looked at Katie. ‘What can I do to make it up to you?’

Katie drew herself up short, wondering how Geraldine ever kept sane.

‘It was not a date,’ she said primly, ‘and you can’t make it up to me.’

‘There
must
be something, oh Always-Right-One.’

Katie gave him a wry grin. ‘Ah, but if I let you make it up to me I shall lose all my power.’

Dan stopped suddenly and Katie chose this moment to walk past him and out of the kitchen. When she came back five minutes later, she had Hugh with her. She was hoping she might get away early. Hugh was wearing his weekend outfit – pleated-front chinos, a stripy shirt under a round-necked sweater. On his feet, Hush Puppies.

‘Look who I found!’ said Katie. ‘Dressed to party! Lock up your daughters!’ She took an appreciative look at Hugh, before turning back to Dan. ‘And your wildlife,’ she added.

He was looking pensive and barely acknowledged Hugh.

‘I was just wondering,’ started Katie, ‘as most of Porter’s Green seems to be at a park instead of here, could I go now?’

‘I think I’m going to go back and look after Geraldine,’ he said quietly.

‘Oh,’ said Katie.

There was a pause as she realised this meant she couldn’t go early.

‘Oh,’ said Hugh, ‘that’s a shame. We were going to ask you if you wanted a lift to the wedding.’

Dan blinked. ‘Were you?’ He gave Katie a surprised look. She gave one to Hugh. Hugh gave it straight back to Dan.

‘Well,’ Hugh shrugged, ‘seems mad for us all to go up separately. If we collect your stuff on the way we’d be there in a jiffy.’

Dan looked at his watch. ‘Hmm,’ he said. ‘I have
definitely
overstaffed. And the weekend staff do know what they’re doing.’ He looked outside. ‘And the weather is lovely,’ he sort of muffled to himself. He stood for a while, seemingly weighing something up in his mind; something that was tricky to get on the scales.

‘Well,’ said Katie, ‘we’ll let you think –’

‘No,’ cut in Dan. ‘Let me just call Gerry.’ He nipped out the back.

Katie turned to Hugh. ‘What did you say that for?’ she whispered.

‘I was only being polite,’ he whispered back. ‘I thought he’d say no and let you go. How did I know he might say yes?’