Walking Back to Happiness (27 page)

‘I feel like every time someone says what a great marriage we had in front of Louise, she’s remembering what I said and thinking what a hypocrite I am.’

‘No one will be . . . Listen, Juliet, you’re
entitled
to have everyone say how wonderful your man was.’ Emer turned her shoulder so she was looking into her face. ‘That’s fair enough. What I’m saying is that you don’t have to stop loving the past to enjoy the rest of your life. The universe has got more in store for you yet. Who knows what?’

Juliet made a noise that wasn’t agreement or disagreement. That’s what the books said.

‘It’s like I said to Lorcan, the Foo Fighters are a great band, but if Dave Grohl had said, “Nope, no more for me. I’m going to grieve for Nirvana for the rest of my life,” we’d never have had the enjoyment of them, right?’

‘Um . . .’

Had Lorcan lost someone? Juliet frowned, but Emer was carrying on.

‘Are you telling me that you’ve never talked to your sister about this since Ben died? In all these months? Juliet, that’s crazy. What do your family
talk
about?’

‘My nephew’s babysitting rota, mainly. It’s not that simple,’ said Juliet. ‘It was a really awkward conversation.’

‘Awkward how? Did she have a gun out?’

‘No! She . . .’ How come it was so easy to tell Emer this? Still, if it made her look less crazy. ‘Louise more or less told
me
that she had something going on with some other man. I don’t think she meant to say so much, but she was all twinkly and girlie, like she had to tell someone.’

‘Really?’ Emer leaned forward, agog. ‘Who?’

Roisin clattered in from the garden. ‘Muuuuum, Spike is all red.’

‘Get his hat. And take his inhaler.’ Emer flapped a hand in her general direction. ‘We’re talking.’

‘Can I get some—’

‘Get whatever you want. But not the red Coke – that’s for Lorcan.’

Roisin gave Juliet a particularly penetrating stare and lingered by the open door of the fridge, taking her time over the drinks selection, her ears practically swivelling like satellite dishes.

‘Roisin! You’ve five seconds before the bar closes,’ commanded Emer. ‘One, two, three, four . . .’

‘Aren’t you meant to leave gaps between the numbers?’ asked Juliet.

‘. . . five!’

Roisin grabbed the cans and half a bag of fun-size Twixes and ran out.

‘Louise didn’t say—’ Juliet began, but Emer was holding up a finger.

‘Wait,’ she mouthed, then spun round and clapped.

There was a clunk as Roisin, concealed behind the vegetable rack, dropped two of the cans, and a muffled ‘Feck!’

Emer got up, shooed her out and closed the back door. ‘That girl is going to grow up to be a spy or a gossip columnist,’ she said, not disapprovingly. ‘So what you’re saying,’ she said, settling herself back down at the table, her chin in her hands as if she was watching the telly, ‘is that every time you see your sister, she thinks about spilling the beans about her affair, and you think about slagging off your late husband. Well. You should have said.’

‘I know,’ said Juliet. ‘It’s been horrible.’

Emer gave her a sympathetic smile. ‘Juliet, I bet she barely remembers it. Don’t you think your husband
dying
would kind of take priority in most people’s memories?’

‘Not in Louise’s,’ sighed Juliet. ‘She’s the kind of person who remembers what you got her for Christmas in 1998. She’s the perfectionist in our family.’

‘Doesn’t sound so perfect to me. Is she still seeing this guy?’

‘No idea. She’s gone back to work and seems to spend every second when she’s not there with Toby.’ Juliet tried to dredge up what details she could remember. ‘To be honest, I was so annoyed that she’d been telling me to go to counselling when her own marriage was obviously not all it was cracked up to be that I left quite soon after that. I didn’t want to know any more.’

‘You didn’t even ask where they met?’

‘At some group or other, I think. I was a bit stunned. She went on about how he made her feel like a new person, not just a mummy, like Peter did. Peter’s an IT designer, bit of a geek. Quite a rich geek now, though. He likes those online games where you’re a wizard.’ Juliet tried to think of some other facts about Peter that didn’t make him sound dull. She couldn’t. ‘This other bloke was a bit more . . .’ She tried to remember exactly what Louise had said. ‘More in touch with himself. More physical.’

As she spoke, she saw Emer’s eyes gleam with intrigue.

‘What?’ Juliet asked.

‘Definitely not an unrequited crush on your husband?’

‘She’d hardly be telling me, would she?’ snorted Juliet.

Emer widened her eyes so much that Juliet could see white all around them. ‘Stranger things have happened.’

Suddenly, Juliet felt defensive and annoyed. ‘Well, not in my family. Ben and Louise . . . were friendly, but they didn’t have anything in common.’

‘OK,’ said Emer. ‘Forget I said anything. I’m an awful gossip. Back to the man in hand. This guy Mark. Do you like him?’

‘I think so,’ said Juliet. ‘Yes, I do.’

‘Then there you are!’ She clapped her hands. ‘Call it a date. What harm can it do?’

Juliet felt a fizz in her chest. Hearing that from Emer’s mouth, rather than her mother or Louise, somehow made her more inclined to agree.

Chapter 17

The days began to move more quickly now Juliet was busier and the exercise made her sleep through the night, and before she knew it, the day of the private view that Mark had talked about was upon her – the date that had seemed so far in the distance.

Juliet stood in front of her bedroom mirror, trying to work out what to wear while the pile of ‘wrong’ clothes on the bed got bigger and bigger. Nothing looked right, and she was running out of time and options.
That
was what was making her feel sixteen again, not the going-on-a-date part.

It’s not a date, she reminded herself. It’s just an evening out.

But it still felt weird. Juliet didn’t quite know the effect she was going for – she didn’t want to look like she was trying too hard, but at the same time there was a fizzing in her stomach that made her reach for something a bit more stylish than her usual jeans.

Minton sat on the bed and watched her, which wasn’t doing much for her churning emotional state either. He seemed confused. Juliet in a skirt wasn’t something he’d seen a lot of recently.

‘What do you think?’ she asked him lightly, twisting so she could see the back. ‘Black skirt and the gypsy top that maybe isn’t very fashionable any more, or denim mini and the black V-neck top that Louise said washed me out unless I wore twice as much lipstick as normal?’

Minton wagged his tail, uncertainly.

‘OK,’ said Louise. ‘Denim mini and the black top and the lipstick it is. And the big boots that your daddy never liked me wearing because he said I looked like I was about to kick over a motorbike.’

In for a penny, she thought. Might as well go out looking nothing like myself.

As she was zipping up the boots, the doorbell rang and Minton launched himself off the bed and skittered down the stairs to investigate.

Juliet followed more slowly. The boots meant she had to clump down each bare tread sideways and then moonwalk across the hall using entirely different muscles from normal. But it was liberating to have no one tell her she was an idiot for having bought boots she couldn’t stand up in.

‘Sorry to keep you,’ she said, when she eventually got to the front door. ‘Oh, hi!’

It was Lorcan, holding a couple of tins of paint.

‘Whoa!’ he said, looking up dramatically. ‘Are stilts back in?’

‘Shut up,’ said Juliet. ‘It’s fashion. And I’m going out somewhere I might need to look over people’s heads.’

‘You could just pay more and get tickets for the front,’ he pointed out.

‘It’s not a gig. I’m going to a private photography viewing, actually.’

‘Are you now? Who knew such things happened in Longhampton?’ Lorcan raised his eyebrows, pretending to be dazzled. ‘Bit out of my social
milieu
, private views . . . Anyway, how are you fixed for a bit of bathroom painting tomorrow? I can teach you the mysteries of bathroom gloss.’

He lifted the cans so she could read the colour: Indian Tea. It was exactly the old-fashioned green she’d wanted, to pick out the swimming-pool tiles around the shower, even though she didn’t remember telling him that.

‘Won’t bother fetching my ladder,’ he added. ‘I’ll let you do the high bits.’

Juliet couldn’t help noticing he was barely suppressing a giggle, and she gave him a light shove.

‘Stop laughing at my boots, Lorcan. They’re fashionable.’ She paused, suddenly struck with doubt. ‘Do I look ridiculous?’

‘
Noo
,’ said Lorcan. ‘You look great. Really . . . great.’

‘Really?’

He nodded.

‘Not too . . . dressed up?’

‘But not too dressed down either? Sounds like a date.’ He raised his eyebrows. ‘Ah, lookit, you’re blushing – it is a date.’

‘Not really. It’s just . . . a client of mine. His friend’s the organiser. I’ll probably only stay for half an hour, just to show willing – you know what it’s like at these things; they just need bodies there at the start so the artist doesn’t look like Billy No-Mates.’

Juliet knew she was talking too fast, and probably blushing, but Lorcan didn’t seem to be bothered by her apparent brazen hussyness. In fact he was nodding encouragingly. Like Emer had done.

‘Fair play to you,’ said Lorcan. ‘You can’t go wrong meeting new people. That’s what the guys in the band always said, anyway. As they cruised the backstage looking for new people to meet.’

‘Do you miss being out with the band, Lorcan?’ said Juliet, in a pretend sad tone. ‘Do you wish you got the same kind of groupie on the building circuit? Farrow and Ball-addicted MILFs, begging for your grouting?’

‘I do not. I was
terrified
of the groupies,’ he said. ‘Emer used to have to scare them off for me with her pinking shears.’ He sighed. ‘Hurricane Emer, we used to call her. Went through whole cities, left them flat in her wake. Don’t ever do cherry-brandy shots with her. Anyway –’ he raised the paint cans – ‘can I leave these till tomorrow?’

‘Feel free.’

He put them down in the porch, then wagged his finger at her. ‘Don’t you come rolling in with a sore head tonight, either. I don’t teach hung-over students.’

‘There’ll be no . . .’ Juliet began, then saw the twinkle in his eye. ‘I’ll be home by ten, Mum. What you should really be worrying about is me buying some awful picture you’ll have to hang.’

‘I’ll bring my hammer,’ said Lorcan. ‘Ah.’ He looked down and saw Minton standing behind her. ‘Do you want us to pet-sit for
you
tonight?’

‘Minton?’ she asked. ‘Do you want to spend the evening playing ticks and fleas with Florrie?’

Minton turned, quite deliberately, and jumped onto the sofa, where he curled himself into a tight, tiny ball.

‘I’ll take that as a no,’ said Lorcan.

The Memorial Hall in Longhampton was an unexpected thing of Arts and Crafts beauty, hidden in the middle of a lot of grey flats behind the equally unlovely concrete precinct. Its solid buttressed walls and jam-tart stained glass made it look as if a tornado had swirled it up from the middle of Chelsea and deposited it, like the Tardis, smack-bang in the middle of Longhampton’s unambitious town centre.

Juliet had only been in once, for the dancing lessons Louise had insisted her bridesmaids and ushers attended before her wedding, so they wouldn’t show her up on the dance floor. She and Ben had had one giggling, awkward foxtrot lesson, during which the stroppy teacher had loudly marked them all out of ten and given her and Ben two for skill, nine for effort.

The streetlights were coming on along the road, bathing the hall in an early-evening glow, and as Juliet approached the steps, she couldn’t help seeing that evening in a rosier glow too. It had been lovely, once they’d got the hang of it. They’d picked it up quicker than the other couples, because she only needed to glance at Ben to know what he was thinking. He’d steered her round the floor with a mere flick of his blond eyebrows, and she’d let him know all about her mangled toes with hers.

Mark looked like the kind of experienced man who knew how to dance properly. She bet he had some black tie in his wardrobe that he brought out for smart charity events. Juliet could see him swinging round the floor with that confident smile, making it easy for his partner to follow, dancing with everyone, knowing the right thing to say . . .

She took a deep breath to stop the flock of butterflies that had swarmed into her throat, jostling with the guilty memories.

This isn’t about grabbing another man, Juliet reminded herself. It’s just a trial run. With a good-looking, intelligent bloke who has an interesting job, lots of books in his house, who’s kind to his dog. That’s enough to be going on with.

It was just a shame she was meeting him in a place with so many memories; but then there wasn’t a corner of Longhampton that didn’t have some cobweb of her and Ben’s shared past clinging to it, so she’d just have to learn to live with it, or do all her dating online from now on.

Juliet steeled herself and headed for the door, where an easel was displaying a big poster of a tree with three dogs and a sheep underneath.

Longhampton’s Year

by Adam Perkins

‘Hello! Sorry I’m late!’

She spun round and saw Mark hurrying up the steps towards her.

Her stomach flipped over: he looked crisp and handsome, in a stone-coloured linen jacket over a white shirt, with navy trousers and a blue checked scarf thrown over the top. It would have looked a bit foppish on someone else, but Mark carried it off. More than carried it off. The admiring look he gave her was the final touch.

‘Have you been waiting long?’ he asked.

‘No, I’ve just got here.’ Juliet was glad she’d bothered with the boots. Without them, she’d have been a bit underdressed. With them, she reached nearly up to Mark’s ear. He seemed happy to see her, anyway.