Tonight was the night. It was Tom’s twenty-first, and his parents were throwing a big party. It seemed like the perfect time to tell him I loved him.
‘Carrie? Why are you muttering?’ Megan whispered, as we were ushered out of the cold into the chandeliered hallway of Hudson Grange, and divested of our coats by a uniformed doorman.
‘I’m not,’ I said, a flush rising up my throat. In truth, I was rehearsing my opening lines in my head.
‘Tom, we’ve been friends for nearly a year now, but the thing is, I’m in love with you…’
‘Tom, I feel as if I’ve known you forever, and even though you’re three years older than me…’ Why would I mention my age?
‘Tom, I love you, and I think that, maybe, you have feelings for me too.’
‘Tom, last night I dreamt we were in bed, listening to a thunderstorm, and you kissed the side of my neck…’
‘Tom, I love you.’
‘Carrie!’ Megan finger-snapped me back to the present, where the air was alive with food smells and the sound of chatter and music. ‘You’ve got a weird look on your face,’ she said, tugging some strands of hair from my backcombed heap, and arranging them around my cheeks. Tom liked redheads. His mentioning it a few weeks ago had seemed significant.
‘I’m fine,’ I lied.
Megan gave me a despairing look. ‘We’re not gatecrashing, we’ve been invited,’ she reminded me, which wasn’t completely true. I’d been invited, and Megan had leapt at the opportunity to come as my ‘plus one’. She’d been angling to set foot in Hudson Grange since the moment I told her about Tom. Probably because his father owned a string of hotels, and was rich and well-connected. Things like that mattered to Megan. Tom didn’t even live at Hudson Grange. He’d only agreed to the party to please his mother.
‘I feel a bit sick,’ I confessed, smoothing my hands over the chiffon dress Megan had helped me choose, which flattered my curves without being clingy. Silver peep-toe heels had elevated me above my usual five feet two, but I hadn’t quite mastered walking in them without looking as if I’d sprained my ankles.
‘You’ve nothing to feel sick about, you look great,’ Megan said, plucking a designer brand lipstick from her clutch, and dabbing at my puckered lips. ‘Stop chewing your mouth.’
‘I’d have been better drawing on some whiskers,’ I said, when she’d finished. ‘At least it would make him laugh.’
‘Whiskers?’ She aimed a dazzling smile at an expensively clad couple, seeming perfectly at home in such grand surroundings, reminding me how very different our backgrounds were; that her parents had paid for her education at Royal Bedworth Girls’ School, while I’d been there on a scholarship, and that her mother was descended from royalty. ‘Why are you talking about whiskers?’
‘It was a joke, because Tom’s training to be a vet,’ I said, adding, ‘he’s never seen my legs.’
‘You’ve got a pair, what else does he need to know?’ An air of suppressed excitement was making her wide grey eyes look extra shiny. ‘Why are you fretting?’
‘I’m not,’ I mumbled, wondering if I should just come clean about my true feelings for Tom. But they were precious, and Megan was withering on the topic of love because of her parents’ divorce, and I knew she’d probably tease me and spoil things.
‘Would you like a drink?’ A passing waiter stopped and offered his silver tray, eyes fixed on Megan’s stretch-knit dress, which had a cut-out panel that displayed her cleavage. As usual, she looked like she’d stepped off a catwalk, with her swishy black hair framing cheekbones you could cut yourself on.
‘Thanks.’ She helped herself to a flute of champagne, then stiffened. ‘Is that him?’ Her gaze moved past me and narrowed. ‘You didn’t tell me he was gorgeous.’
Heart exploding, I spun around to see Tom descending the sweeping staircase, hands in his trouser pockets.
‘Carrie!’ Brightening, he jumped the last few steps. ‘Thanks for coming.’ He tugged at his bow tie as though it was strangling him. ‘I wasn’t sure you would.’
Really? ‘Hi,’ I said, feeling shy. Seeing him in such different surroundings, scrubbed up and clean-shaven, his dark hair neater than usual, was disconcerting. He was wearing aftershave and the scent ignited my senses.
‘You look like nice,’ he said, his Marmite-coloured eyes grazing my hair, which immediately felt too bouffy. ‘I like the dress.’
Resisting an impulse to cover myself with my hands, I muttered, ‘Thanks.’ Feeling more was required, I added, ‘You too. Nice, you look.’ Now I sounded like Yoda.
I handed over a card and a gift-wrapped picture of his dog, which I’d had framed. Hovis – so-called because he resembled a small, brown loaf – was the three-legged terrier I’d rescued from the side of the road the year before, on my way to college, and had driven to the nearest vet’s – the one where Tom was working as part of his veterinary training.
‘Happy Birthday,’ I said, trying and failing to screw up the courage to kiss him. I’d never done it before and worried we might end up bumping noses.
‘That’s nice of you.’ His face relaxed into his familiar crinkly-eyed smile. ‘I hope you won’t be bored,’ he said. ‘Most of the guests are people my father knows, and relatives I haven’t seen for years.’
‘’Course not,’ I said, in lieu of a witty comeback. Normally we chatted easily, but normally we’d be at the pub, or watching a film with his house-share friends, or walking Hovis on the beach, not standing in a hall that could have passed as a hotel lobby.
Aware of Megan’s barely concealed impatience, I said, ‘I hope it was okay to bring a friend.’ He turned his head, as if he’d only just noticed I wasn’t alone. ‘This is Megan Ford.’
‘Hi, Megan.’ He nodded politely.
‘Hello, birthday boy.’ Why was she using her flirty voice? ‘I’ve heard a lot about you,’ she said, dancing her fingernails up his arm as she tilted her cheek for a kiss.
‘All good I hope?’
A small gasp escaped me, as Tom’s lips briefly touched her skin. Why hadn’t I kissed him? Now Megan had been more intimate with him than I had.
‘Carrie’s always going on about your little walks with that adorable dog you adopted,’ she said, though I knew for a fact she hated dogs, and had pulled a horrible face when I showed her a picture of Hovis. ‘Unlike me, she loves being outdoors.’ She threw me an ‘aren’t you adorable?’ look, reducing my status to that of annoying sister. ‘When she hasn’t got her head buried in a maths book.’
She made it sound as though studying accounts was missing the point of life, but before I could defend myself, she prised my unopened card and gift from Tom’s hand, passed them back to me, and slipped her slender arm through his.
‘Your home is amazing, you have to give me a tour,’ she said. ‘Then maybe you can introduce me to your parents. I’d love to pick your father’s brain.’
Tom threw me a comical look over his shoulder, but let her propel him towards a set of double doors, which were open to reveal a high-ceilinged room, strung with bunting and silver balloons, and filled with people in evening dress, talking over each other.
I dumped his gift and card on a curvy console table and scuttled after them, stiff-legged in my heels, accepting a drink from the waiter’s tray on the way. When I looked up, I saw Megan laughing – inappropriately loudly – at something Tom had said, and was hit by a wave of jealousy.
‘What are you doing?’ I said half an hour later, dragging her into a side room, away from the blaring jazz and over-dressed press of gym-honed bodies.
‘What do you mean?’ Megan wrenched from my grasp, a frown marring her face. ‘I was trying to get Tom to dance.’
‘He hates dancing,’ I said peevishly.
‘He won’t when I’ve finished with him.’ Megan grinned, and adjusted her dress with a sexy wiggle.
‘He likes the Red Hot Chilli Peppers, not music with trumpets,’ I said, with the logic of a grumpy toddler.
‘Well, maybe he fancies a change as it’s his special birthday.’ Megan double-checked her breasts were where they should be. ‘Where are his friends, anyway?’
‘They didn’t want to come,’ I said. ‘It’s not that sort of party.’
Her eyes expanded. ‘It sounds like his father is right and he’s been hanging out with the wrong people,’ she said.
I’d seen her chatting at length with Mr Hudson – an older, more polished version of Tom, with the same, thick dark hair – who’d seemed enchanted by her, and no wonder. She was the sort of girlfriend he’d think perfect for his only son. Tom had been standing stiffly to one side, clutching a bottle of beer, eyes scoping the room (for me, I liked to think). I knew he didn’t get on with his father, who was always on at him to join the company, so seizing the opportunity I’d darted over and tried to join in, but they were discussing something political I couldn’t grasp. I’d gone to the buffet and Tom had hastily followed. He tried to introduce me to his mother, an elegant woman in a shimmering navy dress, but she was immediately distracted by a woman choking on an olive, then Megan dragged him away.
‘His friends are nice,’ I said, too loudly now, and a middle-aged man looked over at me as though I’d puked on the carpet. ‘They don’t fit in here and neither do I.’
‘Oh, Bagsy, stop being such a killjoy.’ I wished she wouldn’t use that silly nickname; a shortened version of Carrier-bag, which was hardly any better. ‘Hey, I’ve seen the way Tom’s cousin was looking at you.’ Her smile danced back and she grabbed my hands. ‘I think he fancies you.’
‘Ed?’ I said, pulling my chin in. ‘The fat one, with the hair?’
‘Sshh!’ Megan giggled. ‘He’s cute. I bet he wouldn’t mind dirty-dancing with you.’
‘I don’t dance dirtily, I want to talk to Tom, but you’re monopol… mompelising… keeping him to yourself.’ I’d had a couple more drinks to steady my nerves, while Megan had worked the room, clutching Tom’s arm. I couldn’t avoid noticing how perfect they looked together – both tall and good-looking, and easy in a room of people who earned more in a month than my family earned in a year.
‘Come on, silly.’ Megan backed away, shimmying her shoulders. ‘I’ll tell Tom you’re feeling lonely and send him over.’
‘No, don’t tell him that!’ I stumbled after her, but she was quickly absorbed by a mass of people, including Tom, listening to a member of the band playing a trumpet solo. Tom caught my eye and pretended to stifle a yawn, which made me smile. I made to go over, but Megan whispered something in his ear, and he avoided looking at me after that.
The next hour or so passed in a blur of one-sided conversation with Cousin Ed, who turned out to be an expert on cricket, and loved to talk about it.
‘I’m so glad you invited me!’ Megan gushed at one point, clutching my hand in passing and planting a kiss on my cheek. ‘I think I’m in love!’
My heart lurched. ‘Look, about Tom,’ I said, keeping hold of her fingers. ‘I know I’ve not said anything before, but—’
‘Ooh, somebody wants that dirty dance!’ She spun me around to face Ed, before diving out of earshot, and I found myself drawn into an uncoordinated jive.
Afterwards, panting and queasy, I managed a chorus of ‘Happy Birthday’ when the band struck up, and cheered along when an embarrassed-looking Tom blew his candles out, because I didn’t want him to see me looking miserable. All the time, a knot was tightening in my chest. I couldn’t even get him alone, never mind pour out my feelings. In desperation, I drank some more champagne. It was now or never.
Rebuffing Ed’s request for my phone number, I scanned the room, and caught sight of Megan, ushering Tom through a set of French doors, onto a patio lit with fairy lights.
I followed, as fast as my high heels would allow, with no idea of what I was going to say, but words deserted me when I saw Megan’s arms snaking around Tom’s neck, and his hands resting on her hips. Time seemed to slow, then speed up again, as she crushed her lips to his.
Turning, I fled through the crowded room and into the hallway, where I fumbled out my phone. ‘Dad, can you come and get me?’
Then I sank down on the stairs and burst into tears. Why had Tom been avoiding me? Maybe he was ashamed to be seen with me in front of his family.
‘Everything OK?’
My head whipped up. It was Mr Hudson, looking more impatient than concerned, as if I was a wet leaf that had blown in and got stuck to his shoe.
‘Fine,’ I muttered, my false eyelashes dropping in my lap like a pair of caterpillars. ‘Too much to drink, that’s all.’
He gave a disdainful smile that was nothing like Tom’s, before striding away without another word.
I scrubbed at my face with a tissue, located my coat and headed outside, catching my reflection in an ornate wall mirror on the way. It looked like someone had rubbed coal in my eyes, and my backcombed hair had collapsed like a soufflé.
‘Carrie?’
Out on the steps, I turned to see Tom, and backed into the shadows so he couldn’t see my tear-ravaged face.
‘I have to go,’ I said, pretend-rummaging in my purse.
‘Already?’ Backlit as he was by the twinkling chandelier in the hallway, I couldn’t make out his expression. ‘I really wanted to talk to you, but…’
‘You don’t have to,’ I said. I couldn’t bear for him to know I’d seen him with Megan, or to hear his excuses. ‘I’ve an early start tomorrow, anyway.’
‘Oh.’ Was that disappointment or relief? ‘Megan said you were—’
‘She’s so lovely, isn’t she?’ I blurted.
‘She seems nice.’ He sounded cautious. ‘My father certainly likes her. He said he might have a job for her.’
My heart plunged into my hideously uncomfortable shoes. ‘I knew she’d be perfect for you.’ I sniffed surreptitiously. ‘That’s why I invited her.’ What the hell? ‘She really likes you, I can tell.’
‘Carrie…’ He seemed about to say more, when Megan appeared like a heat-seeking missile and rested a proprietorial hand on his shoulder.
‘Are you going?’ she said, sounding surprised. ‘It’s only eleven o’clock.’
Tom didn’t move, as though her touch had turned him to ice.
‘I’ve an early start,’ I said, injecting my voice with a brightness I was far from feeling. ‘I’m going to Manchester, to see Sarah.’
‘Oh, yes, your sister’s at uni there.’ Megan gave Tom a meaningful look. ‘Another little brain-box, and engaged to her boyfriend already.’
‘You didn’t mention you were going,’ Tom said, coming to life again.
‘You have fun, Carrie, I can make my own way home.’ Megan spoke at the same time, her eyes glittering as though full of stars. ‘Looks like your ride’s here.’
I turned to see Dad’s car sweeping up the drive. The headlights captured Tom and Megan posed in the doorway, like a perfect couple in a lifestyle magazine, and I wondered how I’d ever thought that Tom would look at me as anything more than a friend.
‘’Bye, then,’ I said, pulling on a smile, feeling as if my heart had snapped in two. ‘See you!’
As I stumbled and tripped down the rest of the steps, landing in a knicker-revealing heap, I had no idea it would be ten long years before I would see either of them again.
‘I’d like a bouquet for my girlfriend’s birthday, please.’
Nine words I’d hoped not to hear. They weren’t unreasonable, considering the man was standing at a flower stall, but I’d only been there an hour.
‘A bouquet,’ I echoed, trying to radiate confidence. Luckily, he was staring at his phone with a lobotomised expression, while I cast my eyes around for inspiration. An array of colours from the abundance of flowers arranged in silver buckets, bounced off my retinas, and their mingled perfume, combined with the tang of the sea, made my nostrils tingle.
‘Roses?’ I prompted, my gaze settling on a cluster of silky white petals.
‘Christ, no.’ He looked at me as if I’d offered him arsenic. ‘We’re not at that lovey-dovey stage.’
‘They don’t have to be red,’ I said. ‘White is for… friendship?’ I was certain he had no more idea than I had. It was years since I’d helped my aunt on the stall, and even then I’d only been in charge of handing out change.
‘No roses,’ he said, adding helpfully, ‘she likes pink.’
‘Pink, pink, pink,’ I murmured. I’d assumed that arranging a bouquet would be a doddle, after a YouTube tutorial, undertaken one wine-fuelled evening with my friend and lodger, Jasmine. We hadn’t even used flowers, but had improvised with cutlery, using newspaper for wrapping, finding ourselves hilarious.
‘Why me?’ I’d said, when Mum had phoned to tell me Dad’s sister was in ‘one of her funks’ and would I mind helping out on her flower stall by the sea in Dorset. ‘I’m an accountant, not a florist.’
‘An out-of-work accountant,’ she kindly reminded me. The car rental company I worked for had recently gone bust. ‘And you have worked there before.’
‘A few weekends for pocket money one summer doesn’t count. And anyway, I hardly know Aunt Ruby. I haven’t spoken to her once since leaving Dorset.’
‘She had a soft spot for you,’ Mum said, clearly desperate to get me to agree.
‘Why can’t you do it?’
‘Because Sarah might need me.’ Although that might have been true – my sister’s five-year-old twins would give Supernanny a run for her money – the real reason was that Mum didn’t get on with her sister-in-law, and Dad wasn’t much better.
‘Doesn’t Ruby have anyone else who could help?’
But it turned out her part-time assistant, Jane, had called Dad as a ‘last resort’, because she’d booked a holiday she couldn’t cancel and there was no one else to ask.
‘Can’t she just shut the stall down?’
‘Of course not, it’s her livelihood. And it’ll only be for a few weeks, until she’s pulled herself together.’ Mum’s voice had turned rather acid. She was probably recalling the time she and Dad had paid Ruby a visit, just after she opened her stall. Apparently, it had been super-awkward, with Dad going into technical mode, asking how it fitted together, and Mum declaring it must be a faff, and Ruby giving her a pitying look as if, ‘Despite running an engineering business with your dad for thirty years, I know nothing!’
Then Dad started advising Ruby about money, and she told him she’d managed without him all these years and to ‘do one’.
‘Anyway, we’re off to Kazakhstan next weekend,’ Mum had said, when I continued to protest. After Sarah had had the twins, our parents had sold their business in Dorset and moved up to Manchester to be closer to us all, and she and Dad had developed a thing for visiting far-flung countries.
‘Well, our water pipe burst,’ I’d parried. ‘Workmen are coming next week.’
‘It’s the summer holidays, so Jasmine will be there,’ Mum shot back.
Jasmine was a science teacher, and in the enviable position of having six weeks off work. The cutlery arranging had been her bright idea.
‘Go,’ she’d urged, when I told her about the flower stall. ‘I’ll be here until the last week of the hols, and you could do with a break.’
‘I have to find a new job.’
‘You can do that when you get back. I know you’ve got savings.’ She gave me a sly look. ‘Anyway, wasn’t that bloke you were in love with from Dorset?’
She’d got me tipsy one night and I’d spilled the whole Tom saga, telling her how Megan had called the next day, to say she’d spent the night with him, and that was when I’d decided to stay in Manchester and finish my accountancy course at the university there.
‘Didn’t you call him, or anything?’
‘Yes, but I kept getting his voicemail. He couldn’t face me, even on the phone,’ I’d wailed, over-dramatic on three and a half vodka-tonics, and I made her promise never to mention him again.
But in the end, the thought of a summer break in Dorset was what had swung it. That, and a surreptitious Google search, which unexpectedly revealed that Tom now owned a veterinary practice in – of all places – Shipley, where Ruby had her flower stall.
But now I was there, things were turning out to be anything but simple. Jane, who’d promised to run me through everything before going on holiday, had been taken ill after erecting the stall with the help of her strapping son, Calum, who’d driven her home in the van, while she muttered about a stomach bug.
‘Listen, I haven’t got all day.’ The man’s voice dragged me back to the moment, where I was dithering by a bucket of dusky-pink… I squinted at the wooden label… dahlias.
‘These look nice.’ I grabbed some, then plucked out a mass of green stuff speckled with white bits, water dripping on my feet.
With hindsight, it probably hadn’t been a good idea to wear my work clothes. I looked like I was going for an interview at a bank, as Jane had pointed out, eyeing my elephant-grey trousers before her face had turned a similar shade of grey.
‘You could put some fuchsias in too, for contrast,’ said a voice.
With a start, I saw a lady standing in front of me, with neatly bobbed hair in a shade my mum would call ash-blonde. She looked about seventy, but well preserved, in a figure-flattering dress and sensible sandals, and was pointing to one of the buckets.
‘Thanks,’ I said, diving for a handful.
‘Doris Day,’ she said, rather confusingly. ‘Where’s Ruby?’
‘She’s, um, having a little break.’ An image of my aunt’s ashen face flashed into my head. I’d been shocked by how unhappy she’d looked, peering at me from the cocoon of her duvet, when I’d arrived the night before. ‘I’m Carrie, her niece.’ I waited.
‘I just told you,’ she said, a crease between her eyebrows. ‘Doris Day.’
‘Oh! Right. I’m sorry.’
‘And Jane?’
‘Ill,’ I said.
‘Oh dear.’ Doris Day looked concerned. ‘She’s my neighbour. We live on Maple Hill, on the other side of the parade,’ she elaborated.
‘Can we move this along?’ The man tucked his phone away and pushed back his floppy fringe. ‘I haven’t got all day.’
I glanced at the sea – a twinkling ribbon of silver in the August sunshine – and wished I was in it.
‘Use the brown paper.’ Doris moved closer to oversee proceedings, shifting her wicker basket from the crook of one elbow to the other. ‘I’ve seen how it’s done, my dear. I’ve been coming by for years.’
Aware of the man’s scrutiny, I moved to the workbench, which was covered with a daisy-patterned oilskin cloth, and scrunched a wad of brown paper around the flower stems, careful not to crush them.
‘Now use Sellotape.’ Doris indicated one of several plastic trays.
‘Ribbon?’ I asked. Doris, not the customer.
She turned to him. ‘Ribbon?’
He shrugged and scratched his chin. ‘S’pose.’
‘In there.’ She flicked her gaze to a different tray, filled with colourful spools.
I located some scissors and snipped off a length of pink ribbon, and tied it around the paper with fingers that felt fatter than usual.
‘Use the blade to make it go curly.’
‘I was going to.’ I wasn’t, but I did my best, and managed not to slice my finger off.
Doris gave the result an appraising look. ‘Hmmm,’ she said. ‘Not bad.’
‘It’s a bit pink,’ said the man.
Make your mind up. I remembered something I’d skim-read in one of Jasmine’s interior magazines. ‘Block colours are in at the moment.’
‘Really?’
‘Really?’ said Doris, less sarcastically than the man.
‘Really.’ I could feel my hair sliding out of its clip, and knew my face was as pink and shiny as the flower petals, but not as attractive. ‘I’m sure she’ll love it.’
‘Of course she will,’ agreed Doris, in a tone that brooked no argument.
Looking resigned, the man dug around in his pocket. ‘How much?’
Doris gestured at the price list pegged to one of the poles supporting the green-and-cream canopy overhead. ‘Twelve pounds.’
‘Five,’ I corrected. Charging more for my amateurish attempt would have felt like daylight robbery.
Evidently impressed, the man handed over a note, which I fumbled into the money-belt Jane had insisted I wear, pretending not to hear Doris’s sharp intake of breath.
The man strode away without a goodbye, and one of the flowers slid out of the wrapping and landed on the pavement.
Luckily, neither he nor Doris noticed.
‘You should have charged him double, rude little bugger,’ she said tartly. ‘Tell Ruby I’ll pop in some time.’
Before I could respond, she was walking away, basket swinging, one hand fluttering a wave.
A little shaky, I reached for my bag and pulled out my phone.
Jasmine had texted:
Remember to relax and breathe. USE YOUR APP!!
She was a fan of relaxation apps, and had insisted I download one, but this was hardly the time for whale music. Instead, I called Ruby’s number. She picked up on the eleventh ring.
‘Carrie? Is everything OK?’
She sounded so fearful I didn’t dare tell her that Jane had gone home.
‘All good!’ I said. ‘Just checking in. It’s so lovely down here!’
That much was true. The stall overlooked the beach, from a cobbled square between a parade of shops and Main Street, where Ruby lived above the bakery. There was a standpipe close by, perfect for watering the flowers,. . .
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