TWO

       That evening

       Lancaster

      Mia walked into the Merchants with Billy at gone eight. For some reason, she was thinking of the film Look Who’s Talking, and winced as she imagined what her son must be thinking now: The pub, twice in one day, Mother, and now for the evening? Classy! And wished so much she could explain without sounding embittered and abandoned. This is what Mia most resented about this whole situation, the opportunities it held for mental behaviour: screaming in the middle of the street at Eduardo, slamming phones down, revenge plots and murderous thoughts. She spent far too much of her time, these days, feeling like a character from Coronation Street.

      Of course it pissed her off whenever Eduardo let her down, but tonight felt especially cruel. Although she was not one to drag out self-pity too long, she couldn’t help but feel a bit sorry for herself as she pushed Billy past the cosy, candlelit arches, looking for her friends.

      This was one night, one night out of the whole year, for remembering her best friend whom she didn’t even have any more, and he thought the customers of Bella Italia needed him more than she did? And she’d had a baby with this man?

      She had considered cancelling – there was nobody else she could call to look after Billy, after all, since Melody was coming too – but she was too angry, too sad, too at risk of binge-drinking alone if she stayed in tonight and, anyway, she wanted to come, she had to come. Surely, Bruce, the landlord, would relax the rules on the baby front just this once?

      But then perhaps not; not after last year’s reunion, which had been utterly grim. Melody and Anna had drunk far too much, got far too maudlin and ended up literally rocking, clinging onto each other in a sentimental sobbing wreck, people openly gawping at them, and Mia had found herself actually cringing at her friends’ display of grief.

      Norm had been unusually quiet – said barely a word, in fact, and spent the entire night at the jukebox putting Green Day on a loop (he and Livs were bonded in their mutual love of Green Day), until he got shouted at to literally ‘fucking change the record!’ by some hard-nut local who Fraser – also steaming drunk – then decided to punch, resulting in two broken fingers and them all getting chucked out.

      Through all of this, of course, Mia was four months pregnant with Billy, and sober. She’d tried to reason with them that perhaps that second round of sambucas was not the best idea, that Fraser had had enough to drink, that quite possibly, Liv wouldn’t have wanted him to take a swing at a bloke twice his size on her behalf, but they wouldn’t listen. Of course they wouldn’t listen, they were steaming and Mia had gone home feeling utterly deflated, sure that two broken fingers and a police caution was definitely not how her best friend would want her birthday to be marked.

      Also, perhaps due to being pregnant, she felt blocked. She couldn’t let her grief run riot like the rest of them. Everything was too much – life event overload – and even though everyone else had piled back to Melody and Norm’s, she’d gone home to Eduardo (who was still with her at this point, preferring to wait until she was thirty-six weeks pregnant to tell her, actually, this whole baby thing wasn’t really going to work for him …) and lay in bed, staring into the dark.

      But tonight was a whole year later, wasn’t it? Their grief was less raw; it would be more of a celebration, a celebration of her life! A chance to reminisce about the good times – so many good times – and a chance to get together. Then she located Melody and Norm at the end of the final tunnel, clearly already in the throes of a row, and her heart sank.

      Melody turned dramatically when she saw Mia, who thought, if she were turning into a character from Coronation Street, then her good friend Melody Burgess was fast becoming one from Ally McBeal. All power dressing and courtroom drama.

      ‘Nobody’s here yet,’ she said, breathily, with what Mia couldn’t help but feel was a slightly staged flick of her hair. ‘Twenty past eight and not a peep out of anyone.’

      ‘Well, I’m here,’ said Mia, brightly.

      ‘Right, yes, I suppose so and er … Billy,’ said Melody, somewhat begrudgingly, clocking the buggy, as if Mia had a choice in this matter. Mia gritted her teeth.

      Norm groaned. ‘I’ve told her to take a chill-pill,’ he said. ‘I’ve told her this is about Olivia, REMEMBER?’ He fired daggers at Melody, and Mia found herself thinking – not for the first time in the last year: what happened to my friends? Jolly old Norm and Melody? Inseparable. Bonded for years in their love of cider and singing appalling indie anthems on karaoke?

      Melody folded her arms indignantly. ‘Well, I’m disgusted, frankly. I mean, Anna’s no surprise but Fraser? Liv was his girlfriend, remember?’

      ‘I think we do,’ said Mia, in a way that was supposed to be helpful and calm her down but didn’t.

      ‘So why the fuck isn’t he here then? No phone call, no text, nada!’

      ‘Um, do you mind putting your foot down, mate?’ Fraser was sitting in the back of a black cab travelling from Preston to Lancaster, jiggling his legs up and down, which he always did when he was nervous. Honestly, what was wrong with these provincial types? No sense of urgency. Liv was doing this, he thought. She knew all about his overactive conscience and she was having a laugh. He imagined her looking down at him now, sweating and toxic and wracked with guilt, and thinking, you muppet, Fraser Morgan. All this guilt for a fumble with a barmaid? Deep down of course, so deep down he couldn’t bring himself to admit it, Fraser Morgan knew this tardiness and stress was entirely of his own making. In fact, the last twenty-four hours were entirely of his own making.

      He was supposed to have caught the four o’clock from Euston – which would have got him to Lancaster and the Merchants in plenty of time, but because he was far too nice and far too hungover to put up a fight, he’d somehow become embroiled in a Tarot reading from Karen, which overran (he wasn’t sure how long the average Tarot reading was, but felt sure an hour and a half was overrunning), missed the four o clock, so had to catch the five o’clock, and only realized when he was on the train that it didn’t go