Once in a Lifetime. Cathy Kelly
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made Natalie absolutely furious.
‘You did! You actually slept with someone because you were stoned, Lizzie, and that didn’t shock you enough, so you still went out on your hen night and got absolutely plastered. If I hadn’t found you, where would you be now? I’ll tell you: you’d be waking up in that guy’s bed–I doubt if you even know his name–and we’d have phoned the police because we thought you were in trouble, and everyone, including your fiancé, would be searching for you now, while you’d be holed up in bed with a hangover with a bloody stranger. That would wreck the Valentine’s Day wedding, for sure. Why would you do that? You don’t need to sleep around with strangers, you’ve got a man who loves you.’
‘Oh, shut up! I hate myself enough, I don’t need you hating me too!’ Lizzie screamed. She clambered to her feet, still bleary-eyed, clutching the sheets to her. ‘Why are you so bloody judgemental, anyway? It’s none of your business; I didn’t kiss your bloody boyfriend, did I? It’s only my life I’m fucking up!’
Suddenly, Natalie felt sorry for what she’d said. Lizzie was right; she was being judgemental and she didn’t know why, because lots of people went out and got terribly drunk on their hen nights. It was almost a rite of passage, wasn’t it? But this had been something worse. Natalie had never seen anyone she loved change so much under the influence of alcohol. Her father barely drank, Bess was the same, and even the boys didn’t drink to the extent that Lizzie had, although she knew many guys their age who did.
It had been part of the family ethos when they’d been growing up: treat alcohol with respect.
But it seemed that Lizzie’s family hadn’t given her the same message. Last night, Lizzie had been like another person: someone Natalie didn’t know and certainly didn’t like.
‘Sorry,’ Natalie said now, and sat down on the mattress. She felt weary after so few hours in bed. ‘I am your friend, Lizzie, but I wouldn’t be a proper friend if I pretended last night was normal or good. I’m not trying to take the moral high ground. You can sleep with who you like, but I can’t stand by and be your bridesmaid if you really don’t want to marry Steve. Why marry him if you want to sleep with other men?’
‘I do want to marry him!’ protested Lizzie. ‘I was drunk, it was a blip. Really.’
‘But–’
‘But nothing. I love Steve. Last night was stupid, that’s all. And he doesn’t need to know, does he?’
‘I suppose not.’ Natalie opened the drawer where she kept clean sheets. She couldn’t believe she was having this conversation with Lizzie. It was like discovering a totally different side to one of her oldest friends. She’d had no idea that Lizzie was capable of a one-night stand before her wedding, and then convincing herself it was all fine, as long as nobody found out. Natalie had found Lizzie’s drunken aggression frightening, but her cool ‘it doesn’t matter as long as nobody knows’ theory was even worse. Lizzie would be devastated if Steve slept with another woman. It wasn’t right not to care that she’d done the same.
‘Where’s my handbag?’ asked Lizzie, looking around the room.
‘You lost it,’ Natalie reminded her. ‘We looked everywhere, but couldn’t find it. You should cancel your credit card, actually.’
‘Oh shit, that’s my phone, my cards, everything!’ wailed Lizzie. ‘What am I going to tell Steve?’
Natalie stared blankly at her clean sheets. She liked the violet-sprigged ones best, and her fingers ran absently over the smooth percale. ‘I’m not sure what you should tell him,’ she said slowly.
‘I know.’ Lizzie sounded confident. ‘We’ll say you and I got totally plastered, we came back here and, even though I’d meant to go home in a taxi, I decided to stay because it was so late. OK?’
No, not OK at all, Natalie thought. But then, it wasn’t her job to fix Lizzie’s relationship or be her moral guardian. ‘OK,’ she said. But her insides felt like lead.
Learn how to say no. Practise. Say it at least once every day and you know what? You’ll get better at it.
Charlie sat down with a sigh and eased off her shoes. Blissful cool air enveloped her toes and she wriggled them. The Hatbox Café on Kenny’s second floor wasn’t too busy. The lunchtime rush was over and the afternoon tea people hadn’t yet started wandering in looking for the café’s speciality: pink fairycakes with quirky shoe designs in multi-coloured icing.
The Hatbox had retained its traditional appearance. Old Mr Kenny, who set the store up all those years ago, would have been right at home here. The fittings were still cherry wood and brass, the wallpaper a riot of bosomy Belle Époque girls spilling out of Grecian gowns, and the chairs were still upholstered in ruby velvet. But the staff no longer wore black and white with frilled caps, having long since moved into chic navy trousers and tops with waiter’s white aprons. The menu was similarly up-to-date.
Charlie’s lunch was a bottle of water and a brown bread sandwich. She’d brought a magazine she’d borrowed from the staff room. The magazine was cover. Once she realised nobody wanted to join her for lunch and that she’d have privacy, she took out her little notebook and pen and furtively began to write.
My mother’s a travel agent for guilt trips.
You think that’s a joke? Wrong.
She phoned me at ten to eight in the morning.
‘Charlie, I’m in bed with the flu. Can you pick up my dry cleaning on your way to work? I left my good jackets in, the tweed ones, and my baby-blue coat, and I need them.’
You wouldn’t think that two fake Chanel jackets and a baby-blue woollen coat circa 1963 could make a grown woman want to kill someone with their bare hands, but they can. Dry cleaning can be a powerful tool in the hands of a master.
‘I don’t really have the time. I’m leaving in a few minutes and I have to drop Mikey at school. Can’t you phone Iseult and ask her to do it?’
Pause. The phrase ‘red rag to a bull’ comes to mind. I knew I shouldn’t have said no, but I had to. I mean, I’m the supervisor of the Organic Belle department in Kenny’s, which is not the sort of place where you can be late. Plus, I have a thirteen-year-old son who views arriving a moment late to school with the horror of a Japanese train scheduler facing a leaf-on-the-line crisis, so we don’t have time for either morning phone calls or emergency dry-cleaning stops.
The pause ended abruptly.
‘No, that’s fine,’ snapped my mother. Think Lady Bracknell on crystal meth. ‘I’ll do it myself. I couldn’t sleep last night, you know. My cough’s worse. I don’t know if I’ll last the winter…’
This is where I think that if only she gave up her bloody thirty-a-day smoking habit, the cough wouldn’t get worse, but I don’t say it. There’s only so much reckless abandon I can manage of a morning.
‘I’ll pick up your dry cleaning,’ I say.
‘No, you’re too busy. I’ll do it–’
‘Really, I’ll fit it in.’
‘No, I can look after myself, thank you very much. Nobody needs to fit me into their life.’
Sound of phone slamming down. My mother has broken many phones in her life and refuses to have a portable one because there’s no satisfying slamming down involved.
Not having a portable means she