Page 61 of The Three of Us
This time I laugh out loud, snorting bubbles down my nose, and he makes a big thing of slapping me on the back so I don’t choke.
‘There,’ he says. ‘I’ve saved your life now, and that makes you forever in my debt.’
I don’t notice at first that Fran is standing next to me. I suppose it’s inevitable that she’ll find herself at the food table at least once every half an hour or so. Fran and food tend to go together like the horse and carriage in some old song, or bread and butter might be a better analogy. She’s watching me and Daz with an obvious curiosity that I know is going to lead to the third degree when we get home. Lights in the eyes, thumbscrews, the lot. But it looks like food is not her main reason for being here, for a change. She holds out her hand with my handbag in it.
‘Sorry to interrupt,’ she says, pointedly, but she’s smiling. I can’t help wondering how things are going between her and that girl outside. ‘Your phone was ringing in your bag, a couple of times actually, so I thought you might want to check it.’
‘Thanks, Fran.’ And thank you, thank you, to whoever has been ringing. That saves me the tricky how-to-rescue-my-bag-from-the-jaws-of-death dilemma.
‘I thought I saw your Jack outside,’ she says.
‘Not my Jack, but yes, he’s here. With his wife.’
‘Oh, right, I see.’ She gives me a strange look as if she wants to know more but I’m not about to give it to her. And certainly not in front of Daz.
‘Well, I might as well stay here for now,’ she says, clearly resigning herself to having to wait until later to interrogate me. ‘Rosie says they’re about to cut the cake. And you know me. First in the queue…’
That’s more like the Fran I know and love. But she’s right. Within seconds everyone seems to be swarming in from all directions, crowding round the table as Syd appears with the most enormous knife, its heavy handle decorated in big silvery swirls, the blade super-shiny. I suspect it’s the one they used for their wedding cake and that it has been carefully wrapped and hidden away somewhere ever since. It’s certainly not your usual everyday kitchen knife. A sudden image flashes across my mind, straight out of one of those old Agatha Christie TV murder mysteries. A fancy knife, dripping with blood, someone out for revenge, a body in the conservatory, a trail of clues…
‘Silence, please,’ Syd bellows, abruptly forcing my wayward thoughts back into the present, and I notice, just in those two words, how Australian he sounds. The acquired London edge to his voice fades away, and he is back to his roots, probably something to do with being surrounded by his own family for the first time in ages. He goes on to make a short speech about how proud he is, of his wife, his children, being here among all the people that matter to him, and I see Rosie wipe away a tear as she rests an arm across his shoulders. He thanks her for putting on such a wonderful spread, thanks us all for coming, thanks Molly for baking the cakes, and if he was even a tiny bit religious he would probably be thanking God by now too. I’m pretty sure he’s close to tears himself, but a few beers always did bring out the sentimental in him.
‘Now, where are the real guests of honour?’ he says, beckoning his mum to bring the babies forward. He takes one and Rosie takes the other, each simultaneously planting little kisses on the tops of their small fluffy heads. ‘To the little people who have changed our lives, who make our lives complete, who are our life…’ He cradles a baby in the crook of one arm and lays the tip of the blade on top of the white cake, the christening half of Molly’s double concoction, and slides it down into the centre. ‘To Jamie and Rebecca.’
Everyone cheers and Syd’s dad pops more champagne as Rosie gives the baby back to her mother-in-law, goes into the kitchen and fetches a stack of plastic flutes just like the ones Daz and I are already trying to hide behind our backs. I’m not sure jumping the gun and guzzling the celebratory champers ahead of the rest of the guests is quite the done thing.
Jack is on the other side of the room. It’s a small room so he’s actually only a few feet away, but it might as well be a mile. He accepts a small glass and downs it in one. His pregnant wife shakes her head. She has an unborn child to protect. Her eyes are on the cake, watching it being cut and handed round, waiting to see if people like it. She smiles to herself as the congratulations pour in. She steps forward and silently slips a few little cards onto the table, as if she’s hoping to attract more business but is too shy to make a big deal about it.
Jack leans against the wall, his eyes lowered. He can’t look at me. Or doesn’t want to. Suddenly, he feels like a stranger to me, a dream I once had, one I have finally woken up from, and I can’t believe I was so scared to come downstairs. If anyone’s scared, it should be him. The one with everything to lose if the truth ever comes out. It gives me a momentary feeling of power. That, at last, I am the one who has the upper hand. A few words in Molly’s ear and I could change both their lives forever.
But what has she ever done to deserve that? Nothing. So, I won’t say a thing. Won’t do anything to rock the boat. It would be vengeful and cruel, and I’m better than that.
Jack may be tall and good-looking and clever, but he’s far from perfect. I know that now. He has his faults, just like everybody else. If I’m looking for my Mr Darcy, then Jack definitely isn’t him. I think I may just have to stick to the fantasy screen version after all, go back to drooling over Colin Firth, dripping wet shirt and all. Real life has a nasty habit of letting people down. Of letting me down, when it comes to men anyway. If Darcy existed for real, I bet even he would have his faults. He’d snore or fart or something…
I watch Jack now, still sheepishly avoiding my gaze. And wait for that magnetic pull, the lurch of feeling that always comes, but this time it doesn’t. I realise that I don’t really know this man, or what his real life is like. And that Molly is just an ordinary, perfectly nice woman whose whole future I could so easily have wrecked, but didn’t.
No. We’re finished. Over. Done. He is standing there, waiting and, as his wife turns back towards him, I can see her shape, properly, for the first time. Her rounded waistline swells inside her dress, and she looks tired. She takes his hand, leans into him, then tilts her face up and kisses him gently on the very edge of his lips. There is an easy intimacy and a familiarity to it that has nothing to do with me. They are a couple, soon to be three. They fit. And in that moment, the what might have been disappears, just like that, quietly, with a little inevitable pop, like the cork coming out of a champagne bottle, never to be forced back in again. Jack looks across at me and gives me a tiny nod, then they say their goodbyes to Syd and Rosie and they leave. Together.
I pick up one of her cards. Secret Centres, it says, in small but fancy print. Celebratory and party cakes. Gender-reveal cakes a speciality. It gives her phone number, her website and email addresses, her Facebook handle, all those important details that, along with actually seeing her real-life-in-the-flesh face, I have tried to avoid for so long. I am tempted to slip it into my bag, to keep it, but I don’t. I put it back on the table with the others.
My bag! I suddenly remember what Fran said, that my phone had been ringing out in the garden. I fish it out from the depths and look at the screen. Two missed calls. Two text messages. All from my mother.
‘Let me give you my number while you have your phone out.’ Daz takes it from me and taps his number into my contacts, before I have a chance to say anything. Not that I’m going to stop him. ‘Maybe we could meet up while I’m still in England?’ he says, pressing a few buttons on my phone and finding my number, which he quickly saves on his.
I nod. ‘I’d like that.’
I take the phone back and open Mum’s messages. Short and sweet, factual, although I can only imagine how she must be feeling. It’s Pauline. She’s gone.
I didn’t know the woman but I feel a wave of sadness for her, and for Anthony. He loved her, and she was so young to die. It’s all so unfair, but then, life so often is, isn’t it? I make my excuses and go up for my jacket, which is buried halfway under Suze and Sean, but I grab it anyway. I have to go. Anthony will be needing Mum, and Mum will be needing me.
She’s sitting by herself in the dark when I get there. There’s a cold cup of tea in front of her on the kitchen table, and a mound of screwed-up tissues.
‘Oh, Carly,’ she says, reaching out and hugging me, so tightly I can hardly breathe.
‘I’m sorry, Mum. Anthony must be devastated.’
‘Yes. He knew it was coming, of course, but it’s still a shock, isn’t it? When it actually happens…’
She’s thinking about Dad. I know she is.