A Hundred Pieces of Me (39 page)

‘Don’t.’ She nudged her back. ‘You’ll make me cry.’

‘I mean it.’ Naomi’s voice had a telltale sniff in it. ‘I always knew you’d be a wonderful part of her life. It’s a big relief to me to think that when she goes through her I-hate-you-Mum phase as a horrible teenager she’ll have you to storm off to. Someone who loves her.’

Gina leaned her head against Naomi’s; she knew her friend’s eyes were brimming with tears, because her own were. They watched Willow pour pretend tea, her attention trained on the cups with an intensity that was pure Naomi.

‘I’m so glad you’re still here, Gee,’ whispered Naomi.

‘Me too,’ she whispered back.

The other guests – Jason’s and Naomi’s parents, friends from toddler group, the neighbours – arrived at three, and after admiring the new addition to the garden, they quickly retreated into the warmth of Naomi’s conservatory. Willow couldn’t be persuaded to stop serving imaginary tea in the playhouse, but she was operating a very strict door policy, which meant that Gina wasn’t allowed to leave, and only select guests were admitted.

Tony the joiner arrived in his Sunday best, and was honoured with an imaginary cake; he was outside deep in DIY conversation with Jason’s dad, when Gina heard a tap on the front door of the playhouse.

She opened it, assuming it would be Naomi with some real tea, but it was Nick. He was wearing his navy peacoat and jeans, and his hair was more neatly styled than usual; Gina noticed the effort he’d made, and was pleased.

‘Hello,’ he said, peering inside. ‘I hear this is where the best tea is being served.’

‘It is,’ she said. ‘But you might not get any. It all depends on the hostess. Willow?’ She turned to Willow. ‘Can this nice man have some tea?’

Willow scrutinised Nick’s face with a look that was more Jason than Naomi, then smiled sunnily and thrust a teacup at him.

‘Take it,’ Gina advised him. ‘You’re the first man she’s agreed to serve all afternoon. And that includes her granddads.’

‘I’m honoured,’ he said, and reached out to take it with a charming smile.

As Nick sipped his pretend tea with due solemnity, Gina saw Naomi’s red-and-white-checked dress pass the window, and then her flushed face was squashed in next to Nick’s.

‘I’ve come to release you,’ she announced. ‘There’s a real cup of tea for you in the house. Hello, Nick,’ she added, turning to him. ‘Good to see you! Actually, Gina, before you move, let me take a photo of you and Willow.’

‘No, it’s . . .’ Gina suddenly felt awkward, as Naomi got her camera out, but at the word ‘photo’ Willow had wrapped her arms around Gina’s neck and was doing her big photo smile. Gina pulled a quick what-can-you-do face at Nick, and mugged along for the camera.

‘Cheese! Aw! That’s so cute!’

Nick tapped Naomi’s arm. ‘Want me to take a photograph of all three of you? Then you can be in it too.’

Gina started to tell him not to, but Naomi was thrilled. ‘Would I like a proper photographer to do a quick portrait? Hmm, let me think. Er, of course! Hold on, let me get my husband. Jason? Jay! Come over here.’

‘You don’t have to do this,’ Gina murmured, but Nick shushed her.

‘It’s no bother. You look so funny sitting at the little table, with that checked tablecloth. Like Alice after the Drink Me bottle.’

‘Thanks. That was the look I was going for.’

Naomi had returned, dragging Jason behind her. ‘OK, here’s Jason . . . Jay, don’t look like that. It’ll only take a second.’

Gina slipped out of the Wendy house and went to stand behind Nick. She watched as he arranged the Hewsons into the best position, charming a smile out of self-conscious Jason, making a properly funny photo with Jason and Naomi behind the pretty windows while Willow stood proudly by the door. There was something attractive about the skilful way he kept them chatting and moving to stop them doing any ‘photo faces’ – she noted the tiny twitch of satisfaction in his expression when they all laughed at the same time and his finger moved imperceptibly, catching it.

This is a memory they’ll talk about at Willow’s wedding, thought Gina, and something tugged inside her, a feeling she didn’t want to articulate because it was so unworthy.

That won’t be me
. That’s going to be Stuart, and Bryony . . . and their own blonde child in the middle. Any other day, she would have been happy, genuinely happy that her friends were so blessed, so proud of their little girl. But today she couldn’t fight the weird sensation of being on the other side of a pane of glass, watching other people playing her part in her life, and feeling further and further away, floating above herself, detached from the whole thing.

But this is where it starts, she told herself. Who knows what happens next?

‘Gina?’ Nick was nudging her to go back to the playhouse, to join in.

It brought her back to herself, and she shook her head. Nick’s camera had a habit of catching something about her she wasn’t always aware of. She didn’t want to risk her own sadness showing through her photo smile.

But then Willow’s chubby hand stretched out towards her. ‘Auntie Gina!’ She couldn’t not go.

‘Auntie Gina made the house for you,’ said Naomi, as she arranged Gina in the centre of the photograph, on the little steps that led to the pink door. ‘Isn’t she clever?’

‘You made it?’ Willow looked awestruck.

‘No, well, I . . .’

‘Ssh.’

Gina felt herself being hugged and she smiled down at Willow, not at the camera.

Afterwards, Gina and Nick wandered back to the house for a cup of tea and a plate of food to eat in the garden. They sat on the wall next to Willow’s sandpit, well away from a heated discussion about Jason’s brother’s planning-permission woes.

‘Make sure Naomi gives you a copy of that photograph,’ said Nick, breaking his birthday cake into pieces. ‘It’s one for the album.’

‘I will.’ Gina gazed across at the playhouse-shed. ‘It was a lovely moment. Thanks for taking it for them.’

‘How’s your project coming on?’ he asked. ‘Your own happy moments?’

‘Are you thinking of my hundred things? I’ve got a list on the back wall of my flat – I’m up to thirty-nine.’ Gina stopped, then confessed, ‘To be honest, it’s kind of ground to a halt. It served its purpose while I was clearing things out, making me think about what I wanted in the flat, but I’m almost done now and I don’t want to be writing “medicine cabinet” next to, I dunno, “music”.’

‘Actually, I wasn’t thinking of that – more of those photos you showed me. The ones on your phone that you were going to print out.’ He gave her a stern look. ‘Have you? Or are you just filling up your phone with lots of cloud pics?’

Gina pretended to be outraged. ‘I’ve been busy. I don’t know if you’ve noticed but you now have eco-insulation in that roof of yours.’

‘I thought so,’ said Nick, and reached into his bag. ‘Have this.’ He handed her a carrier bag. In it was the Polaroid camera and some boxes of film.

‘I can’t take this – you need it.’

‘I’ve found something else that does the same thing. I think you’d get more out of it than me.’ He indicated the films. ‘Make it your project – instead of a hundred things, take a hundred moments that make you happy. There are exactly nine boxes there, so you’ve got room for a few mistakes, but not many. Good discipline.’

‘Thank you,’ said Gina. A faint teenage excitement buzzed in her chest. ‘You know, I’ve wanted one of these since I was thirteen.’

‘Why didn’t you get one?’

‘It was an expensive gimmick, apparently.’

Nick grinned. ‘Well, there you go. And here, I’ve got a couple to get you started. If you don’t mind?’

He passed her a couple of Polaroids: in the first, Gina was accepting a cup of imaginary tea from Willow in the Wendy house. A warm orange glow surrounded them, and Gina’s face was solemn, though her eyes sparkled above the cup.

The other photo was of her with Naomi, talking by the kitchen door. Gina hadn’t noticed Nick take it, possibly because she was giggling and so was Naomi – proper unself-conscious double-chinned giggling. Naomi’s hand rested on Gina’s upper arm, Gina’s head was tilted and her neck looked long and white against the red brick of the wall.

‘Have you been watching me?’ said Gina, surprised. Or flattered?

‘What do you take me for?’ Now Nick pretended to look affronted. ‘A paparazzo? No, you said you were wanted moments that made you happy, and I knew you wouldn’t be able to take photos of yourself so I took them for you. When
I
thought you looked happiest – with your best mate and your other little mate.’

Gina examined the white-framed images. The woman in her clothes didn’t look like her. Or, rather, it didn’t look like she usually looked in photos – a bit stiff, head held at an angle, shoulders hunched to hide her chest. In these, she seemed relaxed, longer somehow. Softer.

Maybe it was the old film: the photos could have come from a different time.

‘It doesn’t look like me.’

‘It does. You’re just one of those people who really change their expression when a camera comes out,’ Nick observed.

‘Am I?’

‘Yup. In fact, you change your expression when you think someone’s watching you, even when there isn’t a camera around.’

‘Doesn’t everyone?’

Nick held her gaze. His grey eyes were curious, but gentle, moving across her face, reading it. ‘Some people do it more than others.’

The moment stretched out between them, filled with the distant sounds of music coming from the kitchen, and pretend tea parties from the playhouse. Gina wondered if she should try to make her expression blank, but there didn’t seem any point. Nick, she guessed, could already see what was in her mind: it wasn’t so much that he was reading it as making her look at some of the thoughts she’d been trying to ignore.

He pressed his lips together, then said, ‘Gina, there’s—’ just as another voice, a worried female one, said, ‘Gina!’

Naomi was hurrying along the grass towards them, and Gina slid the photos into her back pocket. ‘What? Are we out of imaginary tea?’

‘I’m so sorry, I don’t know what to do.’ Naomi folded her arms, then unfolded them. She looked angry and anxious. ‘Stuart’s just turned up. His car’s outside. Jason told him not to come till five because you said you were going to leave by half four, but he’s here.’

Something cold gripped Gina inside. Focus, she told herself. Focus.

‘Did you invite both of them?’ she asked.

‘Of course not! Jason can invite Stuart if he has to but I’m not having . . .’ Naomi trailed away as she turned her head towards the house and saw something that made her stop.

Stuart had appeared at the back door: a handsome half-stranger in his casual weekend jeans, the new beard. The new leather jacket.

Gina closed her eyes and willed her face to remain still, like stone, so she could hide behind it. I don’t want to be a ghost in people’s lives, she thought, with sudden determination. Having to slip away when Stuart arrives, him having to wait until I’ve gone. This is my life too. I have to be here, I have to face him.
Then
I can go.

It’ll be awkward for him too, she told herself. I need to be the one who’s gracious.

‘Gina, do you want a lift back?’ Nick jangled his keys. ‘I’m heading off now – Tony’s filled me in on summer houses. Got some editing to do.’

‘Oh . . . no,’ breathed Naomi, and Gina turned back to see something that made her stomach sink.

A young woman had appeared behind Stuart, clutching his hand in a proprietorial way. She was blonde, not particularly pretty, fit and tanned. But Gina wasn’t looking at her longer-than-average nose or the swallow tattoo on her wrist: her gaze was drawn by the stripy T-shirt that emphasised the small but definite shape of Stuart’s new life. Willow’s birthday cake repeated at the back of Gina’s throat, a sharp scratch of acid reflux.

The woman smiled hopefully, showing small, uneven teeth: it was a nervous smile, not a triumphant one, and Stuart started to smile too, but when he saw Gina’s expression, it froze on his face.

It’s over
, Gina thought, as her chest filled with grief, but there was unexpected relief at the heart of it. She’d never have to wonder what it looked like again: Stuart and his new life without her. That was it. It had started: he was moving down a different path away from her.

Gina lifted her hand towards Stuart and Bryony and waved stiffly, forcing a smile to her face. Then she turned back to Nick, hoping the white noise inside her wasn’t too obvious to his sharp eyes. ‘A lift would be great,’ she said, in a voice that didn’t sound like her own, and she lifted her chin as she walked towards the garden gate, away from the house.

Chapter Seventeen

ITEM
: a huge framed orange print of a
Gone With the Wind
movie poster, moved from Gina’s student set, to her first house share, then to the guest bedroom of Dryden Road

Little Mallow, October 2002