Goodnight, Beautiful: A Novel (17 page)

Nova isn’t having him, it’s as simple as that.

“Hi,” I said, fixing a bright smile to my face, even though I was trembling as I lowered myself into the seat opposite him.

His face creased into a smile that brought all the love I felt for him rushing to the surface of my soul. I couldn’t imagine being without him, not for one minute. “Steph, hi.” He stood up and kissed my cheek, the heat of him lingering long after he had been to and returned from the bar to get me a drink.

“Look,” he began, “I’ll get to the point. If I don’t, I won’t say what I’ve got to say. And as we found out with my name, that’s not the best way forward.”

I didn’t usually drink more than two glasses of wine. I’d spent a lot of time getting drunk as a teenager, getting my fill on the high of it, and it wasn’t worth it. Not anymore. But right then I wanted to down the glass of wine in front of me and then a few more. I wanted to be numb when he said whatever it was he was going to say. With a trembling hand, I picked up the glass of wine in front of me and tossed half of it back in one gulp. I needed the remaining half to make a sufficient impact should I need to throw something in his face before I walked out. That would be seconds before I slapped him, marched out into the street, hailed a cab to Nova’s restaurant to deal with her. Depending on how that went, I’d either be spending the night crying myself to sleep or recovering in the hospital.

“I talked it over with Nova,” he said.

I will not be in the hospital, she will. For a long, long time.

“I have to tell you this. We’re getting serious. That is, I feel this relationship is serious and I want you to know who I truly am before it goes any further. I think it’s only fair to you that you know this and see if it’s something you can handle.”

The coil of fear, anger and indignation loosened in my chest as it filtered into my worry-addled brain that he wasn’t talking about ending things with me. He was talking about going further, talking as though whether our relationship continued was wholly my choice.

“I, I haven’t ever told a girlfriend this. Which is why I had to talk it over with Nova first. This is her history, too, so if I reveal this about me, it’s about her as well. She said if I thought you felt for me what I feel for you, then I should, because she wants you to be around.”

A modicum of guilt flitted across my conscience: I’d misjudged her. Again. But the guilt was only a sliver because what should have been about us was once again about her, too. Why did he have to bring everything back to her?
Everything.
Was there a decision he had made in his life that he hadn’t checked with her first?

His fingers skitted slowly across the table, laced themselves with mine. “I love your hands,” he said, staring down at them. His eyes lifted up to meet mine. “I love you.”

I felt my heart bubbling up again with everything I felt for him. He said it so easily. He said it as though he constantly said it; as though this wasn’t the first time.

I opened my mouth and he pressed his fingers over my lips.

“No, don’t say it back,” he said, before taking his hand away. “I don’t want you to feel pressured. Not when you don’t know everything. I don’t want you to feel trapped to stay because you’ve said it.” His face creased as he closed his eyes and shook his head slightly. “I haven’t said this before. Anyone who knows has always known, so they don’t need it to be explained.” He fixed me with a gaze, steadying himself to say what had to be said.

“My mum, who I hope you’ll meet one day, is manic depressive. I know people call it bipolar these days, but we always called it manic depression, she calls it manic depression. That’s it. It doesn’t sound so big when I say it, but it is, of course. It’s been a part of our lives since we were old enough to know. Do you know what manic depression is?” he asked, suddenly realizing that I might not know what he was talking about.

I nodded. I knew.

“But she’s not a psycho,” he said, suddenly angry. “Anyone who even thinks that—”

“I don’t think that,” I cut in, tightening my fingers around his to stop him. “I’d never think that. Never.”

“But you have to know that she’ll always come first. Always. That’s why I had to tell you now before we got any deeper into this. I don’t want this to end between us, but it wouldn’t be fair to you not knowing that. Do you see what I mean?”

I nodded. Calm was flowing through my body, one cell at a time. No fear, no anxiety, nothing but calm. And then something began at my core, spreading, blossoming inside me like a baby growing. I felt it growing, taking on its own life, filling me up until my body, my heart, my mind were saturated with it. It took a few moments for me to understand what it was—for the first time in years, I knew what hope felt like.

“I know this isn’t exactly what someone who’s just started a relationship wants to hear, that they’ll never come first, but that’s the way it is. I haven’t needed to do anything in years, and Nova’s parents are usually the people who are there first, but if Mum needs me, I have to drop everything to go and be with her. Do you understand?”

I smiled at Mal. What he said was exactly what I needed to hear; it was what had planted the seed of hope inside me.

“I want to tell you a story,” I said to him. “It’s a true story. It’s a story about me. By the time I’ve finished telling you the story, I hope you’ll understand why I had to tell you, and why I’m glad you told me what you told me.” I sounded dramatic, but I didn’t mean to. Like Mal, I was unused to telling anyone this, so in the telling it sounded dramatic. People saw me, they made assumptions, they gossiped about me. Rarely did people ask, never did I tell.

At the end of my story, where there should have been “happily ever after,” he kissed me instead. He kissed me and he made me a promise.

We all make promises. I believe we all mean to keep them.
The one Mal made me he wanted to keep, but of course he didn’t realize at the time—I don’t think either of us did—the price he’d have to pay to do so.

“So it’s all very well you two apologizing and explaining why you did it, but the next time you’re about to say something about someone, maybe you should think that you don’t know all the facts. That their life may look perfect, but it may actually be fragile and sad and beset with a multitude of problems.

“And also, you might want to think how
you’d
feel if they were standing right behind you whilst you rip them to shreds. Yes, that’s right, how
you’d
feel, because it’s obvious you two don’t care at all what other people might feel.”

I give the silent, shocked duo another mean-eyed glare and march out of the locker room again. I climb in my car and push my key in the ignition, but I do not turn it. I do not drive.

I stare out of the windshield. Not only do I definitely have to find a new gym, I desperately have to get a new life.

T
here’s no change. Another six days and there’s been no change.

I have to tell my family everything today. I know the second I do, they’ll be down here, a convoy of Kumalisis and one Wacken, before I’ve settled the phone in its cradle. I’ve been hoping things might have got better and that I’d be able to tell them everything when Leo is awake, but that hasn’t happened. Yet. It hasn’t happened
yet.
Bringing more people into this means I am accepting a small defeat. I am saying that there is something going on that Keith and I cannot handle alone. We need help.

The café is in darkness as I come in through the front door and rush to disable the alarm—bleeping in the back like the countdown to Armageddon—before it goes off and half of East Sussex police force descends upon this place. It’s happened before. Last year, Leo and I had come over to the café to get some of the giant fairy cakes I’d baked earlier for an after-dinner treat, and for some reason I had typed in the wrong number three times. Before we knew it, the world outside was illuminated by flashing blue lights and what looked like a whole platoon of officers appeared, all of them ready to deal with whichever criminal had dared to break into our little café. Leo and I had been terrified at the speedy response and the number of officers that
arrived, and while he thought he was clinging onto me for protection, I was clutching him just as tightly, partly to be ready to step in front of him and partly to ease my terror. Keith had been on duty at the time and he’d come with them, and had obviously been
overjoyed
that his wife had shown such utter ditziness by getting the code to her own café wrong in front of his colleagues. I could hear them all laughing, and the comments—“If it’s a psychic café, how come she didn’t know the code?”—all the way back to the station. Leo thought it was cool after they’d all gone, but neither of us much fancied cake after that. I’d driven us to Kemp Town in Brighton to get us ice cream from a late-night supermarket instead. Later on, when I called Amy to tell her that I’d had to change the code, she said she’d already done it earlier that day because Keith had called to remind her that we hadn’t changed it in a while. And had she not told me? And had he not told me? And, oh, did the police really laugh and laugh at you? And Keith never did really say you were lucky you wouldn’t be charged with wasting police time, did he?

If I didn’t know the pair of them better, I would have thought it was a stitch-up, but Keith has no humor in such things and it just isn’t in Amy to play that sort of practical joke.

After the alarm is disabled, I dump my bag on the desk in the little broom cupboard we call the office. My keys clatter loudly in the darkness, reverberating out into the main seating area with the counter and the coffee machine.

I’m momentarily blinded as I flick on the kitchen lights and brightness bounces off all the metal and white surfaces. I yank up my sleeves and from the drawer by the door I retrieve my white mesh cap and jam it on my head, before tying on my apron, which hangs on a hook by the door. I move to the big metal sink and scrub my hands clean.

While Keith sits with Leo, I’m going to make some cakes and cookies so Amy doesn’t have to worry about ordering them in for a few more days. Poor Amy has been running Starstruck, my café, all alone for more than two weeks now and she hasn’t uttered one word of complaint. She hasn’t even mentioned how tired she is, that she’s been running low on supplies, that she needs cash to order more stock. She has carried on as normal, so I don’t have to worry.