Her Best Worst Mistake (3 page)

“
Come on, let’s go upstairs. This is
a conversation that requires alcohol and saturated animal fats,
preferably in the form of icecream.”

“
I couldn’t eat a thing. But a drink
would be good. A drink would be perfect.”

Elizabeth waited by the door while Violet turned off
lights and set the alarm, then they took the stairs to her
apartment, which was situated over the shop. Elizabeth abandoned
her suitcase by the door and went straight to the kitchen. Violet
watched, worried, as her friend tore the cap off a bottle of vodka
and poured two very stiff drinks. Elizabeth lifted hers to her
mouth and downed the lot in one long, gulping swallow. Then she set
the glass back onto the counter with a loud thunk and met Violet’s
eyes.

“
I’ve called off the wedding,” she
said boldly. “And I want to find my father.”

Violet mouthed a four letter word. “You’re kidding
me?”

They both know she was referring to the wedding part
of Elizabeth’s announcement and not the part where she wanted to
search for her newly discovered parent.

“
No. It was suddenly incredibly
clear to me. All these months—years, really—I’ve been doing what
everyone else wanted me to do. All those committees Grandmother
insisted on nominating me for. Giving up teaching full time.
Accepting Martin’s proposal. It’s all been about what they wanted,
not what I want.”

Violet watched, stunned, as Elizabeth downed the
second vodka as quickly as she’d downed the first.

“
You know what the crazy thing is? I
don’t even know what I want. If you held a gun to my head right now
and told me I had to tell you where I wanted to be a year from now,
I couldn’t do it. I have no idea. None. Nada. The only idea I have
in my head is that I need to find my father. I want to know who he
is. And maybe knowing him will help me work out who I
am.”

Elizabeth reached for the vodka bottle again, but
Violet beat her to it.

“
Have you had anything to
eat?”

“
I don’t want food. I want oblivion.
I want to feel angry with all the people who have lied to me
without having to feel guilty and obligated at the same time. I
want to get really, really, horribly drunk.”

Violet met her friend’s eyes. She could see the hurt
and the anger and the panic there. Elizabeth’s whole world had just
been rocked on its axis. She deserved a good blow out, complete
with hideous morning-after hang-over. It was practically a rite of
passage.

She released her grip on the vodka bottle.
“Okay.”

Elizabeth’s face crumpled, all the defiance leaking
out of her. “Thank you for understanding. Thank you for always
understanding.”

She threw her arms around Violet, crushing her close.
Violet hugged her back just as fiercely. This woman was her best,
most loyal, most wonderful friend. More than anything she wanted
her to be happy and fulfilled.

“
Let’s get toasted,” she said as
they both drew back from the embrace.

They kicked off their shoes and made themselves
comfortable on Violet’s saggy three seater sofa, and all the while
Elizabeth talked, pausing only to gulp at the vodka and cranberry
juice Violet made for her. She talked about the panic attacks she’d
been having in the lead up to the wedding, and how stifled she felt
sometimes living with her grandparents. She talked about knowing
that her grandmother used her heart condition to ruthlessly
manipulate and emotionally blackmail the people in her life but
that up until now she’d felt powerless to resist her. She talked
about standing in the hallway at her grandparent’s Mayfair mansion
less than an hour ago and looking into Martin’s eyes and knowing
that she didn’t love him the way she should love the man she was
going to spend the rest of her life with and understanding,
finally, that marrying him would be the biggest mistake of her
life.

Violet nodded and made the right noises in the right
places and got outraged on her friend’s behalf and passed the
tissues when Elizabeth got to the maudlin, self-pitying drunken
part of the evening. It was well into the small hours and they were
both bleary-eyed and hoarse by the time Violet made up a bed for
Elizabeth on the couch and staggered to her own room.

Lying in bed, she worried for her friend while a part
of her rejoiced that for the first time in years Elizabeth was
being honest about how she felt and what she wanted. A more cynical
part of her wondered if Elizabeth wouldn’t wake up full of regrets
and remorse tomorrow, but her gut told her that something had
shifted irreversibly for her friend tonight. Elizabeth had broken
free. With a bit of luck, she’d be able to hang onto that and start
making some decisions about her life.

Violet’s thoughts drifted to Martin as she edged
toward sleep. She wondered how he was feeling right now. Angry?
Thwarted? Wounded? She waited for a sense of satisfaction to wash
over herself—she’d never liked him, after all—but it didn’t come.
Instead she felt a peculiar tightness in her chest and throat.

Almost as though she was sorry for him.

Which was nuts. Obviously she was drunker than she’d
thought. Martin St Clair did not need her pity. He was probably
already planning his campaign for another well-bred, beautiful wife
who would be perfectly suited to his upwardly mobile ambitions.

The tight feeling remained in her chest and she
pressed a hand to her sternum.

“
Go away. I don’t care.”

Eventually she dropped off to sleep, waking when her
alarm blared next to her ear at seven-thirty the next morning. She
felt terrible—headachy and dry mouthed and nauseous—and she
shuffled into the bathroom and stood beneath the shower until she
could face the prospect of getting out and battling the day.
Elizabeth was deeply asleep on the sofa and Violet dressed quietly
before making her way downstairs to the shop. She ducked out to
grab coffees and muffins a few minutes before opening time and was
sucking the froth off her latte when a heavy-eyed Elizabeth entered
the store.

“
Hey. How are you feeling?” Violet
asked.

“
Like something the cat threw up.”
She pressed a hand to her forehead. She’d had a shower and pulled
her long blonde hair into a pony tail. She looked tired and drawn,
but Violet was glad to see the spark of anger and defiance remained
in her friend’s eyes.

Her gut had been right—Elizabeth wasn’t going
back.

“
Here,” she said, pushing the second
coffee across the counter. “I got a spare, just in
case.”

“
Bless you.” Elizabeth buried her
nose in the coffee.

“
There’s a muffin, too, if you’re up
to solids yet.”

“
Might need a few minutes before I
can go there,” Elizabeth said.

“
So...Whats on the agenda for
today?” Violet asked cautiously.

“
Finding my father. I have his name
and his birthdate. In the days of Google, that’s got to count for
something, don’t you think?”

Violet broke off a piece of muffin, a part of her
brain noticing that Elizabeth hadn’t so much as mouthed Martin’s
name, despite it being a new day. Surely he must be on her mind in
some shape or form?

“
We can search for him. And there’s
always Andy. He owes me a favor.”

Her cousin, Andy, was a policeman. She’d helped him
out when he’d messed things up with his girlfriend a few months
ago, so she was pretty sure she should be able to lean on him to
get him to look up Elizabeth’s biological father.

“
I’d forgotten about Andy. He’s
perfect. Can we call him now?”

Violet studied her. “You’re serious about this,
aren’t you? You’re really going to go find him.”

“
Yes. Absolutely. I want to know the
truth. I want to know who I am.”

Elizabeth had said something similar last night. It
was on the tip of Violet’s tongue to point out that the only person
who defined Elizabeth was Elizabeth herself, but she decided that
it wasn’t what her friend needed to hear right now. She needed to
be a bit reckless and impulsive, and if that meant racing off to
Dublin or Yorkshire or New York on what might turn out to be a
goose chase, so be it.

Elizabeth’s phone rang. Violet watched as she pulled
it from her bag, checked the screen, then slid it back into her bag
without taking the call.

“
Martin?” Violet couldn’t resist
asking.

“
Yes.”

“
You’re not going to talk to
him?”

“
No.”

Violet told herself to mind her own business. It
worked for all of five seconds. “Don’t you think he might be
worried about you?”

“
I don’t want to talk to him right
now. I’m still angry with him, and I don’t want to say something
I’ll regret.”

“
Does that mean you’re having second
thoughts about calling off the wedding?”

“
No. That was the right thing to do,
no matter what happens. I don’t love him, Vi.”

For some reason, her friend’s words hit her like a
blow to the solar plexus. She had no idea why. It wasn’t as though
she’d ever truly believed in them as a couple.

It took her a few seconds to gather her suddenly
scattered thoughts together.

“
Okay. But that doesn’t mean you
can’t talk to him. Reassure the guy.”

Elizabeth gave her a look. “Since when have you been
on his side?”

“
I’m not on his side. It’s just that
it occurred to me last night that this must have hit him really
hard.”

For a moment Elizabeth’s face sagged with guilt. Then
she lifted her chin. “I can’t think about him. I know that sounds
selfish, but if I stop to think about all the people I’ll be
disappointing, I’ll never do this. And I need to do this, Vi.”

“
I know.”

“
Can we call Andy now?”

“
Absolutely.”

She called her cousin, and after ten minutes of
cajoling that soon degenerated into outright sucking up, she
managed to secure his promise to run a search on Sam Blackwell.
Elizabeth thanked her profusely and went back upstairs to sleep off
more of her hangover. At three that afternoon, Andy called back
with the last known address for Sam Blackwell. Feeling a little
dazed, Violet put the “back in five minutes” sign in the window and
shut the shop up before heading upstairs.

She walked into a shining, immaculate apartment and
the smell of cleaning fluid.

“
I hope you don’t mind. I needed
something to do while waiting. Other than sit around and doubt
myself, I mean,” Elizabeth said as she straightened the pile of
magazines on the coffee table.

“
Why would I mind? You can stay any
time.” Violet marveled at how nice her living space looked when it
wasn’t buried under papers and discarded clothes.

Elizabeth’s gaze dropped to the piece of paper in her
hand. “Is that it? Did Andy call?”

Violet handed the piece of paper over. She watched as
Elizabeth’s eyebrows shot toward her hairline.

“
Australia
? He’s in
Australia?”

“
According to Andy he
is.”

“
Philip Island. I’ve never even
heard of it.”

“
I looked it up. It’s south of
Melbourne. A beach community.”

Elizabeth stared at the note for a long beat before
meeting Violet’s gaze.

“
Then I guess I’d better book a
ticket for Australia.”

“
We could try to call him
first.”

“
No,” Elizabeth said firmly. “I want
to do this in person. And it will be good to get away for a few
days.”

“
Then lets book you that ticket,
baby cakes.”

Four days later, Violet waited until the customer
she’d just served had left the store before dialing her friend’s
cell number. She’d been counting down the hours, checking the
arrivals information for Tullamarine airport in Melbourne,
Australia, waiting for her friend to touch down.

She bit her thumb nail as she waited for E to pick
up.

“
Violet.” Elizabeth’s voice came
down the line clear as a bell, almost as though she was in the next
room instead of halfway around the world.

“
E. How was your flight? What’s
happening? Have you spoken to him yet?”

They’d discussed strategy before Elizabeth left, so
she knew her friend planned to go straight to her biological
father’s house and make contact.

“
Long. Not much. And no. I’m sitting
out the front of his house right now, trying to get up the courage
to knock on the door.”

Violet’s hand tightened on the phone. She
could hear the fear in Elizabeth’s voice. Guilt ate at her. If only
she had been able to leave the shop, she would have gone with her.
Then Elizabeth wouldn’t be facing this huge challenge alone.

“You’re nervous,” Violet said.

“Just a little.”

“Don’t be. Once he gets to know you, he’ll be
over the moon you’ve tracked him down.”

“I don’t know. Maybe I’m doing this all
wrong. Maybe I should have made contact with a letter or email
first, used a lawyer to break the ice...”

“No. You’ve done the right thing. And even if
you haven’t, you’re there now. All you have to do is go knock on
his door.”

“You make it sound so easy.”

Violet could hear the smile in her friend’s
voice.

“Come on, E. You’re a woman on a mission,
remember? You’re reclaiming your life, striking out on your own.
Shaking off old Droopy Drawers was just the first step.”