How We Met (14 page)

Not that Norm’s probably giving much thought to his wife, to be fair, since he will probably have bankrupted himself by now or been arrested. She thinks about the boys at the poker table, JD on the rocks, and she looks at them all on their gondola and laughs to herself because it all just seems such a cliché! And who’d have known that the reason they were all where they were was about as far away from a cliché as it was possible to get: that they were not on a hen or stag do, but a ‘dead friend’ do. But this weekend will be special. She hasn’t left her son with his father and spent her savings for it not to be …

‘What do you reckon the boys will be up to now?’ she offers, trying to lighten the situation in her own mind.

‘Drunk,’ says Anna, not looking up from her book.

‘Declaring their love for one another in an Elvis suit at the Little Chapel of Love?’ adds Mia.

Anna sniggers. ‘I can just see Norm in an Elvis suit, especially with his sideburns,’ she says. ‘Not sure about Fraser though. Not sure he could really pull off white satin flares.’ Then they both pause as if expecting Melody to say something comical or affectionate, but all she does is roll her eyes with all the charm of a long-suffering wife and say, ‘Andrew’ (she’s taken to calling him Andrew
lately, something she never did, it was always Norm)
‘will probably be in bed with heatstroke. I told him he’d never cope with the heat in Las Vegas. He’s always been terrible with heat.’

So far, Melody’s behaviour suggests she doesn’t miss poor Norm at all, that she’s glad to be shot of him for a few days.

But perhaps this is just ‘transference’, Mia thinks. It’s a word Valerie once used – Valerie being the therapist she saw after Liv died and then again when Eduardo left her – and one she uses liberally these days because it makes her feel better somehow that there may be a term for it. Because the thing is, she doesn’t miss Billy. Not really. And what sort of person, or mother, does that make her?

‘Oh, you’ll feel dreadful leaving him,’ Jo and Tamsin had said to her. Jo and Tamsin are mums from Rock-a-Bye Baby, a mother-and-baby singing class Mia has started to go to – or persevere with might be a better description, since the first time she took Billy he screamed blue murder, and the second he threw a brick at another baby’s head.

‘I’ve never left Daisy overnight,’ Tamsin added.

Why the hell not? Mia wanted to say. You’ve got a FREE babysitter living in your house. She never did get this – married mums who never went out and complained continuously about it. If she had another person living in her house – any person; it didn’t need to be her husband, just as long as she didn’t need to pay them every time she went to the shop for toilet roll – she’d be out every night.

To top it off, her mother had (in that infuriating subtle manner she had) laid the guilt on too. ‘Oh, you’re not leaving him, are you?’ she’d said, in that ‘poor-little-mite’ voice. It really pissed Mia off – the number of times her mother had left her, sometimes for a fortnight at a time, with grandma or Aunty Gill, so she could bugger off on holiday with whoever she was shagging at the time. The number of weekends Mia had sat outside pubs drinking endless glasses of lemonade and eating packets of crisps as a child, waiting for her mother to take her home.

What was even more galling was that it worked, she did feel guilty; she felt guilty that she didn’t feel guilty about leaving Billy, that in fact she couldn’t get out of the door fast enough.

Eduardo had looked at her as if she was leaving him at the foot of Mount Everest without supplies, but sod him, if she’d done this for ten months, he could bloody well cope for a weekend. When she finally walked out of her door to catch the airport train, she’d never felt lighter. Buying a coffee and being able to drink it without fear that a small child might knock it down her top, or just being able to sit, for one English hour, without having to read
This Is Not My Tractor
, was nothing short of thrilling.

Of course she did worry if her baby was OK with his feckless father. Would he remember he needed feeding several times a day? Would he realize that that demented cry was because he was tired? But, to be honest, these thoughts are few and far between because she is free! Free for the first time in nearly a year and sitting here with the sun on her face, it feels truly incredible.

And also, this is the test. For the last few months or so, Mia has been giving Eduardo a chance. Deep down she worries this may be the worst idea she has ever had in her life, but so far she is sticking with it because she needs someone, she wants to be a family. She’s sick of being a ‘single mum’ because it’s not cool and it’s not romantic, it’s shit, and maybe she just needs to compromise and accept Eduardo will never be perfect.

Fraser seems to be compromising – heavily as far as Mia is concerned. Every time she’s called him in the past month, he’s been on his way to a wedding with Karen or just back from salsa class, or driving to godforsaken Milton Keynes with her to pick up something she’s bought on eBay. It’s insane. God, it’s insane! If Liv could see, she’d be flabbergasted, because Karen is about as far from Liv as is humanly possible. For weeks, Mia has had to bite her lip to stop herself saying, ‘Are you serious? Karen makes you happy?’ She’s a forty-two-year-old dolphin enthusiast, for crying out loud. But Fraser has made it clear that Karen is ‘a lovely person’ and that ‘he’s just growing up and learning to compromise’, and so she’s said to herself, Mia, shut up. Shut up and concentrate on your own life, because it really is none of your business. Just as what she and Eduardo are up to is none of
his
business, either. These days, there’s quite a lot off limits in terms of the conversations she has with Fraser, much more small talk than there used to be.

Melody leans forward and makes as if to cup Lorenzo’s butt cheeks, and Anna tuts, disdainfully. Once upon a time, she would have been the first to be eyeing up gondoliers. Mia watches her. Lately she’s been wondering if she really knows her friend any more. Did she ever? They always came as a group, after all, a ‘whole’ – the six of them. But now Liv has gone, the linchpin, they are fragmented, they’re suddenly having to relate to one another as individuals, and Mia isn’t sure if she actually
does
relate to Anna as an individual, which makes her feel sad and also a little guilty for some reason.

They’ve always had fun, of course, you could always count on Anna for fun, an adventure, a story to tell at the end of the night; but in terms of anything deeper? Mia is beginning to wonder if it was only with Liv that Anna shared her innermost thoughts and insecurities. Liv was always close to Anna; she went that extra mile to understand their complex, sometimes infuriating friend. As Liv’s best friend, Mia feels she should be the one to take over that role and yet, she doesn’t feel able, she’s not up to the job. Right now, sitting here, she resolves that she’ll try.

‘So how’s your book, Span?’ she says, brightly. ‘Maybe you can teach me how to live in the moment.’

‘Amazing. Really fascinating. Throws a whole new perspective on life, actually, do you know what I mean?’

Mia didn’t really, but she smiled at her friend, immersed in her book.

And she did suppose that this was Anna’s MO after all. Spanner is a girl of contrast and extremes, somehow making up for her overindulgence in casual sex and hedonism in all its forms (predictably, nothing had been heard of Ollie since Liv’s reunion), by indulgence in health fads such as cupping, flotation tanks or, now, Buddhism. One of the things on the list that Anna pulled out was
Learn how to meditate
, and so, not one to do things by halves, she has started going to a nearby monastery to take part in silent weekends, and hanging around with a meditation guru called Steve – a name that, Mia couldn’t help thinking, didn’t exactly say ‘chakra’ to her.

But Mia is glad Anna has some focus in her life. Work doesn’t give her much of that, after all: it’s a series of temping contracts and career diversions. Anna seems incapable of finding that one thing to set her world on fire (and Anna can’t just get a job, it has to be one that ‘sets her world on fire’). It’s just this new
spiritual direction seems too extreme, even for her.
What
happened to the bolshie Anna of old? The reckless, naughty Anna who would have rolled her eyes at the idea of ‘meditating’?

Lorenzo pushes on and Mia marvels at her surroundings, drinking it in like she’s been in prison for years and this is her first blast of fresh air: the twinkling jade-green water, the wooden jetties with the gondolas lined up, like rows of Aladdin’s shoes; it seems unreal, like a painting. Now and again, she gets a sudden flashback, an image in her head of them all the last time they were here, drifting along in a gondola. It’s not so much a whole picture, though, as a feeling or a sense of something: the firmness of her nineteen-year-old thighs in her denim
cut-offs; the sound of Liv’s cackling laugh, totally unin
hibited; the way Anna would check herself out in the water’s reflection and they’d all pretend they hadn’t seen – where did that vain Anna go? Mia wants her back.

‘Liv would have loved this,’ she says, suddenly. Must get a grip, she thinks, must not get too introspective. ‘She would have been very impressed with us, girls, I think. Very impressed indeed.’ And then, without having to say anything to one another, Anna puts her book down and Melody gets up and moves so she is wedged between the two of them and they hold hands for a few seconds in sombre silence before eventually not being able to take it any more and falling about laughing at nothing in particular.

The afternoon is whiled away pleasantly with a trip to the Guggenheim Museum, where Anna spends hours reading every single word on the information panels and Melody and Mia take themselves off to the gallery shop to buy postcards and browse through the art books.

This is so nice, thinks Mia. When was the last time I did anything vaguely cultural? When was the last time I looked at any book that wasn’t waterproof or made noises? She is revelling in this feeling – she can practically feel her mind expanding – when her mobile goes.

She picks up, and all she hears is Billy screaming.

‘Eduardo?’ Her stomach flips. ‘Eduardo? Are you there? What’s wrong with Billy?’

There’s a crackling sound and then a louder wail and Mia realizes Eduardo has had the phone to Billy’s ear.

She takes herself outside the shop, leaving Melody. ‘Eduardo. Answer me: why is Billy crying like that?’

There’s a long pause as Billy takes a silent breath, which Mia knows is about to be followed by an almighty howl.

‘He misses his mama,’ says Eduardo.

Mia stands outside the Guggenheim shop and feels the blood rise to her cheeks.

‘He misses his mummy, don’t you, Billy?’

Mia sighs, infuriated, a horrid mix of guilt and anger and worry rolled into one.

‘Eduardo, this is not fair. What am I supposed to do about it here?’

‘I don’t know,’ says Eduardo. ‘But he’s been like this for hours. I didn’t know what to do.’

‘
Hours?
’ says Mia, alarmed.

The crying goes on and on and she feels a wrenching in her bones, an overwhelming desire to feel her son’s springy, smooth skin, to hold him close to her and smell him.

She rubs her forehead.

‘Has he had his lunchtime sleep?’ she says. ‘He’s tired, that cry is tired. Or maybe he’s not well? Have you felt his head? Feel his head, Eduardo, is it hot?’

Mia has always prided herself on not being an overprotective mum, but then she’s never been hundreds of miles away and unable to do anything before.

Billy wails and wails. He’s beside himself now, hysterical, and Mia has to hold the phone away from her ear for a second because she can’t bear to hear it any more.

‘Look, I’m going to have to go,’ huffs Eduardo, over the noise, when she puts it back. ‘I’ll work it out – have a good time, yeah?’ And Mia says, ‘OK …’ Then, ‘Put him on, Eduardo, put Billy on the phone.’

The crying calms a little as Eduardo puts the phone to his son’s ear.

‘Hey, Billy, I love you, OK?’ she says. Has she ever
said that to him? To her baby? Has she ever said it out loud? ‘Mummy loves you lots and I’ll be back soon, OK?’ But Eduardo has already hung up.

‘Everything all right?’ Melody comes out of the shop and Mia looks away, fighting the almighty lump in her throat.

‘Yeah, yeah, everything’s fine,’ she sniffs. ‘I need a drink I think, shall we go and find Anna?’

The three of them walk idly along the cobbled lanes, which open into quaint squares and streets of designer shops, to Corte del Arsenale, where they have lunch alfresco, facing two gigantic stone lions straight out of Narnia in the fading afternoon sun.

And because they are old friends, they don’t talk about the big picture, or where their lives are going (although secretly, perhaps, this is exactly what they need to talk about), but instead about their shoes, Davina McCall’s exercise DVD and, of course, there’s always their shared history: how funny it was when Liv did this; how they all spent their money getting their portraits done in Budapest on that InterRailing holiday and then had to starve. ‘Never been thinner though,’ said Melody. ‘Norm didn’t recognize me when I got back.’ How Liv got a shocking bout of holiday belly and lost control of her bowels on the ferry to Corfu. They cry with laughter at this one and, for a second, a fleeting second, Mia sees her friends as she used to.

Plans to go back to the hotel to shower and change so they can look their best for Harry’s Bar are replaced by ordering more wine. It’s what she would have wanted, after all.

‘Mmm, I know!’ says Melody suddenly, mouth full of wine. ‘Let’s play, I Have Never …’

Mia fills up her glass. Since the call from Eduardo she’s struggling to relax and thinks more alcohol might help. ‘Is that wise? Haven’t played that for years,’ she says.

‘Me neither.’ In contrast, Melody seems to be having no problem at all relaxing and is already tipsy. ‘But it was a game Liv made up, wasn’t it? It was one of hers so I think it’s only right. Spanner, are you in?’