How We Met (22 page)

Zanzibar? Dolphins? Mia drew a blank.

Mia was glad to see that people were mixing and chatting a little more easily now.

Karen wandered off to take her place next to Fraser again, where she could rub his knee, mutely. Two mutes together.

Mia needed a wee – excellent. Since having a baby, needing a wee always filled Mia with a frisson of excitement. Twenty seconds alone on the loo! Going for a number two? That was practically a mini-break. She gave Billy to Eduardo again – who promptly threw him in the air – then went inside with her handbag, planning to retouch her make-up.

She flushed the toilet then studied herself in the mirror. The afternoon sun streaming in through the window was unforgiving, and she blew air out through her mouth in dismay. She looked knackered – this year had really aged her. She pulled the corners of her cheeks up, wondering how much a face-lift might set her back, put some Touche Eclat under her eyes, bared her teeth, checking on the encroaching state of yellowness
, and made to rejoin the party.

‘Oh, there you are …’

‘Fraser
, Jesus
,’ Mia gasped. ‘Do you make a habit of stalking people outside toilets?’

‘I’ve been looking for you everywhere. How are you doing?’

‘Good – where’s Billy?’

‘Karen’s got him.’

‘Oh.’ She forced her eyebrows down. ‘She’s lovely, Fraser. Really, just lovely.’

‘Do you think so?’ He was sort of screwing his face up.

‘Definitely. Really nice.’

They hovered on the stairs saying nothing for too long.

‘Well, you and Eduardo seem to be getting on well, too.’

She rolled her eyes ‘Like a house on fire …’

Fraser laughed through his nose and looked at the floor.

‘I saw Karen showing you her dolphin nails,’ he said, grimacing.

‘And very lovely they were too. Apparently, it’s a love you share.’

Fraser looked blank.

‘She told me about you swimming with dolphins in Zanzibar.’ Then Mia bit her lip and it took him a second, but then he started to laugh, a low chuckle. ‘You know, I don’t tell you everything I’ve ever done in my life.’

‘No, I suppose not. Anyway, you look happy,’ she said, and then she thought about it for a moment, what the heck. ‘
Are
you happy?’ she asked.

‘Yes,’ said Fraser, but he paused. ‘Yes, I think I am.’

There was another, very long pause as Mia searched his face.

‘That’s good,’ she said eventually. ‘I’m really pleased for you, Fraser.’ She smiled. ‘Anyway, I’d better …’

‘Actually, I just wanted to give you this,’ said Fraser, quickly, handing her a small, thick blue envelope that said
BILLY
on the front.

‘But you and Karen gave him a card already?’ she said.

‘I know, but this one’s from me.’

‘Oh.’ She beamed. ‘Shall I open it now?’

‘No, no, just open it at home … Anyway,’ Fraser looked flustered, ‘listen, about that phone call last week. I—’

‘Oh, look, I’m sorry—’

‘No,
I’m
sorry, I was being a twat, I …’

‘No, honestly …’

‘Frase? Hun, are you up here?’ They both started and turned around to see Karen stomping up the stairs, her chest leading the way. ‘They’re doing …’

And then she stopped mid-stair and, for some bizarre reason, Mia found herself putting the envelope behind her back.

‘They’re wanting to do the candles and cakes, now.’

‘OK, we’re coming,’ said Mia, brightly.

‘Yep, we’re coming right now,’ said Fraser.

But she’d already gone back downstairs.

‘Happy Birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday dear Billy … Happy birthday to you!’

Billy screeched with delight, kicking his legs, and Mia helped him blow out the candles in the low, afternoon sun. ‘Make a wish, Billy,’ she whispered.

‘Him and Daisy forever!!’ someone shouted from the back, and everyone laughed and clapped.

‘Let’s raise a glass to Billy,’ said Melody.

‘To Billy!’ everyone said, chinking their glasses.

Then Norm stood up. ‘Um, if you don’t mind, I do have one other person to toast …’

Oh, Norm, thought Mia. Not here, not now. ‘…
and that is our friend Liv. Those here today who knew her
, some very closely …’ Mia looked over at Fraser, their eyes locked for a second and she looked away. ‘… will know that she would have loved to have been here today. She would have been the life and soul.’

‘Hear, Hear,’ said Mia, almost to herself, and she gave Billy a little squeeze.

‘Yes, Olivia was always the last to leave a party,’ piped up Melody. She was a little drunk now and stumbled slightly on her wedges. ‘In fact, on her List that she left us – well, at least we like to
think
she left us, the list of things she wanted to do before she was thirty, although bless her heart she never saw that birthday …’ The garden had fallen silent now. People were looking confused. ‘… she actually specifically requested we hold a party, so here we all are!’

There was a ripple of nervous laughter.

‘Melody.’ Norm silenced his wife with a squeeze of her hand. ‘I’d just like us to also raise our glasses to absent friends, that’s all,’ he said, turning to the crowd, ‘and specifically to Liv.’

‘To Liv,’ everyone said, and there were a couple of seconds’ awkward silence as everyone sipped their drinks.

‘Oh! And also to Norm and me,’ Melody suddenly said, ‘for three glorious years of marriage. It’s our anniversary today!’

But everyone had started to meander back to what they were doing and her words were soaked up in the chatter.

After the hot, muggy day in Norm and Melody’s back garden, the heavens had finally opened, and Mia sat at traffic lights on her way home, windscreen wipers on ‘manic’, having a row with Eduardo.

‘But
why
do you have to go out though? You’ve been out all day?’

So far, they were trying to keep things tame – Billy was asleep in the back, as was Mia’s mum (five long hours hard at it, flirting and drinking Pimm’s had finally got to her). But Mia knew this had potential to become an all-out barney and she was quite up for it, actually. She had that sinking, tetchy feeling after the day’s events, like coming home from a long holiday to find you’ve left the freezer door open and everything’s defrosted.

‘It’s my son’s first birthday, Mia. A milestone. I just want a celebratory one with the boys. I’ll be back for nine p.m.’

Mia actually gasped – she couldn’t help it. This was exactly what she meant when she said her relationship with Eduardo held far too much potential for ranting, raving and getting out of moving cars (something she would seriously consider NOW if she wasn’t driving herself
). Of course it was a bloody milestone! That’s why she’d made a cake! And organized a party! (And looked after his son for the past twelve months, but she’d have to overlook that right now, otherwise she might kill him.)

Also—

‘That’s what you said on his actual
birth
day, remember? That you would be back to see us by nine p.m. after you’d “wet the baby’s head”. Then I didn’t see you for three months, Eduardo. How do I know the same thing isn’t going to happen this birthday, too?’

Mia and Eduardo don’t talk about him leaving her when she was pregnant, they don’t talk about how he missed the birth because he was pissed in a pub in Columbia Road or how he went AWOL, literally uncontactable for three months afterwards, because if they did, Mia wouldn’t be able to look at him.

‘Now you’re just being … FACTITIOUS,’ he said.

‘I think you mean facetious.’ Ten years in England and Eduardo still got some words wrong.

‘Whatever, a pain in the ass.’

‘Oh, that’s lovely, that is.’

The lights changed, Mia drove on towards the station. James Brown ‘Sex Machine’ came on the radio and she had to turn it down in case she laughed, or very possibly cried. They were rowing (again); they had several Tupperware boxes of uneaten egg-mayo sandwiches packed between them, making the car smell of farts. She couldn’t feel less of a sex machine if she tried. She felt miserable, really miserable, all of a sudden. She wanted to get home, put her baby to bed and work her way methodically through a four-pack of lager.

‘I don’t mind you going out, but you’ve been with your mates all day. You’ve been drinking beer in a garden
all day.
If anyone should be going out, it should be me!’

‘But you don’t like going out.’

Oh, this drove her INSANE.

‘I don’t have anyone to go out with. Or any money. Everyone’s in couples, or lives in London. Melody and Norm are going through some marital crisis, all my old friends got bored of asking if I could go out long ago, Anna lives in London and has turned to Buddha, Fraser’s got a girlfriend …’

She was tired and ranting; she hated it when she got like this.

‘And you’re jealous.’

‘What?’

‘Of Fraser’s girlfriend. I saw you watching her at the party.’

‘Oh, give it up, Eduardo.’ Mia leant forward to try to see anything through the lashing rain.

‘You love him, I think.’

‘He was my best friend’s boyfriend, you are being
absurd
.’

‘… you kissed him once, you told me.’

‘Yes, I was hypnotized, I’d just eaten a raw onion and it was more than TEN YEARS AGO. Shut up!’

‘Dearie me, what are you two arguing about?’

In the back, Lynette suddenly stirred. She’d had her eyes open for three seconds and was already applying lip gloss.

‘Sorry, Mum,’ sighed Mia, bad-temperedly. ‘We’re almost here now anyway …’

Mia drove up the hill and turned right into Lancaster train station – a handsome, sandstone, old-fashioned sort of station, where she would drop off her barely conscious mother, so she could hit the buffet car and start on the mini-bottles of Blossom Hill.

Mia’s mother never came to stay the night. Apparently, if she didn’t get her full eight hours, she was ‘unbearable’.

It didn’t bear thinking about.

Mia reached under the front seat to unlock the boot.

‘So, come on, what is all the noise about?’ said Lynette. ‘I’m interested now, you woke me up.’

Eduardo stared out of the window.

‘Oh, Eduardo wants to go out,’ said Mia. ‘Which isn’t a big deal. I just thought, since he’s been out all day, he might want to stop in, open the rest of Billy’s cards and presents together and have a drink, you know, raise a glass to our son.’

Lynette sighed.
‘You are hard on him, Mia Saffron.’ Mia cringed at the reminder of her awful middle name. ‘Children’s parties are really quite tiring, you know …’

Mia got out of the car before she did something she’d regret.

‘OK, Mum, thanks for coming!’ She lugged Lynette’s pulley case out of her boot, practically steered her mum towards the automatic doors of the station. ‘Have a good journey home, OK, Mum? Billy and I will come to see you soon.’

Mia stood under the shelter of the entrance and went to give her mum a peck on the cheek,
but Lynette stopped her.

‘You know, I do know what it’s like, being on your own,’ Lynette said suddenly. ‘I was on my own when I had you, remember?’ Mia couldn’t remember her mother being with her on her own, ever, but anyway … ‘And you know my advice?’ her mum said, leaning in so she could whisper in Mia’s ear. ‘Keep hold of him, because it’s so much easier when there’s two of you, even if he’s a bit of a shit. Money-wise, time-wise. Believe me, I’ve been there. And he’s just a normal bloke, Mia. They’re all the same, love.’

And with that, she kissed Mia on top of her head and tottered off on her zebra-print stilettos, slightly wobbly now with a hangover. Mia watched her. ‘Mad, mad mother of mine,’ she said to herself.

Then she ran through the rain to the car.

‘Just go out,’ she said, getting in. ‘I’ll drop you off at Revolution.’

After three trips up and down the stairs to her flat, carrying Billy in one hand and endless boxes of Tupperware and presents in the other, Mia was finally home.

The flat was warm, and like everything in her life of late, smelt faintly of nappy sacs and hard-boiled egg.

She switched on the light and stood there for a second, leaning on the doorframe, getting her breath back.

‘What am I doing, Olivia?’

It wasn’t often she had the urge just to speak to her like that – unless, of course, she was at the bench. It wasn’t as if she felt ‘her presence’. Mia wasn’t into all that supernatural stuff: that used to be Anna’s job; she was always claiming to have had a visit in the night, or to have smelt her perfume. (‘Yeah, probably from when she was actually last there,’ Fraser would joke, drily. Liv didn’t so much put perfume on as jump in the bottle.) So no, Mia wasn’t surprised one bit when the curtains didn’t flutter, when nothing fell off the shelf and smashed, when nobody replied. It’s just sometimes,
usually when she was asking herself whether she’d made the right decision, she’d ask Liv – it was as if she were her conscience – and right now, having taken the path of least resistance again, she imagined she’d be none too impressed.

She walked over to the window. The rain had stopped and it had started to brighten up, the castle suddenly backlit, and Mia felt that familiar drag of loneliness take hold of her. It was 6.30 p.m., she had three more hours of daylight – what the hell was she supposed to fill them with?

She used to love summer – a summer bunny, she was, prone to getting people round for barbecues in March, then not putting shoes on until October. These days, however, she dreaded the long summer evenings in her flat, even longer up North than in London, with the sun in July not dipping behind the castle till gone half past nine sometimes. At least in winter you could rack up the central heating, put on a DVD at 5 p.m. and call it a day.

She opened the window further and listened: traffic, the
rhythmic rumble of a train making its way towards the
Lakes, somewhere too … church bells. Evensong. She held Billy and she shuddered, because these sounds, this vivid light, the smell of summer after rain, they all reminded her of exactly this time of day last year, when
all her friends would be going to the Water Witch to drink pints by the canal, and she would be here, in this flat, with a tiny, mewing, writhing baby she didn’t know.