How We Met (43 page)

The hotel lounge bar was a small, elevated room off the lobby, with more white-painted brick and several tastefully upholstered chairs around cocktail tables. Mia walked in at 6 p.m., as arranged, self-conscious in an already seen outfit, the hound-tooth dress she’d worn on her birthday. Melody was also in a dress, and the boys in suits.

They both looked so handsome in suits, she thought: Fraser tall and distinguished – elegant even; Norm, twinkly eyed, with a neatly trimmed beard. For a split second, when she came out of the lift and saw them, the image that came to mind was of them standing in Liv’s parents’ tasteful lounge in a pool of August sun, talking to her father at the wake.

Time to stop this.

They raised a toast. ‘Well, to Liv, I guess,’ said Norm. (Fraser said he wasn’t drunk enough to do this particular toast.) ‘Happy birthday. We fucking miss you, man,’ and it was only as they chinked their glasses, and drank silently, tears in their eyes, that Melody suddenly said, ‘Wait, where’s Anna?’

They looked at one another.

‘Oh, I’m fucking sick of this.’ Fraser slammed his drink on the table and went towards the stairs. ‘I’m not having this any more, I’m going up.’

Mia went after him. For some reason, she felt as though Anna’s mood, the potential she seemed to hold for ruining everything lately, fell on her shoulders, and she didn’t want Fraser to bear the brunt.

‘Wait,’ she said, tugging at his suit jacket, ‘I’ll go and get her. You stay here.’

She took the lift to the second floor and knocked softly on door 220.

‘Anna, it’s me. We’re all waiting downstairs. Are you going to be long?’

She could hear faint talking, faint music. Ten seconds later, she knocked again.

‘Anna?’ she said, louder this time. ‘Open the door, it’s me, Mia.’

There was the click of a phone, the soft pad of footsteps. Eventually, Anna opened the door, still in her dressing gown, a glass in her hand. She looked as if she’d been crying.

‘Oh, Anna,’ said Mia.

‘Oh, what?’ she shrugged.’

‘Can I come in?’

Anna walked back inside the room, leaving the door open, so Mia followed her in. There were candles lit, four empty mini-bottles of vodka on the dressing table. Anna was midway through her own private party.

‘Would you like a drink?’ she said, going to the mini-bar. ‘I’ve got vodka, gin. I can open a bottle of wine, if you like?’

‘No, I don’t want a drink,’ said Mia. ‘I just want to know what’s wrong. I just want to know what’s going on with you.’

Anna knocked back her drink. ‘I think you know what’s going on with me, Mia.’ She smiled, her lip trembling. ‘I haven’t forgotten our conversation in January. I don’t know about you.’

Mia gave a quick, nervous laugh. ‘But, Anna, it’s irrelevant.’

‘What’s irrelevant, Mia? That you’re in love with Fraser? You think that’s irrelevant?’

Mia swallowed. ‘I’m not in love with Fraser,’ she said. ‘I don’t know, maybe I was at one point.’ She paused. ‘OK, who knows, maybe I still am. But, Anna, so what? Do you know what I mean?’

Anna fixed her with fierce blue eyes.

‘Why do you care? I don’t mean that horribly – but exactly what can either of us do about it?’

And as Mia said the words, they made total sense. Even if this was a cop-out – what
could
she do about it?

‘Today is not about me, or Fraser, or Norm, or you,’ Mia carried on. ‘It’s not about any of us, it’s about Liv. It’s about making tonight good for Liv.’

Anna smiled and went over to the dressing table. ‘That’s the very reason why it
is
about everyone else,’ she said, refilling her glass. ‘Why it is about you and Fraser …’ She hovered over the words, Mia shifted nervously.

She passed Mia something, a photo. ‘Remember this?’ she said.

It was of them all in Ibiza. It was evening, but they were still in bikinis and shorts, their tans deep in the moonlight, the picture of health and youth. They were outside the beach bar on the night Liv died, arms slung around one another, drinks held in the air, mouths open, laughing. Their faces said: this is the time of our lives and we know it.

‘Remember that night?’ said Anna.

‘Course,’ said Mia. ‘How could I ever forget?’

‘Well, yeah. How could you ever forget?’

What did that mean? Anna was freaking her out now.

‘That was the best holiday of my life – until what happened, happened, obviously … I’ve never had such a good time since,’ Anna said. ‘Never had friends like I did then.’

‘But we’re still friends,
’ said Mia, feeling tearful and anxious now. ‘I know this year’s been tough, I know none of us are a replacement for Liv, I know you miss her so much, darling, but we’re still friends. I’m still your friend,’ and she reached out and squeezed Anna’s hand.

‘Friends tell the truth,’ said Anna, moving her hand away.

‘About what? About Fraser? But I’ve told you the truth. I’ve told you I had feelings for him.’

Suddenly there was a banging on the door. ‘Ladies, we’re leaving for the restaurant now,’ Fraser shouted. Mia jolted and pulled her hand away. ‘So if you’re coming, Anna, then you have to come now.’

Anna turned to Mia, her eyes full of tears. ‘I’m not coming,’ she said.

‘But, Anna, why not?’ Mia suddenly felt panicked. ‘It won’t be the same without you. It won’t be the five of us.’

Anna stared into her drink. ‘It’s already not the five of us,’ she said, as one single tear rolled down her cheek. ‘It hasn’t been the five of us for a long time.’

They’d taken a punt on the restaurant, like they’d had to take a punt on the hotel, choosing it because – on their brief walk around town on arrival – it looked the most obvious: a modern, cavernous establishment imaginatively
named the Restaurant, Bar and Grill,
slap-bang in City Square in what was apparently the old Post Office.

They’d all looked inside as if they were eyeing up a wedding venue. Uh-huh, big (probably meant it had tables available), chic, high ceilings, glass-backed cocktail bar, black-and-white photos of movie stars. It had something of an old-style glamour to it, and Liv loved old-style glamour.

‘Well, clearly, she did go for Leeds, so sod her,’ Melody said sardonically, as they went to reception to make a reservation for that evening. ‘If we all get food poisoning, or it’s rubbish, then on her head be it,’ and she threw an arm around Norm and pulled him close and they all smiled because they knew that Norm felt wretched about pulling Leeds out of the hat; and also it was just nice to see them getting on. Almost six months after they’d separated, Norm and Melody had gone full circle. It was like they were friends again, being ‘larky and matey’ (rather than ‘arsey and hatey’, as Norm had put it.)

They had a drink in the main restaurant first. Behind it, Leeds Station was just visible, the curve of the train tracks making their way out of the city, the distinctive black-and-white taxis rolling up in front. Mia had thought they were police cars when she’d first arrived: even she’d had to laugh at how clueless she could be sometimes.

The private dining room they’d booked was on a mezzanine level, above the main restaurant. It was self-contained and almost soundproof, with a long glass table and swanky, tan leather, high-backed seats. Although it was smart it lacked any of the character of the main restaurant. Mia couldn’t help feeling she was attending an AGM.

‘So, just wondering, did any of you bring your lists?’ asked Norm, rubbing his hands together. Mia looked at Fraser at the other end of the table and wondered whether he was having similar thoughts.

Clearly, he was: ‘This isn’t a business meeting, mate.’

‘I have to agree,’ said Mia. ‘We’re ordering dinner, aren’t we? Not coffee and biscuits.’

Norm looked a bit hurt. ‘Hey, I’m just doing things properly,’ he said, splaying his palms defensively. ‘I do feel a bit of a twat for us being in Leeds in the first place, do you know what I mean?’
He adjusted his tie. ‘I just want to do her proud. In case you’d all forgotten, we were all meant to have completed the List by now, which we haven’t. I just thought we could see where we were.’

‘OK, later, Norm,’ said Melody softly, touching his arm. ‘Don’t get your knickers in a twist, we’ll do it later.’

They ordered food: rock oysters because Melody insisted (her treat), even though Mia wasn’t even sure she liked oysters and wondered if she might have a life-threatening allergy to them: death by rock-oyster-
induced anaphylactic shock – what was it with her and her morbid fascination today? It was supposed to be a happy day.

But of course it wasn’t a happy day, not really. It wasn’t a happy day because it wasn’t Liv’s birthday. She didn’t make it to her thirtieth birthday.

The rock oysters came – shiny and, Mia couldn’t help thinking, the consistency of huge gobs of phlegm. She ate a couple anyway, felt them slide down her throat, vinegary and lemony. ‘Well, this is proper romantic, this is,’ Fraser said
, and they all laughed – it felt like something of a release. Then he told some hideous, out-of-both-ends story regarding him and Liv and a mutual food-poisoning encounter with oysters. Mia wondered if he’d embellished it a little, just to get things going, to lighten the mood.

They ordered wine, or rather Melody tried to order wine – a £57 bottle of Burgundy. Fraser, seeing Mia’s face (£57 was pretty much what she had to spend on living per week), overruled with house white.

It’s what Liv would have wanted.

But would she have wanted any of this?
Mia was beginning to wonder. Every time she and Fraser exchanged looks, she suspected he was thinking the same.

They chatted and laughed; they talked about Anna and about what could possibly be her problem, Fraser becoming more bolshie the drunker he got: ‘Fuck her. She’s just attention seeking. She’s probably having a Buddhist ceremony in her room, chanting at the walls or something. She’ll be happy as Larry.’ But it was definitely tense, a birthday celebration without a birthday, after all.

Mia looked around the table at her friends, Anna’s words reverberating in her head: She was right. They weren’t the five of them any
more, not the same five they’d been back in Ibiza, anyway, not even the same five they had been this time last year.

She watched Fraser as he laughed and joked. He was so much more confident than the man who’d sat on her sofa a year ago tomorrow and cried like a baby, and yet he looked older – unmistakably handsome but definitely older. She’d never looked at one of her friends and thought they’d aged before, but now she did.

Norm and Melody were divorced now, too, and yet Melody had sat on the front steps of her marital home just days ago, before she started the task of sorting through her and Norm’s stuff, and said she hadn’t felt happier in a long time.

It was because things were changing – Mia had said as much to her; things were evolving. Mia couldn’t help feeling suddenly so sad that Liv would never evolve.

She would never know what it was to be divorced, or even married; her face would never age. Mrs Durham joked these days, ‘See these wrinkles? All paid for, Mary! Life’s rich tapestry, etched on my face.’ It was a privilege to age, thought Mia, but Liv was robbed of that. Her life was interrupted and the List was just a concrete reminder of that fact. Literally a life suspended, dreams frozen in time.

It had been Mia’s idea to do it. It had to be her idea to stop.

The main courses came and went, then Norm got a piece of paper out of his jacket and rustled it, officiously.

‘Right, so, what have we got left on the List to do? Because there were twenty things on there and I swear we’ve not done all of them.’

Mia reluctantly got her copy of the List out of her bag. It was agreed that the following were outstanding:

9. French kiss in Central Park. ‘Well, that’s not going to happen, is it, Andrew?’ said Melody. She was pissed now and any efforts to be sensitive had gone with the last bottle of wine.

Thankfully, Norm saw the funny side: ‘I’m sure we French-kissed in Williamson’s Park at some point in our relationship?’ he said. ‘Thorpe Park? Chessington World of Adventures?’

Melody sniggered, laying her head on her arms in surrender. Norm could still make her laugh.

12. Live in Paris. That was Anna’s, and so far they’d heard nothing about Paris.

10. Climb Great Wall of China. ‘Well, actually,’ announced Norm, ‘I’m going to do that this summer.’

And they all
oooh
ed and
aaaah
ed whilst looking at him as if to say, ‘Course you are, Norm.’

14. Swim naked in the sea at dawn. (Oh, God), Mia fake-coughed and looked out of the window

‘Woodhouse!’ They all pointed at her. ‘You said you were going to do that in the summer!’

‘This summer,’ she cowered. ‘This summer I shall swim naked, constantly. Try and stop me! Every single day I shall be in Morecambe Bay.’

But really, she couldn’t bear it any longer. Just as the idea for the List had hammered insistently at her mind a year ago, now it seemed to curdle in there and she needed to be the one to say something.

She spoke suddenly.

‘Just out of interest, has anyone actually ever made one of these Lists?’

They all looked at her blankly.

‘One of these “Things to Do Before I Am Thirty” lists? Because Fraser’s already thirty and the rest of us turn thirty this year.’

Across the table, she caught Fraser’s face. She could have sworn she saw a smile curl at his lips.

‘No, I didn’t make a list,’ he said, palms pressed together,
not taking his eyes off her. ‘And I don’t intend to make a list. Ever, actually.’

He looked at her so long that she had to look away.

‘What about anyone else?’ she said.

Silence; they all looked at one another.

‘I haven’t got time to complete my shopping list,’ said Melody. ‘Never mind anything else.’

‘Well, I have,’ announced Norm, suddenly sticking his hand up. ‘I wrote a list of things to do before I’m thirty.’