Sticks and Stones (12 page)

‘What? Look Lou – ‘

‘How about: “Come on Frankie let’s just get going, you don’t need any stuff to stay at mine.” Or “Don’t worry about the pill Frankie; it’ll be fine”.’

Tom’s face lit up and he made another move around Lou, ‘Is she…?’

Lou threw up her hands then pushed him back into the corridor. ‘Yes Weasel, that was the plan wasn’t it?’

Tom’s elated expression faltered a minute and he started rubbing the back of his neck with his hand, looking down at his feet and scuffing the floor.

‘It’s not like I went out of my way to…to…’

‘Knock her up? Isn’t it? So that’s why you weren’t too worried that she “forgot” her pills or why you didn’t bother to use a condom?’

‘It wasn’t deliberate Lou but…but…I guess…’

Lou had never seen Tom look anything less than supremely arrogant, and his sheepish demeanor went some way to softening her anger.

‘You guess that it was kind of what you hoped for.’

Tom shrugged helplessly. ‘I wasn’t really thinking to be honest Lou. I just thought that…well…if she did happen to…you know…that it would mean that she…’ he trailed off and Lou narrowed her eyes.

‘It would mean that she would be tied to you?’

Tom sighed. ‘I wasn’t deliberately going out of my way to trap her Lou. It’s just that she’s been the very definition of hard to get, and the thought of her slipping through my fingers again is – ‘ He was interrupted by the door opening behind Lou, Frankie stood in the frame. Her eyes were still red-rimmed but her tears had dried and the look of fear on her face from earlier was replaced by a look of wonder.

‘You’re happy I’m - ?’ she started to say in a hopeful, breathless voice but was cut off as Tom pushed past Lou and snatched Frankie up in a fierce hug.

‘Of course I’m bloody happy,’ he said, his voice hoarse with emotion as he practically lifted her off her feet.

‘You want me to be pregnant? You’re not angry?’

Tom pulled back so he could look directly into her eyes. ‘I am the happiest I’ve ever been in my whole sodding life,’ he said fiercely. Frankie searched his face, running her fingers from his temple down to his jaw reverently. Once she’d seen whatever she was looking for in him her expression cleared, and she smiled her most dazzlingly smile. Lou made a frustrated noise in the back of her throat and both eyes swung to her.

‘Frankie,’ she said slowly and in her opinion with what she regarded as infinite patience. ‘You do realize that he
wanted
to get you pregnant? That he deliberately – ‘

‘Really?’ Frankie breathed, her hand still cupping his face, her smile if anything more dazzlingly than before. Lou looked at the ceiling despairingly.

‘Frankie, that is
not cool
. Weasel shouldn’t just get away with…’ Lou trailed off when the kissing started. It was clear that as far as the two of them were concerned she had ceased to exist. She huffed, but as Tom started shuffling Frankie back into her room and Frankie threw a huge smile at her over her shoulder, looking absolutely ecstatic, Lou couldn’t help a small smile. Maybe he was a caveman but if he could make Frankie smile like that then Lou could let it go. For now.

Lou’s smile died as she made her way to her own room and flopped down on the bed. So much for offloading on Frankie. But as Lou had done time and time again in the past, she put her own worries last on her priority list, swallowed back her emotions and blinked away her tears before they had a chance to fall.

Stopped expecting too much a long time ago

‘Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or – ‘ Lou stopped as she felt a sharp tug on the front of her dress and heard the ripple of laughter go through the congregation.

‘Louey cuccol!’ cried Finlay, who was standing beside her at the front of the church, his sturdy little legs planted wide and a stubborn expression on his face.

She looked up from his angelic little face to see the chaos he was causing in the second row as Jack and Benji struggled to contain a squirming Thomas who obviously wanted to join his brother, and Rob tried to squeeze past everyone to retrieve Finlay. Lou smiled and put up her hand to Rob before bending down to scoop up Finlay and settle him on her hip. Happy with his new position Finlay snuggled into Lou’s neck, and she resumed the reading that she luckily had learnt by heart. Things only got slightly tricky during the last paragraph when Finlay decided that he would cover Lou’s mouth with one pudgy little hand and shove the other down the top of her dress, but Lou continued valiantly on despite the general amusement of the crowd and her own threatening laughter. Looking down at Frankie’s shining expression she knew it had been worth it. There had been enough disappointments today for Frankie without Lou adding to them.

True to form Frankie was not revelling in the whole centre of attention thing, and had been a nervous wreck right up until the moment she saw Tom standing at the other end of the aisle. However, when she caught sight of him it was as if the crowd melted away, and she looked almost confident as she walked towards him. In typical arrogant fashion Tom hadn’t been willing to wait at the other end like a normal bloody person. No, as soon as he saw her he broke away from his best man, and started striding towards the wedding party. Lou had never seen anything like it. It was as if he thought Frankie would turn tail at any moment. He snatched up her hand and ended up tugging her along after him to the altar, her arm still linked with a bemused Dylan.

This behaviour, whilst being utterly ridiculous, did at least seemed to cut through Frankie’s nerves. And, Lou had to admit, that although it made her roll her eyes, it brought a tear to them as well.

Up until that point it was safe to say that things had not gone exactly to plan. Frankie had stayed in the flat with Lou the night before. After the shock of the pregnancy Tom had used Frankie’s dazed state to his advantage, and wasted no time moving her into his house with him. To Lou’s frustration this was something he had taken into his own hands with little actual apparent consultation with Frankie. The sneaky weasel had just loaded up his van with more and more of her stuff each time he collected her, until one day Frankie had realized that not even her toothbrush remained in the flat. It was like watching a sleepy, confused kitten get bulldozed by a lion.

But surprisingly, Frankie had dug her heels in about the night before the wedding. She was staying with Lou and nothing he could say would persuade her otherwise. Lou hadn’t bothered to find another flat mate since Frankie left. Frankie had insisted on paying for three months notice anyway and Lou could afford it on her own, more than afford it in actual fact. Even now that she wasn’t earning. She’d never really needed the rent Frankie had insisted on paying her, and she definitely wasn’t in the mood to live with anyone else.

They had been woken that morning by an extremely overexcited Sarah, who came crashing into the flat at the ungodly hour of six thirty. Lou and Frankie were both sleeping in Lou’s bed together. The sheets had long since been stripped from Frankie’s bed, and neither of them was in the mood to make it after the frantic organizing yesterday. Also Lou could literally feel Frankie’s nervous energy like a living force in the flat, and she knew that she wouldn’t want to sleep alone.

Lou had made the unwise decision of giving Sarah a spare key to the flat, and thus there was nothing stopping her crashing through and leaping all over both of them in Lou’s bed. They had both buried further under the duvet, only to have it yanked completely off, before Sarah grabbed both their faces, squeezing either side of their mouths and giving their heads a shake shouting: ‘Welcome to the family!’ and grinning like a mad woman.

‘I’m not married yet,’ Frankie said as best she could with her lips being smushed into a weird pout by Sarah’s surprisingly strong grip.

‘And I’m not planning on joining,’ Lou put in, her voice matching Frankie’s.

‘Bah! You –‘ she released their faces and punctuated her words by grabbing Frankie’s hand and pulling her up to sitting, ‘-are practically married. And you – ‘ she repeated the same manoeuver with Lou, forcing her to sit up and poking her in the chest, ‘don’t think you can get out of joining the Longley family.’

‘Thankfully you have no more obnoxious brothers left to make good on that threat,’ Lou mumbled, flinging her arm over her eyes and flopping back down on the bed.

‘Uh-uh,’ Sarah replied, shaking her head and pulling Lou’s arm down so she could catch her eye, ‘you’re already Auntie Louey to my boys. You can’t get out of it just because there’s no poxy bit of paper calling you a Longley.’ Lou groaned.

‘You just want me for my babysitting abilities,’ she grumbled, squinting up at her.

‘I’ll have you know there are people clamouring to look after my little angels.’

Lou snorted, knowing just how far from the truth that really was.

‘Anyway, get your arses up and at ‘em. We’ve got some serious prep work to do.’

Thus began the hair and makeup torture session. Somehow Sarah had managed to convince the famous cross-dressing guy from the MAC counter in town to come to the flat, and even managed to convince him to tone down ‘drama’ to a more natural and less drag queen level. Gabriella had been drafted in at Frankie’s request for hair and did a surprisingly good job, despite spending most of the morning crying what she called ‘happy tears’ and incessantly patting everyone’s faces (even the MAC counter guy didn’t get away without a few face pats and at least two hugs).

The fact that Frankie looked so incredibly stunning by the time her hair was pulled back softly from her face with flowers, the expertise of the MAC guy making her lashes impossibly long and accentuating her high cheekbones, made the hour before they were due to leave for the church all the more heartbreaking.

Lou sensed something was wrong around mid-morning. Frankie kept shooting nervous glances towards the door of the flat, and checking her phone every five minutes even though it wasn’t on silent. When her phone did finally ring she nearly lost an eye to a mascara brush when she shot out of her seat to grab it. But when she registered the tune (in typical Weasel fashion Tom had programmed Frankie’s phone with ‘I need a hero’ as his own personalized ring tone) an odd look of disappointment flashed across her face before she took a deep breath and answered it. Lou was shocked. It was unprecedented that a phonecall from the great man himself caused Frankie to display the barest hint of disappointment. At the start of their relationship it had often provoked fear and apprehension, but that had since morphed into slightly sickening unbridled glee whenever that obnoxious song started playing.

After a few minutes on the phone to Weasel, her tone not wavering from fake excitement and a weird forced smile of her face, Frankie handed the phone to Lou. ‘He wants to talk to you,’ she said, shrugging slightly at Lou’s confused expression but obviously still distracted.

‘Weasel?’ Lou said into the phone as she watched a beautiful Frankie clad in a toweling dressing gown glide over to the window and stare down at the street.

‘What on earth is going on with her?’ Tom snapped. ‘She’s totally checked out. I thought you lot were going to look after her?’

‘I know as much as you Weasel,’ Lou whispered into the phone, although she doubted that Frankie would have heard her anyway; she looked a thousand miles away. ‘I mean maybe the whole centre of attention thing is getting to her.’ Lou’s continued to watch Frankie, whose eyes were still fixed on the street below. She knew Frankie would be worried about today but she didn’t usually react this strongly if it was only worry for herself unless… ‘Oh bugger,’ Lou closed her eyes, how could she have been so stupid. ‘Papa Marco…’ She trailed off.

Papa Marco had been over the moon about the wedding and unfortunately his form of celebrating involved a fair amount of Stella. But he’d promised, he’d
promised
to walk Frankie down the aisle.

‘I’m on it,’ Weasel curt reply came through just before he cut off. Lou walked over to the window, put her arm around Frankie’s waist and rested her head on her shoulder.

‘How’s the bean doing?’

Frankie’s lips curved slightly in the first semblance of a true smile Lou had seen from her for the last two hours, and her hand moved to rest on her still flat lower abdomen.

‘He’s okay,’ she said softly, and Lou gave her a firm squeeze. They stood like that for the next fifteen minutes, with Lou fielding the others’ questions until they eventually got the hint and left them to it. That was until the door burst open, and Lou smelt the unmistakable aroma of Special Brew and vomit.

Frankie spun around, and before anyone could stop her she ran across the room and threw her arms around a dishevelled Marco, who was being held up between Ash and Dylan. He had a black eye and a small cut under his cheek.

‘We found him outside the house,’ Dylan said, his voice tight. ‘He was asleep in the front garden, hidden behind the azalea bush.’

Marco had been a lot better recently. He was staying in Gio and Gabriella’s annex and had even started doing some odd bits in the restaurant, but it had only lasted a few weeks and he’d never stopped drinking completely. Frankie reached up and framed his beat-up face with her hands, her tears making tracks through the previously perfect make-up.

‘I was so worried Papa,’ she whispered.

‘Francesca,’ he slurred, appearing to struggle with the weight of his head and having difficulty focusing on her face. ‘Bella Francesca. Sono orgogliosa.’

‘He was excited for you last night Frankie,’ Ash’s quiet voice put in, his eyes on her wet cheeks. ‘I think…I think he just lost control, he didn’t-‘

Frankie tore her eyes away from Marco and looked at Ash, giving him a shaky smile. ‘I’m not angry Ash. I was just scared. He wanted to be here so much…he was so excited. When he didn’t arrive I was worried that something had happened. I’m just relieved he’s okay.’

‘I’m so sorry ladies,’ Dylan whispered, his free hand reaching to squeeze the back of Frankie’s neck. Frankie took one of her hands away from Marco’s face and rested it on Dylan’s chest.

‘I stopped expecting too much a long time ago honey,’ she whispered. ‘I’m fine, honestly.’ Marco started sagging more, and Lou realized that he had actually fallen asleep standing up.

‘Put him in my bed,’ Lou said firmly, ushering them through to her room.

‘But Lou –‘ Frankie started.

‘No lip,’ Lou said, propelling Frankie towards the now agitated MAC man, who was looking appalled by his ravaged make-up job. ‘You get fixed up. We’ll sort him and then we can go.’

Even though there was plenty of time, and even though everyone was ready to go early, they were still late for the church. This was because as they were about to get into the cars Frankie suddenly turned back.

‘One minute,’ she said to Lou, shoving her flowers at her and then racing back up to the flat in her heels. When Dylan and Lou made it up they heard Frankie’s voice singing softly in Italian. She was lying on Lou’s bed in all her wedding finery, her fingers sifting through a snoring Marco’s hair. When she’d finished the song, one that Lou had heard Marco sing to Frankie many a time before, she kissed his forehead and whispered, ‘Arrivederci Papa,’ in his ear before slipping off the bed. There were no tears, no anger. In fact she looked happier than she had all morning.

‘At least I know he’s safe,’ she said when she drew up next to Lou and Dylan, surprising them by smiling and linking her arms through both of theirs. As they moved through the flat she looked up at Dylan.

‘Dyl, I was wondering if you…’ she trailed off, looking down at the floor for a moment, before squaring her shoulders with determination. ‘I mean would you mind…I know it might be weird but…would you walkmedowntheaisle?’ Dylan took a moment to decipher the rushed words, but once he had he wasted no time in snatching Frankie up in a fierce hug, nearly lifting her off her feet.

‘Is that a yes?’ Frankie wheezed. Dylan set her down and Lou could see his face was flushed and his eyes were wet.

He cleared his throat and blinked a few times. ‘You bet you’re sweet wedding g-string clad arse it is,’ he said, smacking said arse, and then putting his arms around both Frankie and Lou. Frankie shot Lou a venomous look (Lou might have lied about the fact that the wedding underwear debate they had last week was a tad bit loud not to have been overheard) but smiled up at Dylan. Of course he’d blinked back the emotion and made a joke of it, but they all heard his voice break slightly whilst he did it. Lou could tell what this meant to him and she was all the more glad that she hadn’t told Frankie anything that would change that.