The Good Kind of Bad (2 page)

It was like looking through a kaleidoscope, with its swirling patterns of jewel-like splendour, but they’d begun to blur, to blend and distort. My couture column gown now felt sticky and tight. Hastily shrugging off the straps, my dress fell around me like folds of thick cream.

When my phone began to ring, I did a little fist pump. I knew he’d have second thoughts about leaving. Locating my phone, I reached to the dressing table while still fiddling with my veil. ‘On your way back yet, hubby?’ I answered, assuming
very
wrongly it was Joe.

‘Hubby? What are you talking about?’

It was a voice I hadn’t heard in weeks; a voice I didn’t think I’d hear again.

Feeling like someone had stuck a fist in my gullet, I was standing alone in my underwear, tangled in tulle and speaking to the one person I didn’t want to. ‘I . . . Mother?’

‘I suppose I should be glad you’re all right,’ she huffed, probably pulling all manner of faces at my father from across the Chesterfield armchair. The seething contempt for her only daughter hadn’t been lost in the ether then.

‘Mother, you’re too kind,’ I huffed, emerging from the tangled veil. ‘And it only took three weeks to call me?’

‘It was your father’s idea. He thought it’d give you time to settle down. Goodness knows, maybe even come to your senses.’

I eye-rolled at Sybil, but she was still snoozing in her basket in the kitchen. ‘I didn’t lose my
senses
.’

‘I suppose you’ve never lost your mind, either. I suppose it’s perfectly normal to run away from your own wedding to Chicago. Remember Will? Your fiancé? The one you left humiliated at the altar?’

‘I didn’t run away. I’m not twelve.’ If you’re going to get technical I might have, kind of, run. Okay, so his wasn’t my first wedding day of the season, not my first fiancé, though mine and Joe’s
was
the only wedding I’d had the courage to go through with. ‘And how do you know where I am?’

‘Howie and that computer of his. He tracked your phone. Oh, and we’ve booked you a flight home.’

‘You’ve done
what
?’

‘A ticket, back to Heathrow, so you can forget these wild ideas about road-tripping across America. You need to come back home. You need to sort this out.’

‘Road-tripping?’

‘Margaret said that’s what you’d be doing. She’s more upset than anyone. She thought . . . you do understand what you’ve done, don’t you? It’s not only Will’s heart you’ve broken.’

There it was, the killer blow. Just in case I hadn’t tortured myself enough, she had a catalogue of insults and put-downs she was aching to try out on me.

‘Look, I . . . I can’t. I can’t come home.’ Because I’d married someone else? Yeah, that’d go down a storm.

‘Which hotel are you at? The Drake? I’ll arrange a car to pick you up. Pack your stuff. Your flight’s at seven tomorrow evening.’

My legs became two heavy lumps of meat. Finding myself on the floorboards, wedged beside the dressing table and with the phone beside me, I pulled the veil back over my face and clutched the netting, my delicate armour, close. No one could hurt me now.

There was a crackle on the line, before her taut voice began echoing out again. ‘Darling? Are you still there? Howie, something’s wrong with this phone. I can’t hear her. Darling? Hello?’

As it turned out, even a new husband and whirlwind romance couldn’t stop my past clawing at the door. Joe knew nothing of my life back there: of Stable Hill Manor, my only recently
ex
-fiancé or of my father’s stolen ten million dollars, of which five million was in my name and stashed in a Chicago bank account. And it had to stay that way.

I listened to Joe’s mumbled voicemail greeting three times before I called Nina. I had to speak to someone; about the impromptu wedding, my mother’s phone call . . . mainly the wedding, though whether Nina would believe I’d married Joe, whether anyone would believe me? Debatable.

After first arriving in Chicago on the 22
nd
April (won’t forget that date in a hurry), I’d checked into the Four Seasons on East Delaware Place. Later that evening, while facing my room service deep dish pizza and wondering what the hell I’d done, I dialled Will’s number. 51 times – I just never dared to press call. I then phoned Gregory Pitt at my (soon-to-be pissed off) employer, Faith Advertising, explaining the situation – you know, the I-decided-to-leave-my-fiance-at-the-altar-and-move-halfway-around-the-world one. Even if I had thrown the rest of my life away, I’d worked my ass off to climb the career ladder in London. If I was planning on staying in Chicago, if this was going to be my life, I couldn’t start back on the bottom rung again.

Gregory had worked at the Chicago branch of Faith before transferring to London, and I begged him for a contact after assuring him there was no need to worry about me. Sure enough, he conjured up a phone number for Nina Durant. Alone and swallowed up with guilt, I called her that night, and she was happy to meet on her way home and ask about a transfer for me. Thankfully we hit it off. Famously. It wouldn’t have mattered if we hadn’t. Right then, I would’ve clung to any hint of friendship I could.

Technically, I’d known Nina longer than I’d known Joe, by one day at least. The next evening she invited me for cocktails at the Black Cat Ballroom, telling me about the Advertising Executive position that’d opened up, setting up a meeting with Mr Renaud and assuring me my dual nationality would cut through any red tape. I’d suggested continuing the night, craving a serious alcohol injection despite the numerous cocktails we’d necked, but Nina’s fiancé had wanted her home. After waving her off, I dared myself to go into the next bar I passed. Alone.

And there, at the bar in Galvin’s on the corner of Hilton and Dean, is where I met Joe. The next morning I’d awoken with a stinking hangover and his phone number scrawled up my arm, but more, I’d felt the smile, pulling at the corners of my mouth. A genuine one.

Of course I’d told Nina about Joe, though had limited it to the basics. Not that I’d known much more at that point myself. Even collecting the marriage licence from the County Clerk’s Office on Monday had been eye-opening (finding out Joe’s middle name was Alphonso). From behind his desk Mr Surley had been adamant our wedding was tinged with green. He hadn’t been afraid to tell us either, until Joe forced an apology out of him.

An hour after calling her, I watched an immaculate Nina Durant catwalk past the bare brick and worn booths in Bemo’s restaurant on Harvelle Street, turning heads while she was at it.

‘You look amazing, girl! What are you all dolled up for?’ Nina sang as she slid into the red leather booth by the window. ‘No more splurging on Oak Street without me, do you hear?’

She’d become my new best friend. Make that
only
friend after everyone back home had disowned me like a leper. Nina fitted my friend profile right down to her couture cuts and daily doses of sarcasm. Her canary-yellow wrap dress didn’t fit Bemo’s usual dress code, hence the wandering gazes, though her bobbed Afro curls and blingy necklace perfectly suited her svelte frame and ebony skin. She looked ready for Fashion Week, not that I was far behind in a cream Stella McCartney jumpsuit. It was my honeymoon outfit, only it turned out this
was
my honeymoon: an early dinner date with a woman I barely knew and a husband out doing god knows what.

Bemo’s had come fifth in Chicago’s Top Ten Eateries, topped the TripAdvisor ratings and Joe incessantly raved about the place. Yeah, it wasn’t the swanky K2 on South LaSalle, but it didn’t hurt the family-style food was nothing short of divine.

‘An ice water for me and the Carpaccio salad,’ Nina instructed the aproned waiter who’d appeared by our booth, and while they blatantly checked each other out, no less.

When we’d met up in Wildberry’s on Tuesday, for red velvet pancakes and a gossip after my first tour of Faith, the server had also taken a shine to Nina. Tall, slim and gazelle-like, and with a tongue you could sharpen a knife on, what wasn’t there to like?

My stomach was doing backflips, whether from nerves or excitement I couldn’t tell, but faced with a calorie-rich menu I was skipping the starter, main course
and
dessert. All I’d managed to force down all day was alcohol and plenty of it. Folding the leather-bound menu, I returned it to Nina’s number one fan. ‘Nothing for me, thanks.’

Judging by Nina’s contorted face, I’d committed a serious social faux pas. ‘You’re not eating? Come on, you have to order
something
from the hottest waiter in Chicago.’

‘I can’t. I mean, I don’t think it’ll do me any good. Acid reflux.’ I placed a tentative hand on my abs. I didn’t know why Nina looked so shocked. She hadn’t achieved a waist the same circumference as my inner thigh with Domino’s on speed dial.

After the handsome waiter left, smiling back over his shoulder at Nina after her remark, Nina folded her arms over the table and gave me a stare like she was channelling some hard-nosed detective. ‘What’s going on? Why the emergency phone call? You didn’t break up with Petrocelli, did you? You’ve only just moved in with him.’

‘His name’s Petrozzi,’ I corrected. While on the subject of Joe, it was best I jumped straight to the point. Nina was that kind of girl. Through gritted teeth, I added, ‘As it happens, it’s my name now too. I’m the new Mrs Petrozzi, as of today.’

There was no hiding her confusion. Nina’s eyes were practically out on stalks. ‘You’re kidding, right?’ she asked through a half laugh.

I glanced at the salt shaker, the napkin holder, the grey bouffant wobbling behind Nina’s head, but I didn’t look at Nina.

‘You’re
not
kidding, are you?’

‘No, I’m not kidding! This is officially my honeymoon.’ It was meant to sound casual, aloof, but I came off as lame. Majorly lame. Any cool points for our off-the-cuff
elopement
were heading down the drain.

‘Hell, you
must
love him. Head-over-heels-can’t-live-without-him love.’ Nina’s fingers fanned the table top, her neon nails aimed like little spears. ‘Girl, this is wild! This is, like, the last thing I expected from you.’

I turned my head to her amused expression. ‘What makes you say that?’

‘Well, you look like a . . . nice girl.’

‘A
nice
girl?’

‘You know, with your Rapunzel hair and Disney eyes? You’re cute! Cute girls don’t marry guys from Armanti Square. I thought it was just part of the deal, like, move to Chicago, get a new job, move in with your wrong-side-of-the-tracks boyfriend of a week until you come to your senses or something. I didn’t think you were actually
serious
about him.’

This wasn’t the first time I’d had a Chicago zip code – I hadn’t chosen this place at random. Fifteen years ago with Ma and Pa this city had been my home, on one of the lesser streets in Oak Park until the grand old age of eleven. It’d been a while, but I knew what Armanti Square and Joe weren’t, and maybe that was the point.

‘Okay, I don’t know you well, but you don’t look like a girl that’d marry a guy after . . . how long have you been here? A month? Unless you’re not telling me something.’

‘What do you mean?’ There was plenty I hadn’t told her (I’d failed to mention Will), but there was plenty of time to navigate that minefield.

‘Maybe Joe’s a god in bed or not lacking down there in his nether regions . . . oh, shit. You’re not pregnant, are you?’

I mock-slapped the table. ‘Nina!’

‘Just saying. People will talk. And don’t pretend like you don’t know what
I’m
talking about. Size-wise, I mean.’

I took a sip of the iceless gin and cranberry I’d been nursing, doubting my desire for validation over Joe. It didn’t look like I’d get it from Nina. ‘Talk. People always want to talk.’ I stared down at my hands like I was sitting in the confessional. ‘Don’t they have anything better to do than gossip?’

‘And why do you think they talk? Their lives aren’t as exciting as yours, honey, and neither is mine. This is like a movie, girl! It’s like a riches-to-rags melodrama. Only reading between the lines here, but I guess you have money and he doesn’t?’

I’d hoped starting over would mean just that. Try as hard as I like, but maybe I couldn’t slum it with the best of them.

‘Come on, you didn’t get that jumpsuit off the rack in Target. You have money, and people with money don’t live in Armanti. You have a story, girl, and I need to hear it.’

I wasn’t short of cash. My dad’s adventures in corporate crime before we left Chicago fifteen years ago had taken care of that. Judging by Nina’s spectacular designer wardrobe, she wasn’t tight-roping the poverty line either, though I despised the connotations. These labels would be harder to shake than I thought, especially the Chanel and Dior.

‘Today’s schedule
did
involve me, Mickey’s cardboard health snacks and a lame series box set, but this is way more interesting. Start at the beginning, why don’t you?’ Nina re-folded her arms, her head did a little shimmy, and then came the pout.