The Nearly-Weds (6 page)

‘Not stupid! Not stupid!’ echoes Samuel, stamping his feet.

There’s only one thing for it. Forget the stacks of qualifications and years of experience. What the hell did Supernanny do with that family from South Wales – the toddler who was close to being issued with an ASBO and the ten-year-old who’d perfected the art of breaking and entering?

I kneel down to Ruby’s level and hold her hands, hoping to put her in a semi-meditative state with my calming get commanding manner. ‘Listen to me, Ruby,’ I say softly. ‘You’ve been a good girl all day, so I know you’re a good girl really. But good girls go to bed when they’re told to and—’

‘
I don’t want to go to bed!
’ she squeals, and the windows rattle. ‘I don’t
like
going to bed!’

I’m attempting to maintain a composed, temperate and compassionate exterior. My head feels like the inner chamber of a volcano, mid-eruption. Think, Zoe. What is at the root of all this? Why the hell aren’t they settling down?

I glance over at the TV in the corner, which is blaring
Go, Diego, Go!.
This is not going to make them happier, but it has to be done. I take another deep breath, stride across the room and flick it off, with a formidable, matronly air. ‘Now—’

‘Arrrgh!’ Samuel howls, as he throws himself on to the floor, pounding his fists so furiously that he nearly knocks a hole through to the cellar.

It is eleven twenty-five by the time I get them to bed. And – after repeated escape attempts, followed by reasoning, bribery and outright threats (largely to disconnect the television) – it’s twelve fifteen before they are finally asleep.

And it’s about twelve sixteen when I wonder if there’s any beer in the house. I should stress that, under normal circumstances, I have a healthy relationship with alcohol. In fact, I like to describe myself as one of those people who can take it or leave it.

So, don’t be fooled by the fact that when I locate a cold bottle of Coors, I open it with trembling hands and immediately feel like Nicolas Cage when he poured vodka over himself in
Leaving Las Vegas.

However, when I’ve slugged half of it – and even though I’ve been awake now for about two days and am exhausted – I’m not sleepy. No matter how I try, I can’t relax. I’m wired. And I know what’s causing it: this chaotic house.
Nobody
could mentally unwind while they were surrounded by so much crap. At least, I can’t. I lived with Jason too long to be able to put up with a mess.

The house where Jason and I used to live was always immaculate, thanks largely to his influence. It wasn’t a huge, flashy place like this one, just a sweet little terrace off Sudley Road. We fell in love with it the minute we first saw it. We spent months doing it up so I could see why Jason was obsessed with keeping it clean and tidy. Even though it didn’t come naturally to me, I soon came to appreciate a permanently glistening chrome bathroom, and our living-room carpet was still lusciously cream two years after it had been fitted.

Which is more than I can say for this carpet. I pick up Island Princess Barbie from under the table. She looks as if she’s spent the day drinking methylated spirits.

I make a half-hearted attempt at tidying her hair before I throw her into the toy box. Then I pick up a Lego sheep and throw it in after her. The spinning top is next. Then a Bratz hairbrush. Followed by a Mr Potato Head. And by the time I’ve dealt with the My Little Pony Teapot Palace, the fluffy orang-utan with bits of yoghurt stuck to his fur and the Sing-along Spiderman, I’m going at a hell of a pace.

I just can’t help it. When I’ve cleared all the shoes from the hallway, done the dirty dishes I found in the downstairs loo (I kid you not), mopped the kitchen floor, tidied the bathroom
and
swept up the layer of muck that was making the hall floor look like a third-world street market, it’s three twenty-five.

And I’m sleepy. Not just sleepy, in fact, properly tired. Beautifully, gloriously, perfectly, doggedly
tired.
I’m just about to head for bed when I hear a key in the door.

I straighten my back.

I’m ridiculously pleased to be bumping into my new boss because I can’t wait to see his reaction to my handiwork. This is a guy who seemed more concerned about my abilities to scrub his toilet than care for his children, and on that basis he’ll be knocked sideways when he sees my achievements.

I lean casually on a work surface as Ryan enters the kitchen.

He’s even more dishevelled than he was when I first set eyes on him – but even sexier too. My eyes are magnetically drawn to the top of his jeans, where half of his T-shirt is tucked in. His hair is enticingly unkempt, his swagger effortlessly self-assured.

It strikes me that Ryan, without having to say a word, exudes something bewitching and mysterious. His sexual presence is such that he’d turn heads in a room with a thousand people in it.

‘Hi!’ I say, trying to read his face as he sets eyes on his newly pristine kitchen.

As he walks past I’m enveloped in an aroma that almost makes me faint, subtle but unmistakable, of booze, perfume and cigarette smoke. The whiff of a big night out.

‘Did you get much done?’ I ask, heart thudding. ‘At work, I mean.’

‘Hmm?’ he says absently, opening the fridge.

‘You were going to work,’ I remind him, wishing he’d turn round.

‘Oh. Yeah. Yeah, I did. Thanks for asking,’ he replies. I can’t help noticing his speech is slightly slurred.

‘Um, the children had a bit of trouble settling before bed,’ I inform him. I walk over to the table and lean across it to draw attention to its gleaming surface.

‘Oh, yeah?’ He shuts the fridge door, leaving the beer, and takes a bottle of whiskey out of a cupboard instead.

‘I think they were overtired,’ I offer.

‘Sure.’

I stand up straight, fold my arms and frown. Ryan is utterly uninterested in this conversation
and
the state of the kitchen.

‘They really didn’t want to go to bed,’ I persevere. ‘It was a bit of a struggle.’

‘Yeah. They get like that sometimes.’

He fills his glass with whiskey. It’s the sort of amount that would put the Jolly Green Giant ten times over the limit.

‘Right. Well, if you don’t mind, I’d like to try putting them to bed a bit earlier tomorrow.’

He shrugs. ‘Whatever you think. I already said that, didn’t I?’

‘Yes. But . . . Yes, I suppose you did.’

There’s another long silence.

‘Well, I think I’ll go to bed,’ I say. But I don’t move. I wait. And wait. And wait. I wait for him to say, ‘My God, Zoe, the house is amazing, truly unrecognizable. It was barely fit for human habitation before, but now it’s like something the Sultan of Brunei wouldn’t mind crashing out in. And I’ve got you to thank, you wonderful, wonderful woman.’

When he finally looks up, his eyes skim across my face, as if he’s taking in my features properly for the first time. He doesn’t say anything but the attention sends my stomach into freefall. ‘Sure,’ he replies, and gulps his whiskey.

Chapter 12

The minor fixation I seem to have developed with my new boss’s body is juvenile, difficult to ignore and baffling. While I haven’t known Ryan long enough to form a detailed judgement on his personality, I have seen enough to want to remind myself that I am not – and have never been – one of those women who are attracted to bastards. The idea appals me.

The only conclusion I can come to, therefore, as I undress and jump under my duvet, is that this is another example of how being jilted on my wedding day has left me mentally unstable.
Jilted.
Now there’s a word no prospective bride ever thinks she’ll use in relation to herself. Oh, how wrong I was.

With hindsight – a word I’ve used so often since – I should have heard certain alarm bells ringing in the run-up to the wedding. I’m only talking little bells – travel clocks as opposed to Big Ben. One of the things that has nagged at me is when Jason asked me to marry him. I don’t think he ever actually did. Certainly there was no dramatic moment when he got down on one knee with a ring that I spent the next twelve months brandishing at friends, family and anyone else who’d look. Somehow we just slipped into it. We both assumed we’d eventually take the plunge.

At the time I didn’t think anything of this. If anything, I saw it as a positive affirmation of the extent to which we were on the same wavelength. I felt I didn’t need some showy proposal because it was
obvious
we both wanted the same thing.

The earliest recollection I have of us talking about our wedding was just after Jason’s best friend Neil and his fiancée Jessica threw an engagement party. Poor Jessica’s mum had slaved for days over the catering, but twelve hundred mushroom vol-au-vents (or canapés, as she insisted Jess’s dad refer to them when he offered them round) didn’t provide much in the way of variety. Jason and I decided to join a couple of others in a curry house on the way home and I remember him turning to me as he passed me a bowl of lime pickle and asking, ‘Where do you think we should get married?’

Yet, now I think about it, that can’t have been the first time it was mentioned because I wasn’t shocked by the question. In fact, at the time it had barely registered because ‘getting married’ was something we’d always known we’d end up doing.

So assumed was this state of affairs that, with only six weeks to go before the big day, I had to point out that I didn’t possess an engagement ring. Jason agreed we should buy one using some of the loan we’d taken out to pay for the wedding – I’m convinced it was bigger than the mortgage on a small stately home. I’d envisaged paying it off over five years. In fact, I got rid of the outstanding balance all at once by selling our house after everything went pear-shaped.

The house was one thing, but getting rid of everything else proved slightly more of a challenge. When you’ve purchased 122 silk bags of sugared almonds, twelve table centrepieces and a three-tiered white-chocolate gateau, believe me, you’re stuck with them.

And while I was happy that my cousin Tanya and her new boyfriend Darren enjoyed our five-star honeymoon in Mauritius, I would have preferred a cash contribution to the knock-off Ralph Lauren T-shirt she sent me to say thanks.

But none of that compares with the horror of what happened on the day itself.

We’d wanted to follow tradition and spend the night before the wedding apart. When Jason kissed me goodnight on my mum’s doorstep, I had no doubt that he intended to go through with it.

I’m not saying he wasn’t nervous. He clearly was. But aren’t pre-wedding nerves as normal a part of it as ructions over the guest list and the bridesmaids being guaranteed a snog?

Perhaps the fact that he hugged me so hard I couldn’t breathe should have told me there was more turmoil in his head than in a Middle Eastern war zone. But it didn’t.

The wedding was booked for two o’clock at St Michael’s, Woolton, the church where, as a child, I’d spent many a Sunday morning, tucked away with the other kids attempting to re-create the nativity scene with bits of newspaper and a Fairy Liquid bottle.

The really strange thing is that the first half of that day was one of the most enjoyable times of my life. If what happened later hadn’t happened, I would still be reminiscing about it.

I woke at four thirty, after a fitful night in my mum’s spare room – so small and stuffy it was like trying to sleep in the airing cupboard. Dropping off again proved impossible so I resorted to skimming through the only book I could see – a dog-eared children’s Bible that had been printed in the early seventies, judging by how strongly Jesus resembled David Cassidy.

Later, my hairdresser told me that all the brides she ‘did’ had a terrible night before their big day, and advised, if I was ever in that situation again, to try a Temazepam (which apparently works a treat, although it can have unwanted side-effects the next day if you go at the champagne too early).

It was at the hairdresser’s that we really got into the swing of things. Jessica, my matron of honour, my bridesmaids, Heather (old friend from school) and Win (my cousin), and I were curled and sprayed so much our hair follicles must have been close to meltdown.

When we got back to Mum’s, we were ushered to the kitchen table and Dad brought out massive plates of breakfast – scrambled eggs piled high with smoked salmon. That moment, when we were sitting around the table, merry with Buck’s fizz and happiness, was one of the most perfect of my life.

Desy had just done my mum’s makeup. After an intensive three-week training programme from his sister Caroline – who works on the Clinique counter at Boots – he was an expert at applying light-reflecting foundation and high-definition mascara. She joined us still wearing her Juicy Couture dressing-gown and a head full of pink Velcro rollers that looked like the insulated pipes in an alien spacecraft. My dad was already in his tails, which he’d put on at about six fifteen that morning.

Then there was me: excited, elated, nervous – and with not a shred of doubt that I was doing the right thing. Jason was the man I loved, with whom I’d effortlessly spent the last seven years and would happily spend ten times that.

That was the thought going through my mind as the car pulled up outside St Michael’s on one of the hottest April days ever recorded. Dad squeezed my hand and tried to hide a tear as I stepped out of the car, careful not to let the hem of my dress touch the dusty ground. The sun warmed my shoulders as I gazed into the cloudless, cornflower-blue sky and smiled.

‘Right, Zoe, let’s have one of you and your dad,’ called the photographer, as he attempted to prop up Dad’s already wilting buttonhole.

But as we laughed and posed, I couldn’t help noticing that something didn’t look right. Andrew, one of Jason’s ushers, was pacing up and down next to the church door, his phone glued to his ear, his face white.

When he turned to us, I frowned.

His eyes widened and he glanced around as if he was searching for somewhere to run.

‘You okay?’ I mouthed.