The Story of Us (48 page)

From behind me I heard the voices shouting frantically as masonry and rubble began to be moved and I realised that people were trying to reach us. Us. Not just me;
of course
not just me. Jimmy had been there when the car came through the window. Jimmy, who had left his position of safety and had come back to save me.

Ignoring the way the blood began to flow even faster when I turned my head, I managed to lift my neck an inch or two off the glass to look for him. The haze of dust and smoke was still too thick, but I thought I could just make out a shape some feet away to one side. There were huge broken masonry blocks and some long twisted piece of metal, which I guessed had been wrenched from the car, and they were all lying at a strangely skewed angle on top of a long white board. As my vision began to clear further, I realised that it wasn't a board at all; it was what was left of our table. And the reason why it wasn't lying flat against the floor, but was canted at that strange angle, was that something, or someone, was beneath it.

Mindless of anything else, I flung out my arm, raking it in a desperate arc towards the crushed table and what must be beneath it. At first I felt nothing, and then the very tips of my fingers brushed, just for a moment, against something soft.

‘Jimmy!' I croaked hoarsely. ‘Jimmy, is that you, can you hear me?' No reply. ‘Jimmy.' I started to cry, the tears cutting small rivulets through the dirt and blood on my face. ‘Jimmy, oh no, Jimmy. Say something …'

The dust and debris had begun to settle a little and I could just make out what it was I had been able to reach. Jimmy's forearm protruded at a strange angle from beneath what was left of the table. That was all I could see of him, just his forearm. The arm still looked strong and tanned, as it had a few moments before, when it had somehow found the strength to pull me away from danger. Only now it wasn't moving. Long before the ambulances reached us, I realised that it would never be moving again.

The wedding invitation was propped up on the mantelpiece, almost hidden by a small bundle of bills and fast-food delivery circulars. I suppose I was trying to bury it, or something. Perhaps I'd thought that by not seeing it, I could then claim to have accidentally forgotten about it and somehow missed the date. As if that was ever going to happen. Of course I'd replied with an acceptance card when the invitation had arrived a few months earlier, but that had been easy, when the thought of going back to Great Bishopsford had seemed like something abstract that was going to happen so far ahead in the future that I didn't need to really think about it. But now, when the date was only two days away; when I was standing in my tiny flat with an open overnight suitcase before me, I didn't know why I'd ever felt that I would be strong enough to do this. To go back.

Abandoning my packing for a moment, I went to retrieve the small embossed card from the mantelpiece.
Mr and Mrs Sam Johnson request the pleasure of your company at the marriage of their daughter Sarah to David
…' I ran my finger lightly over the raised scrolled handwriting of her name and knew then, as I had always known, that I
had
to go; that I couldn't make some pathetic excuse and not be at the wedding of my best friend just because it was taking place in my old home town. And was it really the town I was scared of, or the memories that I knew were waiting for me there? Memories I'd schooled myself to bury deep and never allow to surface.

Still clutching the thick cream-coloured invitation, I raised my head to look at my reflection in the mirror above the mantelpiece. In my eyes I saw the truth; returning to the town was only half the problem. The greatest fear was how I would cope with seeing everyone all together in one place again for the first time in years. Well, almost everyone. A haunted look fell over my face and that seemed appropriate, for I knew it wasn't a reunion with the living that was going to be so hard to deal with.

I packed my bag mindlessly, not really concerned about what I took. It was only for three days, and then I'd be back in my own flat, able to lose myself once again in the anonymity of a big city. To many, I'm sure, it might sound peculiar but I'd actually come to relish living somewhere where ‘everybody
didn't
know your name'. The only items I took more care in packing were my outfit for the hen-night dinner and the deep burgundy velvet dress I had bought to wear for the wedding itself. Thank God Sarah had eventually given in and accepted my refusal to be her bridesmaid.

‘But you
have
to,' she had pleaded, and for a second it could have been the old schooldays Sarah, imploring me to become involved in some crackpot scheme or caper she had cooked up. Only this time I had held fast in my refusal. I'd felt bad, of course. But then I'd known what she was going to ask me, even before the words had left her lips.

It wasn't often that she visited me in London, even though we kept in touch every few weeks by phone. Her job in the north kept her busy and of course her boyfriend Dave –
fiancé
, I mentally corrected – lived there too and quite rightly occupied most of her free time. I'd suspected what was coming when she had invited herself down for the weekend, and so saying no hadn't been as difficult as I'd imagined, when I'd had sufficient time to rehearse it.

‘Oh Rachel, please think again,' she had implored and she'd sounded so crestfallen that I had actually felt myself wavering. ‘There's no one else in the world I want as a bridesmaid except you, please say you'll do it.' And when I'd shaken my head, not quite trusting myself to speak in case she heard the chink of doubt in my resolve, she had inadvertently asked the one question that allowed me to abdicate from the role without her pursuing it further. ‘But
why
won't you say yes?'

And it was then that I'd taken the coward's way out; answering her question by lifting away from my face the heavy swathe of hair I wore in a side parting and revealing the silver forked-lightning scar that ran from my forehead to my cheek. She'd pursed her lips and sighed, and in that moment I knew she had conceded defeat.

‘Ah, so she's pulling the old disfigured face card again, is she?' I'd smiled in response. Everyone else I knew pussyfooted around the issue, but Sarah was the only one who had the courage never to dress up her words in anything less transparent than the truth.

‘Well, if that's what it takes to keep me firmly seated in a back pew and not wearing some frothy pink creation up near the altar, then yes.'

She'd looked at me mulishly for a second, and I thought she was regrouping her argument for another try, but she then appeared to reconsider and backed down, only murmuring in her defeat, ‘I wouldn't have
made
you wear pink, you know.'

I'd hugged her then, knowing I'd let her down in a big way and loving her because she had let me do it.

Before closing the case, I reached over to pick up the small brown bottle of pills on the bedside table, intending to add them to my toiletry bag. I frowned when I felt the weight of the container, holding the bottle up to try and count the contents by the weak light filtering through the window from the overcast December day. There were fewer there than I'd thought, barely enough to last for the next few days. That couldn't be right, could it? I checked the date on the front of the prescription label. It was only ten days old. I knew the headaches had been getting worse but I hadn't realised I'd gone through this many painkillers so quickly. A cold tremor meandered down my spine. This wasn't good. And while I could lie to my dad when he asked how I was, and even (stupidly) had tried lying to the doctors when the headaches had first started, I knew that sooner or later I'd have to face up to the truth. This was the warning sign they had told us to be on the alert for all those years ago. This was the reason why every phone call from my dad in the three years since we lived apart would follow the habitual pattern of ‘How are you? No headaches, or anything?' And I'd been happy to report for the first two and a half years that I'd been fine; but for the last six months I'd been lying and saying I was still fine. Eventually I'd made an appointment to see the specialist I hadn't had to visit since my early days of recovery from the accident. He'd seemed concerned when I had told him about the headaches and their frequency, and I was concerned because I'd actually played down their severity quite considerably. The pills he'd prescribed were not the answer and he had urged me to make an appointment to go back to hospital for further tests. I'd taken the prescription but not his advice and had put off making the appointment I knew that I could no longer avoid.

And all of this I had kept from my dad. He had enough to worry about with his own health problems. He needed this time to try and get well, without concerning himself over me all over again. He'd done far too much of that already. However bleak the outcome of his consultation with his oncologists were, he always would end by saying, ‘But at least
you
are all right now, thank God.' I didn't have the courage to take that away from him.

I'd sometimes wonder exactly how many mirrors we must have broken, or how many gypsy curses had been hurled our way to account for my family's unfortunate history. First Mum; then my accident; then Dad's illness and now these headaches. It made me wonder if there was some family out there who had been blessed with twenty-odd years of good health and luck, because we seemed to have been given their share of dark misfortune as well as our own. And it didn't matter that Dad said that no one was to blame for his illness, because I knew that he'd only begun smoking again after my accident. It had been his way of coping with the stress. And if he hadn't been doing that, then he probably wouldn't be ill now.

So many terrible things were linked to that one awful night. A blinding twist of pain, worse than even the severest of my headaches, stopped my thoughts suddenly in their tracks before they were allowed to venture down that forbidden avenue.

I intended to leave first thing in the morning and had looked up the times for the first train from London. I'd already booked two days off work, for although everyone wasn't meeting up until the Thursday evening for Sarah's hen-night dinner, I hadn't wanted to arrive late in the day. In reality I knew I would need the time to compose myself for the three-day visit and I had no way of knowing just how hard that was going to be until I was actually there.

I had refused Sarah's offer to stay at her parents' place. Much as I loved her family, they had always been more exuberant and excitable than my own, and I didn't think I'd be strong enough to face that particular brand of crazy in the run-up to their only daughter's wedding. They had seemed to understand and hadn't appeared offended when I'd declined their offer and had instead booked a room in one of the town's two hotels. Many of the guests would be doing the same, I imagined, although of course quite a large number probably still lived in the area.

As the train slipped out of the station and began the two-hour journey, I allowed myself to think of the people I would be meeting again that night. My friends from the past. It seemed strange that the bonds I had thought would bind us for ever had not proved as resilient as I had always believed. And it hadn't been the passing years that had slowly severed the threads apart. No, they had been sheared away by a young man's moment of insanity and an out-of-control stolen vehicle.

Sarah had been extremely careful and cautious when filling me in on news of our old group of friends. From visits to her parents and through the town grapevine she knew that after uni Trevor had returned to Great Bishopsford and was currently living with his girlfriend, who Sarah had yet to meet, and was working as a branch manager in a bank. I found it hard to imagine the rock-band guitar-playing Trev of my teenage years in such a sedate and respectable lifestyle.

Phil was apparently still living the life of a nomad. He'd taken a gap year after university which had grown into a second year of basically bumming around the world. This wandering lifestyle had somehow metamorphosed into a job as a freelance photographer, and although his family still lived in the area, Phil apparently spent little time there between assignments, often electing those which sent him abroad for months at a time. Sarah said that when their paths had crossed, she sensed in him a restlessness that seemed to explain his lifestyle and reluctance to settle in any one place.

And then there was Matt… and of course Cathy, for now their histories were inextricably linked. I could tell how hard it had been for Sarah to let me know about them. How carefully she had chosen her words, picking just the right phrase, uncertain of the pain she might be inflicting. It must be just over eighteen months since she had told me that Cathy and my ex-boyfriend were now an item. As the words had settled down the phone lines between us, I had waited for any shard of pain that this news would bring. There was none; merely surprise. And not surprise that those two unbelievably beautiful people were together, just surprise that it had taken Cathy this long to achieve her objective.

I pushed this thought away, as I had when Sarah had first broken the news to me about their relationship. If I allowed myself to think of Matt, then I would be opening the door to our own sad little story and break-up, and that would lead to the reasons… and that would lead me somewhere I never allowed my thoughts to go.

As the clusters of houses and built-up areas gradually gave way to fields and open spaces, I could feel a palpable tension beginning to rise inside me. I swallowed it back down with a mouthful of revolting, bitter coffee bought from the buffet car and tried to focus instead on the purpose of the visit. This was
Sarah's
weekend;
Sarah's
big day; I couldn't allow myself to ruin this time for her by having her worry about how I was going to cope with being home again.