The Unknown Bridesmaid (20 page)

‘But,’ Julia said, ‘she’s never had a chance. Look at her history. Fostered from the age of two, then a children’s home when the fostering failed, then the abuse from the staff member, then—’

The other woman interrupted her. ‘All this is true, and dreadful,’ she said, quite gently, ‘but she could have turned herself round. She made choices, bad ones, which is why she is here, and has been here before.’

They were right, the other two, but losing the argument made Julia despair.

‘Hiya, Julia,’ Caroline said, ‘it’s me, how are you?’

How long since they’d met? Julia couldn’t remember, but quite a long time.

‘I’m in London for two days,’ Caroline went on, ‘how about a catch-up? I’ve lots to tell you. Where shall we meet? Your place?’

‘No,’ Julia said quickly, ‘I’m having the flat decorated and
it’s a terrible mess. Why don’t we meet in the caff at Tate Modern? I’ve got to be on the South Bank tomorrow morning, to see someone at ten, so how about having lunch there, one o’clock?’

She wasn’t having her flat decorated but she didn’t want Caroline there. She hadn’t wanted her in her home last time they’d met either. They’d met in the rose garden in Regent’s Park, on a lovely sunny day. Julia almost hadn’t recognised her old school friend. She’d always been big but now she was enormous, disconcertingly so. Her hair, however, was an improvement, no longer viciously short but grown into a shapely bob. And the sharp intelligent eyes were the same. Caroline gave her an enthusiastic greeting, enfolding her in a bear hug, which Julia slightly recoiled from. They had not been, as girls, used to this kind of embrace, and she found it embarrassing. It was a strange hour they spent, sitting on a bench in the rose garden, with Caroline doing most of the talking in her still strong Scottish accent, unaffected apparently by living in Manchester more than thirty years. They spent a good deal of their time reminiscing about their schooldays, seeing who could recall the most names of teachers and classmates. They laughed a lot. People passing by smiled at their apparent happiness, two women, side by side, thoroughly enjoying each other’s company. But Julia wasn’t sure she was enjoying Caroline’s company as much as she must seem to be doing. She felt false, as though she were acting a part. Yet, unlike Sandra, during her primary schooldays, Caroline had been a real friend, with whom she had kept up some contact, however vague. The trouble was that Caroline seemed to be assuming a past intimacy that Julia felt had never really been there, or only briefly.

But now here was Caroline again, and she’d agreed to meet her, as she had done the previous time. What would they talk about? More reminiscing? There were things Caroline knew that Julia felt uneasy about and did not want to have
brought up. Last time, she’d managed to steer the conversation away from memories of Elsa, and Carlo, and only hoped she would be able to do this again. She must keep the chat light, and encourage Caroline to talk about herself.

Elsa was sporty, to her father’s delight. By the time she was seven she could wield a tennis racket effectively, and she was a good swimmer. Often, Julia was given the job of taking Elsa to the junior clubs Carlo had enrolled her in, a task she resented. She didn’t want to be Elsa’s chaperone. She wasn’t the least bit interested herself in tennis or swimming, and didn’t want to have to watch Elsa bashing balls over a net or ploughing up and down a swimming pool, though when she complained Caroline said she didn’t know what she was making a fuss about.

Quite often, Julia slipped out of the tennis club grounds, or the swimming pool building, and wandered about till it was time to collect Elsa. Caroline, told this, didn’t approve. Julia was in charge of Elsa and should stay with her. ‘Oh, don’t be so pompous,’ Julia said, ‘I’m always back in time.’ But one evening, she wasn’t. She’d left the swimming pool building the moment she’d delivered Elsa instead of waiting till she’d seen her actually in the water, in charge of the coach. But then she got lost. That was the simple truth. She turned left out of the swimming pool instead of right, the usual direction she took when escaping for a while. All the streets to the right were familiar. She could walk them without thinking, and knew how to retrace her steps by another route, arriving back well before time at the pool. But she turned left, walking quickly, defiantly, though no one was watching her. Left led her to a huge, ugly, blackened church. She crossed the street and went down a narrow lane opposite which in turn led to a series of streets where
the traffic was heavy. She had to go all the way down the main thoroughfare, off which the smaller streets ran, to find a pedestrian crossing, and once she was across she hesitated over which route to take. In her mind, she was walking in a square and had now done three of the sides of it, so all she had to do was turn left down one of the streets and she’d be back where she started.

But she wasn’t. She came out on another main road and didn’t recognise it. For nearly a year she’d been taking Elsa to swimming club, always catching the same bus, always getting off at the same stop and walking the same way to the pool. The first time, Carlo had gone with them, pointing out landmarks so she would know the right stop to get off at. It had been easy. But the hinterland of the building the pool was in was unknown to her. It was only the area to the right that she’d become familiar with. And now she was lost. An edge of panic crept into her mind but she pushed it away. All she had to do was retrace her steps exactly. It would take longer than completing the square, but if she ran she would be back in time, just. So she ran, but running along crowded pavements was not a speedy process. She had to dodge round people, and sometimes she banged into them and had to stop and apologise, and then, at the pedestrian crossing she had used before, the green light wouldn’t come on though she pressed the button over and over.

The big clock in the entrance to the pool building said ten past seven. She was ten minutes late. Elsa would be standing waiting, clutching her bag, her hair still wet. Surely they would never let her go without there being someone to collect her. Julia prepared her apologies, her excuses, and what she would persuade Elsa to tell her father, or rather what not to tell him. There were still three girls coming out of the area where the changing cubicles were. Julia stopped the last one and asked if Elsa was still getting ready. The girl said she didn’t know, so Julia went in herself and went up and down
the cubicles. They had half doors, which didn’t have locks and swung open easily. All empty. Now that edge of panic, which before she had suppressed, firmly took over. She rushed out of the cubicles to find the coach. He was standing talking to a parent, his back to the doorway into the entrance hall. ‘Excuse me,’ Julia said, ‘I’ve come to collect Elsa, where is she?’

But Elsa was by that time safely at home. She said she’d ‘waited and waited’ (though really only for a very short time) and when Julia didn’t come she just decided she could get home on her own. She knew which bus stop to wait at, which bus to catch, and she had money in her pocket to pay her fare. Bouncing with pride at her own daring and cleverness, she arrived home at the usual time, just as the coach rang to report that she seemed to have left the pool unaccompanied and that her cousin was now here to collect her. The moment he turned to Julia and said Elsa had found her own way home Julia started crying. She was taken to the cafe and given a cup of tea and told not to worry, all was well, nothing awful had happened. Eventually, snivelling, she went to catch the bus home herself, but then while she waited she changed her mind. She didn’t want to go home. It wasn’t her real home, it never had been. It was just a place where she had been put. People told her how lucky she was to have a cousin who was willing to give her a home, and she knew this was true but the truth didn’t make her feel better about it. Iris was kind, but Julia resented this kindness more and more. She’d rather Iris was not kind at all, and her resentment would have an excuse. She hated thinking how much she owed Iris, who didn’t even know half the things she’d done, the small, mean things. Some of these, whenever she thought of them, made Julia feel hot and embarrassed, they were so petty. Nothing was worse than having to feel grateful to a cousin she’d consistently wronged.

She had enough money to get herself by bus to the centre of Manchester, where she wandered about staring into shop windows and trying to get up the courage to go into a cafe and have some tea. But by then it was long past the time to be having cups of tea. People were eating their evening meals, the tables were all set with knives and forks. There would be no room for someone just wanting a cup of tea. And she was intimidated anyway, at the thought of walking into any cafe and having to ask for something. She couldn’t do it naturally, as though she was always doing it. It seemed a huge step, bold, defiant, and she hadn’t the nerve. So she walked round and round the Piccadilly area, slower and slower, and when it began to rain she sheltered in the doorway of a department store, trying to look as if she were waiting for someone.

It got to ten o’clock. She’d never been out on her own so late at night. She’d moved doorways several times, and now she felt there was a man watching her. He was selling newspapers when she arrived but had put what he hadn’t sold into a van where he was sitting smoking and staring at her. She left the doorway she’d been sheltering in and walked off rapidly, with purpose. She knew she’d have to go home. There was no alternative. She had no money, except for the bus fare and a little loose change, which she fingered nervously, in her coat pocket, and nowhere else to go. Iris and Carlo would be worried. She felt such prickling shame, thinking of how concerned they would be. What would they have done? Half running by then, along a street she didn’t recognise, but hoped was leading her in the general direction she needed to go to catch a bus to get home, she suddenly became convinced that Carlo would ring the police. That was what you had to do when people went missing. But did she count as ‘missing’ yet? She didn’t know. Maybe at this moment a police car was cruising around looking for her. The thought terrified her – the police, looking for her.

She reached home a little before midnight, her hair plastered to her head with all the rain that had fallen on it, her clothes and shoes soaked through, not an inch of her dry. She had a key, but her fingers, cold and wet, slipped on the metal as she tried to get it into the lock. Every light in the house was blazing, making it look dramatically different from all the other houses in the road, like in an advert. She bent to pick up the key, and with great care, though she could hardly control her shaking hand, this time she managed to insert it in the lock, and successfully turned it. The next moment, before she had got through the doorway, she heard Iris shout, ‘Oh! The door! Carlo . . .’ and then Carlo came charging down the hallway, followed by Iris, both of them rushing towards her with such force that she flinched and cowered and gibbered sorry, sorry, covering her face with her wet hands, half convinced that they would attack her.

‘I’m getting married,’ Caroline said, as soon as Julia sat down in the cafe. ‘Ridiculous, isn’t it, at my age, but I am. Can you believe it?’

Julia asked all the obvious questions about the husband-to-be, and was rewarded with detailed answers.

‘I’m in love,’ said Caroline, ‘can you tell? Forty-eight years old and in love – oh God, how silly that sounds, but I am. What I wanted to ask you, Julia,’ she went on, ‘was will you be my bridesmaid?’

Julia laughed, loudly. ‘A bridesmaid, me? Come on Caroline, think about it. I’m forty-eight too, I can’t be a bridesmaid.’

‘A maid of honour, then?’

Julia, still smiling, shook her head.

What she wanted to say, she couldn’t say without unnecessarily hurting Caroline’s feelings. They had only seen each other perhaps a dozen times since they left school. Surely, in
this long interval, Caroline had made other friends? Julia felt a stranger. It was embarrassing, this request. And she had no desire to return to Manchester, or meet Caroline’s family again, or her bridegroom.

‘Really, Caroline,’ she said, ‘I can’t, it’s not my kind of thing. I’d be useless as a maid of honour.’

‘Well, then,’ Caroline said, ‘come to my wedding anyway, as my oldest chum, for old times’ sake, yes?’

It was impossible to refuse. The only way out would be to cancel at the last minute, to make something to do with work the excuse. But she’d send flowers, and a good present, and if Caroline was offended by her absence that would put a convenient end to this awkward, late-burning friendship.

I am ashamed, Julia thought. I live constantly with shame and guilt but neither makes me behave better.

Carlo adored Elsa. Julia despised the way he doted on her, the way he cuddled and kissed her and called her his golden girl, his little princess. Sick-making. Fran didn’t merit the same attention but didn’t seem to resent this because she was her mother’s favourite. Julia thought both Carlo and Iris spoiled their girls something rotten. They were hardly ever reprimanded for bad behaviour and, when they were, a few tears from either of them, but especially from Elsa, had an immediate effect. Whatever the punishment threatened, it was withdrawn, and there would be pleas to stop their crying. It was no way, Julia thought, to bring up children. She would like to have seen Elsa in particular given a smack. Thinking this shocked her. She’d never been smacked herself, but on the other hand she had been firmly disciplined, at their age, by her mother. It was too late for Elsa to be disciplined. A stinging smack, just on the legs, would be best.

Julia never voiced this opinion but Elsa seemed to sense it. Ever since the swimming pool incident, she had been wary of Julia, whom she knew she’d got into a great deal of trouble. She was made to say sorry for leaving the swimming pool building on her own but Julia was the one punished. Going on a school trip to Paris was cancelled which made Julia hysterical with rage and disappointment. Elsa could hear her sobbing behind the closed door of her room and when she came out of it her eyes were all red and blotchy.