The Unknown Bridesmaid (27 page)

‘Shall I open them, Dad?’ Elsa said, as Carlo went to get his jacket, ‘Tell you what they are?’

‘OK,’ Carlo shouted back.

Julia watched, helpless, mesmerised, as Elsa opened the
two bills and called out what they were for, and then the letter allegedly from Ramola. Her face took on an expression of bewilderment, a frown appearing, her mouth hanging open a little in a pantomime of astonishment, but instead of reading the letter out she said, ‘I can’t read the writing on this one, Dad.’

‘Oh, give it here,’ Carlo said, and shoved it, with the bills, into his pocket as he rushed out of the door.

Elsa said nothing. Maybe she hadn’t been able to read the handwriting. Or maybe she had, and in spite of her youth had realised she must not read the message out. It was impossible to know.

Julia went to bed leaving Iris still sitting there. She said nothing as she got up from the armchair, as quietly as possible, aware that she must not make any gesture which might antagonise Iris further. She must appear contrite even if she resented having to do so. Iris didn’t move. Carefully, Julia tiptoed up the stairs, without putting the light on, and then hesitated. Which room to take? Was Elsa in one? Fran in the other? She hadn’t asked if they were here. The door of what had once been her room, then Elsa’s, was slightly open. She peered round it and saw, in the gloom, a single bed and nobody in it. She lay down on the bed, fully dressed, and closed her eyes. She didn’t imagine she would sleep, but she had to lie down. Her mind was seething but her body exhausted, and her mind would win but at least her body would be rested.

There was any number of lies Elsa could have told. An expert in lies herself, Julia thought she knew them all but knew, too, that this was impossible. There would always be some twist, some wild piece of invention, which she hadn’t thought of. She set herself to imagine what would have been
likely to occur to Elsa, all those years ago, if she had wanted to make her mother hate Julia. But that wouldn’t have worked. Making Iris hate anyone was too much a perversion of her character for Elsa to have managed. So Julia reckoned she would have had to have been accused of, in some way, casting Carlo in a bad light, without Carlo being responsible for whatever was alleged to have happened. What could she have done to Carlo that Iris refused to believe, but now, with him lying in hospital dying, she had decided to believe, and why? Why, at this late stage (in every sense), change her mind?

By dawn, the light creeping greyly through the window, Julia had come to a decision. It was possible, she’d decided, in these extreme circumstances, to say sorry for an unknown, undivulged, act or word of hers which Iris believed she had committed or said. Sorry was an easy word. Short. What would it cost her to have to say ‘Sorry, Carlo’? Quickly done. Satisfying to Iris. Perhaps satisfying to Elsa, though maybe Elsa would prefer Julia to refuse to apologise until she’d been told what for, and then there would be the scene she wanted. What would Elsa do, if she said sorry to Carlo? Would she then tell? Iris, of course, would assume that she, Julia, had said sorry because she was acknowledging, without needing to say it, whatever Elsa said she had done to Carlo some thirty years ago.

Iris, Julia told herself, was in a dreadful state of grief. She could not be held responsible for her own behaviour. Afterwards, later, when Carlo died, if he died, she could attempt to find out what Iris thought she had to apologise to Carlo for. If Carlo lived, the same applied, though investigating the truth might take longer. The important thing, the kind thing, was simply to do it: say sorry. And then see what happened. It could be done. In a curious way, the longer she practised saying Sorry, Carlo, in her head, the more it appealed to her. So easy. And there were plenty of trivial things she
could apologise for. Her teenage years had been full of irritating and maligning Carlo, of driving him mad with her sulkiness and obduracy, insulting him in childish ways, making him the object of her scorn, mocking him mercilessly.

She could say Sorry, Carlo, and mean it. Julia began almost to look forward to saying it, defeating whatever plan Elsa had had by doing so.

Julia wrote no more letters to Carlo. It was too risky. She never discovered whether Elsa had read the last one and understood its meaning, or whether she had asked her father about it. Somehow, she thought this unlikely. But had Carlo mentioned the contents of the letter to her? That seemed unlikely too. It would be best to drop the whole game. Elsa was still very young. She would forget about the letter even if she had after all read it and guessed at its significance.

Not long after, Julia was ready to leave her cousin and her family. She had a place at University College London, and a grant to enable her to take it up. She intended never to return. In the vacations, she’d get a job, as a waitress or something, and stay in London. Later, much later, when she’d graduated and had a proper job (though she didn’t know what as) and was settled in her own home, the ultimate ambition, she’d return in a car of her own, she hoped, and collect the little table and the rug and the pictures which had been her mother’s.

Elsa watched her pack. She stood in the doorway of the room, which would now become hers, her arms folded across her flat chest, one leg crossed awkwardly over the other. Julia ignored her.

‘You think you’re so smart, so clever,’ Elsa suddenly said.

Julia didn’t say anything, just finished zipping up the second holdall. She looked round the room one last time. It worried her that Elsa might scratch the surface of the table,
or spill something sticky on the rug. She wished she’d asked Iris if she could put these few belongings of her mother’s in the attic. Too late now.

‘Can you get out of the way?’ she said to Elsa, who was almost blocking the door.

‘Good riddance,’ Elsa said.

‘Get out of the way,’ Julia said, ‘or I’ll have to push you.’

‘Push!’ said Elsa.

Julia promptly picked up one of her bags and swung it at Elsa’s knees. It was a blow hard enough to unbalance her, and she fell backwards onto the landing, then turned quickly onto all fours and stuck a foot out to trip Julia up. The bags and Julia both fell beside her. They both lay there in a heap, with one of the bags now beginning to roll down the stairs.

‘You little cow,’ Julia said, ‘I don’t know what you’re think you’re doing, but I don’t care.’

The doorbell went.

‘That’s my taxi,’ Julia said.

Iris opened the front door and shouted, sounding astonished, that it was a taxi.

‘Coming,’ Julia shouted back. They were both on their feet again.

‘I’m going to tell Mum the moment you’re gone,’ Elsa said.

Julia didn’t bother replying. There was nothing to tell. If Elsa made up lies, she didn’t care. She’d made plenty up herself and didn’t care about those either. The only thing that mattered was getting away. She dragged one bag down the stairs and picked up the other which had fallen almost to the bottom.

‘Oh, Julia,’ Iris said, ‘I wish you hadn’t ordered a taxi, I wish you’d let Carlo take you to the station, you know he wanted to. This doesn’t seem right.’

Julia said she was fine, she didn’t want to bother Carlo.

‘Give me a hug,’ Iris said.

Julia was horrified to see tears in her cousin’s eyes. She made the hug as perfunctory as possible, and muttered goodbye and thanks.

‘Ring when you get there,’ Iris said, ‘or I’ll worry.’

Then, when Julia was finally out of the house and putting her bags on the back seat of the cab, Fran came hurtling out, shouting her goodbyes, and there was another delay.

As the cab moved off, Julia saw Elsa appearing behind Iris and Fran, both of whom were still waving. She took hold of her mother’s shoulders and turned them towards her.

When Julia went downstairs, she saw that the lamp in the sitting room was still on, and there, still sitting on the sofa, in exactly the same position, was Iris, asleep, her head lolling forward. She was snoring slightly, more of a wheeze than a snore, and this emphasised the pathos. Iris would be mortified to be found snoring. Women, in her opinion, didn’t snore, only men. Julia went into the kitchen and wondered if she dared to boil the kettle or would it waken Iris? She wanted Iris kept asleep for as long as possible, giving her time to make some tea and leave the house. She couldn’t leave without a hot drink and some toast.

Of
course
she was not going to go to the hospital and say sorry to Carlo. How she could have imagined in the early hours of the morning she’d do such a thing she didn’t know. The idea was ridiculous. She made tea, and took a slice of bread from the bread bin and popped it into the toaster. When it was ready, she stood nibbling it and sipping the tea, her hands round the comforting warmth of the mug. She should make Iris some tea and toast and take them through to her. Her fear of the night before had gone. She felt such a sudden tenderness for Iris. Another mug filled with tea (she remembered Iris liked milk and one sugar) and another slice of
bread toasted; she carried them through to the sitting room, wondering how best to waken her.

But she was now awake, the small noises of kettle and toaster in the next room bringing her out of her sleep. She looked startled, as Julia entered, giving a little ‘Oh!’ of surprise. ‘I’ve made you some tea,’ Julia said, in a whisper, and held the mug out. Iris took it, her hand quite shaky, but she managed to drink a little. Julia didn’t sit down. She was standing there, about to say she was going to leave now, and dreading Iris’s reaction whatever it might be, when the telephone rang. Iris turned her head and looked at it in apparent astonishment, as though she had never heard a phone ring before. It went on ringing but she seemed paralysed. ‘Shall I?’ Julia said, and moved towards the table where the phone rested. But suddenly Iris stood up, slopping some of the tea from her still full mug, and moved stiffly to the table, putting the mug down carefully before lifting the receiver. Her back was now to Julia, who quietly left the room and put on her coat, which she’d left the night before on the peg behind the door, and picked up her bag from the foot of the stairs. She hesitated only a moment at the front door, straining to hear Iris’s voice so that she might interpret from it whether this was a call from the hospital or from Elsa or Fran. Whoever was calling, Iris was speaking to them in an even tone, not saying much at all except yes, OK, I’m sure, no, I don’t think so, or at least this was all Julia could hear. No panic, anyway, no cry of anguish. Good.

She hoped the bus stop hadn’t changed. It was a good distance away but she remembered how to get to it and knew there was a bus, or there used to be, that went to the station. No chance of flagging down a taxi. Taxis didn’t cruise round this suburb, and she hadn’t wanted to order a minicab. She walked briskly, glad to have left her cousin’s house without any scene, without encountering Elsa or Fran. They would all think less of her, for sneaking away, but she didn’t care
zwhat they thought. If Carlo was dead, Julia would be wiped out of Iris’s mind; if he were still alive, then Julia had escaped and she would know she couldn’t be brought back. Julia hoped this reasoning was correct.

London suited Julia. Other girls from the North might find the city intimidating but she did not. She thought it was exciting. Walking down the Mall towards Buckingham Palace thrilled her, making her feel part of all the events she’d seen in films and on television featuring the location. Much of her free time was spent simply walking from park to park, and along the river, and she never grew tired of trawling the city. Manchester and the Annovazzi family began to recede quite alarmingly in her memory.

‘Alarmingly’ because she’d spent so many years of her life there, a time when everything went wrong, or so it seemed to her in retrospect. It scared her to think of all the wrong turnings she’d almost taken. Well, no, some of which she had taken, only she’d got out of them in time. The letters to Carlo episode particularly bothered her, and so did not knowing the effect the second silly letter had had. It made her blush with shame to recall what she’d written, dragging that shop assistant Ramola into her plot. Would she have got into trouble? Would Carlo have approached her, accused her, sacked her? Julia was glad to be in London, far away from any possible consequences of her foolishness.

Iris wrote to her throughout her years as a student, sweet little notes wondering how she was getting on, and telling her what Elsa and Fran were doing, a predictably boring list of swimming triumphs and school concerts and details of who had had a tooth filled or her hair cut short. Sometimes she mentioned Carlo, but not often. His business was doing well, but he was finding managing it tiring and was thinking
of appointing a general manager. Iris always ended by saying how often she thought of Julia, and how they all missed her and hoped she wasn’t feeling lost in the big city, or lonely. That last bit made Julia laugh – as if! Where she’d felt lost and lonely was in Manchester, living with the Annovazzis, being utterly out of place, desperate to be free.

She replied only once to Iris, a few weeks after she arrived, telling her how happy she was, how settled, and then that she was going to be working very hard and wouldn’t have time to write very often. She didn’t go ‘home’ (what Iris called ‘home’) for the first Christmas, which upset Iris, because (she wrote) Christmas was a family time. Not to Julia it wasn’t. She worked on the post and in the evenings in a bar and managed to save enough money to join a trip to Austria, skiing. They drove there in a van, four of them, and stayed in a hostel and she had the best Christmas she’d ever had.

When she graduated, Julia hesitated over whether to give Iris the address of the flat she was going to be sharing with three other friends. She didn’t want to be tracked down, but on the other hand she didn’t think it wise to disappear entirely or Iris might have one of her fits of anxiety and report her missing, so, reluctantly, she sent a card with her new address, telling Iris that she was training to be a chemistry teacher. Immediately, a letter came from Iris, saying how relieved she was to hear Julia was alive and well because she’d begun to dread something awful had happened, and she felt so responsible for her welfare, and had done ever since Julia came to live with them. The letter was thick with reproach, and all of it was justified, but, as ever, it only deepened Julia’s rage that she should be made to feel guilty and ungrateful. She didn’t acknowledge this letter at all.