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Authors: Lucy Diamond

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BOOK: Hens Reunited
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Katie sipped her water thankfully. It was stuffy in the small room. ‘Well, in a nutshell, Steve asked me to marry him . . .’

‘Oh! Congratulations!’ Alice cried, spilling her drink as she jumped to her feet. ‘That’s—’

‘And I said no,’ Katie put in.

Alice had got halfway across the room, arms out as if to hug her, but as Katie finished the sentence, her arms flapped down again. ‘You said no? But why?’

‘Because . . .’ Katie ducked her head, shying away from Alice’s look of bewilderment. ‘Well, I’ve been there before, haven’t I? Marriage, I mean. And it doesn’t suit me. Once bitten, and all that. Besides, he started talking about wanting children, too. And that is
so
not going to happen. Not with me, anyway.’

Alice eyed her. ‘Why not? You’d be a great mum.’

Katie didn’t say anything, but the words pricked her.
Whatever you do, take precautions
, her mum had ordered Katie and her sisters, almost as soon as they had their first periods.
Don’t mess up your life like I did, getting pregnant too young.
Katie’s mum had been a pretty crap role model but that was one piece of advice Katie had followed to the letter. There was no way on earth she wanted to turn into her own mother and wreck an innocent child’s life. Not likely.

Obviously she wasn’t going to say as much in front of Alice, though. ‘Let me ask you something,’ she said, to change the subject. ‘We don’t have to talk about this if you don’t want to,’ she went on, choosing her words carefully, ‘but . . . what did you like about being married to Jake? I mean, wasn’t it just the same as going out with him?’

Alice shook her head. ‘Oh no, totally different,’ she replied. ‘
Totally
different. And I hadn’t expected it to be so at all, but when he said he wanted to marry me . . . Oh! Honestly, Katie, I was so so happy. I felt as if I was just brimming with love for him. And when we’d actually got married . . . well, I just felt as if we would be together for ever, lives entwined. That’s what I liked about it – that it’s the ultimate commitment.’

A tear rolled down her cheek and she pushed it away.

‘Oh, honey!’ Katie said, getting up and hugging her. ‘Oh, Alice, sorry. I’m so insensitive, aren’t I? I shouldn’t have asked.’

‘No, you’re all right,’ Alice said, with a catch in her voice
. ‘
I’ve got to toughen up and face the fact that it’s over. I just . . .’ She sniffed. ‘I just feel sad, especially when I think of us making those vows. ‘Til death do us part . . . More like “’til Victoria bloody Hartley do us part”. That snake!’

Her voice was thick with melancholy, and Katie held her until she had stopped sniffling. ‘What I was trying to get at – in a totally crap, insensitive way—’ Katie went on, ‘was that when Steve proposed to me, I didn’t feel happy at all. I panicked. All I could think about was Neil cheating on me, and being trapped in that house with him. And I just wanted to run away, to push Steve away—’

Before Katie could finish, there was a knock at the front door, and they both turned to watch as the latch was lifted and it was pushed open. Alice’s eyes narrowed and she folded her arms across her chest. ‘Bloody hell, I’m sick of this!’ she hissed to Katie. ‘Come in, why don’t you,’ she said in a louder, rather sarcastic voice.

A man had appeared – somewhat comically to Katie’s eyes, as he had to duck his head and stoop to enter the small cottage doorway. He stood there like a rather ungainly giant, blinking as his eyes adjusted to the light, then gave them both a friendly smile and walked across the room, holding his hand out. ‘Hi, I’m Dom,’ he said to Katie. ‘Alice’s sort-of neighbour.’

Katie rose from the sofa to shake his hand. He had a nice, honest way about him, she thought as his tanned fingers gripped hers. No guile. ‘Katie,’ she said, liking him. Alice’s sort-of neighbour, eh? Interesting.

‘Alice, I—’ he began, then he peered closer at her face. ‘Oh. Are you all right?’

He had noticed the tear tracks down her cheeks.
Observant for a bloke
, Katie thought.

Alice fixed him with a very bright, very fake smile. ‘Of course,’ she lied. ‘Is there anything I can help you with?’

Katie was surprised at the stiffness of her tone. Alice was usually so warm, so accommodating – but not to this sort-of-neighbour bloke. What had
he
done to rattle her cage, then?

Dom seemed taken aback too. ‘Not really, I was just passing, thought I’d pop in and see how you were doing,’ he replied. His eyes were concerned as he gazed at her. ‘Are you sure you’re okay?’

‘Absolutely fine,’ Alice replied, her smile starting to resemble a rictus type of grimace.

Bang. Nail in the conversation coffin. It would be clear to even the most thick-skinned of souls that everything about Alice – her body language, her fixed false smile, her curtness – was shrieking
Go away!

Katie turned to Dom. Had the message got through?

He was shrugging, with rather a hurt expression. Yes. ‘Okay,’ he said. He was trying to catch Alice’s eye, but she was looking away. ‘Okay,’ he repeated. ‘Well, I’m only down the road if you need me, yeah? Nice to meet you, Katie. Er . . . I’ll see myself out.’

‘You just do that,’ Alice muttered through gritted teeth as he left.

Katie could barely wait until he was out of earshot to ask the obvious question. ‘What was all that about?’ she hissed. ‘I thought he seemed really nice.’

Alice raised her eyebrows and looked scornfully at the spot where Dom had been standing just moments earlier. ‘Well, I did too, at first,’ she said, ‘but now I know differently.’

‘Oh, right,’ Katie said, wondering what on earth the guy had done wrong. Was he some kind of child molester? A peeping Tom? ‘So what—’

A plaintive cry came from upstairs just then, and Katie broke off. ‘That’s Iris,’ Alice said, and the life seemed to go out of her for a moment, as if someone had pulled out her stopper and she’d deflated. Then she scowled. ‘Bloody idiot must have woken her banging the door,’ she said with unusual vehemence. ‘Let’s listen. She might go back to sleep if we’re lucky.’

They sat as if frozen, in silence. Tick, tick, tick went an ugly-looking clock on the mantelpiece.

Alice let out a sigh of relief after thirty seconds or so had passed. ‘Phew,’ she said. ‘She often stirs like that. If we’re lucky we’ll get another half-hour before she’s properly awake.’

‘How’s it going, then?’ Katie asked. ‘Motherhood, I mean. Are you managing all right on your own?’

Alice pulled a face. ‘It’s a bit scary,’ she admitted. ‘I’m dreading her being ill in the night – having to deal with that sort of thing alone. I’ve never had to do that before – Mum was always there to dish out advice, tell me what to do.’ She sighed. ‘It’s lonely, too, just being the two of us here. Honestly, Kate, it seemed like a good idea at the time, moving to this place, but now . . .’ She squared her shoulders and gave another of her fake smiles. ‘Anyway, we’ll manage. And you didn’t come here to talk about me. Go on, carry on about Steve. Tell me everything.’

Katie didn’t need asking twice, and the details poured out. ‘I can’t help thinking that Neil was right, you know – that I’m just cold inside,’ she finished miserably. ‘That there’s something wrong with me. How come everyone else seems to want to play Happy Families, but not me? What’s wrong with me?’

Alice put a hand on hers. ‘Nothing’s wrong with you,’ she replied. ‘You’re brilliant. Steve thinks so too, right? Otherwise he wouldn’t be trying to get you up the aisle.’ There was a pause. ‘So anyway . . . what next? Have you phoned him?’

Katie shook her head. ‘I don’t know what to say,’ she confessed. ‘I thought he’d call me. And now it’s been two days and . . . I almost feel as if we’ve split up, you know. Which is ridiculous, isn’t it? And just goes to show it must be a pretty flimsy relationship if we can’t survive a conversation about the future without falling to pieces.’

They were both silent for a few moments. ‘He’s probably feeling a bit crushed,’ Alice said. ‘There he was, building up to this nerve-racking proposal, thinking of every detail, by the sound of it. Apart from the possibility that you might say no. I bet he feels pretty crap now. Maybe even embarrassed.’

‘Yeah,’ Katie said. ‘I guess he wasn’t expecting a “no”.’ She sighed, feeling muddled and tired. ‘What a mess. Bloody marriage proposals wreck everything, if you ask me!’

Hindsight was a wonderful thing. Katie looked back at her teenage self now and knew that meeting Neil had been nothing more than a convenient means of breaking free from her home life, cutting the ties from her flaky mother, her absent dad. It was a something-for-me moment, a relief to step into his arms away from her chaotic family.

It wasn’t the worst childhood in the world, to be fair, yet you wouldn’t call it an ideal one. As a fourteen-year-old, while all her mates were hanging out, experimenting with make-up and practising the Lambada together, Katie would be stuck indoors babysitting her younger sisters because her mum was off down the White Horse and may well not come home for twenty-four hours. Or she’d be making tea for them all because Mum had passed out cold on the sofa again. Or she’d be suffering the charity of ‘Aunty’ Sylv next door who took it upon herself every now and then to do their washing – until Katie had heard Sylv gossiping in the mini-mart about it (‘Poor little mites! I’ve a good mind to call social services, get them taken away from that woman!’) and stoutly refused all offers of help from then on.

No wonder Dad had walked out, Katie would think, as her mum shambled from day to day, seemingly uncaring of how her daughters fared. Sometimes she wished her mum had been the one to go.

Katie leaned against the steering wheel as she sat in the rush-hour traffic, steeped in memories. It was hardly surprising that when Neil had sauntered into her world and picked her out, Katie had fallen head over heels. She was so desperate for some love and closeness, so grateful and delighted that anybody wanted her, that anybody found her attractive! It would have been pathetic if it wasn’t so bloody sad, her trotting after Neil like an adoring puppy.

She stared out of the window, unseeing, as she waited for the traffic lights to change. Ironic really, wasn’t it? While most of her friends were rebelling against their parents by drinking and smoking and throwing wild house parties behind their backs, Katie’s act of rebellion had been to get married – a teenage bride. How tragic was that? And how spectacularly it had backfired on her!

Katie drove the rest of the way home on automatic pilot, trying not to think about her failed marriage any more. At last she was able to turn into her road, and she slowed as she approached her house. Then she almost stalled the engine in surprise as she saw the metallic blue Ford Focus parked neatly outside. Steve’s car. He was back. He’d come back!

So what the hell should she do now?

 

Chapter Eight

Pray

1987

‘Oh look, girls. Here she comes, the walking Knightmare herself!’ Michelle Jones’ voice had a ring of delight, and Georgia flinched as she heard it. Oh, no. Not again. She clutched her school bag defensively against herself as if it were a shield that would repel Michelle and her cronies. No such luck.

‘Done your homework, then, Knightmare?’ That was Gayle Fisher, dumb sidekick, with a bleached-blonde mullet and studs all the way up her ears. She was rock hard, Gayle, everyone knew that. And now she was advancing on her so that Georgia had to back away against the grey metal lockers.

‘Yeah,’ Georgia replied, eyes cast down to the ground. ’Course she’d done her homework. It wasn’t worth her while
not
to do it when this lot wanted copies every day.

‘Hand it over then.’ That was Lindsey Newton, chewing on a wad of pink Bubblicious, holding out a stubby-nailed hand expectantly. Not as hard as Gayle, but with such an expert line in catty remarks she could make you cry within seconds if she put her mind to it.

Georgia scrabbled inside her bag for the English essay she’d spent hours labouring over last night. ‘Macbeth’s Downfall’, it was called. She knew how he must have felt, poor old Macbeth, with these three witches breathing down her neck.

Michelle grabbed the book out of her hands and flicked through it. ‘Oooh, what long words,’ she mocked. ‘Think you’re better than us, do you?’

‘No,’ Georgia mumbled. It was true. She felt worthless pretty much all of the time. The only thing that kept her going was walking home with Carl Finchley. He was so nice, Carl. Different from the other boys. He made her laugh, too, and forget about Michelle Jones for the short distance from the school gates to her house.

‘Good, ’cos you’re not,’ Lindsey said, leaning closer to Georgia so that she could smell the sickly waft of strawberry gum. The lockers were cold against her back, she could feel the metal chill on her shoulder blades. ‘You’re shit. You’re nothing. Everyone hates you, you know. ’Specially us.’

‘Watch out,’ Michelle murmured just then, and they turned to see what she’d noticed. Georgia raised her gaze slightly too and saw, to her great relief, that Carol, her sister, was striding down the corridor towards them with her best mate, Susie Leigh. Carol took in the scene – the three girls crowding around Georgia, pinning her against the lockers – but didn’t comment. Her gaze flickered over Georgia’s face disinterestedly, and she walked on. Georgia could hear her telling Susie about the new shoes she’d seen in Chelsea Girl as they disappeared down the corridor.

Michelle gave a hard, spiteful laugh. ‘Well, whaddya know? Big sis Knightmare thinks you’re a freak, too. She doesn’t care what happens to little Georgie!’ She grabbed Georgia’s wrist and wrenched it in a Chinese burn. ‘Looks like you’re on your own, eh?’

Saturday, 14 June 2008

The scene flashed back into Georgia’s mind as she walked along the hospital corridor with Owen. The shame – the years-old shame – spread through her like a rising tide. It had gone on for months and months, the bullying – years, actually. How ironic that Michelle Jones was now in the health profession. Healing, rather than crushing. Was that some kind of karmic penance? Or the universe’s little joke?

BOOK: Hens Reunited
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