Miss You (18 page)

‘Nowhere better on an evening like this,’ said Dave.

The expression jarred slightly because it was what my dad always said to get out of taking us on a real holiday. If I ever hinted at another package to Tenerife, where we went the summer after
the boys left home, he always said, ‘What’s the point of all that travelling, when we live a mile from the beach?’

At first I’d thought that maybe money was tight, but he’d spent two years as a site manager on the construction of a new out-of-town shopping centre, so I realized that the last
thing he wanted to do was be away for a fortnight with just the two of us.

‘Where did you find Balloon Dolphin?’ I whispered to Dave.

For a moment, he frowned at me like I actually thought he’d found the original one, then cottoned on that I was continuing the pretence just in case Hope overheard.

‘I was called to fix a leak at a party shop last week. I remembered they sold balloons, so I figured they all get them from the same supplier, don’t they?’

He was lucky, I thought. But wasn’t that what we needed, a bit of luck?

‘Who wants fish and chips?’ he said, capping off a perfect afternoon for Hope.

We ate our piping-hot supper out of paper sitting on a bench on the promenade under a string of coloured lights. It felt like a real holiday thing to do.

Hope fell asleep in the van on the way home. In the darkness, with the volume on the CD player turned down low, the atmosphere was suddenly intimate.

‘You have a great smile, you know,’ Dave said softly, glancing at me in the rear-view mirror.

‘People usually say that if someone’s fat or plain,’ I said.

‘What are you like?’ he laughed. ‘You’re not fat, are you? And you’re lovely-looking, but I’m still saying it . . .’

‘Oh . . .’

‘You should smile more often.’

Of course, then I couldn’t stop.

We told each other our stories.

‘You’re great with her,’ he said, after I’d described how I came to be looking after Hope.

He was four years older than me and came from the Isle of Sheppey just along the coast. Both his parents were alive and he lived with them, although he was saving a deposit for a flat.
He’d got the idea of being a DJ from childhood holidays in Butlin’s, and he was hoping to do it full-time when he’d built up a regular clientele. He had two older sisters who both
had kids.

‘That must be why you’re so good at it,’ I said, returning the compliment.

In his spare time, Dave went to the gym and played golf twice a week.

‘Gets me out of the house,’ he said. ‘What about you?’

‘I read,’ I said. ‘Gets me out of the house. In a different way, obviously . . .’

‘Travel books, that kind of thing?’ Dave asked.

‘Novels, mostly,’ I told him.

The one bit of the day I looked forward to was closing my bedroom door when I’d got Hope to bed and the house was all quiet, being transported to Victorian London, or Hardy’s Wessex,
or Ireland in the 1960s. Edna O’Brien was Mum’s favourite novelist and reading
The Country Girls
trilogy made me wonder if that’s how she’d felt about friendship and
men and stuff when she was my age.

Dave had a nice smile himself. I’m not just talking about his mouth. With Fred, it was all those ultraviolet white teeth, but with Dave it was his eyes. He had nice, kind eyes.

‘Forget your tall, dark and handsome,’ Mum used to tell us, when Doll and I were mad for Robbie Williams. ‘What you need to find is someone who understands who you are –
a kind man, a gentle man.’

And then she used to sigh. We all knew my father was not one. He was a good-looking man, or at least he had been in his youth. He was a charming man who could be great fun when he was on form
and was capable of having a really good time – craic, he called it. But I don’t think I ever saw him do anything kind. With Dad, it was always about himself. When Kevin got a job with a
dance company in New York, it was all about Dad’s sorrow and nothing to do with well done to Kev. When I got my offer for university, it was all about how much that was going to cost. Mum
used to tell us that was just his way of saying he was proud, but we knew that was her kindness, not his.

When the doctor said her cancer was stage four, which meant terminal, Dad’s reaction was, ‘Dear God, what have I done to deserve this?’

When Dave pulled up outside our house, he kept the engine running. I didn’t know if that was because he was in a hurry to get away or waiting for me to invite him in. The house was dark,
so Dad was probably out, but I wasn’t going to risk him rolling in the worse for wear and making assumptions. Or being charming, because Dad was that unpredictable. Him making a mate of Dave
was almost a worse prospect than him throwing Dave out.

‘This has been the best day we’ve had in ages,’ I said, first to break the slightly nervous silence that had fallen over the chugging of exhaust, and immediately thinking that
sounded too keen.

Dave had probably had enough of us. In my head, I was preparing for the let-down, so when he did speak it took a second or two to understand what he was asking.

‘You wouldn’t be up for helping me out next Saturday, would you? I’ve been booked to do a wedding, one of those marquee-in-the-garden type of jobs – and it would be great
to have you along, you know. Help set everything up.’

‘I couldn’t bring Hope to something like that.’

‘No,’ he said.

I realized I’d made it sound like I didn’t want to go.

‘I’ll ask my friend if she can look after Hope, shall I?’ I said quickly.

‘Great!’ Dave said. ‘I’ll call you in the week . . .’

If I’d been in the front seat, I sensed he would have leaned across and given me a kiss but it was awkward with me sitting in the back. Dave switched the engine off and came round to let
me and Balloon Dolphin out.

‘Come on, Hope. Time for bed . . .’ I patted her gently to wake her up.

‘I’m not tired!’ Hope declared, as soon as her eyes were open.

‘I’m sure Balloon Dolphin wants to go to bed,’ I said.

‘Balloons don’t go to bed, Tree!’ she said crossly.

‘A wedding, eh?’ said Doll.

‘It’s not like that,’ I said.

After a lot of trying on, we decided that the most appropriate thing for me to wear would be black jeans and a white shirt, but Doll lent me a pair of earrings, two big single pearls, ‘to
lift the outfit’, so I looked quite smart. She also bought a present of lacy underwear, which didn’t show, obviously, but felt a tiny bit sexy.

On the Saturday morning she came round early to do my hair, straightening and smoothing it back from a middle parting into a long sleek ponytail, which made me look severe, before she applied
pale pink pearly lipstick that totally softened the look.

Doll stepped back and assessed her work. ‘Businesslike, but alluring.’

The person in the mirror didn’t look at all like me.

‘You don’t think it’s a bit much for this time in the morning?’ I asked.

‘Wow!’ Dave said, when I got into the van.

It felt a bit strange, sitting in the front seat, occasionally looking at the side of his face as he concentrated on the road, and neither of us speaking, except when I gave
him directions from the map. Maybe it wouldn’t work without Hope there to keep things moving along?

I finally thought of a question. ‘How did you get this job, then?’

‘One of my mates knackered his Achilles heel,’ he said. ‘So he’s chatting to the physio and she’s telling him that she’s got her wedding all planned, but the
DJ’s let her down, and so he told her about me. It’s my first wedding.’

He was nervous too, I thought, which is probably why he’d invited me along.

‘You’ll be fine,’ I said. ‘Much better than Bryan Leary.’

‘High praise!’ he said.

We both laughed, and the atmosphere in the car was easy again.

Even though it was only a few miles from where I lived, I’d never been down this narrow bit of coast road before because it wasn’t on the bus route.

‘I think this is the place,’ I said, spotting the entrance to a private estate.

There were big bunches of heart-shaped silver helium balloons tied to the gates of one of the large detached houses. A couple of florist’s vans were parked up outside and a team of
caterers were unloading piles of white crockery from another.

‘How the other half lives,’ said Dave.

‘Can someone get that?’ Nicky called from upstairs.

I was waiting in the hall while the women got themselves ready, but I wasn’t sure if ‘someone’ included me. There had been deliveries arriving all morning: ten large, round
tables and eighty chairs; a bale of white tablecloths; the cake, heavy tiers in separate boxes that were now being stacked into a tower in the marquee; and flowers, so many flowers, all white and
trailing ivy, pedestals of lilies, yards of garland that scented the air with jasmine, and shallow crates containing cushions of white roses for each table. I knew the drill, but it wasn’t my
house and, as I hesitated, Helen came running down the stairs in a dressing gown, her hair in large rollers.

‘Side gate and through to the back,’ she instructed the people on the doorstep. ‘Our planner will meet you there.’

She closed the door and shouted, ‘DJ’s here, Pip!’

‘What? Oh, thank God!’ came a muffled cry from upstairs.

‘Bit early, isn’t it?’ I said to Helen.

‘Better early than late,’ she said, running up the stairs again.

I took the comment to be a reference to my arrival that morning instead of the previous evening when I should have been there for the family dinner. Friday nights were the busiest in the
restaurant and I’d had to work late in order to get Saturday off. By the time we’d finished polishing and setting up, it was one in the morning, and after that, though I hadn’t
mentioned it to Lucy, I’d gone round to Nash’s because she’d just been dumped by an actor she’d met at the Edinburgh Fringe and needed a shoulder to cry on. It had taken
most of the night to get her smiling again and I’d only managed to grab a couple of hours’ sleep on her sofa. I’d had to leg it to Moss Bros that morning to pick up my suit before
getting my train.

Despite this, I was now showered, shaved and dressed when none of them were ready. The service was due to start in forty minutes and there was a lot of walking around upstairs, but still no sign
of the bride or bridesmaids. I felt a bit of an idiot standing idly in the hall, but I didn’t want to sit down and read the paper in the living room because I’d never worn a morning
suit before and wasn’t sure what to do with the tails.

‘Awright, mate?’

A stocky figure in a white T-shirt printed with the words
The Music Man
was standing in the door to the kitchen with a wheel of electric cable over his arm.

‘Any idea where I plug in?’ he said.

‘I think there’s a wedding planner in the marquee?’ I said, anxious not to cause a breach of protocol.

‘No one there except florists, mate!’

‘Hang on . . .’

I called Helen.

‘Oh, for heaven’s sake!’ she said, clattering down the stairs, in silk shoes the same pale blue as her dress. She hurried out through the kitchen with the man, returning a
couple of minutes later.

‘I don’t know why we even bothered with a planner if I have to do everything!’

‘You’re brilliant at it,’ I said. ‘That’s the problem.’

It was the kind of remark that would have worked if I’d said it to Lucy, but with Helen it just sounded ingratiating and priggish at the same time.

Helen peered through the small window in the front door.

‘The bloody florists are going to have to move their vans before the cars arrive,’ she said.

‘Should I tell them?’

She gave me her GP’s stare.

‘Aren’t you supposed to be an usher?’

‘I think I am.’

‘Shouldn’t you be at the church, then?’

‘I assumed I’d be going with Lucy.’

‘There’ll be no room for you in the car with the bridesmaids. And you can’t go in with Pippa. I’m sure you should have gone with Dad and Granny Cee,’ she said.

‘I’ll walk then, shall I?’

‘It’s quite a long way . . .’

‘I’ll be fine,’ I assured her, not wanting to cause any more trouble, but realizing, when Pippa’s vintage Rolls drove past me, that I’d completely underestimated
the distance.

It’s difficult not to draw attention to yourself when you’re six foot four sprinting along in a morning suit with a top hat in your hand, and when I finally arrived at the church,
Lucy and Helen were glaring at me, but Pippa was laughing.

‘Very thoughtful of you, Gus,’ she said. ‘To give me something to worry about and take my mind off things!’

‘I’m so sorry,’ I stammered. ‘You look gorgeous, by the way.’

I wouldn’t normally have said ‘gorgeous’ to Pippa, because it sounded a bit personal for the sister of your girlfriend, but I was so out of breath, I wasn’t really
thinking. And it was true.

Inside the church, the dim coolness made me conscious of the beads of sweat trickling down my temples and I could feel my white shirt sticking to my back under my jacket. I spotted Nicky
agitatedly beckoning me to the front, then the organ struck up the ‘Arrival of the Queen of Sheba’ and I suddenly realized that Pippa and her father were poised behind me and I was in
the way. With everyone in the congregation now staring at me, I dived into a pew at the rear.

As the procession passed by, Pippa looked fragile as she gripped her father’s arm very tightly; Lucy’s glance was more dismayed than amused; Helen wasn’t even prepared to look
in my direction. In their high-waisted ice-blue dresses, with their father leading them, I thought they looked like a family of sisters from a Regency television drama. At the altar stood Greg and
his twin brother Jeff, who had come over to be his best man. The two of them together were as wide as they were tall. For a moment, I wondered where there was going to be room for Pippa, but then
Jeff stepped aside.

The general view in the family was that Greg would be good for Pippa. She’d met him on her training semester in Banff. Ruddy and robust, he was the kind of man you could imagine wrestling
a bear, I’d said to Lucy, after the engagement dinner a few months back. It was clear that Greg doted on Pippa, in a puppy-doggish kind of way, which seemed to charm her, although I suspected
that if his ogling admiration had come from an equivalent Englishman, she would have thought him a bit of a wally. I assumed he must be great in the sack.