The Good Kind of Bad (3 page)

I was going to
have
to spill my guts now. ‘I met a guy, we got married, in fact, wasn’t that today or something?’ I quipped, a finger to my cheek.

‘Spit it out, Blondie.’

‘What do you want to know?’

Nina knitted her brows together, like I was some quantum physics conundrum. ‘Like, why do you sound like the Duchess of Cambridge but you came here and married a guy from the wrong side of everywhere after no time at all?’

‘I was born here. We only moved to England when I was eleven.’

‘Yeah, okay, but why come back? And why come back now?’

I examined a chip in my pearlescent wedding manicure before flicking my gaze upwards. ‘Would you believe me if I said I missed the pizza?’

From Nina’s blunt expression and voluminous pout, that would be a no. ‘You lived in Lake Forest last time you were here. I’d bet my life on it. You had an outdoor pool, a view of the lake, a butler like Geoffrey on
The Fresh Prince of Bel Air
. . .’

I got it. I got where she was coming from, though fifteen years ago there was no outdoor pool, and certainly no Geoffrey. My dad’s company had hardly been in the Fortune 500 and then, out of the blue, he moved us four thousand miles away to the English countryside and into a Bel Air-esque mansion of our own. I was upset, sure, to leave my friends, but I didn’t question the move. That we were running away certainly didn’t cross my mind.

After crawling through the traffic earlier, I’d half expected Joe to drive the once familiar route to Oak Park. It was the road to my glittering past, the secret foreboding of fifteen years earlier. There it remained, the now dead and empty house teetering on a precipice. Even if it never succumbed, time would crush and crumble it eventually. Like the twinkling horizon of a distant city, the memories couldn’t sustain it; my childhood tied up with a pretty pink bow.

Back then, life had been everything Hallmark didn’t forget to print. Our home in Chicago, no matter how small, had been my perfect little world until it happened. The dividing line of all that was once good juxtaposed with the allegory of the sins of the father.
My
father: architect of the theft fifteen years before.

Howard Clarke had been joint owner of a personal investment company in Chicago. When I was sixteen, and realising there was more to our midnight flit than I’d been told, my father confessed he’d rogue-traded his way to ten million dollars by way of a Ponzi scheme using his company, T&C Associates, before relocating us across the Atlantic to my mother’s homeland. He said whatever I thought of him, my life was comfortable because of what he’d done. The way he saw it? He’d simply seen an opportunity, and taken it. They sold the house for under market value, the relocation had taken days instead of months, and, after my father’s partner fell upon ill health, probably in part due to the company’s collapse, he’d left half the money hidden in an account in Chicago, using the other five million to fund our new life in England.

As for the five million he’d left sitting in Eagle First Bank in Chicago? The account was in my name. When the time was right, and I was old enough, the money was mine. He’d meant when nobody was looking for it anymore. He’d meant on my wedding day, my first wedding day, with Will.

So, my father, mother and I absconded under a cloud of anonymity the day before my eleventh birthday. The gate of the Chicago house had probably swarmed with party guests, armed with parcels and balloons and the trappings of convention. Turned out self-preservation hadn’t only been taken to new heights by my father, but surpassed.

After we left the city, it took a couple of months but the stress of the business and his secret melted away. Appearances at my piano recitals and school plays became the norm, and just in time.

I could see Nina was still waiting for tales of my exuberant childhood to match her own. I could hardly tell her it was more
Rogue Trader
than
Clueless
. Artfully changing the subject, I asked, ‘Have you ever been to England?’

‘I have a strict policy of only leaving the US for sandy beaches and cocktails before noon.’

I didn’t doubt that.

She added a giggle before slipping back into detective mode. ‘So, you spend all that time in England and then leave your job, your home and marry the first guy you meet? Don’t they make films about this? And how have we never talked about this before?’

‘And shouldn’t you have been a cop?’

‘Come on, girl. I’m waiting for an explanation.’

‘All right. It’s my New Year’s Resolution.’

‘In May?’

‘It’s to say yes, to everything. Joe proposed so I said—’

‘Yes?’

‘As a matter of fact . . .’

‘And before that? Come on, don’t skip the good stuff.’

‘Before that I was with a guy I met at Oxford.’ There was no harm in throwing Nina a few choice morsels. I didn’t need to mention the next five years passed absent of drama though full of certainty, culminating in the wedding I’d feared since the Tiffany ring box had quivered in Will’s hand. ‘After a few years, Will proposed.’

‘And?’ Nina looked like she was about to burst.

‘ . . . and three weeks ago I left him checking his cravat by the church altar.’

‘You skipped out on him?’ she breathed. ‘No freaking way.’

‘I took my dad’s garden shears to my wedding dress, downed half a bottle of Southern Comfort and boarded a plane to Chicago.’

I waited for Nina’s witty retort, but her mouth sat open. It was then I realised she was the only person I’d told. Now breathing out the sickness I’d held in for almost a month, maybe confession
was
good for the soul. ‘Okay, I ran, but I ran to the one place in the world which still felt like home. And then, I met Joe.’

Nina shuffled excitedly over the booth. ‘I don’t think you ever told me where you met him.’

‘In Galvin’s bar on Hilton and Dean?’

Nina snorted. ‘Classy, once you pull your feet off the floor.’

‘I’d seen him ordering a drink and thought he was worth a few second glances, but when he fell to one knee by the bar, shot me a few lines of what could have been Shakespeare and called me his “beautiful stranger”, I thought it was a joke. He was drunk, but deadly serious; hence, the marriage.’

‘You thought it was a good idea to marry someone else after leaving your fiancé at the altar?’

I was
not
on the rebound, despite Nina’s implication. However many times I’d nearly told Joe the truth, I couldn’t bear to hurt him. I couldn’t squander the rest of our lives together because I had a past. Everyone had a past. Besides, I guessed Joe was far from a choirboy himself.

‘Yes. I married Joe after leaving my fiancé at the altar.’

She tipped her newly arrived glass to me. ‘This
so
deserves a toast: to living life instead of watching it. Never knew you had it in you, girl. I mean, to marry Petrocelli.’

‘You know I’m not married to a Seventies TV lawyer, right?’
Married
. Weird.

‘My dad loved that show. Let me call him that, all right? So? How is it? Living with him?’

‘How about baptism of fire? I’ve had seven days of odd socks turning up in the weirdest of places, a fridge full of failed science experiments and a fire escape home to a couple of thousand cigarette butts. I don’t know why, but the word
cleaner
keeps springing to mind.’

‘Because it sounds like you’ve married the human equivalent of a dumpster? Can’t you move? I mean, both of you? Get a nice apartment and he’ll
want
to keep it pristine.’

‘He doesn’t want to move.’

‘Are you serious?’

‘Joe likes the neighbourhood.’

‘Joe
likes
living in Armanti Square?’

‘He says there’s nothing worse than living uptown with a bunch of
Testa di Merdas
and besides, we have to “keep it real”.’

‘
Keep it real
?
Testa di Merdas
? Who does he think he is, a fake gangster?’

‘I guess it
is
only mess, he can sell the rust bucket car and there’s nothing wrong with being a courier, Nina.’

‘
That’s
what he does? He’s a courier?’

Evidently, Nina didn’t keep her opinions to herself.

‘Well . . . Joe says he’s more managing director than delivery driver, but that doesn’t matter. I want Joe for
him
. The other stuff’s not important.’

‘I’ve known Mickey two years, been engaged for one, and is there any hint of a wedding dress on the horizon? And you’re in one already!’

Our marriage was far from a sham, contrary to popular opinion. It had been a whirlwind engagement, yes, but a genuine one. It was a genuine attempt to fix my life by impulsively selecting another off the rack and, so far, it was working.

‘Now I need your advice,’ I confided, after dropping the bombshell and walking away largely unscathed. ‘My parents don’t know about Joe.’

She bit at her lip. ‘And the plot thickens.’

‘Even worse is my mother’s booked me a plane ticket home. What am I supposed to do with that?’

Raising her glass, Nina shot me a wink. ‘Get drunk and forget your old life. Welcome back to Chicago, girl.’

I bottled it. After five days of my mother calling, texting and badgering me to death, I took the ticket. I went home. I couldn’t admit I’d been swallowed up by the city, Joe, my own stupid resolution . . . but I had, and it was time to put some perspective on things.

To get one thing straight, I wasn’t keen on subservience when I
did
live at Stable Hill Manor, and this wasn’t about running back to my parents. Mother preferred the mansion’s full title,
Stable Hill
never had enough syllables. People couldn’t possibly assume anything less of her, or of the seven bedroom suites, vast wine cellar or room for that travelling circus in the garden.

My mother was all about the moolah, the coin, the money; my father’s
stolen
money. She knew where it had come from, she wasn’t that stupid, but didn’t know about the Chicago account. I’d been sworn to secrecy by my father, and knowing something she didn’t had always made me feel rather smug.

With Joe keen to keep running his ‘errands’, he encouraged me to make the journey alone. It would do me good. What, to see how utterly ashamed they were of me? To know I’d not only upset the applecart but left it overturned with my abandoning and disregarding? My past achievements amounted to nothing in the face of my ‘unfortunate decision’, or so it seemed.

Though surprisingly I was convinced not by Joe, but my own unwitting sense of obligation. I’d married someone else after abandoning a wedding they’d spent five figures on. It was only manners to tell them in person.

Now back in the cavernous dining room at Stable Hill, it felt like I’d taken one giant leap backwards. There was too much here; too much clutter and chintz and talk and questions. There was too much life. I was no longer anonymous. Chicago was a million miles of discreet fulfilment, of wishes and future chances and of a cute guy named Joe. Now, Chicago was a million miles
away
; our nuptials a vivid dream in the face of regimented order and sempiternal familiarity.

Mother was never one to do things by halves, but she’d pulled out all the stops and then some. She could’ve been feeding the five thousand with the sheer weight of food on the gaudy dining table, spindly legs ready to snap under the burden of sharpened knives, asparagus spears and oysters bare against once tight shells. Mother preferred to pick at her food. She wasn’t big on the whole
meal
concept.

They were dressed in their usual get-up, like they’d wandered in off the set of some landed gentry melodrama. Once mentioning my mother’s wardrobe had a section dedicated wholly to silk scarves, there wasn’t much else to say.

‘Darling, drink up. This is cause for celebration. Where in the cellar did you find this, Howie? It’s an excellent year,’ she scoffed, the Spanish red churning against the glass before she admired the bouquet.

Her voice was taut like her neck, skin strained over bone. The words came sieved through veneers already yellowing, like old Tupperware. Like Stable Hill Manor she was ageing, one loose thread and split fingernail at a time. She also didn’t know what she was talking about when it came to the claret. One paltry wine tasting course and she was a sozzled and seasoned pro, apparently.

‘She’s not interested in wine.’ My father observed me through square lenses while scratching at his beard, probably stashing a morsel of food for later. The facial hair was a prerequisite of his later years. He’d never sported a beard before negotiating the heights of his late fifties, though for work (which was now only part time), it remained neat and trimmed.