The Great Escape (41 page)

Spike stands there, oblivious to Rick’s concerned frown and a group of teenage boys who are clearly whispering something derogatory about him. He stares at the door, realising he has to stop this right now – this waiting for that girl to come back in, waiting for Lou to forgive him, waiting for his life to somehow, miraculously, fix itself. He needs to get away from all of this – to escape from a life of waiting and start
doing
something instead. With a start, he knows exactly what he must do.

He’ll go back to Charlie and Toni’s and collect the letter he wrote for Lou, and he’ll creep round to the flat and post it through the door. Then he’ll spend the rest of the money Charlie lent him on a return train ticket to Ayr, and he’ll go the sheltered bungalow to spend time with his parents before it’s too late. Then, as he walks with them on the blustery beach, he’ll figure out what the hell to do with the rest of his life.

SEVENTY-THREE

‘You kissed him? You kissed this …
Andrew
?’

Sadie nods mutely in the middle of their living room where her children are now playing beneath their activity arch. ‘You got off your face and snogged someone?’

‘Yes,’ she whispers. ‘At least that’s what Hannah and Sadie said. I’m sorry, Barney. I had these cocktails, they went straight to my head. It’s all fuzzy and I can’t remember …’

‘Did you do anything else?’ he snaps.

‘No! Of course not …’ She tails off, realising this is the first time she’s ever seen Barney this angry.

‘I knew something had happened,’ he mutters, his dark eyes boring into hers across the room. ‘You’ve been different since you came back …’

‘Look, I said I’m sorry, you can’t imagine how much I wish it hadn’t happened. But if it means anything, and I’m not trying to make excuses …’ She glances down at their children, wishing with all her heart that a magic nanny would appear and whisk them out of the room. ‘If it means anything,’ she continues shakily, ‘it was the first time I’d done anything on my own since having the boys and I think it went to my head.’

‘It obviously did,’ he says gruffly.

‘I’m sorry, Barney.’ Blinking away the tears that have started to form – she will
not
let the children see her cry – she pulls out the baby shoe from her pocket. ‘I found this,’ she adds in a whisper.

‘Did you? Where?’

‘In the woods …’

‘The woods?’ he repeats, eyebrows shooting upwards.

Sadie studies his face, then glances down to see Milo peering at his reflection in the dangling mirror. When she looks back at her husband she doesn’t see caring Barney who tries to do the right thing, or even furious Barney, confronting her about kissing a man in a bar. He looks trapped and scared as she calmly asks, ‘How did Dylan’s shoe get in the woods?’

And now she’s the one glaring as it all pours out: ‘Met these girls … works in the café… fancied Pete … nothing happened, I promise … really uncomfortable … all Pete’s idea …’ She knows she should cut in and yell, ‘Don’t try and blame it all on Pete! You were aiding and abetting …’ But as the words form in her mind, she almost laughs at how ridiculous they’d sound:
aiding and abetting?
Who has she turned into – the sodding police?

‘I’m sorry, Sadie,’ he says now, coming towards her and holding her tight, burying his face in her hair.

‘God, I’m so sorry too,’ she says as they kiss long and hard, unaware of the two pairs of large brown eyes fixed intently on them.

SEVENTY-FOUR

Early on the morning of Hannah and Ryan’s wedding, Sadie and Barney take the boys for a walk round Hissingham Park. The wedding is at two, and they are leaving the babies with Barney’s parents overnight. Both Sadie and Barney are feeling a little edgy about the prospect, despite Barney’s mother reassuring them that their home is now fully baby-proofed with an impressive assortment of guards and gates.

They are so busy running through the list of things they mustn’t forget to take that they don’t notice Magda across the park. She is walking her dog and stops to watch them, never having seen them out together before. Magda knows, of course, that Barney is married because she sees his wife every Monday and Friday through the café windows, pushing the buggy in all weathers. She’s served her coffee, offered to warm the boys’ bottles and seen her gamely trying to breastfeed her babies on a park bench, making a mental note to perhaps delay becoming a mother herself for as long as humanly possible.

What is it with men?
she reflects. Why the pretence of being a single dad? Magda hadn’t told Barney that she’d met his wife, as she was interested to see if he’d mention her. And of course he didn’t. Even when she praised him, jokingly, for coping all by himself, he didn’t correct her then either. She chuckles to herself. It was pathetic really – although he doesn’t strike her as some kind of would-be playboy, not like Pete, who has yet to realise that Amy’s flirty texting will lead him precisely nowhere.

Barney and his wife are hugging now. Well, that’s nice, Magda thinks, starting to walk again as her dog pulls on the leash. Perhaps it’s not all over when you have kids. Magda checks her watch. She’s due to meet her boyfriend – the twenty-year-old photography student who, it seems, cannot take enough pictures of her. Taking a big lungful of morning air and seeing him waiting for her at the gates, she smiles and waves, her dog straining so hard now he’s pulling her along towards him.

‘That’s a really nice dress,’ Daisy says, observing Hannah from the bedroom doorway.

‘Thanks,’ Hannah says. ‘Come on in. You don’t have to stand there at the door.’

‘Where’s Dad?’ Daisy asks, glancing around furtively as if half-expecting something or someone to bounce out at her.

‘He’s upstairs, getting dressed.’

‘What, in your studio?’

‘Yes,’ Hannah laughs. ‘He’s been banished to the attic. No, actually, he offered – said he’d give me some space to get ready. You know, the bride and groom aren’t really supposed to spend the night before their wedding together.’

Daisy frowns. ‘Why not?’

‘I don’t know really. Just superstition, I guess, like not getting married in a red dress.’

‘What’s wrong with a red dress?’

‘Nothing,’ she laughs. ‘Anyway, I don’t believe any of that. I knew this was the dress for me as soon as I saw it – before I’d even tried it on.’

‘It’s a lot nicer than the other one,’ Daisy agrees.

Hannah turns and gives her a quizzical look. ‘Did you sneak a look at it in my wardrobe?’

Daisy nods, her cheeks flushing pink. ‘Yeah.’

‘I don’t mind. It’s pretty frumpy, isn’t it?’

‘Yeah, a bit.’

‘It made me look like a fat nurse,’ she sniggers, and Daisy laughs too.

‘I don’t think you’re fat.’

‘Thanks, Daisy,’ Hannah says with a smile. ‘I don’t think so either. The dress just wasn’t very flattering. Yours is lovely, though – d’you feel good in it?’

‘I love it,’ she declares, looking down and appraising the bold stripes.

‘It really suits you. You look beautiful.’

‘So do you, Han,’ Lou says, wandering into the bedroom. ‘You
both
look stunning.’

‘Did you make Hannah’s tiara?’ Daisy asks.

‘Yes, I did. D’you like it?’ Lou perches on the edge of the bed near Daisy’s printed-out story.

‘I really do. D’you sell them in shops?’

‘I used to,’ Lou explains, ‘and I’m going to start again. I was working on some new ideas last week and I’m going to make them up when I get home. I’ve even found a couple of shops to stock them, and I’m going to update my website.’

‘That’s great, Lou,’ Hannah smiles.

‘D’you think Dad would buy me one?’ Daisy asks, fixing her gaze on Hannah.

‘Oh, I’m sure we could sort out something, couldn’t we, Lou? It’s Daisy’s birthday in three weeks’ time.’ She glances at Daisy. ‘You haven’t told us what you’d like yet.’ Told
us
. She’s said it, and it feels just right.

‘Well, that’s what I’d like,’ Daisy says firmly. ‘I don’t mean a little girlie tiara like princesses wear …’

‘No, you’re too grown-up for that,’ Lou agrees. ‘That’s not the kind of jewellery I make anyway.’

‘I mean a proper tiara, just like Hannah’s,’ she says with a grin.

Johnny and Cal take a cab from Felix’s flat, where they stayed last night, to Hackney Registry Office. Felix will meet them there after setting up at the bar, making sure everything is just so. Hannah, Daisy, Josh and Lou are travelling together in her boss Michael’s bright orange vintage Saab; Ryan tried to persuade his kids to come with him and Jack, his old college friend and best man, but they wouldn’t hear of it. ‘Imagine having a driver,’ Josh keeps saying. ‘Wouldn’t that be the best thing – being able to go anywhere you like?’

Having left their overnight bags in the hotel, Sadie and Barney climb into a black cab, while Hannah’s parents have arrived at the registry office far too early and are wondering if that smart-looking couple might be Ryan’s mum and dad, and whether they should go over and say hello. They are relieved when more people start arriving – first Ryan and the best man, then a group of Ryan’s colleagues from the ad agency and a bunch of excitable women from Hannah’s design company.

There’s Sadie and Barney and some funny-looking blond man who could have got a haircut before the wedding, and now their daughter is here, looking stunningly beautiful as she steps out of an orange car and hurries over to hug them before mingling with the group. Rose, Hannah’s mother, swallows hard and tries to steady her breath.

Ryan’s children are chatting to Hannah now, both looking very smart, and there’s Lou, the one who makes jewellery, wearing a dazzling flowery frock. Rose vaguely remembers the tall man who looks like he’s with her, and thinks he lived upstairs from the girls in Glasgow. She sees his son, who’s the spitting image of him, march over and start talking to Daisy, who looks a little startled.

People keep coming, some with babies and toddlers, the adults all kissing and hugging each other before filing into the building. Once inside, Rose can focus on her daughter properly. She is so overawed by the sight of the beautiful bride in the stunning red dress that she is unable to speak. She sees Ryan glancing at Hannah, perhaps a little taken aback by how different she looks today – so radiant and self-assured. Hannah smiles at Ryan, a big, broad smile which says she’s ready for this, and that it promises to be the best day of her life.

Hannah’s mother is conscious of her husband squeezing her hand as she takes her seat at the front, but she can’t look at him now; she knows it’ll set her off if she does. Instead, she fixes her gaze upon the couple standing before her as the wedding begins.

Read on for Fiona’s tips for a
perfect girlie weekend away

Fiona’s perfect girlie weekend away

The Great Escape
was inspired by my love of a girlie weekend away. In the book, Hannah, Sadie and Lou have very different reasons for craving a bit of respite from everyday life, and I’m convinced that a couple of days with your best girlfriends can be a real sanity saver. Of course, escaping with your partner and family is wonderful too, and I cherish the two weeks each summer when the five of us go away together. But there’s something about being with old friends – the ones who’ve known me for decades – that lifts the spirits in a different way.

Of course, there are different types of girlie weekend, and the key to making yours a success is matching the right kind of break to the right people. Here are some of my favourites.

The wild one: Throughout my twenties I worked on teenage and women’s magazines, in offices staffed with lovely people who I still count as my closest friends now, twenty years on. Back then, we were all footloose (and, crucially, child-free) and would hop over to buzzy cities like Dublin, Florence, Paris and Berlin whenever funds allowed. I have to admit that these weren’t exactly cultural trips. Once, on our ferry journey home from Amsterdam, a man marched over to where we were sitting, feeling a little fragile, and barked, ‘Not so bloody lairy now, are you?’

‘No,’ we whimpered. It’s safe to say that we hadn’t seen the inside of any museums on that trip.

The restorative one: Ah, how times change. I might no longer be up for dancing all night but I still love getting together with my friend Jen, and wallowing in the bubbly rooftop pool of an Edinburgh spa. It’s our once-a-year treat where we indulge in a bit of ‘life planning’, talking about where we’re headed and what changes, if any, we’d like to make to our lives – all that life-coachy stuff you can pay a fortune for. It’s a brilliant head clearer and puts a smile on my face for weeks afterwards.

The mums and kids one: As I write this, I’ve just come back from one of these weekends – complete chaos with three women and seven kids in a house we rented in Norfolk. There are always several small disasters – on one trip, unbeknown to us, one of the younger members of our party used the holiday house phone to call 118118 (120 times!) to ask ‘the lady’ to marry him. Quite reasonably, we were presented with the phone bill to pay a few weeks later. This time, one of my sons accidentally pierced a radiator in the games room with a dart, causing the dramatic spurting of water and frantic calls to a plumber. Luckily, there’s been no bill for that one … yet.

The get-over-heartbreak one: After a big break-up I took myself off to Barcelona with a friend, which worked wonders to set me back on track. It’s a bit like having a drastic haircut when a relationship ends – you just want things to look and feel a bit different. When I came back, the flat we’d once shared no longer seemed like a sad little place. Barcelona is one of those cities where you can kick up your heels if you want to, but also have a more mellow time exploring and browsing.

The just-because one: As you grow older, you often find that close friends are scattered all over the country. Even phonecalls are tricky these days – most of us work full time and have families, and even emailing falls by the wayside. When I lived in London, I’d get together with friends whenever I liked. Since we moved to Scotland thirteen years ago, it’s taken a little more planning – which is where the ‘just-because’ girlie weekend comes in. It’s a brilliant way to enjoy a big chunk of time together, and I love it all – from late nights spent chatting, to lazy breakfasts over a pot of coffee, to exploring during the day. It brings everyone together again and it’s so much more satisfying than a speedy drink after work. In fact, I think I’ll plan another one right now …