Where on earth are you? was Eli’s almost-immediate response to Bea sending him a picture message of a dart board on the wall that was so ancient that it was more pin-holes than solid matter.
Out for dinner. The village pub. It’s actually called The Village Pub FFS. It’s very Hot Fuzz here…
What? Eli answered. Are you going to fuck off up the model village tomorrow? he quoted, with a winking face. Any luck on the dress-front?
‘Two double gin and tonics, please,’ Bea ordered, once the barman made eye contact with her.
‘You’re not having the wine, then?’ he asked her mildly as he forewent tongs to grab wedges of rather dry looking lime and ice cubes with his bare hands and dropped them into the hi-ball tumbler glasses.
‘Oh, don’t worry, the bride will see to that,’ Bea assured him, returning to Eli on her phone when the man turned his back on her to use the optics and pour out the double measures of gin.
No luck, she typed. Every time N puts on something she halfway likes, her mum tells her it’s too modern, or the shop staff tell her it’s the wrong cut for her. N fit to spit and I don’t blame her. Can’t believe there’s a whole other day of this tomorrow!!
And tomorrow you’ll be trying on the dresses too, Eli pointed out. If some old bat tells you something doesn’t suit you but you like it, I hope you tell her to sod right off.
Smiling to herself, Bea slipped her phone back into her handbag as she retrieved her purse to pay the (agreeably low compared to London prices) cost of the two G&Ts before carrying them back through to the garden.
‘Ta.’ Cleo immediately removed the straw the bartender had slipped into the drink and dropped it to the table top without missing a beat. Bea had known she’d do that – if she’d been paying attention at the bar rather than texting Eli she would have told the guy to not bother putting a straw in one of the gins; it was a Cleo-idiosyncrasy that she never used straws.
Bea remembered the first time she’d ever set eyes on Cleo Adkins. She’d given Nora loads of time to adjust to her new life before she’d taken the train to Sheffield to visit her at university, about six weeks or so; it was the longest time they’d been apart since they were born.
University had been this thing looming in the distance ever since the summer after their GCSEs. All of a sudden Harry was moaning about the fact that he hadn’t managed to finish his Silver grade Duke of Edinburgh by the end of Year Eleven, and he needed to make sure he had the Gold Award for his UCAS personal statement. Eli started to subtly sound them all out about what universities they were thinking of applying to, not really ready to strike out on his own just yet. Claire and Cole swapped tips on where they’d been told were the best party university towns. Nora went on and on ad nauseum about which would be a better degree in terms of key transferable skills – Sociology or Media Studies? Or Communications? Or…?
Eventually even Bea had started to feel that frisson of excitement, of something big coming, of long-overdue change. Her form tutor supplied her with a pile of glossy prospectuses; her Maths teacher had gently encouraged her to consider a degree in Applied Mathematics. She’d been pouring over one of the brochures at the kitchen table one evening, staring with an almost guilty pleasure at the attainable entry requirements for Maths at one of her top target institutions.
Hannah had breezed in – Bea’s mother never simply entered or walked: she sauntered or marched or slinked. She’d plucked the university prospectus out of Bea’s unresisting grasp. And she’d laughed and laughed.
‘Where do you think you’re getting the money for this, then?’ she’d scorned.
Bea had scowled, automatically showing a hard face to her hard-faced mother. She’d never in a million years thought there’d be any funding forthcoming from her childish, self-obsessed sole parent. ‘I can get a student loan.’
‘You’d be better off getting a job and standing on your own two feet,’ Hannah had shot back. She’d made no secret of the fact that she was counting down the days until Bea finished school so that she could head off and seek the adventure that her unexpected teen-pregnancy had curtailed years earlier. She’d tossed the prospectus to the table top with derision. ‘All that money just so you can feel superior to everyone else? You’ll still end up working in a shop you know. You’ll just have debt round your neck for the rest of your life as well.’
‘Mum,’ Bea had whined, and hated herself for it. ‘Everyone’s going to uni-’
‘Wanting to stay sat on Nora Dervan’s bloody coat-tails for three more years isn’t a good reason to spend ten thousand pounds,’ Hannah had snapped. ‘It’s alright for her. Eileen’s still living off all that life insurance. Lucky bitch.’ Bea turned away, a curl of disgust licking in her belly at the thought of Eileen being ‘lucky’ that out of the blue one day her young husband had been killed in an accident at work, leaving her with four children under the age of ten.
‘I’m trying to help you,’ Hannah had insisted, after a moment’s reflection, dropping her hand heavily onto her daughter’s shoulder; Bea turned to the fleeting show of warmth like a flower to the sun. ‘To give you advice.’ She took back her hand and busied herself making tea for them both – her usual silent apology when she realised she’d gone too far. ‘Just think about it,’ she pleaded. Bea nodded slowly – that was reasonable, of course – but her fingers still teased the curling edges of the prospectus’ pages.
‘Besides,’ Hannah had continued airily, as she’d flicked the switch on the kettle. ‘I don’t know who you think you’re fooling, love. Remember who’s had to go to all your Parents’ Evenings for the last ten bloody years. You’re not exactly the brains of the operation!’
And so, Bea never went to university; she never even applied. The deadline came and went. The others all asked her tactfully why she’d chosen not to go into higher education and Bea had just parroted her mother, hating the taste of her words in her mouth: she didn’t see the point, she just wanted to get a job and get on, and plus – she was a bit thick, and would probably barely pass her A Levels, she’d confided, with a self-depreciating laugh – so it was all a moot point.
She’d gone with her friends to collect their exam results, of course, on a golden August morning. They’d all stood around, all mingled with their classmates of seven years – best friends and good friends and ex friends and almost strangers – clutching those strange little brown envelopes emblazoned with their names, enclosing their futures. There had been shrieks and there had been tears and a multitude of hugs. And then they’d all swooped on the pub closest to the school, where the lady behind the bar congratulated them, but made their drinks pretty weak all night – because they were still such kids, after all – but they got wasted all the same. Everyone talked excitedly about the bars that were on their future campus, the halls they hoped to be living in, the student societies they hoped to join. And that was it: the beginning of the end of life as they knew it – but not in the way Bea had once dared to hope.
Her results sheets, screwed up in the bottom of her handbag, the grades glanced at and gone: she’d have gotten in to that university by miles.
That October had gone slowly for Bea. She’d gotten a temp job – data entry for a telesales company, it didn’t set her world on fire, but it was decent money and experience – but all of her friends were just that little bit slower to reply to text messages, less frequently on MSN Messenger and available to chat. She signed in and out and in again, trying to catch their attentions. She felt Nora’s absence like a phantom limb. She had never had to be without her, so how would she ever have realised that she didn’t know how to do it?
Bea had bought a new dress to wear out at Nora’s university, and a daringly red lipstick to match it. She felt gratifyingly grown up. She fully expected to be introduced to a host of folks; Nora had always had no problems attracting people and everyone knows that you spend your first term at university making as many new friends as possible (and the rest of the three years trying to shake off the ones you wish you hadn’t made).
Nora had met her at the train station; she’d looked amazing: she’d somehow suddenly learned how to even out her eye make-up better, and looked effortlessly cool in cropped tights in a statement purple colour under a button-fronted denim mini-skirt and an oversized mannish coat to ward off the late-autumn chill. Nora had nattered the entire way to her halls of residence as they stood together, swaying lightly, holding onto the rails of the tram, full of anecdotes and little jokes about all the people she’d met and all the things she’d learned about herself.
When they’d arrived, Nora had opened the door to her room and held the door open so that Bea could shuffle through with her bag.
Bea had thought that Nora looked terribly cool, but she had nothing on the girl that rose from where she’d been lounging on the narrow single bed, tugging her earphones out with one hand and unfolding slender legging-clad legs, smiling at Bea eagerly.
‘Welcome to Sheffield,’ she’d beamed, moving to take Bea’s weekend luggage from her and usher her into the room. Bea had been momentarily confused – had Nora stopped off at someone else’s room first? – but everything from the bedding to the pictures tacked to the wall above the desk were familiarly Nora’s.
‘I’ve heard so much about you,’ the girl had continued. ‘I’m Cleo.’ And Bea had wondered why she hadn’t heard a word about this Cleo, this girl who was quite clearly very good friends with her best friend already.
Cleo had tailed them all weekend, and the catching-up over drinks that Bea had envisaged ended up being the Nora-and-Cleo show, as the girls giggled through story after story, like some sort of comedy double act. Bea had boarded the London-bound train on Sunday evening feeling bruised and confused.
So in the end it was just bad timing; that was all. The week that followed Bea’s disappointing trip to Sheffield was the week that an entire generation of British university students discovered something called Facebook. Way back then you needed to have a university institution email address to even set up a profile, and so Bea was locked out of all the friending fun. Eli came home to visit his parents that weekend and he’d let her have a look at the site on his laptop, ostensibly to show her the pictures he’d taken that term so far, but Bea had honed in on Nora’s profile page.
Nora was with Cleo in the profile picture, in a club bathroom somewhere – Bea didn’t recognise it, it wasn’t one of the places she’d been taken the previous week. The two girls were of a height, and back then Cleo wore her hair as long as Nora did, the tight curls tumbling forever down her back. Their bodies were turned into one another’s, perfect bookends, an effortless mirroring of pointed toes and curved hips and black dresses. And – again, that timing at work – Nora’s most recent status: Cleo just brought me in a mug of tea and a sandwich while I tackle some coursework… thanks wifey… best friend ever :)
And Bea had swallowed back the surge of anxiety, put on her hard face and called Nora. After that conversation they didn’t speak again for over two months.
Bea’s gin and tonic is more than half gone and the conversation around the table miles away by the time she brings herself back from the noughties, blinks away the thoughtless eighteen year old Nora in her bright footless tights. Thirty year old Nora, in a navy Bardot-style sundress and round retro sunglasses, looked at her quizzically, second glass of wine in hand.
She regrets it now, of course. She’s an adult and she knows that Nora loves her, that Nora always loved her, and that eighteen year old Cleo was just trying to be friendly and welcoming, excited to meet her new friend’s best friend. And she knows that if she’d not made a massive awkward issue over it, and had made an effort to visit Nora at university more, she’d probably have made good friends with Cleo in her own right. But, as her godmother Eileen would say, if ‘ifs’ and ‘ands’ were pots and pans, there’d be no work for the tinker – or whatever the stupid phrase was.
‘My round,’ Cleo announced cheerily. ‘Same again?’ she asked Bea.
* * *
Ostensibly Sarah was sharing the bottle of wine with Nora. Nora poured the last of the dregs of the bottle into Sarah’s glass, filling it back to the top; Sarah had only been nursing her first drink really, so Nora had to have had the other three glasses-worth, and was looking accordingly merry. Sarah didn’t begrudge her – it made it less obvious that she herself wasn’t really drinking, plus it was nice to see Nora relax after being so stressy towards the end of the afternoon.
Eileen – always suspicious of food she hadn’t prepared herself, as a rule – had picked at her plate of Hunter’s Chicken, apparently oblivious to the way her presence was somewhat censoring the conversation around the table. Sarah had assumed Eileen would be heading back to the B&B when she’d finished her dinner, but Nora’s mother didn’t show any signs of moving any time soon. All attempts to involve her in the chatter had met with resistance, and even her beloved godchild Bea couldn’t raise a smile from her. She sure had a stick up her arse about this wedding, and she wasn’t afraid to show it.
Sarah’s own mother had been thrown yet supportive when Sarah announced she was getting married. She couldn’t blame her – at that point the woman had never even met Cole. They’d been dating for less than six months, and they were usually far too busy at the weekends to trek back to the far coast of Wales. Two years earlier her mother had hugged her goodbye, tearful, holding her longer than was necessary, full of regurgitated paranoid advice about a life in London: don’t get on a night bus alone; always double check the sell by dates on milk from corner shops; make sure the taxi you’re getting into is a licensed black cab. Unfortunately, her mother hadn’t known to warn her about her then-boyfriend, the then-love of her life – specifically about his proclivities towards women other than Sarah.
Sarah had always been a serial monogamist: high school boyfriend followed by university boyfriend, followed by the man she’d tailed to London, the man she’d thought she was going to marry. She’d never seen Cole coming, nor the surprisingly fierce, grown-up love she’d fallen straight into. Sarah sighed; Cole wasn’t perfect, but being away from it all was helping to put things in perspective. She mustn’t let her baby-craziness cloud her marriage. Cole Norris was the best thing that had ever happened to her. Sarah reached for her phone in response to the sudden need to be in contact with her husband, even if it was just via a quick text.
Nora returned from a trip to the bathroom with a new bottle of wine and fresh glasses, glancing at her mother as if daring her to pass comment. And when Sarah slightly shook her head, Nora said nothing – she just sloshed wine into her own empty glass.