‘We’re married, now,’ Liza said defensively. ‘I tell him everything.’
‘Liza was only trying to help,’ interrupted James. ‘I told Stephen because he’s a decent guy and he’s been around the block, you know, could give you what you want.’
He slapped Stephen on the back.
‘What I want? Meaningless sex to get rid of my embarrassing virginity with a man who has a girlfriend? How could you?’
‘Listen, Ginge,’ said Stephen, wading in. ‘We would have had fun, babes, we could still have some fun – don’t be so heavy.’
It was the wrong word to use.
Ginger stared at him.
Heavy.
Sothe wrong word: a fat, heavy, pitiful virgin on her thirtieth birthday who thought she’d finally found somebody special.
Instead she was part of some cruel fix-up where everyone would laugh about her afterwards.
Satisfied that Ginger had at last had a man, Liza could happily unfriend her and the twenty-six years of knowing each other would cease to exist.
How had she ever thought Liza was her friend?
Her brothers, Mick and Declan, hated Liza, always had.
Great-Aunt Grace, her father’s aunt, and her only female relative, had agreed.
‘A little madam – take care of yourself around her,’ she’d warned. Grace was wise. Utterly eccentric, but wise.
They were all devastatingly correct and it had taken this for her to see it: this public humiliation.
Ginger swivelled and walked towards the corridor where the back stairs lay.
Nobody called after her, nobody said ‘please come back’.
Liza, who could have hurried after her in the high but comfortable shoes Ginger had helped her choose, did none of those things.
They let Ginger go alone and she kept walking, ramrod straight, not once looking back.
At the small staircase, she went up to her floor, sweating as she hurried.
Finally, she was in her hotel bedroom – had it really only been a few hours before that she’d been here getting ready, so happy for her friend? Why hadn’t she come up here to take off her damn tights?
Then she wouldn’t have heard those horrible words.
But she’d had to hear them, Ginger thought sadly.
Fate had wanted her to.The truth shall set you free, she thought, remembering her Gloria Steinem from college, but wow, it was utterly devastating. She would need a lot more time for it to merely piss her off.
She began to laugh, and then the laugh turned to tears as she thought that, really, there couldn’t be anyone having as bad a birthday in the whole city as her. And then she closed her eyes, and let the tears fall.
I wish that next year, everything in my life could be totally different.
PART TWO
One month earlier
Callie
