‘I’m okay.’ She looks at me and I can see that she understands my intention. That, like me, she doesn’t want to waste this moment with small talk.
‘Honestly, I’m scared. I don’t want it. I know I have to, I know not doing so would be beyond stupid. But the thought of walking into that hospital, actively putting one foot in front of another so I can lie there and have a surgeon take such a big part of me away… I’m terrified and don’t want it.’
I put my hand over hers before I speak. ‘Look, I know you have a lifetime’s worth of friends, and you have Dave and Rory, but if you want to rant at someone, say all the nonsensical stuff you’re scared to confide in people who know you really well, I’m here. I listen, I don’t judge and I won’t ever tell a soul. Call me the minute you want or need a rant or a sob or just a whisper, and at any time, day or night. Honestly, I keep the strangest hours so you won’t be disturbing me. Call me.’
‘You’re a love and you’re right, I’m very blessed with the people around me—’
‘Like attracts like,’ I say quickly
She smiles. ‘But an ear outside my social circle, that would be nice. I have the Macmillan nurse too and they are wonderful but there’s something about you, Belle. I may well take you up on that. In the meantime, I am so grateful that you are in my son’s life.’
‘Ahh,’ I say and then am unsure of what to say next. I don’t know if I am? Your son seems to have booted me out of his life. Luckily the need to fill the gap is relieved as Dave comes back to the table, a tray of drinks precariously balanced in his huge hands.
‘Ooh, would you look at that! There he is now. Rory! Rory!’ Alison screeches with excitement and my forehead crinkles as intensely as a Klingon’s. I’m too scared to raise my eyes from the table and all the doubts I have about coming along tonight resurface. However, there is no escaping. I slowly – very slowly – raise my eyes up towards the door and as I do so I see Rory standing there, staring right at me, and as he looks at me the expression on his face freezes my heart.
Shit! He’s going to think I’m a right weirdo and he’d be right. Whilst I may feel very comfortable sat here with his family, it definitely looks a bit stalkery. I should never have come.
I look under the table for an escape and then picture myself crawling across the flocked carpet on my hands and knees like all heroines in all ;movies ever. Although without the rom and on my part not really feeling the com. Plus we all know how that move would pan out, I’ll end up looking completely bonkers.
What am I going to do? Shit, shit, shit!
I have no option but to stay put. I raise my eyes again to meet his. A small seed in me – okay, a giant avocado stone of a seed – hopes that when I see his face this time it will be flooded with the pleasure it has been all month. That I’ll see the obvious joy at being around me weave through his mouth, his green eyes, that look that is so, so addictive, that it seduces me into thinking of future possibilities. Hope is fluttering all the time whilst my inner voice is saying to me in a firm, dismissive and slightly patronising tone: if he’s not answering your calls or returning your messages it’s because he doesn’t want to. None of these ‘he’s lost his phone’, ‘it’s out of charge’ excuses are valid. People don’t answer because they don’t want to. There isn’t going to be any joy in that face to see you sat with his mum and step-dad.
I look and see horror is flooding his face like armies on a dawn-flushed plain. My heart freezes even further as the ice of his alarm slowly fills my veins, cracking them one at a time as all hope seeps out of me.
‘Rory’s here,’ Eve trills as she darts back to the table, unaware of what is unfolding, the subtext. Janet is trying to pull the quizmaster in the corner. Alison and Dave both look from Rory to me and back to him again, recognising that there is something going on that they don’t know about. That I am a cuckoo in the nest.
Rory gives Alison a sad little half smile and then wordlessly turns and leaves.
My face is burning and I am filled with mortification, with shame. My selfish desire to take part in this quiz, experience a normal family Christmas activity, to try and force Rory into talking to me, the embarrassment of all of this floods through me. I feel as if I have betrayed Alison’s trust and I make a lunge for my coat, hat and scarf. I need to get out of here. It is no longer important how many bloody stops Santa makes in a second; the heat from the fire combines with my humiliation and something is stuck in my throat, I am getting hotter and hotter and hotter and feel like a volcano trying to force the lava back down, knowing its spill and the torrent of destruction it will unleash are inevitable.
I wind my way around the table.
‘Belle. What’s going on?’ Alison asks. I shrug my shoulders because right now I cannot make words come. If I open my mouth and make a sound I am scared of what will rush out.
I push my way through the still crowded bar, through the door, and the cold of December blasts my face. I don’t dare cry; each tear will freeze as an icicle and I may be stuck this way for ever. I cannot be this way for ever. I am a mess.
I see Rory walking down the hill towards the corner of Picton Street. Once he turns onto Stokes Croft I will lose him; the swirls of people that populate this area will be out in full force tonight. I can hear them even from here.
‘Rory.’ I force my mouth open, to call him, to stop him. For all of his new-found dislike of me I need to hear him, I want him tell me why he cannot face me anymore. What has caused this shift from friends to enemies. This could be my last chance. No sound comes. I try again and this time it bellows out of me like wind filling sails, like Blanche inA Streetcar Named Desire.
‘Rory!’ I watch as he pauses. He stands still for a minute and I take advantage of his lack of movement, running helter-skelter down the hill, praying that I don’t hit an icy patch, that my ankle doesn’t turn, that I catch him before he begins his walk away again.
‘Rory!’ I shout a second time, to keep him there. This time he turns and under a streetlamp I see his face lit up – drawn, sad.Wait for me,wait for meruns through my head; I’m telepathically willing him not to turn and walk away again. I race towards him, my feet slowing to a running stop as I approach the lamppost.
‘Rory!’ My breathing is heavy now and I bend slightly to catch my breath before looking up at his stony face. ‘I can explain.’
‘There’s no need. Go back in, win that quiz for Mum.’ His tone is dulled, a robot just before the batteries run out. He smiles a little wan smile and suddenly instead of wanting to make everything right I am filled with anger. How dare he? He doesn’t answer my messages, he walks out, away from his family when he sees them – presumably to avoid me – and now his sad little smile is fully infused with a pity-me martyr tone. Nah, bollocks to that.
I know this glorious man in front of me has his issues, I know that something has occurred to turn him from Technicolor to washed-out sepia and I strongly suspect that somehow he has mixed me up in his misery and now he needs to escape. I get that. I understand a need to escape. I spent most of my late teens embracing that. But understanding he is grieving, that he has things he needs to process, doesn’t mean he gets a get-out-of-jail-free card. It doesn’t mean that he can’t be held accountable for his actions here and now. His mum has had to go without having him around for years and now he’s in the country, what? He can’t sit in a pub with her and her friends, make her really happy for an evening, because ofwhat?Because he is having some kind of tantrum, some kind of crisis about me being present. So, stand like an adult and ask me to leave, don’t silently walk out and leave your mum there confused and abandoned again.
And actually, what about me? We’ve been good friends now for a month, a sped-up whirlwind of a friendship that may not see December out, fair enough, but that doesn’t give him the right to go from being my closest confidante to someone who won’t pick up the phone. Nah, nah. I’m not having it. I deserve a little bit more respect than that and I’m going to bloody take it, not thinly smile and accept that being treated like bullshit is all I deserve.
‘Do you know what, you can stop that. Stop that right now.Yougo back and win that quiz for your mum and then you can come find me and talk to me, tell me why you’ve suddenly turned into someone whose behaviour lacks any kind of merit. Who thinks it’s okay to ghost his mate, not give a shit about how it makes her feel.’ I am standing tall now, one hand on my hip, the other waving about with the ferocity of an Italian mama when her boys have let her down.
‘Look, I get that you and my mum get on and I’m happy about that. But I’m a grown man, I know what I’m doing. I don’t need you to tell me what to do right now,’ he snaps back. I raise an eyebrow.
‘Yeah, you think? I beg to differ. Nah. Not beg, I do differ. I think that’s exactly what you need. Your mum wants you in there next to her. You’ve flown halfway across the world to spend time with her and what now, cos I’ve done something to piss you off, upset you somehow, you’re going to let her down? I know you’re more of a man than that. I know you are.’
