When I got back to my desk, I read the card. Everybody had signed it and scribbled daft messages—even Betty the cleaner, who’d written:
Me and my old man were happy for twenty years and then we met.
It was almost six, but I still needed to make some calls. There were several newspapers that hadn’t yet covered the Nasreen Karimi asylum story. I needed to beg-slash-guilt them into running pieces highlighting her situation. I was so glad that Josh and I had decided to delay our honeymoon. I couldn’t have walked away from this case now. I found myself thinking about the wedding and how I had a future to look forward to, a life to plan. Nasreen, thin and frail now because she could barely eat from all the worry, had nothing. On Sunday while I was getting married, she would be staring at the walls of her room in the detention center, knowing that at any minute she could be sent back to Iran and a possible death sentence.
Nobody was picking up at any of the newspapers, so I left voice-mail messages, which included all my phone numbers and e-mail.
I had just shut down my computer when my office phone rang. I assumed it was one of the newspapers calling back wanting more details on Nasreen.
“Tally Roth.”
“Tally, it’s Hugh.”
“I’m sorry—Hugh who?”
“The Hugh you used to go out with.” He was laughing. “The Hugh whose heart you broke.”
“Omigod. You Hugh. I didn’t recognize your voice. How are you?”
“I’m good. Look, I know we haven’t spoken or e-mailed in yonks and I don’t do Facebook, but I heard on the grapevine that you were getting married this weekend. I wasn’t sure if it was appropriate to call or if you’d want to hear from me, but I just had to pick up the phone and wish you all the best.”
“Thank you. That is so sweet. I really appreciate it. So, where are you?”
He said he was in Perth for another few weeks and then coming back to the UK for good. The rumor I’d heard was right. He had taken a job advising the government on third world poverty.
“I’m glad you found somebody to make you happy,” he said.
“I’m very lucky. Josh is a wonderful guy. So what about you? Is there anybody special?”
“There was for three or four years, but it kinda fizzled out . . . I wanted to start a family. She wasn’t ready.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s OK. I’m over it now . . . Hey, I was thinking the other day. Do you remember that terrible weekend we spent in Barcelona when it rained all the time and you ended up with food poisoning?”
“God yes. I’m not likely to forget that in a hurry.”
“And what about the first time I took you out for a drink and you asked for Scotch? I wanted to impress you with something decent so I asked the barman for two single malts that ended up costing fifty quid. Then I didn’t have enough money on my card and you had to pay. That was so embarrassing.”
I was laughing. “I still said yes when you asked me out on a second date.”
“You know,” he said, “I probably shouldn’t be saying this, seeing as you’re about to get married, but I often find myself thinking about us and what might have happened if you’d come to Australia.”
He was right. This wasn’t the time to be talking about how things might have been. “Who knows?” I said. “It’s all in the past now.”
“It was just bad timing, I guess.”
“I guess.”
The conversation trailed off into an awkward silence. Then:
“I’m glad it all worked out for you, Tally. I really am. Good luck for Sunday and maybe the three of us could meet up for a drink or dinner one night.”
“That would be great. I’ll look forward to it.”
“Bye, Tally.”
“Bye.”
It was kind of him to call, but hearing from somebody I’d been so in love with and going over old times—particularly two days before my wedding—was ever-so-slightly discombobulating.
Chapter 5
The evening before the wedding . . .
N
ana Ida held up one finger, then tugged her earlobe. “First word . . . sounds like . . . ,” we all chorused. She began tapping her head.
Everybody started shouting at once.
“Head.”
“Skull.”
“Brain box.”
“Duh. What sounds like
brain box
?”
Nana began playing with her hair.
“Hair,” we cried.
She gave an excited nod. Then she mimed stretching elastic, to indicate the word was longer than
hair
.
“OK,” Scarlett said. “The first word sounds like
hair
—something.”
“Hairdo, haircut, hairdresser . . . ,” Mum piped up.
Nana shook her head.
“I know,” I said. “Hair-y.”
“That’s it,” Nana said. Mum told her off for speaking.
“OK, let’s recap,” Scarlett said. “It’s a book and a film. Two words and the first word sounds like
hairy
.”
“
Scary Movie!
” Grace shouted.
“Since when was
Scary Movie
a book?” Scarlett came back.
But Grace wasn’t to be defeated. “Oooh, I know! I know!
Hairy Potter
.”
“Yes!” Nana cried.
Hairy Potter
. We all fell about, the way you do when you’ve downed several White Russians with Pink Lady chasers and the lamest joke seems hilarious.
By now we were on champagne. Nobody could believe the rate at which Nana Ida—who only ever had the occasional glass of Amontillado before dinner—was knocking them back. We couldn’t work out how she hadn’t fallen asleep hours ago. Who knew that she could hold her liquor like that?
Mum was mellow, but not so far gone that she couldn’t point out to Nana that none of the Harry Potter books or films had actually been called
Harry Potter
. “It has to be
Harry Potter and the
something . . . like
The Goblet of Fire.
”
“So bite me,” Nana said, hiccuping. We all corpsed.
It was Mum’s idea that the family should be together the night before the wedding. The rest of us agreed, so she booked us into the Park Royal, where the wedding reception was going to be held. She insisted on us having a suite, but the only one available was the penthouse suite.
“But that’s going to cost a fortune,” I said.
She shrugged. “Oh, who cares? You wouldn’t let me pay for the wedding. Come on, it’ll be fun.” She’d also arranged for Josh and me to stay in the suite on our wedding night. What we were going to do with three bedrooms, three en suite bathrooms and a living room, I had no idea. Josh, on the other hand, said that to get our money’s worth—or rather Mum’s money’s worth—we had to have sex in every room.
Our night at the Park Royal wasn’t even our wedding present. Mum had also given us money to put towards the building work on my flat. She was adamant that since she wasn’t being allowed to pay for the wedding, Dad’s life insurance money should be used to help us set up home.
“Omigod, this is so bling,” Mum said now, as we walked into the penthouse suite. “I’ve never seen so much marble and gold.” We took in the giant gold eagle on a plinth, the goldpainted Corinthian columns decorated with grape-munching cherubs.
“It looks like Snoop Dogg’s boudoir,” Grace said, laughing.
“I always wanted a porch with pillars,” Nana said. “I do think they say elegance.”
“No, Nana,” Scarlett said. “What they say is Ed Bundy just won the lottery.”
“Thank heavens the banqueting suite doesn’t look like this,” I said. “People would think they’d come to a Roman orgy.”
We put down our bags and laid our dresses—which were all under polythene—on the back of the giant sofa. Then we began exploring. The bathrooms contained more gold. This time it was fish taps that spewed water from their mouths. Each bathroom also had a wall-mounted flat-screen TV and car wash–style shower. The bedrooms were as big as my entire flat with beds that could sleep six. Each had a built-in massage system. In the vast living room, a wall of glass offered glorious views across London to the hills of distant Surrey.
It was early evening. We all got into our fluffy Park Royal dressing gowns and slippers. Mum got on the phone and had the first round of cocktails sent up. A couple of hours later we were starving, so we ordered room service dinner. Sprawled over the huge feather-backed sofas we ate hamburgers and profiteroles and watched a DVD of
Knocked Up
, which we’d found in the suite’s DVD library, if you please. I shuffled along the sofa, closer to Mum, and placed my hand on hers. “Thanks for spoiling me like this,” I said, squeezing her hand. “I’m aware that I’m a very lucky girl.”
“You’re more than welcome, hon,” she said, giving me a hug and a kiss. We went back to the film. A few moments later, she dug me in the ribs. “Don’t they make a cute couple?” She was watching Scarlett and Grace snuggled up on the sofa, feeding each other profiteroles.
I agreed that they did indeed make a cute couple, and they truly did, but it didn’t stop me wanting to ask Mum why she never said that about Josh and me. Didn’t we make a cute couple? But challenging her didn’t feel right. To have said anything would have appeared childish and needy and created unnecessary tension, which, on the night before my wedding, was the last thing either of us needed. It upset me, though, to think that deep down Mum still didn’t quite approve of my marrying Josh.
“And they are going to make wonderful parents,” she went on, turning the screw. “I just wish this friend of theirs would make up his mind about whether he wants to be a father. It’s not right to leave the two of them hanging like this.” I reminded her that it wasn’t Richie who was the problem, but his partner, Tom.
Josh called my cell halfway through the film. I asked Scarlett to put it on pause and went into the bedroom. “I just wanted to see how you were doing,” he said. I could barely hear him over the noise in the pub.
“I’m great. I know most people get prewedding nerves, but I just can’t wait until tomorrow. Marrying you feels like the most natural thing in the world. You OK?”
“Yeah, just hoping the guys haven’t got me a stripogram. Plus, I think that maybe the jitters have started to kick in a bit. I keep worrying about something going wrong at the last minute.”
“Hey, c’mon, it’s all going to be fine. We’ve planned this thing like a military operation.”
“You’re right,” he said. “I need to stop worrying. So . . . I guess I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Yep. See you tomorrow.”
“Love you.”
“Love you, too.”
It was midnight by the time we started playing charades. After about half an hour, nobody had the energy to carry on. What was more, the alcohol was beginning to make Nana maudlin.
“Of course, with my heart like it is, I might not live to see any more family weddings.”
“What?” Mum said. “Your heart is fine. After your last physical, I checked with your doctor.”
“Physical, schimisical,” she said waving a hand in front of her. “At my age you just go to be carbon dated. Anyway, what do doctors know? They tell you you’re OK and the next minute you’re dead.”
“Mum, you’re exhausted. We need to get you to bed.”
But Nana kept on about how she would soon be gone, laid to rest beside Grandpa Joe, God rest his soul. “Of course, I will be taking up residence in the best burial plot in the classiest cemetery in town. It overlooks the lake on Hampstead Heath, you know.”
“We know,” Mum said.
“My darling Joe—he was so good to me. Did I ever tell you how he came by that plot?”
“Only a few hundred times,” Mum said.
“Nana hasn’t told me,” Grace said.
My grandmother needed no more encouragement.
She explained how Grandpa Joe had bought their joint resting place in 1962, during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
The powers that be at the synagogue, who were always looking for ways to raise money, had decided to play into the congregation’s fears of imminent nuclear annihilation by offering “never to be repeated” twofer deals on burial plots in the Jewish cemetery that they part owned.
Almost nobody took advantage of the offer, on the grounds that if a bomb went up, there would be nobody left to bury them. Grandpa—cautious and conservative in every area of his life apart from business—took a gamble on America and Russia settling their differences. He ended up negotiating with all the local synagogues and buying the entire cemetery. He spent the next twenty years selling burial plots at a very decent profit.
“And that is how my darling Joe made our fortune,” Nana said.
Mum looked at Scarlett and me and rolled her eyes. “Yes, but you left out the part where he lost it.”
“You know we don’t talk about that.”
The tragic epilogue to this story was that Grandpa Joe lost nearly all his money in the early nineties, when he invested in what he was convinced was going to be the next big thing: self-heating overcoats.
“Come on,” Mum said to Nana. “Let’s get you to bed.” Mum took her hand. “Up you get, old woman.”
Nana laughed. “Less of the
old
, if you please. I’m not dying quite yet.” She raised herself off the sofa with an oomph.
Scarlett, Grace and I drained our champagne glasses and said our good nights. Grace reminded me about drinking plenty of water before going to sleep, so that I wouldn’t wake up with a hangover.
“Will do.”
She and my sister headed to their room, arms around each other. Scarlett’s head was resting on Grace’s shoulder and she was singing:
“Going to the chapel, and we’re gonna get married . . .”
“Come on, sweetie,” Grace said, planting a kiss on Scarlett’s cheek. “We need to get you to bed, too.”
Not only was I exhausted, but after drinking so much, I was at the stage where if I’d lain on the floor I would have needed to hang on. I went to the bathroom and drank two glasses of water. Then I climbed into bed. I imagined that in a few moments, I would be dead to the world, but even after a twenty-minute bed massage, I couldn’t sleep. I was thinking about Dad. I couldn’t remember when I stopped missing him, but at some stage in the last seventeen years, living without him became normal and I had stopped crying for him. Tonight, as I lay in bed, Dad’s absence seemed raw again. I wiped away the tears that had started to tumble down my cheeks. He wasn’t going to be with me on my wedding day, and I wanted him there so much. Mum had agreed to give me away, which I knew would be fine, but it was Dad’s arm I wanted.