Lessons in Laughing Out Loud (36 page)

“Thank you.” Willow bowed her head.

“And, um, are you okay?” Willow was about to reply when she realized that Victoria was more ticking off items from a list than actually inquiring after her welfare. “Sorry for your loss, anything I can do let me know, take all the time you need . . . I don’t mean that last bit. You have a week.”

Chloe and Holly had been waiting for her when she arrived back at the flat, sitting side by side on the sofa watching some reality show that Chloe was addicted to.

“Cow! Why would you marry her?” Holly was exclaiming as Willow let herself in with the spare key she kept hidden in the picture rail landing. “She looks like a fucking outsize meringue.”

“Nice mouth,” Willow said.

“Oh, good.” Holly got up and came and kissed her. “What happened?”

“You know what happened,” Willow said. “I’ve decided that I’ve got to go home. I’ve got to see Mum, I’ve got to face her. I can’t go on like this, Holly, I wreck everything I touch. I’m stuck in this fat, stupid body never being me. I don’t even really know who I am and I don’t want to always be this way. I want to be free of it, once and for all. I want a chance to laugh.”

“Er . . . who are you now, then?” Chloe asked her peering over the back of the sofa.

“Not the sort of person who stays married,” Willow said. “Or who is always there no matter what for the people she loves. I’m the sort of person who hides away, a half person who wishes for what she can’t have and then runs away from it when it is given to her. I’m the sort of person that almost dragged poor sweet James into bed against his will and then blamed him for knowing that that was really the last thing I wanted.”

“Oh, bloody hell, aren’t you too old for sex yet?” Chloe was disgusted.

“Oh, Will.” Holly was not surprised. “The walk didn’t go exactly as planned then.”

“No, it went better. He sees me the way I want to be. I liked being with him, he’s interesting and sweet and not all bluster and ego. I wasn’t second-guessing myself, or trying to be thinner or funnier. Considering he pretty much humiliated me in front of a room of strangers I really, really like him. It’s that he sees me so clearly and that scares me off. If he can see the mess I’m in and still be interested . . . I mean, why would any normal person want that?”

“Maybe a normal person isn’t what you need,” Holly said. “After all, all any of us ever want is to be understood, right? Does it matter if the person who understands you happens to be a slightly eccentric ex-goth accountant-cum-comedian? And maybe he realizes that you just might be the only person who could understand him back.”

“I expect I’ve probably put him off now,” Willow said thoughtfully. “Which is a shame because I do like him.”

“Really?” Chloe looked disappointed. “More than Dad?”

“I love your dad, Chloe,” Willow said sadly. “And I think he cares about me too. But I’d be lying to you if I said that there was a chance that we’d ever get back together.” Chloe was silent for a second.

“Well, good,” she said. “That would be a nightmare.”

Holly put the kettle on while Willow went and sat next to Chloe, winding an arm around her neck and kissing her on the forehead. “You and me, however. We can definitely get back together. For good.”

“Weirdo,” Chloe retorted, but she was smiling.

“So how did you go from being yourself with James to attempting to gang him into sex?” Holly asked. Her eyes met Willow’s across Chloe’s head.

“I don’t know,” Willow said. She didn’t want to say out loud
that this was often how it had been with her. Through her late teens and raucous twenties she had been the party girl, the girl who was just looking for a good time. Boys had loved her for that, and she had embraced the persona right up until the moment she’d met Sam. And after the divorce, her encounters had been less outwardly ebullient, more discreet and impersonal, never crossing from that physical part of her life into the rest of it. But always it had been about sex, because sex was the only way Willow really knew how to communicate with a man. There had been so much that she wanted to say to James. She’d wanted to flirt with him, tell him stories and make him laugh. But when she thought about it, it seemed impossible, so she went to her default setting instead. Sex was a language she understood.

“Poor James, he very sweetly said he thought more of me than that and I stormed out.”

“Gay!” Chloe exclaimed.

Holly handed her a cup of tea, squeezing into the last remaining space on the sofa.

“So tomorrow we’re going on a road trip, just like we used to. Do you remember? As soon as we got our licenses, we’d wait till Mum wasn’t looking, then we’d get Ian’s shitty old Rover out of the garage and drive and drive.”

Willow smiled, remembering their reckless high-speed journeys to anywhere that wasn’t Christchurch, Holly a little less brave than she was but never willing to let her sister go it alone. Sometimes they’d dodge school and drive along the coast to Bournemouth first thing in the morning, spend the day frittering away the cash they made from their Saturday jobs in the amusement arcades and the evening trying to get served in various pubs. Once they’d been so successful, they were too drunk to drive home and slept the night on the beach. Their mother had screamed at them for a solid hour when
they arrived back the next day, and Willow remembered the relief of realizing that she didn’t have to care anymore. What could her mother do to her now? Now that Willow didn’t care what Mummy thought of her. From that point on, it had become her mission to wind up her mother as much as she could. Looking back, Willow regretted those last few months at home—not because of the bitter rift that grew between her and her mother, but because of Holly’s attempts to overcompensate by becoming a better daughter in direct correlation with Willow’s disintegrating behavior. And also because if there had ever been a chance that Imogene Briars would have seen her daughter as the girl she had once loved again, it had died then, before Willow had even turned eighteen.

“We’ll be like Thelma and Louise,” Holly said. “Only without the shooting and driving off a cliff part, plus I’ve got to pick the girls up at three fifteen.”

“Am I coming then?” Chloe asked bluntly. “Only I don’t remember the pregnant chick in
Thelma and Louise.
”

“Of course you are,” Willow said. “A break by the sea, a stay in Holly’s house, it’s just what you need. Some space to think. I haven’t asked Sam, but I don’t suppose he’ll mind.”

“He might want to come too,” Chloe said. “Last night he said he missed me.”

“Well, he could come down for a few days. I’ll have run out of bedrooms, but the Captain’s Club is lovely,” Holly said brightly. Willow loved her for her optimism, loved her for putting on a brave enough face for both of them. Only Holly and Willow knew what this trip was really about. And Willow wanted to keep it that way.

“Sandy beach or stony beach?” Chloe asked.

“You can catch a ferry from Mudeford to the nicest, sweetest sandy beach in the world ever, complete with candy-striped beach huts,” Holly told her. “When we were little our
mum used to take us there after school, sometimes it would be just the three of us on this tiny little beach, endless blue sky, warm yellow sand. It was perfect, wasn’t it, Will?”

Willow nodded. “It was.”

“You will, of course, freeze to death if you go out there in this weather, but it is lovely.”

“Okay then, I’ll come,” Chloe said as if her answer would have been any different for a stony beach.

Sam arrived on the doorstep just as Willow got out of the shower. Assuming it must be the postman with a package, she opened the door a crack to find him on the other side, and wished she was wearing more than a large towel when she let him in.

“Are you okay?” he asked her.

“I’m fine,” she said. “I just needed a bit of space from . . . my past, to get some perspective.”

“And did you?”

Willow stood in her bare feet, on the carpet, wrapped in a towel, the chill of the morning radiating off Sam making her shudder. “No, but what I did realize is that I can’t get away from . . . the things that happened. I need to face up to it, Sam. I need to conquer it, I suppose.”

Sam nodded, silently.

“What can I do?” he asked.

“You have enough on your plate,” Willow said.

Sam shook his head. “I blamed you for what happened to us. But it wasn’t your fault, it was mine. I should have been helping you do this years ago. You trusted me with the truth and I threw that back in your face . . . no wonder you turned to someone else.” He shuddered visibly. “I have a lot on my plate, but you are part of it. So please tell me there is something I can do. Because if there is, then I think helping you will really help me.”

Willow nodded, steeling herself for what was to come.

“I want to go to Christchurch, to try and talk to Mum,” Willow said.

“Are you sure?” Sam asked her. “Are you ready?”

“I don’t suppose that I will ever be ready, but what else can I do? It seems like the right place to start. I’d like to take Chloe. I know I shouldn’t rely on her and I promise not to involve her, but having her near inspires me. It makes me brave. Besides, Holly’s house is such a lovely place, it will be good for her too, I think. A break from everything here, a place to think and perhaps clear her head.”

Sam hesitated. “I need some time too, some time to get closer to Chloe. I’ll take a few days off; that way Chloe and I get time together and you get time to talk things over with your mum. And if you need me, I’ll be close.”

Willow nodded.

“And then?” Sam asked her.

“And then?”

“What if going home, seeing your mum, talking about it doesn’t help? What then?” Sam asked her. Willow closed her eyes for a moment.

“I have no idea.”

“Well, whatever it is, let me be here for you, Willow. Please.” Sam took a step closer to her. “It’s pretty shoddy that it took my daughter getting pregnant and running away to bring us back together. I wasn’t prepared for how I’d feel when I saw you, for how much I missed you and regretted . . . how I handled things. It took a lot for me to let myself fall in love again after Charlotte died. And when I found you with . . .” He swallowed. “I’m not proud of myself, Willow. When I think about how I pushed you away, at exactly the moment I should have been protecting you. You were lost and trying your best with a husband who didn’t talk about anything that mattered. I shut
myself off, I let you drift and that was wrong. So let me be here for you now. Let me get back some of the self-respect I once had and be a friend to you at least.”

“Sam,” Willow breathed, “don’t say that.”

“It’s true.” He shrugged. “It’s how I feel. I want to be your friend . . . for me it’s, well, it’s a matter of honor.”

Towel or no towel, Willow put her arms around her former husband and hugged him. “On one condition,” she said. “That you let me be a friend to you too.”

Willow left the office with Lucy in situ behind the reception desk, along with a very efficient temp named Marlene whom Willow regularly employed, as she used to be a psychiatric nurse and was never surprised by anything. Besides, anyone who could authoritatively diagnose Victoria as a narcissistic sociopath was okay by her, even if she did pop a Ritalin or two along with her morning tea.

Feeling purposeful and as focused as she was, it came as something of a shock when she walked right into James on Golden Square, treading heavily on his poorly shod toes and sending him staggering back a step or two, ricocheting off a lamppost.

“Oh!” Willow exclaimed, backing away from him and into another pedestrian, who swore at both of them. “James?”

“Sorry, sorry,” James apologized through his pain. “I know what it looks like and it’s true, I am stalking you.”

“You’re stalking me?” Willow blinked, surprised to find herself pleased that he was still talking to her at all.

“Just a bit.” James grinned. “I felt so bad about what happened, I had to try and see you. I thought about not hanging around outside your office and waiting for you to come out so that I could pretend to bump into you but, well, I just didn’t want last night to be the last I ever saw of you,” James explained.

“You didn’t think about going down the e-mail or phone call route?” Willow couldn’t resist teasing him.

“I didn’t want to give you the option of screening me out. When you think about it, a bit of light stalking is quite romantic. Look, obviously I should have had casual sex with you. I mean, how rude of me not to, I’m really sorry,” James said. “Of course, you don’t need rescuing and absolutely you have your whole life under control. That much is clear and—”

“Which part of naked sarcasm is romantic?” Willow asked.

“I don’t know,” James said, all traces of flippancy gone. “I don’t know what to do, or what to say or how to act, I just know I don’t want you to completely shut the door on me. Not yet.”

Willow caught her breath as she looked at him. There was something about him, something in his eyes, that made her want to go to him. But she couldn’t; he was too good, too decent to get embroiled in the mess that was her life.