Elaine Bedell - About That Night

Elizabeth made some tea and forced herself to eat some dry toast. She was always astonished to find her kitchen empty of anything resembling butter or jam. She knew these things had to be purchased with forethought from a supermarket – she just never seemed to have the forethought. Jamie, when he’d lived with her, had been good at keeping up the supplies, religiously filling out the Tesco order online, taking care to seek out all the organic options, replacing Elizabeth’s Jammie Dodgers with nourishing seeds and nuts. At times like these, Elizabeth hated living alone. She didn’t want to be by herself, this morning of all mornings. She missed the lie-ins, the cuddles, the cups of tea in bed, the cleaning of teeth side by side, spitting in unison into the basin. She missed Jamie.

Jamie! The day that should’ve been her happiest – her wedding day – was a year ago, almost to the day. Another terrible May day.

When Elizabeth told her mum the date of her wedding six weeks beforehand, the corners of Maureen’s mouth had drooped and she’d murmured, ‘ Marry in May and rue the day .’ Elizabeth had been furious. But later she had to acknowledge that her mum, through some spooky umbilical instinct, seemed to know something then that Elizabeth barely knew herself.

The whole wedding had been a whirlwind, although she and Jamie had met in their first week at uni and had shared a flat for the last ten years. Elizabeth had assumed they’d just continue to live together and then – quite soon, she hoped – have a baby. Jamie had often described marriage to her as an outmoded, patriarchal, state-imposed institution and as a full-time feminist, Elizabeth felt that she ought not to feel excited about the idea of a day when everyone would treat her like a fairy-tale princess. (Although she and Lola did quite often find themselves poring over wedding dresses in Hello! , and she had really quite well-developed ideas about what she would wear, in the very unlikely event that the occasion might arise.)

So the proposal, when it came, caught her completely off balance. She’d been up to her eyes producing the latest series of Saturday Bonkers and was out of the door early in the morning and always home late. She and Jamie were hardly ever in the flat at the same time. He’d grown exasperated with her job, her hours, the Ricky Clough antics. He worked for a charity which educated women in Ethiopia about the spread of HIV and he quite often travelled abroad. He’d shown Elizabeth photos of the prostitutes lining the road to Djibouti, a long ribbon of tarmac known as HIV Drive, and she’d often wondered what those women in their brightly coloured kemis and embroidered shawls thought of her blond, earnest boyfriend, in his button-down denim shirt, squatting in the dust talking to them about condoms.

In an attempt to spend more time together, Elizabeth had suggested that they go to her nephew’s birthday party and stay the weekend in Manchester with her sister, Vic. Elizabeth adored her two small nephews and Vic in turn was fond of Jamie. Elizabeth had thought a family party might be healing, but in the end she and Jamie argued all the way up the M6 about whether or not they should sell the flat and buy a small house (Elizabeth was keen – she was secretly hoping they might soon have a need for a second bedroom – but Jamie dampened her hopes by arguing it was too acquisitive and bourgeois) and the tiff cast a cloud over the family reunion. Jamie was mostly sullen and distracted from the moment they arrived, and Elizabeth found herself overcompensating by being exceptionally lively and drinking too much. But during the birthday party on Saturday – just as she was acting out an elaborate scene from Toy Story with her nephews – Jamie suddenly seized her round the waist and murmured into her hair, ‘Hey Lizzie, you’re good at this. Let’s get married and have one of our own.’

Elizabeth looked up, puzzled by his change of mood, and in her best Buzz Lightyear voice said, ‘Excuse me, you are delaying my rendezvous with star command.’ But Jamie was looking at her very seriously. It wasn’t a joke. Vic paused in her pouring of lemonade and looked over at them anxiously.

‘Well?’ Jamie said more loudly.

Her nephew, Billy, who was Woody to her Buzz, took off his sheriff’s hat and threw it across the room, frustrated that the game had stopped. He looked up at Elizabeth with a chocolate-smeared mouth, eyes round and impatient. Jamie’s face paled. He looked suddenly young, very like the hopeful blue-eyed boy she’d met on a freezing anti-war march in her first term at York, when he’d offered her some soup from his flask and some socialist leaflets from his rucksack.

But marriage? Did she want to be married? To wear a ring that signalled I belong to someone else ? And they’d been so distant with each other recently! She glanced over at her sister, whose mouth formed a small questioning O. Billy tugged at her skirt and she looked down at his sweet face. But oh yes, oh God, she so wanted that ! She did want one of their own. She took Jamie’s hand. The hand she knew so well, every contour and lifeline, almost better than her own. How could she not accept that hand? Things would be better if they were husband and wife. She’d go home more. He’d be more communicative. They’d have a baby. Everything that felt wrong now would feel right once they were married.

‘Yes,’ she said, smiling at him. ‘Yes. Yes. YES.’

Elizabeth drained her mug of tea and wandered over to the mirror that hung over the fireplace. Her face was unnaturally pale, the fine dusting of freckles across the bridge of her nose more pronounced than usual, her lips colourless, her short brown hair standing on end where she’d run her fingers through it, again and again. Hollow eyes were framed by dark circles and looked back at her accusingly: Why didn’t you know ? You were meant to be in control. Why didn’t you spot how ill Ricky was? Was it just like it was with Jamie? You simply didn’t notice what was wrong?

Her phone rang and she hesitated, thinking it would be Hutch. It was her mum. Elizabeth imagined her in her Essex kitchen, pottering about in the inappropriate silk robe Elizabeth had bought her when on a shoot in Rome, more suited to a bordello than a bungalow in Frinton-on-Sea. It sat uneasily on her, as did a number of other things Elizabeth had bought on her travels: the sofa throw that she’d brought back from Colombia, or the Costa Rican mugs, or the Galapagos tortoise paperweight. None of it suited the home of a woman who had spent most of Elizabeth’s childhood holidays on the Costa del Sol searching high and low for Branston Pickle and Cheddar cheese. But that’s what parenting was like, Elizabeth imagined: you cherished unsuitable gifts just because your children had thought about you for the briefest of moments while shopping in a South American street market.

And you stood by them no matter what they’d done.

Thoughts of home were comforting and Elizabeth wished she was with her mum now, being made cups of strong sweet tea. Tea had got them through so much over the years.

‘Hello, dear. How are you? I wasn’t sure if you’d be up… Elizabeth, are you still not sleeping properly?’

‘Well…’ Elizabeth realised her mum wouldn’t have seen the news swirling on the internet. She kept the old android phone her daughters had bought her in a knitted sock in her bedroom drawer ‘for emergencies’.

‘Mum, Ricky Clough’s dead! He died last night.’

‘Oh no! Elizabeth! Really? How awful! How old was he?’

It was a relief finally to be able to talk about how terrible it had been, without having to put on a show of being capable and in charge. ‘Oh, Mum, it was so horrible! And do you know, I’m not sure how old he is… I went to his birthday party a few weeks ago and people said it was his fiftieth but I think he was a bit older.’