Page 12 of Lie For Me

‘Fine,’ Lucy sighed and gave up on her breakfast, pushing her plate away.

The coffee machine hissed loudly, and the bell rang on the door as more people crowded into the busy café, asking harried staff how long the wait would be and checking their watches.

Jack started re-examining the menu as if he didn’t know it by heart.

‘I don’t know why you’re looking at that,’ she grumbled. ‘We both know you’re going to order another portion of hash browns, like every Saturday. Even the waitress knows it.’

Jack pulled a face at her and strained to catch the attention of their waitress.

Lucy rubbed her temples and mentally slumped into the notion of going to the wedding alone. She shuddered as she thought of calling Ollie and explaining that she was very sorry, but actually, there wouldn’t be a plus one after all. Things had changed, she’d say, and she’d be coming on her own.

‘Oh no!’ Ollie would say, with genuine concern for her.

‘It’s all fine,’ she’d reply with her best cheery voice on. ‘No problem, I’m looking forward to seeing you!’

And that part of things would be okay.

And then, ten minutes later, her mother would call. Valerie Carmell would make no bones about letting her know what a problem this was and how it upset all the seating plans. She’d tell Lucy in tart tones that she would now need to be seated at some distant back table near the toilets, behind a yucca plant, and with one foot sticking out of the marquee so as not to lead to odd numbers and unbalanced tables. Lucy would practically be able to chew on the disapproval coming down the phone line.

Then, about ten minutes after Lucy extricated herself from that call—possibly by pressing her doorbell so her mother heard the chime and was forced to give way to imaginary visitors—her sister, Heather, would call.

Heather would have just heard from her mother that Lucy had done this terrible thing and would have bent Heather’s ear about it. Now Heather was calling to take her turn to berate Lucy for being such a pain. She would revel in being the perfect child her mother turned to for support whenever anything went wrong—which, in their mother’s strictly regulated world, was often. Lucy would sit on the phone and vacillate back and forth between biting her own tongue so as not to tell her sister to please, please just get lost, and wondering how to fake her own death. Or maybe just fully embrace her role as the odd one out in the family and attend the wedding dressed in black, swigging gin from a hip flask and smoking herbal cigarettes in a long black and gold cigarette holder.

In the end, she’d do none of these things. She and Heather would bicker but, having only recently started speaking after a painful falling out nearly two years earlier, both would leave much unsaid.

The call would dwindle to them both saying things like, ‘Well then….’ and, ‘Right, well….’ in starched tones, with long awkward pauses in between. And then they’d do the right thing and simply hang up and go to bed cross and irritated. Lucy would spend the next week thinking of all the things she should have said and being inspired, three days after the call, with wonderful comebacks to Heather’s remarks. She would promise herself that next time, next time, she would stand up for herself.

Although Lucy and Heather had started speaking again in recent months—coaxed by a pleading Ollie who wanted happy sisters at his wedding—it was a tentative truce. This would be the first time they had seen each other since the fight.

Lucy shuddered at the thought of the looming seventy-two hours of inescapable family time, and all that would be found wanting in her life. She glanced at Jack, who was draining the last of the coffee from the pot, and decided that if she needed to prostrate herself on the floor of the café in front of the Saturday morning regulars in order to get Jack to agree, that would still be better than dealing with her family alone.

She sighed, and absent-mindedly added more milk to her tepid coffee. Jack glanced up from his newly delivered hash browns.

‘Didn’t any of those dates you went on lead to anything? Nothing promising?’

‘Tuh, no,’ Lucy said, tearing off a corner of jammy toast. ‘There was that gym-crazed beefcake I told you about, who was more interested in his protein intake at dinner than me, and called me Louise all night—no thanks. There was that very timid guy who was renovating a barn to live in, which sounds great, except all his stories were about rising damp and the trouble with local planning regulations.’ She folded the jam-soaked toast into her mouth. ‘And then Trevor, who gave me unsolicited financial advice all night and explained the differences between assets and liabilities over dessert. I wasn’t sure if he wanted me as a date or a client.’ She sighed and licked a blob of jam off her finger. ‘I just want to meet someone I can grow old with.’

‘Doesn’t everyone want that?’ Jack said.

‘I’m even considering downgrading from fall in love with to happily tolerate, so long as they have an active social life that means they are often out of the house. Someone to measure out my daily meds for me when I get old.’ Lucy continued, scraping butter onto more toast. ‘Help me stagger to the loo, empty my catheter, roll me over so I don’t get bed sores—’

‘I think you’re mistaking husband for nurse.’

Lucy shook her head vehemently, chewing.

‘Nope, that’s why they make you take vows—in sickness and in health, until death do us part. It’s to make sure you look after each other. Come what may,’ Lucy said come what may in a voice of deep foreboding.

‘Oh, cheer up Lucy,’ Jack said. ‘You might die before it comes to that.’ He grinned at her. ‘Honestly, with your sunny personality, I don’t know why you aren’t fighting them off with a stick.’

‘Maybe I’m just really good with a stick,’ Lucy said darkly.

She threw down the last of the toast.

‘Okay, what will it take, Jack?’

She could hear the note of desperation in her voice and made no attempt to hide it.

‘This is the first time I’ll see Heather since the fight. Seventy-two hours with my oh-so-perfect sister while she and my mother let me know exactly what’s wrong with my life choices.’

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