LITMIR.BIZ

       Chapter Six

      The day after my plaster-cast finally came off, Bel and Johnno got married. I’d never seen Bel looking quite so alive, as she stood smiling on the Registry steps on the Kings Road waiting to go in, clutching onto Johnno under a great scarlet umbrella like they’d never ever part, white velvet collar turned up high, setting off her blonde urchin cut and her beaming pixie face, a proper winter bride. And Johnno, oh God, he looked so proud, small and stocky but still towering over Bel’s birdlike form. Hannah stood tiny in sparkly white beside them, her patent shoes all shiny, holding her mother’s hand, beaming, the spit (thank the Lord) of Bel. I was overjoyed that Bel had finally recovered from the utter disaster of Hannah’s father: the hippy painter who had promised Bel the world and then vanished to Morocco with his other pregnant lover the week before Hannah was born. The father who’d never bothered to meet his adorable daughter.

      I stood on the pavement, filming them with my little video camera – Bel’s parents and her brothers all cheering with joy. The way Bel looked at Johnno now was enough to give you hope.

      The Christmas decorations were already up, although it was only November. The lampposts fizzed with electric blue stars and Hannah pointed a tiny hand and sang ‘Twinkle, twinkle, little Mummy’, and everybody laughed until Hannah went beet-red with excitement and overbalanced doing the deep curtsies she’d learned in ballet. And for a moment, for one long moment, I felt happy, happier than I’d been in such a long time.

      I was just calling to Bel to describe how she felt on this auspicious day, in her last few moments before she become a Mrs for all time, when her face dropped visibly. Frowning, I lowered the camera. She was looking at something over my shoulder, and then she wrinkled her brow and Johnno looked in the same direction, then stooped and whispered in her ear. And then I felt them both gazing at me, and an icy claw crept down my back and I turned round quickly –

      And there he was. Just standing there, just like that, as if everything was fine. He had both hands shoved deep in the pockets of an extremely smart dark suit, a suit he’d never have worn when he was with me, and for a moment he looked guarded – but then he caught my startled eye and slowly smiled. I felt a pain, like someone had just got hold of my heart and was slowly pulling the bleeding flesh out through my chest, as I stared at him. And then, as if in slow motion, I saw him put one long hand out behind him, and I saw a leather-gloved hand slip into his, and he pulled the owner, the girl who wore it, forwards.

      A great gust of wind blew down the road. The trees leaned right over under the weight and the blue stars wobbled and Bel’s mother’s fussy pillbox hat went flying off; there was a big kerfuffle while Nigel ran to fetch it. My hair blew across my face and stuck to my lipsticked mouth, stuck fast, but I didn’t bother to remove it. I didn’t even care. How could he come here, here of all places, and, worst of all, bring this girl too?

      He was still smiling, his short brown hair sticking up on end and his yellow eyes glinting with something I couldn’t quite read. Malice?

      ‘Hello Alex,’ I said quietly.

      ‘Maggie.’ He was ever so polite, of course he was. Charm the birds out of the trees, my Alex could, when he wanted to. ‘I’d like you to meet Serena.’

      Serena was very thin and falsely blonde (how utterly predictable), and her expensive heels very high, though Alex still dwarfed both of us. She looked at me, looked me up and down, and then she smiled too, a slow smile, a smug smile, which spread across her chiselled face. I pulled my old red coat round me but still shivered in the wind. Graciously, the girl offered me her hand. Her gloves were so soft they felt like butter.

      I stared blankly at this new pair. If Alex didn’t stop grinning like that I’d punch him right on the already skewed bridge of his once-broken nose. I clenched my fists. And then they moved off, towards the happy couple, the four of them all kissing and shaking hands, and I was left just standing there, a satellite on the windy pavement of Kings Road. Alone, despite a thousand strangers rushing by.

      And all through Bel’s wedding in that little room, the room in muted tones that smelled of Bel’s red roses, I couldn’t concentrate, and when it was my time to read my bit out from The Prophet, the bit about ‘Love one another but make not a bond of love – Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls’, Bel’s mum had to nudge me to get up. And I tried not to let the strain show in my voice, or let my hands shake, and I stood very straight and tall – although my foot really hurt now and my heart truly ached – not looking at the row where Alex and Serena sat; and I tried to read the lines about love with sincerity, as if I hadn’t very nearly drowned in the bloody sea The Prophet was on about. As if I thought love could be a good thing, and was not likely to finish you off for all time.

      Alex did at least have the good grace not to crash the wedding breakfast. He knew he’d done enough. He and Serena disappeared into the swirl of Christmas shoppers, big hand in buttery one, waving. I could sense he was elated in his shambolic one-off elegance, while I felt utterly bereft. Somehow I got through lunch – ate a bit of the duck pate starter, picked at the salmon main, managed, somehow, to down lots of the very good wine. I thought of Bel and how sad she’d been, on her own with Hannah, and how she’d turned her life around. A little drunk after all the speeches, I hugged her tighter than I’d ever done before.

      ‘I’m so happy for you, darling,’ I said, and her pointy little face was so soft with joy that I almost wept.

      ‘I’m so happy too,’ she whispered. ‘I can’t believe it really. I keep pinching myself.’

      ‘It does happen, you know, Bel. Good people do get what they deserve, sometimes.’

      She squeezed my arm. ‘Yeah, well, your turn will come, I’m sure. I’m sure of it, my Maggie.’ She looked up at me, serious now. ‘I’m so sorry about Alex. He wasn’t invited, you know. I wouldn’t let Johnno, though he did want to.’

      ‘It’s okay, Bel. It’s hardly your fault that he turned up.’

      ‘Yeah, well, I wish he’d bloody stayed away. He knew it’d hurt you. God, after everything he –’

      ‘Don’t mention it, please,’ I said quickly. ‘It’s fine. I’ve got to get on with it sometime, haven’t I?’

      She squeezed my arm again. ‘Oh God, Mag, I’m going to miss you.’

      ‘Oh Bel, don’t start that now. Let’s think of nice things.’ My sniff was barely audible. ‘You’re not going quite yet.’

      ‘And it’s not forever.’

      ‘It’d better bloody not be.’

      ‘And you’d better be at the party, okay?’

      Hannah skipped up, her fairy wings iridescent in the candlelight. ‘Why are you crying, sillies?’ She observed me steadily. ‘You look like a panda, Auntie Maggie. Like what I saw in the zoo when Johnno took me. The fat one that was scratching her bottom.’ She slipped her hand in mine. ‘Don’t cry.’

      ‘I’m not. I’m laughing. I never cry.’

      ‘Why’s water coming out of your eyes then?’

      ‘Oh,

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