had been unusually quiet – said barely a word, in fact, and spent the entire night at the jukebox putting Green Day on a loop (he and Livs were bonded in their mutual love of Green Day), until he got shouted at to literally ‘fucking change the record!’ by some hard-nut local who Fraser – also steaming drunk – then decided to punch, resulting in two broken fingers and them all getting chucked out.
Through all of this, of course, Mia was four months pregnant with Billy, and sober. She’d tried to reason with them that perhaps that second round of sambucas was not the best idea, that Fraser had had enough to drink, that quite possibly, Liv wouldn’t have wanted him to take a swing at a bloke twice his size on her behalf, but they wouldn’t listen. Of course they wouldn’t listen, they were steaming and Mia had gone home feeling utterly deflated, sure that two broken fingers and a police caution was definitely not how her best friend would want her birthday to be marked.
Also, perhaps due to being pregnant, she felt blocked. She couldn’t let her grief run riot like the rest of them. Everything was too much – life event overload – and even though everyone else had piled back to Melody and Norm’s, she’d gone home to Eduardo (who was still with her at this point, preferring to wait until she was thirty-six weeks pregnant to tell her, actually, this whole baby thing wasn’t really going to work for him …) and lay in bed, staring into the dark.
But tonight was a whole year later, wasn’t it? Their grief was less raw; it would be more of a celebration, a celebration of her life! A chance to reminisce about the good times – so many good times – and a chance to get together. Then she located Melody and Norm at the end of the final tunnel, clearly already in the throes of a row, and her heart sank.
Melody turned dramatically when she saw Mia, who thought, if she were turning into a character from Coronation Street, then her good friend Melody Burgess was fast becoming one from Ally McBeal. All power dressing and courtroom drama.
‘Nobody’s here yet,’ she said, breathily, with what Mia couldn’t help but feel was a slightly staged flick of her hair. ‘Twenty past eight and not a peep out of anyone.’
‘Well, I’m here,’ said Mia, brightly.
‘Right, yes, I suppose so and er … Billy,’ said Melody, somewhat begrudgingly, clocking the buggy, as if Mia had a choice in this matter. Mia gritted her teeth.
Norm groaned. ‘I’ve told her to take a chill-pill,’ he said. ‘I’ve told her this is about Olivia, REMEMBER?’ He fired daggers at Melody, and Mia found herself thinking – not for the first time in the last year: what happened to my friends? Jolly old Norm and Melody? Inseparable. Bonded for years in their love of cider and singing appalling indie anthems on karaoke?
Melody folded her arms indignantly. ‘Well, I’m disgusted, frankly. I mean, Anna’s no surprise but Fraser? Liv was his girlfriend, remember?’
‘I think we do,’ said Mia, in a way that was supposed to be helpful and calm her down but didn’t.
‘So why the fuck isn’t he here then? No phone call, no text, nada!’
‘Um, do you mind putting your foot down, mate?’ Fraser was sitting in the back of a black cab travelling from Preston to Lancaster, jiggling his legs up and down, which he always did when he was nervous. Honestly, what was wrong with these provincial types? No sense of urgency. Liv was doing this, he thought. She knew all about his overactive conscience and she was having a laugh. He imagined her looking down at him now, sweating and toxic and wracked with guilt, and thinking, you muppet, Fraser Morgan. All this guilt for a fumble with a barmaid? Deep down of course, so deep down he couldn’t bring himself to admit it, Fraser Morgan knew this tardiness and stress was entirely of his own making. In fact, the last twenty-four hours were entirely of his own making.
He was supposed to have caught the four o’clock from Euston – which would have got him to Lancaster and the Merchants in plenty of time, but because he was far too nice and far too hungover to put up a fight, he’d somehow become embroiled in a Tarot reading from Karen, which overran (he wasn’t sure how long the average Tarot reading was, but felt sure an hour and a half was overrunning), missed the four o clock, so had to catch the five o’clock, and only realized when he was on the train that it didn’t go further than Preston.
He now felt wretched, having thrown up in the train toilets and fielded three texts from Karen – are you on the train yet? How’s the hangover? He’d finally broken when she’d told him what she was having for tea and switched off his phone.
Still, at least in the end he’d told her the truth; he’d been nothing but a gent. At least there was that.
‘Unfortunately,’ (he was now somewhat regretting the ‘unfortunately’ line. You give these people an inch and they take a mile) ‘I can’t hang out all day because I’m going to a reunion with my university mates – we do it every year.’
All true, nothing but the truth. But even that had backfired when Karen had propped herself up on her elbow, shaken her head slowly and given him that look – the look of love – and said, ‘Do you know what? That doesn’t surprise me one little bit. I can tell that Fraser Morgan is the sort of person who, once he is your friend, is a friend for life, do you know what I mean?’
Oh, Jesus Christ.
‘So this is Ollie. Ollie, these are my friends …’
Fraser practically skidded into the Merchants, locating his mates in the last arch, just as Anna was introducing some new … boyfriend/fuck-buddy/future husband – it was hard to know what to expect where Spanner was concerned.
‘Ollie,’ thought Fraser, standing in the doorway of the arch, they’re always called Ollie and I bet he works in the media and lives in Ladbroke Grove.
It took him another few seconds to register the reality of the situation. Spanner had brought some idiot in red skinny jeans – no doubt last night’s conquest, a bloke nobody knew from Adam – to Liv’s birthday reunion? He felt a sudden, overwhelming blackness of mood that crashed down on him like a tonne of rock involving anger on Liv’s behalf, fury at his friend’s audacity, mixed with a horrible, horrible wave of self-loathing – an ugly sense of his own double standards as the reality of what he’d done last night hit him again.
What Anna had done seemed suddenly outrageous, and yet, was what he’d done actually any better? And these were his friends, his best and oldest friends. They’d just know.
Nobody said hello to Ollie, who had the most unfortunate hairstyle Fraser had ever seen: dyed a reddish-pink and pulled forward around his face, like a giant crab-claw had him in a headlock.
‘Right, wicked … well, er, I’ll just go to the bar then?’ he said, eventually, to nobody in particular.
Anna stroked his arm repeatedly as if he was a cat. ‘Can I have a vodka and lime, please? Proper lime juice, not lime cordial?’ she added, lowering her lashes at him, and Ollie nodded, locking eyes for far longer than was natural. (Or necessary, or fucking appropriate, come to think of it, thought Fraser. Who did he think he was? Playing out his postcoital dance, here?) And went to the bar.
‘So you got here then?’
Fraser was still boring a hole in Ollie’s back when he realized, back inside the arch, that Melody was talking to him.
‘A call would have been appreciated, Fraser, we’ve been worried sick.’
