The One Before The One. Katy Regan

mates? You could have just said.’

      ‘I know I could, it’s just …’

      ‘Sorry, you know Lexi, my sister, don’t you?’ I say, when I can see he’s struggling. ‘Lexi, you remember Martin?’

      ‘Oh yeah, I remember Martin.’ I shoot her a look – why the rude tone? Oh. I know why the rude tone. ‘We met a few times,’ she carries on. I feel the blood rise in my cheeks. ‘The last time when you were actually engaged to my sister.’

      Martin’s eyes dart to mine. Mine dart to the floor. Why didn’t I just tell her it was me who broke off our engagement?

      ‘So, er, how’s tricks, Caro?’ says Martin, after a very awkward pause. ‘Just having a walk?’

      ‘We’ve been to see an art exhibition, actually.’ Lexi folds her arms, indignantly. ‘It was at the Pulp House—’

      ‘The Pump House, Lexi.’

      ‘It was brilliant, really inspiring.’

      God, Lexi, just shut the fuck up.

      ‘You should go if you get the chance, although probably best to go with someone, you know, if you can.’

      ‘Right,’ says Martin, staring at me with something combining boy-caught-out and confusion. This is dreadful.

      We stand in awkward silence until I see a blonde, plumpish girl in flip-flops and a cotton shirt dress walking towards us, smiling.

      ‘Hello …’ She puts her arm around Martin’s back. A girlfriend?! Martin has a girlfriend?

      ‘Oh, hello P.’ P? Pee?! Bloody hell, were they already on pet names and he hasn’t even told me he’s seeing someone? ‘You made me jump. Caroline, Lexi this is Polly. Polly, this is Caroline and her sister, Lexi.’

      ‘Hi!’ She smiles. She has a ruddy complexion, well-bred teeth and earnest, uncomplicated eyes.

      ‘Hi,’ I say, my face fixed into something I hope resembles friendliness. I look over at Lexi, urging her to say the same, but she’s chewing the inside of her cheek and looking Polly up and down.

      ‘Anyway …’ I say

      ‘Anyway,’ agrees Martin.

      ‘We’d better get going.’

      ‘Yes, we’ve got so much to fit in today,’ says Lexi. ‘Shopping, having dinner …’

      ‘Nice to meet you, anyway, Polly,’ I say, squeezing Lexi’s hand tighter. ‘Have a lovely barbecue.’

      ‘We will,’ says Martin, somewhat feebly.

      And then we carry on across the park, and the soundtrack of a summer’s day in London – planes flying into Heathrow, roller-bladers’ shrieks of delight, the laughter of friends on picnic rugs – is drowned out by the sound of my brain trying to fathom how I feel about what just happened.

       CHAPTER SIX

      After a bus ride, where Lexi goes on about how I am so much prettier than Polly and how Martin wanted me back, she could see it in his eyes, we end up in a Mexican on the King’s Road.

      Lexi studies me over her menu, twiddling her fringe. ‘Are you all right?’ she asks.

      ‘Me? Fine.’

      ‘Are you upset about Polly?’

      ‘No. No,’ I say, totally unconvincingly. ‘It was going to happen sooner or later.’ Although I didn’t expect it quite so soon. We only split up last September. That’s nine months ago. Nine months to get over a fourteen-year relationship? I thought I might have made a little more impact than that.

      ‘Can I ask you a question, then?’

      ‘Fire away,’ I say, forcing a smile.

      ‘Was I right?’

      I scour the menu, pretending to be making vital decisions between a burrito and a taco.

      ‘Right about what?’

      ‘The dress.’ She puts the menu down now and folds her slim, tanned arms. ‘The wedding dress? Look, I know it’s none of my business but I think the reason you were wearing your wedding dress when I turned up and that you were drunk …’

      I wince at the drunk bit.

      ‘… and sh-mok-ing …’

      ‘Now you’re just rubbing it in.’

      ‘… was because you were upset about Martin, you know, and the fact –’ she cocks her head to the side sympathetically, which makes me feel even more terrible – ‘the wedding didn’t happen?’

      ‘If only it were that simple,’ I say, in a you-wouldn’t-understand-you’re-only-seventeen kind of a way.

      But clearly she does understand, because then she says, ‘Caroline. How many times have you had that dress on?’

      ‘Why? What’s it to you?’

      ‘Come on, I just wanna know. How many times have you had it on in, say, the past six months?

      I don’t know how the wedding dress thing happened, it just did, a self-indulgent little ritual that got out of control. It was a bit like how some people feel the need to get all their hair hacked off when a relationship ends, or go out and get drunk.

      That dress was gorgeous, too, a vintage-style gown with silk sleeves sliced to the waist and a four foot train. I pictured myself walking down the aisle, smiling and radiant on my wedding day, arm in arm with Dad, who, for just that one day, would be there for me. Just me. I would be a success story. Because someone wanted me and loved me enough to marry me.

      But, in the end, that dress, which was supposed to represent My Future, just smells faintly of cigarette smoke and regret and sits at the top of my wardrobe only to be brought out after another romance bites the dust, so I can wallow in could-have-beens.

      Of course, Lexi’s right; the first time it came out was two months after Martin and I finished, which was one month after the wedding that never happened, which, like I say, was almost a year now and I’m still wracked with guilt …

      ‘Hello?’ Lexi says. She’s got her ‘computer generated’ voice on. ‘Calling Caroline Steele to planet Earth. Calling Caroline Marie Steele—’

      ‘Three times, okay? I’ve had the dress on three times.’

      She raises an eyebrow.

      ‘Okay, possibly five. And, yes, if you must know, I did once put it on and get drunk and listen to Pat Benitar because I was upset about Martin – but that wasn’t really why I had it on when you arrived.’

      ‘Right, got yer,’ says Lexi. ‘So who were you crying about, then?’

      Who was I crying about? It’s hard to tell. Since Martin and the first outing of the dress, there’s been a wake of casualties: Nathan – a Kiwi I met on a client do who I fancied like mad but who then asked me if I wanted to come and visit his mum in New Zealand three weeks after I started seeing him. I made a sharp exit in the opposite direction. There was Mark – I had hopes for him, could have really fallen for his green eyes and penchant for obscure French films, but then I realized he was just pretentious. In the end, I could no longer tolerate him calling me Carol-eeen (if he had actually been French that would have been fine, but he wasn’t, he was from Walsall). And of course there was Garf, lovely Garf, who I dumped at his sister’s wedding, which was held at Walthamstow Dogs Track (not that his family’s love of dog racing was a deal-breaker or anything). He was the sweetest of the lot and he could have really loved me, but I couldn’t love him, probably because I was already falling for someone else by then, I just didn’t know