Putting Alice Back Together. Carol Marinelli

over I found myself there. I hated saying goodbye to Mum, kissing her and knowing when I saw her again she’d be two years older.

      If I ever saw her again.

      ‘It’s six weeks, Alice.’ Nicole hugged me and tried to reassure me, and I hugged her back and didn’t want to let her go.

      It wasn’t six weeks.

      She was going through those doors and again everything was changing.

      She was changing.

      She wasn’t coming back, or if she did come back it would just be to leave, and in my heart of hearts I knew that.

      ‘Be nice to Hugh,’ she warned. ‘You will remember to pick him up? I’m sorry Mum didn’t send a photo. You can just hold up a sign.’

      I wouldn’t need a sign.

      Ginger with glasses and a cousin of Nicole’s.

      Oh, I wouldn’t need a sign.

      She cuddled Roz.

      Roz, all practical and stoic, reminded me of my mum the day Bonny had left for Australia. Overweight and trying to smile.

      Lisa was right, it had unsettled me.

      I didn’t want to remember that day.

      But I was standing there doing just that: Bonny and Lex leaving for Australia. Mum spilling out of her shoes and skirt, trying to smile and failing, because Bonny was her baby, Bonny was her favourite and she had to let her go.

      Nic had one of those hand luggage bags on wheels and she headed to the door, jaunty and shiny and ready. We waved her off and thank God Dan’s arms were around me as I did the right thing and forced a smile and made myself wave.

      But I kept remembering.

      Dad there with Lucy, his new girlfriend, dainty and pregnant.

      Bonny bawled her eyes out and Lex hugged me, just briefly, even though I knew he didn’t want to, but it would have looked odd if he’d missed me out. I could feel the contempt and disgust as he reluctantly embraced me.

      ‘Take care, Alice.’ That was all he said. Lex still wasn’t able to look me in the eye and I couldn’t look at him either.

      I didn’t want to think about it.

      I couldn’t think about it.

      So I blew my nose and I wished Dan would come back to the flat, but he had a new car and was taking it to visit his family. I couldn’t stand his father, so I was more than happy that he hadn’t asked me along.

      ‘I’ll come back with you,’ Roz said, because she’s nice like that.

      She sort of mothered me a bit, I guess.

      ‘You should have used your credit card,’ Roz said, as I rummaged in my bag for money for the car-park machine. ‘It’s so much easier.’

      I could see my hands shaking as I put in the coins and dropped one. I felt the impatience in the line behind me.

      I couldn’t think about it.

      Except I couldn’t stop thinking about.

      And worse, I knew that lately, sometimes, Lex was thinking about it too.

      One mistake, one stupid mistake. I wanted to live my life without having made it. I wanted to have my life back.

      I didn’t want to remember, but details, details, details kept flinging themselves at me, chasing me, cornering me, and I knew they were about to catch me.

      Why couldn’t Big Tits just have written up a script?

      ‘She’ll be back,’ Dan said, and it was a funny thing, because it was his new car that was blocking in mine. It was a sign, I was sure, that we were meant to be together perhaps, or, given how he’d parked, that he takes up all of the bed.

      He gave me a cuddle as Roz waited.

      I could hear the steady thud-thud-thud of his heart as mine leapt up to my throat and I wanted him to come home and lie down beside me.

      ‘Love you lots,’ he said to me.

      ‘Love you lots too.’

      It’s our little thing.

      ‘It’s good she’s gone to see him,’ Dan added. ‘She might finally work out he’s a complete wanker.’

      And I laughed, got into my car and I chatted to Roz.

      Put my ticket in the machine and the boom gate went up and Roz and I headed for home, and Nicole wouldn’t be there.

      Only it’s wasn’t Nicole that was upsetting me.

      Somehow I knew that.

      I didn’t want to think about it.

      We stopped at the drive-through bottle shop on the way.

      ‘Are you okay, Alice?’ Roz checked when we got back to the flat.

      ‘I’m fine,’ I said, because I was pouring a nice glass of red, and I would be in a moment.

      ‘I know you’re upset about Nic going, but is there something else?’ Roz pushed. ‘Is there something on your mind?’

      ‘Nothing,’ I said, because I didn’t want it on my mind. I didn’t want to think about it.

      Just, lately, it was all I seemed to do.

       Six

      As you can imagine, as I sat there in the kitchen, having my split ends trimmed and trying to block out Bonny’s moaning, another hour with Gus was such a nice thing to think of. So much so that as the hairdresser gave me a ‘little trim to tidy things up’, I wasn’t concentrating—instead I was having a lovely thought about Gus leaving miserable Celeste, and me and him setting up and playing piano and…

      ‘What the…?’ She’d given me a fringe… Okay, that doesn’t sound so bad if you don’t have curly hair, but if you do have really curly hair, you will know this was a crisis.

      ‘I’ve left plenty of length,’ the hairdresser was saying, but I could sort of hear the wobble of panic in her voice, because even if she had cut it to the bridge of my nose, as she tried to drag the wet curls down with her finger, they were already coiling up into knots in my hairline.

      ‘It will be fine.’ Mum was reassuring.

      ‘With lots of product.’ The hairdresser was plastering on serum to weigh the curls down. I was crying, not just at the prospect of the wedding but seeing Gus, and, worse, Bonny was screaming, completely hysterical.

      ‘Look at it!’ She was staring at my hair in horror. It was like the day the nit nurse at school found nits in my hair and I could feel everyone staring at me in disgust. I sat there humiliated as Bonny screeched out what a shit bridesmaid I’d make, what a mess I looked, how I’d ruin the photos.

      For months I’d put up with her histrionics. For months I’d shut up and put up and been good…

      ‘I don’t want to be your bridesmaid.’ I didn’t.

      ‘I don’t want to wear that disgusting pink dress.’ That was certainly true.

      ‘And you don’t have to worry about people talking about your ugly bridesmaid.’ I ripped off the towel from my shoulders. I was so angry, so ashamed, so embarrassed that I couldn’t even cry. ‘They’ll be too busy looking at the back end of the bride and sniggering at her massive arse. I thought brides were supposed to lose weight before the wedding.’

      Mum slapped me.

      We’re not talking a little slap either, she slammed her hand across my cheek, and Bonny’s screams quadrupled—not, may I add, because her sister was being beaten (well, maybe not beaten,