‘OK, you can look now.’ He took his hand away from her face.
There was a chorus of voices: ‘Surprise!?’
Opening her eyes, Frankie was greeted by the sight of Hugh’s old school chum, a ponytailed advertising executive called Adam, and his much younger girlfriend, Jessica. They were grinning like clowns and wielding two huge black shiny balls. Frankie’s mouth went dry as she took in her surroundings, her excitement escaping like steam from a kettle. It was replaced by pure, 100 per cent proof horror. This wasn’t a candlelit, white-linen-tableclothed, champagne-serving restaurant. It wasn’t even a restaurant. It was a ten-pin bowling alley. Her face plummeted like a bungee-jumper. She was in the middle of a bowling alley on her twenty-ninth birthday wearing a dry-clean-only Karen Millen outfit and a pair of hideously expensive Pied à Terre slingbacks. Suddenly aware that everyone was staring at her, her face bounced back like elastic and into a glassy grin.
‘Jessica, Adam, what a surprise!’ Struggling to sound enthusiastic, Frankie gave them a kiss on each cheek.
Jessica started giggling. She sounded like a flat battery. ‘Isn’t this totally groovy? I knew you’d love it when Adam suggested it.’ Standing on tiptoes, she kissed Adam on his nose and grinned like a lovesick teenager. ‘Isn’t he clever?’
Frankie tried hard to swallow the lump, the size of a bowling bowl, which stuck in her throat. ‘Adam’s idea?’ Not having a clue what was going on, she looked desperately at Hugh for an explanation.
Oblivious of her crushing disappointment, he nodded in amusement and began one of his anecdotes. ‘Well, I’d booked a restaurant and was going to take you out for dinner – as I always do.’ He puffed out his chest slightly, as if proud of this fact. ‘But then Adam had this rather fabulous idea of coming to a bowling alley. He arranged it for Jessica’s twenty-first birthday last year and she loved it.’
‘It was brilliant,’ piped up Jessica, putting her arm around Adam’s spare tyre, which he’d tried, and failed, to conceal underneath a vintage Hawaiian shirt. ‘A totally wicked idea.’
Frankie tried hard to silence the scream within. Wicked wasn’t the word she would have chosen. Dreadful. Awful. Hideous. They were more like it. She gave Adam, the pleased-as-punch instigator of this heinous crime, a withering look. This couldn’t be happening. Surely it was some kind of practical joke. Wasn’t it?
It wasn’t.
‘Keeping secrets can be difficult, but Hugh must be pretty good at it.’ Adam chuckled loudly and looked at her high heels. ‘You didn’t have any idea, did you?’
Forcing a ventriloquist’s smile, Frankie muttered through gritted teeth, ‘No, I guess not.’
5
It was the bitterest pill she’d ever had to swallow. Standing in her red, white and blue lace-ups, Frankie felt she was doing a bad impersonation of Paul Weller in his Jam days. She looked at Jessica, flicking her curtain of glossy blonde hair around as she skipped to and fro in her cut-off logo T-shirt, hipster jeans and pierced bellybutton. Tiny, Kylie-esque Jessica could make even Union Jack shoes look cute. Next to her, Frankie felt like an old frump. Three-inch snakeskin stilettos had given her designer outfit a sexy edge, but a pair of scuffed, rented laceups made her feel as if she were a Volvo-driving mum on the school run.
Things couldn’t get any worse. Or so she thought, until she saw Jessica in action. Not only did she look the part, but she’d obviously been a champion bowler in a former life. Wiggling her hips, she strutted daintily to the line and, with a flick of her wrist and a toss of her hair, scored a perfect ten each time. Every male in the bowling alley was mesmerised by her technique: cardigan-wearing OAPs out on their weekly bowling night drooled over her ball control; young lager-drinking trendies salivated at the power in her fingertips. Yep, there was no doubt about it, Jessica had them well and truly by the balls.
If only the same could be said for Frankie. Like a loose cannon, she flung her ball half-heartedly down the alley, trying not to fling herself with it, and cringed as it veered off to one side, missing every single skittle.
‘Better luck next time,’ giggled Jessica, who giggled at everything. When she wasn’t giggling she was, well, giggling.
Fighting back tears of disappointment and frustration, Frankie glanced across at Hugh for support, but he was being the absent boyfriend. Drinking beer with Adam, he was thoroughly enjoying himself, halfway through a witty anecdote of how he’d just gazumped an offer on a four-bedroom semi. Frankie sighed. Boyfriends were always the same, always leaving you to chat to their friends’ girlfriends while they discussed business/golf/rugby scores. Not that there was anything wrong with Jessica, unless you counted the fact that all she talked about were clubs, DJs and her collection of underground garage and hip-hop CDs. Frankie tried to look as if she knew what Jessica was going on about, but her clubbing days had finished when her pension contributions had started and her CD collection was made up from the easy-listening section: Elvis, Frank Sinatra and Abba. Two dead crooners and a retired Swedish import. Hardly cutting edge.
After sixty minutes had ticked painfully slowly by, Frankie could no longer pretend she was enjoying herself. She was bored, knackered, completely fed up, and to make matters worse she was lucky to be in even fourth place. Every skittle was standing, every fingernail was broken. And while Hugh had hardly spoken to her, preferring to discuss endowment mortgages and interest rates with Adam, Jessica hadn’t stopped. Thankfully she’d finally come up for air, complained she was ‘totally starving’ and dragged Adam to the neon-lit refreshments booth.
It was time to leave. Frankie collared Hugh, who was standing with his hands in his pockets by the Coke dispenser. ‘I want to go home,’ she muttered, miserably sitting on one of the fold-down plastic chairs and rubbing the bruise on her shin that was working its way through all the colours of the rainbow.
‘Why?’ He looked surprised.
It was the final straw. ‘Why do you think?’ she snapped. ‘It’s my birthday and I’m in a bowling alley. I’m bruised, bored, my fingers hurt, my feet hurt, and on top of all that you’ve hardly spoken to me all night.’
Silence. Hugh ran his fingers through his gelled quiff and looked at the floor.
Frankie softened. She always did when he played with his hair. ‘Look, if you’ve got something on your mind, just say it.’ He hadn’t given her a present yet, so no doubt he was waiting for the right time to bring out the ring. Obviously he wanted to do one of those wacky kinds of proposal – the hot-air-ballooning, scuba-diving, in a bowling-alley type that people have to show they’re not boring traditionalists. But, to be honest, although she appreciated his ingenuity, she’d rather have had the boring old-fashioned candlelit-dinner proposal any day.
There was an awkward pause. ‘Well, actually there is something I’ve been meaning to say for a while, but this probably isn’t the right time or the right place . . .’ Hugh sat down. Not in the chair next to her.
It was like somebody playing a piano chord in a minor key. It jarred ominously. But Frankie didn’t hear it. All she could hear was the sound of wedding bells. Mistakenly thinking he was nervous, she tried to help him along.
‘Look, if this makes it any easier for you, I know what it is you want to say.’
‘You do?’ He wrinkled his forehead, his thick blond eyebrows blocking the light from his eyes.
‘Yep.’
‘Oh.’ He looked taken aback. ‘And you’re not upset?’
Frankie gasped and, slipping off her seat, crouched down by his knees on the dusty floor. She rested her hand reassuringly on his. ‘Hugh, what are you talking about? Why would I be upset? I love you. Of course I want to marry you.’
Silence.
‘What did you just say?’
Frankie rushed over the words. ‘I’m sorry, I know I’m jumping the gun a bit. You see, I didn’t mean to snoop, but I found the receipt for the engagement ring in your pocket.’ Her words came out in a jumbled gabble.
Hugh went ashen. Moving
his hand away from hers, he stood up and paced around in a circle. Frankie watched him, feeling bewildered. She wasn’t exactly a seasoned pro when it came to marriage proposals, but even she knew this wasn’t how it was supposed to happen.
‘I think there’s been a bit of a misunderstanding.’ His voice was clipped and flat. As if he was talking to a client, not his girlfriend, not someone he was supposed to love. He looked at her. His face was drained of blood and emotion. Hard and colourless. It was a look she would never forget.
‘What?’ Her voice was almost a whisper.
There was a commotion behind them. With disastrous timing, Adam and Jessica burst upon them.
‘Hey, guess what, guys!’ trilled Jessica breathlessly. ‘Look what Adam just hid in my hotdog!’ Waving her hand under Frankie’s nose, she flashed a beautiful Tiffany’s engagement ring. ‘Isn’t it wicked? We’re going to get married!’ She jumped up and down like Zebedee, the diamond sparkling under the harsh glare of the illuminous strip-lighting.
Frankie didn’t say anything. Neither did Hugh, apart from a half-hearted ‘Congratulations’ to Adam, who was standing to one side, grinning modestly.
Turning to Hugh, Adam fell serious for a moment. ‘Before I forget, I think I’ve left the receipt in the pocket of that overcoat of yours – the one I borrowed one lunchtime last week when it was raining. Better have that, just in case . . . Insurance and all that. Good job I remembered. It could have got you in all kinds of trouble with the missus.’ Winking at Frankie, he nudged Hugh in the ribs before putting his arm around his over-excited fiancée. ‘This calls for a drink. Better see if they sell champers in this place!’
Whooping like a chimpanzee, Jessica snogged the side of Adam’s face, leaving behind a trail of berry lip gloss. And nuzzling Jessica, who was clinging to him like a life raft, Adam led her back into the crowd.
Frankie’s eyes began to well up with tears. She was suddenly aware of the sound of her heart beating really fast. In the background she could faintly hear Hugh – the steady hum of his voice. She caught snatches of words, phrases, strings of vowels, but nothing registered. It was like listening to a voice-over in a foreign language . . .
‘. . . things aren’t working out between us. Not for me, anyway . . . I don’t want to settle down yet . . . I’m not ready for this level of commitment . . . I feel claustrophobic . . . I need space.’
The last word registered. Space. He wanted space. Looking up at him, she saw his face through a bleary film of tears.
‘What are you saying? Are you saying you want me to move out?’ Her voice broke as she struggled to bear a sudden overwhelming pain.
It was the longest pause. Finally he spoke. ‘I’m saying it’s over.’
For a split second time paused. Until someone pressed play and the impact of his words hit with the force of a bowling ball. And, like a dozen skittles, her life came crashing down around her.
6
The journey home passed in a blur. Frankie lay huddled in the back of the car, shock seeping through her body like an anaesthetic, dulling the pain, fuzzing the edges. She vaguely remembered running out of the bowling alley, the bewildered look on Adam and Jessica’s faces as she bolted past them, knocking the bottle of cheap plonk flying out of their hands, mumbling apologies as she stumbled into the drizzly car park and fell into the back of a minicab.
Looking out into the rain, she numbly watched as the lights of the bowling alley disappeared, before turning her face away from the window. Shivering, she stared miserably down at the floor, and it was only then that she noticed she’d forgotten to change her shoes. It was like rubbing salt into her wounds. Staring right back at her were those bloody red, white and blue lace-ups.
Letting herself in through the front door, she could almost fool herself that nothing had changed. Everything looked the same, everything was still as they’d left it: Hugh’s coffee cup by the phone, her make-up bag on the hallway table. It reminded her of a party game she used to play as a child. Where you had to close your eyes and somebody removed something from the room and then you had to say what was missing. But it wasn’t a game and she knew what was missing. Love. It sounded corny, worthy of a toe-curling line from a slushy Mills & Boon, but it was true. Hugh didn’t love her any more and it made everything around her look different. As if she’d been watching life on a colour television and now, suddenly, everything had switched to black and white.
Dropping her keys in the silver ashtray on the coffee table, she slumped down on the sofa. Fred opened a lazy eye and, without changing his Sphinx-like position, extended a furry paw on to her lap. Always the more demonstrative, Ginger uncurled her body, arched her back and yawned, before tiptoeing delicately on to Frankie’s bare knees. Nuzzling her small damp sandpapery nose into her neck, she began to purr. Normally Frankie would stroke both cats lovingly, tickling them under their Velcro chins and fondling their soft, velvety paws. But this time she didn’t. Unable to move, she lay limply against the cushions, staring vacantly into space.
An involuntary sob rose in her throat and her bloodshot eyes began brimming again with tears. Never in a million years had she expected this to happen. They didn’t argue – well, not really, only over stupid stuff like whose turn it was to wash up or who’d used the last of the loo roll, and they had a good sex life, at least she thought so. She felt her stomach tighten. Oh God, don’t say it was that, anything but that. OK, so she wasn’t swinging from the chandeliers – not that they had a chandelier, it was one of those white paper Chinese lanterns you get from Habitat for a fiver – but he seemed to enjoy it.
Frankie cringed, as one awful thought after another fired at her like poison darts. It was probably all just an act, all that kissing her neck and nibbling her ear lobes – Hugh was big on ear lobes; his hard-on was probably a fake too. After all, if women could fake orgasms, surely men could fake erections. Even worse, maybe he’d been imagining she was someone else – Suzy ‘with the nice pair’ in accounts, or that new temp with the French accent who kept buying him croissants. Jesus, don’t say he was having an affair with her. Don’t say he was giving her a pain au chocolat behind the filing cabinets. The more she thought about it, the more she remembered how he had been odd these past few weeks. Distant, less attentive, as if he had something on his mind. Bloody hell, what an idiot she’d been. There was she thinking he was contemplating marriage, and all the time he was thinking about splitting up.
And as if things weren’t bleak enough, she now had to find somewhere else to live. But how? If she had a job she could start looking, but somehow she didn’t think the dole would stretch to two-hundred-quid-a-week flats in W2. There was always the option of calling up a few friends and asking to kip on the sofa, but she dismissed the idea. Nobody wanted a weeping, wailing wreck camping out in their living room, however sympathetic they might be to her plight. That only left her parents, but she didn’t want to worry them. She was twenty-nine years old, she should be able to sort out her own problems and not have to run home crying as if she was a kid again and she’d come last in the egg-and-spoon race, or dropped Tiny Tears head first into next-door’s ornamental pond.
They were both getting on a bit now – her dad would be seventy-two next May and her mum wasn’t far off – but they were still happily married, even after fifty years. Her mum always loved telling her the story of how they’d first met ballroom-dancing in Blackpool, and how, when they’d married six months later, they’d waltzed down the aisle and foxtrotted to the reception. But her mum’s all-time best, oft-repeated tale was the one about when she’d turned forty and started feeling unwell. And how, terrified, she was fearing the C word. But – and this was the bit she loved telling the most – it had turned out to be the P word instead. She wasn’t dying, far from it. She was four and a half months pregnant with Frankie – she’d discovered the right kind of lump.
Covering her face with her hands, Frankie started to cry again and her sniffling tears gave way to loud, choking, convulsiv
e sobs. Fred and Ginger looked at her, confusion reflected in their amber-flecked eyes. On and on, until their fur was soaked with her unhappy tears, and her face was blotchy and bloated. And then she couldn’t cry any more.
Taking rapid, desperate breaths, she wiped the end of her runny nose with the sleeve of her new jacket, streaking it with salty tears and saliva, and, easing herself up gingerly from the sofa, walked across the living room to the large sash window. Pressing her hot, clammy cheek against the soothing coolness of the glass, she stared into the street below, half-heartedly hoping to see Hugh turning the corner, climbing the flight of steps two at a time up to the front door. But there was nobody outside, nothing apart from rows of parked cars and ugly piles of rotting autumn leaves.
She didn’t know how long she’d stood there before she noticed the answering machine, lying on the table beside her flashing. For a few moments Frankie watched it, not registering at first that there was a message, before leaning across and pressing Play. There was a click, and then the sound of Rita’s voice, her thick Lancashire accent, loud and familiar, filling the room.
‘Hi, Frankie, it’s me,’ she was shouting – it sounded as if she was on a mobile. ‘I’ve bought a car . . . a convertible . . . and I’m driving along Sunset, so I don’t know if you can hear a word I’m saying, but I was just ringing to wish you happy birthday. I sent you an e-mail but I don’t think you got it, ’cos you never replied. I don’t know where you are . . . probably out having a brilliant time with Hugh at some swanky restaurant, you lucky sod!’ The sound of a horn blowing and Rita swearing. ‘Bloody hell, some of these drivers don’t look where they’re going.’ Another sound of the horn. ‘Get out of the fucking way!’ God, sorry about that. Some stupid bastard in a Roller . . . Hang on, I think it’s Rod Stewart.’ Rita’s high-pitched cackle. ‘Anyway, changing the subject. When are you going to come and see me? It’s been three months and you did promise. Can’t you leave loverboy for a couple of weeks? You know what they say about absence making the heart grow fonder and all that . . .’ The screeching of brakes. ‘Oh, shit, what now?’ A pause. ‘Christ, I think it’s the cops. Better go. Love yer!’ The sound of kisses and then the phone went dead.