She could see that her point had been somewhat lost on Jules.
“Okay, take Liam just for example…”
“Rather not,” interrupted Jules. She had never been fond of him since he’d make a very disparaging remark about her to one of her so-called friends who’d, naturally, made sure she wasted no time relaying it to Jules.
“Well, forget that you didn’t like him. Listen. He was the captain of the footie team, fastest runner, most popular boy in school, agreed?”
Sadly, Jules had to agree with that as it was indisputable fact and probably the reason why he’d been such a dick.
“Now,” continued Evie. “he's a businessman, got a flash car and look at Miranda Carter, she owns her own magazine title. Both super popular at school, both really successful now, and that’s where it is all laid down. Susan Philips, mediocre at school, mediocre in life.”
“Evie that’s dreadful. Why would even say that?”
“No. Think about it,” Evie was warming to her theme. “All the popular kids at school, kids like Damian, who, let's face it, had the teachers eating out of his hand, have gone onto be successful adults. It's like they were given that extra boost. That little confidence pill to think, believe, that they could do anything, become anything they wanted and they have. They had a head start. They were already popular, they had fantastic self-possession and this is the result.”
“So,” said Jules feeling the bile rising slightly at the inference Evie had just made. “I wasn’t popular; does that mean I’m a failure?
Evie suddenly realised she’d dropped a huge clanger and hurried to pick it up again.
“You're not a failure.”
“I’m a miserable failure because all I do all day is clean and cook,” Jules could see Evie going red. “As for Susan Philips, who's to say she isn't happy? I don't think you can measure it by what job you do. I bet loads of these people are totally unhappy in their jobs.”
“Okay, okay but you have to admit we still judge people by them. You say 'hi', ask how they are and then it's straight into what line of work they do and that's where the value judgment comes in. It's ego and some sub-conscious need to know where we are on the pecking order so we can be smug or intimated as need be.”
“And I'd be pretty low down, I suppose, because I don't work?”
“No! I'm not talking about you. I'm talking about them. Fuck it. I'm not talking about you. I'm just...talking...shit as usual. Red wine, makes me maudlin.”
Jules looked at her friend. She loved Evie like a sister but sometimes, just every now and then this side of her came out; it was a little too hard, a little too nasty. Jules wondered if it came from having to be tough in her line of work and that it spilled over into her every day.
***
“What's the hold up?”
Andy had left the hall to make a call to Olivia who, at that moment, was standing by the patio doors, smoking a cigarette, and wearing Jules’ dressing gown.
“I got a flat. I told you to check that damned tyre for me. Just so typical. I'm waiting for the AA now.”
Andy pushed his phone back into his pocket after the call had ended and glanced around him. This place haunted him.
Olivia had picked him to be her lab partner in chemistry but Andy had assumed, at the time, it was because he was top of the class and she had been languishing somewhere in the depths.
She’d always been a strong woman – he hated to use the term bossy, why should women be labelled bossy because they knew what they wanted? She’d sailed through that practical with him to guide her and Andy had thought that maybe, just maybe, she’d found some respect for him.
It was here, in this very hall that he’d asked Olivia out on a date. It was the fifth-year Valentine disco and he’d been egged on by Liam and Damian. Somehow, once that first date was over, she’d kept suggesting more things for them to do until it seemed they were a proper item on the local scene. Andy and Olivia.
They’d got engaged on her twenty-first birthday and married two years later. What a day that had been! Planned by Olivia to within an inch of its life, Andy had been left with the distinct feeling that he was just there to make up numbers.
From then on, it seemed that she was never happy, never satisfied with the life they had together.
Olivia always had one eye on what everyone else had and her conversations over dinner revolved around it. Working in the local bank gave her easy access to everyone’s hopes and dreams. Louise Manning’s new extension; Roger Hinchcliffe’s swimming pool; Mrs Plummer’s latest holiday, it all came home with her to be pored over and dissected and compared with what they had or didn’t have.
Then it happened. He caught her out in a lie.
She’d claimed that their son’s teacher had asked her to come into school to discuss some problem he was having. Andy had felt slighted that as his father, he wasn’t even considered when it came to the meeting. Olivia had, naturally, talked him out of it in her usual dismissive tone but something had just snapped in his head.
He told his boss that he had to go to the school and Jeff had more than happy to let him leave early. Andy arrived to find that no meeting had been set up and that his son was doing fine at school.
Over dinner that evening, boiling with anger, Andy had managed to keep calm and ask Olivia how the meeting had gone. Her answers had been non-specific and it was at that point that Andy suspected that something was going on.
***
“Hey Andy,” called out Leanne as she spotted him walking towards the dining room. “Everything okay?”
“Yeah, yeah, I was just er...” he looked about him but didn’t finish his sentence.
Leanne frowned but let it pass. “Well, as long as everything is all right. Got to go, food waiting.” She smiled warmly and walked away.
Andy watched her and decided that this might be his last chance.
“Great party though,” he called after her. “You've done, well, you've done us proud.”
“Thanks! Maybe tonight I'll get a good night’s sleep.”
Andy followed her into the kitchen where the staff she had hired for the night were preparing the desserts.
“Oh?”
“Oh, no, nothing serious,” she said as she opened the large fridge and pulled out some trays of seafood. “Just pre-party nerves. You know, have I ordered enough food, will anyone turn up. What if the DJ is crap, that kind of thing.”
Andy watched, feeling a little like a fifth wheel, that for sure someone would wonder what he was hanging around for.
“Do you um, do you need a hand with anything?” and he rubbed his hands together.
“Sure, if it's not too much trouble.” Leanne was rather startled by his offer and glanced around trying to find something for him. Her eyes settled on the sea food platters.
“Just, be careful with them. Lot of money on those platters.”
Andy scoops up two of the large platters and balanced them precariously on his arms. With care, he pushed open the swing door and waits for Leanne to follow him through.
“Leanne.”
“Huh-huh?” Leanne, having had years more practice at the carriage of large platters came through the door with another two deftly laid across her arms.
Andy, who was struggling not to drop his precious cargo, put them down on the serving counter and said: “Leanne, stop. I… I need to talk to you.”
If Leanne had been concentrating she’d have heard the tone in his voice and been alerted to what was coming. However, her mind was still on the job and so she stopped which gave Andy the incentive he needed to continue.
“I'm thinking of leaving Olivia.”
“Oh?”
It wasn’t the reaction he’d been hoping for when he’d rehearsed this speech a thousand times in his head. He felt a sense of anger that she hadn’t jumped up and down with glee at the very idea of him leaving Olivia. Most people, at this point would have taken the cue, and not gone there. This was the very poi
nt Andy could have turned it into a confidential conversation and nobody would have been any the wiser. Andy didn’t think like that.
“Don't you want to know why? Apart from the fact that she's a self-centred, never anything good enough for her, bitch?”
“Andy, I...” Too late, Leanne had guessed what he was going to say.
Andy held up his hand to hush her.
“I love you.”
Leanne tried to stop him going any further but he rushed ahead: “No, listen, listen, I love you.
Leanne felt her head pounding and all she could think was ‘this isn’t happening’. She glanced at the door to the dining room willing Damian to appear at any moment to prevent Andy going any further. Time seemed to slow down and she looked at him and wondered if he was safe to be with.
Andy was in a world of his own as if the barrier was now down and flood of pent up emotion was being let loose. He wasn’t even really talking to her any more.
“I don't know why I stayed with her. I mean, fifteen. It's too young to know what you want, right? But, when I met up with you again, I realised that I never stopped having those feelings for you. I still feel that and it's killing me.”
Leanne heard the hurt in his voice and it pulled her back. This was Andy. Andy Cummings. She’d known him since the first day of infants. He was as familiar to her as her own family.
“Andy,” she said slowly. “I love Damian.”
She heard the hiss of breath as he let go of the pain those words caused him
“I never thought that the bloke I sat next to in registration twice a day for two years would turn out to be the best thing that happened to me.”
She looked at Andy.
“Andy, you're a nice guy, a little, what shall we say, indecisive sometimes? If you've come to the conclusion that you can't bear it anymore then leave. I'm not the answer though.”
She walked past him without a backward glance. At fifteen Andy Cummings had been her world and he’d chosen Olivia. At twenty, when he was about to embark on his marriage he’d turned to her once more. Nothing more than whispered promises and stolen kisses had occurred but it was all just that and Andy had, on the allotted day, walked down the aisle with his bride.
Damian came back into her life not long after that and they had made a life together as Andy had made his. Leanne now had a comparison and she knew that Andy was weak-willed and could never be the man for her.
Leanne met up with her husband in the corridor leading past the hall to the dining room.
“Hey, you'll never guess who's just turned up?”
***
“Ed Moore.”
Jules heard Evie whisper his name and her first reaction was to be ‘not cool’.
“How is he still so gorgeous?” mused Evie as she watched him take his name badge from Samantha Goode who had been the Head Girl to Liam’s Head Boy. “It defies some law.”
Evie realised that Jules had yet to say anything and turned to her friend.
“Are you okay? You've gone beetroot.”
“I'm just hot. It's hot in here. Aren't you hot? I'm really hot. I think I need some air.”
“Oh. My. God. You're blushing.”
“Would you like to say that a bit louder? I don't think they heard at the back.”
“Go and say 'hello'.” Urged Evie giving Jules a gentle nudge with her elbow.
“No!”
“Oh, come on, what are you scared of?”
“Nothing. I'm just not going to make an idiot of myself by rushing over the minute he walks through the door.”
“What, like Susan Phillips?”
Jules swung around to see Ed giving Susan a big hug and her heart almost stopped.
“Fine,” said Evie tartly. “If you won't, I will.”
Before Jules could stop her, Evie was on her feet and heading over to Ed.
Jules cursed her friend under her breath. Still, she held her breath as she watched Evie make her way through the crowd to where Ed was ordering a drink from the bar. She saw how he turned and nearly bumped into Evie. The double-take, the huge smile of recognition and the bear hug of a hello. She saw him bend his six feet four frame to hear what Evie was saying and his eyes look up and straight at her, and the smile that spread over his face.
Jules smiled back, embarrassed, fifteen again.
She saw Evie take him by the hand and begin to walk towards her. She could feel her own heartbeat pounding in her chest, and the creep of blush spreading over her cheeks. Barely able to contain her smile, she looked away, composed herself then looked back just in time to see Ed intercepted by Liam and Carl. She saw him break loose from Evie’s grip, say something to her as he became ensnared in their animated conversation. She saw him look over at her, his eyes wishing that he was by her side and she saw him look away.
“My God, look at them,” sneered Olivia as she
surveyed the scene before her. “And we spent fifty quid on this. Leanne's got some nerve calling herself a caterer.”
She turned to look at Andy who sat with a stony expression; his lips set into a thin line.
“Oh please. Look at you, you've been making moo-moo eyes at the silly bitch, all evening, I shouldn't wonder.”
Slowly Andy turned to his wife and hissed: “Why don't you shut the fuck up?”
Olivia is, at first, startled but then finds her voice. “What did you say?”
“You. You look down on everyone and you're no better than they are. I don't know where you got the idea that you were. This is where you went to school. With these people. You're nothing special, so why don't you, just for once, take that stick out of your arse and shut the fuck up?”
And with that he slammed the pint of beer down onto the table, causing its contents to slop over the sides on the table, pushed his chair back with such violence as to knock it over and walked out of the hall. Mortified, Olivia looked around to see who had noticed and wasn’t sure if she was happy or dismayed to find that she wasn’t centre of attention.
Jules had been caught at her table by a woman whose name she couldn’t remember but who clearly remembered her. This woman seemingly had the ability to breathe through her ears as she jabbered non-stop; her voice faded into the background as Jules' eyes wandered over to Ed.
He was, in turn, gently staring in her direction as Liam and Shorty noisily prattled on.
Embarrassed, Jules looked away but couldn’t help herself and smiled before locking eyes with Ed again. He’d clearly seen her smile and was grinning from ear to ear.
In an instant, she was back in school, in the library, sat at a table with her friends, as he was sat at one with his and they were doing exactly this.
And so, it went on through sixth form, a relationship by proxy until the day they were walking home and he slipped his hand into hers and suddenly they were an item.
Then, just after A levels, when talk changed to ‘what next’ he astounded everyone by announcing that he’d joined up.
Ed saw no problem with it – he’d get basic training out of the way, pass out, get a posting. After a couple of years, he’d get promotion and then they could get married and move into quarters.
Except, Jules didn’t see it that way. She wasn’t really sure what she saw – their age, moving away from home, the acidic comments of Olivia who referred to her as a squaddie mattress? All three or nothing at all? Was it just her own fear? She called the relationship off.
Ed, who’d never had a great relationship with his own parents, found his wings in the rigour and routine of service life and never looked back.
The grapevine alerted Jules to his sporadic visits home but tonight was the first time she’d seen him in the flesh in all these long years.
She looked at him again, seeing the boy in the features of the man before her and it felt as though they were conversing across the room in looks and smiles and a warm glow spread through her.
“Is that true?”
Jules suddenly realised that th
e woman has stopped talking and is waiting for an answer.
“Sorry, is what...?”
“That you're husband no longer takes NHS, it's just I've got this tooth, here, look...” the woman pulled up her top lip to expose her teeth to the startled Jules.
“Oh, no, he's private.” Seeing that the woman was clearly disappointed to hear this she added: “The chap down on Western, he's NHS, he's taking on, I think.”
Her unknown companion brightened up at this news. Jules decided that she should exploit this moment of silence to make good her escape. “Would you excuse me, I need to visit the bathroom.”
This announcement was marked by a round of false bonhomie as the two women exchanged kisses on the cheek before Jules managed to get away to where Evie was sampling the seafood.
“Who was that you were talking too?”
“No idea.”
***
Alan worked in the photography shop on a Saturday. He was at the local sixth form college looking to go to University after his A levels. He was a competent lad and Damian had trusted him with the important task of manning the projector and lights for the various activities that had been planned for the evening, including the showing of the autobiographies guests had filmed. He had been holed up in the projector room above the hall with a running order and stop watch.
Andy arrived unannounced, startling poor Alan who had been taking five minutes to chat to his girlfriend on Whatsapp.
“Sorry mate, you're not supposed to be up here. Elf 'n safety, you know.”
Andy rubbed his hands together, a nervous tic. “Yeah, I know, I mean, sorry. I've got this.”
He held out a disc which Alan took and flipped over as if there was something more insightful on the other side.
“I was supposed to give it to Damon after approval but I forgot. Hope it doesn't, you know, mess up your timings.”
“Sorry, what's your name?” Alan scanned the list.
“Andy. Andy Cummings.”
“Cutting it fine mate,” replied Andy. “you’re on in ten.”
***
“Look, do you mind if I call it a night?”
“What?” Evie tried to swallow the food in her mouth. “You can't go.”
“I'm not, it's just...” Jules paused and felt the hot sting of tears forming. “I feel stupid.”