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CHAPTER TWO

Tiptoeing barefoot, Louboutins in hand, I searched for the car. Over in a dark corner, hidden beneath beautiful weeping willows was Mark’s Range Rover. When he had bought it six months before, Louisa had taken it as a direct sign that he was ready for kids. I saw it as a direct sign that he was not ever going to let me drive it on my own. So far, I’d been the one proven right. Scrambling around in my handbag for the spare keys, I noticed that the reading light was on in the back. I smiled to myself, knowing Mark would be so happy that I had come out and saved his battery. Pressing the button to turn off the alarm, instead of the reassuring double pip, I was greeted by a loud siren and flashing indicators. Which was when I realized someone was inside the car.

Shit, our car was being stolen and here I was, hobbling barefoot over gravel with a pair of £400 shoes in one hand and wearing a floor length gown. And I’d just set the alarm off. Brilliant. The car thieves were definitely going to kill me. If I was murdered at Louisa’s wedding, she would be furious. All her anniversaries would be ruined. Would she still go on her honeymoon? Maybe I could use my heels as a weapon. Well, maybe not, I didn’t want to stain them. But the soles were already red …

I was all ready to turn and hightail it out of the headlines when I remembered my shoes. They could take Mark’s car but, damn it, they weren’t taking my fallback flats. Two-year-old Topshop maybe but they were the comfiest damn shoes I’d ever owned. I pulled open the back door to confront the thief before I bottled it. And then, in a startling moment of clarity, I realized there wasn’t a man trying to steal the car or my shoes, but two people, very much having sex on the back seat.

And one of them was Mark.

‘Angela,’ he stuttered, his red sweaty face staring out at me, indentations from my Hello Kitty seatbelt protectors on his left cheek. He wouldn’t let me put them in the front. It took me another moment to register the naked woman underneath him. She looked at me, frozen underneath Mark, with smudged mascara and a red chin from Mark’s omnipresent five o’clock shadow. I didn’t recognize her at all, blonde, pretty, looked fairly skinny from what I could see of her bony shoulders, and she had a lovely tan. A peacock blue silk dress scrunched up on the parcel shelf suggested she had been at the wedding reception, and the beautiful pair of silver Gina sandals clamped around my boyfriend’s waist told me I really should have spotted her earlier. I did love a nicely turned shoe.

‘I came to get my flats,’ I said, numb, not moving.

I stumbled backwards as Mark pulled himself out of the car on his belly and dropped to the floor in front of me, his boxer shorts working themselves further back down his legs as his sweaty skin peeled away from the leather.

‘Angela,’ Mark stood up, he pulled his pants up high, and wriggled into his shirt. I looked past him into the car. The girl had managed to get her dress on and was rubbing under her eyes to try to get rid of the mascara. Good luck, I thought, if it’s as good a quality as your shoes you won’t get that off by rubbing. Shoes still looked great though. Bitch.

‘Angela,’ he tried again snapping me out of my shoe-induced haze. ‘I – what are you doing out here?’

I looked back at him. ‘Shoes,’ I said, waving my sandals at him and gesturing towards the car. ‘You didn’t bring my flats in.’

He stared at me wildly, glancing from me to my high heels and then back at the car. Slowly, as though I were a startled animal that might bolt, he took a step back towards the backseat and reached under the passenger seat for a small cloth shoe bag. He held it out to me, afraid to touch me, afraid to make contact. ‘Thanks.’ I took the bag.

Mark stood, bathed in the backseat light, red, sweaty, trousers off, socks and shoes on with a little wet patch growing on the front of his boxers to add insult to injury.

‘What the fuck are you doing?’ I asked. Incredibly eloquently.

‘Angela,’ Mark shuffled forward half an inch.

‘And who, the fuck, is she?’ I asked, pointing to the girl with my left Louboutin, still in my hand. The girl looked away, trapped in the back of the car.

‘Angela,’ he stuttered, retreating from the perfectly pointed toe aimed at his temple.

‘No, I’m Angela. I can see how you might be confused though,’ I said, feeling my eyes starting to well up. My boyfriend was having sex in the back of our car, our beautiful future children’s car, at our best friends’ wedding. I was not going to cry in front of him while he pissed away ten years together on a cheap shag in a car park.

‘Angela, this is Katie. I, erm, I—’ he looked back again and met her eyes briefly and I swear I saw a hint of a goofy smile cross his goddamned face. It was the most painful moment of the whole thing. ‘We, well, we’ve been playing tennis together, and, well—’

‘This is what you think playing tennis is? Shit, does Louisa know you’ve been “playing tennis” with Tim?’ I wanted to hit him, I wanted to hit her, and just as I was about to toss a coin to see who was getting it first, I realized. ‘You haven’t been playing tennis with Tim,’ I said.

‘No.’ He shook his head.

‘And you haven’t been working late.’ It was all making a horrible sort of sense.

‘No.’ He sighed, his shoulders dropping with acceptance.

‘Does Tim know?’ I asked.

‘Yes.’ I didn’t even look up.

‘And Louisa knows?’ I gripped my heels tightly and was vaguely aware of a buckle cutting into the flesh of my palm.

‘I think so.’ He nodded. ‘I mean, well, we do play tennis sometimes. Doubles. I – I’m not sure though.’

Was I happy? Louisa had wanted to know if I knew.

‘You’ve all been playing doubles together?’ I gulped, trying not to be sick.

He looked at me, eyebrows raised, breath caught in his throat. ‘Angela, don’t,’ he put a hand out towards my forearm.

‘Don’t you dare!’ I said, feeling the bile rise in my throat and pulling my arm away. ‘Don’t you dare touch me.’ Heel raised high above my head, I saw for a second how easy it would be. He was frozen and she was trapped in the back seat and Louboutins are beautifully made, I’m fairly sure they would do two skulls without breaking.

But, instead of seeing two bloody corpses, all I could see was Tim and Louisa laughing hysterically in their tennis whites after a game of doubles with Mark and Katie. While I sat at home, tapping away on my laptop, not eating and waiting for my cheating, lying, scumbag boyfriend.

Potential murder weapon in hand, I turned on my heel and started back across the car park. Mark was still pitifully calling my name as I charged through the French doors and across the dance floor, cutting a swathe through the tiny bridesmaids dancing to the poptastic disco. Tim and Louisa were standing by the dance floor cradling champagne, waiting for the DJ to announce their first dance, when Louisa saw me.

‘Angela,’ she said as I ploughed to a stop in front of them. Right away, I knew she knew.

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ I shouted. All concern for ruining her wedding was long gone. I had been completely betrayed by the people I trusted most in the world.

‘Angela, I – why don’t we —’ Tim reached out and placed his hand on my forearm. Before I knew what I was doing, I snatched my arm away and cracked his knuckles with my shoe.

‘Will you stop saying my name like it’s a bloody tranquillizer!’ I paused, gritting my teeth. ‘I have just caught Mark shagging your tennis buddy in the back of our car.’

If I didn’t have everyone’s attention before I broke the groom’s knuckles, I did now.

‘Oh, Angela,’ Louisa sobbed. ‘I tried to tell you, I just, I thought you must already know. You know, somehow, deep down.’

‘At what point did you think that? When I told you I was perfectly happy and was still sure I was marrying Mark? When I didn’t tell you my boyfriend was a cheating shit? Or when you first started playing doubles with him and that slag?’

Louisa burst into tears and turned to run out of the room, but her exit through the French doors was blocked by Mark. Still in his stained boxers, socks, and half buttoned-up shirt, he stood frozen under the gaze of three hundred wedding guests, most of whom had just about worked out what was happening. Finally remembering to breathe, I took a moment to observe the scene. Tim looked at me with pale terror as he clutched his bloody hand, Louisa was standing bawling in the middle of the dance floor, surrounded by crying children, and Mark, clutching at the doorframe as though it was all that was holding him up, stared at me in disbelief. I looked backwards towards the guests and saw my mum emerge from the crowd. She looked everyone up and down, paused, pursed her lips and walked right up to me. Loosening my white knuckles, she prised my Louboutins out of my left hand, then gripped it tightly in her own.

‘Come on,’ she said quietly, placing a hand on the small of my back and guiding me across the room. I couldn’t see anything but the floor in front of my feet, or hear any of the murmurings around me. All I knew was my mum’s hand and the gravel still stuck to my bare feet.

It must have been about five in the morning when I woke up. The room was so big and quiet and I could hear the bones of my bridesmaid dress scrunching into my ribs. I turned over and realized that lying next to me in the big beautiful bed wasn’t my fiancé, my Mark, but my mother. Her perfect wedding outfit was carefully folded over the back of a chair and I hesitated for a moment before looking down at what she was wearing instead. It’s a bit weird to see your mum wearing an old Blondie T-shirt and a pair of your boyfriend’s boxers. Ex-boyfriend. I sat up slowly and tried not to catch sight of myself in the mirror until I’d locked myself in the bathroom. My hair was a bird’s nest of slept-in chignon, my make-up smeared with sleep, tears and pillow creases and the parts of my dress that hadn’t already been torn or muddied, were twisted and creased up beyond all recognition.

Stripping myself of everything, earrings, necklace, engagement ring, I stepped into the giant shower and just let the water run. How had this happened? Destroying my best friend’s wedding aside, how had I not noticed that my boyfriend was cheating on me and had been doing so for so long and so openly that my friends all knew? It wasn’t just a quick shag, it was clearly serious. What would I do? Where would I go? As the shower stall steamed up and I lathered, rinsed and repeated, I tried to be rational. Keep a clear head in any situation. Mum always said it was one of our strengths.

I’d have to go home and get my stuff. Home. I supposed it wasn’t even my home any more. He’d probably move her in tomorrow. ‘Katie,’ said a little pixie-ish voice in my head. ‘Not “her”, it’s Katie.’

‘This shower feels amazing,’ I said out loud, pushing that voice out of my head as the hot, hot water streamed down from three different jets. It was as if none of it was real. If only I could live in a hotel. Not having to go back to that shit heap and rummage through my stuff like I was the one that had done something wrong. Jesus, the splitting of the CDs. I just couldn’t face it. A couple of renegade tears started to seep out of my eyes. If only I could stay in this hotel for ever and pretend none of it had happened.

Why not stay in a hotel?

Not this hotel, clearly. I had a strange feeling I wasn’t going to be terribly welcome at breakfast, but another hotel. Somewhere impersonal and wonderful where the staff’s only concern would be keeping me happy rather than whether or not I was going to ruin another gala event. I had a little bit of money, we’d been saving for my non-existent wedding for years, and it seemed fairly appropriate to tax Mark his share of the cash for shitting on me. My work was freelance, I had my passport, credit cards, driver’s license (no burglar was stealing my identity while I was away at a wedding for almost a week!) enough clothes, my favourite shoes, what else would I need? I definitely had enough stuff not to need to go home for a while. Screw the CDs even, I had my iPod. There was really no reason not to go, and God knows, I am the queen of talking myself out of anything even vaguely confrontational.

I forced myself out of the shower and into the bathroom. For a second my gaze rested on Mark’s wash bag, next to my engagement ring. A lovely leather piece I’d bought him last Christmas. He’s bound to want to come back for that, I thought as I slipped on my earrings, my necklace, it’s full of all his fancy shaving stuff his mum buys him for his birthday. For a moment I thought about filling it with shaving foam, but froze with a flashback as I picked up the can. Him, hunched over that cow, all sweaty and confused. Maybe I should throw it out of the window. Then I remembered him smiling at her. Smiling at her, in front of me, in those scummy boxer shorts.

And so I sat on the loo and pissed in the bag. It was the most disgusting thing I’d ever done, and I was so so proud. Once it was nicely ruined, I dropped in my engagement ring, zipped up the bag and left the bathroom.

‘Mum,’ I whispered, sitting beside her on the bed. ‘Mum, I’m off.’

She opened her eyes and looked a bit confused as she remembered everything, and then she looked at me as though she was going to commit me to the same home where she had stashed my nan.

‘What do you mean?’ she asked, sitting up, looking even more confused at the sight of her nightwear. ‘You don’t have to go anywhere because of that shit.’

It was the first time I’d heard her call Mark anything other than ‘darling boy’ or ‘that lovely Mark’, and I was quite touched.

‘I know,’ I nodded towards my packed travel bag. ‘But with the wedding and everything, I think I’d better get off early. Thing is, I thought I might nip off for a few days to sort myself out.’

‘Oh no,’ she said, taking my hand. ‘You’re just coming home with me and your father, he’s going to come and collect us later. You’ve done nothing wrong, you know. Well …’

‘I know, Mum,’ I said. ‘But I think it would do me good to get away. I’ve booked a taxi to the airport.’

She looked at me slightly oddly. ‘Really?’ she asked. ‘You’re really going somewhere on a plane?’

‘Yes,’ I said, standing up, clutching my bag.

‘Where are you going?’ she asked, looking at the clock. ‘Wouldn’t you rather just come home with me and your dad?’

‘Hmm,’ I pecked her on the cheek. ‘I think I’m actually going to go with my first idea.’

Mum shook her head. ‘But where is better than home at a time like this?’