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Four Hours Before I Do
It was calm and peaceful in the cupboard. There was something comforting about the close walls, the dim light and the quiet, the blissful quiet. Audrey only wished she’d stretched to a plate and a cup for her breakfast-to-go. When she’d picked up the coffee pot and the croissants she’d envisaged going back upstairs, where there were cups and saucers as part of the in-room tea-making facilities. Now she was getting crumbs on clean linen and had to make do with drinking her coffee from a dusty water glass she found at the back of a shelf.
How long could she stay in here before someone came looking for her? What would happen if she never came out? Even when people finally tracked her down, what if she just refused to open the door, claimed she was sick? She couldn’t walk up an aisle if she were sick. She looked around the cupboard at all the cleaning products and wondered how much bathroom cleaner she’d have to drink to make herself sick enough to postpone the wedding. Not sick enough to do any real, long-lasting harm, just ill enough to get a few days’ reprieve. Audrey covered her face with her hands – was she really thinking about drinking bathroom cleaner? She suspected these weren’t thoughts a bride should be having on her wedding day.
Audrey occasionally had these strange, intrusive thoughts, things she wouldn’t admit to anyone. Her mind sometimes ventured down a dark avenue without permission, and it scared her. It was like standing on a roof terrace, looking over the edge and wondering if the fall would be high enough to kill you. She wasn’t considering jumping, but still, she stepped back from the edge, just in case. Clara had once told her this was not abnormal; it even had a name – ‘high place phenomenon’. Your brain sees a dangerous situation, like the edge of a building, and it reacts by stepping back, but you interpret the action as the suppression of a desire to jump, as though there is a part of yourself you don’t trust not to do it. The French called it ‘l’appel du vide’, the call of the void.
In her early twenties, after everything that happened with Benedict, Audrey had developed some unhealthy, self-destructive tendencies. She always chose the bad boys to kiss at parties, men who were not kind or caring. She always drank a little bit too much, was the last to leave a party when she knew she should go home. She hadn’t looked after herself. That part of her life was over now. Since choosing lovely, decent, kind Josh, she had said goodbye to her darker, self-destructive side. He had saved her from herself. But what if that side wasn’t gone? What if she was still there, in that cupboard, about to answer the call of the void and ruin her wedding?
There was a sharp knock on the door of the linen cupboard, which made Audrey spill hot coffee down her dress.
‘Shit!’
‘Audrey?’ Hillary’s voice came through the door.
‘I’m not here,’ she said pathetically, but Hillary opened the door anyway. ‘Seriously? Do you have me microchipped or something?’
Hillary peered into the cupboard and sighed. ‘This is the location of choice for your wedding morning freak out?’ He moved a few towels aside and made a seat for himself on a box full of miniature shampoo bottles. He’d brought an espresso cup of black coffee with him.
‘How did you know I was here?’
‘You had that look in your eye at breakfast, like someone pulled the pin out of a hand grenade and passed it to you. There are only four potential hiding places on the ground floor, and this was the second one I knocked on.’
‘Why did you think I’d be freaking out? I’m not freaking out, I just wanted to have breakfast in peace. A quiet moment of reflection before, you know, committing myself to someone forever and ever and ever and ever. And ever.’ Audrey started hyperventilating. With Hillary now stealing half the air, there wasn’t enough oxygen in the cupboard.
Hillary leaned towards her and laid a hand on each shoulder, before pulling her into a hug.
‘Don’t you worry. Hillary’s here. We’ll sort it all out.’ The kindness in his voice, the unexpected earnestness, broke her. Audrey let out a single sob.
He held her for a moment before asking, ‘So, is this “croissants in the cupboard” routine a genuine cry for help, or are you furnishing me with material for my speech later?’ He let her go and rooted around in his jacket pocket before pulling out some nicotine gum.
Despite his acerbic manner, Hillary could be sensible and serious when he needed to be. He was the kind of person who, if you asked him for a drink when he’d just sat down, would call you a lazy cow and declare he wasn’t getting up again for love nor money. But if you phoned him at two in the morning and said you needed rescuing from a nightclub, he would cross London to get you, no questions asked.
‘Do you remember me telling you about Photo Booth Guy?’ Audrey said, shuffling on her own chair of toilet rolls to get more comfortable. ‘The guy I had that one amazing afternoon with, who never showed up for our date the next day?’
‘No,’ Hillary said. ‘Wait, is this the guy with the tattoo who you got obsessed with, who inspired you to get that horrible smudge on your shoulder?’
‘I can’t believe you don’t remember this, Hillary! It was about six years ago—’
‘There is a distant bell ringing,’ Hillary said, waving a hand at her. ‘Qu’est-que le relevance?’
‘He’s here. He’s Miranda’s date, Fred.’
‘That pale boy?’ Hillary said, his voice rising an octave.
‘Yes, him.’ Audrey frowned. ‘Do you think it means something, him showing up this weekend?’
Hillary paused, popped a second piece of gum into his mouth, then stood up a mop that had fallen across his lap.
‘I think there was always going to be something that threw you off today. If it wasn’t some spectre from your past showing up with good hair and beautiful cheekbones, it would have been something else.’ He fixed her with an unblinking gaze. ‘Do you think maybe you’re depressed, Auds?’
‘You always think everything boils down to people being depressed!’ Audrey cried. ‘I’m not depressed, this is the happiest day of my life.’ Then they looked at each other and both started snorting with laughter. That was the problem with Hillary, you could only have a serious conversation with him for so long, and then he would inevitably make you laugh. ‘I’m serious, Hillary. Help me. What am I supposed to do? Do you think him being here is a sign that I’m making a mistake?’
Hillary looked contemplative for a moment and made a ‘hmmm’ sound. Audrey held out her palms, inviting him to elaborate.
‘Did you ever hear the fairy tale about the princess who got everything she ever wanted?’
‘No,’ Audrey said, rolling her eyes.
