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“Well, after you left, everything went a bit shit. Firstly, no one knew where you were. Your mum and dad wouldn’t tell Freddy where you’d gone. He was going crazy trying to find you. I mean, he may have had your best intentions in mind when he broke up with you, but it didn’t take him long to put his own needs first again, and what he needed was you. But you were gone. Poof, in a puff of smoke.” She waves her hand like a magician and sways in her seat, giving me an incredibly unimpressed look.
“Obviously I couldn’t help, because you dumped me too. So there we all were, wondering what had happened. Whatever your parents knew, they weren’t sharing. Freddy pretty much gave up everything. We all know he’s the one that kept that garage going, but one day he just didn’t pitch up, nor the next, nor the day after. He said he needed time to sort himself out. So off he went as well, leaving Charles with a business he could no longer run by himself.”
A wave of sick remorse washes over me. I’m a bitch. I don’t even know why these people still want to talk to me.
I don’t want to talk to me right now.
“So anyway,” she continues. “Henry went to Japan to try to sell the business, the car prototype or something, I don’t really understand. There he met Mai and she came over eventually when they realised it was a love thing not a business thing; that and the fact she was totally knocked up by that point. Finally, Freddy came home. He was serious, determined, and no one was ever allowed to mention you. He basically bought the business but over a set amount of years.”
“No one was allowed to talk about me?” I shouldn’t be surprised, at all.
“No, Miss Centre of the Universe.”
“And what then?”
“Then you turned up and Freddy found his way to your door about five minutes after I told him I’d seen you. So I’m guessing not talking about you all those years really paid off.”
I sit in silence for a moment, thinking all this through. “I’m sorry, Dani, you were my best friend, and I shouldn’t have acted like that.”
“I am your best friend, and no, you shouldn’t have. Bitch.”
“Fuck face.”
We grin at each other until Dani’s attention is caught at the bar. “Oh fuck. I hope Mai turns up soon, otherwise I will be left here by myself.”
“What do you mean?” I spin to investigate and find Freddy across the room. His tall body is leant over the smooth wood of the bar as he speaks into the barmaid’s ear to get a drink.
My stomach does an all-out gold standard somersault.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I shrug nonchalantly, clutching hold of my glass just a fraction tighter.
To my credit,I manage to keep my back turned and my feet firmly in place for an hour after Freddy’s arrival, which was closely followed by Mai, but now I am so desperate for a wee my bladder could explode.
“Okay, where is he?” I whisper across the table. I think I’m whispering but I’ve been party to three bottles of wine and there is no quiet mode after that amount has been consumed.
Dani and Mai both roll their eyes in unison. “Still standing by the bar, just like he was fifteen minutes ago when you last asked.” Dani laughs with her words.
“I need to wee. I can’t hold it any longer. Where’s the loo?”
Dani smirks. “It’s just around there.” She motions to a path that takes me in front of the bar, and directly past Freddy. “Or there’s a flowerpot outside, should you need it.”
“No, not at all.”
Wobbling up from my seat, I adjust my jeans and make sure to tuck in all my squidgy bits. I breathe out a dramatic sigh of relief when I see that Freddy has his back turned to me. I walk past, cool as a cucumber, or some other refrigerated vegetable, and keep my eyes down and focused on my feet and the simple task of not tripping up. I’m nearly past him when I do something completely ridiculous. I walk past, relatively unseen, and decide to reach my hand out and graze my fingers against his.
I don’t stop. I just keep walking, walking, walking, walking until I reach the toilet, which is right back where I started. Dani is chuckling away to herself as Mai shakes her head at the immaturity of it all. I’ve just walked around a circular bar.
It’s no good, I am going to wet myself. Waving a two finger salute at Dani, I duck into the loo and admire the graffiti while I gain some measure of relief. I scan the words scratched into the old paintwork searching for any reference to Hot Freddy Bale Sex but there isn’t any.
I’m pretty sure that if I’d hung around the village long enough after turning eighteen, I would have eventually written something on there.
Big Boner Bale. Something equally mature.
I study myself in the mirror as I wash my hands and I’m having some trouble recognising the woman looking back at me. With thirty creeping up on me, the changes are starting to show. Faint crinkles spread around my eyes when I smile. There is a permanent crease between my brow; and my body, which has always been curvy, now refuses to even try to lose a pound or two. It wants to keep them all. Greedy bastard.
Thing is, and it’s the bitch of the situation, inside I still feel like the eighteen-year-old girl who was last here.
I take in a deep breath — it does help the muffin top — and shake my hair out over my shoulders. My face is flushed from the wine, and I know I need to get home. I’ve got to get everything ready for school and I can’t leave Mum for much longer. It’s responsibilities like this that make me lock the eighteen-year-old deep inside me and won’t let her out to play, otherwise I’d never get home to be the responsible adult I know I need to be.
