The cake was a triumph. It stood in the centre of the table, surrounded by all the discarded paraphernalia of a full-on party. Half-empty plates of gone-cold sausage rolls, tiny triangular sandwiches with indeterminate fillings, the bread starting to curl at the corners, and several lipstick-stained wine glasses, abandoned because no one could remember whose was whose and it was just so much easier to go and find a clean one.
Nicci had to admit that, despite her misgivings, the cake had turned out to be all that Jilly had promised it would be, and more. Her friend had done a fantastic job. It was a big, square, impressively ornate not-quite-wedding cake, iced in white and wrapped around with a wide band of blood-red ribbon. The scattered roses beautifully arranged in the corners, each one handmade with skill, determination and a generous helping of sugar paste, were surrounded by symbolic – perhaps rather too obviously symbolic – rings of spiky icing thorns. And right in the middle, two little icing people, crafted to the last detail, with even their hair exactly the right colour, sat very slightly apart, not touching at all, their backs turned tellingly towards each other.
It was the perfect cake for the occasion. It was just a shame that the occasion itself was so far from perfect. In fact, if she really thought about it and stopped trying to plaster a phoney smile on her face, Nicci would have to say that it was probably one of the worst occasions of her entire thirty-three-year-old life.
‘Enjoying yourself?’ Jilly shouted, pushing her way towards her through the crowd and trying to make herself heard above the bumping, thumping music that someone, in their attempt to jolly things along, had turned up way too loud.
Nicci nodded, not quite trusting herself to speak.
‘Oh, come on, Nic. Chin up. This day could be a real turning point for you,’ Jilly went on, dropping her voice as the CD moved on to a slower, quieter track. ‘Your new life starts right here, right now. You’ve got your freedom back. You can start letting your hair down again and having some fun. And that has to be celebrated, surely? Well, maybe not celebrated exactly, but certainly marked.’ And then she burst into a fit of Rioja-fuelled giggles and slung her arm wildly about Nicci’s shoulders. ‘Marked! That’s a good one. Get it? Or un-Marked, more like!’
Nicci bunched her fists and closed her eyes, and squeezed all four up as tightly as she could. She didn’t want to be un-Marked, but there didn’t seem to be anything she could do about it. This was Mark’s divorce. Not hers. It was not what she had wanted at all, but it was racing along so quickly now, completely out of her hands, as if she was on a runaway train that had somehow set off without its driver, and she had no idea how to stop it. But she was definitely not going to cry. Not if she could help it anyway. Not now, in front of everybody, not when they had all tried so hard to get her into the party mood. Crying could wait until later, after they’d all gone home, when she was alone in bed and gazing at the empty space beside her where Mark had always been.
‘I declare this party a man-free zone!’ Jilly’s voice rose above the hubble-bubble chatter of slightly tipsy bare-shouldered female bodies, all swaying awkwardly together to the romantic and not entirely appropriate made-for-two music that wafted through the semi-darkness from the other side of the room.
‘Not only the party. The world!’ a high-pitched voice she couldn’t quite recognise shouted in reply, and a great cheer went up into the air, along with a champagne cork, an explosion of party popper streamers, and a pair of skimpy leopard-print knickers. God knows who they belonged to!
They were all only trying to do what they thought was the right thing. Nicci knew that. These girls had been her friends for ages, some of them since school. Together through thick and thin, through hockey fields, and painful periods, and silly diets that never worked, doodling their way through double maths, and sobbing in the loos together over boys who, looking back, she knew had absolutely never been worth it. Her friends. She loved them all, and they were all here tonight to support her, to show solidarity, and to try to help her, or that’s what they’d said anyway, every one of them, as if they were reading from the same clichéd script, as they’d turned up on her doorstep, one by one, shivering in their party frocks, with their bottles of cheap plonk and their forced Who needs men anyway? faces.
But they were here to help her do what exactly? Celebrate? Cheer up? Move on? Forget? Any one of the above. Or all of them, probably, with Get Drunk thrown in for good measure. Jilly even made it sound like regaining her freedom was a good thing, but all freedom meant was that from now on she was on her own. Mark was gone. From her house, her bed, her life. And it was looking horribly like there was no going back.
He had taken the first step towards making it a formal ending. It wasn’t just a mistake any more, a bad patch to be got through, one of those it was still possible to recover from. The decree nisi told her that. It had arrived on Wednesday and was now hidden away in the top drawer of the sideboard, having been read and reread and then tucked back inside its long flat envelope, along with the latest exorbitant bill from her solicitor. And just knowing it was there made it hard to think, or care, about pretty much anything else. How had it come to this? That a once loving and passionate marriage had gone so badly wrong, had dwindled away to almost nothing, and neither of them had done a thing to hold on to it?
‘Come on, Nic. Time to cut your cake!’ Jilly weaved her way towards her from the kitchen, brandishing a rather scary-looking carving knife and a teetering pile of assorted plates, stopping as she reached the CD player to turn the volume down. ‘And for you to make a wish.’
‘It’s not my birthday. You’ll be bringing out candles and a box of matches next!’
‘You are quite right. It is not your birthday.’ Jilly hiccupped a little, lifting her hand to cover her mouth, giggled, and had another try. ‘This is a far more momentous and auspicious occasion than a plain old birthday, which is, after all, something all of us have every year, and most of us over the age of thirty are starting to wish we didn’t. So, I think this calls for more than one plain old birthday-style wish, don’t you? I hereby appoint myself as your fairy godmother…’
‘Oh, get on with it!’ someone shouted from the back.
‘Okay, okay. So, as I was saying before I was so – hic – rudely interrupted, I am your fairy godmother, and this is my magic wand…’ Everyone dodged out of the way as Jilly waved the knife around her head three times, wobbled a bit, and almost dropped the plates which rattled ominously against each other in her other hand as she finally lowered them to the table. ‘And I am granting you not one, not two, but three wishes. So, come on, cut the cake and wish away, and then we can get back to the important business of having a good time.’
Nicci took a deep breath. A good time? How was she supposed to have a good time? This wasn’t another of those wild hen parties or nightclub jaunts they’d enjoyed together so often over the years. The ones where they’d all laughed and danced and had too much to drink, without a care in the world. The sort she could stagger away from, knowing her husband would be there outside, waiting to drive her home, as he always was. There to snuggle up to in bed afterwards, to hold her head if she was a teeny bit sick, and then bring her a cup of tea and a couple of aspirins in the morning. No, this was about as far from one of those fun-filled parties as she could possibly imagine.
And as she looked around the room, it struck her that this was the first and only party she had ever held in this house where Mark hadn’t been right here by her side. So, okay, he would probably have been muttering about the cost of the food or worrying that the noise might be upsetting the neighbours, but he would have been here. Quietly taking care of things, and taking care of her. And now he wasn’t, and it was looking like he might never be again.
There was no reliable, dependable Mark to lean on this time. Had she really called him boring? Actually said it to his face? Honestly