Once in a Lifetime

‘Sure. I need to find Lizzie’s things.’

Lizzie’s coat was found in a heap on the floor under the table, but her bag was nowhere to be seen.

Lizzie was too out of it to be the slightest bit worried about this.

‘Cheap bag!’ she kept saying loudly. ‘Cheap bag.’

‘What’s inside it is what counts,’ Natalie said: ‘your wallet, keys and phone.’

‘Cheap, cheap–’

Finally, Natalie gave up looking. The club was heaving by now and she was tired. ‘Home,’ she said to Lizzie, then realised she couldn’t send Lizzie back to the flat she shared with Steve in that condition. ‘You’d better come with me.’

The next morning, Lizzie woke first and ran to the bathroom. Natalie could hear retching, and the bedroom reeked of stale alcohol. Even the bed smelled of boozy sweat. Natalie got up and began stripping off the sheets. She couldn’t wait to wash them, to get rid of the memory of last night. There had been something disturbing about seeing her friend in such a terrible state. Lizzie had been more than drunk, she was out of control. The pillowcase from her side of the bed was striped with make-up. Skin-cleansing hadn’t been high on the agenda when Natalie had finally got her back to the flat. She’d had enough trouble getting Lizzie into bed in the first place. It had taken a lot of cajoling. And then, in bed, Lizzie had shouted that nobody understood her and how horrible Natalie was being, when all she wanted was to have some fun. Then, suddenly, she’d lain down on the bed and fallen asleep in an instant.

‘Don’t do the bed,’ moaned Lizzie, staggering back into the bedroom looking like a representative of the undead. ‘I need to lie down, pleeese.’

‘You can lie down on the couch,’ Natalie said shortly. ‘This place stinks and I need to wash the sheets.’

‘Oh nooo.’ Lizzie lay down on the pile of dirty sheets and curled up into a ball. ‘I can lie here. I’ll wash them later.’

‘Later, if you remember,’ Natalie reminded her tartly, ‘you’re meeting Steve’s friend from San Diego. The one who went with them on the stag night–the wild one, remember? The one you were scared was going to take Steve to all manner of unsuitable clubs to meet unsuitable women.’

Lizzie was chalk white as it was, but at the mention of her fiancé, her face began to look even more ghostly. ‘Shit.’

‘You can say that again,’ Natalie said.

‘Don’t, please don’t,’ begged Lizzie.

‘Don’t what? Remind you about last night?’ Natalie thought of how she’d hauled Lizzie out of the club after giving up on the handbag, and of the people Lizzie had drunkenly bumped into on the way, threatening to start a fight over it, even though she was the one who’d bumped into them. Lizzie! Funny, normally gentle Lizzie.

It had been a nightmare. And then the guy, the guy Lizzie had been with, poor Steve totally forgotten. That was the worst.

‘What do you remember?’ Natalie demanded.

Lizzie covered her eyes with her hands. ‘Lots of it. Too much. I had far too much to drink–’

‘That’s not what I’m talking about.’

‘The guy at the bar, I kissed him–’

‘Kissed him! I thought you were going to devour him, Lizzie. You were glued to him and I had to practically drag you off. If anyone else had seen you and told Steve, can you imagine that?’ Natalie shook her head in disgust. ‘There’s drunk, Lizzie, and there’s crazy–and you were crazy.’

‘I know,’ Lizzie said brokenly. ‘It’s awful, I’m awful. And I promised I’d never, not after the last time–’ she stopped abruptly.

Startled, Natalie stared at her. ‘What last time?’

Lizzie hesitated before whispering: ‘The Christmas party at work. It was work people only, no partners, and there was this big joint being passed around and–Oh, Natalie, you don’t want to know.’

‘You slept with someone else?’ Natalie knew she sounded like the mother superior of a convent, but she couldn’t help it.

Lizzie didn’t reply and that made Natalie absolutely furious.

‘You did! You actually slept with someone because you were stoned, Lizzie, and that didn’t shock you enough, so you still went out on your hen night and got absolutely plastered. If I hadn’t found you, where would you be now? I’ll tell you: you’d be waking up in that guy’s bed–I doubt if you even know his name–and we’d have phoned the police because we thought you were in trouble, and everyone, including your fiancé, would be searching for you now, while you’d be holed up in bed with a hangover with a bloody stranger. That would wreck the Valentine’s Day wedding, for sure. Why would you do that? You don’t need to sleep around with strangers, you’ve got a man who loves you.’

‘Oh, shut up! I hate myself enough, I don’t need you hating me too!’ Lizzie screamed. She clambered to her feet, still bleary-eyed, clutching the sheets to her. ‘Why are you so bloody judgemental, anyway? It’s none of your business; I didn’t kiss your bloody boyfriend, did I? It’s only my life I’m fucking up!’

Suddenly, Natalie felt sorry for what she’d said. Lizzie was right; she was being judgemental and she didn’t know why, because lots of people went out and got terribly drunk on their hen nights. It was almost a rite of passage, wasn’t it? But this had been something worse. Natalie had never seen anyone she loved change so much under the influence of alcohol. Her father barely drank, Bess was the same, and even the boys didn’t drink to the extent that Lizzie had, although she knew many guys their age who did.

It had been part of the family ethos when they’d been growing up: treat alcohol with respect.

But it seemed that Lizzie’s family hadn’t given her the same message. Last night, Lizzie had been like another person: someone Natalie didn’t know and certainly didn’t like.

‘Sorry,’ Natalie said now, and sat down on the mattress. She felt weary after so few hours in bed. ‘I am your friend, Lizzie, but I wouldn’t be a proper friend if I pretended last night was normal or good. I’m not trying to take the moral high ground. You can sleep with who you like, but I can’t stand by and be your bridesmaid if you really don’t want to marry Steve. Why marry him if you want to sleep with other men?’

‘I do want to marry him!’ protested Lizzie. ‘I was drunk, it was a blip. Really.’

‘But–’

‘But nothing. I love Steve. Last night was stupid, that’s all. And he doesn’t need to know, does he?’

‘I suppose not.’ Natalie opened the drawer where she kept clean sheets. She couldn’t believe she was having this conversation with Lizzie. It was like discovering a totally different side to one of her oldest friends. She’d had no idea that Lizzie was capable of a one-night stand before her wedding, and then convincing herself it was all fine, as long as nobody found out. Natalie had found Lizzie’s drunken aggression frightening, but her cool ‘it doesn’t matter as long as nobody knows’ theory was even worse. Lizzie would be devastated if Steve slept with another woman. It wasn’t right not to care that she’d done the same.

‘Where’s my handbag?’ asked Lizzie, looking around the room.

‘You lost it,’ Natalie reminded her. ‘We looked everywhere, but couldn’t find it. You should cancel your credit card, actually.’

‘Oh shit, that’s my phone, my cards, everything!’ wailed Lizzie. ‘What am I going to tell Steve?’

Natalie stared blankly at her clean sheets. She liked the violet-sprigged ones best, and her fingers ran absently over the smooth percale. ‘I’m not sure what you should tell him,’ she said slowly.

‘I know.’ Lizzie sounded confident. ‘We’ll say you and I got totally plastered, we came back here and, even though I’d meant to go home in a taxi, I decided to stay because it was so late. OK?’

No, not OK at all, Natalie thought. But then, it wasn’t her job to fix Lizzie’s relationship or be her moral guardian. ‘OK,’ she said. But her insides felt like lead.

3 (#ulink_410f344f-7a2d-553a-87fd-976a7bf84bd0)

Learn how to say no. Practise. Say it at least once every day and you know what? You’ll get better at it.

Charlie sat down with a sigh and eased off her shoes. Blissful cool air enveloped her toes and she wriggled them. The Hatbox Café on Kenny’s second floor wasn’t too busy. The lunchtime rush was over and the afternoon tea people hadn’t yet started wandering in looking for the café’s speciality: pink fairycakes with quirky shoe designs in multi-coloured icing.

The Hatbox had retained its traditional appearance. Old Mr Kenny, who set the store up all those years ago, would have been right at home here. The fittings were still cherry wood and brass, the wallpaper a riot of bosomy Belle Époque girls spilling out of Grecian gowns, and the chairs were still upholstered in ruby velvet. But the staff no longer wore black and white with frilled caps, having long since moved into chic navy trousers and tops with waiter’s white aprons. The menu was similarly up-to-date.

Charlie’s lunch was a bottle of water and a brown bread sandwich. She’d brought a magazine she’d borrowed from the staff room. The magazine was cover. Once she realised nobody wanted to join her for lunch and that she’d have privacy, she took out her little notebook and pen and furtively began to write.

My mother’s a travel agent for guilt trips.

You think that’s a joke? Wrong.