The One Before The One. Katy Regan

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ only it were that simple,’ I say, in a you-wouldn’t-understand-you’re-only-seventeen kind of a way.

      But clearly she does understand, because then she says, ‘Caroline. How many times have you had that dress on?’

      ‘Why? What’s it to you?’

      ‘Come on, I just wanna know. How many times have you had it on in, say, the past six months?

      I don’t know how the wedding dress thing happened, it just did, a self-indulgent little ritual that got out of control. It was a bit like how some people feel the need to get all their hair hacked off when a relationship ends, or go out and get drunk.

      That dress was gorgeous, too, a vintage-style gown with silk sleeves sliced to the waist and a four foot train. I pictured myself walking down the aisle, smiling and radiant on my wedding day, arm in arm with Dad, who, for just that one day, would be there for me. Just me. I would be a success story. Because someone wanted me and loved me enough to marry me.

      But, in the end, that dress, which was supposed to represent My Future, just smells faintly of cigarette smoke and regret and sits at the top of my wardrobe only to be brought out after another romance bites the dust, so I can wallow in could-have-beens.

      Of course, Lexi’s right; the first time it came out was two months after Martin and I finished, which was one month after the wedding that never happened, which, like I say, was almost a year now and I’m still wracked with guilt …

      ‘Hello?’ Lexi says. She’s got her ‘computer generated’ voice on. ‘Calling Caroline Steele to planet Earth. Calling Caroline Marie Steele—’

      ‘Three times, okay? I’ve had the dress on three times.’

      She raises an eyebrow.

      ‘Okay, possibly five. And, yes, if you must know, I did once put it on and get drunk and listen to Pat Benitar because I was upset about Martin – but that wasn’t really why I had it on when you arrived.’

      ‘Right, got yer,’ says Lexi. ‘So who were you crying about, then?’

      Who was I crying about? It’s hard to tell. Since Martin and the first outing of the dress, there’s been a wake of casualties: Nathan – a Kiwi I met on a client do who I fancied like mad but who then asked me if I wanted to come and visit his mum in New Zealand three weeks after I started seeing him. I made a sharp exit in the opposite direction. There was Mark – I had hopes for him, could have really fallen for his green eyes and penchant for obscure French films, but then I realized he was just pretentious. In the end, I could no longer tolerate him calling me Carol-eeen (if he had actually been French that would have been fine, but he wasn’t, he was from Walsall). And of course there was Garf, lovely Garf, who I dumped at his sister’s wedding, which was held at Walthamstow Dogs Track (not that his family’s love of dog racing was a deal-breaker or anything). He was the sweetest of the lot and he could have really loved me, but I couldn’t love him, probably because I was already falling for someone else by then, I just didn’t know it yet.

      So, a pattern emerged. Every time a relationship ended, I would find myself getting sentimental and morose and drinking alone in my wedding dress. But really, I wasn’t upset about Nathan or Mark or Garf, I was just upset that, at thirty-two, I was no closer to finding The One, and asking myself whether I’d made a huge mistake letting Martin go. After all, I still loved him, even if he was a bit middle-aged, had over-bearing parents and could spend three hours making the perfect pesto. I just don’t know whether I was ever in love with him, that’s all, not after the first few years anyway. But the older I get and the more complicated life becomes, I am beginning to wonder whether I could settle for ‘love’ rather than ‘in love’, which everybody knows is the solid, reliable concrete that remains beneath your feet, when the sparkling snow has melted away.

      Still, I reasoned, it could be worse. At least I had the book club …

       CHAPTER SEVEN

      Toby leans coolly against my bedroom window frame, takes a slow, deep drag on his cigarette, his eyebrows smouldering as he does. I swear he’s putting that on now.

      ‘God, you really look like James Dean doing that.’

      ‘Do I?’ he says.

      ‘Yes, except for maybe the socks.’ I squint at his feet. ‘Are they actually South Park socks?’

      It’s a rare man that can pull off nudity avec South Park socks with all the style and nonchalance of a Hollywood sex god, but Toby Delaney manages to.

      I sit up in bed and pull the sheet up so my nipples don’t escape. It’s 8.08 p.m., still broad daylight outside, the hum of traffic from Battersea Park Road just audible, and Toby is smoking a post-coital cigarette out of my bedroom window. It’s something he’s done every other Wednesday for the past five months, a ritual of the ‘book club’. Except, it isn’t a book club at all. It’s more, well, it’s more of a fuck club. With just the two members: Toby and me.

      Rachel, Toby’s wife thinks it’s a book club. She thinks that every second Wednesday, Toby comes to my house in Battersea to discuss the naked prose of M. J. Hyland, when really, he’s just there to get naked with me.

      I sink further down into the duvet and take a moment to savour his physical form. I never know when it might be my last chance, after all. When all this might implode. When he, or I, decide we can’t do this any more. His long, slim legs, which drive me crazy, his bum, possibly less firm than it could be but that’s because he spends so much time sitting on it. Lazy bugger. His … Yep, he’s got a very nice one. Surely it spells trouble if you’re starting to find their flaccid penis attractive?

      My eyes move up his body to that flat, boyish belly of his, which he’s always stuffing but which never increases. It incites a sort of erotic envy in me. His chest, lean yet broad, that perfect smattering of darkish hair and then that bizarre, mutant third nipple, tiny like a baby’s, which apparently is very common and which I find thrilling because when he’s at work I know it’s there, under his shirt. Our little secret. And, finally, his face. The bit I crave the most when he’s not here: that gorgeous line from his Adam’s apple to his chin to his jaw, emphasized by a two-day shadow, which I know he’s kept for me because I’ve got a thing for facial hair. (A throwback from a crippling crush on Tom Selleck in Three Men and a Baby). The fine, distinguished nose and the sexy quiff of a fringe. Then the famous Delaney eyebrows, which I love and despise all at the same time because they give away all of his feelings. They frequently disappoint me.

      Toby sucks hard on his Lucky Strike.

      ‘So what did you tell your sister again?’ he asks.

      ‘That I was hosting a book club. That it would be full of geeks reading War and Peace and that she’d hate it.’

      Toby laughs.

      ‘Steele, you’re a genius. And did she buy it?’ He exhales the last of his cigarette and gets back into bed, slipping his cool, hard body next to mine.

      ‘Oh yeah, totally. She was like, “yawn” and other teenage expressions denoting boredom.’

      Toby smiles, amused, snuggles under the duvet and grabs my bum.

СКАЧАТЬ