St Mary’s had been bombed in the war so, like Coventry Cathedral (most famously), it was one of those amazing pieces of ecclesiastical architecture that was part original structure and part modern addition, and both old and new parts of St Mary’s were beautiful. To the northern end, it was intact gothic splendour; to the southern it was stunningly modern, with a dazzling glass and steel annexe. The entrance hall was gorgeous. At the original end of the cathedral, it had thick stone walls, stained glass windows and a good old proper echo; my heels click-clacking on the stone paving underfoot made a wonderful sound.
I’d paid the rubbish taxi driver and Freya and I had both dashed here, across the pavement, with the umbrella little more than useless in the wind which was stronger than I’d forecast. It was pelting it down. Raindrops the size of fifty pence pieces made us sodden, instantly. But, we’d laughed once we’d got inside like people do when they escape from the rain into somewhere warm and dry. And we did that thing where we kind of shook ourselves down, like dogs. Very attractive and highly groomed dogs, I should add. We had both scrubbed up extremely well, and a little damp weather would not dampen our mother and daughter glossy glow.
We stood there, for a few seconds, and I removed my cape. It was packed in that lobby area. Dozens of black gowns mingled with suits and lovely dresses of all colours. People chatted and put their arms round each other and laughed and took photos. We were handed an order of service by someone and Freya had a quick chat with a boy who’d been in her year. I took it all in. I’d had a graduation, too, at Brighton Poly, once upon a million years ago. Mum and Dad had come of course and bickered all the way through it, but it had been lovely – a few of us had gone out afterwards and had a meal and stayed in a hotel. Gabby had come down for it, too. Who would have thought, all these years later, she’d be coming to the graduation of her best friend’s daughter, as her best friend’s ex-husband’s lover. Complicated, eh? Jeremy Kyle would be proud.
A large black umbrella, glistening wet and dripping with rain water, thrust itself into the throng. ‘Sorry, sorry,’ said a loud booming voice. Jeff. He stepped into the crowd in a grey suit and a very shiny pair of shoes, the bottom of his trousers legs two inches soaked. He spotted me and gave a sheepish smile, then stepped forward to hug Freya.
‘Ugh, Dad, you’re all wet.’
‘Blasted car broke down yesterday so we had to get the Tube. We got bloody drenched walking from High Street Ken.’ He flicked rainwater from each shoulder. Some landed on my dress. ‘Daryl.’
‘Jeff.’ I hated seeing him now. It gave me a horrible jolt, each time. ‘How are you?’ I asked, formally.
‘Good. You? You look well.’ He gave me a surreptitious look up and down. Is that what he used to do to Gabby, all those times she came round? I wondered. Thinking no one would notice. Well, I hadn’t, had I?
‘You sound surprised.’ He looked quite surprised, too. I don’t think he was expecting to see me in such a show-stopping, curve-enhancing dress.
‘No… I’m not surprised, of course I’m not, I…’
I cut through his bluster. ‘Well, I am well. Thank you.’ I knew I looked great. How I felt was harder to pin down. I felt sick, nervous, terrified, proud, defiant, regretful, determined and resolute. I wasn’t sure in which order; it was quite a quagmire. In summary, I was hardly at ease, but I hoped I could front it out.
And then she appeared. A little windswept and buffeted, her hair a little damp, but there was Gabby in a pale green, jersey wrap dress. It hung like a dream; it had sheer, gossamer sleeves. Her hair was down and flowing over her shoulders (she never wore it up. It was ‘a waste’, she always said). She had bare legs and was wearing those nude platforms that used to be everywhere. Not quite on trend, Gabs, I thought, a little bitchily, but hey, she brought it out in me.
‘Hello,’ she said, awkwardly, in a very un-Gabby sounding voice, looking at me from beneath her fringe. She was holding a ruby-red wool coat over her arm; she must have taken it off just before she came in, for maximum outfit impact. Typical Gabby. Freya squeezed my arm.
‘Hello,’ I replied, struggling to make my voice a little louder than hers.
Gabby couldn’t look me in the eye. She was definitely hiding under that flicky, five-varying-shades-of-caramel fringe. Her blue eyes were darting, nervous. She looked shocked to see me, somehow, although of course she knew I’d be there. It’s weird when you haven’t seen someone for such a long time; you marry what you see now with what you remember. It hadn’t been that long, but she did look slightly different – slightly more hollow around the eyes, less firm at the jaw, more gaunt in the face, somehow. Well, age was catching up with us all, slowly and surely and she was probably up all night, shagging Jeff… She was good at sex, she’d always told me so. We used to laugh about it. She had quite the moves, she’d told me, and they were really good ones. Now Jeff was getting all her expertise. Well, good luck to them. Let them get their rocks off night after night; I didn’t care any more.
I suddenly felt brave again. I was the wronged party; I wasn’t the perpetrator. I wasn’t going to cower away.
‘How are you?’ A little stilted, granted. But I asked the question.
‘Good, thanks. How are you?’ Also very stilted and uncomfortable, but she sounded more stilted and looked more uncomfortable than me, which was something.
‘I’m really well,’ I said. What else could I say? That I’d cried for three months into leftover lasagne and two-for-the-price-of-one gin? That at one time I’d wanted to kill both of them? That I was now – despite myself – back on the dating scene, but it was going really, really badly? Let me see, I’d embarrassed myself with my next door neighbour; I’d had a date with some kind of man-boy around town who wasn’t a very good kisser; and I’d been propositioned by a sleaze in a car park after mistakenly flirting with him all night. Oh, my old friend, it was all going swimmingly. Really, really well.
It was actually quite funny, in a black comedy-esque warped way, and once upon a time Gabby would have known all of this anyway, in the days when we told each other everything. If Jeff had gone off with someone else, and not her, and I was single and dating, the events of this week would have been discussed for hours, especially what had happened with Will. We would have sat in her conservatory, or mine, scoffing biscuits and drinking cups of coffee or glasses of wine, and going over every single minute detail again and again. Now, she knew nothing about me.
I realised I was shaking, slightly. I hoped she couldn’t tell. But I’d told Freya I was going to make her proud so I was going to have to continue to woman up. I spoke again, louder and more confidently this time.
‘I’m actually really well,’ I said, in a clear, loud voice. ‘Better than I’ve ever been, actually.’ There, that told her. Jeff’s ears pricked up, too, and Freya squeezed my arm again, encouragingly.
‘Great,’ said Gabby and she turned to Jeff with an icy smile and with a look on her face that seemed to be willing him to say something, anything. She can’t handle it, can she? I thought. She can’t handle that I’m here, right in front of her, telling her I’m doing very okay, actually, and reminding her what a bloody awful person she is. She may think she got away unscathed, with her new man and her new life and her hunky-dory existence – all flicky hair and dinner parties and lunches at the golf club, no doubt – but I was here to remind her she was one of the worst people in the world; a woman who thought it was okay to steal her best friend’s husband.
‘Very busy, isn’t it?’ said Jeff, catching her silent drift and making very obvious small talk. ‘Quite a crowd, darling,’ he added, to Gabby, and I nearly snorted with derision. ‘Darling!’ He used to call me ‘darling.’ It was an endearment that meant absolutely nothing.
‘Oh, here’s Hannah,’ said Freya. Hannah’s parents arrived under an umbrella even bigger than Jeff’s, but looked considerably wetter. Hannah’s dad was a balding man with a slight stoop; her mum a stunning woman in her late thirties, who looked like she could pass for a Hollywood movie star. Hannah emerged from between them.
‘Hannah!’ shrieked Freya. Hannah was shorter than Freya, and very pretty, with long brown hair, and Freya squeezed her tight the way teenage girls do, like they’re going to crush all the air out of them. Jeff and Gabby stepped forward, in readiness for hand-shaking and air kissing and Freya started introducing everyone. ‘… And these are my parents, Jeff and Daryl,’ she said, when she got to that point, ‘And this is Gabby… erm… Dad’s girlfriend? Partner?’
‘Girlfriend,’ said Gabby, stepping forward and proffering her hand to each of Hannah’s parents. ‘Partner sounds deathly dull and business-like, doesn’t it? Or something people who hate each other call themselves.’ She risked a quick glance at me. She’d made this joke before, many a time. For the first time in our lives I didn’t laugh.
‘My wife and I came from the Tube,’ said Brian, Hannah’s dad. ‘It’s chucking it down out there.’
‘I’ve never seen anything like it,’ agreed Jeff. ‘Stair rods.’ Oh, how the English liked to talk about the weather; I’d made a career on it.
They nodded sagely at each other, like two old duffers. Brian was not a very attractive man, though he seemed nice enough, and Jeff was less and less attractive to me each time I saw him, which wasn’t a lot, these days. Will was better than both of them put together. Will! Why was I thinking about Will? I had to forget about Will. And fast. It was tricky though, now I had that kiss in my brain forevermore, like a tattoo that could never be lasered off. Oh god. I really, really liked him. I wished I didn’t but I did. Could anything be salvaged? Should I pop over, tomorrow sometime perhaps, and have a chat with him? Clear the air. Or should I just leave things as they were: a big barrel of neighbourly awkwardness and eternal cringing?
‘We’re going in,’ said Freya.
I pulled myself together and looked around me. The lobby was slowly emptying out and people were shuffling through a door at one end.
‘Fantastic.’ Tears of pride were already pricking at my eyes.
‘Mum!’
‘I’ll behave myself, I promise.’
We filed in through the door and I almost exclaimed out loud when I saw how beautiful it was inside the main body of the cathedral. The end we arrived in had not been touched by Hitler’s bombs and was in its original, stone glory. High cavernous, vaulted ceiling. Ornate wooden pews. Magnificent stained glass windows with glinting panes of every colour. But at the top, where Freya would be seated, the stonework fell away, to be replaced by a steel and glass atrium with floor to ceiling windows that glinted in the soft lighting. It really was incredible.
‘See you later, Mum.’
Freya left us and walked with Hannah to her seat, located in one of two blocks either side of a wooden lectern, currently un-manned.
We funnelled into the rows of seats for spectators. Somehow, as we trooped through the cathedral, our heels echoing on the stone floor, I ended up walking behind Gabby and Jeff, and I had to reluctantly take the chair next to hers. As we sat down, she immediately took Jeff’s hand and turned to talk to him. Okay, so that was how it was going to be – she was going to pretty much ignore me. Well, fine with me; I certainly didn’t want to make idle chitchat and share tissues with her as my daughter received her degree. To my left was a lovely-looking elderly lady with a bag on her lap who offered me an extra-strong mint. I took one gratefully and smiled at her.
‘You here on your own?’ she ventured.
‘Pretty much.’
‘Single mum?’ she asked, in the blunt way lovely old ladies sometimes do.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Single mum.’
‘You must be very proud.’
Yes, I am.’ I wondered if she meant of Freya, or of me. I decided she meant both.
The room – a bustle of chatter and flapping of coats and crossing of legs and fidgeting and hair smoothing and toothy grinning and the rustle of orders of service – fell to a hush as the Dean approached the lectern. He waffled on a bit about Smith College and its fine tradition and its fine and upstanding students – I was a little distracted by his hair, which looked like a bird had tried to make off with it just before he took to the lectern – then the ceremony started. Boy, it was long. Me and my new friend polished off the whole packet of mints and moved onto Fruit Polos. Our hands were worn out with clapping – well, mine were. Remember at school, when they made you tap your palm with two fingers, so it would be quieter? I wished I could have done that; my hands were getting quite chapped. All the time, Gabby had her body turned towards Jeff.
At last, Hannah was called; Brian and Movie Star clapped enthusiastically. And then, finally, Freya’s name was read out. Freya Williams – my baby girl. She was grinning from ear to ear when she received her scroll and shook hands with the Dean. And I was absolutely bursting with pride. I knew my eyes would be shining with tears, but I managed to contain them so they didn’t spill down my cheeks, and as Freya looked out across the audience on the way back to her seat, she caught my eye and I gave her an excited thumbs up. She’d done it. She had graduated and at this very moment all other thoughts flew away – Jeff, Gabby …Will, no don’t go, there, please… and I was completely and utterly happy. My girl.
My elderly friend handed me a tissue.
‘Well done,’ she said, as I was leaning forward to take it from her packet. Jeff leant forward too, and with his eyes glistening, gave me small smile.
Another half an hour later – during which the old lady’s grandson graduated and she actually stood up and cheered – and it was all done. All two hundred and eighty economics students from Smith had graduated. Now all I had to get through was the celebratory dinner at Caspar’s, where I would have to actually talk to my enemies. Small talk, that’s all I could bear. It would have to be the smallest of small talk and I was sure Jeff and Gabby would be happy to oblige; nobody would want to get onto any big topics – far too dangerous.
At least there would be wine.
I could do it, I thought, as we rose from our seats and filed out of the cathedral.
I had to, for Freya’s sake.