Before I Do(27)
“What’s wrong?” Brian asked, sounding genuinely concerned as he took in her expression.
She should have slammed down the handset, made up an excuse, composed herself, but she just stood there with it clasped in her hand, feeling like a rabbit caught in the headlights of a huge truck.
Brian’s eyes narrowed. He walked across the kitchen and took the handset out of her hand. She could have held on or made a sound to warn Vivien, but she did neither of these things. She just let the phone slip out of her palm into his. As Brian held it to his ear, she saw his face harden, his eyebrows draw into a frown. But he was frowning at Audrey, at her strange behavior.
“Why did you make that face, hearing your mother talk to her friend on the phone?” he asked, his voice breaking as he put the receiver back. Audrey shook her head.
“No reason,” she said, her voice a whisper, and now they both knew she was lying.
“How long has it been going on between them?” Brian asked slowly. He looked so hurt, discovering her a conspirator.
“It’s nothing to do with me,” Audrey said. And then dramatically fled upstairs to her room, put some music on her headphones, and buried herself under the duvet.
* * *
When she ventured downstairs later that evening, she found her mother sitting at the kitchen table, red-eyed.
“He’s gone, Brian’s gone.”
“What? Why?” Audrey asked, every limb feeling leaden with shame.
“He heard me talking to Benedict on the phone. We were only talking, we’re friends. I don’t know why he thought it was something else . . .” And then her words jumbled into tears.
Audrey sat down on the floor and gave her mother a hug, guilt cutting at her bones. She looked across at the kitchen table and had a distinct flash of déjà vu to a dimly remembered conversation sixteen years earlier over herbed roast potatoes. To the last time she’d ruined her mother’s life by failing to keep her secrets.
* * *
Brian moved out and Vivien took to her bed. She canceled rehearsals for the play she was opening in a month’s time. She saw no one, even when the frantic director came knocking. Audrey called Brian. “Won’t you talk to her, please?”
“Audrey, you will always be a daughter to me, always, but don’t involve yourself in this. There’s history here.”
This wasn’t the first time. Did that make it better or worse?
Audrey hoped their separation might be temporary, but then, one Sunday Audrey opened the door to find Benedict, with a large suitcase in each hand.
“Hello?” she said, her face full of confusion. She was wearing a bed shirt with no bra, and Benedict’s eyes fell briefly to her chest. She reached a hand up to her shoulder, covering herself with one arm. “What are you doing here?”
His eyes were now on her face, and she wondered if his eyeline had been accidental.
“Your mother needs me,” he said, bringing his cases into the hall.
Audrey left him by the door, charging up the stairs and bursting into her mother’s bedroom.
“Why is he here?” she hissed. Her mother was out of bed, doing her hair at the dressing table. It was the first time she had gotten dressed in days.
“Oh, has Benedict arrived?” she asked, pinning a stray piece of hair at the nape of her neck.
“With suitcases,” Audrey said, in a way that made “suitcases” sound like a dirty word.
Vivien turned to her daughter, taking in her bewildered expression. “Brian isn’t coming back. You know I’m no good on my own. Benedict is going to keep me company for a few weeks. I thought you’d be pleased, not having to babysit me anymore.”
“It’s not babysitting, I don’t mind. I love it when it’s just the two of us.”
“I’m sorry, darling,” said Vivien, looking anything but sorry.
“Well, you could have checked with me first. I live here too,” Audrey said, pacing up and down the bedroom.
“It is my house,” said Vivien sharply. “You’re an adult now. You can go and live in the halls with all the other students if you don’t like my arrangements.”
“Why can’t you just be on your own for a bit?” Audrey changed tack, pleading now.
“It’s not how I’m built, Audrey. You know it’s not how I’m built.”
Audrey felt the weight of this settle in her chest. Falling in love seemed like a dangerous thing. Every time it happened to her mother, Audrey lost her family or her home. Love was not safe and warm, it was a wild wind that could rip your life apart.
16
Five Hours Before I Do
Audrey woke up alone, sweating, her hair matted and damp against her forehead. It took her a moment to realize where she was. Picking up her phone, she saw it was nine thirty on the twenty-fifth of June. The date written on her marriage plate, on the invitations, and on the laminated wedding-day schedule. The date she would celebrate as her anniversary for years and decades to come.
Her mind felt like stewed soup, claggy with a cocktail of emotions and vodka. Vivien had been right about one thing: spirits were a bad idea. She could still taste the fuzz of alcohol on her tongue. She’d gone to sleep in a bad mood and the feeling hadn’t dissipated. The shock of seeing Fred at the rehearsal dinner had passed, and now she just felt annoyed that he was here, saying all these things to her that she didn’t need to know. It might have seemed charming in the moonlight and the rain, but in the sharp light of day it felt selfish and confusing for him to say anything—especially about posting a note for her in every astronomy department in London. There was something in this detail, that he had listened and remembered, that he had made such an effort to look for her . . . If she had only passed that exam, gotten into that course, would she have found one of his notes? What if, what if, what if.