Before I Do(41)

Audrey shook her head. Why was she endowing his words with some kind of prophetic significance? She needed to focus on happier things. She scrolled to one of her favorite photos, saved on her phone. It was her, aged ten, at her mother’s wedding to Brian. She was holding both their hands; Brian was looking at Vivien, but Vivien’s eyes were on Audrey, and she looked besotted. Audrey’s arms began to itch again. She turned off her phone and tossed it down onto the bath mat. No more scrolling today. She loved Josh, she wanted to marry Josh; everything else was just messing with her head.

She had a shower and washed her hair, the soapy water stinging the rope burn on her neck. Emerging from the steamy bathroom, Audrey found Clara sitting on the bed attached to a double breast pump.

“Wow,” Audrey said, “that is . . . loud.”

“Sorry, sorry, I know, baby stuff, ugh. I’m only feeding them a couple of times a night, so I hoped my boobs wouldn’t notice, but apparently, they have. I’ll just drain them now and then I’ll be all yours.”

“Thank you for being here, Clara,” said Audrey, sitting down next to her friend and marveling at the strange machine currently sucking milk into two small bottles with a strange voom, voom, voom sound. “I know it hasn’t been easy for you to get away.”

Audrey noticed the lines beneath her friend’s eyes, the stray grays in her hair that had not been colored in, the lines on her forehead that remained even when her face was not in motion.

“It looks hard, this mothering thing,” she said gently.

Clara stifled a sob. “Don’t! You’ll set me off. My hormones mean I’m on the edge of crying whenever I pump.”

“You had twins, seven months ago,” Audrey said. “I wouldn’t have held it against you if you’d said no to being my maid of honor.”

“I would have held it against me,” Clara said, running a finger beneath each eye to stop her mascara from smudging. “You don’t have babies and then bail on your friends when they need you. I’m not going to be that person.” She shook her head. “Besides, you’re making out like it’s a chore to be here—I got an uninterrupted night of sleep last night, I’m living the dream.” And then she burst into tears. “I miss them so much.” And then she laughed through the tears. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know I was going to miss them like this. When I’m with them, they need me constantly, it makes me feel like I’ve lost who I am. Then, when I’m without them, it’s like a part of me is missing. I can’t even think about going back to work in a few months. How am I going to do the job I used to do, going to gigs all night? I just can’t see how it’s going to work.”

“I think it’s probably normal to feel that way, and you are doing an amazing job.” Audrey rubbed her friend’s shoulder. “Maybe work will let you evolve your role, go to less gigs?”

“You know what these musicians are like, they expect you to be available all hours.”

Audrey felt for her. She knew it was not going to be easy for Clara to do her job nine to five, and Clara loved her job—it was her identity, or at least, it had been.

“I know what will cheer you up. Shall I get the dress out?”

“Yes, yes, yes!” Clara said, clapping her hands, her face brightening.

Audrey walked over to the heavy-duty white dry-cleaning bag hanging on the back of the closet door and carefully pulled the zipper. Inside, the dress was wrapped in cream tissue paper; just the sound of the paper made Audrey feel like a child on Christmas Day. It was one of her mother’s dresses, the one she’d worn to marry Audrey’s father.

“Wow,” said Clara. “You’re lucky your mum kept it so well.”

Clara detached herself from the milking machine and screwed tops onto the plastic milk bottles. Then she pulled up her blouse and helped Audrey take the dress from its paper-and-plastic tomb. It was a cream silk fitted gown with a cowl neckline and a low back, with tiny silk buttons all the way to the floor. Audrey had deliberated over hundreds of different dresses. In the face of such overwhelming choice, she’d opted for one that meant something. This dress had a connection to both her parents, on a day when only one of them could be here.

They laid the dress on the bed. Clara pulled up a predesigned wedding-day playlist on her phone, then she set about drying and styling Audrey’s hair in front of the dressing-table mirror. As she tonged pieces into loose curls and sang along to “Wedding Bell Blues” by Laura Nyro, Audrey felt a wave of gratitude. Her friend, who had been through the toughest year of her life, who was clearly exhausted and emotional and worried about the future, had still found time to make her a wedding playlist, to pick up the wedding plate, to buy her wildflowers. Maybe all this debate about soul mates missed the real love story, the one she had been lucky enough to have for nearly twenty years now.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” Clara asked, narrowing her eyes at Audrey in the mirror.

“Just thinking how grateful I am to have you. How much I love you.”

“Did you inhale my milk hormones when I was pumping? You’re getting all soppy on me,” Clara said, before kissing her lightly on the head.



* * *





Halfway through the tonging process, after a brief knock on the door, in swept Hillary, with a deep-set angry brow and pursed lips.