Hating Valentine's Day Read online

  Anyway, now Rachel’s married off, I’m hoping she’s going to stop with the ‘insert man here’ dinners. Rachel loves to entertain, and watches Nigella and Jamie like religion. Both these things would be more than fine by me and my entrée, main and dessert stomachs if it weren’t for the ring-in males she invites along to these occasions.

  Take, for example, last year’s Rachel-hosted Valentine’s Day dinner. The guy I’d been paired up with for the night asked me out at the end of the evening. We decided to go out for dinner a week later, and set a time to meet at an area where there were a number of restaurants, agreeing on a Greek place he’d been to before and enjoyed. When we met up, he confessed he’d forgotten to book, but, thinking we might get lucky anyway, we tried to get a table for two. The place was packed and the waiters looked at us like we were crazy for even asking. I remember one of them just laughed. Right in our faces! We ended up going from door to door down the restaurant strip in the hope of finally getting something to eat.

  After restaurant number eight, I started to see the funny side of all of this and told him maybe we should change our names from Liv and Terry to Mary and Joseph. Actually, I thought this was so funny I could barely stop laughing and had to lean against a bus stop sign for a minute or two to catch my breath, intermittently calling out, ‘There’s no room at the restaurant.’ I caught it, however, when I saw the look on his face. Recovering a touch, I looked at him very seriously and said in my best Deborah Kerr An Affair to Remember voice, ‘Maybe we should book now and meet at the top of the road in six months’ time. At five o’clock.’

  He turned around with a huff and said, ‘I don’t think there’s going to be a next time, Olivia.’ And then he took off. Just like that! I stood there for a few minutes, wondering if he was going to come back. (He didn’t.)

  Maybe I went too far when I asked him where he’d parked his donkey…I don’t know. I thought it was funny!

  In the end I picked up some KFC on my way home (with real Coke instead of Diet, and extra seasoning sprinkled on the chips to get over the shock of being dumped before dinner).

  Oh, well.

  I look back down at the album and start flipping over the pages again until, finally, I reach the end. Then I close the ivory fabric-lined cover, put it back in its box and get up off the couch.

  It’s beautiful outside, sunny with a completely blue sky, and hot in the kind of way I know will be nice while I’m coming down from the air-conditioning I’ve been in for hours, but won’t be so nice when I’m sitting in traffic. There’s no air-conditioning in my yellow Ferrari. There’s no yellow Ferrari either. Just a smallish, not too oldish, but not brand-newish either, dark green Honda hatchback that I stick my key into, open up and get in. I put the box on the passenger seat and set off for Rachel’s house.

  Y Y Y Y

  ‘Let me see! Let me see!’ Rachel says as soon as she opens the front door.

  I give her the box, which she takes from me eagerly. ‘Go easy, tiger, you’ll hurt yourself…’

  She laughs. ‘Coffee?’

  ‘Why ever not?’ I follow her inside the townhouse, closing the door behind me. As we make our way through to the kitchen I wonder for a second whether I should have said yes to coffee. I’ve practically caffeinated myself up to the eyeballs today in order to keep going. But I guess one more can’t do too much damage. Well, it might give me the odd palpitation here and there, but I’m far too young for a full-blown heart attack.

  I hope.

  I take a seat at the kitchen table and watch as Rachel tears around the kitchen trying to arrange mugs, coffee, sugar, milk and some good-looking blueberry muffins in the microwave all at once so she can get to the album.

  ‘Sit down,’ I say when I start to feel exhausted just watching her. ‘I’ll make the coffee.’

  She doesn’t argue, but comes straight over, plonks herself down at the table, opens the box and pulls the album out, feeling the fabric. ‘Oh, it’s lovely.’

  By the time I bring the coffee and muffins over and take my seat again, Rachel’s only on the second photo. I realise, at this rate, we could be here till Christmas.

  Slowly, meticulously, taking in the detail of every photograph, she turns the pages. When she gets to a close-up of the four bridesmaids, she finally looks up at me, back down again, and up one more time. ‘Nice cheekbones.’

  I shrug. ‘Hey, a girl’s got to do what a girl’s got to do.’

  ‘Yes, well. You seem to have done a whole lot.’ Rachel keeps turning until she reaches the end of the album. ‘I love this one,’ she says, turning back the pages and pointing to one photo in particular.

  I take a look. It’s my favourite. An intimate shot of Rachel and Ryan talking, their heads together, that Sally caught when they thought no one was looking. It really is a beautiful photo. Those sort of moments are Sally’s specialty, and the good reason she gets paid the amount of money she does. We both sit in silence for a few moments before Rachel closes the album.

  ‘So…’ she says.

  I glance up from my coffee mug and picked-at muffin, wary.

  ‘There was something I had to ask you,’ Rachel starts, then pauses for a moment, looking confused. ‘Oh, now I remember what it is. Valentine’s Day’s coming and…’

  I give Rachel the evil eye and a strange look comes over her face.

  ‘What was that?’ she asks.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Did you just…growl?’

  ‘Um.’ I don’t think so. Still, anything’s possible—she did say the V and the D words.

  ‘Right. Right…’ She pauses, gives me another look—this time an assessing one. ‘You know, if you’re growling about Valentine’s Day, I’m not having a dinner party this year. I’m not trying to set you up any more. I’ve run out of men. No, what I was going to ask, before you so rudely interrupted—’ she gives me a pointed look with this‘—was whether you thought this would be a good present for Ryan.’

  She brushes a few muffin crumbs off her fingers, fishes a catalogue out of the basket of bits and pieces sitting on the table and starts flipping through it, looking for something. Finally, she finds it, spins it around so I can see it and points something out.

  ‘Or is it too, you know, silly…?’

  I take a look. It’s a sleepwear catalogue. I pick it up in order to have a better look at what she’s pointing out. It’s a pair of pyjamas that read GROUCHY in big letters down the side.

  She checks my expression carefully. ‘You don’t think it’s a bit lame? I’ve already got some “Good Morning” ones.’

  ‘No.’ They really are cute, as pyjamas go. ‘But I guess the question to ask is whether or not Ryan’s grouchy in the morning.’

  Rachel snorts at this. ‘Very.’ There’s a pause as we eye each other off. ‘Now, was that so hard?’

  ‘Um.’ I look at the table, my coffee, the floor, the ceiling, not wanting to let Rachel win. ‘Oh, look at the time,’ I add. Table, coffee, floor, ceiling.

  ‘You know what would be really nice?’ Rachel says when I finally meet her eyes.

  I stop. Aha! I knew it! She has picked a guy up for me from somewhere and arranged a dinner. And what would be nice is if I come along, chow down, think he’s fantastic, book the celebrant before the main course and marry him on the front lawn after dessert so we can double date with Rachel and Ryan for evermore.

  Still, I take the bait. ‘What would be really nice?’

  ‘It would be really nice if you actually looked at your watch when you say “Look at the time”.’

  ‘Oh.’

  She nods, looking very self-satisfied.

  Rachel: 2 Liv: 0

  We chat for a while after this, and I check out the latest honeymoon photos from the Maldives. When I look at the time for real, I’m surprised to find it’s almost six o’clock.

  ‘I’d better get going,’ I say, standing up and starting to collect my things. I didn’t know it was so late. Ryan will probably be home soon.
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  ‘Oh, I keep forgetting to tell you,’ Rachel says.

  ‘Mmm?’ I keep searching for my car keys in my handbag.

  ‘I’m going away on a conference on the thirteenth. That’s why I can’t have the dinner. I should be back the next day, early.’ ‘OK.’

  ‘Thanks for bringing the album round.’ Rachel pats the box.

  ‘Any time, babe,’ I say, swinging my bag over my shoulder and heading for the door.

  Following me, Rachel laughs. ‘I was kind of hoping this would be the only time.’ She leans on the doorframe as I step down outside, and it’s only when I look back at her that I realise the expression on her face doesn’t match her laugh. I pause, not wanting to say anything, but giving her the time to bring something up if she wants to.

  She doesn’t.

  ‘Well, I’m off,’ I say, taking another step towards the car.

  Rachel hesitates for a moment and wrinkles her forehead in thought.

  Oh, no. I freeze and wait for the worst…

  ‘You really think Ryan would like those pyjamas?’ she says. ‘I’m still not sure…’

  As I start reversing out of the driveway I spot Ryan’s car coming up the street. He pulls over to the kerb when he sees me and waits while I back the rest of the way out. My car on the road, I wave at him, then at Rachel, and head for home.

  Ryan.

  Driving down their street, I eye him carefully in the rear-vision mirror, my stomach doing those all too familiar flip-flops about him even now. About his cheating, that is. Or, to clarify, his almost cheating.

  It was over a year into their relationship when it happened. I’d been in the city, shooting a couple’s engagement portrait at a restaurant. Having finished, I’d rounded the corner to leave and there he was on one of the red leather banquettes. With a woman who wasn’t Rachel.

  Seeing him, I’d frozen on the spot, unable to move, not caring if he spotted me.

  I must have stayed there, my mouth hanging open, for ages. I kept thinking over and over again that I must be seeing it wrong, that it couldn’t be him. But I didn’t have it wrong. It was all too plain just what was going on across the room. Whoever she was, he was touching her, and boy was she touching him. My heart dropped right down onto the parquetry floor of the restaurant for Rachel.

  When I managed to unfreeze, I picked up my heart and went to the ladies’, where I tried to calm down and decide what to do. After an emotional merry-go-round and a whole lot of pacing between the hand-dryers, I came up with a plan. I decided not to confront Ryan then and there. I didn’t want to cause a scene. Instead, I’d approach him the next day and tell him that I’d been at the restaurant.

  So that’s what I did.

  The next day, quite calmly, I went to his office in the city and described to him what I’d seen the night before. I also told him that if he didn’t tell Rachel what was going on, I’d tell her myself. I gave him twenty-four hours.

  He told her.

  After it was all over, she came over to my place. And after we’d talked it through, I asked her what she was going to do.

  She said that her first reaction had been just to kick him out. End it all. Like they said, once a cheater, always a cheater. But then, Rachel added, she’d thought about it and he hadn’t actually cheated, had he? He’d come close, but had caved at the last minute and told her everything because he felt terrible. Because he felt guilty about what he was doing to her and to their relationship. She wasn’t sure what to do.

  Of course, I had to keep my mouth well and truly closed when Rachel said all of this. Still, I thought, at least Ryan had had the decency not to tell her about my part in his confession. It wasn’t just that I was glad that he’d spared me getting involved, it was that he’d left Rachel something. A grain of something to believe in—that he was, underneath it all, a half-decent guy.

  Rachel went around and around in circles all night with her dilemma—once a cheater, always a cheater—but then he hadn’t actually cheated, had he? The next night, she did it again. Around and around and around.

  And I learned things in those two nights. Things about Rachel and Ryan and relationships in general that I hadn’t even thought about before. I’d never questioned Rachel and Ryan’s relationship. They just were. It was only a week or so into their seeing each other when she started telling me he was ‘It’, ‘The One’, ‘my soul mate’. All the lines. And I’d believed her. But after Ryan had strayed, I started to wonder if their whole relationship had been some kind of mirage I’d simply wanted to believe in. Did things like ‘soul mates’ and ‘It’ and ‘The One’ actually exist? I didn’t think so, considering I’d once thought I’d met ‘The One’ and he left me. Plus, my parents hadn’t exactly set the best example for me to follow. But Rachel and Ryan had given me hope. Until this. Rachel’s predicament certainly strengthened my resolve to stay single. I didn’t want to end up in the kind of situation she’d found herself in. To trust someone wholeheartedly again thinking they’d never hurt me and then, right when you least expected it…

  Accordingly, I stopped thinking about the guy I’d had my eye on at the time—a new photographer across town. At the next bridal convention I avoided him. The suffering Rachel was going through I didn’t need.

  On the third day Rachel stayed with me, Ryan called for about the one hundred and seventeenth time, and Rachel accidentally answered her mobile. He begged her to meet him for a coffee.

  They announced their engagement only a few weeks later.

  Soon afterwards, turning the tables, Ryan came to visit me at work. He wanted, he said, to explain the whole situation. I told him I didn’t want to know, that it was between Rachel and himself. But he insisted on telling me. All of it. He kept saying over and over again how much of a mistake it had been, how it had only been that once, how sorry he was, that he knew he’d hurt Rachel and felt awful. And that it would never, ever happen again because it would kill him if he saw a repeat of the expression on Rachel’s face when he’d told her what had been going on.

  I didn’t believe him. I couldn’t. All I could think about as he told me this was how it had looked, that scene in the restaurant. Him touching her. Her touching him. How Rachel and Ryan’s relationship had been my great white hope and now it was gone. So, no, I didn’t believe him. But with all my heart I hoped he was telling the truth.

  For Rachel’s sake.

  Y Y Y Y

  Saturday 6 February-eight more sleeps…

  ‘Morning!’ I yawn, stretching as I come into the lounge room. I expect to open my eyes and see Justine on the phone—I’d heard it ring just a few minutes before—but being in my pyjamas with troll-like morning hair, of course there’s someone other than my flatmate in the room.

  Drew.

  ‘Ah,’ I say, mid-stretch, definitely awake now.

  ‘Hi,’ he says, looking up from the newspapers scattered around his place at the dining room table. ‘What time of day do you call this to be getting out of bed?’

  I check the clock on the kitchen wall. It’s seven-thirty. ‘Normal-person time?’ I think about going and getting changed as we have a visitor, but then decide I can’t be bothered. I go over to pull out a chair and sit down with an automatic slump. ‘Don’t tell me you’ve been doing that awful running thing again.’

  ‘Sure have.’

  ‘You guys are sick. You must have been up at—what, six?’

  ‘Five-thirty.’

  I shudder.

  ‘Lifestyle or news?’ Drew holds up two sections of the paper for me to choose from.

  I have another quick think—should I say news and seem worthy and good, or ask for the lifestyle section, the section I actually want? ‘Lifestyle.’ I reach over and take the paper from him.

  Drew meets my eyes as I take it. ‘You win. I’ll just have to turn my brain to mush later.’

  I laugh. It’s nice to know he’s not worthy and good either.

  We settle into our sections in companionable silence. I’m ha
lfway through an article about why marriage is good for you (sure, I’ll just put that on my ‘to do’ list for today…), when I smell it. Him. How is it that guys always smell so good after exercise—well, the deodorant-wearing ones, anyway—and I just smell…well, funky?

  Behind my paper, my eyes start to wander a little. He’s been over here a lot recently. Drew, that is. Quite a lot. I quizzed Justine about his presence a week or so ago, but she swore there was nothing going on between them. She said they’d dated once or twice before they’d realised it was all completely ridiculous and they’d be better off as friends and running partners. I was surprised to hear this—Justine wasn’t usually the kind of girl who kept her leftovers for lunch the next day. Still, it’s all fine by me. Drew seems really nice, he decorates the apartment nicely (he’s not exactly bad-looking) and once he even did the washing up. Justine’s obviously right—the boy is a keeper.

  In front of me Drew’s paper moves slightly sideways. ‘Hello again,’ he says as his eyes meet mine again.

  ‘Oh. Um, I was just wondering where Justine is?’

  But there’s no need for an answer because Justine comes into the room now and gives me a wave. She is on the phone, just as I’d thought—pacing around the apartment on the cordless. She can never sit still while she’s on the phone. She says the movement helps her think.

  ‘Who’s she talking to?’ I ask Drew, putting my paper down.

  Drew puts his down as well. ‘Er, I think it’s your dad’s girlfriend.’

  Justine comes over, holding the phone out, but before she passes it to me she clamps one hand firmly over the mouthpiece. ‘Um, here’s the thing…’ she begins and I know well enough to brace myself for whatever’s coming. There’s usually a ‘thing’ or two where Justine’s concerned. ‘I’ve booked tickets. For a ball. The Cupid’s Choice Ball, you know? The one where they computer-match you with a date? Anyway, it’s next Saturday, and I know you can’t come because of work, but your dad and Eileen kind of think you should go anyway, and…’