Eight Perfect Hours by Lia Louis
Chapter Twenty-One
iMessage from Candice:Noelle, would you be able to call me when you get a minute? Total SOS wedding situation! Need your help!
Dilly appears in the doorway, his blond, iced-gem tuft of hair on end, a huge flowing blood-red silk scarf spilling from the back of his skinny jeans’ pocket. He’s home again, for three nights, and tonight, he’s playing a local gig in Bath city centre, but of course acting as though he’s about to go on stage at Wembley Stadium and we are lucky to merely breathe his air.
‘Say it,’ he says, smirking over at me and giving a slow wink.
I stop, twine between my lips, three heavy blooms of baby-blue hydrangeas in my hand. ‘Mm?’
‘Tell me.’
Mum looks over her mug of tea at him, her proud eyes twinkling, as if he is in fact already on that Wembley stage. ‘You look gorgeous, darling Dilly,’ she says. ‘A true rock star. Isn’t he, Noelle?’
‘Too good, right?’ Dilly shrugs, as if it bores him to be this cool. ‘I mean, that’s what I think, anyway. A total ten out of ten.’
‘You look ace,’ I say, and he nods, satisfied. He won’t sleep tonight. He never does when he gets home from a gig. The adrenaline, the need to retell us over and over, with accents and gestures how certain people reacted when he played a certain guitar solo, when he sang a particular note. ‘Sometimes I really do feel like Jesus,’ he’ll say, and I will laugh and ask how Jesus fancies cleaning out the food waste bin.
The back door rattles open and then closed, and Dilly poses in the hallway, his skinny, pale elongated arm above his head, his head bowed like Freddie Mercury and I wait, for Ian’s faux surprise and admiration.
‘My goodness,’ says Ian, his voice travelling down the hallway. There it is. ‘Do you know, for a minute I thought that was Roger Daltrey.’ He appears in the living room doorway, dressed from top to bottom in the colour of rich tea biscuits. From his polo shirt, to his combat trousers and socks. Beige. Always beige. ‘Did you hear what I said, Belinda? Hello, Noelle.’
‘Hiya, Ian,’ I say, the twine muffling my words.
‘Roger Daltrey,’ grins Mum. ‘Doesn’t he look the part, Ian? You can just see it, can’t you? Him, on the ol’, you-know-what – MTV awards.’
‘Oh, yes,’ says Ian, meandering around the coffee table and pulling at the knees of his trousers as he sits. He sets an oven timer shaped like a pig down on the table. ‘Although, I’d hazard a guess that NME is far more suited to Dillon. If I know my music, and I won’t ever pretend to be an expert, then I’d say a rock group like his wouldn’t fit in at MTV at all. It’s all manufactured pop music.’
‘Oh,’ says Mum woundedly.
‘Yeah,’ says Dilly, lifting his chin, looking at something invisible in the air. ‘Superficial bullshit. Pretentious posers. That’s not us.’
‘No,’ I laugh. ‘Definitely not you.’ Dilly rolls his eyes. ‘What’s with the timer, Ian?’ I ask.
‘That’ll mean the first coat of the anti-mould emulsion is dry.’
‘Then you’ll nip back and do another coat?’ Mum asks.
‘Exactly.’
‘Clever,’ says Mum, picking up the egg timer as if analysing a rare fossil, and looking over at me, impressed. ‘Ever such a domestic man, isn’t he, Elle? He reminds me of … who’s that handsome gay man with the lovely, soothing voice? Very clean-looking. Very wise.’
‘Me?’ Dilly says, angling his guitar case on his shoulder.
‘Apart from you.’
‘Nigel Slater?’
‘Yes, Noelle! That’s it! Oh, he’s lovely, he is, Ian. Very domesticated. Ever so good with all things in the home. He wraps all his food in brown paper. You know, steaks and things? You’re like that.’ Mum looks at me. ‘Isn’t he, Noelle? With his cling film?’
‘Oh, yeah,’ I say. ‘Cling film.’
Ian looks really pleased with himself, straightens a little in his seat. ‘Yes,’ he says. ‘I do think it’s important to ensure all things are wrapped safely in a fridge. Especially when dealing with meats.’
I make a mental note to tell Charlie – to type out the chat exchange later on WhatsApp, like a screen play. She’ll get it. She’ll piss herself laughing and say, ‘Oh God bless Bel and Ian. Fucking love them.’ And I don’t want to just keep texting her to ask how she is – like she’s something defective that I have to keep checking in on. She went to the GP yesterday, with Theo. The doctor offered her CBT and suggested trying a course of anti-depressants which she started taking this morning. She was so worried to tell Theo about what happened at the weekend, but within seconds of talking to him, I knew she was so glad she did. I saw it with my own eyes, the relief trickling into her blood stream, colouring her cheeks. ‘I love you,’ is all Theo said. ‘I love you so much.’ I cried on the way home, for Charlie, and I cried out all of those tears I kept locked in, in the launderette. And I still don’t really know what they’re for. I’m confused. I am. I even sat down with a pen and paper last night in bed after sketching out something for Candice, just to try to tease out the tangles in my mind.
‘Ed was my forever,’ I wrote. ‘My world ended when he left. And now he’s back. But it feels too easy? There’s more to it? Why did he come back?’ Then I’d buried my head in my hands and groaned as I wrote, ‘I like Sam’ on the page before I punctuated it with a question mark that would fool no man, and slammed the book shut and pulled the duvet over my head. I’m confused. A complete tangle of heart and head and gut and logic and what is probably fifty per cent bloody mountaineering lust. He followed me on Instagram after the launderette – I’d mentioned the photos I took of the hydrangeas in the park, and I felt like I’d been shot with a dart when the notification came through. SamAts followed you. He doesn’t update much, and when he has, it’s all beautiful landscapes, weird knots, ‘how to wash your ropes’ tutorial (who knew?) and beaten up go-pro cameras with breezy captions like ‘this little buddy is still going strong.’ But there are some of him. One of which was taken a few weeks ago. Sam, with a group of four others, completely suited up – hats, and helmets, and gloves and smiles, nothing but ocean blue sky behind them. Of course, I spent ages scrolling his grid, the patchwork collage of Sam Attwood’s vast and colourful life. Cataluña, Chulilla, Mount Elbrus in Russia. These beautiful places I’ve only ever seen on the front of gift biscuit tins – a kaleidoscope of colour and nature. Then of course, there was the photo that made me so hot, I felt like I’d rolled obliviously into a bonfire. It was from last year. A huge sandy, bark-coloured rock face, with Sam, clinging to it effortlessly, his back to the camera, and topless, the muscles of his back, large and defined and sun-tanned. I’d sent a screenshot to Charlie. Shitting. Hell. She had texted back. I’m deeply aroused.
‘Wow.’ Ian looks at me over his glasses, shakes me out of my muscle trance. ‘Those hydrangeas are lovely. Who’s the lucky recipient?’
‘Candice,’ I say. ‘This woman at Jetson’s. Her florist has let her down and she’s asked me––’
‘To do the wedding?’ cuts in Mum.
I freeze. ‘Well. Yes,’ I say carefully, ‘but I said I wouldn’t be able to and I’d just make her up a bouquet for her to copy. She said she might have to do them herself if she can’t find anyone in time, at such short notice––’
‘When is it?’ Mum asks, urgently, the words blending into one.
‘September twenty-eighth. In Edinburgh. But I’d have to leave on the twenty-seventh – they would. The florist I mean.’ I hadn’t mentioned it to Mum, when Candice had called me, and asked me to fill in for her florist, who’d somehow double booked. My heart when she asked me – I couldn’t put into words I don’t think, how I felt. I felt like it was too large for my body all of a sudden. I felt like it was going to fill with air, send us upwards, into the clouds. But I said no. How could I leave everything at home, travel hundreds of miles away, do a job I’ve never, ever done before.
Mum stares at me. ‘Right,’ she says.
‘Well, you have to do it,’ says Ian, giving a deep nod, and Mum and I look at him like he’s just Morris danced on the table in nothing but his beige Y-fronts.
‘Well, I’d love to do it, Ian, but––’
‘I’ll stay with Mum,’ says Dilly, his hazel eyes on the phone in his hand, his skinny nibbled thumb cycling up the screen. ‘I’ll be back on the um – yep, here we go, the twenty-seventh. About midday?’
I look at Mum, my lips parted, words jammed in my throat, struggling to arrange themselves into a sentence. ‘I – well – I don’t – I’d need to leave really early. Like, really early. About six.’
Mum nods, staring ahead, as if psyching herself up for a marathon.
‘Honestly, it’s too short notice and I’ve never––’
‘No,’ Mum swoops in. ‘No, I’ll be all right. You – you have to go, Noelle. Ian’s right.’ She looks as if she might cry, and I feel like I might too because – can I really do this?
‘Mum, I don’t have to.’
‘Noelle, you must.’ Mum’s eyes shine, and she digs her two front teeth into her quivering lip. ‘You have to.’
‘And you’re definitely sure you’ll be here by noon, Dilly?’ asks Ian, tentatively. He’ll get his iPad out in a minute, his fingertips tapping in a flurry of reminders and countdowns.
‘Yeah, should be. We’re only over in Newcastle so should be mint.’
Something flutters inside of me, wings opening, taking flight. Could I? Could I really do flowers for a wedding? An actual wedding with posies and guests and wedding breakfasts and of course, the token drunken sweaty fight? And in Edinburgh. I’ve always wanted to go to Edinburgh! Oh, God, I feel sick. With longing, with nerves, with the Can I actually pull this off? and the Is this avenue open, for someone like me?
‘So – I should say yes?’ I ask. ‘Really?’
Mum looks at me and nods. ‘Yes,’ she says tearfully, her words quivering at the edges, like blancmange. ‘Please say yes, Noelle.’