Upwards

I took a very deep breath. In and then out.

Surely this was fate. What else could it be? A coincidence like this? On my birthday? No way. Surely.

Confidently, pushing all of the other shit aside for just one fucking minute, I approached one of the bouncers. He was built like a marine/bus and had very very dark eyes. I pretended that he didn’t scare the shit out of me and that my heart wasn’t on the fine line between excitement and coronary attack.

“Excuse me,” I said politely, having to raise my voice slightly to be heard over the angry kids in line shouting at me. “Could you tell me if the band have arrived yet?”

He glanced me over. My sandy hair was loose and wavy around my face. I was wearing a neutral blouse and a pencil skirt and heels and of course my glasses. Certainly not your average groupie obsessive fan, but I’m sure he couldn’t be too careful. “I cannot,” he said lowly.

I am an excellent liar now. Let that be shown on the record. I’m fucking ace. Even if I’m on the brink of collapse. “Oh, I’m sorry, I should have introduced myself,” I smiled. “My name is Daisy Montague, I’m the band’s PR representative. I’m afraid I got caught in traffic so I’m a little late, but I really need to speak to them. It’s quite urgent. If you just ask the band they will vouch for me. Please.” I like to think I sounded pretty legit.

Apparently I did. He looked a little dumbfounded, but still he picked up his walkie-talkie and said into it, “I have a Daisy Montague here, says she’s with PR. Shall I let her in?”

There was a short pause in which I was concerned that the bouncer would be able to hear my heart slamming against my ribcage, or the blood swishing around my brains, reaching right into the murky depths where I stored so many memories. What if Frank didn’t want to see me? Who could blame him? What the fuck was I doing here in the first place? Why couldn’t I just go home and forget about it and carry on with my life?

As I was reassessing my choices, a voice came through on the walkie. “Affirmitive,” it said, and I recognised it as Mikey, even after all these years. “Ten four.”

I smiled confidently and the bouncer led me inside, much to the anguish of the crowd outside, and through a maze of corridors in silence. Finally we stopped outside a door marked ‘DRESSING ROOM 1’ and he nodded at me and I thanked him and he left. And I took a very slow, very deep breath before I allowed myself to knock on that door.

“Come in!”

Everyone was there except for Bob. Mikey, Gerard, Ray, Tony, Alice, another pale guy and, sitting in the very corner of the room, Frank. Immediately my eyes were drawn to him. For the most part he looked exactly the same. Same scruffy dark hair. Same hazel eyes. Still scratching the back of his head. He looked good. But his expression was troubled.

This was a mistake. Oh well. No going back now.

“Hey,” I managed to choke out, for lack of anything better to say to the husband I hadn’t seen in two years. Fucking husband. Shit.

Frank lifted his head to greet me but avoided direct eye contact. “Hey.” A passing glance at his left hand revealed his wedding ring, right where it should be. Right where mine still is.

“So, I could use some coffee,” Gerard announced, clapping his hands together subtly and rising to his feet. Like a saint, he ushered the rest of them out of the room with small waves and unsure smiles until it was just Frank and I and several feet of space between us. It may as well have been a mile. A mile of red-hot lava or man-eating alligators or razor-sharp blades. A mile of discomfort and unease. A mile of unsaid things.

“So,” I said, gingerly perching myself on the arm of one of the three couches around the room. As I leant towards him, he flinched, as if I had slapped him across his face. I didn’t dare move any closer. “How’re you doing?” It was a stupid question but I had the feeling that if I hadn’t said something, we’d have been sitting in horrible silence forever.

He looked around the room, eyebrows still furrowed. “Pretty good,” he said, chewing on his lip ring. God damn. How could I have been married to that fine specimen of a man and not have just constantly jumped his bones? “You?”

This was all so stupid. The pleasantries and the fakeness. What he really wanted to do was rip my arms off and feed them to hungry bears. But instead he was asking me how I was doing like we were just old friends who ran into each other at the supermarket.

But I didn’t say any of this. “I’m doing great,” I nodded, smoothing out invisible creases on my skirt. “I’m doing really well. I just came to... talk to you.” It was much harder than I thought it would be. We were both so different. Older. Wiser. Like proper adults and everything. It was scary and it was strange. I had always just thought the words would come. I had always thought that when this happened, I would just know what to say somehow. But I didn’t have a fucking clue. It had been too long to believe that everything would just be fine.

“Talk to me about what?” he said softly. His voice was almost choked, as if the words hurt him too much to say. No no no. “How you left me? How you’re doing ‘really well’ without me? How you took my baby and my car and you walked out without a word? How you broke my fucking heart?” He didn’t sound angry. He sounded like he was going to cry. He was still avoiding my gaze.

I chewed on my lip, my cheeks flushed and my heart beating a thousand times a minute. I had no answer to any of that, of course. Instead I just sighed and stared at the floor. “It wasn’t easy for me,” I said eventually. “I did it for you. You know that, right?”

He shrugged. “Doesn’t make it hurt any less.”

I stood up and walked to him, bravely touching a hand to his chin and finally making him look me in the eyes. “I’m sorry,” I said, very very quietly. I could feel his breath hot on my face. “I’m so sorry, Frank.”

He blinked but made no effort to move away from me. “The baby?”

I smiled and stepped away, pulling out a small photograph from my bag. Rosie had been laughing when the picture was taken, with all of her tiny white baby teeth on full display and her eyes squinting and her dark hair all messed up. My hands had been over my face but you could tell that I was grinning too. We had been playing peek-a-boo and Kate had caught us by surprise when the flash went off. Rosie found it extremely amusing. I had smiled at the two of them and wanted to cry with happiness.

“Her name is Rosie Frances,” I announced, handing the picture over to Frank.

He took it shakily and stared in silence at my child – his child, our child - for a really long time. I sat back down on the end of the sofa and observed him with a faint smile. His expression remained in a sort of stunned disbelief as he took in every inch of the picture. It reminded me of the first time I had shown him the sonogram in his old living room. A lifetime ago now.

“I’d love for you to come and meet her, Frank,” I said after a couple of minutes, seemingly snapping him out of his catatonia. He nodded very slowly.

“I’d like that,” he replied softly.

“Good.” I handed him my business card as I stood to leave. “My address is on here. Come by anytime.”

He nodded as he absent-mindedly passed the card through his fingers. Eventually he stood up, so we were eye-to eye. He looked every bit as gorgeous as the last time I saw him. Just a little sadder. And it made me sad to think that I had probably caused that. I had taken the spark from behind his hazel eyes.

“I’m so sorry, Frankie,” I said again. “For what it’s worth.”

He gave a faint smile at last, and placed the business card and the photograph into the back pocket of his jeans. He slowly shook his head. “I’m sorry too, Daisy,” he said faintly. “I’m sorry for letting you make that choice.”

Pinpricks of tears threatened behind my eyes, but I refused to let them fall. Not now. I blinked them away.

“I can’t tell you how many times I’ve imagined this moment,” Frank said, slowly but surely. “How I’ve rehearsed all the things that I’d say and all the things that I wouldn’t say. But it doesn’t really matter now, does it?”

I gave a faint smile. “We can’t move backwards,” I quoted. “A wise person once told me that we can only move frontwards, and hope that everything turns out alright in the end.”

Frank laughed under his breath. “Is that what I said?”

“I think it’s pretty much verbatim,” I replied.

The remains of a smile lingered on his lips. “It makes a lot of sense.”

“It sure does.”

We were silent for a moment, both searching each other’s eyes for answers that were a long time coming. Answers to questions that we didn’t even want to ask. And then there was a knock on the door and Frank was being called to the stage.

“I have to go,” he said unnecessarily. “You can stay and watch, if you like.”

I smiled. “I’d like that,” I nodded. “Thanks.”

Frank put his arms around my waist and pulled me into a hug which we’d both been waiting two years for. And it was as if nothing had ever changed, except that Frank smelt like Frank again and there was no bump between us.

“Good luck out there,” I breathed as we parted, because I wasn’t sure what else I could say.

“Thanks,” he grinned, turning the door handle. “Oh, and happy birthday.”

I chuckled. “Thanks.”

Frank gave me one last wink and then they were on the stage. The first song was I Don’t Love You and I was crying and smiling all together but it felt good just to be able to look at him and feel something real again.

Even as I’m writing this all down now, it doesn’t feel like it actually happened. Any of it. As if I’d made up the whole damned thing, right from the night on the train up to now, where such a huge coincidence couldn’t even be really possible, could it? Perhaps I’m already dreaming, and any minute now I’ll wake up back in Nottingham with no daughter and no husband and an entry-level job as an accountant.