Page 27

26 MEG

‘You can’t just do all this without us! It isn’t fair!’

Meg’s mum was unrelenting. No matter how Meg approached the topic, how logical or emotional her arguments, her mum could not see sense. She was standing, arms flailing around her, as if trying to grab onto an argument that would suddenly make Meg docile, obedient, and a child again. Her skin was flushed with anger and her feet, whenever she paced as she spoke, were making tapping noises on the concrete floor. It was a response Meg was used to, a few times a year when Ava used to get this mad, sometimes at her husband, sometimes at Meg, once or twice at someone random in a restaurant or at the shops. It was one of the first changes Meg noticed in herself when she moved to university, the feeling of release at not being scared anymore of what her mother’s mood might be.

‘Mum!’ she continued. ‘You weren’t here, you didn’t reply to me, you didn’t come to any of the things you were meant to come to. What were you expecting me to do? If we’re going to talk about fair, let’s talk about that! No, let me speak! You were the ones being absent parents when I had loads on my plate, and actually could have done with the help.’

‘We’ve brought help; we’ve brought William!’

‘I don’t give a damn about William!’

‘Well! That’s charming.’

‘Please don’t swear,’ her dad added.

‘He’s gay too, you know. Your rules, whatever your belief system is, I don’t get it! Why is he okay? Is it okay until you get married? Is it okay to be gay but only in private? Otherwise you get banished from the family.’

‘Why don’t you take a minute and calm down. We’re worried about you …’ Ava said.

‘Nobody,’ George said, ‘is saying anything as dramatic as anybody being banished.’

‘You are! If you were going to disown me, you should have just done it when I came out to you! Doing it right now, in the middle of my wedding? It’s so cruel.’

Nobody seemed to know what to say.

She felt Hannah twitch next to her. ‘I think we maybe all need to take a minute.’

‘Darling,’ her dad began.

‘We’re not disowning you,’ Ava said. ‘We’re here aren’t we?’

‘I wish you weren’t!’ Meg shouted back.

The room went silent, and although the situation involved her by necessity, she wished she were a bystander, or that someone else was talking for her. Every word pulled out of her was torture.

‘We were just worried, darling, which is actually our job as parents.’

Hannah looked irritated. ‘Ava, I need you to listen to me, this—’

‘Hannah, with respect, you’ve said your piece. I’m going to say mine,’ Meg’s mum said. ‘For a lot of people, it is a phase. I’ve read about it online.’ Hannah was shaking her head, but Ava continued. ‘So it’s not out of the bounds of imagination that as parents we want Meg, and you actually, to consider whether you want to go through with something this serious.’

Hannah took another protective step towards Meg.

‘And, you have to understand, we are not your generation. We are worried about your life, and your job opportunities, and with a ring on your finger, all of this is going to be very hard to avoid.’

‘What do you mean all of this ?’ Hannah said, making air-quotes with her hands, though Ava hadn’t when she had said those words. ‘We are getting married because that’s what we want to do.’

‘What I mean is you’ll have to say it at work, and people, I’m not saying they’re right, people might make assumptions.’

‘What assumptions?’ Meg said suddenly. ‘I actually work freelance and literally never have to say anything personal to anyone, ever. What you’re saying, it’s just …’

Hannah looked between them both. ‘Ava, George, I want to marry your daughter. I don’t know how you can still have a problem after how long you’ve known me,’ Hannah said. ‘We need the wedding to happen, ideally with your blessing.’

‘I know, which is why I’ve shown up here, and your father too, to make sure that if you are doing this, you’re doing this properly. All of this—’ Ava gestured around at her boxes. ‘Is being thrown back in my face.’

‘I’m having the wedding I, we , wanted to have,’ Meg said, looking at Hannah. ‘You would have had your input if you’d shown up to any of the things I asked you to. You haven’t even seen the dress I’ve chosen! I probably would have compromised loads if you’d—’

‘Well I don’t think that’s healthy either, Meg,’ Hannah interrupted. ‘It’s our wedding, Ava. We’re a family and a wedding isn’t just something you do to please your parents.’

‘Yes, but weddings are family things, so,’ Meg said.

‘I know, babe, but you know what I mean.’

‘Oh great, now you’re fighting,’ Ava said. ‘Look, are you sure about this?’

‘Oh, Mum, will you just stop it?’ Meg asked. ‘Please.’

Ava looked at George. ‘Are you going to let her speak to me like that?’

‘I don’t know where you’ve picked up this attitude,’ George said, before turning his gaze onto Hannah.

‘It wasn’t me.’

‘What?’ Meg said to Hannah.

‘It wasn’t me!’ Hannah protested. ‘What he said!’

‘I know that.’

‘Well tell your parents!’

‘Life is hard for gay people,’ Ava said. ‘That is what everyone says, that’s what William tells me, that’s what happened in EastEnders . Your florist, for example, has a real chip on his shoulder. I don’t want your life to be hard, so yes I would still rather you were marrying a man. My expectations won’t change overnight.’

‘It’s been ten years!’

‘You’re going to tell me life isn’t hard?’

‘Life is hard for everyone!’ Meg said. ‘The only person making my life harder because I’m gay right now is you! Everyone else is happy for me!’

Again, the room fell silent. Meg wondered briefly if their conversation could be heard upstairs in the pub. She wondered if David could hear her; she wondered what he thought.

‘You know what, you’re uninvited, just don’t come,’ she said. ‘You obviously don’t want to celebrate our marriage, and you obviously don’t care that I’ve spent months planning my wedding, so just don’t.’

‘Uninvited from my own daughter’s wedding … well, that’s quite something.’ Ava was shaking her head, speaking at low volume. ‘Are you sure you want to behave like this? Your poor dad …’

‘Am I sure I want to … Are you … I never want to see you again,’ Meg said. It was out before she’d thought to say it, and she knew had she shouted, had she screamed, it would be something she regretted later. The words would be something said in the heat of the moment that she’d feel contrite about later, something she spoke to her parents in soft tones to apologize for, like coming down the stairs to the kitchen as a hormone-fuelled teenager who had finally tired of whatever she and her mum had been fighting about. As it stood, it came out from Meg as a disappointed sentence, thrown out, that she really did feel. It just was what it was.

Her mum stormed out of the room, and her dad followed. At the bottom of the stairs, George paused, as if to say something. Meg thought that he might say sorry, or apologize for Meg’s mum, or give her some reason to hold out hope. Instead, he turned his face away and followed Ava.

Meg’s body went into overdrive, and started feeling a way she had never felt before. It was like her heart was getting too big for her chest. A migraine formed at her temples, and she felt like she needed to take her shoes off. She was too hot but her hands were frozen to the bone, and she couldn’t catch breath from the air to say any of the hundred things going through her head. She looked at the boxes of wedding things, hers and her mum’s, dumped in this room. Was any of this worth it? Was Hannah worth losing her parents over? Had she lost them already?

Overwhelmed by the strain this must be putting on Hannah, she felt like she needed to get away from her too. Meg couldn’t see Hannah in pain because of her family. She felt too responsible, and she was tired of the one person she was meant to be spending the rest of her life with just seeing her as a sad, crying person. She wanted Hannah to see her as something other than this, as beautiful, or funny, or even comically stressed, or any of the things people were meant to feel in the run-up to their wedding. Once again, she wished this were all normal.

‘I need to get some air,’ she said, before running up the stairs and out of the room, leaving Hannah alone in the empty room full of all the wedding paraphernalia, all the boxes they did and didn’t want, of a wedding as they wished it to be, and the special day someone else supposed was right for them.