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32 MEG

One Day Until the Wedding

Meg noticed, as she looked up at the plastic clock in their favourite brunch spot, the second hand ticking past the vertical alignment of the hands showing midday, that this time tomorrow she’d be walking down the aisle. Aside from everything else, she hoped the weather would pick up. It was a wet, windy and stormy Saturday morning, and the rain was lashing down against the windows, no mistaking whether you needed an umbrella or not. The café was sparse and empty, owing to most people likely staying at home. Anyone who was already there was reluctant to leave. It meant the piles of pastries in the window stayed high, and there was a pile of sodden shoes and umbrellas by the door.

‘Do you think the rain is a bad omen?’ Hannah said. ‘Like, God, or the universe or whatever, is against us?’

‘Well neither of us is religious,’ Meg said. ‘I feel like we’ve got enough on our plate without the universe having it in for us too.’

Yesterday had been much of the same in terms of weather; grey everywhere, and fog and rain meaning you could barely see more than a few metres ahead of you, and yet Meg felt blissful. It was like home was her own personal little bubble and her day of relaxation had been perfect.

She had lain in, been treated to a coffee in bed from Hannah, then walked to the Lido she’d been meaning to try for weeks. A cold swim in the rain could fix you like nothing else, she had always found. After a quick lunch at home, she had taken the bus to the cinema, and though the film hadn’t been great, the weekday quiet meant she had one of the greatest sleeps she could remember in a long time. That evening, a takeaway on the way, and Hannah returning home from work to greet her, she felt, as much as she could, back to normal. She had even booked the course of driving lessons she’d been talking about for so long. She felt hopeful, again.

‘Excuse me,’ she said to the waiter. ‘Can we have another look at the menu?’

‘Of course, let me grab one for you.’

‘I haven’t seen you in here before,’ Meg added. ‘Are you new?’

‘Moved to the area recently,’ the woman said. ‘I’m at the Open University from September but wanted to get my bearings before that, so I’m here most days, then I’ll probably go part-time.’

‘You’ll love it round here,’ she said. ‘Let us know if you need anything; we’re in a fair bit. I sometimes come and do my work in here.’

‘I will, thank you,’ she said, smiling down at them. ‘That’s very kind. I’ll just grab those menus for you.’

Meg looked around the restaurant and she realized Hannah was sitting staring at her, smiling.

‘What?’

‘You’re like the local tourist board,’ Hannah said. ‘I feel like I’m with … I don’t know, the town mayor or something. I feel like you’ve really made this home.’

‘Well,’ Meg said, feeling slightly shy. She hadn’t even realized what she was doing. ‘Everyone’s been so nice to me, it feels, I don’t know … It feels effortless to give that back.’

Meg was, considering all that was going on, feeling surprisingly optimistic now. Whereas a few months ago she might have feared having little to look forward to after the wedding, now she had so much. New community initiatives to get involved in, new work possibilities and new friends. She was considering formally getting involved in the youth club and the great thing about making her own hours was that she’d be able to commit to that. Also, she had seen that the fairly new local Pride needed volunteers, for on the day but also on the board throughout the year, and she knew that might be a great way to give back. She knew she’d be good at it. It was still on her mind to set up a regular drawing and illustration club in the shop, but she didn’t want to get ahead of herself.

‘How are you feeling about this afternoon?’ Hannah asked.

‘I feel okay,’ Meg said. ‘Having just that day to collect my thoughts was really worth it. I know what I’m going to say. I’ve actually written it down.’ She patted her bag, in which she had her notebook. ‘So I can say what I want without them changing it, or without having to follow what they want to talk about.’ She took a huge breath in. ‘Thank you for coming with me.’

‘Stop it!’ Hannah said. ‘Obviously I’d come with you.’

The waitress dropped the menus back in front of them.

‘Do you think we’ll get a pudding?’ Hannah said.

‘It’s not that I want to delay going round there but … yes, let’s.’

‘And the rain.’

‘We don’t want to trip and fall …’

‘Could we split a French toast?’

‘Do you think most brides have a two-course breakfast the day before their wedding?’ Meg asked.

‘Well luckily for you, it’s a non-traditional wedding,’ Hannah said. ‘So we almost have to …’

‘I’d get French toast or that banana bread.’

‘We can’t get both.’

‘We can’t have both.’

‘Can we?’

‘Could we?’

‘I’ll order.’

Meg had not been to her parents’ house since Christmas when she and Hannah had told them they were engaged. It looked exactly the same. Stone-cobbled white front, and roof tiles that she was sure could do with a clean. Her parents were intensely house proud, and yet with her dad’s mild arthritis, it was clear that the outside jobs – roof, garden, patio – had fallen by the wayside. The garden was ever so slightly overgrown, the hedge veering perilously into the pavement, in a way she hadn’t realized in the winter.

She and Hannah stood for a moment too long at the door, long enough that she was sure her mum would know they were there and open the door anyway, but their hands brushed against each other for a second, and then Meg grasped Hannah’s hand in hers. They had a second alone.

‘Ready?’ Meg asked Hannah.

‘Yes.’

Meg knocked three times and the door opened quickly.

‘Hello, darling. You came,’ her mother said, smiling but on edge. Everything about this kind of meeting belied what her mum thought families should be: obedient, agreeable, showing that everything was fine.

Ava opened the door wide to let them both in and showed them to the living room. It was all as it usually was, but there was something sad in the house now they were a family in the situation they were in. The striped wallpaper seemed to make the room feel cramped, and her mum’s insistence on not having harsh lighting seemed to make the place seem dim and deserted. A window was open and a cold breeze was flowing through the house. On the coffee table, she had laid out a variety of biscuits and she asked if they wanted a cup of tea.

‘I’m all right actually,’ Meg said. And she was. She knew what she was here to do. ‘Han?’

‘I’m okay too.’

‘Okay, well your father and I did want a cup of tea, so we’re going to make—’

‘Mum,’ Meg said. ‘We actually won’t be here very long.’

‘I said we were having a tea. That’s what we planned.’

‘No,’ Meg said, firmly, louder than before. ‘Let me say what I want to say.’

There was a moment she felt her mum was going to continue to argue, but then she came through from the kitchen and sat on the sofa next to George. The sofas were perpendicular to each other and Meg felt grateful she didn’t have to stare across at both of them in such a confrontational way. She started speaking, staring at a spot just above the fireplace. She was holding her notebook open in her hands and she knew she was shaking.

‘I feel like you’ve said enough about how you feel,’ Meg said. ‘Some of that, I would want to change. Some of that, I don’t know if I can, but I need you to listen to me.’ She took a deep breath. ‘It is the day before the most important day of my life, and I need you to hear me and hear how I feel and how what you’ve said and done affects me and Hannah. I’m not coming to you angry, or sad, or expecting anything. I just want to give you all the information you might need for you to make your decision about tomorrow, which is our wedding as we have planned it.

‘First, I want to tell you how I feel about Hannah. I love her. Deeply. I think she’s brilliant. She’s kinder and smarter and funnier than I ever really thought I deserved. We talk about everything, and she treats me with the care and respect I always thought you would want a partner to treat me with. She loves me, and I love her in the ways I always saw you two loving each other growing up. I always thought we’d got past my teen years and you’d seen the light, or whatever, and that you were happy for me. I thought you saw, with Hannah, how lucky I was. I gave you all the allowances of the time you grew up in, and where you’d lived, and who you’d known, and I said, even recently, it just takes people time. Now, you’ve had enough time.’

‘Meg,’ her mum said.

‘No, Ava,’ Hannah said. She didn’t look at her mum as she said it, but her meaning was clear. This is Meg’s turn to speak.

‘Growing up was really, really hard for me.’ Meg wiped at a tear. ‘This place was all people like you and I felt every day like I was an alien who’d been dropped on a planet that I wasn’t built to live on. I’d go into school and try to carry on but you were there too, and I knew, before I knew anything about being gay, I knew that to even think it would disappoint you. Do you understand what a pressure that is to put on someone? Don’t answer.

‘You were teachers, and I know you weren’t allowed to say certain things at school, but at home? You could have. Nothing was stopping you, except yourselves. I was never a girly girl, you could have suspected … but it’s not even about that. It’s how you treated others. It’s not like you ever said something homophobic about me; it was the things you said about gay people on the television, or if you saw people holding hands in the street, or whatever. That had an effect on me that pushed me back further into myself, struggling to deal with those two parts of me. I had no control. I had no way to leave and I had no way to tell you the truth. I genuinely thought that if you knew, you’d kick me out onto the streets. The one saving grace was Angus, Gus he goes by now, and our friendship, and you turned even that into something so pressurized that as soon as I went to university, I barely spoke to him. And he’d needed me to stick by him, and I didn’t, and I’m only just making up for that. You see, silence just breeds silence.

‘I don’t, for a second, think you knew what you were doing or wanted that result. But now, everything you’ve done this year? It’s been the same. You’ve seen the effect on me and you’ve still done the same thing.

‘Actually it’s been worse, because you don’t have the excuse of the time you lived in or what other people are saying or that I was a child. I’m a grown adult, making decisions and living my own life and you’re constantly making me feel like I’m not good enough. And I am! I know I am.’ Meg willed the tears to stay in her eyes for just moments longer. ‘I want to get married because I deserve love and I deserve the day that everyone else gets. That’s why people fought for this, for years. Everybody I’ve met in this community through David, they’ve all shown me I’m more than enough. I find it hard to believe, sometimes, but they think I’m brilliant, actually.

‘You have to respect my life now, please,’ Meg continued, closing the notebook. ‘I want you there but I want you there celebrating me, not the idea of me as a child. Me, as I am now. I can’t be anyone else; trust me I’ve tried.’

Hannah shifted in her chair.

‘Now, it’s the day before my wedding and I don’t want to hear anything negative, so unless you’re going to sit and say you’re coming and everything’s fine, then I don’t want to hear it. You can come to the wedding we’re having, or I’d rather you stayed at home.’

They sat in silence. George was watching Ava, waiting for her response. It felt like a lifetime, before her mum slowly opened her mouth, Meg’s dad watching.

‘There’s nothing much for us to say to that,’ Ava said.

‘Okay,’ Meg said. She hung on for a moment longer, expecting perhaps because we’re so moved, of course we’re coming, or nothing much else to say because we’re so ashamed of what we did.

When neither came, she nodded at Hannah.

She wanted to say bye, but she knew her whole body was shaking.

They left the room and the house in silence. It was still raining and Meg braced as they walked out into it. When they’d walked far enough away, far around the corner onto the next street where there was no way her parents could see them, Meg collapsed into Hannah, and cried and cried. She had to stop a howling noise coming from her mouth, though she hoped any noise was hidden by the rain. This was worse than she had imagined. She had felt okay speaking, but it had felt so painful, cruel even, for them to sit there in silence. They stayed like that for a few minutes. Meg noticed somebody on the street look at them and she buried herself closer into Hannah’s neck and hair, which were soaking wet.

‘I’m sorry,’ Hannah said. ‘Are you okay?’

‘I will be,’ she said. ‘I will be.’

‘All right.’

It would be okay. They would potter around for the afternoon doing last-minute jobs, and then they would have dinner together and get an early night. Their last night, as girlfriends or partners, before the rest of their lives began, and there was only one word to choose from: wife. Closure, at last.

‘And I’ve decided something,’ Meg said, wiping wet hair from her face. ‘I want David to walk me down the aisle.’