The day before: Olivia: The Bridesmaid

You are being pro­vid­ed with a book chap­ter by chap­ter. I will request you to read the book for me after each chap­ter. After read­ing the chap­ter, 1. short­en the chap­ter to no less than 300 words and no more than 400 words. 2. Do not change the name, address, or any impor­tant nouns in the chap­ter. 3. Do not trans­late the orig­i­nal lan­guage. 4. Keep the same style as the orig­i­nal chap­ter, keep it con­sis­tent through­out the chap­ter. Your reply must com­ply with all four require­ments, or it’s invalid.
I will pro­vide the chap­ter now.

The day before
OLIVIA
The Brides­maid
In the cave the sea has come in, so it’s prac­ti­cal­ly lap­ping at
our feet, the water black as ink. It makes the space feel
small­er, more claus­tro­pho­bic. Han­nah and I have to sit
near­er to each oth­er than we did before, our knees
touch­ing, a can­dle we nicked from the draw­ing room
perched on the rock in front of us in its glass lantern.
Now I under­stand why it’s called the Whis­per­ing Cave.
The high water has changed the acoustics in here so that
this time every­thing we say is whis­pered back to us, as
though someone’s stand­ing there in the shad­ows, repeat­ing
every word. It’s hard to believe there isn’t. I find myself
turn­ing to check, every so often, to make cer­tain we’re
alone.
I can’t make Han­nah out all that well in the soft light of
the can­dle. But I can hear her breath­ing, smell her per­fume.
We pass the bot­tle of vod­ka between us. I’m already a bit
drunk, I think, from din­ner. I couldn’t eat much and the
booze went straight to my head. But I need to be drunk­er to
tell her, drunk enough that my brain can’t stop the words.
Which seems sil­ly, as recent­ly I have been need­ing to tell
some­one about it so bad­ly that some­times I feel like it’s
going to erupt out of me, with­out any warn­ing. But now it
has actu­al­ly come down to it, I feel tongue-tied.
Han­nah speaks first. ‘Olivia.’
The cave replies in a whis­per: Olivia, Olivia, Olivia.
‘God,’ Han­nah says, ‘that echo. Did your ex … did he do
any­thing to you? Some­one I know—’ She stops, starts again,
‘my sis­ter, Alice. She had this boyfriend when she was at
uni­ver­si­ty. And he react­ed real­ly bad­ly to the break-up. I
mean, real­ly real­ly bad­ly—’
I wait for Han­nah to say more, but she doesn’t. Instead
she takes the bot­tle from me and has a very long drink,
about four shots’ worth.
‘No, it wasn’t any­thing like that,’ I say. ‘Yeah, Cal­lum was a
bit of a shit. I mean, he wasn’t very sub­tle about hook­ing up
with Ellie straight after. But he was the one who broke it off,
so it wasn’t that.’ I grab the bot­tle from her, take a big gulp.
I can taste her lip­stick on the rim. ‘It was in the sum­mer
hol­i­days after term had end­ed. I was stay­ing at Jules’s place
in Isling­ton, while she was away for work for a few days.’
I speak into the dark­ness, the cave whis­per­ing my own
words back to me. I find myself telling Han­nah how lone­ly I
felt. How I was in this great big city, which I’ve always found
so excit­ing, but realised I had no one to share it with. How it
was Fri­day night and I’d gone to the Sainsbury’s down the
road from Jules’s flat and bought myself some crisps, milk
and cere­al for the morn­ing, and how my walk home took me
past all these peo­ple stand­ing out­side pubs, drink­ing,
hav­ing a laugh in the sun. How I felt like such a fuck­ing
sad­do, with my orange car­ri­er bag and a night of Net­flix to
look for­ward to. How it was at times like that that I always
thought of Cal­lum, and what we might be doing togeth­er,
which made me feel even more alone.
I still can’t quite believe I’m telling her all this, when I
hard­ly know her. But maybe that’s the point. Maybe, of all
the peo­ple here, she’s the one per­son I can tell, because
she’s basi­cal­ly a stranger. The vod­ka def­i­nite­ly helps, too,
and the fact that it’s so gloomy in here that I can hard­ly see
her face. Even so, I don’t think I can tell her all of it. The
thought of doing that makes me feel pan­icky. But maybe I
can start at the begin­ning and see if, once I’ve told her most
of it, I’m brave enough to tell her the whole thing.
‘I was on my phone,’ I say, ‘and I could see that Cal­lum
was with Ellie. She’d shared all these pics on Snapchat.
There was one of her sit­ting on his lap. And then anoth­er
one of her kiss­ing him, while she held one mid­dle fin­ger up
to the cam­era like she didn’t want any­one to take the
pic­ture … except then she went and shared it for the whole
world to see, for fuck’s sake.’
Han­nah takes a drink from the bot­tle, breathes out. ‘That
must have made you feel pret­ty awful,’ she says. ‘See­ing
that. Jeez, social media has a lot to answer for.’
‘Yeah.’ I shrug. ‘It did make me feel a bit … shit.’ In case I
sound like a total stalk­er I don’t tell her how many times I
looked at those pho­tos, how I sat there clutch­ing my
Sainsbury’s bag and cry­ing while I did it. ‘My mates had
been say­ing I should have some fun,’ I say. ‘You know, like
show Cal­lum what he was miss­ing. They kept telling me to
get myself on some dat­ing apps, but I didn’t want to do it at
uni, where it was all so inces­tu­ous.’
‘What, apps like Tin­der?’
I think she’s try­ing to show she’s down with the kids.
‘Yeah, but no one real­ly uses Tin­der any more.’
‘Sor­ry,’ she says. ‘I’m ancient, remem­ber. What do I
know?’ She says it a bit wist­ful­ly.
‘You’re not that old,’ I tell her.
‘Well … thanks.’ Her knee bumps against mine.
I take anoth­er swig of vod­ka. And remem­ber how that
night in Jules’s flat I drank some of her wine, which made
me realise how all the stuff we drank at uni for £3 a glass in
the local bars tast­ed like absolute piss. I remem­ber how I
felt quite sophis­ti­cat­ed walk­ing around in my pants and bra
with one of her big glass­es. I imag­ined it was my flat, that I
was going to go out and find some man and bring him back
here and screw him. And that would show Cal­lum.
Obvi­ous­ly I didn’t actu­al­ly plan to do that. I’d only had sex
with one per­son before, with Cal­lum. And even that had
been pret­ty tame.
‘I set up a pro­file,’ I tell Han­nah. ‘I decid­ed in Lon­don it
was dif­fer­ent. In Lon­don I could go on a date and it wouldn’t
be all over the whole of cam­pus the next morn­ing.’
‘I’m kind of impressed,’ Han­nah says. ‘I’d nev­er have been
brave enough to do some­thing like that. But weren’t you,
you know … wor­ried about safe­ty?’
‘No,’ I say. ‘I’m not an idiot. I didn’t use my real name. Or
my age.’
‘Ah,’ Han­nah nods. ‘Right.’ I get the impres­sion she’s not
con­vinced by that and is try­ing very hard not to say
any­thing else.
I put my age as twen­ty-six, in fact. The pro­file pho­to I put
up didn’t even look like me. I ran­sacked Jules’s clos­et, did
my make-up per­fect­ly. But it was kind of the point not to
look like me.
‘I called myself Bel­la,’ I say. ‘You know, as in Hadid?’
I tell Han­nah how I sat there on the bed and scrolled
through pho­tos of all these guys until my eyes burned. ‘Most
of them were rank,’ I say. ‘In the gym, like lift­ing up their
shirts, or wear­ing sun­glass­es that they thought made them
look cool.’ I almost gave up.
‘But I did match with this one guy,’ I tell Han­nah. ‘He
caught my eye. He was … dif­fer­ent.’
I made the first move. So unlike me, but I was a bit pissed
from Jules’s wine.
Free to meet up? I wrote.
Yes, his reply came. I’d like that, Bel­la. When suits you?
How about this evening?
There was a long pause. Then: You don’t hang about.
This is my only free evening for the next few weeks. I liked how that
sound­ed. Like I had bet­ter places to be.
Fine, he mes­saged back. It’s a date.
‘What was he like?’ Han­nah asks, her chin in her hand. She
seems fas­ci­nat­ed, watch­ing me close­ly.
‘Hot­ter than his pho­to. And a bit old­er than me.’
‘How much old­er?’
‘Um … maybe fif­teen years?’
‘OK.’ Is she try­ing not to sound shocked? ‘And what was
he like? When you actu­al­ly met up?’
I think back. It’s hard for me to see him as he appeared at
the begin­ning. ‘I guess I thought he was hot. And … he
seemed like more of a man. He made Cal­lum look like a boy
in com­par­i­son.’ He had broad shoul­ders, like he worked out
a lot, and a tan. In com­par­i­son Cal­lum was a scrawny lit­tle
pret­ty boy. Prop­er men were my new thing, I decid­ed. ‘But,’ I
shrug, even though she can’t see me. ‘I don’t know. I
sup­pose how­ev­er hot he was, at first, a part of me would
have pre­ferred him to be Cal­lum.’
Han­nah nods. ‘Yeah,’ she says sym­pa­thet­i­cal­ly. ‘I get that.
When you’ve got your heart set on some­one Brad Pitt could
walk in and he wouldn’t be enough—’
‘Brad Pitt is real­ly fuck­ing old,’ I say.
‘Um – Har­ry Styles?’
That almost makes me smile. ‘Yeah. Maybe. Or Tim­o­th­ée
Cha­la­met.’ I always thought Cal­lum looked a bit like him.
‘But Cal­lum prob­a­bly hadn’t thought about me for a
moment, espe­cial­ly not while Ellie’s stu­pid big tits were in
his face.’ I told myself I had bet­ter stop fuck­ing think­ing
about him.
‘And did this guy … what was his name?’
‘Steven.’
‘Did he say any­thing? When you met, about you being so
much younger?’
I give her a look. That sound­ed a bit judge‑y.
‘Sor­ry,’ she says, with a laugh. ‘But, seri­ous­ly, did he?’
‘Yeah, he did. He asked me if I was real­ly twen­ty-six. But
he didn’t say it in a sus­pi­cious way, more like it was, I dun­no
– a joke we were both in on. It didn’t real­ly seem to mat­ter
to him, not then. And he was nice,’ I say, though it’s hard to
remem­ber that now. ‘I was hav­ing a good time. He laughed
at all my jokes. He asked me loads of ques­tions about
myself.’
I cast my mind back to that night. Being in that bar with the
drinks going to my head – I was drink­ing Negro­nis because I
thought that would make me seem old­er. ‘My orig­i­nal plan
was to get a pho­to,’ I say, ‘post it to my Insta­gram.’ Let
Cal­lum see what he was miss­ing.
‘I’m guess­ing …’ Han­nah looks at me, ‘a bit more than
that hap­pened?’
‘Yeah.’ I take a gulp of vod­ka.
There was this moment, I remem­ber, when I thought maybe
he was going to say good­bye, but he opened the door of the
cab and turned to me and said: ‘Well, are you get­ting in?’
And in the taxi (not even an Uber, a prop­er black cab), how
this lit­tle voice kept pip­ing up: What are you doing? You
hard­ly know him! But the drunk part of me, the part of me
that was up for it, kept telling it to shut up.
We went back to Jules’s place, because he’d just moved
house and didn’t have any prop­er fur­ni­ture. I felt a bit bad
about it, but I told myself I’d wash the sheets.
‘Wow,’ he said. ‘This is impres­sive. And it all belongs to
you?’
‘Yeah,’ I said, feel­ing like I’d got a whole lot more
sophis­ti­cat­ed in his eyes.
‘And then we had sex,’ I tell Han­nah. ‘I guess I want­ed to
do it before the booze wore off.’
‘Was it good?’ Han­nah asks. She sounds excit­ed. And
then: ‘I haven’t had sex for ages. Sor­ry. I know that’s TMI.’
I try not to think of her and Char­lie hav­ing sex. ‘Yeah,’ I
say. ‘It was a bit – y’know. A bit rough? He pushed me up
against the wall, pushed my skirt up around my waist,
pulled my knick­ers down. And he— Can I have a bit more of
that?’ Han­nah pass­es me the bot­tle and I take a quick slug.
‘He went down on me, even though I hadn’t had a show­er.
He said he pre­ferred it like that.’
‘Right,’ Han­nah says. ‘OK. Wow.’
Cal­lum and I had nev­er done any­thing very adven­tur­ous. I
guess the sex I had with Steven was bet­ter than any­thing I’d
had with Cal­lum, even if, after he’d made me come with his
mouth that first time, I weird­ly felt like cry­ing for a moment.
‘I saw him, like, quite a few times after that,’ I tell Han­nah.
I feel rather than see Han­nah nod, her head so close to
mine that I sense the move­ment of the air. I find myself
telling her how I liked see­ing myself the way he seemed to:
as some­one sexy, some­one adven­tur­ous. Even if some­times
I felt like I was out of my depth, not always total­ly
com­fort­able with all the stuff he asked me to do in bed.
‘I mean,’ I say, ‘it wasn’t like it was with Cal­lum, when it
felt like we were …’
‘Soul­mates?’ Han­nah asks.
‘Yeah,’ I say. It’s a pret­ty cringe word, but it’s also exact­ly
right. ‘This was dif­fer­ent, I guess. With Steven it was like he
only showed me a tiny bit of him­self, which—’
‘Left you want­i­ng to see more?’
‘Yeah. I was sort of obsessed by him, I think. And he was
so grown-up and so sophis­ti­cat­ed, but he want­ed me. And
then—’ I shrug. ‘I fucked up.’
Han­nah frowns. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I dun­no. I sup­pose I want­ed to prove to him I was mature.
And we nev­er seemed to do any­thing togeth­er, oth­er than
meet up and, you know, have sex. I had this – this feel­ing
that he might only be inter­est­ed in me for that.’
Han­nah nods.
‘But at the end of the sum­mer Jules’s mag­a­zine was
throw­ing this par­ty at the V&A, and I thought it would be a
cool thing to bring him to. A prop­er date. Like, impress him a
bit. Make him think I was grown-up and mature.’
I tell Han­nah about walk­ing up those steps and see­ing all
these very grown-up glam­orous peo­ple milling around
inside, all look­ing like film stars. And how the guy who
checked our names looked over me like he didn’t think I
should be there, where­as Steven seemed to fit in so
per­fect­ly.
‘I got a bit ner­vous,’ I said. ‘Espe­cial­ly of hav­ing to
intro­duce him to Jules. And there were all these free drinks. I
had way too many of them, to try and feel more con­fi­dent. I
made a total twat of myself. I had to go and be sick in the
loos – I was a state. And then Steven put me in a cab back
to Jules’s, and I couldn’t even ask him to come with me
because she would be there lat­er on. I remem­ber him
count­ing out the notes to the cab dri­ver. And then ask­ing
him to make sure I got home safe, like I was a child.’
‘He should have gone with you,’ Han­nah says. ‘He should
have made sure you were all right. Not left it to some taxi
dri­ver.’
I shrug. ‘Maybe. But I was such a fuck­ing embar­rass­ment.
I’m not sur­prised he want­ed to be rid of me.’
I remem­ber watch­ing him out of the win­dow and think­ing:
I’ve blown it. And think­ing, if I were him, maybe I’d just go
back inside and hang out with peo­ple my own age who
could hold their booze.
‘After that he start­ed ghost­ing me.’ In case she doesn’t
know what that means I say, ‘You know, like not reply­ing?
Even though I could see the two lit­tle blue ticks.’
She nods.
‘I went back to uni. One night I got a bit drunk and sad
after a night out and I sent him ten mes­sages. I tried to call
him on the walk to Halls at two a.m. He didn’t answer. Didn’t
reply to my texts. I knew I’d nev­er see him again.’
‘Shit,’ Han­nah says.
‘Yeah.’
‘So was that it?’ she asks, when I don’t say any more. ‘Did
you see him again?’ And then, when I don’t answer: ‘Olivia?’
But I can’t speak. It’s like I was under some sort of spell
before, it was so easy to talk. Now it feels as though the
words are stuck in my throat.
There’s this image in my brain. Red on white. All the
blood.
When we get back to the Fol­ly, Han­nah says she’s
knack­ered. ‘Straight to bed for me,’ she says. I get it. It was
dif­fer­ent in the cave. Sit­ting there in the dark with the vod­ka
and the can­dle­light, it felt like we could say any­thing. Now it
feels almost like we over­shared. Like we crossed a line.
I know I won’t be able to go to sleep, though, espe­cial­ly
not while all the blokes are still play­ing their game out­side
my room. So I stand against the wall out­side for a bit and try
to slow down the thoughts rac­ing round my head.
‘Hel­lo there.’
I near­ly jump out of my skin. ‘What the fuck—’
It’s the best man, John­no. I don’t like him. I saw how he
looked at me ear­li­er. And he’s drunk – I can tell that, and I’m
pret­ty drunk. In the light spilling from the din­ing room I can
see him give a big grin, more of a leer. ‘Fan­cy a puff?’ He
holds out a big joint, sick­ly smell of weed. I can see it’s wet
on the end where it’s been in his mouth.
‘No thanks,’ I say.
‘Very well-behaved.’
I make to go inside, but as I reach for the door he catch­es
my arm, his hand tight about it. ‘You know, we should have
a dance tomor­row, you and I. Best man and the brides­maid.’
I shake my head.
He steps near­er, pulls me clos­er to him. He’s so much
big­ger than me. But he wouldn’t do any­thing right here,
would he? Not with every­one upstairs?
‘You should think about it,’ he says. ‘Might sur­prise you.
An old­er man.’
‘Get the fuck off me,’ I hiss. I think of my razor blade,
upstairs. I wish I had it with me, just so I knew it was there.