Читать книгу: «No One Wants to Be Miss Havisham»

Chapter 1

Jessica Marley was dead: to begin with. The notice of her death had been in all the major newspapers, her Facebook account was now a very sparsely populated memorial page and Edie Dickens had been to her funeral. Yes, Jessica Marley was as dead as a doornail.

This didn’t stop Edie from hoping that it had all been a bad dream. She glared at the calendar on her computer. The words ‘Mel’s Hen Night’ stared back at her. It was a mere two days before this ordeal and her greatest ally on the battlefield of nuptial nonsense was gone. Dead. Pushing up the daisies. Whilst Edie was stuck with going and worse, she was the maid of honour, which meant participating in the damn thing. Mel might be her oldest friend but they differed wildly in their views on weddings and suitable hen activities. Jessica hadn’t.

Who would complain with her about the ridiculousness of venue, the trite jokes and obscene games, plus the awful tackiness of the regalia that all, not just the hen, would be forced to wear?

And at the wedding itself… Edie would have no one to take bets with on how long the marriage would last and whether the groom had had his hand in the bridesmaid’s posy.

The thought that it was irrational to blame Jessica for dying did flit across the front of her brain, but it was quickly brushed away. Jessica was a veteran of the nuptial war and one of the rules was always “eye the food warily”. She should’ve spotted the cocktail stick holding the mini burger together. If she’d spotted it she wouldn’t have swallowed it, therefore causing the onset of peritonitis.

Death by canapé.

Another casualty of a wedding, just a little more final than the normal crushed dreams and plundered bank accounts.

Edie locked her computer screen, breathing more easily when the screen showed the regulation company logo, ‘Bailey Lang Satis and Partners’. She grabbed her bag and jacket and left to get a late lunch. She glanced at the empty seat at the other desk in her office. Rachel, her trainee, was taking yet another long lunch. It was getting ridiculous.

Edie swept along the corridor, taking some pleasure that people stepped out of her way.

Never let anyone stop you from being the best you can be.

She couldn't remember who had told her that, but it stuck with her. Along with her mother's maxim of ‘never let the bastards see you cry.’

"I can't believe he's actually working here!"

It was another solicitor, Caroline, who was speaking in a breathless voice like a boy band groupie.

"He's so sexy. When he smiled at me as he held the door open this morning I swear I almost fainted."

Carmel, one of the partners, was giggling.

As she passed them all standing in a knot by the Ladies she frowned. The office was not a place for socialising. It was a place to work. When she reached partner, there would be changes. Ever since her mentor, Ms Satis had been put on gardening leave for alleged work place bullying, it had gone soft. Was it bullying to expect the best from everyone? Edie pressed the lift button hard.

"Looks like the Shark is in a snit again."

She heard the whisper as it carried across the marble floor and hard walls of the lift lobby. The doors opened and she got in.

Never let the bastards see you cry.

The smell of cinnamon and buttery pastry filled her senses as she stood at the counter of the local sandwich shop. Her mouth watered at the memory of it melting on her tongue. An image of her dad laughing as he wiped the crumbs from her cheeks.

She thrust the memory back behind the walls in her mind. It was better to forget that and only remember that her mum never allowed pastries. Too calorific.

Plus Ms Satis had always advocated that a widening waist showed that a lawyer wasn’t taking care of the little details. Edie wasn’t sure she would ever reach the greyhound leanness of her mentor but she was giving it a good try. The thought of Hilary Satis kept the memories safer. Emotions had no place in a divorce lawyer.

“Oh come on,” she couldn’t help muttering under her breath.

Edie wanted to leave the shop as fast as possible whilst her memories were still ruthlessly corralled. But the one person who stood in front of her in the queue wasn’t moving. Why were people not prepared with the correct change when they came to pay for their sandwich? She tapped her foot and started tutting.

“I’m sure I have it right here.” The woman in front was digging through her purse and beginning to count copper coins out onto the Plexiglas counter. A key chain with a cube of photos of grinning children swung from it.

“For the love of God,” Edie didn’t explode so much as fire the words with laser pointedness at the back of the woman’s head. Edie took in the messy and poorly cut hair and wondered how the woman could’ve allowed herself out looking like that.

The woman turned in shock.

“Some of us work and you are costing me money. If you are incapable of counting out change then I suggest you ask your children to teach you.” Edie pushed past the woman as she said it, leaving the woman open mouthed and with tears starting in her eyes.

I’m only doing it for her own good, Edie thought, pushing any twinge of shame down behind her walls to join her cinnamon flavoured memories.

“Smoked salmon on granary, salad and no butter,” she calmly ordered.

The owner of the shop, a burly Italian cockney glared at her but slapped the bread onto the board.

“No butter,” she said it sharply as she saw him start to dip his knife in the tub. He threw the knife down, muttering in Italian.

People had to learn. They had to toughen up. Life wasn’t a Disney film full of helpful woodland creatures and funny animated snowmen. If you didn’t look after yourself no one else would.

She paid with the correct money, and took her sandwich in silence. She stared pointedly at the now crying woman standing with a handful of change and left the shop the doorbells chiming accusingly behind her.

Walking back onto her floor from the lift, she noticed that there were still people gossiping. She could feel her lips tightening. It was a dog eat dog world; that was what made her a great lawyer. No distractions, no diversions. What she hadn’t learned by herself, her mother or Hilary Satis had drummed into her.

These people needed to get with the programme.

“Edie?” A weedy voice said.

Sighing, Edie turned away from the screen.

“Yes, Rachel?”

Edie asked herself, yet again, why she had been assigned the most colourless and ineffectual trainee solicitor the firm had ever taken on. Didn’t they know that a divorce practice needed sharks? Go-getters? Ever since Hilary had been forced out it had gone soft. Mind you the trainee before Rachel hadn't been much good either and Hilary had been around then.

“I have to leave early tonight,” Rachel said bouncing from foot to foot.

It was the most animated Edie had ever seen her.

“Early?”

She'd already taken a long lunch. Edie would have to check her billable hours carefully.

“Yes… it’s for my wedding dress fitting!” Rachel fairly glowed.

And another one was seduced to the dark side. No wonder she wasn't good for anything. Weddings turned people's mind to porridge. And if they didn't have much of a mind before, it went even quicker.

Edie looked at Rachel, really seeing her for the first time. She shone from within, transforming her dirty dishwater coloured hair, her scrawny figure hidden in a polyester black suit and her cheap shoes into something touchingly pretty.

Weddings? Pah.

It wouldn’t last.

“And you think that takes priority over Mrs Robinson-Smythe’s settlement?” Edie asked.

“I can come in early tomorrow?” Rachel’s bottom lip wobbled.

“You should be coming in early anyway if you want to get ahead. Oh don’t cry. Just go. But this will be going on your permanent record.” Edie said and turned away from her in disgust, ignoring her until she left the office.

Edie found that firing off an email to the HR department about the lackadaisical attitude of her trainee lifted her spirits, and she carried on working with a small smile. If you didn’t watch the trainees they were apt to slack off, she knew this. She’d been taught by the best. Really, between Rachel’s sloppiness and the other solicitors spending the time gossiping about men, it was a surprise that Bailey Lang Satis and Partners was still as successful as it was. Standards were slipping.

At eight pm, she shut down her computer, removed all papers from her desk, averted her eyes from Rachel’s teetering piles of briefs and left. She strode confidently through the office, and noted she was the last to leave. Good. It gave her a sense of pride, and also relief that she didn't have to make small talk with anyone.

Exactly twenty minutes later she was outside the door to her building, a red and white mansion block just off Victoria Street. It was a quiet and elegant place and an easy bus ride from work at the edge of the City. The double doors were half glazed and led through to a tiled entrance way. Above the doors was a stained glass semicircular window showing flowers, misplaced Edwardian whimsy, Edie always thought.

The last rays of the sun on this June evening were shining directly onto the window. As Edie put her key in the lock, she glanced up.

Instead of the whimsical flowers she'd expected, a face stared down at her. The face of Jessica Marley.

It glowed in the light of the setting sun. It had Jessica’s perpetual look of superiority; her chin length bob moved slightly as if touched by a faint wind. And perched on top was a cheap silver tiara. Brown eyes stared beadily down at Edie. There was nothing whimsical about them.

Edie blinked.

No, it really was just a stained glass window.

The blood from her face was now pooled somewhere round her knees. With her hand shaking, she turned the key in the lock and stumbled through the front door.

That didn’t just happen. It couldn’t have done.

“Low blood sugar. It’s just low blood sugar,” she whispered as she took the lift not trusting her legs for the usual brisk walk up the stairs. She’d seen Jessica because she’d been on her mind earlier; that was it. It had to be. It was the only logical explanation.

Once in her second floor flat, she rapidly turned the locks and put the chain on. Back flattened against it, she lifted a hand to her forehead. It was cold and damp, but not from fear; she didn't do fear.

She could hear Ms Satis' voice telling her to pull it together.

“Get a grip Edie. It was just a trick of the light.” Maybe if she said it enough she could believe it. It was a technique she knew well.

Taking a deep breath she walked to the kitchen through her bland and colourless flat. There was not a personal touch anywhere, not a photo or a knickknack; it was more like a hotel room. She could move out at a moment’s notice and not leave an imprint of herself behind. And what was in the flat was perfectly aligned; everything was in its place.

In her spotless and almost clinical kitchen, Edie prepared dinner with automaton precision: organic chicken, no skin and grilled to reduce the calories, organic vegetables steamed and not a touch of a starchy carbohydrate because it was after six pm. The work soothed her, all the boundaries and rules giving her structure, making her feel safe. Her phone rang, and she automatically checked the caller.

Her mother.

Her lips pursed. She didn’t have time to speak to her mother, Edie lied to herself, when what she meant was that she didn't have the energy to deal with her. She sent it to voice mail.

Then, as was her routine, she sat at the small breakfast bar that divided the kitchen from the living room and carefully placed a forkful of food made up of perfect proportions and dimension in her mouth. She chewed exactly thirty times before she swallowed, and, because she'd had so much practice at ignoring anything that made her uncomfortable, she successfully dismissed the thoughts of weddings and stained glass windows as she reviewed Mrs Robinson-Smythe’s settlement.

By exactly ten thirty pm Edie was in bed, a solitary figure lying in her cool crisp white linen sheets. It was as if she was laid out, arms by her sides or occasionally crossed across her chest. All neat and tidy, nothing messy.

OK, so tonight she might have checked under the bed and in each wardrobe before she lay down, but those were just sensible precautions for a single woman living in the centre of London. And if she'd never done it before tonight, it was never too late to start. At least that is what she told herself.

On that fuzzy edge of sleep, that time where you walk on the verge between the waking path or the field of dreams, she heard an electronic click, the sound of a text message being delivered. It jolted her awake.

Who could be texting her now?

And then as her brain woke up, she remembered she didn't have an alert for her text messages, her phone was set to vibrate mode. Then as if to underline her thought and highlight it in bold, she heard it again, and again. And then it seemed that every electrical appliance in the flat turned on and began to beep, the sound getting louder and louder.

What the…

Edie's heart was hammering so loudly that she almost didn't hear the sound of stiletto-heeled shoes tapping slowly and laboriously towards her and the clanking sound of a chain being dragged over wooden floors.

It came closer and closer.

“Bugger this!” she whispered. “It’s just a dream.”

And as she said it, something came through the bedroom door. Right through it, without opening it.

“Jessica?” Edie whispered.

She pressed her hand against her ribcage as if trying to keep her slamming heart from leaping out.

The same face that had stared at her from the stained glass was right there in front of her: the superior look, the chin length bob. But Edie had never seen Jessica in a bridesmaid’s dress before. It was peach satin, cheap looking and so full of frills and lace, it was the embodiment of the dream of a demented four year old. And Jessica had a chain dragging behind her. It was fastened about her waist. It wound around her and fell behind her like a train. It sparkled with pink glitter; and woven between the links were pink feather boas, ‘L’ plates and bunny rabbit ears, penis-shaped straws, red devil horns and fairy wings.

Her body was transparent, so Edie could see the massive bow that adorned the back of the dress.

She’d always suspected Jessica was full of hot air.

“What the hell do you want? You’re dead.” Edie said.

“Oh come on Edie, of course I’m dead. Do you think if I were still alive I’d be here? Also, you know, see-through…” The shade gestured to her body.

“But J-Jessica…” Edie wasn’t sure why she was trying to argue with a mad bridesmaid ghost in her bedroom; maybe she needed to humour it until she was certain what she was dealing with.

“You know, that is the first time I’ve heard my name since I died. Nothing worse than having been someone and then to be reduced to wandering around without anyone knowing you,” the spirit said.

Edie suddenly remembered that although she and Jessica had known each other since secondary school and were united in their hatred of all things nuptial, she hadn’t actually liked Jessica very much. Too full of herself.

“Can you sit down?” asked Edie, doubtfully.

The ghoul raised a withering transparent eyebrow.

No, Edie hadn’t really cared for Jessica at all.

“Well… erm… make yourself at home.”

Make yourself at home? What was she saying? She’d never had Jessica to stay in her flat when she was alive and now she was asking her spirit to make herself at home. In fact she couldn't remember ever hanging out with Jessica except at various weddings of mutual acquaintances. Not that Edie went out much anyway.

Edie watched as Jessica positioned herself on the end of her bed. There was no corresponding dip in the mattress; it was like the ghoul floated on the duvet.

She must be dreaming.

“You think you’re dreaming,” stated the ghost.

“Well I must be.”

“Edie, for once in your life stop being a lawyer and doubting everything. Use the senses God gave you, why question everything?”

“Because senses have a habit of being hijacked, that’s why. Little things can affect them; I could be overworked and hallucinating.”

Edie knew she was clutching at straws, but what was the alternative?

The beady gaze of the spectre was making her uneasy. Added to that was the way that whilst the ghost sat still, her hair, gown and wedding ephemera were agitated. It was as if someone had opened an oven and let the hot vapour out.

Odd, very odd.

“If I wanted I could have had a piece of cheese after dinner and I'd be imagining George Clooney instead. It’s all bollocks.” Edie said going on the attack as she always did when feeling uncomfortable. But also wondering why she hadn't imagined George Clooney.

At this, see-through Jessica gave her a scathing look and then raised a cry, so truly gut wrenching and melancholy, that the hairs on Edie’s neck rose and she clutched her duvet closer to her, moving it to her mouth so she could bite on it and stifle her scream.

“OK, OK. I believe in you.” Edie said.

“Thank God for that, those cries are hellish on one’s throat.” The apparition coughed politely.

“So it’s lovely to see you and all Jessica, but why are you here?” Edie’s voice trembled even as she tried to sound calm and professional.

“I can tell you where I would be if I had a choice. I would be living it up the other side of the pearly gates. As it is I’m stuck round here doing the spiritual version of social work.” The ghoul sighed and slumped slightly.

Edie waited. The spectre then sat up straighter and fixed its stare on her.

“OK so here’s the thing, Edie, supposedly everyone is required to love selflessly. I know; I rolled my eyes too. You are supposed to go out and ‘spread the love.’ Not just love of course, but also all that hope that it supposedly produces, and share it. With the whole world. All a bit vomit inducing, I thought. But that wasn’t the end of it. Oh no, and this is the doozy… If you don’t go out and ‘spread the love,’" Jessica-that-was used her fingers to make quotation marks, "well, you spend death wandering the earth, witnessing all that love and stuff and not being able to share in it. Did you know there was a contract? People should let you know these things. I was told it was all set out in the small print. But who has time to read that?”

That which had been Jessica threw up its hands causing the chain to rattle and a blizzard of pink glitter to fall on the duvet.

“And the chain?” Edie asked.

“Another one of those pesky Ts & Cs which no one tells you about; allegedly the links represent every time I scorned love, focused on work and the minutiae of weddings. When I didn’t see through the glitter and the tat to what was underneath it all, I made one of these damn links. Something about free will, I zoned out around then.” The ghost sighed. “And if you think this is bad… well you should see yours. You get extra links every time you act shark-like in those divorces instead of going for mediation. I particularly like the fetching penis deely boppers and magic wands they've put on yours.”

Edie was horrified. Not the boppers.