Dead Like You

49

Saturday 10 January

In another part of the city, just a couple of miles away in a quiet, residential Kemp Town street, another couple were also discussing their wedding plans.

Jessie Sheldon and Benedict Greene were ensconced opposite each other in Sam’s restaurant, sharing a dessert.

Anyone looking at them would have seen two attractive people, both in their mid-twenties, clearly in love. It was evident from their body language. They sat oblivious of their surroundings, and anyone else, their foreheads almost touching over the tall glass dish, each taking it in turn to dig a long spoon in and feed the other tenderly and sensually.

Neither was dressed up, even though it was Saturday night. Jessie, who had come straight from a kick-boxing class at the gym, wore a grey tracksuit with a large Nike tick across it. Her shoulder-length bleached hair was scooped up into a ponytail, with a few loose strands hanging down. She had a pretty face and, if it weren’t for her nose, she would be almost classically beautiful.

Jessie had had a complex about her nose throughout her childhood. In her view, it wasn’t so much a nose as a beak. In her teens she was forever glancing sideways to catch her reflection in mirrors or shop windows. She had been determined that one day she would have a nose job.

But that was then, in her life before Benedict. Now, at twenty-five, she didn’t care about it any more. Benedict told her he loved her nose, that he would not hear of her changing it and that he hoped their children would inherit that same shape. She was less happy about that thought, about putting them through the same years of misery she had been through.

They would have nose jobs, she promised herself silently.

The irony was that neither of her parents had that nose, nor did her grandparents. It was her great-grandfather’s, she had been told by her mother, who had a framed and fading sepia photograph of him. The damned hooked-nose gene had managed to vault two generations and fetch up in her DNA strand.

Thanks a lot, great-grandpa!

‘You know something, I love your nose more every day,’ Benedict said, holding up the spoon she had just licked clean and handing it to her.

‘Is it just my nose?’ she teased.

He shrugged and looked pensive for a moment. ‘Other bits too, I suppose!’

She gave him a playful kick under the table. ‘Which other bits?’

Benedict had a serious, studious face and neat brown hair. When she had first met him, he had reminded her of those clean-cut, almost impossibly perfect-looking boy-next-door actors who seemed to star in every US television mini series. She felt so good with him. He made her feel safe and secure, and she missed him every single second that they were apart. She looked forward with intense happiness to a life with him.

But there was an elephant in the room.

It stood beside their table now. Casting its own massive shadow over them.

‘So, did you tell them, last night?’ he asked.

Friday night. The Shabbat. The ritual Friday night with her mother and father, her brother, her sister-in-law, her grandmother, that she never missed. The prayers and the meal. The gefilte fish that her mother’s appalling cooking made taste like cat food. The cremated chicken and shrivelled sweetcorn. The candles. The grim wine her father bought that tasted like boiled tarmac – as if drinking alcohol on a Friday night was a mortal sin, so he had to ensure that the stuff tasted like a penance.

Her brother, Marcus, was the big success of the family. He was a lawyer, married to a good Jewish girl, Rochelle, who was now irritatingly pregnant, and they were both irritatingly smug about that.

She had fully intended breaking the news, the same way she had intended breaking it for the past four Friday nights. That she was in love with and intended to marry a goy. And a poor goy to boot. But she had funked it yet again.

She shrugged. ‘I’m sorry, I – I was going to – but – it just wasn’t the right moment. I think they should meet you first. Then they’ll see what a lovely person you are.’

He frowned.

She put down the spoon, reached across the table and took his hand. ‘I’ve told you – they’re not easy people.’

He put his free hand over hers and stared into her eyes. ‘Does that mean you’re having doubts?’

She shook her head vigorously. ‘None. Absolutely none. I love you, Benedict, and I want to spend the rest of my life with you. I don’t have one shred of doubt.’

And she didn’t.

But she had a problem. Not only was Benedict not Jewish or wealthy, but he wasn’t ambitious in the sense that her parents could – or would ever – understand: the monetary sense. He did have big ambitions in a different direction. He worked for a local charity, helping homeless people. He wanted to improve the plight of underprivileged people throughout his city. He dreamed of the day when no one would ever have to sleep on the streets of this rich city again. She loved and admired him for that.

Her mother had dreamed of her becoming a doctor, which had once been Jessie’s dream too. When, with lower sights, she’d opted instead to go for a nursing degree at Southampton University, her parents had accepted it, her mother with less good grace than her father. But when she graduated she decided that she wanted to do something to help the underprivileged, and she got a job that was low-paid but she loved, as a nurse/counsellor at a drug addict drop-in centre at the Old Steine in central Brighton.

A job with no prospects. Not something either of her parents could easily get their heads around. But they admired her dedication, no question of that. They were proud of her. And they were looking forward to a son-in-law, one day, they would be equally proud of. It was a natural assumption that he would be a big earner, a provider, to keep Jessie in the ma

Which was a problem with Benedict.

‘I’m happy to meet them any time. You know that.’

She nodded and gripped his hand. ‘You’re going to meet them next week at the ball. You’ll charm them then, I’m sure.’

Her father was chair of a large local charity that raised money for Jewish causes around the world. He had booked a table at a fund-raising ball at the Metropole Hotel to which she had been invited to bring a friend.

She’d already bought her outfit and what she needed now was a pair of shoes to go with it. All she had to do was ask her father for the money, which she knew would please him no end. But she just could not bring herself to do that. She’d spotted some Anya Hindmarch shoes earlier today, in the January sale at a local store, Marielle Shoes. They were dead sexy but classy at the same time. Black patent leather, five-inch heels, ankle straps and open toe. But at £250 they were still a lot of money. She hoped that perhaps, if she waited, there might be a further reduction on them. If someone else bought them in the interim, well, too bad. She’d find something else. Brighton had no shortage of shoe shops. She’d find something!

The Shoe Man agreed with her.

He’d stood right behind her at the counter of Deja Shoes in Kensington Gardens earlier today. He’d listened to her telling the shop assistant that she wanted something classy and sexy to wear for her fiancé at an important function next week. Then he’d stood behind her at Marielle Shoes, just along the road.

And he had to admit she looked really sexy in those strapped black patent shoes she had tried on but not bought. So very sexy.

Much too sexy for them to be wasted on her fiancé.

He sincerely hoped she would return and buy them.

Then she could wear them for him!