Saving Francesca

At the reception hall, things get bad. Toasting royalty is a completely foreign concept for my extended family. Although they can relate to the fact that Queen Elizabeth doesn’t get on with her daughters-in-law, they’re just not interested in paying homage to her and they chat through the whole thing. Worse still, Vera the gym junkie is flirting outrageously with my father and he’s laughing with her. She’s attractive and uncomplicated, and she does the helpless thing well. Mia’s never been helpless until now.

From my lonely spot at the main table, while the bride and groom are socializing and the maid of honor is breaking up my parents’ marriage, I watch as Will introduces his family to Luca, and I can almost hear them saying how adorable he is. Luca sits down and he’s the center of their world and I feel invisible and ugly and, more than anything, I miss Mia. I miss sitting with the grown-ups, the way she included me in their conversations. If it wasn’t her, it was usually Angelina, but she is too busy being a bride tonight.

My partner remembers that I’m alive and asks me to dance to “Nutbush City Limits,” and Tara Finke invades my body and I tell him that standing up and dancing the same steps as everyone else in the room, en masse, is the last bastion of conformity.

I don’t see him for the rest of the night.

I go into the toilet and sit on a chair, staring into space. In one of the cubicles a line of smoke comes over the top, and I look underneath the door and see the ivory dress.

“Angelina?”

The cubicle door opens and she ushers me in. Thank God she didn’t do the big poufy dress and there’s room in there for me as well.

Next to the toilet there’s a window, and we poke our heads outside. She hands me the cigarette and I take a drag.

“I’ll be gone two months,” she tells me. “So you’ve got to take care of Mia.”

I nod.

“Listen to me. It’s not your fault. It’s not Uncle Robert’s. It’s not Luca’s. And most of all, it’s not Mia’s. Sometimes your whole system just shuts down and you wake up in the morning and everything’s black and no matter how much people speak to you and try to talk you out of it and tell you everything’s okay, it doesn’t work. Mia is going to get out of this thing, Frankie, but it’s not going to happen on the day she gets out of bed or the next day or the next. And there are some days you’re going to find it hard, but you have to be there for her. Get her back into a routine and she’ll do the rest somehow. And whatever you do, don’t underestimate your father. He’s been married to the clueiest woman I know for eighteen years. That means he has to be cluey himself. Your parents’ marriage works because of your father as well, Francesca, not just because of Mia, and she’ll get out of this because of Robert and you guys. Just don’t give up on her.”

She takes out some breath freshener and sprays it in her mouth.

“You’re begi

“I went through his overnight bag in the limo. He’s packed the shorts.”

“Enough said.”

She washes her hands and wipes them and gives me a kiss, and then she’s gone.

I fix up my makeup and step outside. Will is standing there, as if he’s been waiting.

“Nice dress.”

I roll my eyes.

“No, really. The … the color … it … it … it looks great on you.”

“They’re called boobs, Ed,” I say, quoting Julia Roberts in Erin Brockovich.

He grins, and after a moment he takes both my hands in his. “Are you okay?”

I shake my head. Lying to Will takes up too much strength. I just want to blend into him.

He bends forward and kisses me and I let him. I love the rough feel of his suit against my bare arms and the smell of him and the bristle of his chin.

He presses me against the wall and I feel every part of him imprint itself on me, but after a moment I feel myself pushing him away.

“I can’t do this if you have a girlfriend, Will. I just can’t.”

He’s silent for a moment, but it’s like he can’t find the words. “It’s complicated.”

“How?”

“Whatever I say is going to make me sound like a bastard. It’s just not that easy.”

I pull my hand away. “Nor am I.”

But we’re still touching, our foreheads together.

“I’m supposed to be going overseas next year. Just to add to the complication,” he says.

“For how long?”

“A while. But I don’t know… . I kind of like my comfort zones, you know. I don’t really think I want to leave that behind.”

I wonder if he means “leave her behind.”

“Comfort zones are overrated,” I tell him. “They make you lazy.”

He smiles. “You come out with weird things.”

The MC a

His father looks inquiringly at Will. “Sophia?” he asks.

Who the hell’s Sophia? Even my mother, who doesn’t know what day it is, knows Will’s name because I talk about him all day long. His family have no idea who I am.

I excuse myself politely and walk toward my father, and we dance. Luca attaches himself to my waist, and the three of us sway as the Elvis impersonator sings “It’s Now or Never.” I remember when I was younger and my mum and dad would be holding Luca in their arms and I’d attach myself to them and we’d dance all night.

But tonight one of us is missing and, combined, we feel like an amputee.

chapter 25

I CAN’T GET the Will Trombal kiss out of my mind. No. “Kiss” is not the word to describe it. The Will Trombal experience. The Will Trombal extravaganza.

“Up against a wall?” Siobhan whispers during class.

“Shhh. And I said there was a wall there, I didn’t put it in those words. You make it sound like a sex thing.”

“As if it’s not.”

“Shhh.”

“Can you stop shushing me?” she says, irritated.

Mr. Brolin is speaking totems and serpent rainbows like he has no idea.

“Don’t let him use you,” she whispers.

I look at her, not believing I’m getting this piece of advice from someone whose experiences are well documented on the wall of the boys’ toilets. She is offended by the look.

“I do not let them use me,” she says forcefully.

“You go out with so many guys and it never works out and then you end up crying in a bedroom at a party.”

“So what? I need to be on the lookout for ‘the One.’ ” She does the quotation-marks thing with her fingers.

“Well, my ‘One,’ ” I say, wiggling my fingers back, “has a girlfriend.”

“You don’t know ‘the One’s’ girlfriend, so there’s nothing unethical happening,” the Queen of Ethics explains.

Our fingers are begi

“That’s not true. Because teenage girls who steal boyfriends today will be stealing husbands in ten years’ time. I’m a home wrecker in training.”

“Oh please. The guy can’t keep his hands off you and you blame yourself.”

“If I had a boyfriend,” I tell her, “and I felt for Will what I think we both feel, I’d split up with my boyfriend. And he’s not doing that.”

“If he does, he might be losing a friend,” she explains. “The girl could have been a friend first.”

“So he and I don’t happen instead?”

She shrugs. “I went out with this guy once. Remember Nick Fox on my street? Best friends for years. We had the same taste in everything, and I just loved talking to him and making sense of everything with him. But I realized I just wasn’t interested in him romantically, so after an agonizing six months I broke it off with him, and he never spoke to me again. Very sad. Second time in my life that my best friend stopped talking to me.”

She gives me one of those meaningful looks.

“You’re the one who came back in Year Seven with the ‘you are so naïve’ attitude,” I argue.