No Ex Before Marriage, page 8
12
After walking out on what was frankly the best date anyone has ever had, by the time I get to my dad’s I’m feeling more emotions than I can wrangle. Angry, upset, confused – my God, am I confused right now. I am divorced. Been there, done that, got the T-shirt (or the decree absolute, at least) – I distinctly remember signing the paperwork, keeping my game face on until I went to the toilets, hiding myself away in a cubicle before allowing myself to cry. Bloody hell, my own mum represented me, and she was the best solicitor in town – and she billed me accordingly!
The door is off the latch, so I walk straight into the living room where I find my dad waiting for me with buttery toast and sweet tea – the traditional Walker family treatment for shock.
‘Sit down,’ my dad instructs, skipping the niceties. ‘I need to explain this now.’
I sit down as I’m told but I don’t say a word. I’m so freaked out right now.
‘I shouldn’t have dropped it on you over the phone,’ he continues before puffing air from his cheeks. ‘I have some good news and some bad news. Times two.’
Dad seems calm considering he’s the one I get my naturally stressed nature from. Then again, when Mum died, he temporarily morphed into someone strong, systematic and supportive. He must have been going through hell, but he always stayed strong around me. Both my parents have always been the absolute best. I’m really lucky in that respect.
‘Oh God, just tell me,’ I insist, bracing, ready for the hit of bad news.
‘The good news is that I finally took your advice and started sorting your mum’s office out,’ he says proudly.
‘Dad, you’re supposed to give the bad news first, so the good news makes it better,’ I insist, verging on angrily.
‘Right, yes, sorry darling,’ he says, shifting from Charles Dance to more of a Hugh Grant type. ‘The bad news is that your mum never quite finished your divorce.’
The way he says ‘never quite finished’ is so gentle I almost don’t feel it. It takes me a moment to really take on board what he’s saying.
‘Wait, she didn’t do my divorce for me?’ I double check. ‘Because she said she did. And she definitely gave us all the paperwork. She took me for a drink, remember, to comfort me when it finally went through.’
I remember that night well. Good old Mum. She didn’t just take me for a drink, she took me to The Birdcage, the only gay bar in town, not just because they do the best cocktails but because she kept telling me I was smart, beautiful and that any man would be lucky to have me, and she didn’t want men trying to pick me up while we were hanging out. I’m pretty sure she was joking about that last part but that night out with her certainly made me feel better. Mum really was a wildcard but when she was in work mode, she was a different person.
‘Mum was brilliant,’ I remind him. ‘There’s no way she’d make a mistake like that. That doesn’t sound like Mum at all.’
‘That’s the thing,’ Dad says softly. ‘It wasn’t a mistake.’
Okay, that does sound like Mum.
‘What?’ I shriek.
‘I found this, printed out in her drawer,’ he explains, handing me a small wad of papers. ‘There’s actually a few different versions. I suppose she didn’t know how to tell you. Then she never got the chance.’
I snatch the letters a little too keenly and dart my eyes back and forth across them frantically.
‘This is insane,’ I blurt.
They all start with basically the same sentiment: I’ve made a mistake and I don’t know how to tell you. Each letter varies in approach, but the bottom line is always the same: you’re not divorced.
‘I just…’
My voice trails off. I’m speechless.
‘It reads to me like your mum was so sure you and Zac would regret getting divorced, and so confident you would end up back together, that she thought she was doing you a favour. It seems as though, as time went on, and it seemed like it wasn’t going to happen, she kept editing the same letter, trying to find a way to tell you, and never quite found the right way in time.’
I can hear a sort of embarrassed sympathy in my dad’s voice. Still, I check.
‘Did you know?’ I ask.
‘I didn’t,’ he replies. ‘Your mum says as much at the end of each letter. They’re all signed off: “Your dad knows nothing about this. Love you, Pops. Mum.”’
It’s so like my crazy mum to do something so insane but I never thought she’d go as far as to risk her job – a job she loved so much – for my relationship. Still, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t take some bizarre comfort from these letters, regardless of what they say, it’s almost as though I’m hearing her voice from beyond the grave, which sounds gross, I know, but when you’ve lost your mum, you take what you can get sometimes. It’s nice to be called Pops again. Only two people have ever called me Pops: Mum and Zac.
Mum and Zac genuinely loved each other. Zac didn’t have much family growing up, and family members, including his parents, passed away, and his family got smaller, meaning Zac didn’t really have many people left, not that he was close with, but at that point he was firmly a part of our family. Mum was devastated when we split, I think she saw him as one of her kids, in a non-weird way. I’m not surprised she was holding out hope of us getting back together again.
‘I didn’t want to worry you before I knew the facts. I’ve got it all worked out, love. The good news is that your Auntie Joan says she can sort it all out for you, you just need to sign some paperwork.’
Auntie Joan works at the firm my mum used to work at. She isn’t my actual auntie, just a close friend of my mum’s, although we don’t see all that much of her since Mum passed away, obviously. She’s a solicitor too, so if anyone can sort it, Joan can. I don’t sigh with relief quite yet, though.
‘You said “the good news”,’ I point out. ‘Why do I get the feeling you’re going to follow it with bad news again?’
‘The bad news is Zac needs to sign it too,’ he replies. I open my mouth to say something, although I have no idea what. I just gawp at him for a split second before he continues. ‘I looked on all the social media thingamajiggies and whatnots and I looked through countless Zac Hunts but none of them were your Zac Hunt.’
It’s so odd, to hear him referred to as my Zac. It’s been a long time since he was mine.
‘Okay…’ is about all I can say.
‘It was the funniest thing, though. I figured I’d give it a go, searching him on Google, and I actually got a hit in the news.’
‘The news?’ I squeak.
‘Only local news, and not for anything bad,’ he reassures me. ‘So, if I can get this the right way around this time, the bad news is that Zac is seemingly uncontactable and you need him to sign papers. The good news is that this article says where he’ll be and when.’
‘Thanks for ending on good news,’ I say pointlessly. ‘So, where is he?’
The thought of seeing Zac again, especially to get him to sign divorce papers that he thinks he’s already signed, is a concept that is beyond mortifying.
Dad practically winces as he hands me another piece of paper. I’m expecting an address or something but what he hands me instead is a printout of a news article.
Action star’s daughter to tie knot in Tarness.
What am I even looking at here?
‘Sonny Strong’s daughter is set to tie the knot in Tarness,’ I read aloud. ‘The action star’s only child, influencer Lilac Strong, who he shares with former centrefold Cherry Ryan, is set to wed in the newly refurbished Castle Tarness. The castle, on an island in Loch Tarness… blah blah blah… oh my God! With beefed up security for her big day with fiancé Zachary Hunt, a thirty-one-year-old musician from Lancashire…’
My voice tapers off. That’s him. That’s Zac.
‘I can’t believe he’s getting married again,’ I say softly. ‘I often wondered if he would – if he had.’
I’d usually tell myself that I doubted it. Well, not that it’s a competition, but when you’re not quite over someone it makes it all the more pathetic if they’re moving on. I hate the thought of him moving on.
‘Poppy, darling, listen to me,’ Dad starts softly but seriously. ‘You need to get him to sign these papers and send them to me before he can get married. He’ll commit bigamy if you don’t. I’ve tried everything I can think of to contact him – I even tried his old phone number with no luck. Your only option is to go there.’
‘Loch Tarness?’ I reply. ‘In Scotland?’
‘It’s the only way,’ Dad insists. ‘I couldn’t find any way to contact him. You have to go there, before it’s too late.’
‘Oh, right, okay, so I’m just supposed to nip up to Scotland, march up to my ex who I haven’t seen or heard from in years, and ask him for the divorce he thinks he’s already been through? That simple?’
‘See in the article, where it says security has been beefed up around the town?’ he points out. ‘So possibly not that simple, but I don’t see what choice you have. Oh, darling, come here.’
My dad opens his arms and beckons me over. I sit next to him on the sofa and hug him tightly.
‘Bloody Mum,’ I say quietly. ‘Always thinking she knew best.’
‘Well, usually she did,’ he replies. ‘Why don’t you stay here tonight? We can watch an old Western, like we used to do when you couldn’t sleep, and we’ll figure out what you need to do?’
‘That’d be good,’ I say with a sigh.
I have no idea what I’m supposed to do, or what I’m going to do, but I can tell you what I’m not doing. There’s no way in hell I’m going to Scotland, tracking down my ex at his own wedding, to tell him we’re still married. No way. Not a chance. Can you think of anything more embarrassing than that?
13
It turns out there is something more embarrassing than driving hundreds of miles to confront your ex with the news that you’re still married days before his wedding, and that is your dad offering to drive you there to do it. I’m a thirty-one-year-old woman, with one parent who has already landed me in this mess by trying to help, so the last thing I need is my dad holding my hand.
That said, I am a big baby who never learned to drive, and with no trains in the part of the Scottish Highlands where Loch Tarness is, I do in fact need someone to drive me.
You can always rely on your friends in a time like this, unless your friends are my friends, who have so blatantly started a group chat without you, because ours has gone suspiciously quiet. But it turns out I do have one person still in my corner, and I couldn’t think of anyone better suited for going on this weird adventure with.
‘I am absolutely buzzing you called me – no, gave me the honour, in fact, of driving you on this mission,’ Kat says as she cruises up yet another narrow road lined with trees, with one hand on the steering wheel and a coffee in the other. ‘Genuinely, it’s just so nice to meet another handful.’
‘What do you mean?’ I ask as I warm my hands on my own drink. It’s starting to go cold, which either means I’ve had it for a while or it really is as freezing cold as it feels here.
We just stopped at what was described to us by the man working there as the last petrol station for ‘a ways away’ so Kat filled up her orange Mini Cooper, we grabbed a couple of coffees and we got back on our way. I thought it was cold back home but the winter hits differently up here. I’m so glad I went along with Kat’s top road trip tip that, if you’re driving through the night, the best thing to wear is your warmest pair of pyjamas and a big coat. I feel so toasty.
‘Someone else as crazy as I am,’ she says.
‘I’m not crazy,’ I insist. ‘Honestly, I never do anything like this.’
‘Do you know how many times you’ve said that to me since we met?’ she says with a laugh.
‘It’s true!’
‘Yeah, that’s what I always say too. And it’s definitely what I’d say if I were driving to Scotland to tell my ex he can’t get married because he’s still married to me,’ she adds. ‘Which is also big-time handful behaviour, by the way.’
‘I’m not going to stop him,’ I point out. ‘I’m going to get him to sign this paperwork and then we will be divorced. So no need to tell anyone else anything. I’m not here to mess up his relationship.’
Kat practically chokes on her swig of coffee.
‘God, I would be,’ she says. ‘I’m a firm believer that exes should cease to be once it’s over.’
‘To be honest, it has felt like Zac has ceased to be since we split,’ I reply. ‘He just disappeared. And it’s not like usual, where your ex sort of exists in your peripheral vision, and you occasionally spot them in the supermarket, bump into them through mutual friends, or get to watch their new life without you, playing out on Facebook. Zac really did just vanish.’
‘Sounds like the perfect ex,’ she replies.
‘Apart from the old still being married thing, yeah, I guess,’ I remind her.
‘There is that,’ she replies. ‘But don’t you think when you see him all the old feelings will come flooding back? What if you want him again?’
I think for a second. It’s pretty safe to say that when Zac and I split it broke my heart. I do still think of him often, and I can’t help but measure every guy I meet against him.
‘I’m here to divorce him, not get back with him,’ I remind her. ‘Brownie’s honour.’
Kat takes her eyes off the road for a moment to glance at me. She narrows her eyes.
‘That sounds fake, but okay,’ she replies. ‘But just so you know, the reason I like my exes to cease to exist is because I’ve never seen an ex again without sleeping with them.’
‘Even if they were about to get married?’ I ask in disbelief.
‘Only because the situation has never arisen,’ she insists with a shrug. ‘But if you say we’re here for closure and paperwork, I’ll believe you.’
‘Well, we are old friends,’ I tell her with a smile.
When I stop and think about the fact that I’ve known Kat for less than a week, it makes this already very weird situation feel even weirder but, honestly, I feel like she’s been more of a friend to me in this past week than the other three have in the past year. I barely had to explain my situation to her before she was insisting she would drive me to Scotland to help me fix it. That’s the kind of person I need in my life.
‘There is that,’ she says. ‘I wouldn’t drive to the arsehole of nowhere for anyone else. Where are we, by the way?’
‘You know, I don’t think we’re too far away,’ I reply.
It’s early afternoon now. We’ve been on the road pretty much through the night and according to the satnav, which has served us well so far, we’re only ten minutes away from our destination. Our destination is a town and not an exact place, because I realised quite quickly that it was going to be a race against time to get to Zac before he tied the knot again, so we just bagged up some things, shoved them in the car and hit the road. We have no real idea where we’re going, other than to a castle in the middle of a loch, and we have no clue where we’re going to sleep tonight.
As far as I’m concerned, the plan is to find Zac, get the papers signed, and get the hell out of here. If we could leave today, I’d be delighted, even if we only get as far back down south as Edinburgh and check into a Travelodge there – hell, we could even call it a holiday if we did that, because lord knows I need one. Things have been pretty full-on with work. Even if my job sounds boring, it’s actually quite hectic and challenging, and with it being the family business I haven’t taken much time off. The plus side to this is that now, when I need time off last minute, it isn’t hard to swing it with my dad, and lucky for me Kat is between jobs at the moment so she is free as a bird to do whatever.
‘What are you thinking about?’ Kat asks.
‘Just work,’ I reply.
‘That explains why you look so constipated,’ she says. ‘It’s not a sexy job, is it?’
‘It’s not supposed to be sexy,’ I insist.
‘Do you think that’s why your date with Fit Fred went south?’
Is she serious?
‘It went south because I found out I was married,’ I remind her.
‘Hmm,’ she replies. ‘I’m just saying, if it was Jake Gyllenhaal, and I found out he was married, it wouldn’t put an end to the date. Do you know what would? If I found out he framed pictures for a living.’
‘I don’t—’
‘But it sounds like you do,’ she interrupts me. ‘I’m not trying to be harsh, I’m just trying to do you a favour. Next fella you’re interested in, lie about your job, and watch what kind of reaction you get.’
I just laugh.
‘Oh, yeah, okay, when the next person is interested in me, because that happens all the time, I’ll lie about my job,’ I say sarcastically.
‘Just try it,’ she insists. ‘Ooh, look, civilisation. Of sorts.’
I peep at Kat’s phone and see that we’re finally in Tarness, a small town somewhere in the Scottish Highlands. Pretty high up in them. To be honest, it feels more like we’re nowhere than somewhere.
There are bits of snow at the edges of the roads. I think I read somewhere that there’s a ski resort nearby, so there must be loads of snow somewhere. There are a few shops that make up the main town, tiny as it is, but most of the buildings appear to be holiday lets. It seems like one of those places where no one really lives, unless they work here, otherwise it’s all just tourists. Not that many tourists though. We’re more in the territory of The Shining than Chalet Girl.
It’s only as we turn a corner that my impression of this place changes. This particular road is abuzz with people. Paparazzi, security, fans hoping to get a peep at Sonny Strong, wearing T-shirts and holding signs with his name and face all over them. Some of them are wearing Not Dead Yet T-shirts. Not Dead Yet is the popular movie franchise that Sonny has been starring in for years. They’re really awful action flicks. I think I saw the first one or two but they weren’t really for me, and while the first few were grounded in reality, I hear they’ve grown more ridiculous over the years. The first flicks had enemies like billionaire weapons manufacturers and miscellaneous foreign secret agents infiltrating MI5 and things like that. In more recent years, Sonny’s character, Jack McVey, has been fighting things like aliens. Just the most absurd stuff. Still, people love it, so much so that fans are gathered here in the middle of nowhere just to get a glimpse of the man himself.
