This Is Your Life Read Free

‘Ah, Lizzie, do you have a minute?’  He’d appeared from his office, a benign smile on his face.
    But well-meaning, he’d summoned everyone to his office, where to Lizzie’s intense embarrassment he’d rambled on with his usual verbosity about what he affectedly referred to as ‘the blessings of marriage’ and ‘lifelong commitment’, words which sent a chill down Lizzie’s spine, before opening a bottle of champagne. 
    It was warm but Lizzie gulped it.  For the second time that day she fought an untimely desire to run, instead smiling blindly around the office at everyone as their voices echoed in her ears.
                  ‘I felt like that, doll!’  Jude’s red lipstick had transferred to the rim of her glass – and her teeth.  Always grateful for a distraction, she was swigging champagne like there was no tomorrow.  ‘Only not like till the day before…’
                  ‘Like what?’  Lizzie was flummoxed.
                  ‘Poleaxed!  Shit scared… You know!  It’s a big day, isn’t it, in front of all those people… But it’ll be a good one.  The best.  Especially the wedding night!  Oh, that was worth waiting for, I can tell you..’  She winked at her.
                  ‘You’re so lucky, Lizzie…’  Little dark-haired Sammy looked enviously at her.  ‘I mean, you’re getting married… it’s just so romantic, isn’t it?’
                  ‘Thank you.  I mean, is it… I am…’  Lizzie stuttered.  Lucky?  Romantic ?  She took another gulp of champagne.
     
    Lizzie fled as soon as she dared.  The tube was its chock-a-block worst, and she failed to notice the man who’d edged closer and closer until he was pressed up against her, breathing noisily in her ear.  And that was when Lizzie lost it, a spark of anger flaring inside as she ground the heel of her boot into his foot. How dare he …
    It flashed into Lizzie’s mind how Jamie had bought them for her.  You can’t beat a pair of good quality high heeled boots…
    And f or once, he was right.  She’d cursed those heels many times but this was her reward for every uncomfortable step.  Her assailant gasped, a contorted look of pain on his face.
    But t he strangest mood was upon her, the most restless of thoughts in her head. Bring it on, she silently challenged the universe, her nails digging into the palms of her hands as she clenched her fists by her sides.  Throw something else at me.  Do your absolute worst… 
    She’d stood stiffly after that, enduring the beastly tube as it jolted through the darkness, staring mindlessly at a pair of arms further down the carriage.  They were encased in a rather damp coat.  Nice though, Lizzie noticed - navy, wool by the looks of it, expensively cut, she thought, desperately trying to distract herself. 
                  Unintentionally her eyes wandered upwards, scrutinising purely objectively of course, blue, smiling eyes with the skin slightly crinkled at the edges, and fairish windswept hair that would have looked more in place on a beach.  Brad Pitt’s hair mixed with Jude Law’s eyes , she vaguely registered, before he smiled and winked at her before getting off at the next stop.
    How could she have … Lizzie’s face flushed with shame as more sardines prised themselves in beside her.  First she’d attacked a man, then been caught red handed ogling another . A wild, alien energy coursed through her veins as yet again she fought the urge to run anywhere, just to escape - from the heaving carriages, the mundanity and pointlessness of all of it.
     
    Slowly, as she soaked blissfully in a steaming hot bath, Lizzie started to feel more like herself.  But even here, submerged in the bubbles, she still couldn’t fathom her thoughts.  It niggled at her that her wedding felt such a chore.  Tired or not, shouldn’t it be the biggest day of her life, looking forward to the future