I step into the shade of the tree with them. ‘Hi, there. Can I join you?’
‘Take a seat,’ Joe says and I sit on the grass cross-legged with them. ‘This is Stella and Kate. Ladies, this is my friend Ruby.’
‘I like your dress,’ Kate says.
‘Thank you.’
‘We’ve made three chains,’ Stella says. ‘It’s not easy.’
‘Looks like you’ve made a great job, though.’
She beams with pride.
‘I haven’t done this for years.’ I pick some daisies and start to thread them myself.
‘Gently,’ Joe instructs. ‘You don’t want to crush the stems.’
I grin at him. ‘I have to say that I’m very impressed by your talent.’
‘You can’t have a daughter called Daisy and not be an expert in the art of making daisy chains. I am practically Jedi,’ he boasts.
The more I see of this man, the more I like him. I can just imagine him sitting patiently with Daisy as a toddler showing her how to do this. Sweet.
We make a few more chains and I fix circles of the flowers on Stella and Kate’s hair. I drape them round their necks and fasten them to their wrists. Now I’m getting into the swing of this, it’s all coming back to me.
‘We need to make more,’ Kate says. ‘For everyone.’
‘I’m not sure we have that many daisies,’ Joe says. ‘But you keep going. I need to leave you lovely ladies. Ruby and I want to have a chat.’
‘Aww.’ Stella and Kate pull faces.
‘I’ll be back later,’ he says. ‘You could show some of the others what to do now that you’re so good at it. I’m sure Maggie and Lou would like to learn.’
‘Yeah,’ Stella shouts enthusiastically. ‘Let’s show them, Kate.’
‘Ask them nicely,’ Joe says.
‘OK.’ And they bound off in search of willing pupils to show off their new skill.
‘You have some nice people here,’ I say when we’ve watched them go.
‘Stella and Kate came in about five years ago at more or less the same time. They’re inseparable. They do really well.’ Then he looks at me wryly. ‘With only the occasional meltdown.’ He takes my arm and even the touch of his hand on my skin thrills me. ‘Let’s get a drink.’
We go over to the terrace of the café where we went last time and, as it’s so hot, we eschew coffee and both have fruit smoothies. The hit of fresh berries is sharp on my tongue and, languidly, I wipe away the condensation that runs down the glass.
Away from the ladies and our daisy chains, there’s a change in Joe’s demeanour. He puts his sunglasses on and stares out into the garden, not looking at me. The sun goes behind a cloud for moment and it makes me shiver.
Then Joe turns towards me and I can tell by the expression on his face that something is terribly wrong.
Chapter Eighty
‘There’s no easy way to say this, Ruby.’ His hands grip the edge of the table and I feel my heartbeat thud in my chest. He blows out an unhappy breath. ‘After all that happened with Tom we’ve been in turmoil as a family.’
‘I can understand that,’ I say. ‘It’s perfectly normal. He must have been traumatised.’
Joe nods. ‘Thank you again for helping out. It was fantastic of you and I’m grateful that you had my back. I should have sent you flowers or something afterwards, but … well …’
‘That doesn’t matter. I did it for you, for Tom. I’m just glad that I could be there. In a weird way, I felt that it helped the children to see that I am actually a nice person. Hopefully, they’ll be happier that I’m in their lives now.’
‘That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.’ Suddenly, he looks as if he has the weight of the world on his shoulders and my stomach flips over. ‘Seeing Tom like that has made Gina re-think her priorities. She’s been round every day since.’ He’s uncomfortable when he continues. ‘Not just to see Tom, but to see me too.’ Joe is wrestling every word out. ‘She realises that she’s been missing the children.’
I’m too stunned to point out that she’s had a very funny way of showing it.
‘We’ve been talking a lot,’ he adds, flatly. ‘Some of it round in circles.’
My head is spinning too. I’m not liking the way this conversation is going and I don’t know why. But my anxiety is growing and I’m apprehensive about what Joe will say next. I wait for what feels like an aeon.
‘The upshot of it all is that she’d like to give it another go.’ He runs a hand over the shadow of stubble on his chin. ‘Give us another go.’
I feel as if I’ve been punched in the stomach. Out of all of the scenarios, this is the one that I could have least imagined. It’s only natural that Gina would be wanting to cling to her son after what had happened, but I thought she was too happy, too loved-up with her new man to return home. It seemed as if she’d flown the family nest for good. Try as I might, I can’t get my head round it. Does she think she can walk back in, just like that?
When I fail to speak, Joe pleads, ‘Say something.’
But I’m not sure that I have the power of speech. I open and close my mouth a few times but nothing comes out.
‘I have to do this,’ Joe presses on. ‘For the kids’ sake. They want their mum back. You must see that.’
When I finally find my voice, I say, ‘So let me get this straight. She walks out on you, on her family, makes scant effort to see her children and then, when she decides that all in the garden of love isn’t rosy and she might be missing out on something, she clicks her fingers and strolls right back in again as if nothing’s happened?’
Joe sighs. ‘That pretty much sums it up.’
‘And you’re happy about that?’ Outwardly, I sound calm but inside my heart is shattering into a thousand pieces.
‘No.’ He uses those strong fingers, so recently making delicate daisy chains, to massage his forehead. ‘Of course not. I’ve hardly had a wink of sleep this week going over everything time and time again.’
He certainly looks anguished. ‘Do you still love her?’
‘I don’t know,’ he says, honestly. ‘We’ve been together for so long, we have history. Should we throw it away if there’s a chance we can salvage what we had? We’re still married. Even though she left me for someone else, we’ve never actually finalised divorce proceedings.’
Fool that I am, I thought that was simply a matter of logistics rather than emotion.
‘I have to do this.’ Joe looks as wretched as I feel. ‘Don’t you see? Gina and I have a lot of work to do and I don’t think for a minute it will be easy, but I feel as if I have to try for the sake of the family. If we can salvage something from the wreckage, then we have to give it a go.’
Noble words and, frankly, it’s nothing less than I would expect from Joe.
‘Daisy’s only thirteen. It’s a difficult age for a girl – you’ll know that more than me. I know she’d be better off if her mum was home again. Neither of the kids like shuttling between houses, but it affects Daisy most of all. She needs Gina to be around for her.’
The sun’s beating down on my head again, my neck, my shoulders, making me feel queasy.
‘This isn’t really about what I want, Ruby. You know that.’ His fingers find mine across the table. ‘In different circumstances, I think we could really have made a go of this.’
I get a flashback to our bodies entwined on the only night we spent together, the warmth and affection between us, the passion and, foolishly, I hoped for a lifetime of that. And not just that. Not simply the physical stuff. I like Joe, l love Joe – his strength, his honesty, his kindness. Even now while he’s trying to let me down gently, I admire him all the more for it. Where will I find all that again? What will I do without him? How can I admit that I never really had him at all?
Slow tears squeeze out of my eyes, when I really don’t want them to.
‘Oh, Ruby. Don’t cry.’ He thumbs away the tears from my cheek. ‘Please don’t cry.’
> ‘I can’t help it.’ I’m already grieving for what I nearly had. I know I could have loved him more than his wife. I could have loved him better. But she’s had his children and those ties can never be broken.
‘Will it help if I tell you that I do love you?’
‘No,’ I say with a wavering sigh. ‘I really don’t think that it does.’
‘You’ll find someone. A man who’s worthy of you. You’re a wonderful woman.’ He strokes my hand softly, tenderly and it breaks my heart. I’d give anything to have one last night, one last day with him. For it not to end here, like this.
Yet there’s nothing else that can be said. Gina is taking up her place again in the family unit and I’m out in the cold. There’s no point asking if we can still be friends as I couldn’t bear it.
Standing, I pick up my bag. ‘I hope it works out for you.’ I sound so brave, that I almost believe it myself.
Joe stands too and, I can’t help myself, I go to him and he takes me in his arms. He holds me tight, rocking me against him and I let my tears flow. He kisses my hair, strokes my face and I feel that I’ll never be able to let him go.
When we’ve stood there for too, too long locked in our final embrace, unwilling to let go, he eventually says, ‘Goodbye, Ruby.’
‘Goodbye, Joe. Give my love to the kids.’
Then before I lose my dignity completely, I walk away. I get in my car and somehow, through a blur of tears, manage to drive round the corner until I’m out of sight of Sunshine Meadows. Then I pull to the side of the road and I cry and cry and cry until I feel that my eyeballs might drop out of my head.
Chapter Eighty-One
‘Shit,’ Charlie says when I tell her.
‘Yeah.’ I haven’t gone into work as I can’t stop crying. Mason will be hacked off with me but I couldn’t care less. I may not have known Joe all that long, but I feel devastated.
Charlie came straight over and now we’re sitting on the sofa bingeing on Take That DVDs. ‘Gary will cheer us up,’ she says, confidently.
So we watch the lads strut their stuff and sing along with them. I bawl my eyes out at all the sad songs – ‘Back for Good, ‘Love Ain’t Here Anymore’ and ‘Pray’ are particularly difficult. Though Charlie is slightly disappointed that I don’t know all the lyrics off by heart.
‘He told me he loves me,’ I sob in Charlie’s arms.
‘Fucker,’ is her verdict.
But Joe’s not a fucker, he’s a nice man and I’ve lost him.
We eat a tub of Ben & Jerry’s each – Cookie Dough for Charlie, Baked Alaska for me – glug our way through a bottle of wine apiece, then scoff two bags of Thai Sweet Chilli Sensations and a bar of 70% Lindt.
Then, when that has made me feel no better, we send out for pizza. Extra large ones. Hawaiian with extra pineapple for Charlie. Meaty Treat for me. And garlic bread. And coleslaw. Even though I don’t even like coleslaw. We polish off the lot.
If this is comfort eating, it’s not working. Charlie just wants to be sick and I still feel like crap.
Chapter Eighty-Two
Weeks go by. I haul myself through my shifts, struggling to find a smile even for the regulars who I like. Yet my tired heart hasn’t stopped hoping for the call that says Joe has made a big mistake and it’s me he wants after all. Yeah. Was that a pig I saw flying across the sky? Plus the weather has taken a turn for the worse and it’s not like summer at all. It’s more like December – cold with freezing rain. Even that’s coming out in sympathy with me. No one should be this miserable in blazing sun.
Charlie shoots off straight after her shift as she’s going to a concert with some of the people from her Take That forum including Nice Paul. I don’t want to go home to my empty flat, so I hang around in the bar talking to Jay about nothing in particular and having a double espresso in the hope that an excess of caffeine might lift my flagging spirits.
Then Jay has to go off and tend to his accounts and I’m just thinking about gathering my stuff together when Mason comes in. He brushes the rain from his immaculate hair and strides across the bar towards me.
‘Hey,’ he says. ‘I hoped to catch you.’
I hold up my hands. ‘Consider me caught.’
He drops into the armchair opposite to me. ‘I need to talk to you about the Christmas menu and possible events.’
‘Get lost, Mason. It’s not even August.’
‘You know what it’s like, the office parties will be beating the door down soon. We have to get ahead of the crowd.’
Even though I know he’s right, I bat back, ‘I don’t want to talk about naffing Christmas. Come back to me in December. I might be in the mood by then.’
‘Grouchy today, Brown,’ he notes. ‘And looking like a wet weekend in Weston-super-Mare, if you don’t mind me saying.’
‘Thanks. I do mind you saying.’
‘Charlie said you’d been dumped.’
I look at him aghast. ‘What?’ All I can do is shake my head in disbelief. Wait until I see Charlie.
‘Well, she may have dressed it up with more girlie words, but that was the gist of it. Is it true?’
‘Yes,’ I concur. ‘I have been dumped.’ From a great height.
He actually smiles. ‘The good news is, I’m still available.’
‘Whoop-de-doo.’
‘You’re lucky, Brown. I could have been snapped up. Only this week I took out Sherene Taylor from Girls About Town. She was very keen.’
‘Really?’ Girls About Town is a hideous reality show that Charlie and I are addicted to. Sherene is actually quite hot, but doesn’t appear to have been allocated her fair share of brain cells. ‘You’re saying that I’m on a par with a Z-list celeb?’
‘Look, I get it.’ He sighs at me in an exasperated manner. ‘Your heart’s broken and all that guff, but come out with me. I’ll take your mind off it. We can have some fun.’
‘I’m not interested, Mason. I need to be left alone to lick my wounds.’
‘I’m being serious, Brown.’ He certainly looks like he is. Mason’s expression is earnest in the extreme. ‘We always have a good time together.’
‘Do we?’
‘I know you think I’m superficial.’
‘There are puddles that are deeper.’
He ignores my jibe. ‘We can even do proper boyfriend and girlfriend stuff if that’s what you like. Picnics in the park, long walks in the woods, mind-numbing marathon sex sessions. Oh wait, you’ve already told me that you “want to be held”.’ He makes quotation marks in the air which really gets on my nerves. ‘Make that marathon cuddling sessions.’
I curl up in my armchair, defensively. ‘If you’re going to take the piss, I won’t talk to you at all.’
‘I’m not taking the piss, I’m pointing out the reality of your situation. Don’t waste your time on someone who’s not interested in you when there are plenty of guys – rather like my good self – who are.’
‘I’m done with men,’ I tell him and I mean it. ‘I’m going to be happily single from now on.’ Well, ‘happily’ might be stretching it a bit, at the moment. But, in the fullness of time, I will be happyhappyhappy again. ‘Let’s just confine ourselves to a purely professional relationship from now on. If you were the last man on earth I wouldn’t go out with you.’
‘Jeez, Brown. I just don’t get you.’ Mason stands up, shaking his head. He grabs his car keys from the table between us and marches into the backroom.
‘I’m not sure that I get myself,’ I say to his retreating back, but I don’t think he hears me. My heart sinks. That was unnecessarily mean, but I’m hurting and Mason thinks that it’s amusing to toy with my affections.
Still, I take his departure as my cue to gather up my stuff and go home. I don’t want to face him again today even though I think Mason may have got the message now.
Chapter Eighty-Three
I mope around for weeks. As I swing between snapping at everyone and crying, I try to keep my own company. I think it
’s not just Joe I’m pining for, though clearly that’s the catalyst for this all-consuming darkness that’s descended on me. The whole thing has thrown into sharp relief the fact that my life is going nowhere. Since divorcing from Simon, I’ve simply drifted. I didn’t realise that the divorce would affect me this much and I wonder if the scar will ever heal. It’s left me feeling rudderless, adrift. A wounded person trying to make her way in the scary world. All I’m doing is marking time. I’m working as a waitress. I live in a rented granny annexe. I have no ambition, no aspirations. I wonder where that all went. I can’t even think what I might want to do with myself. Perhaps I should move to Spain and start all over again. At least it would be sunny there.
‘What do you think, Gary?’ As usual, cardboard cut-out Gary Barlow has nothing to offer on the subject.
Plus, I spend my time talking to a cardboard cut-out of a boy band member. This is my life.
I need to get out of the house. I’m not working today, so I head into town to spend money that I don’t have.
Drifting about, aimlessly, through the shopping centre, I pick up a few trinkets in Accessorize. Surely something sparkly might make me feel better. I’m just coming out of the shop, clutching my unnecessary purchase, when I catch sight of Tom and Daisy coming towards me through the throng of shoppers. Then, as I look up, following behind them I see Joe and Gina and all the breath leaves my body. They’re hand-in-hand, both smiling widely. They are the very picture of a happy family.
He pulls her to him and kisses the top of her head. She beams up at him. A woman in love. This is heartbreaking. But only for me. They’ve clearly resolved their differences and are enjoying a second honeymoon. I’d like to be pleased for them, for the kids, but I just feel nauseous. Joe’s forgotten me in an instant and I realise that I meant nothing to him after all.
Million Love Songs Page 26