The Valentine's Card

by Juliet Ashton

  ‘Poor Fionnuala. How was Rob?’

  ‘Well … serene, actually.’

  ‘Odd.’

  ‘Pleased, even. A bit. As if he was, oh yuk, Orla, he enjoyed it.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘Ah, indeed. If my poor mother had looked under the lunch table and seen his foot up my skirt she’d have died on the spot.’

  ‘That was a bit risky!’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Was it …?’

  ‘Weird? Very. I mean, hello! These people are family.’

  ‘How can I say I told you so without sounding like a complete cow?’

  ‘You did tell me so and you were right. When he walked in I thought, how do I stop myself ripping his clothes off. But as the day wore on I avoided being alone with him. I hid myself in the yard at one point instead of snogging the gob off him in the utility room.’

  ‘What now?’

  ‘We’ve arranged to meet tomorrow. He’s booked a hotel room.’

  ‘For unbridled nookie?’

  ‘I’m going to end it.’

  ‘What? Are you sure?’

  ‘Are you doing a U-turn on me?’

  ‘Not in the least. I’m delighted. It was guaranteed pain, like asking to be punched in the face. It’s just that your change of heart is very sudden.’

  ‘As sudden as the way I fell for him. He’s a symptom, Orla. Christmas Day is good for soul-searching.’

  ‘Hmm.’

  ‘It’s like time switches off. The world puts its feet up and thinks. Rob’s in love with love. And worse, he’s selfish. I’m no better. I know you’ve been kind about it, but I’ve behaved abominably. I’ve had a close shave and I’ll have to spend the rest of my life making it up to Himself and Fionnuala and Poppy and Jack without them even knowing.’

  ‘You really have woken up. Welcome back, Sleeping Beauty!’

  ‘Rob was a sticking plaster over my marriage. I got things the wrong way round. I should have sorted out my home life first. So wish me luck getting rid of Rob. He’s a rubbish kisser, by the way.’

  ‘How the mighty have fallen.’

  ‘And then tomorrow when I get home from Rob I’m going to talk to Himself.’

  ‘Work things out. I’m glad.’

  ‘No. I’m going to ask him for a divorce.’

  Three days until their New Year date. Three days’ radio silence from Marek. It was sinking in.

  Orla had shed her pride. She wanted to roller-skate to Marek’s door and collapse on his step. The fantasy ended there: she couldn’t conjure up a speech to win him back because their showdown had been inevitable and any rapprochement would simply start the meter running to the next one.

  It was becoming real, their estrangement. She’d refrained from filling Juno in on this latest hairpin bend in her love life. She’d tell her after New Year’s Eve; if Marek kept their date there might be nothing to tell.

  The bangle gathered dust on its shelf, already sinking into the chintzy landscape. She envisioned herself clicking it shut around her wrist on New Year’s Eve, the way Maude visualised herself sauntering along the High Street.

  Maude was on best behaviour still, visualising like billy-o, knocking back her tablets, yoga breathing loudly three times a day. Orla envied her discipline: Maude wouldn’t have made that absurd phone call. She could only hope that Marek chose to be charmed by her teenage gabble, but she could visualise all too well his face as he listened to her message, as he wondered when, if ever, she would do justice to what had happened between them.

  ‘Orla, dear!’ Maude called her down to the shop. ‘Something’s come. By courier. For you.’ She pointed to a bulky package. Her look of excitement slithered off her chin when she saw Orla’s face.

  The ornate European handwriting on the label, so quaint in comparison to the more modern British style, was Marek’s. Orla didn’t have to open the package to know it was her ‘stuff’.

  ‘At the risk of stating the obvious,’ said Maude, on Sunday night, the eve of New Year’s Eve, ‘ring him. That’s the second time you’ve moved Professor Plum diagonally and you know that’s strictly forbidden in the rules.’

  The simple things that she and Maude were taking pleasure in had started to look similar to boring things. Orla couldn’t care which Cluedo character dunnit while Marek was at large, assiduously not getting in touch.

  ‘I did call him, remember?’

  ‘I mean call him and talk to him. Tell him how you feel. Be honest, for heaven’s sake.’

  Maude wouldn’t suggest this if she knew about the systematic lying, the addictive behaviour. ‘I think Miss Scarlett did it. With her knicker elastic. In the lean-to. It has to come from him, Maudie. He’s the one who left. He either wants me or he doesn’t.’

  ‘Poor chap,’ muttered Maude, rolling the dice. ‘He has to do all the heavy lifting, doesn’t he?’

  If Marek stood by his word, if he was the man Orla thought he was, if the new year was truly going to be, as he’d put it, their year, then he’d be back tomorrow.

  When she would tell him that she had withstood the allure of Anthea Blake and the journal.

  Sim’s journal

  31 December 2011

  Only a few hours to go. I am NEVER spending new year in this madhouse AGAIN. Mum’s right. The Cassidys ARE mad.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  It was the last five hours of the old year. A careful shower was in order, with neurotic grooming. Orla must be smooth of leg, glossy of hair, exfoliated, moisturised, perfumed.

  The Trafalgar Square jaunt had been carefully planned. A cab was a must, Marek had said: he intended to drink a little too much. He’d pick her up at nine and they’d have a drink with Maude, who planned to ignore New Year as she always did – ‘too schmaltzy’ – before setting off for a late dinner in a W1 restaurant.

  ‘Anywhere will do,’ Orla had said.

  ‘Somewhere special. I’ve booked already.’

  Then they’d make their way to the square on foot. ‘I’m bringing whisky,’ Marek had promised, ‘in a hip flask.’

  ‘I’ll bring my hand-warmers.’ Orla had neglected to say she’d bought them en route to Beatrice Gardens that second time. ‘If we hold hands it’ll warm us both.’

  ‘If?’ Marek had insisted that they kiss on each of the twelve chimes, before travelling home on the tube.

  ‘There’ll be vomit,’ Orla had warned.

  ‘We won’t care,’ Marek had said.

  Blow-drying her hair, Orla clung to the fact that he hadn’t cancelled these elaborate plans. The doorbell would ring at nine o’clock. They would step over the threshold of 2013 together.

  As she painted her wan face, a memory intruded on Orla’s artistry. This time last year, she’d applied her make-up just as carefully, only to sob it off later. She paused, only half her cupid’s bow defined.

  BONG! The long hallway of Ma’s bungalow as Orla approaches the spare room. From the sitting room behind her, the live broadcast has started its countdown to midnight. Ma is yelling ‘Come on everyone! It’s starting!’

  BONG! Hugh’s newborn is bawling – still – in the kitchen. Orla throws her brother a sympathetic smile as he paces up and down the lino, hair on end and baby to his chest. Above Orla’s head, a game of tag in the loft sounds like an infestation of child-size mice.

  BONG! Ma yells ‘How many is that? Three or four? WAKE UP AUNTY ANNIE, IT’S NEARLY MIDNIGHT!’ Stepping over Hugh’s eldest mastering ‘Danny Boy’ on her new recorder – ‘Keep at it, Niamh!’ – Orla speeds up. She needs to wrap her arms about Sim, nose his neck like a pony, reconnect. They haven’t been alone since they arrived, not really, and he has the air of a man who needs to talk.

  BONG! Conor and Martin, down from the loft, en route to the sitting room, knock into Orla, send her reeling. ‘Watch it, lads!’ The Cassidys are heading towards the chimes like fleeing wildebeest and Orla is the only one going in the opposite direction. The sitting room sing-song has begun.

 
; BONG! Despite the spare-room door lacking a lock, Orla and Sim’s drought must end. They’ll make love. They’ll whisper special things. The glue between them is tacky, and gives a little. Orla stumbles on a Barbie car pile-up, and pauses to place the pink plastic up on a shelf, out of harm’s way.

  BONG! All it needs is a chair up against the door handle, a swift hand down the front of his trousers and a few choice words in his ear; they’ll be on that lumpy bed, between those manmade sheets, before Sim knows what’s hit him.

  BONG! Deirdre appears from the loo, in a personal mushroom cloud of Coco Mademoiselle. She grabs Orla by the shoulders and says, ‘Aw, me little sis,’ kisses her roughly on both cheeks. ‘Happy New Year! You’re going the wrong way, you dirty-looking eejit! Is that my top?’

  ‘No,’ says Orla. ‘Happy New Year.’

  BONG! On second thoughts, thinks Orla, almost at the door, primping her hair and smoothing down her skirt, we’ll bypass the bed and just drop to the rug. That bed is noisy: even in this pandemonium Ma’s Catholic ears will pick out rhythmic bedsprings.

  BONG! She opens the door and steps into a dimly lit room (Ah good! Curtains already pulled!) and closes the door. The noise of New Year is suddenly turned down.

  BONG! Sim is on the phone, he’s talking, fast, head down but looking at Orla. His face is that of a Saturday boy caught with his hand in the till. ‘Let’s discuss this back in London. No, no, nothing.’ He laughs, not the baboon masturbating laugh but a counterfeit one. ‘Yes!’ He says with artificial glee. ‘Exactly! Ha, ha, ha!’

  BONG! Orla isn’t laughing, and the suggestive smile that’s been on her face since she stood up from the Buckaroo board has gone.

  ‘Who’s that?’ she asks, curtly.

  Sim puts one finger up, mouths hold on, and winds up the phone conversation with, ‘Gotta go! Yeah, you too. Bye.’

  BONG! Down the hall cheering erupts. Squeaky baby voices, menopausal ones, gruff male ones, all mingle.

  ‘Who was that?’

  ‘Doesn’t that baby ever stop crying?’

  ‘It’s a baby. Who was that?’

  Fiddle music breaks out. Somebody’s playing a jig. There is clapping.

  ‘It was nobody. What’s the face for?’

  ‘Who was it?’ Her lunge for the phone is clumsy. Sim, fresh from Courtesan fight lessons, dodges her easily. That he laughs makes Orla angrier. ‘Stop it, Sim, and tell me.’

  ‘It was Reece.’ Sim shakes his head, as if in disbelief at all this silly fuss. ‘Remember him? My agent? The man responsible for my entire career? Is it all right if I talk to Reece?’

  ‘It was not Reece at midnight on New Year’s Eve!’ Orla grabs again, misses again. Sim’s teasing giggle infuriates her. She wants to cry but doesn’t.

  She knows they won’t make love. She knows that Sim will say, as he did last night, that he can’t perform in the lair of Ma Cassidy. And when they return to her cottage he’ll be too tired or in a mood.

  There will be more calls, and they won’t really be Reece either. Orla knows it’s over but she doesn’t have the courage to say it out loud.

  Orla blinked, and set to with the lip-liner. She was done. She moved her head from left to right, unable to judge how she looked.

  Half an hour to go until nine. The full-skirted black dress was fitted over her bust and upper arms: she felt held in, supported but elegant. She’d piled up her hair, and could feel it rebelling. She unleashed a tempest of Elnett, and could imagine Marek wrinkling his nose at the smell of hair spray. Orla hoped she’d get to shake it out for him.

  Her reflection was a little funereal: it needed something. She wondered if she should tempt fate and wear the bangle.

  After all, she’d been ‘good’. No internet searches. No late-night surveillance missions.

  The moronic peep of her mobile stopped Orla mid-reach. Counselling calm, she extracted it from her bag. The screen told her, dispassionately, Marek. She grasped it hard, afraid to drop it, and pressed the button as carefully as if she were defusing a bomb. She felt sick to her stomach and as strong as an ox. ‘Hello?’

  ‘No, not you,’ said a nasal female voice. ‘Maude, please. I want to say Happy New Year.’

  ‘Bogna? You’re using your brother’s phone,’ said Orla, accusingly.

  ‘Mine does not work here. Maude? Please? Chop-chop.’

  ‘Here? Where’s here?’

  ‘Bloody Chamonix,’ said Bogna bitterly. ‘Bloody Marek make me ski with him. I miss all best parties at home. I hate snow. I think I have crab from barman. Now get Maude thank you.’

  ‘Maude!’ called Orla, laying down the phone and racing to the bedroom. ‘Call for you!’

  As Maude’s murmured words drifted through the door – ‘And Happy New Year to you too, Bogna dear. How about we make 2013 the year of no swearing?’ – Orla clawed off her dress. Roughly wiping off her careful make-up, Orla didn’t see her reflection. She saw instead Marek flying down a white mountainside, like a bird.

  There would be no kissing in Trafalgar Square for them. He hadn’t considered their arrangement significant enough to need a specific cancellation; ending the relationship had covered it, evidently.

  Foolish! Orla chastised herself for feeling that his ski trip was somehow an insult to her; Marek owed her nothing and could do what he liked.

  And so can I.

  A shadow, like a bird of prey, fell across her. Orla rubbed viciously at her face. She knew what was coming to get her.

  To imagine she could magic Marek back to her side by being ‘good’ was superstitious folly worthy of Ma. A new plan, direct and clean, arrived in her mind fully formed.

  The bird of prey might well be swooping towards her, but she could struggle in its talons.

  Maude, phone dead in her hand, came to the door and watched with a closed expression as her lodger pushed her feet into trainers and pulled on an old and well-loved hand-knit.

  Moving fast, Orla put no effort into her cover story. ‘A crowd from college are meeting in a pub in, um, Hammersmith.’ She rifled a drawer for gloves. ‘Don’t wait up.’

  Maude was already out of the door, and on the way to her own flat. ‘Whatever you say, dear.’

  ‘See you next year!’ yelled Orla, winding a long soft scarf around her neck. It was Marek’s: she’d never given it back.

  Rushing down the stairs as if fleeing a forest fire, Orla exhilarated in the fresh, forgotten feeling of power. How did I imagine that sitting passively in a cell of my own making would win Marek? She stooped to knot a trailing lace, impatient at the delay to her flight out of the door on winged heels.

  Orla was at the door now, a tingling anticipation surfing her blood. She paused to imagine the scene where she went to Marek and said, see, this is what I did for you. I whupped my demons, faced Anthea, read the journal.

  The tingling sensation intensified, but it wasn’t positive and pastel any more. The door remained closed.

  As she’d urged Maude to do so many times, Orla was visualising. She saw herself at Anthea’s illustrious New Year’s Eve party, a guttersnipe attempting to scale the ramparts of a vast glittering palace.

  She couldn’t trump Anthea. Anthea beat Orla effortlessly, pilfering her boyfriend and trashing her next relationship without even being aware of it.

  The door was as much a barrier to Orla as it was to Maude. Beyond it lay proof of her own inadequacy. She turned to slink away but jumped instead at the sight of a figure on the stairs.

  Maude in a hat and coat was as unexpected as Maude in a spacesuit. Tugging on her gloves, her face sharp, Maude said, ‘We need to be quick, dear, so why don’t I answer the questions whizzing around your head before you ask them. Yes, I do know about the stalking. Marek rang me. He felt somebody close to you should know.’

  Shame boiled briefly in Orla’s chest. Marek had squealed. No, she corrected herself. He passed on the baton. Very ‘him’, very decent, and not the action of a man planning to return.

  ‘And yes,
I guessed that silly Bogna’s call on Marek’s phone would spark another sortie and, yes, because I know you rather well by now, I guessed that you’d run out of steam.’ Maude, stiff in her outdoor clothes, looked bemused. ‘That journal must be terribly important to you. I’m unsure about the wisdom of all this but you’re your own woman. So, yes, I’m preparing to leave the house on the thirteenth anniversary of the last time I managed it because I think it’s an excellent idea to challenge Anthea and put an end to this once and for all. There isn’t another person on earth I’d do this for. Now. Have I covered everything? May we go?’

  Even in the dim light of the hall’s eco-bulb Orla saw the pall of stress on Maude’s china-white face. ‘Maude, the house rule is that only one of us goes bonkers at any given time so whisht and come upstairs.’

  ‘Look at us!’ Maude slapped the sides of her coat in exasperation. ‘One woman who can’t go out and one who can’t stay in. If you truly, really want to have this journal in your hands and ask it these damn questions, then get on with it. Do it. Tonight.’

  ‘You’re angry.’

  ‘I’m furious. Do you think life is so long that it doesn’t matter if you waste some of it? I’m telling you, dear, from the other end of it, that life goes by in the blink of an eye. One moment you’re playing hopscotch, the next you’re married, then whoosh!’ Maude clapped her gloved hands, her fine-boned face ardent. ‘You’re burying him. These years when your body works perfectly and your skin is like taut cotton don’t last for ever and to waste them is blasphemous.’

  ‘I won’t let you do this.’

  ‘Let me?’ Maude skewered Orla with a blue eye. ‘What gives you the impression I’m asking your permission?’

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Their driver, his eyes superstitious dots either side of a bread-knife nose, was the runt of Kwikkie Kabs’ litter. It was, according to the uninterested controller, the busiest night of the year and Orla and Maude had waited two hours for even this substandard banger of a car to turn up. ‘She OK?’ the driver asked roughly at a traffic lights, in an accent even Orla couldn’t place.