by Rebecca Done
I look up from where I am halfway across the lawn, maybe ten feet away, my dad between us. Timothy has his eyes shut, head tipped up towards the sky; Arabella’s got one hand clamped across her mouth. On the barbecue, I can smell the hot dogs slowly charring.
Graeme’s somewhere behind me. The whole garden is holding its breath, the sky still on pause.
Finally, I look Molly in the eyes. We have both welled up, so now there’s only one thing for me to do. I get to my feet, walk unsteadily over to her, take her quivering hand in mine and drop down again, this time to one knee. I feel in my pocket for the box containing the ring, set it in the middle of my right hand and open it with my left.
Molly’s mouth is slightly ajar, her eyes wide and expectant. A single tear drips down her cheek.
‘Molly Meadows,’ I whisper, ‘will you do me the honour of being my wife?’
And then it is like it is in the films. The sky suddenly explodes with a great rush of colour and sound, and someone (my dad, I think) is whooping, and Molly’s screaming, ‘Yes, yes, yes!’ and now she’s in my arms and my face is in her hair and I’m gasping, ‘I love you, I love you, I love you, Moll.’ And then I draw away, slip the glove from her hand and slide the ring on to her fourth finger before scooping her into a fierce hug. And then I whisper, ‘I’m sorry,’ over and over again, because I am sorry – I’m devastated, gutted, that her special moment was just ruined by my idiot dad.
Above our heads, fireworks are squealing and shooting up from neighbouring gardens, brightly coloured streamers throwing explosions of orange and pink up into the blackness.
I don’t know how he did it, but by the time we draw back from one another for breath, Graeme has managed to get Dad to do a disappearing act. I’m unsure if that means Graeme missed the moment itself while he was ushering him out of the side gate, but anyway, when I look around angrily for Dad, he is nowhere to be seen – though Graeme has reappeared and is making his way back across the grass towards us.
Arabella and Timothy are, of course, the epitome of grace, sweeping Molly into more hugs and congratulations and distracting her by popping a bottle of champagne they’ve had hiding under the barbecue in a cool box.
For the briefest of moments as they envelop her, Graeme and I face one another, watching the three of them gasp and exclaim, sharing the most precious of moments as gunpowder crackles above our heads.
‘Why the hell did you tell him?’ I hiss furiously.
‘I didn’t. He guessed. I’m so sorry, mate. I tried to tell you, before.’
‘Where is he?’
‘I packed him off out front. I’ll take him back to the flat.’
I say nothing, I’m so furious with both of them.
‘Alex.’
‘What?’
‘I should probably just tell you …’ Graeme nods over at Molly. ‘Wrong finger.’
‘What?’
‘You put it on her right hand. Ring finger’s left.’
‘Oh shit,’ I breathe, then hesitate, because Molly’s extended her hand so Timothy can admire the rock. Even more excruciating, they’re all pretending they haven’t noticed. ‘What should I do?’
Graeme hesitates. ‘What can you do? Style it out.’ He pats me gently on the back. ‘Sorry again, mate. Better get the old fart home to sleep it off.’ Then he heads away from me back towards the side gate and the street. Arabella glances up as he goes, but then I catch her eye and sling her a lop-sided What can I do? smile.
I’m just so angry. Already I know that instead of celebrating with Molly tomorrow, I’m going to spend the entire day worrying, in between grovelling and apologizing to her parents on my father’s behalf. Even worse, I know Molly will now for ever associate the night I proposed with my idiot drunk of a father. And for that, I will never forgive him.
Much later that night, while Molly sleeps, I swap the ring over to her left finger, so everything will be okay when she wakes up. And then I whisper, ‘Sorry,’ into her ear, tell her how much I love her, hope that somehow my words arrive to her in a dream.
I try not to worry that the whole mess of it all is an omen, an early indicator of catastrophic errors to come.
Next morning, Dad’s sleeping off yesterday’s booze bender; Molly’s sleeping off the champagne and most likely her disappointment.
So it is Graeme and I who find ourselves alone in the kitchen the morning after my engagement. He’s sitting at the table in jogging bottoms and a T-shirt, like he might be about to head to the park for a run, finishing a cup of black coffee and flicking through the news on his phone. In the background, the radio’s humming faintly.
It’s chilly in the kitchen; the heating hasn’t yet come on. Beyond the window, it’s only just getting light.
‘You okay?’ he asks me.
‘Not exactly.’
‘Alex, I am sorry. He worked it out when I said I was going to Molly’s family Bonfire Night.’
‘You shouldn’t have even told him that. I asked you not to say anything.’
‘He realized pretty quickly it was some sort of occasion, asked me directly. What could I say? Look, it was Dad that got drunk and ruined everything, not me.’
‘You didn’t think to warn me?’
‘I tried. Upstairs in Molly’s room. But you were a bit … tunnel vision at that point.’
‘How the hell did he get all the way to London anyway? He can barely make it downstairs. Or so he claims.’ I shake my head, furious and disappointed. I’ve never once had cause to question the gravity of Dad’s symptoms before.
‘He took a bloody cab the whole way here,’ Graeme tells me.
‘God, I’m such an idiot. Everything I was saying about understanding what Dad’s gone through, why he drinks … maybe he really doesn’t care about me. About us. I mean, look at everything he’s ruined over the years with his drinking. Birthday parties, school plays, Christmases … and now this. My engagement. All he had to do was not cock it up …’
‘Maybe he thought he was doing a nice thing. Turning up, showing his support. I mean, he’s always saying he wants to be closer to you –’
‘And turning up pissed at Molly’s parents’ house is the way to do that, is it?’
‘It’s the only way he knows to do anything,’ Graeme says quietly.
‘You accused me before of being embarrassed by Dad,’ I say. ‘Do you remember? The weekend Molly moved into my flat. Well, maybe you were right. Maybe I am embarrassed by him – and this is why.’
He nods, like that’s understandable. ‘Well, parents are supposed to be embarrassing, aren’t they?’
Molly’s aren’t. Molly’s parents are as normal as it gets. ‘Why do you always stand up for him, Gray, give him the benefit of the doubt?’
‘Force of habit, I guess.’ He smiles faintly. ‘Maybe I’m hoping one day he’ll thank me for it.’
And then, as he takes another sip from his coffee, glances at his phone again, it strikes me.
‘You told him to come last night,’ I realize out loud. ‘How else would he have known the address?’
Graeme snorts. ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’
‘You did,’ I say, slowly becoming convinced of it. ‘You told him about last night and you gave him the address because you thought he’d be grateful to you.’
Graeme sets down his coffee cup and leans forward, meets my eye. ‘Alex. Don’t be crazy. He must have found the address online somehow. Isn’t her dad some sort of church official? Open door and all that?’
The floor tiles feel cold beneath my feet. ‘Is this some conspiracy between you and Dad – to mess things up with me and Moll because you want me to move home?’
‘You really are losing it, Alex, you know that?’
I play my words back in my head and sigh. ‘I’m sorry, Gray. I don’t know what I’m saying. I’m just gutted about how everything turned out last night, and I’m tired. I don’t really believe any of that.’ I pull out a chair and slump down opposite my brother at the ta
ble.
‘I hope you don’t,’ is all he says.
‘I mean, I know you think I’m rushing into things with Moll …’
‘Alex, you say this so often I’m starting to think maybe you’re the one who thinks you’re rushing into it. Are you … absolutely sure you’re doing the right thing?’
My arms are coming up in goose pimples. I try to rub them away. ‘Of course I’ve got doubts,’ I say, meaning only I’m well aware that according to society in general, a year is a ludicrously short space of time – and that I’d hate nothing more than for people to think I bulldozed Molly into marrying me, or for her parents to think I was too hasty.
But just as I’m about to explain that the only doubts I have are related to what everyone else thinks – that as far as I’m concerned, I’ve never met anyone like Molly, and never will again – the kitchen door opens like the final twist in a really torturous story, and I turn to see Molly standing behind me.
‘You’ve got doubts,’ she repeats flatly.
‘Moll,’ I gasp, but by the time I’ve got the word out, she’s already fled.
10
Molly – present day
Two days after I return from London, I am in the kitchen kneading dough for a pizza when I feel Alex standing behind me. ‘Hey,’ he says, shooting me a rare smile, leaning back against the worktop, just like he used to. I hold the memory in my mind for just a moment, willing time to pause so I can pretend for just a few seconds longer.
But I can’t control my mouth, the things that exit from it, new reflexes that come naturally to me now. ‘Feeling okay?’
‘I like that,’ he says, nodding at me.
I glance down at the playsuit I threw on when I got in, the hastily chosen result of having over-sweated on my drive home and having nothing else to hand. It could be argued that, aged thirty-one, I am too old to be wearing a playsuit.
‘Oh,’ I say uncertainly. ‘Thanks.’
‘It’s sexy.’
I can’t help but smile. His flirtation’s clumsy when it comes now, but he’s still gorgeous, he still flatters me. And anyway, the clumsiness carries sincerity – he means it when he flirts with me, he’s trying hard – whereas with all the others, it’s more like a practised display of polished, empty motions. But of course it still hurts when it’s not directed at me, and now I feel stupidly, girlishly grateful that tonight it is me and not some random girl – or Nicola – as the recipient of his charm.
‘Let’s have a drink,’ he says.
I hesitate. Alex isn’t really supposed to drink – his altered brain is a lot more sensitive to it now – but on the other hand, I firmly believe that we still have to live. Occasional half-pints are allowed, they’ve told us that. And of course there’s nothing I like better than sharing a drink with him, almost like old times, despite looking into his eyes and wondering if the alcohol might prompt him to return, however fleetingly. I live my life from hope to hope, these days.
‘Yes, all right. What do you want?’
‘A drink,’ he repeats.
I nod. ‘What type of drink – beer, wine?’
‘Beer.’ He moves to the fridge and pulls one out, then hesitates before repeating the action, extending a second bottle to me. ‘Here you go.’
Beer it is. He puts his hand round the bottle top and I am about to leap into action – No, Alex, don’t try and twist it! – when to my relief he pauses. I bite my tongue, try to wait as the process slots into place inside his mind.
‘I need a – you know.’
He’s forgotten the word; I begin to make a b with my mouth but he’s already moved past me and so I abandon it, not wanting to say anything he could interpret as patronizing or interfering that might snuff out his good mood. Instead I wait nonchalantly with my dough-stuck fingers wrapped round the beer bottle he’s handed me while he recalls where the bottle opener’s kept, looks in the wrong drawer first but the right one next, withdraws it, struggles for just a moment and then finally pops the cap off.
‘And mine,’ I say gently, holding it out.
He does it for me, a tiny act of chivalry I already treasure.
‘Cheers,’ I say, then clink my bottle against his.
He looks blank; he remembers what this means sometimes, but evidently not tonight.
I take a slug. ‘This was a good idea.’
‘I like your dress,’ he says again, leaning back against the ancient melamine worktop, taking me in.
‘It’s a –’ Oh, shut up, Molly – it doesn’t matter. ‘Thanks.’
‘I always liked you, Molly. From the moment I met you. I always felt like we had a connection.’ Holding me in his gaze, he takes a swig from his bottle.
‘I know,’ I say. ‘That’s why we got married.’ I hesitate. ‘You remember our wedding day, don’t you?’ For so long it was my biggest fear – that one day, the memory of it would inexplicably vanish. But so far, he’s held on to it.
‘Yeah,’ he says, like that’s kind of a stupid question. Perhaps he’s right. ‘It rained.’
It didn’t rain on our wedding day. It was raining on the night of Alex’s accident, so very often he decorates his memories with rain. His psychologist told me this is a quirk of the brain’s wiring, a distortion of actual events, muddling truth with imagination.
I smile sadly, fail to correct him. I don’t want to say anything to tip the gentle balance we seem to have found tonight.
He swigs from his beer again. ‘You’re very pretty, Molly,’ he says, before lowering the bottle, stepping forward and putting his mouth to mine.
Tears spring to my eyes as I sink into his kiss, his touch. I have missed it so much. It comes so rarely now that when it does arrive I am almost too eager, I virtually climb into it. The kissing we used to enjoy anywhere and everywhere, the tenderness of a grabbed hand, the mind-blowing sex – these are now precious events we only rarely enjoy when one of us isn’t too tired, or pissed off. And even when they come, they are still different somehow – Alex is less tender than he used to be, less attentive. More single-minded and self-absorbed. Still, I do enjoy them because how could I not? No matter what the passing of time and the accident have done, he is still gorgeous. He is still my husband, I will always look at him and recall in an instant why I married him. And I still have flashes of the man he was before to hold on to.
Tonight, we only make it as far as the sofa – again a throwback to our former life, when we seized any and every opportunity to rip each other’s clothes off. And although it is not very romantic, and there is no candlelight and soft music and clean white linen to sink into, it is still romantic to me, because it reminds me of those early days when we couldn’t keep our hands off one another.
Afterwards, we fall into a contented doze, half naked on the cushions, and suddenly, there comes the moment I live for – I feel him absent-mindedly reach out and start to play with my hair, a tiny time-worn gesture that’s returned to him like muscle-memory.
I shut my eyes and do everything I can to think not of the past or of the future, but to simply feel him breathing, his touch against me. And all too soon – after ten minutes or so – it is over, as I knew it would be. He clears his throat, removes his hand and gets up without speaking. I find him gruff and bare-chested minutes later in the kitchen, flicking through his phone and swigging from his abandoned beer, but still I am able to sneak up behind him, wrap my arms round his chest, kiss the back of his shoulder and tell him I love him without being shrugged away. Instead, he tells me he loves me too and although his voice is flatter than it ever would have been before, these are the moments I cherish when life gets almost too hard to bear.
We eat pizza much later than planned side by side on the sofa, beers long-since drunk. A repeat documentary comes on the TV, a fly-on-the-wall about women giving birth, and I think sadly back to a conversation I once had with Alex, about wanting to be a young mum. How old was I? It was in our old flat, not long after we met – twenty-six, perhaps?
&nb
sp; I sneak a look across at him. He’s picking jalapeños straight from a jar, depositing them on top of his pizza. There’s no point asking him if he remembers that conversation – even if he does, I doubt he’d grasp its significance now. Because of course I think about having children all the time – about whether we could, how our situation would affect them, whether I even possess the mental, physical and emotional strength to undergo such a huge, life-changing journey with Alex in tow. Because so often I feel as if he is in tow – that I want to go at one speed, he another. I am always pulling him along, urging him to do this or that. And Alex, understandably, would like to amble along at his own pace. In many ways, it’s like having a child already – so the thought of adding one or more newborns to the mix is fundamentally terrifying.
And yet it’s all I’ve ever wanted, to be a mum – and when other people remind me of that, it’s especially heartbreaking, because it’s as if they think I’ve forgotten. They say to me, Don’t forget your dreams. And what I want to say to them is, Do you have any idea how ridiculous that is? I haven’t forgotten my dreams – I regret the loss of them every day. I grieve the non-existence of mine and Alex’s little family with every waking minute, even though it never lived anywhere other than in our imaginations, in the future we were sure we had waiting for us.
But then I think about Graeme, and about Dave, and about all my friends. And I know there are other ways to be happy, ways that don’t involve having a family – I know this. There must be new dreams out there waiting for us – it’s just down to me to conjure them up. That’s my job; my end of the deal. We’re always telling Alex not to give up; surely that must be my half of the bargain.
And now comes the most poignant part of the TV documentary – the part when the piano chords are chiming and everyone’s tearful and the baby is making its very first, shuddering cry – and I almost hold my breath, a slice of nearly cold pizza halfway to my mouth, because I am willing against all the odds for Alex to say something romantic, to give me some indication that he still thinks about starting a family, that he hasn’t forgotten the dreams we once had, the agony we endured in the months leading up to his accident when our crossed fingers were met with so many failed tests. But my hope deflates as he flicks the television on to the sports channel.