by Low, Shari
Yvie shrugs and I can see she is mortified.
‘In case I found out.’ Again, it takes me a minute for my brain to catch up and realise that has come from Verity, who’s come back into the room carrying another tray of neon pink filled glasses.
‘But why… why would that be a problem?’
Verity sighs. ‘She suspected I was in love with him. And she was right.’
Holy. Fuck. The fact that deep down I’d known it all along only makes it worse to hear it being said out loud. Still, I wanted to understand more.
‘But I asked you…’
‘And I lied,’ Verity says.
‘Because…?’ I probe.
She puts the tray down on the table and distributes the drinks, making me wait for an explanation. That’s Verity. Always plays to the beat of her own drum.
‘Because I was so angry at you for taking him in the first place.’
For the second time this afternoon, one of my sisters goes on to tell me things about my husband that I didn’t know. How she felt about him. The flirting. The fury at my relationship with him. Then – and this takes the wind right out of my sails – setting up a false profile on a dating app to see if he was playing around.
The worst bit? The moment in Verity’s recording of their conversation at the wedding, when he admits that he’d played her from the start.
Compared to that, the news of his secret Your Next Date habit doesn’t even make a dent.
‘I’m sorry,’ Verity says, when she’s told me it all. ‘I really am. All I can say is that I was in a weird place. I think I’ve been there for a long time.’
For the first time, the room falls silent and I realise that all my sisters are staring at me, waiting for me to speak.
‘You all knew this?’
Marina nods her head. ‘Not at the start. It all came out in Vegas. The night you got married. When Yvie had her panic attack.’
‘You had a panic attack?’ I gasp. ‘When did they start again?’
‘Maybe a year ago now.’ It’s no consolation that she seems to regret not telling me.
‘Bloody hell, Yvie, I’m so sorry. I had no idea. I would have been there for… Hang on, is that why you left my birthday party?’
Yvie nods and I feel like the worst sister that ever lived. I’ll make it up to her. I will.
‘Is there anything else I should know?’ I blurt. ‘Marina, is my husband your secret lover on the side or something?’
I know I’m being facetious and ludicrous, but I can’t help it.
‘No, but she has been picking up strangers for sex,’ Verity says casually.
I drop the glass. Neon pink gunk and pineapple is spreading all over my floor and I don’t care. I listen. Dumbfounded. Where have I been? Where have we all been? We’re family – how could we have lost each other like this?
Yvie, my smiley, caring sister was cracking under the pressure of taking care of everyone but herself.
Verity, aloof and closed, was fighting her own battle, tormented by unhappiness but determined not to let anyone in.
Marina, so in control of the lives of everyone she loves, had an area of her own life that was so out of control.
And me? Head in the sand. Working. Focusing on stuff that didn’t really matter so that I didn’t need to deal with the pain of what did.
And that’s when I see it. I see the person I called on when I needed it most. I see the cause of it all, the reason that we’ve become the women that we are.
‘Watch me fly, Dad.’
We all flew in different directions, all trying to survive from the moment he left us.
The moment he chose to leave us.
Will Danton, our father, had been divorced from our mother for fifteen days when he swallowed a bottle of pills on Boxing Day, 1999, after a long, undiagnosed and untreated battle with depression.
Marina was fourteen. Verity was thirteen. I was twelve and Yvie was ten. And none of us knew that something so awful was blighting his life. Back then, people didn’t talk about mental health, let along educate teenagers on the signs and symptoms. Even our mum hadn’t realised that he desperately needed medical help, or I really believe she’d have tried. Our mum is many things – she’s quirky, and self-centred and she lives life on her own (and Oprah’s) terms, but she wouldn’t stand by and let someone suffer if she thought they could be helped. She’d have forced him to get treatment, would have supported his recovery, but she simply didn’t comprehend the extent of it. For a while afterwards, all of us, except Yvie, blamed Mum at some point or another. The truth was, it wasn’t her fault.
We’d learned later from his workmates that Dad had refused to see a doctor even when he knew that he was unwell. He’d eventually been fired from his job on Christmas Eve. He’d spent Christmas Day in the one local bar that was open throughout the festivities. He’d left very drunk at closing time. And then he’d gone home and at some point in the next few hours, he’d taken his own life.
He’d left four girls, who’d built walls that dated back to that very moment in time, who’d formed the personalities they needed to survive the trauma of that kind of loss. Yvie’s need to take care of people, especially those she loves. Marina’s desire to control every little detail in case something goes wrong, especially at Christmas, the toughest time of all for us. Verity’s fearsome ability to shut down and close off when she feels vulnerable. And my determination to be independent and take care of myself.
I understand now that we all became extreme versions of those teenage girls, our personalities defined in that moment of loss, and we’ve all been fighting our own battles ever since.
Maybe it isn’t too late to fight them together.
Last night, I sent them all a message on our group chat, telling them what I’d known for a week, since my husband came home dishevelled, unshaven and shifty the night after Tom’s wedding and told me he’d slept with someone else after the reception. Someone you know, he’d sneered, before grabbing a change of clothes, taking his credit cards back out of my handbag and walking out the door. I’d taken a few days to sort it out in my head, to give him time to come back and pack up most of his stuff, grateful beyond measure that we hadn’t had time to go to the Vegas courthouse to make the marriage legally binding. I took off my wedding ring, counted my blessings, and then I texted the only three people in the world that I wanted to see.
‘My marriage is over,’ I said in the message on the group chat. ‘Can you come over tomorrow?’
My wedding band and my husband are no longer around, but my sisters are here.
And now they are waiting for some reaction from me, to the things I’ve learned today, to the fact that they’ve shared their faults, their weaknesses, their mistakes and their secrets. It’s time for me to do the same.
‘I love you all, do you know that? The truth is, I’ve been a pretty crap sister over the last year. I’ve not been paying attention to what was going on with any of you. I’m so sorry and I don’t have any excuses other than I was so consumed with trying to get through losing Tom. Just like I honestly think we’ve all been trying to deal with losing Dad since it happened. It seemed easier to slip into denial about how much Tom had hurt me, and just try to patch over the pain with Ned and work and nothing much else. I should have been there for you all too. The only consolation is that maybe it needed to happen this way though, because if the last year has taught all of us anything, it’s that we will always stick together, just like Marina said back then. I’m so grateful I’ve got you three beside me. I’m just sorry it took the arrival of Ned Merton in our lives to get us to this point, but I’m so happy we’re here.’
It’s Yvie’s turn to pounce now and she hugs me so tightly she nearly collapses my lung. Marina, calm, controlled, boss sister, follows suit and piles on top of us. Even Verity surrenders, adding to the pile up but doing it slowly so she won’t crease her shirt or do herself an injury.
I’ve never felt so much love. Or gratitude.
‘Oh, and for the record, I never believed that any of you would ever sleep with my husband. My ex-husband.’ I add. ‘But if any of you take a notion to, I believe he’s newly single and can be contacted on Your Next Date.’
We’re still laughing when Verity climbs up and goes to make another round of cocktails.
Epilogue
Six Weeks Later – The Fifth Anniversary Party of the Kemp Ibiza
The sun is falling in the sky as a gang of us sit on the beach, the sound of retro nineties hits coming from the speakers in the bar a few feet behind us. So far, we’ve had Take That, the Spice Girls and Robbie Williams. It’s like reliving our teenage years.
‘I still can’t believe that you thought I’d spent the night with that tosser, Ned Merton, even for a minute,’ Kay says to the group. ‘I mean, fool me once and all that… No offence, Zoe,’ she adds quickly.
‘None taken,’ I laugh. The credit card payment is still a mystery because we all know now who was with Kay that night and it wasn’t Ned.
Yvie nudges her best friend playfully, her face bright with mischief. She is looking so much better already. Having Marina and the kids at the flat for a couple of weeks until they found their own place was a very crowded but very genuine boost for her, especially as Marina immediately organised a nutrition plan and cooked her healthy meals for breakfast, packed lunch and dinner. On top of that, she’s already started counselling and she is open to taking meds if she needs them to get the anxiety under control. Carlo is helping and has taken up where Marina left off. When I told him what was going on – she’d insisted it wasn’t to be a secret – he’d shown up at her flat with a low-fat, delicious meal from his father’s restaurant. Every day for a month now.
Yvie answers for us. ‘We didn’t really. We knew it had to be a mistake. I mean, you clearly had a much better option.’ Yvie nods in the direction of Dr Seth McGonigle, standing over with Tom, Roger, Carlo, Nigel and the rest of the guys at the firepit in the sands. Turns out that early in the morning after Tom’s wedding, Kay called him from her suite at the Kemp and asked him to meet her at the hotel for breakfast. It had been bold. Reckless. But neither of them are having any regrets about it. Chester is away for a rare weekend with his dad, so Kay and Seth decided to take up Yvie’s invitation to join us here. Seth still makes Yvie talk nonsense, but now that she’s got to know him out of work as Kay’s boyfriend, she’s come to realise that he’s just one of those guys who can be perfectly friendly and happy on the inside, but his brain forgets to inform the outside.
‘Can’t believe you got there first,’ Marina whistles, referring to Seth, but we all know she is kidding. She’s sworn off men until she’s sorted herself out. After two weeks at Yvie’s, she found a gorgeous flat for her and the kids. Annabelle is back in the same school as Oscar and their new home is only five minutes away, so they can walk there and back and it’s easy for them to get to all their extra activities. If they feel like going, that is. Marina doesn’t insist. She’s just enjoying the time they have together, especially now that there’s less of it, since she’s started working as Roger’s executive assistant. He says he’s fairly terrified of her, but his life has never been more organised. Graham, on the other hand, has cut down his hours to spend more time with the kids and he’s met a life coach called Debbie who’s determined to address his work/life balance. Marina, Annabelle and Oscar are hoping she’ll succeed.
‘Don’t listen to her, Kay. She wouldn’t stand a chance with you around,’ Verity tells her with a cheeky wink, as she stretches on her towel, loving the fact that she’s teasing Marina. She is so tanned – no surprise given that she’s already been here for a fortnight. She had shocked us all when she announced she was taking a year out to teach English over here, and promptly packed in her job and moved a week later, but so far it definitely looks like it’s working for her.
‘Verity, leave your sister alone and stop teasing her.’ That comes from our mother, who has broken off from staring at the third finger on her left hand for as long as it takes to chide Verity. Last night, Nigel slipped down on to one very bendy knee and proposed to her. Now she is sitting, taking in the chat, the atmosphere and the ocean breeze, while staring at her stunning solitaire engagement ring. We’re happy for her, but there’s no doubt that, even now, we all feel a tiny twinge of wishful thinking that things could have been different. Every one of us would give anything for Dad to be here right now too. Over the last few weeks we’ve talked endlessly about how much we miss him, how devastating it was that he couldn’t get the help he needed. Our dad loved us. There’s no world in which he’d have left us if he didn’t feel in his mind right there and then that it was his only option. I think maybe now that we are all finally talking things through and dealing with our own feelings and relationships with each other, we have a better understanding of his issues and the place he was in. He’ll always be the little piece that’s chipped off our hearts. We just need to learn to help each other deal with the moments when that missing chip hurts the most.
‘Roger’s coming over,’ Mum points out, as he crosses the sands towards us. ‘Has he told you any more yet?’
‘Not since this morning’s text,’ I reply.
The mystery had rumbled on in the background since that day we’d all congregated at my flat, drinking those awful pink cocktails and eating Jean’s surprisingly delicious lasagne. Roger had called later that afternoon to say that there had been a mistake and Yvie’s card had been used for two rooms. He didn’t quite understand it, but he was going to get to the bottom of it and get back to me. He’d texted me earlier today to say he’d found out the answers. Not that they mattered. Ned Merton was long gone – I’d had no contact with him since that day – and I no longer cared who he’d spent that night, or any night since, with. This morning, Roger had texted to say he had more news. I was intrigued to hear it, but at the same time, I didn’t really care. Nothing would make a difference to the outcome.
‘Ladies!’ Roger greets us, as he reaches us. ‘Can I borrow Zoe for a moment?’
‘Make it fast because you’ve got a 5 p.m. meeting in the lounge,’ Marina tells him, making him wince and us laugh.
I clamber up, brush the sands off my white skirt and walk with him.
‘So… this is awkward,’ he says, and I notice that he seems uncomfortable. Not something I’ve ever seen before. He’s usually so confident and sure of himself.
‘What’s happened?’
‘Security have checked all the CCTV and talked to the staff again. We missed it the first time because they weren’t looking for it, but they’ve discovered that it was Felice.’
I don’t understand what he’s saying. ‘What was?’
‘In the room with your husband on the night of Tom’s wedding. It’s why she left me. Actually, she left because we’d been over for a long time before then, but I guess that must have been the final straw.’ It was only a fortnight ago that he’d told Tom and I that Felice had gone and they’d ended their marriage. He hadn’t gone into detail, but I’d definitely got the impression it was a relief and there was zero chance of them getting back together.
The shock made my jaw drop for a few speechless seconds, before I checked to see if I’d understood that correctly, ‘Felice spent the night with Ned?’
He nods. ‘We’ve pieced together that she was at the hotel reception when Yvie booked the room in Kay’s name and explained that she’d given Kay her credit card. The next morning, Felice got a junior in the finance department to charge Ned’s room to that card too.’
‘Because…?’
Roger sighs wearily, shrugging. For a man who’s just discovered his soon-to-be ex-wife has been unfaithful, he doesn’t seem too troubled.
‘Because she wanted to cover their tracks. If she’d comped the room, asked someone to make it a freebie, she knows I’d have found out about it. She was aware I wanted out and she didn’t want to give me any ammunition by getting caught with someone else.
Charging it to Yvie’s card was an opportune solution that bought her some time. I did more digging today. She’s rented a flat in Glasgow. I can’t think of any reason she’d have to stay there unless she was seeing someone.’
I’m stunned. ‘You think she’s with Ned?’
‘I do.’
‘Wow.’
That strikes me speechless for a second, while so many pieces of a jigsaw slide into place. Ned has always resented Roger. He loves a trophy. And a challenge. Felice would certainly be that. When the shock wears off, I check for stings of pain and realise there are absolutely none. I genuinely don’t care.
‘It’s bizarre. They have absolutely nothing in common.’
‘I’m not sure that’s true,’ he says softly, his expression indecipherable.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, didn’t you say that Ned was always jealous of our friendship? Felice was exactly the same. She was convinced I had feelings for you.’
He shrugs apologetically as he says that, and I pause again to take it all in.
‘Are you okay?’ Roger asks me, and I can hear the concern. ‘What are you thinking?’
‘I think they deserve each other.’
Roger Kemp, my client, my friend, the man who makes me laugh, challenges me, respects my professional judgement, helps me and the company I work for thrive and – most of all – embraces my dysfunctional family, matches my gaze and smiles, then leans down so that his lips are just inches from mine. Once I get over the surprise, I realise that I like it. A lot.
‘Can I ask you something?’ he says.
‘Anything.’
‘Do you think we do too?’
I smile, my heart thuds a little faster, and as I go up on my tiptoes to kiss him, I realise that I know the answer to that.
‘Maybe we do.’
I know now what I should have seen before now. Ned was right to have concerns about Roger because there’s always been something more than just a professional relationship between us. And I want to find out exactly how much more is there.