by Lucy Dawson
‘It’s not cold, you baby!’ I force a smile. ‘You’re just used to more exotic temperatures.’
‘I’m not away that much,’ he scolds.
I raise an eyebrow.
‘OK, I am.’ He sighs. ‘I might have to reappraise that a bit now though. I thought Gretch was doing so well. But . . . anyway. I’ll just have to scale down again for the time being. Articles on “A hundred weekends of fun in Britain” here I come!’
‘You’re going to do that, just to be around for her?’ I can’t keep the incredulity out of my voice. He has to be away, doesn’t he? It’s just the way it is, isn’t it? Apparently not . . . not when he doesn’t want it to be.
‘Of course!’ Bailey says in surprise. ‘She’s going to be really low when she wakes up,’ he adds determinedly, as if there is no other alternative, she will get better. ‘You remember.’
I know he’s her brother and he’d do anything for her, and that’s how it should be. If Gretchen shouted for him on the highest hill in the middle of the loudest storm, he’d get to her somehow. I think it’s lovely that he has such a generous, big, kind heart that still remains full of hope that he can love her better; it’s one of the many reasons I fell in love with him. You should be there for your family. It just really, really hurts to have it so obviously pointed out that I am not as important to Bailey as Gretchen is – and I never will be. She will always come first with him.
‘When I see her just lying there in that hospital bed, full of all those tubes, I just want to rip them all out of her,’ he suddenly says, ‘even though I know she won’t be able to breathe without them. She looks so tiny, so vulnerable. I can’t tell you what it feels like to see someone you love like that. I actually feel my heart physically wrenching in my chest.’ He shakes his head. ‘You want to do anything you can . . . do it for them, and it breaks me up that she was in a place so bad that she could do this to herself, even when she knows what it will do to me if one day – God forbid – she ever succeeds. The only way I can even vaguely deal with it is by telling myself that she would never do it if she was rational. Never.’
His eyes become shiny and he continues, ‘I know she’s a grown adult and I know she’s not perfect by any means, but you know, when I look at her, Alice, I just see a little girl. She was a right pain in the arse when we were growing up, but she always, always smiled when I came into the room. She used to follow me around everywhere. She was all, “Bailey! Let me! Muuuuuummmmm!” he mimics. “He won’t let me play!” He does a short little laugh. ‘I’d be racing off upstairs with one of my mates at that point of course, mean git, but she never gave up – I’d hear her stomping up the stairs determinedly after me. She just wanted to be around me, I think.’ He pauses, letting himself swim about in happier memories, then adds, ‘I’d let her play now if she wanted to.’
A sudden tear angrily shoots out of the corner of his eye and courses down his face, but he wipes it away quickly. ‘I should have been there, Alice! That’s what big brothers do!’ He falls silent for a moment. ‘It was me who was with her the first time. When she was seventeen.’ He has never told me this before. Neither has she.
‘Her boyfriend dumped her. Usual story – first love, huge passion and all that. She was really, really low and Mum sent me up to get her from her bedroom because she wasn’t coming down for tea. She was on her window ledge in the dark. You know, all I can remember is seeing the window flapping around in the wind, in the space. I spent twenty minutes trying to talk her down, but she jumped anyway.’
‘Oh, Bailey!’ I reach out and clasp his hand for all I am worth. I would do anything to make it better for him. Anything.
‘She only broke her ankle and three ribs – I don’t know how. We thought she was just in a state over the break-up, but I can see now that was when it was starting. It was totally terrifying and I’m so sorry that you had to find her, Alice, I really am. But don’t hate her for it. She really doesn’t know what she is doing.’
He looks at me so sincerely, but I still can’t say anything to that.
‘I wouldn’t blame you if you did, I mean even Mum can’t do it any more. She hasn’t got anything left. It’s just turned her into a wreck and she hasn’t got it in her to watch Gretch fight again . . . I think Dad might persuade her to come down tomorrow.’ He rakes a hand over his tired face. ‘I don’t get it myself. If it were my child I’d walk into the mouth of hell and snatch them back from the edge of oblivion if that’s what it took,’ he says, suddenly fierce.
Finally he tips his head back, forces his eyes shut and says, ‘When this is all over, I’m going to take her somewhere hot where she can sink her toes into some warm sand and just have a cold beer. Simple stuff.’
I know he means it too – he would trade every single good experience of his life, every laugh yet to come out of his mouth and every possession he had, as long as she is all right.
‘Bailey,’ I say quietly, ‘can I ask you something? Did Gretchen ever ask you to end our relationship?’
He looks astonished. ‘No! Why?’
So Vic was right – he just hadn’t got enough strength for anyone else to need him, and to be fair, by then I had become clingy. Vic was indefinitely loved up in Paris, Gretchen was in New York where there was also a five-hour time difference, Tom was gone, my family had become obsessed with landmark baby scans, Fran moving to a bigger house, the next midwife visit. I was lonely, but I can see how my saying ‘I miss you’ repeatedly to Bailey during overseas phone calls added up to make him feel overwhelmed with responsibility for yet someone else’s happiness, when all he wanted was a bit of fun. We might still be together now if I’d made absolutely no demands on him whatsoever, just been there for him when he needed me – his strong, reliable, caring Alice.
‘Sorry,’ he rubs my arm briefly, ‘I didn’t mean to go off on one, bending your ear like that. I feel much better now though, thanks,’ he says gratefully. ‘Come on, Ally pally!’ He stands up and holds out a hand. ‘Let’s go. I’m done with this chapel. It smells funny too.’ He wrinkles his nose. ‘Gretchen needs us up there.’
‘I’ll be back up in a minute, I promise,’ I say.
He nods, gets up easily and walks to the door. ‘Thanks for listening, Al,’ he says. ‘It so helps that you know Gretchen as well as you do. She, we, owe you so much. Thank you.’ And he leaves.
With trembling hands, I turn from the page in the Bible on forgiveness to the one on envy. I read the words over and over again, focusing so hard that I can see the grain of the paper as the words brand my brain:
In envy and selfish ambition, there you find disorder and every evil practice.
James 3:16–18
Chapter Twenty-Two
‘Take a big breath, sweetheart, now tell me what’s happened?’
‘He dumped me! We finally get some time just us and he’s ended it!’ I was hunched up against a wall in Gretchen’s flat, crying into the phone.
‘What, literally just now?’ Vic said.
I tried to get my voice under control. ‘He got back from Rio yesterday—’
Vic snorted. ‘As you do.’
‘. . . And asked me to meet him as soon as I could. I didn’t think anything of it, I just thought he wanted to see me.’ I looked around desperately for another tissue. ‘He said he needed to get out of the flat to stop himself falling asleep,’ I continued. ‘So we met in Hyde Park for coffee, then went for a walk. I was all overexcited to have him back and all chatty.’
‘Of course you were,’ Vic agreed sympathetically.
‘I was kicking the leaves around and gibbering on about how I’ve always wanted to go to New England and see the fall there, all sort of “Don’t you think the colours are amazing? Go on, you kick them too.”’ I closed my eyes with the humiliation. ‘Oh I feel so stupid! And he’s going to think I meant we should go together, which is even worse.’
Vic waited patiently.
‘He was really quiet, but I thought it was just jet la
g, so I said I’d kick for him, but I kicked a lump of dog shit by mistake.’ I tried to laugh, but found I couldn’t.
‘Oh no!’ Vic, to her credit, didn’t laugh at all.
‘It was hidden under a pile of leaves. I was wiping my foot on the grass and saying I’d wash it off when we got back, but he said it wasn’t working and I said it was, and I lifted my foot up to show him I’d got almost all of it off and then he said, “Not the shoe, us. We’re not working.”’
‘Ouuuucchhh,’ groaned Vic. ‘What did you say?’
‘I don’t really remember. Nothing much at first.’ I huddled over the phone. ‘He walked me back here, which must have been weird for him, what with it being his sister’s flat.’
‘That was the bloody least he could do!’ Vic said, outraged.
‘But when we got back and I knew he was going to go and that would be it, I tried to persuade him he was making a mistake.’ The pain and rawness of the fresh memory – him just standing there, resolute, as I hopefully laid out reasons why I was worth staying with – made me start to cry afresh.
‘It doesn’t get more soul-destroying than that,’ Vic said.
‘I know,’ I gulped. ‘Holding on to just a small shred of dignity would have been nice.’
‘Break-ups are never pretty . . .’
‘I kept on and on until he lost patience with me. And then I asked him if there was anyone else. It really wasn’t my finest hour.’
‘And? Is there someone else?’
‘He says not, and that he’d never do that, he just couldn’t give me what I need or want. He said it wouldn’t be fair to pretend otherwise.’
‘Well at least he admitted he wasn’t man enough for you after all and has serious personal shortcomings,’ Vic said crisply, ‘but he was the one that pursued you and was all “I can’t wait for you,” and “Let’s just grab happiness now”. Urrggghhh! I hate headfuck men like him!’
‘And then, then I asked him to stay anyway, just for one more night,’ I blurted, my heart breaking. I didn’t want to admit the depths I’d sunk to – even to her – but neither could I stop my confession.
‘Oh, Al . . .’ Vic fell silent for a moment.
She waited as I cried quietly, the sound echoing round Gretchen’s flat. Then, gently, she said, ‘And did he stay? Is that why you’re calling me now? Has he just left?’
I shook my head, which was stupid of course, because she couldn’t see me. ‘He refused to stay.’ I tried to laugh and blew my nose a little bit. ‘Which just about finished me off. He got all sulky and started looking at his watch and saying over and over again that he had work to do. Eventually I got so upset I just shouted at him to fuck off if it was that important to him, and he did.’
‘Well let’s be thankful for small mercies,’ Vic said. ‘At least he, and you, did one thing right. That’s what you have to hold on to, Al – that ultimately you told him to fuck off.’
‘Only because he pushed me to it.’
‘Doesn’t matter,’ Vic insisted. ‘You still told him. Did Gretchen know he was going to do this? You’ve rung her, I take it?’
‘I tried to,’ I admitted, ‘but it’s so hard to catch her, what with the five hours time difference and everything. She was out last night and it’s too early to call again yet – it’s six on Sunday morning for her, she’ll be in bed. You were so right, you said this would happen if we broke up and it has.’
‘Yeah, well, I take no pleasure in that.’
‘You were right about everything. That’s part of the problem too – I’m so fucking angry with myself for all this.’ I tearfully scrunched up my tissue into a ball. ‘When Tom and I broke up you said have some space and get back in the mix. But instead,’ I threw the tissue away angrily, ‘I spent every waking minute at Bailey’s with Gretchen and him for the first two months, which, OK, wasn’t really his or her fault because she was ill, but then she goes and he starts poncing off everywhere . . . and what do I do then?’
Vic waited, knowing that I didn’t expect her to answer.
‘I wait around like some saddo on standby for him to get back from each trip – I make him my priority.’ I began to rant. ‘I turn down a shoot in Italy because otherwise I’ll be leaving the country when he’s coming home for two days. I take loads of boring home-based jobs that mean I’m always around at the drop of a hat. I mean, what the fuck was I thinking?’ I yanked another tissue out of the box violently. ‘It’s so pathetic!’
‘Come on, Al, we’ve all done it,’ Vic said. ‘You fell head over heels for him and what you thought he was going to offer you, so you threw yourself into it. You’re not the first person to realise that living your life for someone else is a crap idea. At worst, you gave up six months to a bit of a dickhead. But you’ll never make that mistake again.’
I listened as I dried my tired, puffy eyes and then blew my sore, red nose.
‘When you’re busy working and getting on with day-to-day bollocks – actually living the situation – it’s hard to step back and look at the bigger picture and see where you’re going wrong. I don’t know a single person who hasn’t thought, “I really should phone one of the girls and arrange to meet up, but hey, I’m tired and it’s been a bitch of a day. All I want to do is go home, have some tea and collapse with my other half.” I know I have. This is a really sad thing to admit, but half the time I’m too knackered even to use Facebook to keep up with people. I only go on it to have a nose at other people’s photos. Now that’s bad.’
I snorted slightly and then did a big sniff. ‘You’re not just saying that to make me feel better?’
‘Of course not! Stop beating yourself up. You’ve got so much going for you, Alice. You’re amazingly talented, you’ve built up a really successful business and now you’re free to take whatever jobs you want! Start chasing the ones you’re really interested in again – the travel ones.’
‘I should, I know,’ I said. ‘I am at least really lucky to have a job I love – I know that.’
‘Atta girl!’ she said briskly. ‘You never have to see the creep ever again. The rest of your life starts here. Now what are you going to do today? I don’t think you should be on your own, because you may feel angry now, but you’re going to get all sad again later.’
Later? The tears were already welling up. She was right! I might have seen him for the last time. We’d had our last ever kiss. Oooohhhhhhhhh! That hurt.
‘Why don’t you go and see your mum and dad? Stay at theirs perhaps?’
‘I’ve got a job tomorrow first thing I need to be here for – a nice calm one, actually. Just me, a client and a box of nail varnishes. Thank God.’
‘OK, well just go for lunch. Listen, I’m sure you’ve thought of this,’ she said, ‘but it’s Halloween today. That’s quite a big deal in the States so bear it in mind if you’re trying to get hold of Gretchen later. Now, I want you to get off the phone and call your mum. OK? Call me tonight when you get home again.’
I hung up and had another cry while I wondered where he was and what he was doing. Then I came worryingly close to sending him a really shit text to ‘check he was all right’ and just to say that I hoped we could ‘still be friends’ and that I hadn’t meant to tell him to fuck off.
But then I thought about what Vic had said, and I made myself hit delete instead. I dialled my mum and dad quickly. It would take me two hours to get there, but it would be nice to have a hug and a cry at home.
Mum tersely answered after barely two rings. ‘Frances, for the love of God – it’s just Braxton Hicks and I am about to leave! The more you keep ringing me, the more it slows me down.’
‘It’s not Frances,’ I said, doing a sorry-for-myself sniff. ‘It’s me.’
‘Oh, Alice,’ she said. ‘Don’t sniff, blow. Now listen, I’d love to stop, but I can’t – your sister is utterly convinced she’s in labour and is in danger of having her baby on the kitchen floor, although I might add this is now the fourth time in two days we’ve been
here.’
That explained why Fran hadn’t called me back yesterday just after Bailey had left.
‘Not only that, but Dad and Phil are at each other’s throats because Phil had some friends over last night and now there’s a hole halfway up the back fence. Philip!’ she said crossly, ‘don’t make that hand gesture at your father! It’s very rude . . . yes, he does know what it means actually and that’s not the point. I’ve got to go, darling. Thank God for you. I should have had you first and stopped after that. I’ll call you later. Philip, speak to your sister.’
‘Yo, Al,’ said Phil. ‘What’s new? Dad’s going mental here and Frances has lost the plot too, she keeps ringing and, like, wailing down the phone, it’s really freaky. Oh my God! All right! Al, I’ve got to go. There’s, like, some insane old man just shouting at me and saying I’ve got to go and fix the stupid fence – even though it’s nothing to do with me. I’ll put him on.’
Then my father took the phone and said tightly, ‘Hello, Alice. We’re all a bit fraught here today, I’m afraid. Philip, as I’m sure you’ve realised, still hasn’t got a job and has taken to a nocturnal existence that involves lying on the sofa scratching himself, eating anything that sits still long enough, drinking my whisky, and is now apparently wantonly destroying the house for his amusement. Yes you did, Phil!’ he roared and I had to hold the phone away from my ear. ‘What kind of bloody idiot do you take me for? The football was right by it!’
So, instead of going home, where they’d all apparently gone mad, I spent most of the day on-off crying in bed, which wasn’t quite the start to the rest of my life I would have chosen, and then discovered a random bottle of peach schnapps under the kitchen sink at about five p.m. As a direct result, things later took a turn for the worse.
With shaking fingers, which could have been nerves or the first sign of my liver packing up, I dialled, and held my breath as the unfamiliar overseas tone began. Shit! It was ringing! I wasn’t even sure he’d still have the same mobile number, let alone if it would work in America. I waited.