‘I think we should go,’ he tells me.
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘I think we both need some sleep.’
We have thrashed out enough, more than enough, for one night and our minds and bodies need to rest and digest all that we have told each other, though, to be honest, despite the rush of alcohol that fills my veins, I doubt there will be very much sleep for me tonight.
I say goodbye to Simon Harte and watch him from the back seat of my taxi as he walks towards the Lisburn Road to the B&B with the real chandeliers.
He looks so lost and lonely and his sister’s heart aches inside of me with longing to ease his pain. I only hope that meeting me can give him the closure he so desperately needs so that he can look forward to his new life with his wife and their baby.
Chapter 9
I count sheep. I count them in English and then in French and then As Gaelige and then backwards in each language, but still sleep won’t come. I see her every time I close my eyes. I see her freckled nose and her glasses and her long wavy, tatty hair that needed to be cut so badly that day. I hear her voice, or what I think it might sound like, and I feel… well, I feel her heart beat inside me and it makes me very sad.
‘God bless you, Lucy,’ I say out loud. ‘God bless you poor, poor Lucy Harte.’
I think of Henry and his wide-eyed innocence. A little boy at only twelve years old, now orphaned and trapped in a man’s body and fully depending on his ageing aunt. I think of Simon, sat that morning with his young girlfriend and worrying about how he might kiss her, when the police arrived at the door. I think of their father, now dead and buried too, and all the pain and regret he must have lived with for so many years. And I think of their desperately addicted mother, who probably thought she was doing the right thing that day by taking her daughter to have her hair cut, topped up in Dutch courage by the dreaded drink.
Life is cruel. Life is crap and cruel and I can’t sleep.
I get out of bed and take my insomnia to the living area, where I curl up on the sofa under my throw again and turn on the TV. Shopping channels. Yes, that should do it. I lie there and squint at the screen, the rush of gin pumping through my veins and my head begins to spin. I am going to be sick. No… I am not. Yes I am… no… should I get up? What time is it? I feel dizzy again… I’m so….
The TV has gone onto standby and I wake up to the sound of a car radio booming outside. I lift my head from the sofa. Ouch. Damn you Cucumber Coolers. Then I remember about the whiskey. My mouth is like sandpaper. No bloody wonder. Yuk.
I am raging to be awake as I was having the most glorious dream where Jeff came to my door, totally unannounced, but looking oh-so handsome apart from needing a haircut, and like someone had waved a magic wand, he told me that Saffron didn’t even exist and it had all been a big mistake. There was no affair. In fact, there was no one in this entire world called Saffron. No one in the entire universe called Saffron, in fact. Saffron who? He kept saying this. You must have been dreaming, babe! You’re my wife and I love you.
He wanted to take me back to the place we called home, the terraced house we bought in Stranmillis until we decided where to build our dream pad, and the place where we would bring our first baby home to in just a few months’ time because I was already pregnant and didn’t even know it. It would be a girl, he said, and we would call her Lucy Harte. Will Powers Sr was with him at the door and he was laughing at the idea of me thinking they had told me to take time out from work. Don’t be so silly, Maggie, he had said and offered me another pay rise. It was a lovely dream, all in all.
I sit up and rub my face. I lie down again. It’s only 6.30am. Thank God I don’t have to face the world today. Well, not yet, anyway. Simon and I have planned to meet again for dinner before his night-time flight, but that is ages away. I can sleep again for now. Phew.
The doorbell wakes me what feels like ten minutes later, but when I look at the clock I am shocked to see it is nearly lunchtime. I head to the door, reminding myself of my mother as I mutter to myself as to who it might be at the door like it is one big mystery.
‘Just answer it and see and stop wondering,’ my dad would always tell her and lo and behold, it always worked. She would open the door and find the very answer to all her questions.
It’s too late to be the postman and I haven’t ordered anything that would come by special delivery so when I open the door, still tightening my dressing gown and squinting as I attempt to wake up, it is like a blow to the stomach when I see my husband standing there with his hands behind his back and his head lowered, just like in my dream.
‘Jeff? What on earth are you doing here?’
Was this my dream coming true? He does look like he needs a haircut…
‘Maggie, I had to come and see you,’ he says, looking up at me under an overgrown, sticky-up fringe. He speaks so gently. It’s just like my dream, but there is no sign of Will Powers Sr and although I know it is Jeff and he sounds like Jeff, something about him looks different. Has he lost weight? No. Actually, he looks a bit fuller around the face, if anything. It’s his clothes, I realise. He is dressed like a Spice Boy in his zippy sports top and trendy jeans and Converse trainers. What on earth has Saffron done to my forty- year-old husband? My head is banging as usual and I’m not sure of what is real and what isn’t right now.
‘You need a haircut,’ I tell him sharply, and automatically think of Lucy Harte’s poor dead mother, who said the same moments before she died. I hope I don’t die soon. I am not ready to die yet. Am I still dreaming? Is he going to try and take me home to Stranmillis? Should I start packing now?
‘I know I do,’ he says and he flashes me a smile, the one that used to turn me on so much. ‘It’s been a while since I had a decent cut. Can I come in?’
I want to be mad at him. I should be mad at him, but that stupid dream has confused me. I want him to come in, so badly. I want to fall into his arms and get my old life back and just pick up from where we left off, but I am a mess. My apartment is a mess also.
I glance back over my shoulder and survey days of sheer neglect and, well, doom and gloom, I suppose. Damn you, Jeffrey Pillock. I would have had the place shining clean and myself dolled up to the nines if I had known you were coming!
‘I’d love you to come in but it’s not really a good time,’ I tell him. ‘Can you come back later, like in about four hours or so and we can have a good chat then?’
‘Four hours?’ he asks. ‘That’s a bit of a random time frame.’
Well, it would take me at least four hours to get organised, I figure in my cloudy mind. I am not dressed and the place is like a tip and now that I think about it, I actually don’t appreciate him calling like this unannounced, even if it is to try and win me back. He is going to have to at least bring flowers when he returns. None of this empty-handed shit is going to wash with me. I am going to play hard to get for once when it comes to my husband and his attempts at apologies.
‘Look, Maggie, I don’t think there is such a thing as a good time for what I have to say,’ he says emphatically. ‘I need to talk to you. Now.’
Oh, so it’s like that, then! Oh, he is keen! I fold my arms.
‘Talk to me about what?’ I ask him. If he thinks I am going to make this easy for him, he can think again. He will have to do more than just turn up like this and say sorry! And he needn’t tell me that Saffron doesn’t exist because I saw them in Tesco with my own two eyes. He is going to have to beg to get me back!
‘It’s about… well, it’s about how we have both moved on in the past few months,’ he says, darting his eyes around anywhere but my face. ‘Or, maybe, how you haven’t… moved on.’
‘Moved on?’ my voice squeaks. ‘Excuse me if it has taken me a little bit of time to get my head around what has just happened. It’s not as easy as that, to just ‘move on’. We were married, Jeff. You said you loved me with all your heart.’
This is the part when he tells me he doesn’t want to move on… where he says
he still does love me with all his heart. I wait. And then he speaks.
‘Yes, I understand it must be difficult,’ he says, avoiding my eyes. ‘Which is why I wanted to speak to you face to face about… about moving on. I wanted to tell you that I want a div… I want a divorce, Maggie. As soon as possible.’
Silence.
I can’t speak. I do speak. At least I think I do.
‘A what?’ I mutter.
‘A di… a divorce,’ he replies. The bastard can barely say the words.
‘A divorce,’ I repeat. I feel a blow of reality has punched me and my rose-tinted glasses crash to the floor as I see him for what he really is again. A lying, cheating, good-for- nothing tramp! A divorce? A fucking divorce?
‘How fucking dare you?’ I say to him, my guts twisting like I might heave at any minute.
‘I thought you might say that,’ he mumbles. ‘Please, just let me in. I wanted to see you in person but you never seem to be here. ‘
He glances around in frustration as if he doesn’t want my neighbours to hear and then he checks his phone like he is on some sort of timer. Like he is in a fucking hurry!
‘Hold on a minute,’ I say to him, forgetting that I probably look like something from a horror movie as I haven’t taken off my make-up from the night before. I don’t actually care any more what I look like. ‘Is she with you?’
My eyes are like saucers and I know I am spitting as I speak but I do not care if I shower him in saliva. I try to remember some anti-panic attack exercises but at this present moment I can barely remember how to breathe.
‘She isn’t with me, no, but she is waiting in the car.’
‘You brought her with you! In the car! Here! What are you trying to do to me?’ I am shouting now. ‘What the hell are you trying to do to me, Jeff?’
I am crying buckets and I want to murder him, right here, right now. Like, really murder him. I don’t care if I go to hell for it. He is messing with my head and I can’t look at him standing there at my new front door like he has literally poisoned every single step I tried to take to get over him. He has polluted my new home. He has polluted my new life and I hate him for it.
‘Maggie. Can you please keep your voice down and let me come in and explain?’
I don’t want him to explain. There is no explanation. I know enough. I saw enough in fucking Tesco. In the very store where we met I saw enough and I don’t think I can take any more detail of their fine romance.
I don’t know what to do. I can’t look at him. I think I am going to be sick. So I do what my instincts tell me to. I try and get rid of him. I slam the door in his face.
‘Maggie, for goodness sake, will you be an adult about this and let me in?’
He calls in a hurried whisper through the letterbox. Jeff would shit himself if any of my new neighbours heard us arguing, even if he didn’t know them from Adam. Where he comes from, no one raises their voice in public and no one ever speaks through a letterbox. This pleases me greatly.
‘Fuck off to fuck!’ I tell him from my hiding place on the floor on the other side of the door.
‘Is this how you want me to tell you what I have come to say?’ he asks and I literally dig my heels into the ground and then cover my ears. Childish, I know, but very, very satisfying. ‘Through a damn letterbox?’
‘I’m not listening,’ I sing back to him. ‘I am not listening, not even one little bit.’
‘Okay then, Maggie, be like that,’ he says. ‘But don’t say I didn’t try and do the decent thing. I tried to tell you to your face but you have given me no option.’
‘Not listening!’ I say again, my eyes now shut tight as I try my best to block him out.
‘Saffron is pregnant,’ he says through the letterbox.
Now I am listening. My hands drop to the floor and I think my whole body has turned to jelly.
‘What?’ I’m definitely going to vomit.
‘You heard me,’ he says. ‘We are having a baby.’
I slowly stand up and like a boxer who has just been punched in the ring, I stagger and reach for the door handle. I open it slowly and I look at my husband, who less than a year and a half ago told my family and friends in a fancy hotel that he was the keeper of my precious, precious heart and that he would be there for me, his best friend, until death us do part. He said it in a poem he had written himself only days after we met. That’s how sure he was. And we all believed him.
And now she is having his baby. She is. Not me. Her. The one he hardly even knows. The one who swept in from nowhere and destroyed our future with the flutter of her eyelashes and a quick flick of her hair, like it was just another day and no big deal.
Oh, my God, please help me. I can’t see straight. I’m having another weird dream, right? My stomach tightens into a giant ball of sick and the room starts to spin.
She is having his baby. My husband’s baby. No, please no! I can’t… but… no. No! I had names chosen and had scoured books and websites to find them. I had joined online forums and chatted to other newly-weds who were trying and mums-to-be who had just found out the most magnificent news of a new arrival.
I had pictured myself with a bump and how much I would glow and how he would tell me how beautiful I was even when I was big and bloated and hormonal as hell. I had the nursery colours chosen and I even had scraps of fabric pinned on a cork board in pinks and blues to see how it would all look together. I took tests every month. I prayed it would happen. But it didn’t. And now this. Now this?
I try to speak. To react. To say something.
‘How could you, Jeff?’ It comes out in a croak and the tears start to fall and I want him to hug me and tell me he is joking or at least that he doesn’t really love her the way he loves me and it’s a mistake and he never meant it to happen and he’s sorry.
But he doesn’t do any of that. He doesn’t even speak. So I do, again.
‘How could you do this to me?’ I mumble. ‘That was meant to be what we –’
I don’t have time to finish my sentence.
‘Don’t say ‘we’ Maggie,’ he says firmly. ‘I love Saffron and we are starting a family. There is no ‘we’ any more. Move on. Please.’
I inhale deeply. Move on. I exhale slowly.
Then I stare him out and he squints in… is that fear? I nod my head. He knows what he has done. He knows he has just dealt me one deadly, almost fatal, blow with his grand revelation of Saffron and their fucking family!
So I do what any boxer on the edge of defeat would do.
I take a step back, I look at my opponent, I raise my fist and I knock the fucker out.
Then I go to the bathroom and I am very sick indeed.
Chapter 10
‘I can’t believe I hit him,’ I tell Simon later that evening after his football game, which he admits he could barely concentrate on. We have ditched the going-out-for-dinner idea and are having Chinese in my living room. ‘I am so ashamed of myself for hitting him. I don’t have a violent bone in my body and I obviously don’t know my own strength.’
‘That’s all that farm work standing by you,’ says Simon. He looks so relaxed, like he has been here forever.
‘Gosh, I actually feel so, so bad.’
‘I’m sorry but I can’t stop laughing when I imagine you actually knocking him out,’ he says, piling rice and curry sauce on top of a prawn cracker. ‘What happened after that? Did Saffron come to his rescue?’
I start to snigger now. It is quite funny, when you take the extreme violence out of it.
‘I honestly have no idea,’ I tell him, covering my mouth, which is half full of noodles. ‘I just closed the door and put on Amy Winehouse full blast and tidied up this place so that it is now unrecognisably clean and put all my energy to good use. I assume he wasn’t still lying in the corridor when you arrived?’
Simon shakes his head and we swap foil containers. It really is like we are totally co-ordinated, like we are connected, somehow, and it feels surreal but
oh-so comfortable.
‘There was no sign and no trace of evidence, so your secret is safe with me,’ he says. ‘Have you heard anything from him since?’
At that I really do start to laugh when I recall the text message I received a few hours later.
‘Seriously, Maggie, you need to sort out your anger management,’ I read aloud from my phone, much to Simon’s amusement. ‘You could have broken my jaw.’
Simon is doubled over now, in hysterics laughing, and I fear the remainder of the delicious chow mein he is holding is going to end up on the floor. I take it from him so that I now have two foil containers in my hand.
‘Gosh, I needed that laugh,’ he says when he finally gets rid of the giggles. ‘You have no idea how good it feels to laugh again.
We finish our Chinese and watch the clock, knowing that our time is coming to an end.
‘I really better get going, Maggie,’ he says. ‘God, it’s going to be so hard saying goodbye. You’re going to be okay, you know that?’
I don’t want him to go. I feel safe when he is here and I know that when he leaves I am going to crash and it’s not going to be pretty.
‘Thanks, Simon,’ I tell him. ‘I will be fine. Time heals, isn’t that what they say?’
He puts on his coat and gets his bag from the hallway. His taxi will be here in just a few minutes and in a way I wish this moment would just hurry up and pass because it’s going to be hard.
‘Remember I said I have something for you,’ he says. ‘Something that might help?’
Did he? There has been so much discussed over the past twenty-four hours that I can hardly remember him saying that.
‘I was kind of holding out until the last minute because I didn’t want you to open it when I am here,’ he tells me.
I pull a face. Uh-oh. Has he bought me a farewell gift? I didn’t get him anything! I curse myself for being so disorganised.
The Legacy of Lucy Harte Page 7