Me, You and Tiramisu

by Charlotte Butterfield

  Abi was still. ‘Jayne, the picture’s of Will.’

  ‘There’s always pictures of Will, what do you mean?’

  ‘He’s with someone.’ Abi took a deep breath; it was as though the words were forming inside her mouth but she didn’t want to let them out. ‘The one who’s always with Rachel. The blonde one.’

  Jayne had never really understood the phrase ‘blood running cold’ before that moment, but as she heard herself squeak the name ‘Kyra,’ she suddenly knew exactly what it meant.

  ‘Show me.’

  Abi gingerly held out a stack of six newspapers. The same pixelated picture of Will nuzzling Kyra’s neck was on the front page of three of them, and within the first five pages of the other three. He was holding a bottle of beer with one hand while his other was reaching up to tuck her hair behind her ear as he leant in. It was a simple act of intimacy that stabbed Jayne in the chest harder than if Kyra was straddling him.

  ‘I’m sorry, Jayne. I thought you’d want to know.’

  There it was again, the pulsing in her ears. Scarlet the Harlot! one headline cried, while others had more eloquent variations of ‘you dirty two-timing dog’. Jayne sank down onto the bed, staring at the picture in disbelief. This was Will. Her Will. Dependable, loyal Will, who waited, what, twelve hours before tucking another girl’s hair behind her ear, the same way he’d done to her on their first date. Well, that was obviously quite clearly his modus operandi. Simple, really, most men go straight for the lips, or the zip, not Will, no, he likes to start small, start with the hair, that’ll get them.

  Abi perched on the bed next to her. They must have sat like that for a few minutes, each giving the moment the gravitas it deserved. Only yesterday Jayne had been making flippant remarks at how the wedding might be off, or not comprehending how to make it right, yet they had both known inside that these words were just filling the silence, they weren’t serious considerations. Of course it would all be okay. Except now, after this, it really wouldn’t be.

  ‘I need to get dressed.’ Jayne said finally, standing up, clutching the towel to her.

  ‘Okay. I’ll be downstairs,’ replied Abi, moving towards the door, ‘I’ll make some fresh tea. Or I’ll open a bottle of something. Whatever you want, just tell me and I’ll do it.’

  ‘No, tea would be good,’ Jayne said quietly. She stood in the middle of the room, intending to dress and yet finding the very act of finding clothes and stepping into them a bit beyond her. As soon as Abi had gently closed the door behind her, Jayne dropped numbly onto the bed. She picked up the top paper again to torment herself by having another look and her heart raced faster than it ever had before.

  It was obviously a nightclub, with bodies pressed together in a way that happens only in dark, loud places. The sound of mirth and hilarity sprang out from the page. His beer was almost empty, but Jayne realised by the way he was holding it, his little finger tucked around the bottle’s neck, coupled with the way he was leaning, that it wasn’t his first. Kyra’s head was slightly tilted away from him, a gesture that some would interpret as coyness, but Jayne knew it was an affectation, a gesture of mock bashfulness, a ‘what? little old me?’ stance that made her want to scream.

  And they weren’t even being mindful of who saw them, which she could understand from Kyra’s point of view. Of course she’d want this little charade to be played out in public, but Will was usually ultra-careful. The doomed dinner in China Town was one of the few nights out together in months. But then, Jayne reasoned, if she had looked like Kyra maybe he wouldn’t have been so quick to suggest ‘another night in’.

  Perhaps their hermit-like existence together wasn’t romantic, or deliberately sacred, like he’d made her believe. Maybe it was just because she wasn’t photogenic enough. Her wide afro might obscure his cheekbones, she thought resentfully, or her glasses might rebound the flash and block him out in a big haze of light.

  This wasn’t supposed to happen. She wasn’t supposed to be sitting in a foreign bedroom with faded posters of Boyzone on the wall. She was meant to be waking up on a Saturday morning with him, reading their books in bed together, bantering over who would fling on enough clothes to be deemed decent and go downstairs and bring fresh pastries and strong coffee up to bed. Like they had every weekend for the last two years. It wasn’t supposed to be like this.

  It was torture studying this photo, yet she couldn’t seem to drag her eyes away from it. Something about it didn’t seem right. Well, nothing about it seemed right, but something niggled at Jayne. She brought the paper closer to her face and dropped it suddenly with a gasp. There was a shadowy figure laughing in the background of the picture; a blurred silhouette that Jayne knew almost better than her own outline. More than Kyra elbowing her way into Will’s drunken line of sight eight hours after she’d left, even more than Will being fickle enough to wave goodbye to his fiancée before pressing ‘next’ on his dating buzzer, the thing that brought on a violent wave of nausea was the fact that Rachel was looking at the scene unfold in front of her and finding it funny.

  ‘I was sick in your bin, but I washed it out,’ Jayne walked into the kitchen and laid her head on Abi’s shoulder.

  ‘Don’t worry about it. I’ve been sick in that bin more times as a teenager than I can remember. It’s what it’s there for. That’s why I made Ma buy one that wasn’t made of wire mesh – there’s nothing worse than sieved vomit.’

  Jayne managed a small smile at her friend’s attempt to lighten the mood as Abi’s mum bustled past her, momentarily pausing to place a hand on her shoulder on her way to swill out her coffee cup in the sink. ‘Morning, pet. Abigail tells me that you’re having some trouble of the heart. Well, you’re in the right place, with four daughters and three sons passing through this house, I’ve witnessed my fair share of misery caused by love, I can tell you that for nothing.’ Placing the upended cup on the draining board, Mrs Sheeran wiped her hands on a tea towel hanging from a hook at the end of the counter. ‘Do you want to talk about it, or just trot on and try and put it out of your mind?’

  Faced with such genuine concern from a relative stranger, Jayne suddenly found herself wracked with grief and fat tears poured down her face. She couldn’t believe she was standing in an unfamiliar kitchen in Ireland sobbing and heaving as though a dam had opened and all the pent-up anxiety and stress from her entire life had burst through.

  ‘There there, my love, come here,’ Mrs Sheeran held Jayne close, tenderly stroking her hair saying, ‘Just let your heart break, pet, I promise you, it won’t kill you.’

  These were the words she’d longed to hear from her own mother her whole life. She’d been desperate to have this moment with her for thirty-two years, to have her kiss her scraped knee better, or tell her in a wise no-nonsense tone that everything would look better in the morning. Any one of thousands of parenting clichés that spill from the lips of mothers all over the world every day would have done. Just one.

  This is what had made Rachel’s betrayal so much harder to understand. The two of them had a bond beyond friendship or normal sibling love; they’d barricaded themselves together against the world, and now Jayne was completely alone. Well, as alone as one could be when staying with a huge Irish family reunited for a family party.

  ‘I’m okay now, I’m sorry, so sorry,’ Jayne pulled away and blew her nose into a tissue that Abi was holding out to her over her mother’s shoulder. ‘This is meant to be a really happy day for all of you, and look at me snivelling and bawling. I’m okay, honestly, thank you. I’m so sorry.’

  ‘Have a seat for a minute,’ it was more of a gentle order than a request as Mrs Sheeran pulled out one of the pine kitchen chairs and patted the floral cushion that was tied to the spindles at the back of the seat. ‘I’m not saying this to interfere, but Abigail has told me a bit about your man, and what he’s been doing. Sounds like quite the go-getter,’ her eyes twinkled. ‘Forgive me for stepping in where I might not be welcome, but I wanted to pass on so
me advice from someone who might know a bit about what you’re going through.’

  Taking Jayne’s hands in hers she looked her straight in the eyes and said, ‘Everyone grows up with dreams, of course they do, dreams to cure horrible diseases, dreams to be in the movies, dreams to be on stage, dreams to be the best bricklayer in the world. These dreams are what make us get up in the morning, they fire us up, they make us excited to be alive. And then, when you meet the person you want to spend your life with, you either accept their dreams and help them reach their goals, or you both reassess your individual dreams and weave ones together that work for both of you. Or sometimes …’ her fingers stroked the top of Jayne’s hands. ‘Sometimes, a person’s dreams are so important to them, they don’t want to change them or they find they can’t bend them to fit in with their partner’s dreams, and yes, that’s okay too, because we each have to walk our own path. When that happens, when two people have such different dreams, you have a choice. You can either decide that one person’s dreams take precedence, and the other one sits back and is supportive from the sidelines, while putting their own goals on hold for a while, or, you let them go and realise their dreams for themselves. And when they’ve done that, they may well realise that success is so much sweeter shared, and your lives will entwine again, or, they may not. But that’s a choice no one can make for you. If your man’s dreams are the polar opposite to yours then, pet, you need to think long and hard about your own path. Can you try and knit your dreams into his, or try and alter his to fit your own, or is it time to walk away?’

  ‘I … I don’t know,’ Jayne stuttered.

  Mrs Sheeran laughed, ‘I’m not asking you to decide now! Take your time, search inside your heart and see what will make you both happy, because you want him to be happy too, yes?’

  ‘Of course I do! Well, no, not right now, but yes, I do.’

  ‘Well, then. Now why don’t the two of you pop down to Sheila’s and get your hair done nice for the party later?’

  ‘Oh no, I couldn’t come to the party, I’ll just stay here if that’s okay? Or if I’m in the way I can go to a hotel?’

  ‘Will you stop it? Like we’re going to leave you here all day and night crying into your pillow! You’re coming with us and that’s the end of it. Now get out of my kitchen the both of you. I have three hundred vol au vents to fill, unless you want to help me mash up the egg into the mayonnaise? No, didn’t think so – be off with you, then.’

  Jayne’s phone was burning a hole in the bag at her feet. She hadn’t dared to turn it on yet, not wanting to see the number of missed calls or pleading text messages. Or worse, see that there weren’t any. She knew that Will must know that she’d seen the photo because she’d heard Abi through the toilet door furtively whispering to someone, she assumed it was Bernard, telling them that she was ‘devastated but bearing up,’ and that she was going to stay in Ireland with her for another couple of weeks. She hadn’t even thought about what she was going to do from tomorrow onwards, let alone talk to Abi about it, so she felt a rush of relief that the decision had been made for her and all she needed to do was remember to breathe in and out, nothing more.

  The sprightly sixty-something hairdresser interrupted Jayne’s thoughts, ‘So I was thinking of piling it all up on top like that, but then I thought, no Sheila, where have you ever seen such gorgeous hair before? You haven’t, so I’m just going to leave all the curls loose around your shoulders, it looks like a beautiful black halo, don’t you think?’

  ‘I don’t feel particularly angelic at the moment,’ Jayne admitted with a hint of a smile, ‘so anything you can do to remedy that would be very welcome.’

  ‘Well you look beautiful. What are you girls wearing tonight?’

  ‘Oh Jeez!’ Jayne covered her face with her hands, ‘Abi, I have absolutely nothing to wear to the party. I came with two changes of slob clothes! What am I going to do? I can’t borrow anything from you. I’m about a foot taller!’

  ‘Our Cameron’s girlfriend’s about the same size as you. I’ll call him and ask if you can borrow something.’

  ‘Won’t she mind? She doesn’t even know me!’

  ‘But she knows me, and I know you, so it’ll be fine.’ Abi started punching in numbers and secured a borrowed dress. ‘Done.’

  ‘Thank you fairy godmother.’

  ‘You’re welcome, Cinders. Thanks, Sheila, we’ll be off now.’ Standing on the pavement outside of the hairdresser’s that had sun-stained posters in its window of women from the eighties sporting slicked-back crops and streaks of pink and purple eye-shadow, Abi said, ‘Right, look. Rachel’s been trying to call me all morning but I’ve cut her off each time. I really think you need to speak to her.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘She’s a back-stabbing cow who laughed seeing her so-called best friend kiss the only man I’ve ever loved, or indeed, ever likely to love. I’m not talking to her. Or him. Any of them.’

  ‘You should hear what she has to say.’

  ‘Why? So she can say that it wasn’t what it looked like? She was laughing because she’d just heard a joke and he was helping retrieve something from Kyra’s ear?’ Saying Kyra’s name out loud made Jayne shudder. Even her name was more exotic than her own, which conveniently for journalists, rhymed with Lame, Plain and Shame. ‘Seriously, Abi, I’m not ready to hear their cover-up story. It is what it is, and I just need time to figure out how I’m going to get over this, but talking to my sister about it is not going to do anything except upset me again, and I’ve cried more this morning than I have done in the last thirty years.’

  ‘Okay. I understand that, but I think I need to at least tell her that you haven’t topped yourself. She’s called about twenty times since we were in Sheila’s.’

  ‘Fine. Tell her that your razor blades haven’t been touched, but no more. I’ll see you back at your mum’s, I don’t really want to listen to the conversation, if you don’t mind.’

  ‘Sure. But know that if you go back now, you’ll be put to work making ten tons of coleslaw.’

  ‘There are worse things in life,’ Jayne replied bleakly.

  Chapter 23

  Jayne had been dispatched to the local village hall to start hanging the vibrant bunting that Mrs Sheeran and her other daughters had spent many evenings cutting and hemming into neat triangles. Lisa and Aoife, two of Abi’s sisters, were sent on the same mission – each of them perched precariously on step ladders of varying heights, trying to remember from Girl Guides which knot would be the most secure.

  Lisa had brought her speakers along with her and put her iPod on shuffle. An interesting array of songs had been belting out for half an hour: Broadway show tunes mixed with eighties dad rock blended with nineties house music. Jayne was glad of the distraction. Admittedly Will had popped into her head about once every few seconds, but having a task to do, and questionable music to do it to, meant that while she couldn’t control the number of times she thought about how miserable she was, at least she couldn’t wallow in it. Not yet. She’d save that for tomorrow.

  She wondered why Abi wasn’t back yet, but then dismissed the thought. In all likelihood she’d gone back to the house and been furnished with another job that needed doing.

  ‘Afternoon, girls!’ came a cheerful Irish accent, ‘Where would you like the band to set up?’ Jayne swivelled round as much as being seven steps up a ladder would allow and saw the same house band from the pub last night wander in with their instrument cases and amps. She quickly turned back around and busied herself with the flags. She vaguely recalled playing a shaky rendition of When the Saints Come Marching In before the trumpet’s real owner had retrieved it from her with a jaunty shake of the head and a wry smile. That was before her world had well and truly fallen apart.

  Rows and rows of flowery chintz and fabric polka-dotted flags decorated the once-bare ceiling as Jayne turned her attention to the matted ball of fairy lights recovered from the Christmas-decorat
ions box in the attic. She was sitting cross-legged on the floor weaving the plug through endless loops of the twisted wire when a shadow fell over her. ‘It’s you, isn’t it?’ a deep voice said, with a soft Irish burr.

  Jayne steeled herself for an insult about her weight, and punching above it, but it never came. ‘You’re the mystery trumpet-stealer.’

  She smiled, relieved, ‘Hardly stealer, merely temporary borrower.’

  ‘You say tomato.’

  Jayne felt a pang. Will and she had had exactly the same banter on the day they’d met. She could feel her eyes start to tingle with the now all-too-familiar warning that tears were about to start, so she hurriedly looked down and concentrated on the next knot. ‘Do you need any help there? Looks like you’ll still be unravelling them when the guests arrive!’

  ‘No, I’m fine, honestly. Shouldn’t you be doing a sound check or something?’

  ‘A sound check? As in one two, one two? How many concerts in village halls have you gone to?’

  ‘That would be none. But when I saw Bon Jovi at Wembley they did that.’ Jayne added with sheepish shrug. She really didn’t want to keep talking, but the trumpet-player had now sat down on the floor next to her and had taken up the other end of the matted mess of wires and lights.

  ‘I don’t think I’ve seen you around here before. Are you on holiday? If so, why are you sat in a village hall undoing lights when you should be hiking up the mountain or eating ice cream by the river along with the rest of the tourists?’

  ‘I’m visiting a friend.’

  ‘A boyfriend?’ He asked cheekily.

  ‘A friend that’s a girl. Not that it’s any of your business Mr Trumpet Man.’

  ‘Aye. None of my business at all. I’m just wondering whether to talk to you as a normal person or to use my charm, quick wit and repartee on you, that’s all.’