by Claire Allan
“Yes, pull the article,” I said, glancing at my watch wondering if the presses were rolling yet.
“The mag has gone,” she said.
“But it won’t be printed yet. They will still be plating it up. There should be time.”
“But why?” she said, paling slightly. Last-minute changes never went down well – ever.
“It doesn’t feel right. It doesn’t feel a little tiny bit right. It feels in bad taste – it’s all too uncertain.”
“You said he would be okay.”
“I’m not a doctor and I’m not a psychic and I don’t want to tempt fate – to become some sort of cause celebre for bleeding hearts everywhere. This, this is too much. It’s more than I was prepared for.”
I felt a thousand and one thoughts scramble through my head, trying to come out. I felt tears prick in my eyes. Oh holy hell, I knew it then that I was going to cry in front of my boss and there was nothing I could do to stop it.
“I only wanted to be with him,” I spluttered. “I was happy. We were happy. I didn’t want this. I didn’t want a big wedding, and a crazy wedding-planner from hell, and a magazine article and my life laid bare – and shagging, stupid, bastarding, shitting cancer and anaemia and whatever other shit life is throwing at us. I don’t want big things – I don’t want the world on a plate. I don’t want to be a superstar millionaire Pulitzer-prize-winning writer with a string of bestsellers under my belt. I don’t want a fancy car and loads of free fancy make-up and a hundred and one pairs of designer shoes or anything like that. All I want is a quiet, uneventful life and that’s too much. You know all that cosmic-ordering bullshit? All that ask and you shall receive crap? I’ve ordered and I’ve asked for it – and prayed for it. And did I get it? That quiet life? Just us and our life, and our Saturday afternoons in the pub and our weekends away and just being able to be there for each other? Did we get it? No, Grace. We didn’t. I didn’t. And it’s as if the Universe – the big stinking fecker – is mocking me. So if I put my life out there again – if that article rang all happy ending and the triumph of love and hope then the bleeding Universe would see this as the perfect opportunity to turn things up another notch. Grace, the thing is, there aren’t very many notches left. I’m all notched out.”
I’m aware that Grace probably heard the first two sentences of what I said. The rest was a kind of breathy, ranty, tirade of overtired emotional tears and snotters. To give her her due, she didn’t look horrified. In fact, about six sentences in she had put her cup of tea down and stood up and walked towards me to sit beside me on the sofa and hug me – and she kept hugging me while I finished my rant and then again while I cried and sobbed and snorted a little bit every now and again.
We were still hugging when I finally quietened down and even though I was aware that with every moment the magazine was more and more likely to be on the presses, I just didn’t care anymore. I was not in control. Paddy was not in control. Nothing we would do, or not do, would make us be in control. That alone scared me more than I had ever been scared in my life.
“I know this seems impossible,” Grace said eventually. “I know it is horrid and I know it must be so very scary and that you are doing everything you can to try and make sense of it but, you know, sometimes life just doesn’t make sense. No matter how much we want it to. I don’t mean to be glib but Forrest Gump was right when he said that shit happens sometimes. It just does.There’s nothing wrong with getting upset about it – and letting it out. It’s much better than holding it all in until you have a complete meltdown one day.”
“I think I might have had that meltdown today,” I said through watery eyes as I tried to steady my breathing again.
“We’ve all had them, pet,” Grace said. “Sure isn’t the day I walked out on my family and ran away to a hotel now a thing of legend in Northern People? Didn’t it act as a catalyst for a big change in my life? My one-day breakdown – sure it brought me and Aidan closer togetherin the end and it did my career no harm.”
I smiled, thinking of the articles I had been shown which my boss had written a few years before when she had decided to go public with her woes in the magazine. She had spoken openly about her battle with depression, her low self-esteem and her battle with her weight.I had read the articles and admired her honesty – thinking they must have helped so many women who felt the same.
“A meltdown does you good, every now and then – but it’s always best to try and catch them a little earlier. You know, before you leave your partner and your child – that kind of thing?”
Her smile was warm and the squeeze of her hand reassuring. “All I’m saying, Erin, is that there is only so much that any of us can control. But we can’t spend our lives fearing the worst or expecting the worse – even when it feels like we can’t get a break. Trust me – I was that person. It didn’t make me happy.”
“I’m scared,” I said, just as Jules walked back into the room grinning from ear to ear at her haul of my make-up. The grin fled pretty quickly when she saw me.
“Of course you are,” Grace said softly. “It’s scary. It’s really scary – I can’t even begin to imagine.”
“But it’s not going away, is it?” I asked.
“I’m afraid not. Not now anyway.”
I felt my sister sit down at the other side of me. I put my head in my hands and ran my fingers through my still wet hair.
“This,” Grace said. “All this . . . all this shit. All these hard times. All that you are going through that you never bargained for and never wanted – it doesn’t make what you have any less of a love story. It doesn’t make it broken or wrong or too hard. It makes it better in a lot of ways. I’m not just saying this from the point of view of an editor who is kind of scared of Sinéad and doesn’t want to haul a magazine back – I’m just saying, don’t give up. Don’t get too scared. Just roll with the punches.”
“Okay,” I sniffed. “Do you think there is any chance of getting a few less punches every now and again?”
“Let’s hope so,” Grace said.
I dried my eyes and took a deep breath and noticed Grace glance at her watch before looking at Jules and me.
“It’s okay,” I said, “The magazine can go. Just let it happen.”
“Just roll with the punches,” Jules said.
Chapter twenty-five
Kitty
“She looked amazing,” I said, topping up my wineglass and offering James a top-up of his.
“Must have been strange, seeing your mother dressed as a bride,” he said.
“In the grand scheme of things I was not expecting to happen in the last month, it was right up there.”
“And do you think your sister will come round to the whole idea?”
I shrugged my shoulders and sank into my chair, putting my feet up and allowing James to give them a rub. It was strange how quickly and easily we had fallen into a little routine together.
“I don’t know. I’m stubborn but Ivy takes it to a whole new level.”
“And did you tell her about Mark?”
I shook my head – a little embarrassed if the truth be told. I was embarrassed to admit to James I wasn’t sure what to tell my mother, never mind how to tell her. “I couldn’t find the words,” I said.
“You should just be honest,” he said strongly. “Tell her he doesn’t deserve you. He never did.”
I bit my lip, thinking of the text message I had received earlier from Mark asking for one last chance to talk. I hadn’t replied.
“He texted again,” I said.
James frowned, stopped rubbing my feet and sat forward. “And you told him where to go?”
“I didn’t tell him anything,” I said. “I haven’t replied.”
“Because you have nothing more to say?”
“Because I don’t know what to say.”
James looked perplexed, as if my answer in some way annoyed him. Again it crossed my mind that his complete hatred now for Mark – who he had been
inseparable from – was a little strange. Buoyed by drink I sat forward and looked into his eyes.
“Why do you hate him so much now? I mean, I know why I’m confused. Why I’m angry – but you, it’s strange. I appreciate your loyalty, I do – but I never thought that loyalty would be to me. I don’t get it . . .”
He looked back at me, his eyes round and honest, and he shook his head. “I know it must seem strange to you . . . I can’t . . . I would tell . . . no . . .”
He stuttered and mumbled and looked away and I knew there was more he wanted to say and more that I needed to hear.
“If there is something I should know then, James, you should tell me.”
He looked at me in the eyes again, and took my hand. “I just don’t understand him. I don’t understand how he could doubt you – how he could for one second think that there was anyone better than you.”
I closed my eyes as he spoke – grateful to listen to his words of comfort, grateful just to know that someone thought there was no one better than me. With my eyes still closed I tilted my head towards James. I could feel his breath on my face – it smelled of wine. It felt different to Mark – even with my eyes closed. I felt his hand hold mine even tighter and felt his lips search to find mine. He kissed differently to Mark – more urgently but yet still tender, still with feeling. Mark used to kiss me with feeling. The last time he kissed me it had been with real, true feeling. It was only a small kiss – a goodbye kiss as he went to work. It wouldn’t have lasted more than a few seconds, but I knew he meant it. My head swam, dizzy with wine and the image of my mother in a wedding dress, and all the weird experiences of the last few weeks and the pleading of Mark that we should meet and talk. I felt James’ hand move up my arm, tenderly with the touch of someone who did think I was better than anyone else, and that was nice. That was good. That was, in that moment, uncomplicated and pure and I allowed myself to kiss him back, to give in to being wanted and needed. I allowed myself to kiss him, and allowed him to kiss me. I allowed him to caress my face, to push my hair back gently and curl it around my ear. I allowed him to kiss my neck, to stroke my back – delicious tickling soft touches that made my whole body ache to be held tighter and kissed longer.
When we broke apart, I looked at him, his eyes heavy and dark, his lips full – almost bruised-looking – and I knew mine felt and looked the same and I stood up, took his hand, and without words led him upstairs to the bed I had shared with Mark and we had sex. Passionate, angry, amazing sex which allowed me to completely block out everything that was going through my mind except what was happening right there and then in that hot and sweaty moment. Nothing mattered but the feeling of my skin against his – the curves of this unfamiliar body lying against mine, moving against mine, making me feel as if every single nerve-ending in my body was on fire. It was new, it was different. It was filled with longing and every part of me responded to this feeling that he wanted me.
It was only after he was asleep, when I crept downstairs for a drink of water and noticed the unfamiliar jacket on the sofa where he had left it, the empty bottle of wine where with Mark it would have been an empty bottle of beer, the smell of his aftershave on my skin, that the reality of what I had done came crashing in. There it was in all its stubble-rash, aching-thighs, slightly sweaty glory. I had slept with someone else – well, I hadn’t slept. I had had sex, calling a spade a spade. I had humped someone else and not just any ‘someone else’. I had humped, shagged, slept with Mark’s former best friend.
Standing, shivering in a T-shirt and nothing else in my kitchen, I wished to all that was holy that I still smoked. A cigarette would go down really well right now – and not just in a post-coital way. Oh Christ. An hour before it had seemed like it was all uncomplicated and could just make the world more simple – to just feel without thinking. But once the feeling was done, the thinking was back with a vengeance. I looked atthe clock on the wall, it was gone twelve – late for sure – but surely not too late to call someone in a crisis.
I lifted my phone from the worktop and scrolled through my address book. Ivy – well, no, I didn’t think she would appreciate a call just now. Calling after midnight with an existential what-the-frig-have-I-just-done crisis would not be a way to mend our broken bridges. Rose – she would be there for me, I knew she would – but she was also exhausted. The effort of making sure the shop was looking its very best for my mother, followed by the effort of maintaining polite conversation with her for the hour and a half she was in the shop, had left her worn out and she had been vowing to go home and fall head first into a bottle of Malibu when I last saw her. Cara – well, she would be in a club around now, or with a new boyfriend, or asleep and not really in the mood to listen to me have yet another crisis of confidence.
One number stood out to me –and it was the one person I couldn’t call. The person who had put me in this position in the first place and made me horribly vulnerable and open to making a mistake. And this was a mistake. I never understood that before – how people could sleep with someone ‘by accident’ – but, caught in that moment and just feeling loved, I had found myself in someone else’s arms – lost in them, lost completely but not as lost as I felt after, standing in the kitchen.I looked at Mark’s name again and slammed my phone down. It was broken now, all of it – and it wasn’t just his fault any more.
Wrapping a fleece jacket around me I went out to sit on the decking and stare at my phone again. I needed to talk to someone – and an hour before that would have been James because I believed he understood. But he didn’t – things had changed there too. I scrolled through my address book again, through my log of calls and saw where my mother had asked me to input her new mobile number that very afternoon.
“Call me if you need me,” she’d said and inwardly I had pulled a funny face while I fought to the urge to petulantly say ‘As if’ like the teenager I was when she left me. My finger hovered over the screen. Would it be too much to call her? Would it be weird? Shove it, I knew it would be weird. We hadn’t had a heart to heart in years. The last one we had was probably in around 1989 when she counselled me on how exactly I would survive if Matt Goss from Bros never returned my affections. I remembered, though, how she had held me as I cried. She hadn’t laughed. She hadn’t mocked me or told me to wise up and pull myself together – she’d just said that it would be okay. That life sometimes works out differently to how we would have hoped but that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. I hadn’t understood what she was saying then, not really. But I allowed myself to let her words soothe me. I remember cuddling into her, the smell of her MaxFactor powder puff and her Charlie perfume making me feel safe and secure. We sat there for what seemed like ages, on my single bed with Matt and his brother Luke looking down at us from the walls, and then she offered to make me my favourite ever dinner of chips with a fried egg and I had followed her down the stairs and watched her set about preparing my meal. I loved her – my mum. I loved her and trusted her, just as I loved and trusted Mark. She had hurt me – and he had hurt me too. I felt tears prick my eyes as I sat there, in my T-shirt and fleece, my legs getting cold, and I realised I couldn’t talk to either of them – not now. But that I needed to talk to them. I tapped out a text message and sent it to both Mark and Mum.
I don’t know what happened with us. It doesn’t make sense. Please can we talk?
I pressed send and then typed another message which I sent to Ivy, Rose and Dad.
I know I don’t make much sense at the moment. But I love you.
Then I climbed back upstairs and looked at James fast asleep in my marital bed. Thankfully he didn’t stir as I lay down, as close to the edge of the bed as possible and hoped that he would stay asleep and that I would be able to get out of the house and out to work with as little physical contact with him as possible. It was done, it couldn’t be undone – so I just had to try and get on with it the best I could.
The following morning was played out like that famous scene from M
orecambe and Wise as we prepared breakfast. He moved close to me, smiling, helping me make toast and eggs while I dodged him in what would have looked to onlookers like a perfectly choreographed dance of awkwardness. I had got up before him – not having slept much, which at least managed the whole morning-kiss, morning-glory, him-having-notions-there-would-be-a-repeat-performance weirdness.
I had been showered and fully dressed when he walked into the kitchen, his hair a little messy, his smile wide.
“Last night . . .” he started and I turned my back to him on the pretext of getting some bread from the cupboard.
I turned to face him before he could continue, waving the loaf at him in a slightly manic fashion. “One slice or two?”
“Two,” he replied absently. “I’m hungry. Must have worked up an appetite.”
“Eggs?” I interjected, trying to keep my voice light.
He nodded. “Kitty –” he began.
“James, I hate to rush you but I’ve a delivery arriving at the shop soon and I need to be out of here pretty quick,” I lied. “I tried to get them to let Rose sign for the stock but they’re quite fussy, apparently. It’s the couture stuff – I have to check it as it comes in. Any flaws at all and it all goes back. Nothing short of perfection is good enough so, you know, I have to be there.”
I knew I was rambling and I hoped that if I just kept rambling for long enough he would get the hint and leave. But it would seem he took my rambling for nervousness as he walked towards me, took the butter knife from my hand and put it on the worktop. He must have taken the slight tremble in my hand as some sort of emotional, physical, perhaps sexual reaction and he kissed me on the lips. I didn’t want to kiss him back. It felt wrong. The attraction, the need, which came with the night-before’s talk and the glasses of wine was gone but I couldn’t bring myself to just push him away so I kissed him for as short a time as I figured I could get away with and reiterated that I had to go. I knew I was being a coward – a horrible, horrible coward and the look in his eyes – confused and wounded – let me know he may have suspected my feelingstoo. Still I didn’t explain to him. I said it was later than I thought it was and that traffic would be heavy and getting parked in the city centre was never easy.