What Becomes of the Broken Hearted?

by Claire Allan

  “Help yourself to whatever you want to eat and let yourself out,” I said, grabbing my phone and my bag and heading to my car.

  I threw all my belonging onto the passenger seat and pulled out of the driveway, feeling more than a little panicked. How I didn’t hit anyone I will never know as I drove like the clappers to work and opened up the shop a good half hour before Rose was due to arrive, or any dress delivery was due to come in.

  I opened the door to the courtyard, wandered through and sat down, glancing at my phone. There was a message from my dad – the same reassuring words that he had been offering me for the last three weeks and I smiled and in my mind I hugged him. Rose replied with a cheery message that she would bring the buns in for morning break and that I would be okay and she loved me. Ivy was fairly typical Ivy. She told me she loved me but I was a dick sometimes. I at least admired her honesty and even though I was feeling quite emotional, it made me smile. There was no response from either Mark orMum. I took a deep breath and decided that for that day I would focus on the things that I did have control over and that was the shop, my customers and my clients.

  “Feck it,” I swore softly before going to the office and switching on my computer. There were a number of emails from suppliers, including one from the company making Erin Brannigan’s wedding dress. They would be able to complete the order even quicker than anticipated, they said, and as soon as I gave them the final few measurements they would put the finishing touches to the dress.

  I smiled widely. I would phone Erin later and tell her the good news and perhaps speak to her about the photo shoot she wanted to do in the shop. She would make a stunning bride – but I knew she didn’t believe that for one second. She was one of those women who had no understanding at all of how beautiful they really were. Erin was one of my favourite kinds of brides – the kind that came in without fuss, who listened to my suggestions, who transformed into a radiant bride as soon as the gown was on. She had looked stunning in the sample dress – she would look even more remarkable in the dress tailored to her own curves. I looked up her number and wrote it on my hand. I’d call her as soon as I could be sure she would be at work.

  I could do that well. I could do that without messing it up or making it all more complicated. Just the thought I would make her feel better made me feel better.I was just congratulating myself on turning my morning around already when my phone started to ring. Looking at the display my heart thumped to see that my mother was calling me.I had asked her for help. I had told her we needed to talk – and I was about to get my wish.

  Chapter twenty-six

  Erin

  Paddy was brighter when I returned to the hospital. He was sitting up and reading a newspaper and there was a half-eaten sandwich in front of him. His saline drip had come down and he had no wires or tubes anywhere on his body. He still looked pale and his lips looked dry and I had to fight the urge just to reach out and touch them – just to feel his breath on my hand.

  “You look brighter,” I said softly.

  “You look brighter yourself,” he said. “Washing your hair definitely improves your appearance.”

  I laughed and winked. “I thought you liked the finger-in-a-light-socket look?”

  “I like all your looks, but some of them are definitely preferable to others.” He put his newspaper down and patted the bed.

  I tottered over, sat down and held his hand. It felt warmer than it had done in days.

  “You’re a dirty bastard,” I said, smiling at him.

  He shrugged his shoulders.

  “You really scared me. I think I’ve lost about ten years off my life.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  I know the good fiancée in me should have soothed and reassured that it was all okay and that as long as he was okay now I didn’t mind that I had narrowly avoided a heart attack with the worry of the last few days. And I did, of course, deep down feel that way, but still there was a part of me which wanted to let him know just how much he had frightened me – intentionally or otherwise.

  “So you should be. Are you planning on having any more near-death experiences any time in the near future? Because a bit of warning would be good.”

  “I didn’t exactly plan this,” he said, stroking my hand. “I’m sorry. I had been feeling pretty worn out but I thought it was just the chemo – you know, a cumulative effect. I didn’t think . . .”

  “But your bloods hadn’t shown anything up?” I was asking him questions like he was the doctor – like he should have been able to self-diagnose – which was ridiculous, really. I bit my lip and looked at him, apologised for all the questions and held his hand tighter, leaning my head towards his chest. “Just don’t do it again, babe. Please.”

  “I’ll do my very best,” he said.

  “Good man.”

  We sat there in companionable silence – me listening to the rise and fall of his chest and his breathing as he rattled his newspaper and slurped from a coffee cup. Ordinarily such sounds would have set my teeth on edge and would have made me want to tear my ears off but it is amazing how your tolerance for annoying noises increases after someone nearly dies. He could have sat there and farted and burped, whistled and whined and I would have revelled in every glorious second of it.

  The doctors arrived in shortly after – said they would do a blood transfusion to boost his blood cells the following day and continue to monitor his condition. Chemo – well, they’d have to call it a day with the chemo for now – but they were fairly confident that he’d probably had enough to see him right anyway. The doctor said it all quite glibly. She stood there, her hair curled up in a bun, her perfect patent court shoes glistening against her American-tan tights. She was probably not much over the age of twenty-six and I wanted to ask her did she really think that them being “fairly confident” was good enough – but I would have felt like her older teacher telling her off. I looked atPaddy, hoping that he would ask the right questions but he was nodding.

  “Well that’s good, isn’t it?” he said. “A blood transfusion won’t be so bad. And when can I get out of here?”

  “We’ll get the transfusion done tomorrow, check your bloods again and hopefully let you home soon after.”

  Paddy was grinning at me. “Home soon, Erin, did you hear that? And we can get on with the wedding plans.”

  The doctor’s face lit up at the mention of a wedding. She was clearly too young to have been jaded by romance just yet. “Oh, you’re getting married? When?”

  “Two months,” Paddy said. “We can’t wait.”

  “Well, that’s something to look forward to,” the doctor said brightly. “What more motivation do you need to get better than a lovely big wedding?”

  “It will be a great day,” he said proudly. “In fact, if you want you can read all about it in this month’s Northern People. Erin here is a features writer with the magazine. She’s telling the story, testicular cancer and all, in the next edition or two.”

  The doctor looked at me strangely. I could guess what she was thinking. Sleazy journo sells her soul to tell her story for the sake of selling a few extra copies. She gave me that look – that beady-eyed look of someone whose entire perception of journalists came from soap operas where the raincoat-wearing, fast-talking hack would sell anyone down the river for a scoop.

  “I must get a copy,” she said slowly. “I’m sure it will be an interesting read.”

  I wanted to tell her to clear off. I couldn’t help it and I wasn’t proud of it I buthad taken a complete dislike to this woman – mostly down to her age, her old-woman tights and the fact she had been so glib about Paddy’s treatment. Her looking down her nose at me didn’t help either. I bit my tongue. Paddy wouldn’t have been a bit happy at me telling her to clear off even if I could fully justify my reaction, given the rubbish few days we’d had.

  “Yes,” Paddy said. “Erin is a very talented writer. She’s won awards.”

  Doctor Patronising smiled and nodd
ed. I had only won awards for writing stupid little stories. She was curing people’s cancers – or at least being “fairly confident” she had. I couldn’t bring myself to talk to her so I stood up and walked to the window and let her get on with whatever else she wanted to say to Paddy before she left.

  “Are you okay?” he asked after she went, as I stood, my back still to him.

  “I’m fine, Paddy,” I said through gritted teeth. I turned back to face him, plastering a smile on my face. “I’m fine. Just fine. Let’s just get you home. Let’s get on with planning this wedding and let’s just pretend that everything is hunky-dory.”

  He looked hurt – and I felt hurt. This was not what I’d intended – not how I’d hoped this day would pan out. It was perfectly clear I was starting to lose my grip on reality – which is why it was the absolute perfect moment for Kitty from The Dressing Room to call and tell me cheerfully that my dress would be in sooner than anticipated and that at least that was one last thing I could put out of my mind. I thanked her for calling me, said I would call her when I was back in the office and arrange to come in again. Then I hung up, turned to Paddy and told him the dress was on its way.

  “See,” he said, with an optimism which made me want to scream. “Things are working out after all.”

  It was an almost joyous relief to get back to work. There was a strange comfort in parking at the office car park in my usual spot, lifting my coffee and bag and walking back in through the doors of the Northern People offices. There was a comfort in seeing the familiar faces of my colleagues even if some of them gave me that hugely sympathy-half-smile and asked in hushed voices how everything was. I had answered the question about seven times when I finally reached my desk and my comfort zone. I switched on my computer, delighted to hear it whizz into life. I listened to my voicemails – comforted that even when things had been beyond crazy in my life for the last few days the rest of the world had been carrying on as normal. The plethora of emails in my inbox made me smile even though most of them were generic press releases sent to hordes of people and not exclusively to me. When Liam walked past singing the Match of the Day theme tune and smiling at me, giving me a cheeky wink which said more than all the soft hushed tones and concerned half-smiles did, I felt myself relax.

  Paddy had got out of hospital the day before. He had come home smiling, pretending that he wasn’t even a bit tired or a bit sore and had set about making himself a cup of tea and some toast even though I had offered to do it.

  “I’m fine to do it myself,” he said. “I could do with getting up and about a bit. I was going a bit stir crazy in that hospital.”

  “You need to rest,” I said to his back as he walked away from me into the kitchen.

  When Paddy was in a mood like this – a ‘feck cancer and everything about it and sure I don’t need to take it easy’ kind of a mood –there was little point in arguing with him. And we had been sniping more over the last few days. I had been unhappy with the doctors. He had wondered why I couldn’t just trust that they knew what they were doing. I had told him I would take some time off when he came out of hospital. He had told me not to be so stupid. I had said we needed to take things easy. Maybe think about toning down the wedding. He had reacted angrily. Said that toning down the wedding was the absolute last thing we should do and that he wasn’t dying and I was to stop treating him as if he was. I had barked back that I hadn’t been treating him that way but that he hadn’t seen himself lying sheet-white on a bed looking like a pathetic corpse. I had cried. He had cried. I had said we would carry on with our plans as normal, while fielding calls from his mother and my mother asking if we should maybe slow things down – each of them stressing they really wanted us to get married but maybe not when he was unwell. I had them in one ear, him in another and in my head there was a small voice screaming that I didn’t know what I wanted.

  I wasn’t used to things being tense with Paddy. I wasn’t used to these uneasy feelings. It sounds a bit ‘lookatuswe’reperfect’, but we had never been a couple to bicker. Even when he was diagnosed and we were stressed and he got very, very drunk one night and threw up on the bedroom carpet – we still never bickered.

  So when he insisted on making his own tea and toast, I took that as not only a sign that he was trying to be fiercely independent but a sign that he didn’t want me to be there – that he was annoyed with me in some way.

  I sat on the sofa and listened to the sounds of him pottering around the kitchen – the fizz of the kettle, the scraping of the butter knife against the toast, and felt an uneasiness in the pit of my stomach which was only made worse when his mother arrived shortly after and looked at me as if I was the antichrist incarnate when I told her he was in the kitchen making himself something to eat. She didn’t say it but the look on her face screamed ‘But he has cancer! People who have cancer can’t make themselves toast! What kind of a slack wife are you going to be? Is it any wonder he ended up in hospital?’

  “He insisted,” I offered and it sounded pathetic even though it wasn’t a lie.

  She sniffed, walked past me and finished making the toast for her son while he took his seat on the sofa and let her fuss around him. I have never wanted to aim a cushion directly at my fiancé’s head before but, in that moment, his head wasin serious jeopardy.

  So work had been a welcome relief when it had come and I swore that apart from those initial niceties I would not talk about cancer or weddings, if I could help it, until home-time rolled around again.

  I sat back, set about answering my emails, returning my voice mails, setting up features for the coming week and enjoying a few quiet hours of blissful busy work which required very little forethought. I even indulged in a sausage bap at break-time and didn’t feel even a little bit guilty. I was on a little work high and it felt great.

  I was smiling to myself when Sinéad walked in and smiled at me. It wasn’t one of those weird half-smiles – it was a full-on, non-sympathetic, no bullshit smile.

  “You’re back,” she stated.

  I nodded.

  “Good to have you here. We’ll have the first run of the magazine in later – come in and see it. The designers did a great job – you look amazing. This will be a big seller. Don’t forget now to follow it up with something equally great next month. Have you the wedding-dress shoot organised yet? Or a column on trying to fit in the pre-wedding pampering while being exceptionally busy? And all that lovey dovey stuff too?”

  So it would seem that I wouldn’t be able to escape wedding talk after all. I smiled and put on my best very professional-journalist voice. “Of course, Sinéad. The copy is already on the way and I’ve arranged some pampering and a mini-makeover, and I’m in the process of arranging a photo shoot at The Dressing Room. Obviously I won’t be trying on the actual dress that I will be wearing on the actual day and I’ll probably get a few models in to do justice to the pretty dresses. It will be great.”

  “Brilliant,” she said. “We’ll discuss it more in my office. Two o’clock? We’ll get the rest of the team in to plan for the next edition too – but I want your focus to be on all things wedding. Liaise with advertising, why don’t you?”

  I nodded because that’s what you did when Sinéad asked you to do something. She wasn’t a bad boss, or particularly hard-nosed, but she was focused and very determined about what she wanted for the magazine. I guess it was that determination which had kept our circulation figures healthy in a time when the magazine industry was in freefall. She was always open to ideas but she definitely believed in her own above all else and, when she asked, you didn’t ever say no. I knew it would have been career suicide to say that if she didn’t mind I’d really love to escape the wedding talk at work. If I had told her what I was really thinking – that things were a little fraught at home and for the first time in the history of our relationship I wanted to tell him he was an annoying fecker – she might have shown me my marching orders right thenand there. So nodding had to do and I did it w
ith a smile.

  “No bother,” I added in a voice which I hoped didn’t sound sarcastic.

  “Great,” she said. “It will be brilliant. I love it when we get a good beefy feature like this – ah, the readers will be in tears and snotters. Everyone loves a wedding story. Everyone loves a love over adversity story. Everyone loves nice dresses and lovely make-up and The Dressing Room will be a fabulous location. Maybe we could take some pictures out on the city walls too – if the weather is good. Check the weather would you, Erin? And pick the best day. Chat with Liam and talk to Grace about getting hair and make-up on board. Oh, I just love it!”

  She smiled and walked away, her heels clicking rhythmically as she went. As far as moods went, this was Sinéad on absolute tip-top form. The excitement emanating from her was palpable which meant there was absolutely no way, no how I was going to be able to tone any of this down. I contemplated a second sausage bap, a king-size Galaxy bar and a can of full-fatCoke, and perhaps a foot-stomping tantrum of toddler proportions.

  The article, spread over three glorious glossy pages, did look very well. I read it without cringing which was always a good sign and I noted that Grace had not changed the copy. Mentally I patted myself on the back for doing a good job. The pictures, one of me taken at the recent shoot and the others hauled from the Ian and me archives (with his face pixelated as requested). There was one of us standing on a beach, my arm around his waist, his arm around my shoulders. In his hand he was holding a beer can. Even though his face was blurred I knew he was smiling in the picture and there was me – my hair wild and frizzy, my face creased with laughter, my eyes bright, waving at the camera. I remembered the day well – it was about three weeks before the wedding that never was. Ian and I, along with four friends from university, had packed a picnic (largely liquid, it has to be said) and had driven in two old and probably slightly dangerous cars to the coast at Donegal where we had spent the day listening to Atlantic 252 on the radio – the tinny sound echoing off the rocks around us – drinking, dipping in and out of the sea and snogging with a complete lack of self-consciousness – the kind you only had when you were twenty-two and only starting out in the adult world. We had talked about the wedding, described this day – which lasted into the next day – as our unofficial stag and hen do combined. My smile for the camera had been genuine. So had Ian’s. I remembered that day and night so well. We had laughed and swum until the stars had shone brightly in the sky and then we had pitched our tents. The others had headed off to their tents, but we sat there, me in front of him, lying back in his arms, our hands intertwined, listening to the gentle lapping of the waves against the shore, trying to count the myriad of stars above our heads.