by Claire Allan
“She’s in the living room,” he said, stepping backwards out of way and letting me in. I nodded my thanks and walked past him, straight to the living room where Ivy was looking at the door.
Michael walked in behind me. “It’s your sister,” he said, as if she couldn’t see me. “She seems a little upset.”
I wondered for a second if I had stepped into some alternate dimension where I was wearing some sort of weird and wonderful invisibility-cloak. Ivy looked from Michael to me and back to Michael again. I sniffed again – thankfully not so loudly or in such a snotter-laden manner – and this was enough to bring my sister’s eyes back to me.
“It’s me,” I said. “And yes, I’m a little upset. You were right. You were so right. She’s just the same. She’s just putting herself first. And Mark’s putting himself first and it is all finally making sense now and it’s just crap and I know right now you probably think all of this serves me one hundred per cent right because I think I know it all and I’m a big stupid eejit but I need you. Because you won’t abandon me, sure you won’t?”
Ivyglanced at Michael again who turned and left the room and then she got up, walked towards me and hugged me tightly, telling me it would all be all right – in the exact same way she had done when our mother had walked out on us all those years before.
An hour later and I was sitting in a pair of perfectly ironed pyjamas on Ivy’s sofa, drinking hot chocolate from Emma Bridgewater mugs and eating toast, which Michael had made and presented to us before leaving again. Ivy had listened – uncharacteristically she hadn’t offered her usual strong opinions. She had just nodded. She knew, I suppose, that she didn’t need to offer those strong opinions because I was increasingly becoming aware of where I went wrong.
The only time she blinked – the only time there was a flicker of what-the-feck across her face was when I told her I had slept with James.
“I know,” I said, as soon as I said it and saw her reaction. “It was a mistake. He has feelings for me – I see that now– but it was nice to feel needed. But I knew as soon as we were done that it had been a mistake. Sure, it made me no better than Mark. I’m a cheater too. I’ve been raging all this time about giving up on our marriage, but is that not what I did?”
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “That’s not what you did at all. It was different.” She paused, sipped from her tea and smiled.
“What are you grinning at?”
She giggled and whispered. “James? Really? I mean, I don’t mean to make light of things, well, not that much anyway . . . but James? Don’t tell Michael but I always thought James was hot. Was he hot? Was it good sex?”
I blushed and smiled, relieved she hadn’t castigated me there and then as a harlot. “It was . . . different.”
“As in sexual-deviant different, or just not the same as Mark?”
I looked at her, sittingthere in her stripy pyjamas with fluffy slippers on her feet and her hands wrapped around a cup of milky tea and I realised I hadn’t really ever heard my sister talk about sex before and it kind of unnerved me. Even though it was me who’d started it.
“Not deviant, no,” I smiled. “But different to Mark. Clumsy maybe, you know when you don’t know each other very well and you aren’t quite sure what to do . . . but yes, it was good, you know, physically. But emotionally . . .”
“I’m being inappropriate, aren’t I?”
“Yes, a little.After all, your pyjama-wearing husband is not that far away, I’m a bit of an emotional wreck and, eugh, I don’t need to hear my sister talk about S.E.X.!”
We laughed as we talked and I cried a little – but less than I had done and she made it all feel a little better and I was grateful to have spent some time in her company. She kissed me on the top of the head before I went up to bed in her spare room and, as I lay in the comfortable double bed in her perfectly designed guest room, I vowed that the day after would be a better day.As I was drifting off I heard the door creak open and my eyes jolted awake, really hoping I wasn’t about to see Michael in his poly-cotton-mix pyjamas looming towards me. But it was my sister, who climbed into the bed beside me and hugged me close, just as she had done when I was smaller.
“It will be okay, Kitty cat,” she whispered. “Everything will be entirely okay. We’ll get through it and I’ll be with you every step of the way. Me, you, Rose and Dad. And the rest of the world can go hang. We are family.”
“I’ve got my big sister with me,” I sang back, remembering how we used to sing that together when we were little. We squeezed hands and chatted a while longer until we both fell asleep.
Chapter twenty-eight
Erin
Ian phoned two days after the magazine hit the shelves. There I was, having a sneaky look at the Daily Mail website at the celebrity-gossip section, when the phone rang. I answered absentmindedly – “Erin Brannigan, hello?” – and when I heard his voice my heart jumped to my throat before plummeting at the speed of light right to the very bottom of my boots. I’m not entirely sure if I said it out loud, but I think that I probably did. I’m pretty sure he heard me say “Shit” at least three times in quick succession.
“I didn’t know you still cared,” he said, his voice nervous in tone. He was trying to make a joke but it wasn’t working.
Neither of us was finding this very funny.
“I didn’t think you’d see it . . .”
“Well, normally Northern People wouldn’t be my magazine of choice but I happened to have a doctor’s appointment and my doctor is one of those rare breeds who keeps his magazines up to date and I saw your name on the front: ‘Erin Brannigan talks love, marriage and broken hearts.’ And of course I was going to read that, wasn’t I?”
My face flushed – I could feel the crimson tide rising and I contemplated simply putting the phone down and pretending that I hadn’t been having this conversation at all.
“I mean, when I read the blurb I figured I might have featured. I didn’t really expect to see a picture of me in my swimming shorts staring back out at me.”
“Your face was blurred. I – I didn’t use your name,” I stuttered.
He laughed that laugh that used to make me weak at the knees – before he turned out to be a complete bastard of course. “I’d recognise those shorts anywhere. And that beach. And that day, I remember it well.”
“It was a long time ago. A lifetime ago.”
“It was nice to remember it,” he said.
“Even the bit where you left me at the altar?” My voice was light but inside I was wondering how on earth he could answer this one without digging himself deeper.
Of course I’d had my explanation at the time – he didn’t want to settle down just yet, it had all got out of hand, he was sorry etc. I had tried so hard to talk to him after that, thinking that if we had just talked through all those concerns and all those worries we could have been fine and we could have gone ahead with our wedding and this whole jilting-at-the-altar carry-on would have been a blip in an otherwise blissful relationship.
That didn’t happen though – he ignored me and I cried, and I shouted in his letterbox at four in the morning and he still ignored me and I cried some more and then I had gone a bit wild – drank too much, slept with two men I barely knew (not at the same time) and smoked cigarettes even though they made me vomit. When I had got all the screaming and crying, smoking and drinking and dodgy dalliances with dodgy men out of the way, I had woken up one Wednesday morning realising I could pretty much do whatever I wanted with the rest of my life and I wasn’t tied to anyone or anything and I breathed a sigh of relief.
In fairness that had been more than a year after he had left me and in that time I had been to hell and back, but it had ultimately been a good thing. I told myself that and had continued to tell myself that until any shadow of doubt had been removed. Ian and what we had been through had, to a large extent, been consigned to my memory. Hearing his voice, discussing what happened with him, was unsettling. I f
elt as if everyone in the office was looking at me, listening in, aware of who I was talking to. I glanced up while I waited for his response but everyone was going about their business, oblivious to my beaming red face and my increasingly hushed tones.
“Yeah, well . . .” he answered at last, “maybe not that bit. I really was a bit of a dick, wasn’t I?”
Although I was over him, my heart leapt to hear him say those words.
“Yes,” I said, still doing my very best to keep my voice measured. “Yes, you were. But it was the nineties. We were all a bit stupid and simple then. Sure we all thought we were brilliant and witty and knew it all then. Eejits, the lot of us!”
He laughed again, that deep, delicious throaty laugh and I kicked myself under the table, a way of trying to remind myself that a) he was my ex for a reason, b) he broke my heart and I hated him, and c) I was in love with Paddy (who I was still annoyed with) and I was marryinghim in two months’ time.
“The folly of youth,” he said. “And look at you now, all grown up and getting married. For real this time. With a big dress and everything.”
“Yes,” I said. “Yep, the Big Day. The real thing. A big dress and a bouquet from a proper florist’s and all.”
“Is he a good man?”
I paused while I tried to find the words. “A really good man,” I said, because he was. Paddy was a good man. And this whole conversation felt wrong. “But look, Ian, I really must go, so unless there is anything else you need?”
“Coffee?” he asked.
“You want coffee?”
“With you.”
“With me?”
“You can keep repeating or you can say yes. I just thought, you know, after all these years, just to meet. Lay some ghosts to rest. Catch up and move on.”
The thought of laying some ghosts to rest appealed to me. There were so many uncertainties – so many things which felt unresolved that even though I knew that this was probably a bad idea I found myself agreeing to his request and we made plans to meet that weekend in the local Starbucks for a chat.
I hung up the phone, looked atthe grinning picture of Paddy on my desk and felt wretched with guilt. I could just not show up, of course, but this was something that I needed to do. So I pushed the photo just that little bit out of sight and decided to go on with my day as if nothing at all unusual had happened.
Coffee is never just coffee. Not when a man asks you. Not when a man who nearly married you once asks you anyway. I knew that. That’s why I bought something new to wear – why I skipped out in my lunch break and had a quick run around the city centre, stopping to pick up a taupe shift dress, nipped in nicely at the waist with a thin belt, in a small boutique close to The Diamond. It screamed professionalism – something that Lois Lane would most definitely wear waiting for her Superman to sweep her off her feet.
We had that chat once, Ian and I, in the cafeteria at university, just a few weeks after we had met, when we were still getting to know each other.
“What do you want to be when you are done here?” he asked over a bitter-tasting instant coffee.
“A journalist. I’m going to be a journalist.”
“Like Lois Lane?” he said with a cheeky wink.
“Something like that.”
“Well, Lois Lane needs a Superman,” he had said and had winked at me again and that had been the start of a beautiful, if ultimately completely disastrous relationship.
I wanted him to see that glamorous Lois Lane type creature walk towards him in the coffee shop. I wanted him to see me wearing something glam and figure-hugging. The slightly washed-out trousers and wrinkled M&S blouse I had on wouldn’t cut it. Looking at the dress in the mirror in the changing rooms, I decided I would need new shoes as well. The pair I was wearing were comfortable and at one stage had been vaguely sexy in a librarian kind of a way – but now they were wrinkled, worn, the patent scuffed at the heels from driving. They would not do. Lois Lane would not have scuffed shoes. I picked up a new pair of neutral court shoes, with a platform sole and killer heels, not looking at the cost, and handed them over followed by my credit card – but not before adding in a chiffon scarf, a new pair of stud earrings and a mother of pearl hair-clip. I would have to tame the frizz, I thought, adding a pair of oversized sunglasses to the pile before me. I could justify the extravagance, I told myself – after all, the wedding-planning had taken every penny, every ounce of our fun-spends. This was just a little blip. A little blip that would have paid for a good few dinners at our receptionbut nevertheless . . .
When I got home that evening, Paddy had smiled at me – after I had run upstairs and hidden the new items in the back of the wardrobe and wandered into the living room with a calm expression on my face.
“Good day at work?” he asked, from the sofa where he sat, counting out RSVPs for the wedding and sorting them into yes and no piles.
“Hmmm,” I muttered. “Not too bad. Busy, you know.” I didn’t trust myself to speak to him. I didn’t even really trust myself to look at him in case he saw my plans – and, well, let’s face it, my deception across my face. “In fact, I’m beat,” I told him. “I was thinking I’d just head up for a soak in the bath and then on to bed if that is okay?”
He glanced up, asked if I was sure I was okay. I nodded and repeated that I was just worn out and I left, making my way upstairs and pouring the deepest bath I could. Sinking down into the bubbles I wondered if I was mad – if all of this was just absolutely mad – if I should just phone Ian and tell him some things were best left in the past. No. I reminded myself – I needed some closure. I needed to show him I was okay – that I was good actually. That I was Erin Brannigan, award-winning journalist, and hadn’t needed his help to do his Superman impression to help me get there. I had been a success in spite of him breaking my heart so violently that day. I tried to ignore the little part of me which fluttered at the very thought of seeing him again, after all these years.
I had brought my new outfit to work with me. I didn’t want to draw attention to myself by wearing it leaving the house. I’d told Paddy I would be working late, helping plan the next edition – it wasn’t unheard of. I purposely avoided calling Jules, knowing that I would be unable to keep what I was about to do from her. I had spent the day watching the clock, and looking back at the picture of us together on the beach. When mostof my colleagues had gone home I slipped into the staff toilets, changed, applied fresh make-up and tidied my hair before slipping my feet into the very uncomfortable shoes I had bought and spraying myself with some Jo Malone which I kept for special occasions. Slicking on a little lipgloss, I climbed into the car and tried my damndest not to feel like a Very Bad Person.
Ian looked much the same as before – greyer around the temples. A little more wrinkled. A little more weather-beaten. He was dressed in a suit and was lost in a conversation with a person unknown on his iPhone. He looked very serious – the kind of serious he looked when he was discussing things which were very important indeed. Although I very much doubted he was discussing world politics or who was the sexiest Spice Girl on this occasion. I watched him for a few moments, noticing how animated he was, which made him spill the sugar that he was trying to add to his coffee; he tried to sweep it up without pausing in his rant to whoever was on the other end of that call.
I stood and watched him until he hung up. Lord only knows who he was talking to. I imagined it was probably some high-flying business partner but there was every chance it was a girlfriend or a wife and perhaps they were having some big domestic because she had found out that he was in Derry about to have coffee with his ex-fiancée. I felt a shiver of unease sweep through me and I was just about to turn to leave when he hit the end call button and waved to me, smiling broadly.
I wasn’t sure how I was to greet him. Were we meant to hug? Were we meant to kiss? In a French way? Not with tongues or anything, just on each cheek? Were we meant to shake hands or just nod in each other’s direction, vaguely acknowledging the oth
er’s existence before maintaining a respectable distance from each other across a wooden table with a couple of coffee cups and a white ceramic milk jug and sugar jar on it?
He stood up. I had forgotten how tall he was – how he made me feel small, dainty. I had forgotten the bulk in his body, the width of his shoulders. As I walked towards him I took a deep breath and reminded myself this was just about laying ghosts to rest – nothing less and nothing more. His smile widened further and we went for a strange, slightly awkward combination of a variety of greetings. He tried to hold my hand as I tried to shake his, and I leant towards him for a hug and felt his lips graze against my cheek, his stubble scratching me slightly. He was wearing Armani aftershave – the same one he used to wear when we were together. I was under no illusion he wore it for that reason.
“Erin, you look amazing,” he said, standing back and looking me up and down. There was a longing in his eyes. His gaze took that little bit too long, his smile was a little bit too wide – too forced. “You really do,” he said, and I tried to find words to respond.
I wanted to tell him he looked great too but I was struck dumb at the sight of him and I wanted to kick myself for regressing thirteen years to that person I was back then when I followed him around like a lost dog looking for his approval. I nodded. I really hated nodding – it made me look like one of those stupid dogs from the back of cheap cars. I only nodded when I was nervous – when I was freaking out just a little inside. Sit down, I told myself, pulling my hand from his and sitting down, thankful for the table and the milk jug and the very oxygen between us.
“I never thought I would see you again,” I said, finding it hard to meet his gaze. I didn’t tell him that in the past I had searched for him on Facebook only to find he was one of those rare beings who didn’t have a profile. I had Googled his name and found out that he was working in Belfast, in PR of all things – the industry he had slammed as ‘the dark side’ when he was filled with ideals. But despite working in similar fields we had never met and, after a couple of years of panicking that one day we would come face to face in a work situation, I had just stopped thinking about him. There was the occasional time, of course, when a song played that was out at the time we had been together or when I got a whiff of Armani aftershave or gin – he loved his gin – that I thought of him. But mostly he was nothing to me – not until recently. Until things had become so difficult. Until I started planning a wedding and all those memories had come flooding back in full Technicolor.