by Claire Allan
“No, I got quite the surprise when I saw that picture in the magazine. It was a blast from the past. Christ, we were so young.”
“We were so stupid,” I said, pouring one sugar into the black coffee he had ordered for me. He still remembered, I noted, how I drank my coffee. He had even ordered me a cinnamon swirl.
He laughed at the word stupid. “We really did think we knew it all. God – we were going to get married? Shit! Could you imagine it?”
I laughed too, but I bristled and fought the urge to kick him very hard in the shins with my nice new shiny patent shoes. It wouldn’t have been that bad, would it? It wouldn’t have been that shit?
“It wouldn’t have ended well,” I said, and I knew that was true but part of me wanted to say he should have at least given it the chance to start. “In fact, it didn’t end well, did it?”
He coloured. “It wasn’t my finest moment. But in the long run . . . God, Erin. I think, well, I don’t know . . . I could have handled it better. I just freaked out and yes, I’ll admit I was a total coward and I took the easy way out.”
“You left me to tell our friends. You left me to come home and face my mother and tell her, despite the note I had left being all dramatic and declaring I was off to get married, and the heartache I had put her through.” I didn’t tell him that I had seen the hidden ‘I told you so’ behind her eyes for years afterwards.
“That must have been shit,” he said, looking at the table, stirring his coffee which was already very well stirred.
“It was,” I said, not feeling the need to elaborate further. Shit is as shit was – there was no need to explain to him exactly how shit it had been.
“But things happen for a reason,” he said. “Sure look at you now – fantastic-looking, ready to get married for real this time. Big dress and all. You seem to be doing very well for yourself and this man of yours, from what you wrote in the magazine, he seems like one to keep.”
“He is,” I said, because what else would I say? That lately, for reasons I couldn’t quite fathom, I wanted to run screaming. Could I tell him that a week ago I had kept vigil by Paddy’s bed begging for him to be okay and nowthat he was, now that Dr Glib had declared they had probably done as much as was needed, I wanted to throttle him? The irony was certainly not lost on me. I decided, wisely, not to go there with that. Instead I just repeated that he was certainly one to keep and then asked him about himself – was he married? It annoyed me that I cared.
“No, I’m single,” he said. “Haven’t found the right woman yet.”
If, of course, this was a Hollywood movie he would have followed that with a simple ‘Or should I say, I did find the right woman but then I let her go’. But this was not a Hollywood movie. This was a coffee shop in the middle of Derry two months before my wedding. And he didn’t add anything. He just let it hang there.
“I bet you aren’t short of attention,” I said, cringing at myself, aware that it sounded very much like I was flirting with him. I sipped from my coffee in an attempt to cover up my embarrassment and reached for the cinnamon twirl, unwinding it and licking the icing from my fingers.
“You haven’t changed a bit,” he said, laughing. “You haven’t learned to eat that like a proper grown-up yet!”
“I’ll have you know, many proper grown-ups eat these just like this. It’s the ‘in’ thing. Don’t pretend you don’t have your foibles. Don’t pretend you don’t eat all the chocolate off the side of your Kit Kats first before eating the wafer – because I’ve seen you, Ian, and those aren’t the kind of habits you grow out of.”
“Guilty as charged,” he laughed again and I found myself relax. “Do you still eat all the chocolate off Peanut M & Ms before you eat the nuts?”
“Do you still always have to have two fried eggs side by side on your cooked breakfast so that they look like a pair of boobs?”
“Do you still wear mismatched socks under your boots just because you think it makes you a bit quirky?”
“Do you still secretly want to shag Fern Britton?”
He laughed and I laughed and I offered him some of my cinnamon swirl and he managed not to induce my wrath by continuing to unroll it instead of biting into it.
“This is probably the cheesy bit where I say it wasn’t all bad?” he said, gazing at me.
“And this would probably be the part where I agree with you and say no, of course, it wasn’t too bad,” I said. “It was good a lot of the time. Immature maybe and misguided but good. We had fun.”
“If I could go back and live just one of those days on the beach again, sitting by the campfire, not worrying about anything or anyone and not caring about the future, I would do it in a heartbeat.”
I smiled and nodded. “It would be nice, wouldn’t it, for one day? But it’s not real life. It wasn’t then really, when you think about it. It was like our very own ‘Summer of 69’ – Bryan Adams could have written a song about it for sure. Drinking and lazing about and having no responsibilities other than whose turn it was to go to the bar next or who was going to nip to the pizza place.”
“Hmmm, pizza,” he said, smiling. “I would love some pizza.”
“Still the same,” I said. “Still want everything on it?”
“Except anchovies?” he smiled and I grinned back.
“Who the holy feck . . .”
“. . . would eat anchovies?” he said, finishing my sentence and mimicking me.
We sat back for a moment, both lost in our memories. Or at least, I was. My rose-tinted glasses were most firmly perched at the end of my nose and everything had taken on a nice hazy, nostalgic glow.
“Would it be mad to actually go for some pizza? You know, coffee is grand and all but pizza tastes so much better. And maybe get a bottle of wine?”
It was tempting, very tempting . . . so I found myself agreeing. Worse than that, I found myself excusing myself, nipping to the toilets, texting Paddy and telling him I was going for a drink with the girls from work and then putting my phone on silent and stuffing it to the bottom recesses of my bag. I looked at myself in the mirror, tried to see a hint of the twenty-year-old I had once been and pulled my skin taut, smoothing out the fine smattering of wrinkles. I pursed my lips, reapplied my lip gloss, smoothed my hair down, spritzed some more perfumeon my wrists and walked out of the bathroom and off on what was, for all intents and purposes, a date with the man who had once broken my heart into a million pieces.
No, a coffee was never really just a coffee.
Chapter twenty-nine
Kitty
Rose and Ivy were both present at what became the official wedding-ring-removal ceremony.
It was at the end of a busy day in the shop and Ivy had arrived with a very big box of Thornton’s chocolates and a bag of fun-size Curly Wurlies. Rose had chilled one of our final bottles of Rosé Prosecco and we had sat on the floor of the dressing room, having a little picnic to ourselves.
After my night at Ivy’s, things had improved dramatically between us. She had vowed that she would be there for me, and she had said she would hold my hand every step of the way so that the person I was relying on for support was not my ex-husband’s ex-best-friend – who had morphed into some kind of bunny-boiler stalker in the two days since we had slept together.
In fairness to James, even though I had been vulnerable and things had been terribly, terribly mixed up, I had probably led him on. I had kissed him back when he kissed me and ultimately it had been me who had led him to the bedroom and let him undress me and have his wicked way with me . . . twice.After the awkward morning after – which by the tone of his emails he seemed to think wasn’t at all awkward and was in fact lovely and relaxing – I had texted him to say I needed a bit of space.
I don’t know who I am at the moment and I need some room to find out I had written and had, in fact, sent that text to James, my mother and Mark.
My mother had replied with a brief message – self-pitying in tone – about how much her Big Day
meant to her and how it would make it just perfect if I was there. Of course she had skipped over the whole assuring me that she loved me and that she was there for me in the wake of the soul-destroying, heart-wrenching, nightmarish end of my own marriage but that was Mum all over.
Mark had replied, almost instantaneously. We need to talk, Kitty. You take the space you need but please let me talk to you at some stage. He finished his text with LYF – our code for Love You Forever (which yes, I know is pretty vomit-inducing). Seeing those three letters ran a whole myriad of emotions straight through my body in very quick succession. Sadness, hope, anger, annoyance, love – they were all there and I had to stop, put the phone down and catch my breath for a second.
James had texted and emailed and called. And sent flowers. Two bouquets in two days. His messages varied between Please call me to asking if I had any regrets, to telling me to stay strong and that he was there for me. Ivy had threatened to call him and scream in her most menacing voice that he needed to back the feck off but I persuaded her against it. But I knew it was down to me. I needed to talk to him and put this right. Awkward as it would be, I needed to tell him it was a mistake. That it had been my mistake.
Sitting on the floor for our Bridal Nook picnic, I told Ivy and Rose what I had been thinking all day.
“I’m not saying I’m fine,” I said. “I’m not saying I know exactly where I’m going or what I’m doing but I do know that it is time for me to pick myself up. I would love it if you were both there to keep me upright from time to time – you know, when I’ve had a bit too much to drink and feel a little overwhelmed? – but I want to do this on my own. I have to start doing it on my own.”
They had looked at each other and then across at me and then back at each other.
“Am I supposed to just crumple from now until eternity? Am I supposed to turn into some sort of demented divorcee selling wedding dresses and being sour the whole time? My husband cheated on me . . .” The words hurt, they cut through me, but them hurting wouldn’t make them any less real. “I always said if he cheated then that would be it. Maybe it wouldn’t have been if he had told me – if he had come home and cried that he was sorry and it meant nothing and he would never do it again – but he didn’t do that. He cheated and he walked out on our relationship without even giving me the chance to try and stop him. His mind, despite his texts begging to talk, was clearly made up. If I took him back now, there are no guarantees that he wouldn’t do it again. I’d rather live through the shit of piecing all this back together than live wondering every night if he was going to be home when I walked through the door. That’s no way to live.”
Ivy shook her head and Rose rubbed my hand.
“You’re a brave girl,” Rose said. “You will get through this.”
“Oh, I know,” I said, trying to convince myself as much as anything. “Sure didn’t Daddy get through it? And we thought his heart would be broken forever? But he got through and he found you. He was lucky.”
“I was the lucky one,” Rose said coyly, sipping from her Prosecco.
I realised then that she might be just a little drunk. She always became very soppy about my father when she had a drink. As a teenager and in my early twenties it used to make me want to claw my own eyes out with embarrassment but now, well, when I realised how precious love was (and when I was a little bit tipsy myself) it made me feel warm inside.I squeezed her hand and thought of how I was the lucky one.
“So,” I said, trying not to lose myself too much in the emotion of the moment, “it is definitely time to move on.”
“I’ll drink to that,” Ivy said, raising her glass and tipping it against mine. “Whatever you need, sis, just ask. I know a great solicitor you can talk to. We can get an appointment with one of the advice agencies if you prefer – you know, about dividing your assets. I’m sure the business is in just your name? Whatever you need . . .”
Ivy was like that – practical, pragmatic, fatalist. She made up her mind and she never wavered from her chosen course of action. She kept going until she reached her goal and emotions rarely came into it. In some ways I envied her.
“I’m not sure I’m ready for that just yet,” I said softly. “But I know you’re the very woman to come to when I am.”
“Small steps,” Rose said, gently. “Small steps all the way and you will get there.”
“Whatever you need,” Ivy repeated, topping up our glasses.
“Well, first of all, I need to pee,” I said, getting to my feet, wobbling a little. “Then I need to eat a few more of those Curly Wurly yokes. Then I need to put myself firmly first for a change. Rose, could you deal with Mum’s order from now on? Whatever it takes? Ivy, as packing is very much your thing, can you help me sort out a few things at home at the weekend?” They both nodded and I clapped my hands together before darting to the loo. Sitting there, slightly hazy on two glasses of fizz consumed on a stomach empty of anything else but chocolate-toffee goodness, it glinted back at me – the platinum band studded with diamonds we had bought together on the Valentine’s Day before our wedding.
It was beautiful – but that was all it was now. It didn’t mean the same. It might not have been literally tarnished but everything that it stood for was. I had to move on and there was one way to start that process.
Walking back to the dressing room, I stood in front of my stepmother and my sister and I took it off. The indent in my finger remained. I wondered how long it would take to go – how long it would take for any trace of my wedding-ring-wearing to disappear altogether. I looked at the indentation and back at the ring and I thrust the ring towards Ivy, her being the more practically minded of the pair, and told her to put it away somewhere I would never look for it – like Michael’s pants drawer or the like. Then I lifted my glass, necked it and decided it was most definitely time to go home before the notion took me to try on a wedding dress and perform a rousing rendition of ‘I Will Survive’.
When I got home, I stumbled straight to the bedroom. Sitting on the edge of the bed, I thought the house didn’t feel quite so empty. I lay back, rolling into the centre of the bed and stretching out. I glanced at the carpet – still clean, still fresh, not strewn with discarded sweaty socks and boxers. The room itself still smelled vaguely of the perfume I had sprayed that morning and not a mixture of Lynx aftershave and body odour. The laundry hamper in the corner of the room was not overflowing. There were not three mugs on his bedside table and the sheets were crisp and fresh. My finger still felt a little naked but I luxuriated in wearing soft, definitely unsexy pyjamas, and I lifted my book and read with no one grumbling at me to turn the light off or snoring beside me, or stealing the covers.
I woke up feeling light-hearted, well-rested and just a little bit hung-over – but it was nothing that a can of Diet Coke and a bacon sandwich wouldn’t cure. Padding down to the kitchen, feeling the warmth of the sun stream through the windows this felt like every cliché in the book. It was the first step on my journey, the first day of the rest of my life, the first . . . erm . . . thing that I did that was different to the day before.
It was only when I reached into the cupboard for some bread that I realised just how different things actually were. There was a scattering of crumbs on the worktop, and the smallest splash of milk. Looking around, I saw that there was a mug with a drain of coffee in it and a teaspoon in the sink. I didn’t drink coffee. I had a pathological hatred for spilling crumbs and not wiping them straight up without any form of hesitation whatsoever and I never dumped anything in the sink. Someone had been in the house. Jesus, maybe someone was still in the house! I glanced around, looking for clues but frozen to the spot at the same time, afraid that I might wake a biscuit-loving, coffee-drinking burglar.
I reached for my phone and called Ivy, praying that she would pick up quickly. When she did I spluttered down the phone that someone had been in the house.
“Jesus!” she exclaimed. “Are you okay? Have you called the police? Have they take
n anything?”
I looked around again from my vantage point, pinned with fear against the Formica. The TV was still in the corner. My laptop was still on the kitchen table. The small ceramic bowl in which I threw my costume jewellery and bits and pieces when I was cooking was still filled with costume jewellery and bits and pieces. There was no obvious ransacking evidence. No broken glass. I had walked through the hall to get to the kitchen and the front door had been firmly shut.
“No. I don’t think there is anything gone. It’s just – it’s just someone has come in and drunk some coffee and eaten some biscuits.”
“Coffee?” Ivy sounded incredulous. “Kitty . . . it must have been Mark.”
“Mark? No. He’d never do that surely!” But of course she was right. There was no other explanation.
“Look, I’ll be over in ten minutes.”
I hung up and stood there, listening. The house was absolutely silent. I should check upstairs . . . if it was Mark he might be asleep. Feeling braver, I walked out to the hall but as I passed the living room I saw that not everything was as it should be.
A jacket was lying over the sofa – a jacket that most definitely was not Mark’s. And on the mantelpiece something was missing. I tried to picture what had been there before and it dawned on me with a sinking feeling that what was gone was our wedding photograph – one in a glass frame of Mark and me staring at each other as we made our vows. I looked at the jacket, I thought of the coffee cup. I thought of who would have a spare key and thought of the conversation I had been avoiding because I was acutely embarrassed about what had happened and horrified at myself for letting it happen. Suddenly I felt very uneasy indeed.