by Claire Allan
“You came,” she squealed, delightedly. “I didn’t know if you would.”
“I had to bring the dress, Mum,” I said. “Of course I would be here.”
“And Ivy, is she coming?” My mother’s eyes were wide with anticipation at my response.
“Yes,” I nodded. “She’s coming to the ceremony anyway. She needs time, Mum. We all do.”
“It’s more than I could have hoped for,” she said, but now was the not the time to agree with her and tell her how precarious the situation was.
It had been Mark who had persuaded me to talk to her again. After that night – the night where he had come to the house – we had spent a lot of time talking. Entire days and nights of talking and trying to understand where we stood and what had happened. We knew it wasn’t going to be easy – we knew we would need to take it slowly. We decided to look into marriage counselling and we vowed to be honest with each other as much as we could. He was looking for work – had a few leads to go on. His confidence was dented but I knew he would get it back. As the walls we had put up started to crumble we began to talk about other things – I’d told him about my mother. Her return for her wedding, her hope for a big reunion.
“You don’t have to spend your whole life being angry at her,” he said. “She probably won’t change but can you accept her the way she is?”
So I said I would try. And Ivy said she would try and that made my father happy. And made my mother ecstatic.
So when we sat close to her and watched her exchange her vows, we knew we were finally building bridges. When she turned to us afterwards, walking hand in hand with Charles, who was grinning like a cat who got the cream, I knew I had made the right decision.And when Mark took my hand and led me outside, I knew I had made the right decision there too. I wasn’t expecting miracles from either of them –but I had more hope for the future and that was as good as anything. I was starting to believe in happy endings.
Chapter thirty-eight
Erin
It was always breezy at Grianán of Aileach. Despite the tall stone surrounds of the ancient Irish ring fort, the breeze always seemed to find a way to whistle in through the gates and dance around your legs. I’m sure someone somewhere has some big theory about it being the spirits of ancient Irish souls reminding you this is their land, or something, but to me it was just a place to be. A sanctuary, a calm place that reminded me that when the past was gone history could not be changed.
On that bright September afternoon, I stood in the centre of the fort, feeling the sun shine on my face. This felt right – this step, this moving on from where I had been felt so very right. Jules took my hand and squeezed it and I hugged her back.
“Careful,” she said, “You’ll squash your flowers.”
“It doesn’t matter a damn if they get squashed,” I said, looking at the simple bunch of lilacs in my hand.
“He’ll be blown away, and I’m not just talking about the breeze,” she said.
“I hope so, Jules.”
“Don’t worry, you look stunning,” Kitty said as she straightened the soft lace of my train and tucked a stray curl behind my ear. “This is the real you,” she said. “You look simply stunning.”
She kissed my cheek and went to stand with the other guests who had gathered. There were only ten of us in total. No crowd. No choirs. No huge floral arrangements. Just me in a simple lace gown from The Dressing Room with flowers in my hair and a small posy in my hand. I was wearing flat comfortable shoes under my dress to stop me sinking into the ground. There were no chairs. No fancy wedding cars had brought us to our destination. There was just this small crowd, a small canopy to protect us from the elements and a single harpist. The celebrant, a kind man with a warm smile and a wicked sense of humour, who had helped us embrace everything that was uniquely ‘us’ about this wedding, smiled at me as things got underway.
“He’s here,” Jules whispered and I turned to watch him walk through the gates. I know it was a break with tradition but I wanted him to walk to me – for me to be the one waiting for him, showing him that I would always be there for him.
The look on his face gave me all the reassurance I needed – and I felt myself stop shivering and shaking.He was here.
The article had caused a quite a stir in the media when it had gone to print. Every Tom, Dick and Harriet had wanted me to talk about laying my heart on the line so publicly. I had refused – saying I had said all that I needed to say and now, well, I would just have to wait to see how things went.
I hadn’t been expecting an immediate reaction so when publication day came and went I congratulated myself on having some fingernails left. I tried not to think about whether or not he had read the piece while fending off sympathetic glances from my colleagues who all jumped about as high as I did whenever my phone rang.
By the time I went home to lay staring at the phone before thankfully falling asleep, I was safe in the knowledge I had done all I could do.
When I woke in the morning I padded downstairs to find him in the kitchen, cooking breakfast with a fixed look of concentration on his face.
I stood there for a moment. I know this sounds beyond cheesy, but I wasn’t sure I wasn’t dreaming so I stood and watched as he cracked some eggs and started to mix them.
“You’re here,” I stated and he turned to look at me.
“I’m here,” he said, “And we’re going to win.”
I smiled and watched as he put the eggs down, walked towards me and kissed me. “We’re going to win,” he whispered in my ear as we hugged.
The wedding Take Two, as it became known – was always to be a simple affair. No flounces. No frills.Nothing that would attract undue attention. We kept it secret from all but those closest to us – this was about us and our future. Nothing else mattered.
As we joined hands, grinning like eejits in front of each other, the rain started to fall softly.
“They say it’s lucky if it rains on your wedding day,” I grinned at him, pulling him out from under the canopy and turning my head towards the heavens.
“I couldn’t be luckier,” he said.
If you enjoyed
What Becomes of the Broken Hearted? by Claire Allan
why not try
If Only You Knew also published by Poolbeg?
Here’s a sneak preview of Chapter One
Chapter 1: If Only You Knew
Ava
Standing in the middle of the fresh-produce aisle in Tesco, Ava took a deep breath and hoped that God would grant her the strength to get all the way around to the tinned-goods aisle – and eventually through the check-out and on her way home – without losing her mind entirely.
Maisie had insisted she was much too big a girl for the trolley and was currently running rings round the carrots, flapping her wings behind her and declaring that she was a butterfly.A few people had smiled indulgently at the child as she twirled while a perfectly preened thirty-something had tutted loudly and muttered that children should be left at home if they couldn’t behave well in public.
Ava wanted to bite back with something witty and cutting but she was too busy trying to remember whether or not they needed onions, what it was Connor had asked her to pick up for him and whether or not she had locked up her classroom before leaving work for the day.
Instead, even though she knew it was childish, she pulled a face at Ms Perfect and took Maisie by the arm and tried to persuade her to help by selecting a few apples for their trolley. It was all going so well until Maisie belted off at lightning speed, reaching out one chubby little hand to the most precarious apple on the bottom of the pile and set off an avalanche ofPink Ladies which gave Ms Perfect the chance to do the very loudest tut in her repertoire before stepping over the apples and heading on her way. Ava felt like crying as she wrestled an indignant Maisie back into the trolley and set about picking the apples up and stocking them back in the display before anyone suggested she pay for the lot of them.
She
would need a drink when she got home. A big, cold, alcoholic drink. In a big glass. Maybe one of those feckers which held an entire bottle.
Putting the last apple in place, she took a deep breath just as she heard Maisie squeal a momentous “Mammmeeeeee!” before toppling head first out of the trolley and landing with a scream on the floor.
A&E hadn’t been very busy, thankfully, and they had been whisked through triage and onto X-ray relatively quickly. Ava had been tempted to ask the doctors if there was any chance of some mildly mind-altering painkillers to help her escape from the headache which was building in her head and the coronary she had no doubt was building somewhere around her heart.
She had phoned Connor, while Maisie screamed blue murder in the background, and had tried to assure him it was okay and it was only a mild trolley-jumping accident and she was pretty sure no bones were broken in the process. She didn’t tell him that Maisie had saved herself from splitting her head open by breaking the fall with her hand. He had sigheddeeply, and said he would meet her at the hospital. The staff at Tesco had been more than lovely, bringing an icepack and telling her not to worry about abandoning her half-filled trolley but she had been mortified anyway. And worried, of course. Maisie’s wrist was starting to swell and bruise and she couldn’t be consoled. The dream of a glass of wine slipped further and further away. When the doctor returned to their cubicle and said the injury was no more than a bad sprain, which would require strapping and some pain relief, Ava felt herself finally sag with relief and tears sprang to her eyes.
Maisie looked up, now doped up on Calpol with her eyes drooping, and Ava felt like the worst mother in the world for feeling frustrated and angry at how the whole situation had developed. Maisie had just been overexcited after a day at nursery. She had been excited to see her mammy and had gone into hyper mode. She hadn’t been naughty – shewas just being a typical almost-three-year-old, but Ava hadn’t been in the form for it – not after a long week at work.Maybe if she had paid more attention this wouldn’t have happened. She would have to try harder. Guiltily, she tearfully kissed her daughter on the head and assured her she loved her all the way to the moon and back.
Eventually Connor popped his head around the curtain, looking equally as frazzled, tired and fecked-off as she felt.
“I drove as fast as I could,” he said, “but you know what it’s like trying to get out of Belfast at this time of the evening. Is she okay?”
“A bad sprain,” Ava said looking down at a now sleeping Maisie. “She’ll be fine. They’ve given her painkillers and are going to strap her wrist up.”
“Thank God,” he said, sitting down on the plastic chair beside his wife and sagging with relief.
Both of them eyed a trolley-bed opposite them and Ava wondered what it would be like to just climb under the harsh, starchy sheets and fall asleep. She could tell by the look in Connor’s eyes that he felt exactly the same.
“I’d fight you to the death for it,” she said, smiling at him and at the bed. And she was only half joking.
A few hours had passed and Maisie was sleeping in her mammy and daddy’s bed, her poor bandaged arm cradling her favourite stuffed bunny rabbit. She had thrown a minor fit at the very notion of sleeping in her own big-girl bed and, too tired to argue with her after all that the day had thrown at them, Ava and Connor had agreed and had tucked her in before returning to the living room to sit, nursing cups of tea and staring into space.
“It could have been worse,” Connor said. “At least it wasn’t serious.”
Ava nodded. “I know.” She sat back, closed her eyes and was just about to drift off into a blissful exhaustion-induced coma when it struck her that she still didn’t have her shopping done and she would need to face the supermarket again. “Fuck!” she swore. “Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.”
Saturday mornings were reserved for that special kind of hell that was a Soft Play centre. Even with a bandaged and swollen arm, Maisie could not be dissuaded from her weekly trip to the ball pools and slides of Cheeky Monkeys. Ava couldn’t argue – not after the act of wilful neglect which had seen her daughter tumble headfirst out of a trolley the day before. So she had packed a bag, filled with cartons of juice, boxes of raisins, a couple of favourite dollies and a change of clothes and had strapped her strong-willed daughter into the back of the car. Connor had padded out to see them, still exhausted from his week of commuting to and from Belfast for work. “I’ll take her if you want,” he offered and Ava had wanted more than anything to let him but instead she settled for hugging him and thanking him for the offer – even though she knew he had made it knowing full well she would never take him up on it.
Saturday mornings were when she met her mummy friends who would arrive with their charges and regale her with stories about their wonderfulness. It wasn’t that Ava didn’t find Maisie wonderful – she was constantly amazed by her daughter’s flighty wee personality as it developed – but she wasn’t one of those who felt the need to boast about her either.
Saturdays were the days she also met Karen – known as ‘Hell-mum’ to Ava and Connor in their private conversations. Karen had taken to motherhood like a layabout takes to work. She did it because she had to but she took no joy in it. She also very much enjoyed sharing her horror stories, time and time again, with anyone who wanted to (or in many cases didn’t want to) listen. Ava felt sorry for her to an extent – she clearly had issues by the bucket-load. Ava looked at Karen’s five-year-old sometimes and felt her heart sink to her boots. She wondered if, in quieter moments, Karen was actually more maternal than she appeared in public.
Sighing, Ava pulled into the car park of the centre and tried to contain Maisie from running in front of the wheels of the 4x4s hunting for a prime parent-and-child parking space. She saw Karen’s Land Rover among them and she braced herself for the latest chapter in ‘How Hard My Life Is Compared to Yours’ from her once dear friend.
“C’mon, Maisie Moo!” she called, injecting a fake sense of cheer into her voice. “It’s time to play and meet all your friends!”
Karen sat sipping from a latte while Ava cradled Maisie – suddenly overcome with nervousness thanks to her sore arm.
“Oh God, you poor thing. Still it could have been worse. I remember when Sophie was the same age – took a tumble in the park and needed three stitches. Still, I only thought things were tough then. God, Ava, you’ve no idea. Now that’s she five – and at school and learning the badness from the other ones – it’s even tougher. You can’t watch her these days. Intoeverything.”
Ava nodded sympathetically, all the while thinking that Karen hadn’t given a single glance to where her daughter was since she’d sauntered into the café attached to the play centre half an hour before.
“I’m sure her being five has its good points,” she offered, hoping that her friend would assure her that of course she was just having a bad day and living with a five-year-old was a joy day in and day out.
“Hmmm,” Karen said with a sly smile, “I’m sure it has – I just can’t think of any of them at the moment. It’s all just work, work, work with some worry thrown in for good measure.”She laughed as she said it and Ava had to fight the urge to pick up the cream bun she was just about to tuck into and ram it right into Karen’s face to stop her from talking any more. She didn’t want to hear that it got worse. She wanted to hear that it got better – and easier and altogether more pleasant. She wanted her friend to tell her that she was only a couple of months away from an altogether easier existence when she would not feel so tired, and worried and overworked 99% of the time.
Deciding that ramming a cream bun in the face of one of her oldest friends was probably not the best way to relieve the knot of tension which seemed to exist on a permanent basis between her shoulder blades, she smiled sweetly and took a large bite from it instead, allowing the sugary softness of the confectionery to give her a momentary saccharine-induced high. If they had served ice-cold Pinot Grigio in the Soft Play, she would have kno
cked a couple of those back too.
Karen was just about to launch into her latest rant on the perils of motherhood (this time – Play-Doh and why it was the work of the Devil) when Ava’s phone burst into life. Gratefully, she pawed in her bag to find it. She didn’t care who was phoning. It could have been a heavily accented salesperson trying to persuade her to part with her life savings for a timeshare but she would have spoken to him.
Glancing down she saw that it was her mother. This was definitely strange. Sure, she was due to see her mother later that day anyway. Saturday afternoons were always spent at Granny’s house, where Maisie had the run of the place and her very own playroom to wreak havoc in.
“Mum?” Ava answered as Maisie glanced up at her.
“Ava, thank goodness I got you,” her mother said, her voice choking with emotion.
“Is everything okay, Mum? Mum, what’s wrong?”
Suddenly, even though she knew this made her a very bad person indeed, the thought crossed her mind that if something was wrong she would have the perfect excuse to get up and leave the play centre without any hesitation whatsoever. She glanced at Karen who was staring into the bottom of her coffee cup, disgusted to be cut off from her rant before she got into full flow, and she felt guilty. She was a bad friend and a bad daughter.
“It’s Betty,” her mum said, her voice cracking.
The memory came to Ava of a well-spoken woman in delicious purple satinshoes with a delicate floral detail who had held her hand as she sobbed through her beloved granny’s funeral. They had gone to sink the better part of two bottles of wine at a restaurant afterwards – talking into the wee small hours. Ava had been very taken with this bohemian creature with wild curly hair and a gentle smile, who looked years younger than her age.