by Cathy Kelly
It was all going to be boring, he said, and she’d known he didn’t want her coming.
‘I’m going to stay over,’ he added casually. ‘We’ll probably all go out to dinner afterwards to finish the day off – you know the sort of thing.’
Julia wondered was she imagining mysteries where there were none, so she risked asking, ‘Should I come?’
‘No,’ he said easily, ‘you’d be bored. All that bridesmaid stuff. It’ll probably just be the kids’ friends.’
And Grace, Julia thought. And Grace.
‘Fine,’ she said, doing her best to hide the tautness in her voice.
She hadn’t slept all night, turning it all over in her head.
She was being cut out. Neatly, surgically, in a way she’d never been before. She wasn’t sure if Stephen even knew he was doing it, but he was separating them: his first family, the important one, from his second family, her.
She’d resolved to say something over breakfast, but when she came downstairs he was already finishing his coffee and looking at his watch as if he was late for the office.
‘Talk later,’ he said, grabbing his briefcase and racing from the kitchen.
Julia stood motionless at the table. He hadn’t kissed her, hadn’t touched her as he left.
He rarely did any more. Little details, but they mattered so much.
‘Tell me everything.’
Julia’s long-time friend Rosa posed the question as they sat in the café that afternoon, two well-dressed women in their late forties with coffees, no cakes, a briefcase at Rosa’s feet.
Julia, slim and chic in skinny jeans, white shirt, leather jacket and grey Converse hi-tops, looked like someone who worked in a creative industry, while Rosa was more traditionally dressed in a smart charcoal dress befitting a partner in an accountancy firm.
Nobody would have guessed that their late-afternoon coffee was no chance meeting between friends but an emergency summit.
‘Can you meet me, please? It’s urgent. I – I don’t know what to do,’ Julia had said on the phone first thing.
Rosa didn’t even ask what it was about. She didn’t have to. She knew.
‘I’ll see you in Café Santina at half four – it’s the earliest I can get away,’ she said in her brisk work voice.
‘Thank you, thank you.’
Julia had hung up and gone out to the fire escape of DdW&X, the advertising agency where she’d been creative director for the past nine years. One of the office juniors was out there, a pretty blonde girl in a parka, smoking as if her life depended on it.
Seeing Julia, she began to stub the cigarette out.
‘Sorry, I thought we could smoke here …’
‘We can,’ said Julia flatly. ‘Can I cadge one of yours?’
‘I didn’t know you smoked,’ said the girl as she offered the packet.
I haven’t, not for years, but I am in such pain that it seemed like an option, said the voice inside Julia’s head. ‘I have the odd one,’ she said instead. ‘Sorry for pinching a fag – I owe you.’
The girl shook her head. ‘No, really, it’s cool.’
She handed over her lighter and Julia turned away to light her cigarette, not wanting the girl to see how much her hands were shaking.
‘Thanks,’ she said, once it was lit, then she busied herself pretending to check her messages on her phone. She might curse the phone with its never-ending connection to the office, but it was the perfect excuse not to have to speak to anyone.
She wouldn’t think, she decided. She’d do some Internet surfing, maybe go on one of those designer clothes sites and look at outfits she couldn’t afford. Anything to keep her mind occupied till four thirty, when Rosa might make sense of it all for her.
Rosa had been there for her the last twenty-five years, all through the disastrous relationship to the perennially resting actor Tony. And then through the years with Stephen.
Julia had been there for Rosa when the man Rosa had been engaged to had suddenly ended their relationship after ten years, married someone else within six months, and swiftly had two children – despite all those years of telling Rosa that there was no rush, they’d have kids when they’d travelled enough and enjoyed their youth. Years when she’d tried to convince herself that she agreed with him, that there was plenty of time to settle down in the future.
‘My bloody ovaries have dried up waiting for him and now he’s playing happy families!’ she had roared, inconsolable in her grief.
In a way, their friendship was more like marriage than Julia’s actual marriage and thirteen-year-relationship with Stephen. The two friends understood each other perfectly; there were no silences, no sulks, no misunderstandings, no things you wanted to say but couldn’t because of whatever chasm it might open up.
Julia was the one who’d gone to Rosa’s flat to pick her naked body up off the floor when Rosa had fallen and hurt her back in the shower and there had been nobody else she could ask. Rosa had sat in the hospital with Julia the time she’d had to have X-rays of her ankle after twisting it on the stairs in work. Tony, her then boyfriend, had responded to Julia’s tearful phone call by saying that he couldn’t come right now because he had an audition in Belfast but as soon as he was finished he’d catch the next train home.
Their friendship had turned out to be more for-better-or-worse than most marriages, Rosa liked to say whenever they shared a bottle of wine – only the one – in their favourite Greek restaurant.
‘So, is it over?’ Rosa asked.
Julia stared down at her cup. She’d ordered a flatte and now she realised she felt sick to her stomach and couldn’t face all that milk.
‘I don’t know,’ she said finally, looking up to face Rosa. ‘I don’t know how I feel any more – not like me, is it?’
‘Not like you at all,’ agreed Rosa. ‘Isn’t that enough for you, Julia? That you’re behaving like someone else, all because of Stephen and his bloody family? You shouldn’t have to come second, you should come first. This wedding carry-on is a symptom of it. You’re somehow the also-ran, and that’s not what you need or deserve in life.’
‘Don’t,’ said Julia. ‘I know, I know all of this, Rosa. I signed up for it. Once,’ she added weakly.
‘You should have insisted that you got married,’ Rosa went on, into her stride now. ‘Then it would be different. You’d have rights …’
‘We said we weren’t the marrying type of women,’ Julia said with a lame smile, remembering the days when they’d believed feminism and marriage were mutually exclusive.
‘It matters.’
‘It doesn’t, actually,’ Julia said. ‘Not after yesterday.’
‘What happened yesterday?’
‘He told me he’d be going back to Bridgeport at the weekend for the big finding-the-bridesmaids’-and-groomsmen’s-outfits palaver. He’s staying overnight and he doesn’t want me there. It’s all part of the same thing, part of the wedding, the pregnancy. Do you know, Rosa, when Stephen told me about the baby, I realised I’d never heard him so happy. Ever. That was when I knew. I’ve been hiding it, avoiding it, but it’s there and it’s not going away.’
‘You’re kidding, right? About the never-sounding-so-happy.’
‘No, not kidding. Nothing – not that holiday in Venice, not the best sex ever – has ever made him sound the way he sounded when he got the news. I kept saying, “That’s great, Stephen,” but inside I felt like I’d died.’
Julia made herself drink some of her coffee and it tasted strange. Everything did today. Her mouth felt tinny, dry, as if her body had ingested a slow-acting poison and it was gradually working its way through her, doing its damage.
After the thirteen years she’d spent with Stephen, she’d thought she knew him inside out. Or as inside out as you could know any person, as Rosa liked to add. Rosa had trust issues.
But Julia hadn’t, not with Stephen. He was utterly straight with her, never lied, even by omission.
Except the w
edding had changed everything. Her straight-talking, urbane and charming partner had undergone a transformation. It had been so subtle at first: phone calls to his son, long chats with his daughter, calls to Grace.
Perfect Grace, as Rosa dubbed her.
He’d seemed withdrawn as a result, wanting to go to the cinema instead of dinner, preferring to sit in silence and stare at the screen instead of facing her across a table, where he’d have to look into her eyes and talk.
Julia had known what it was, had recognised it with horror: his son’s marriage had made him think about what family meant, had made him reconsider his choices. And because Grace was still sitting there unmarried, unattached, he had the opportunity of a second chance at marriage and happy families. Despite all he’d said about how he and Grace had agreed to split up, had wanted to, Julia could see that fifteen years later, Stephen actually believed he’d made a mistake.
He wanted to be back in the bosom of his family, picking up where he’d left off with his ex-wife and children, playing father of the groom, grandfather of the newborn, the whole enchilada.
There wasn’t any cruelty or unkindness intended. She wasn’t sure that Stephen even recognised what was happening, but she did. Without lifting a finger, his ex-wife and children had ensnared him, lured him away from her. The prospect of becoming a grandfather had sealed the deal.
All last night, she’d lain in bed examining the evidence, seeing the truth. She couldn’t stay.
‘I’ve tried so hard to understand over the years,’ she said sadly. ‘When they were young, we took Michael and Fiona everywhere with us. I cared for them and did all I could, but somehow, despite all that, I am not part of his family.’ She paused before she said finally, ‘I love them but there isn’t enough room for me.’
Julia couldn’t go back to work after her conversation with Rosa. Instead she went home, where she sat on the balcony with a cup of coffee and the packet of cigarettes she’d bought after leaving the café. She didn’t know why she was smoking: it was stupid, really. Like being a kid and doing something self-destructive to get back at your parents. But years ago, like many in the advertising industry, her creative process had been fuelled with coffee and cigarettes; it was all part of working late into the night, tossing ideas around. Smoking now was her way of going back to the way her mind used to work pre-Stephen. Because that was the reality. She needed to return to thinking of herself in a pre-Stephen sort of way – or even in a post-Stephen sort of way. For it was over. She’d known that for a while, but only now was she ready to face up to it.
There was no question of Stephen walking out on her. He was too honourable for that. And he loved her, she knew he did. But he loved the family he’d left behind even more. It was hard to say whether it was Grace or his children or the memory of the life he’d once had, but something was pulling him inexorably towards Bridgeport, and there was no space for Julia there. If she was to hold on to her self-respect and live an honest life, then she had to end it.
Don’t do anything crazy, Rosa had said.
Me, crazy? Julia had replied wryly.
There was no scent of cooking when Stephen arrived back in the apartment, even though it was one of Julia’s days to cook dinner. Maybe it was a salad, he thought miserably. He liked salads in the summer, but not in the winter or spring. The good thing about Julia was that she wouldn’t be offended if he said he’d rustle up something a bit warmer. He wasn’t a bad cook these days. He hadn’t cooked much in the days when he had been married and the children had been young. He felt guilty about that now; he felt guilty about lots of things. The past seemed to be haunting him lately.
It wasn’t fair to Julia. He knew she was upset about not going to Bridgeport with him, and she had every right to be; there was no reason he couldn’t take her along. Except he wanted to go alone.
‘I’m out here,’ she called, and he followed her voice out to the balcony. She was sitting with a blanket wrapped around her; cafetière, coffee and an ashtray on the table by her side. There were several cigarette butts in the ashtray, smoked right down.
‘You’re smoking?’ he said in astonishment.
‘I just felt like it,’ she said and looked at him. It was then that he saw her reddened eyes and pale face, the smears where her make-up had been washed away by tears.
‘What’s wrong, Julia?’ He sat beside her, grabbing her hand.
‘We’ve got to talk,’ she said quietly, and he realised how much he hated those words, the clichéd words from films and television where people looked into each other’s eyes and announced dramatic things.
He couldn’t do dramatic things, not any more. And then it occurred to him: she might be sick. He’d been working on a cancer campaign last year and it still hit him in the deep of the night. His heart gave a lurch of pity. Oh Lord, no, poor Julia.
‘Are you OK? Have you found something? A lump?’
She laughed then and shook her head. ‘No. No lump, Stephen, nothing like that, thankfully. Well, maybe there’s a lump, but it’s in my heart.’ She looked into his eyes. ‘I think it’s over between you and me.’
He drew back, let her hand drop. ‘What?’
‘Come on, Stephen,’ she said. ‘You don’t need me to spell it out. It really isn’t me, it’s you – funny though that sounds. We could use it in a slogan. Ever since Michael got engaged, you’ve been different.’
He could see her eyes tear up again and she felt blindly for another cigarette.
‘Don’t,’ he said, reaching out to still her hand. ‘You’re going to kill yourself.’
‘Let me kill myself if I want to,’ she said, shaking his hand off. ‘I’m an adult.’
With trembling fingers she lit the cigarette, and he watched her through narrowed eyes as a spiral of smoke rose lazily into the air.
‘You want to go back to Grace and Fiona and Michael and have it all back again. I know, I can tell. I don’t think you’ve actually figured it out yet, but I have – you’re like someone who’s made a vow to stay with me for ever but in his heart he wants to be elsewhere. I don’t want to be second best, Stephen.’
She stared at him through the trails of smoke. ‘I won’t be second best. I deserve better.’
He reached out for her hand again and this time she let him take it. Now there were tears in his eyes too.
‘But I love you, I won’t leave you. We’ve got a great life here.’ He waved a hand, gesturing around futilely.
‘Oh, Stephen,’ she said wearily. ‘Yes, we’ve a great life here, but I’m not going to live a lie. You want to be somewhere else – I can see it. I can’t come second any more. Let’s leave it at that.’
‘But …’ Stephen swept out a hand, indicating their apartment, the home they’d made together.
‘But nothing,’ Julia said, trying not to cry. ‘None of this means a thing when the real love is gone. I don’t want a man who’s staying with me because he’s kind. I want more than that. I’d like you to move out, and if you think about it, I dare say you’d like to move out too.’
With that, she got to her feet and went inside.
Stephen sat outside on the balcony and let the cold swirl around him. He wanted to go and comfort Julia, tell her she was wrong and what they had was still strong, but he didn’t. Because she was right.
The Madison and Fitzgerald nuptials were taking place on Friday, and Lizzie Fitzgerald phoned to ask if she might drop into the Golden Vanilla Cake Shop briefly with her two daughters who had arrived from Dublin and London respectively and wanted to inspect the cake for what they were calling their mother’s ‘ridiculous wedding’.
‘They never said that, surely?’ said Vonnie on the phone.
She could be coolly remote with clients when it was required, but to people like dear, sweet Lizzie, for whom life had obviously been hard until unexpectedly love had come along, she was kindness itself. What sort of daughters, she asked herself, could be so cruel?
‘I shouldn’t be telling you
this because you’ll think I’m an awful eejit, Vonnie, but they think Charlie’s marrying me for my money,’ Lizzie blurted out.
An image came into Vonnie’s mind of the couple on the wrong side of sixty who’d entered her premises months earlier, holding hands as they giggled over cakes like a couple of twenty-somethings. Neither of them looked as if they were exactly overburdened with cash. Charlie Madison had two electrical repair shops and Lizzie was retired from an executive assistant job.
They’d met two years previously at a rock’n’roll night at the Palace Hotel and had been going there ever since. Charlie wasn’t able to twirl Lizzie as much as he’d like – a tricky lumbar disc had put paid to that – but in every other respect they were having a ball.
Charlie had never been married before, Lizzie explained. Her daughters saw this as a sign that he was not fit for marriage in the first instance and was only marrying Lizzie to get his paws on her money. Or, as they saw it, their long-dead father’s money and, when it came down to brass tacks, their inheritance.
‘Is there a lot of money?’ asked Vonnie, abandoning all recommended business practices.
‘No,’ said Lizzie. ‘That’s the thing. Charlie has his business, but I’ve only got the house – and the roof needs doing or else the rain’s going to start coming in with the next big storm. We were going to tackle it when we got back from our honeymoon. We’re going to Capri for a week.’
It was the way she said it: honeymoon. A voice that spoke of a woman who’d been alone for a long time.
‘Maybe you think I’m mad too,’ she finished sadly.
‘No,’ Vonnie said with great firmness. ‘I think you’re the sanest woman I know. I think you need some of my angel cake right now, in fact. But before we organise that, tell me, when do the girls want to come in? Give me an exact time.’
Lorraine lit candles in the inner room and put on the 1950s music the couple liked.