by Sara Downing
So Alice and I both admire her immensely, and have a lot to be thankful to her for. Our teenage years would have been significantly more challenging without her, but not only did she ease the way for us both, she was a fantastic friend too, and we always knew we could turn to her if we needed help. As in the sort of help you can’t really ask your Mum about when you’re fifteen or sixteen. Such as how we felt the first time we went to ‘first base’ with a boy, and when it would be appropriate to let him go any further. She was brilliant at all that; even now it brings me out in a cold sweat to imagine ever having to discuss those sorts of issues with Mum. I just don’t think we would have done, so God knows how we’d have fared. But then poor Sarah must have got through it herself, somehow. She’d had no big sister to turn to when she was discovering boys and she certainly wouldn’t have turned to her younger, completely innocent and inexperienced sisters.
‘That sounds brilliant!’ I reply to Lulu, bending down to her level and holding her hands, as much to tether her to the spot as anything else, and I really mean it too. Had someone asked me yesterday what I’d have liked to do today I’d probably have said mope in my room all day, play some old CD’s and sit around in my PJ’s. But actually, a day out with Sarah and the kids will be great. I can’t remember when we last did that. And whenever we did, it would have been with the men in tow, too, and that always puts a completely different spin on the day. Having to keep the other half happy as well as do the whole family thing, and I’d never been sure that Mark and Nigel, Sarah’s husband, actually liked each other, although they both managed to put a brave face on it. So there would have been all the politics of that to deal with too.
Sarah and I will have a lovely day, focus on the kids one hundred percent, plus catch up on each other’s lives and have a really good natter. Will I tell her about Tom? I don’t know yet, haven’t decided. Let’s just see how things go.
‘Bloody hell, Grace, you have been through it,’ Sarah says, sounding emotionally drained when I finish telling her about the whole Tom-and-me fiasco, whilst we sip our coffees on a bench in the outdoor play area. The kids had been amusing themselves quite self-sufficiently, so the timing had seemed right to be honest with her and just come out with it all. And I feel so much better for it, too. I needed someone to tell me I’m not behaving like a foolish schoolgirl, that these sort of ‘adventures’ can happen to normal, sane women like me, and to help me come to terms with the grief I feel, so deep, deep down in the pit of my stomach. It’s not going to go away or even get a little bit better unless I tell someone about it; I can’t tell Evie, she’s not even in this country at the moment, and it would be wholly inappropriate to tell Alex, given her closeness to Mark, and Mum, well, that just goes without saying. Mum and I are very close, but there are boundaries….
‘You have to talk to him, Grace,’ Sarah pleads. ‘What if you’ve completely misunderstood something totally innocent? She might just have been a friend or something?’
‘Yeah and she looked really friendly from where I was sitting,’ I reply sarcastically. ‘The sort of intimate friendly like she either knows him really well, or doesn’t know him at all but can’t wait to drag him back to her lair and rip his pants off. Why should I talk to him when he’s done that to me? I’m so angry with him I might just kill him.’
‘No you won’t,’ she says, ‘You love him. This is the BIG ONE. You thought Mark was, but I could always see you came second best to his career. If you didn’t you’d have had a ring on your finger a long time ago. You put up with such a lot from him. Tosser.’
‘Blimey Sarah, that’s a bit strong. Did you really dislike him that much?’ I say, amazed. No one has ever been quite so blunt in their opinion not just of Mark, but of our relationship. Then without waiting to hear her reply: ‘I always thought I was happy and that it was just in these past few months, but happiness is all relative, isn’t it? When I look back on it, he was a bit of a control freak. About everything, not just the wanting a baby stuff. I couldn’t be completely me with him. With Tom, that’s all so different. We’re grown up enough to know what we want from life and to feel we have a right to things being perfect, and if they’re not, well, that’s that, I suppose. Maybe it’s just a maturity thing, something we discover with age and experience. But now he’s gone and blown that too, so he can’t have been that mature, can he?’
‘Have you heard from him?’ Sarah asks.
‘A load of worried-sounding messages, which I haven’t replied to, of course. Let him stew for a bit,’ I reply.
Sarah was a great one to use as a sounding board. She had vast and varied experience when it came to men. She’d travelled for a year after graduating, spending time in Europe and further afield, and had come back with, not just some excellent knowledge of the various mother tongues and local cultures, but intimate knowledge of male tongues from most of the countries she had visited, too.
There’d been Frederique le Fantastique in France, Pedro the Pants in Spain, Giovanni the Gorgeous in Italy and Heinrich the Horny in Germany, to name but a few, and she had kept in touch with some of them when she returned home, and maybe still does, who knows. But then when she fell in love properly, she really fell, hook line and sinker. Although God knows why she chose a man with a name like Nigel, when she’d had the pick of all the exotic names under the European sun. Not to knock Nigel, of course, he’s a good man, just a little on the ordinary side, but maybe that had been just what she’d needed, after all that adventure. Maybe deep down inside she’d just been looking for a Nigel the Nice amongst all those Pedros and Giovannis.
We glance across at the kids – just a cursory glance to make sure they are (a) still there and haven’t been abducted by dirty old men in flasher macs and (b) still in one piece on whichever activity they are currently climbing on. Fortunately they all seem to hunt in a pack, a bit like we three did when we were kids. They look out for each other, too, which is nice. And Charlie is so protective of his little sisters; not surprising really, given that he almost lost his Mum and his youngest sister when Sarah was giving birth to Lulu.
I’m sure Sarah has put it all out of her mind now, in the way that mothers do with childbirth, or there’d only ever be one child per family. But the rest of us certainly haven’t and I will never forget the looks on Mum and Dad’s faces that day I visited Sarah in hospital. Basically, we’d all come to say goodbye to her, as none of us thought she would pull through. And it had been touch and go with Lulu for quite some time too. Sarah had had an emergency caesarean which had turned scary; they’d had difficulty getting Lulu out and she’d lost gallons of blood. I hate to imagine it but I can’t help myself – I’ve watched too many hospital dramas where the blood is all over the floor and the medical staff keep slipping in it. Vile to think of my precious sister being that almost-dead body on the table, with the blood and gore everywhere, and the paddles on her chest to try and get her heart started again. She makes light of it, she says she never felt like she was going to die – she just had this massive urge to get better as she had a baby, plus two other children and a husband, to get back to. They needed her, so she pulled through. For her, it’s as simple as that. But for the rest of us it’s still a bad dream that won’t completely go away, and it haunts me sometimes when I see her, thinking of how much we could all have lost.
Whilst I’m sitting there pensively with my sister, my phone rings again, and it’s Tom. I have a really strong urge to answer it; I’m feeling confrontational, emboldened by the discussion with Sarah, but then at the last moment, with a sigh, I chicken out. I just can’t face speaking to him. I don’t know what I would say, really. A few seconds later there is the beep of a text message. Here he goes again. Persistent, isn’t he? Has he finished entertaining Miss Blondey Locks Long Legs now then and fancies getting his boring old teacher girlfriend round for some extra-curricular fun?
‘Grace, where are you? Why are you ignoring me? Please let me know what’s going on & if anything’s wrong. Ca
me to the house & you weren’t there. Please PLEASE let me know UR OK. Love you & miss you, Tom xxx,’ it reads.
I snort at it with derision and show it to Sarah. The expression on her face is the opposite of mine. She is taking sides with him, of all things! I don’t believe it!
‘You have to tell him where you are, Grace. Imagine if it was you, you’d be going out of your mind. At least send him a text and let him know you’re still alive, even if you don’t want to see him. Do it now,’ she implores.
‘OK then, I will, but only because you’re my big sister and you know best,’ I say, bowing to her superior knowledge on these matters.
‘Am OK. At M&D’s for a few days. Need some space. Grace,’ I type.
‘There you are,’ I say, showing it to Sarah, ‘are you satisfied now?’
‘You normally add kisses to all your texts so you have to put one in otherwise what will he think?’ she replies.
‘Well, so he should be thinking,’ I say indignantly. ‘The man IS cheating on me, after all. He shouldn’t be expecting kisses on the end of his texts.’
‘You don’t know that Grace,’ she says, so calmly. ‘Just do it,’ she adds, exasperated, in little more than a whisper, so I do, and hit the Send button quickly before I can change my mind.
Several hours later we return to Mum and Dad’s exhausted, but happy. Sarah and I have had a great time, and the kids even more so. They’ve worn us out and they are tired and suntanned, and full of all sorts of sugary treats which, given the fatigue, haven’t (yet) sent them bouncing round the room like whirling dervishes. Sarah will probably reap the side-effects of that when she takes them all home for a bath later.
‘You look better,’ Mum says kindly as we struggle through the door with our empty picnic hamper.
‘It was great, Mum,’ I reply, smiling at her in an attempt to show that she need worry about me a little less today than she did yesterday.
‘Cuppa?’ Mum asks. ‘Oh, by the way, Mark rang.’
‘Mark?’ I say, sounding surprised, but then realising that for Mum, he is the obvious person to be calling. He is, they still assume, as I have not yet corrected them, the source of my anguish at the moment.
‘He’s coming down to see you. Driving down now, in fact. He should be here in the next half an hour or so.’
Oh great, that’s just fantastic. I thought I was through with sorting everything out with Mark, other than the house stuff once that all nears completion. What on earth is he coming down here to see me about? Surely he doesn’t want a big reconciliation or anything daft like that? Mark and I are well and truly over, we both know that and I thought we’d both moved on.
Sarah decides to drag the kids off home and leave the house uncluttered for Mark’s visit. Actually I think I’d prefer her to stay, for a bit of moral support, but I can see where she’s coming from. I’m not really looking forward to seeing him, I just can’t think what it is that’s so important to bring him down here, but as he is making the effort to come, I do have to see him and hear him out.
Taking refuge in my room, I hear him arrive and greet Mum and Dad. To say they chat would be the wrong word to use, more like Dad grunts at him – he is the man who has broken his little girl’s heart, after all – and Mum just tries to be polite and offers him a cup of tea, the solution to every problem.
He is already sitting with said cup of tea when I gingerly come downstairs and into the kitchen. Mum and Dad do an amazing disappearing act, something about vegetables needing weeding, or some such excuse, and once Dad cottons on to Mum’s nudges and winks they are gone before I can make a bolt for it, back to my room, and Mark and I are alone together.
‘Hi Grace, you’re looking well. You took some tracking down!’ he begins. ‘Having a nice family visit, are you?’
Like he cares. Come on Mark, say what you have to say, then go.
He doesn’t wait for my reply. ‘I’ve been thinking.’ Here we go. Another of Mark’s prepared speeches, no doubt. I haven’t said a word to him yet, but that doesn’t seem to stop him launching into his diatribe.
‘I still love you, Grace,’ he says. Shock, horror on my face. ‘Um…I want us to have another try. We had so much, it seems silly to throw it all away for nothing. Um….you’re the love of my life, I’ve been missing you so much. Come home, please?’ Not quite the usual eloquent Mark, but more a lonely and regretful Mark stumbling over his words, and not really knowing exactly how to say it. Nothing lawyer-like there at all.
He kneels on the floor in front of me and takes my hand, gazing up at me. For a brief moment I wonder if I really have done the right thing. Left a man I loved and with whom I expected to spend the rest of my life, for an affair which looks like it has fizzled out before it has barely started. Was I wooed by the excitement of the chase, in the same way that Tom clearly was with me? Am I just as shallow? I start to wobble a bit and suddenly I don’t know what I’m doing any more. Before I can take charge of my senses, Mark has pulled me to him and is kissing me. But it’s like it’s not really me. It feels like another one of those weird out-of-body experiences, where I’m watching myself do something and have no control over it.
Suddenly a light bulb comes on in my head and I realise what is happening. I push Mark away and sit back down in my chair, looking at him as though he has just committed the vilest act. I can’t help the horror spreading across my face, but his expression is one of total dismay, he looks utterly crushed.
‘Did you really think that’s all it would take?’ I ask. ‘You come down here and force yourself on me, remind me what I’ve been missing, and I’ll follow you back home, meek as a lamb? We’ve been through all this so many times, Mark. I thought you were OK with it? There’s nothing there any more, I’m sorry.’
‘Come back home, Grace, and you could have what you want.’ Hasn’t he been listening to me? Not only now but all those times when we talked this through, over and over again. ‘We can park the idea of a baby for now if you like. Leave it for a year or two. I don’t even mind if you carry on working. We can do things your way for once.’ Doesn’t sound much like my way to me. More like the same old Mark, trying to control everything and expecting me to fall into line. I can’t believe he is still so delusional about the starting a family thing, too. It’s like our break-up never happened, like we never had all those conversations. The man is unbelievable.
‘Go home Mark. It’s over. Please try to understand that there is no ‘you and me’ and hasn’t been for ages, and never will be again. I don’t love you any more, and I certainly don’t want to get back with you. I’ll come and get my stuff from the house as soon as I get back from here, then we’ve only the house sale to wait for and it’s all done and dusted. Go home,’ I say again.
He looks dejected but what did he expect? That I would jump straight back into his arms with just one declaration of love, after everything we have been through?
‘Your teacher friend consoling you now then, is he?’ he asks bitterly, and suddenly his face is no longer dejected, but furious. It’s like someone has pressed his big red rage button. I hadn’t realised he knew about Tom and me, but then he did suspect for a while that we were more than friends, even at the stage when that was all we really were, so maybe he was just throwing in a random comment, in the hope that it would strike a nerve.
At that moment Dad comes into the kitchen to check everything is OK, and Mark turns to him.
‘Don’t suppose your precious daughter’s told you about her lover, has she? How she left me for her boss? Left her fiancé of five years for a sordid fling. She’s a tease, that one.’
By now Mark is puce and fuming. Dad isn’t having any of it though, and despite all the years of boyfriend dramas he’s been through with his three daughters, I have never seen him do quite what he does next. I see his Irish blood literally boil and rise to the surface and he seems to grow about six inches in stature (Mark is tall, and Dad obviously feels he has a height disadvantage) and pretty much pick
s Mark up by the scruff of his neck, ejecting him from the house within the space of a couple of seconds. He slams the door behind him, rubs his hands together with an ‘Ahhhh’ to show how pleased he is with himself, then calmly comes back into the kitchen.
Mum pops up from nowhere with a smile. ‘So, have you two love-birds patched things up?’ she asks me.
Twenty-Three
‘So that’s how it is,’ I say to Mum and Dad, with a big sigh. I’ve told them my torrid tale. We’ve been through everything, the break-up with Mark, falling for Tom, the start of the affair, right through to spotting him with The Blonde and making a bolt for home. Obviously, for the sake of my parent’s hearts, I left out the nitty-gritty of the finer detail – Dad has no need to know about his precious younger daughter’s intimate love-life details. No, just a bare outline is more than enough to give them an idea of what’s been going on in my life and my head over the past few months.
‘Oh Grace, what a mess,’ Mum says, and I feel guilty for putting them through all this, at their age. She slumps into her chair with a long sigh. But – and I am amazed at this – she doesn’t embark on a long lecture on the wrongs I have done, and how I shouldn’t have been with one man when I was already with another. It would have been quite unthinkable for her to do something like that in her day, I’m sure. But there you are, I’ve done it, and whatever they think of me, I owe it to them to tell them everything. Well, I’d had no choice after Mark’s vitriolic outburst earlier, but actually now that it’s all out in the open, I am quite relieved. I don’t like having to keep secrets, and although I’d never really lied to them as such, I’d allowed them to assume something which wasn’t entirely correct, and had been very economical with the truth.