Milkshakes and Heartbreaks at the Starlight Diner

by Helen Cox

  ‘It doesn’t change anything,’ I said, sharper than I meant to. ‘I appreciate the thought, Alan. I do. But I’ve just had enough secrets.’

  ‘Understood,’ he replied while adjusting his hat. I gave him another hug.

  ‘I feel like if I let you go I’m letting it all go. New York and everything,’ I said with my arms still wrapped round him.

  ‘Hey, we’re not going anywhere. And neither’s New York.’

  I finally released him from my grip and nodded. He smiled. If I said anymore I’d probably wind up in tears so instead I picked up my case, blew him a kiss and strode off into the airport.

  Waiting in the departure lounge for my flight to be called, I looked around at the other passengers booked on the early evening plane back to London. They were an odd assortment of tourist families in garish clothes, elderly couples ticking The Big Apple off their ‘trip of a lifetime’ list, businessmen suited up for a eight-hour flight and the odd, lone traveller saddled with a backpack big enough to live in, flaunting their own musty force field that kept all the seats surrounding them vacant. Those who weren’t stuffing their face with fistfuls of crisps or counting up the last few cents they had left were having muted arguments with their companions over something they’d left at the hotel or who had the passports or some other such trifle.

  Ferreting out a broken compact mirror from my satchel, I looked at my reflection and recalled a line from some old movie that I was sure had been set in New York. Shirley MacLaine looks into her compact and Jack Lemmon points out that it’s smashed. ‘Yes, I know,’ she replies, ‘I like it that way. It makes me look the way I feel.’ I sighed. Was I supposed to stay in splinters for good?

  ‘He’s had a hold on you for long enough.’ Isn’t that what Alan had said? And he was right. But the forgiving myself bit, that wouldn’t come easy. Three thousand miles hadn’t been far enough to keep Esther Delaney and Esther Knight apart and I wasn’t convinced they’d ever co-exist in harmony. They hated each other. I hated myself. Tears formed at that horrible realisation.

  I really hated myself.

  That one thought circled on a conveyer belt in my mind. I scrunched my eyes shut, trying to hold back tears.

  I wanted to be punished. Is that what had kept me quiet all this time? Every time Michael had lumbered on top of me uninvited. Or squeezed my neck in his right hand. I’d even wanted to keep the mugging quiet because I thought it was what I deserved.

  Esther was weak.

  Esther was stupid.

  Esther deserved all she got.

  Foraging through my bag again, this time for a drink, I took a swig of tepid water, hoping to ease the sudden nausea that’d seized me. I closed my eyes and took in deep, slow breaths of stale airport oxygen. Whatever I chose to do next I couldn’t go on like this. That much was for sure.

  It was then I remembered something I’d said to Mona ages ago about Jack not being able to fix me. It was a fleeting comment at the time, designed to get her off my back about forging a relationship with him. But it was true. In the short time we were together I’d become so wrapped up in him – how it felt to kiss him, have him hold me close, hear him laugh at my jokes. Even after the way things had ended I couldn’t deny it: I’d never felt about anybody the way I felt about Jack. Had I started to think of him as the answer to all my problems? If so, what a joke that turned out to be. But it didn’t matter because holding Jack up as the answer to all my problems wasn’t right anyway.

  The only person who could change my life was me.

  I’d tried running away. I’d tried hiding out. I’d tried beating myself up. I’d even tried falling in love. None of it had proven fruitful. Maybe Alan was right about forgiveness. Certainly I seemed to be running out of strategies for getting my life back on track.

  Three short chimes rang out over the tannoy system: ‘Could all passengers for flight 180 JFK to London Heathrow check in at gate number seven please. That’s all customers for flight 180 to gate number seven.’

  Chapter Twenty-four

  After a long bath, I tiptoed into my old bedroom and curled up on the bed in a white, towel cocoon. The room was a dingy mustard colour I’d never liked. A colour I tried to hide with a huge Roxy Music poster I pinned to the wall about fifteen years ago. Lying there, I began thinking about the last time I’d stayed in this room. The night of the crash. I couldn’t face going back to the flat to see our smiling faces imprisoned in all the picture frames. Nor could I bear the thought of lying awake in our bed knowing, because of me, his side would stay empty for good. So I’d lay awake here instead. I thought now exactly what I thought then: that somehow the reset button had been pressed on my life. That for everything I’d accomplished: completing an English degree, surviving teacher training and marrying a man I thought I loved, I’d been sent back in time and space to the place I’d started out. And this time, even though I’d sold almost all my earthly belongings, migrated to America, earned a wage in Atlantic City and New York, and fallen in love with an actor, here I was again. Back with Bryan, Graham, Phil, Andy and Paul. No flying DeLorean required.

  ‘Esther!’ Mum called from downstairs.

  ‘Yeah?’ I pushed my head out of the nest so she could hear me.

  ‘Dinner’ll be ready in ten minutes.’

  ‘Alright. Down in a bit.’ I sat up, started drying my hair off with a spare towel, pulled my suitcase onto the bed and unzipped it. Before leaving New York I’d spent the last few dollars in my pocket on a trip to the laundromat and as I opened my case the chalky scent of Tide washing powder hit me.

  I bit my lower lip.

  There. At the bottom, beneath the books I’d smuggled back across the Atlantic, creased and tangled in the unwashed clothes I hadn’t had time to clean, was the chequered shirt Jack lent me the morning after we were first together.

  I hadn’t been paying attention to what garments were going in the suitcase when I, as usual, left my packing to the last possible minute. I’d been more concerned about which novels I could fit in once the clothes had been accounted for. Picking up the shirt by the collar, I let it dangle on my index finger a moment before pressing it flat to my face.

  It still smelt of bergamot.

  I closed my eyes and breathed in the last traces of Jack I had left.

  Adrift in the scent, I thought once again about what it was like to rest my head on his chest. The way his eyes would squint at the corners when I said something acerbic. How my stomach upturned when he carried me in his arms. My chest tightened; there was a lump lodged somewhere within. Sweating and pulsing. Was this what it felt like to pine? If so, it would explain all the miserable poetry that’d been written over the past few hundred years. The ache spread from my chest, down to my stomach. There it settled, and fermented.

  It shouldn’t be possible to still want somebody who betrayed you. You shouldn’t ever have to think about the way their eyebrow flickered when they told a joke or the way their beard tickled the skin when they kissed along your shoulder…

  ‘Esther! Are you ready? Because dinner is and it’s getting cold.’

  ‘Alright!’ I called back down to Mum, before pulling my damp hair back into a ponytail, jumping into a pair of jeans and, pausing just long enough to acknowledge how much of an emotional self-harmer I was, put on Jack’s shirt, securing it with a belt.

  ‘Is that a man’s shirt?’ Mum asked as I pulled out a chair at the dining room table.

  ‘No,’ I lied, ‘it’s how women wear them in America.’ I didn’t think Mum was going to swallow that. Surely she’d suss how such a garment might have come into my possession? She was, however, too distracted by the fact I’d spilt my juice as I sat up to the table and tutted when I soaked up the mess with a napkin.

  ‘So, all unpacked now?’ she asked, trying to ignore the orange stain on her freshly washed, floral tablecloth.

  ‘Depends. Are you talking about figurative or literal baggage?’ I half-smiled.

  ‘Both.’ Mum gave me
sideways look and spooned some broccoli onto her plate before offering me the bowl.

  ‘Literally, yes. The figurative stuff always needs more work than you’d like,’ I said, accepting the dish and heaping a load of veg on the side of my chicken.

  ‘Yes.’ Mum looked at me and squinted. ‘You’re still at that age where everything’s so complicated, aren’t you?’ she added, topping up her glass of water.

  ‘Well, I didn’t ask for the complication,’ I reminded her.

  ‘None of us ever do,’ she in turn reminded me. ‘None of us ever…’ She paused because there was a knock at the front door. ‘Always in the middle of dinner,’ she muttered.

  ‘It’s alright, Mum, I’ll go,’ I said, tucking my chair back under the mahogany table. I walked through the passageway from the kitchen and swung open the front door with little thought to who might be on the other side of it.

  At first I didn’t recognise him. He looked somehow shorter since I’d last seen him. His haircut was different – still short around the ears but the front was longer and fell in sandy curtains into his face.

  ‘Ryan?’

  ‘Hi,’ he said, shoving his hands in his pockets. He was wearing jeans teamed with a white vest and a mint-green shirt over the top.

  ‘What’re you doing here?’ Not all that polite, I admit. But neither was spilling the secrets I’d shared with him to Boyle. A fact I vowed to grill him on the second I could be sure Mum wouldn’t butt in.

  ‘Nice to see you too,’ he said, making a joke out of my tendency to be tart. Just as he’d always done. ‘Your Mum rang to say you were back in England. So I thought I’d come round. You know, check in.’

  ‘Mum rang you?’ I said. She was such an interferer.

  ‘Yeah. You okay?’

  ‘I’m fine. Well, you know. Better.’ I shook my head. There was an awkward pause.

  I looked at him and he at me, and neither of us really knew what to say. Was he wondering if I knew he’d talked to Boyle? Or was he thinking about the last time we were alone together? The night of the weird, drunken kiss.

  That night, he’d agreed to meet me at The Orange Tree pub in Southgate. He hadn’t known why I’d asked to meet. He’d just known I’d needed him. He had been the only person I was still talking to at that point who wasn’t in some way connected to my husband. The only person who could help me escape.

  ‘Did you want to come in?’ I opened the door wider.

  ‘Actually, I was wondering if you wanted to come out for a walk. In the park maybe?’

  ‘A walk in the park,’ I repeated. ‘Well, we were just having dinner.’ I felt a bit like I was nine again, explaining that Mum wouldn’t let me come out until I’d eaten something. As it turned out, Mum’s eat first, play later policy had been amended since I hit adulthood. She’d crept up behind me in an attempt to eavesdrop and took his invitation as an opportunity to intervene.

  ‘Esther, I’ll just put your food in the oven if you want to go for a walk with Ryan.’

  I glared back at her down the passage. Always meddling. I didn’t want to go for a walk.

  ‘Oh, hello, Edith,’ he called through to her and smiled at me again. I looked between the two of them and adjusted my glasses on my nose; suspecting some kind of conspiracy to ensure I got fresh air and exercise. Two things I’d never been that keen on.

  ‘OK. That sounds nice.’ I toyed with the edge of my shirt, Jack’s shirt. Then crossed my arms. ‘Want to go right now?’

  ‘Yeah,’ he said, nodding.

  We strode out together into the warmth of the early evening, leaving Mum stood on the doorstep, watching after us. Though the sun was falling, dusk had yet to take hold. We walked the streets lined with identical red-brick houses without even thinking. Our feet knew the destination well enough to leave our minds out of the process, creating more space in my head for wondering.

  What was Ryan expecting here?

  The last time we’d been alone, just before Michael had died, he’d kissed me. A gentle kiss. He knew what I’d been through so he didn’t push for anything more. But he did kiss me. And I, glad of an ally, hadn’t resisted. But that was over two years ago. He couldn’t be expecting anything to develop between us now, could he? Whilst I tried to calculate his motives, he chatted about his day. He was a fireman and thus always had the best day job stories out of everyone I knew. Who doesn’t love to hear about daring cat rescues?

  Once inside the park, Ryan steered us to a large lake at the centre. He sat down on one of the wooden benches and I followed suit.

  ‘So, how are you, really?’ he said, looking over at me.

  ‘Is it safe to talk or are you wearing a wire?’ My jaw tightened. The idea of him talking with Boyle made my stomach churn.

  ‘What? What’re you talking about now, woman?’ said Ryan. He knew I hated it when he tagged ‘woman’ on the end of sentences. He was a notorious wind-up merchant but now wasn’t the time.

  ‘You know what I’m talking about,’ I said, my voice steely.

  ‘Do I look like I know what you’re talking about?’ He didn’t. But he must.

  ‘The reporter that called you? Jimmy Boyle?’ I hung my head on one side to let him know I wasn’t fooled by his attempts to act the innocent.

  ‘Um…Who?’ Ryan scratched his head and gave his ear lobe a light tug as if that was where he kept his brain and he was trying to stimulate his cerebral cortex by hand. ‘The only person I’ve spoken to about you is your therapist.’

  ‘My what?’ I narrowed my eyes. Ryan knew that look and shuffled in his seat.

  ‘He said he was your therapist.’ He had a rare, sheepish expression on his face.

  ‘And you believed him?’ I crossed my arms. I think I preferred it when I thought he’d blabbed to the press.

  ‘Sorry but you’ve been through a lot, Esther.’ He clasped his hands together and let them hang between his legs.

  ‘Oh well, thanks a bunch,’ I said, sharpening my tone further.

  ‘Well, how was I supposed to know? All the yanks have therapists, don’t they? I thought you’d just…I said I was sorry. Did he…’

  ‘Publish the frightening past I’d been hiding for the world to see? Yeah.’ I gazed into the lake. Remembering. I thought I’d lost Jack for good that day. But it hadn’t been the end. Just a bad omen.

  ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t know. I was worried about you.’ He moved closer.

  ‘It’s alright.’ I nodded. ‘At least you didn’t sell me out.’

  ‘Of course not. You didn’t think that?’ He put a tentative arm round my shoulders.

  ‘Ryan…’ I closed my eyes. ‘Can I ask you a question? It’s pretty direct.’

  ‘That’s the kind of question I prefer.’

  I opened my eyes again to see him smiling.

  ‘Well, it’s not that I don’t appreciate the concern but, what is this? What are you expecting here? A straight answer will do.’ I stared at him, waiting.

  He looked me up and down. ‘When have I ever expected anything from you?’ he asked, moving his arm from my shoulders and propping it on the back of the bench. ‘When have I ever asked you for anything? I understand how this works. I’m a friend.’

  ‘But we… we… kissed.’

  ‘You’re right. That is a very serious matter,’ he said with a familiar twinkle in his eye. I shoved him and he laughed. ‘So I took advantage once. Sue me. Isn’t that what the Americans say?’

  ‘I’m trying to forget about America right now.’

  Oh Esther, you liar. Whose shirt is that on your back? You could’ve just worn any old T-shirt. But no. You’re holding on.

  ‘Any particular reason? Haunted by crime-fighting turtles living in the sewer system? I hear they eat pizza down there too. Disgusting.’ I gave Ryan a withering look but laughed in spite of myself.

  ‘I don’t want to say why but you’re going to make me, aren’t you?’ I pouted my lips to one side.

  ‘Letting you off the hook isn’t
traditionally in my remit.’ He grinned. I looked closer at him. He had a soft, cherubic face that shone with kindness. In that moment, I wanted to coax him into making the mistake of kissing me again. An urge I resisted only because I recognised it as a last ditch attempt to escape the truth I was about to impart.

  ‘OK. This is embarrassing so I’m not going to look at you when I say it.’ I looked back into the lake.

  He laughed again. ‘Alright.’

  I paused, wondering exactly how much of the truth I should share with him lest Boyle called again impersonating someone else. A fictional life guru perhaps, or some other such nonsense. It was probably best just to stick with the basic facts for now.

  ‘I’m in love with somebody.’ I stuck my chin out as far as I could as if to prove I could still hold my head high, even though I’d turned out to be a total sap. Just like any fool. Ryan was quiet for a moment so I looked at him out of the corner of my eye. Seeing my eyes dart prompted him.

  ‘An American?’ he asked.

  ‘No.’ I half-smiled. ‘A legal alien.’

  Ryan frowned and had to think before recognising the reference.

  ‘Oh. “An Englishman in New York”,’ he said at last. ‘Forgive me for being logical about this but if you’re in love with someone over there then what’re you doing here?’

  ‘He…the guy, betrayed me. And I’m still angry.’ I looked at him and swept my hair out of my face. ‘Bet you wish you hadn’t bothered coming round to our house tonight. More grief. I’m what the Americans call bad news.’

  Ryan shook his head. ‘You don’t think I’ve already worked that out? Come here.’ He leant his head to the right, indicating I should move towards him. I shuffled over in his direction. He wrapped an arm around me. Let me put my head on his shoulder.

  ‘We’re not going to have sex,’ I said, then winced, thankful that he couldn’t see my face.