Ebb and Flow

by Mary O'Sullivan

  “That’s fine, thank you,” he said to the girl, giving the impression it was something he had been expecting to be delivered.

  It was. His hands shook as he tore open the flap. The shaking spread to his body as he drew out the photograph. It was in colour and very clear even though it had been taken at night, as he and Maxine had slept in the guest room of his home, naked, entwined, sated. He picked up the envelope and shook it, then ripped it flat open just to be sure. There was no note. He grabbed the internal phone and buzzed the front desk.

  “Who delivered that envelope?”

  “A courier. He wore a helmet and leathers so he was obviously a bike courier. He didn’t have a delivery docket though. Is there a problem, Andrew?”

  “No, none at all,” Andrew lied and then put down the phone.

  Fuck! Laide was really prepared to play hardball. And it wasn’t just Andrew’s reputation at risk. Maxine’s career could suffer too. And what would this do to Ella? Damn Jason Laide!

  The door opened again. Andrew grabbed the photo and quickly flipped it upside down. Ella stood in the open doorway, her eyes puffy, her nose slightly red but her shoulders thrown back and her chin held high.

  “More secrets, Andrew?”

  “Just sorting through some stuff here,” he answered as casually as possible. “Time for a spring clean, I think.”

  Picking up the photo, picture side turned into his body, he walked over to the shredder and watched until the last millimetre had been drawn into the churning blades. When he looked up, Ella was still standing at the door, her gaze steady.

  “I agree, Andrew. It’s time for a spring clean. Why don’t we go some place we can talk? We can’t keep putting it off for ever.”

  Andrew looked at the woman who had shared his bed, his business, his life for so long. For the first time he felt not just regret but a deep sadness at the thought of a future without her by his side. He nodded his head slowly.

  “You’re right, Ella. We must talk. Where?”

  “How about the Ballyhaven site? It’s quiet and private there. And we still own it.”

  Andrew smiled at the irony of the location she had chosen. He shut down his computer. He would not be doing any further work today. By tacit agreement, they each took their own cars. There was after all, a strong possibility that they would be going in different directions by the time they had finished the spring clean of their lives.

  * * *

  Ella was first to arrive at the broken-down gate which was the most convenient entrance to the Ballyhaven site. She opened the boot of her car and hesitated for a moment before taking out a box and opening it up. Then she kicked off her high heels and put on the expensive red leather shoes Jason Laide had given her in the hospital, glad now that she had felt uncomfortable enough about the gift to hide it in her car. Not a good match for her pink jacket but then colour co-ordination was the least of her problems at the moment. She watched as Andrew approached, his face solemn. He was driving slowly. Not something that came naturally to him. Nothing about this situation was natural.

  He got out of his car and stood in front of her.

  “Will we walk?” he asked.

  Silently Ella headed for the gate and scaled it with ease. She was getting good at this. Andrew followed and they set off. They did not have to discuss the direction. Both knew they were headed for the glade. The place which had once been special to them.

  Ella glanced around her as she trudged along. It seemed to her that nature was setting a very apt backdrop to the death of her marriage. Underfoot, the ground was sodden, needing to be ploughed through rather than walked on. The red leather shoes were by now frilled by layers of squelchy mud. The sky was grey, low, promising rain and darkness. Ahead the trees of the little glade they used to call their forest stood stark against the skyline. Today they seemed cold and unwelcoming, their very stillness a judgment.

  Ella led the way to the big oak and, mindless of the damp ground underneath her, sat with her back against the gnarled trunk. Andrew sat down beside her. A crow squawked, nearby the brook gurgled, a twig snapped, a pigeon filled the air with its plaintive coo – but Ella and Andrew were silent. Prepared speeches were forgotten as they sat side by side and each absorbed pain from the other. Andrew reached for Ella’s hand and held it tightly. She returned the pressure of his fingers.

  “I’m so sorry, El,” he whispered.

  “Do you love Maxine Doran?”

  His lips moved but no sound came out. Ella squeezed his hand.

  “Yes. I do,” he whispered. “How long have you known?”

  Ella withdrew her hand and turned to face her husband. There were tears in his eyes. His beautiful dark-blue eyes with the curling lashes. She lifted her hand and touched his cheek.

  “A while. But I didn’t allow myself to admit it until recently. I’m glad it’s out in the open now. I want you to be happy, Andy. You’ve been good to me. But we’re not right for each other. We’re a business, not a relationship. We both deserve better.”

  Ella watched as disbelief and relief chased across his face. Her words seemed to lift a weight from him. He raised an eyebrow.

  “You’ve met someone too?”

  “In a way, I have.” Ella smiled at his puzzled frown. “Not a man. I’ve rediscovered Ella Deasy and I want to get to know her better. If that sounds like weird psychobabble, it probably is. It’s very difficult to put logical words to the illogicality of my life for the past year.”

  “It’s bound to have been confusing. You had a very serious accident. I didn’t always have the patience I should have had with your slow recovery.”

  “Aah! The accident. My excuse. My shelter.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Ella picked up a curled leaf from the ground and began to smooth it out. It crumbled in her hand. Rubbing her palms together to free them from the debris of the decayed leaf, she took a deep breath.

  “Andy, can we be really honest with each other at this stage? It might be more painful now but it would mean we could both go forward with a clean slate.”

  He nodded his agreement and then Ella tried to explain to him – and to herself – why she had married him in the first place, how she had come to realise that she did not really love him as a wife should a husband, how she now knew that their relationship must end.

  “Peter Sheehan somehow unlocked the paralysis in my mind. I think he did it by very skilfully and calmly encouraging me to find the answers myself. ”

  “Yes. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is his field.”

  “But that wasn’t the problem. Not really. Yes, I was getting flashbacks to the accident but not of the crash itself. What haunted me and took over my life was the ghost of Karen Trevor.”

  “Ghost!”

  Ella laughed as she saw the expression on Andrew’s face. He was clearly thinking that she was still crazy.

  “Of course not,” she said quickly. “There are no ghosts. I allowed my imagination run riot. I obsessed about Karen Trevor, saw her everywhere. And she was always in the throes of dying. Screaming. She took over my life.”

  “So all the times you were pale and shaking and terrified, you were seeing Karen Trevor? Or thought you were.”

  “True. I could hardly tell you that, could I? Even on my worst days, when Karen shadowed me from dawn to dusk, when I could feel her coldness on my skin, when I believed she would suck the life from me, I still knew that she was a secret I should not share. So I stayed silent instead. Eventually I admitted to myself that I was using these illusions as an excuse. I didn’t have to move on from the time of the accident as long as the haunting was happening. I was hiding behind Karen Trevor and what I was hiding from was my life in general and my marriage in particular.”

  “It wasn’t that bad!” Andrew protested.

  Ella smiled at him. “No. We were very happy while we were building up the business. Remember? We were happy when we bought this site. Another acquisition for the Fords. But why do yo
u think we never seriously planned a family? Wasn’t that always a vague plan off in the distant future? Why were our conversations always about work and never about us? We agreed to be honest today, didn’t we?”

  Andrew lowered his head and stared at the ground for what seemed like a long time. When he looked up he seemed older.

  “Honesty it is then. You’re right. We worked so hard to compensate for the lack of passion between us. We’re a good team. In business.”

  “Exactly. But a balance sheet is cold comfort. You’ve obviously found what I couldn’t give you.”

  “About Max. I didn’t deliberately . . . I never went out to . . .”

  It was dusk now, that time of evening when the last rays of light pierced encroaching darkness with a red intensity. A beam pierced through the treetops and lit the area where they were sitting. Ella stared at her husband and knew that she had caused some of the white hairs and fine lines on his forehead. The last time she had really looked at him, a long time ago now, he had been raven-haired and smooth-skinned. They had scarred each other in a silent, cold way.

  “You lied to me, Andrew. I’m disappointed about that. But I’m not jealous or resentful. Does Maxine love you?”

  “I think so.” Andrew hesitated before adding, “She’s had a lot of trouble in her life. She has her secrets too.”

  “Talking of secrets, what were you trying to hide from me in the office this afternoon?”

  Andrew shifted his position and suddenly seemed very intent on staring at the sunset. “A photograph,” he mumbled.

  “Of you and Maxine?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “Andrew, remember we’re being honest here . . .”

  “It was taken while we were sleeping. Someone must have followed us and broken in.”

  “Of course the paparazzi would be interested in whatever Maxine was up to. She usually manages to avoid them pretty well. How come they found her this time?”

  “I don’t think it was the papers. Why would they send it anonymously to me?”

  He did not have to mention Jason Laide. Ella remembered Jason’s cryptic remarks this morning. Hints about Andrew’s weekend. Jason was obviously prepared to stoop even lower than she had thought to get whatever he wanted. She looked down at her muddy red leather shoes and realised that her dealings with that thug had made the situation dangerously complicated.

  “Why does Jason Laide so desperately want this site? He has already bought the pub in Ballyhaven village. What’s going on here? Did you find out anything new from Oliver Griffin and Pascal McEvoy?”

  By the time Andrew had finished explaining the new Gambling Bill and the plans for designating Ballyhaven as a custom-built gambling resort, the last rays of sun had disappeared. Ella at last understood why Jason had targeted their fifty-acre site. And why the Coxes wanted it too. And there would be many other bidders once the proposed bill was in the public domain. Laide and Cox just wanted to beat the rush. But Laide would make sure that he was the one who came out on top.

  “Does Jason know that Maxine is the other bidder for Manor House?”

  Andrew shook his head. “I don’t think so. Unless you told him?”

  Ella’s angry look was answer enough. It was getting very cold now. Pulling her jacket close about her, she moved a little nearer to Andrew and peered up into his face.

  “Here we go again, Andy, talking about business when we should be discussing us. What are we going to do about our marriage, our future?”

  “What do you want to do?”

  “I want a divorce.”

  Her words, loud and clear, seemed to echo around the glade. They were both shocked by the baldness of her statement. Andrew stood and held his hand out to her. She felt stiff, cold and damp when she got up. Standing close together, they shared the sadness, the sense of failure.

  “If you’re sure,” Andrew said, implying that there was another way when they both knew there was not. Sorting out the details would take time. Division of assets and finances. But there was no division of opinion. They both knew their future would not be spent together.

  Ella shivered. The glade was no longer a place of shelter and beauty. It was dark and threatening, each tiny sound magnified in the stillness.

  “We should go home now, Andrew. Have a shower and something warm to eat before we get pneumonia.”

  Andrew took her hand and together they picked their way through the rough terrain of their fifty-acre site. Each step they took brought them further away from a marriage which had not worked. By the time they reached the gate they were each engrossed in thoughts of their own separate futures.

  Chapter 27

  On first waking Ella felt dizzy. As she looked around her bedroom and noticed the shafts of morning light, heard the trilling of a thrush from the garden, noted the empty space in the bed beside her, she realised her light-headedness was caused by relief. She had done it! She had clawed her way out of the long dark tunnel where she and Karen Trevor had spent the past year.

  Jumping out of bed she ran to the long mirrored panels of the wardrobe doors and examined her reflection. The woman she was looking at was brighter, more animated than she had been for a long, long, time. She tried a smile. The reflection beamed back at her. Ella twirled, feeling so light that she almost believed she could fly. She could do anything now. Achieve anything. Be anybody she chose to be. She stopped mid-pirouette. The arms which had been raised in a graceful arch fell to her sides. She looked again at her empty bed and the enormity of her decision to end her marriage struck a lonely, fearful chord.

  Walking slowly, she went to the window and drew back the curtains. It was raining. Just a shower now but darker clouds were massing on the western horizon. The lone thrush perched on a top branch of the bare cherry tree sang bravely on, bill raised to the heavens. Ella knew then that she would miss this garden and the house which had become little more than a bed and breakfast. She would miss Andrew. Mourn the death of their hopes and ambitions, their dream of a perfect life in the perfect little world they had created for themselves. All that perfection had not been enough. For either of them.

  Going back to the mirror she examined her reflection again and this time she saw the dark shadow of pain in her eyes. Maybe Peter Sheehan was right. Perhaps she should go for marriage counselling. Or more appropriately, divorce counselling. Divorce was, after all, one of the most traumatic life events. Andrew would have his supermodel to help him through. If he needed help. Probably not. He was the one who had somebody to turn to, someone with whom to share. Fuck him! Her reflection was angry now. Ugly. This was not the image she wanted to see. Not the Ella she wanted to live with for the rest of her life. She forced herself to smile again. Better now.

  This smiling woman, dark-haired, attractive even without her make-up, was someone who could cope with divorce, selling her home, buying a new one, leaving the business she had helped build up from scratch, starting a new career, putting a major accident and a year of deep depression behind her.

  Ella took a deep shuddering breath. She could do it. She must. But first she must deal with Jason Laide and Manor House and the mess the much-sought-after Ballyhaven site had become. She winked at her reflection. The woman in the mirror smiled back and Ella knew that she would somehow, somewhere, find the strength to carry on.

  * * *

  Andrew had come into the office early to get a head-start on work. Or so he had told himself. He had spent the past hour just sitting at his desk thinking about the conversation he and Ella had had last night. Discussing their future. Dismantling their marriage. Ever since he had met Maxine he had wanted his marriage to end. He should be happy. And he was. Except for the deep feelings of regret which would not go away and the memories of the young Andrew and Ella, so full of hope and confidence in their future together.

  The office was quiet. Staff would not be here for another half an hour. Annoyed by his confused thoughts, Andrew stood and began to pace. Ella had been the soul of reason
and understanding last night. She did not want a huge settlement, instead suggesting that she put her share of the business up for sale, sell their home and the Ballyhaven site, then split whatever was left after the mortgage was paid. When she had outlined her plan for moving back to Cuanowen, Andrew felt she had been thinking of this for a long time. Maybe that, rather than the accident, had been the reason for her mental condition during the past year. This thought was the most upsetting. Had he been that unapproachable? Had he been so self-obsessed that he had not seen why Ella was suffering? The answer obviously was yes. He had gone willingly along with the idea that all her problems had been caused by the accident. Even now, it was difficult to admit that he could have been . . .

  The ring of his phone was very loud in the silent office. He reached to pick it up quickly in order to still the jarring sound.

  “Is that you, Ford?”

  “It is,” Andrew answered coldly, resenting the way Jason Laide addressed him and hating the lout’s guts for sending that photo of Maxine and himself. Even though he had not had much time to think about it since, he knew it was Laide who had done that. Who else would be low enough?

  “What do you want? Your photo back maybe?”

  “Ah! Come on now, Andrew. You must admit it was a nice shot. You should be proud to share it. With Mrs Ford. And why stop there? “

  “I could have you prosecuted, you prick.”

  “For what? You hardly think I took the photo. I just passed it on. Thought you should know it’s out there. It could be used by someone with less scruples than I have. Maybe some low life would send it to the papers.”

  Jason was enjoying himself. The sound of his mocking laugh echoed down the phone. Andrew could imagine his pale face split by a big toothy grin. The man was ugly inside and out. It was difficult to know whether he would carry through on his threats or not. He seemed more the type of bully who enjoyed threatening rather than carrying out. But yet . . .

  “What exactly do you want, Laide?”