by Claire Allan
“Memory like an elephant. Ears like a bat. A fatal combination in this house, I can tell you,” Fionn said, but she had a faint smile on her lips. It was clear she was amused by Emma’s turn of phrase. “She certainly keeps us on our toes.”
“I bet she does,” I answered, deciding that now was obviously not the time to discuss in any great detail whatsoever any ongoing difficulties, perceived or otherwise, with Rebecca.
“Right,” Fionn said. “Are you going to help me stick stamps on these damn invitations or not? It’s bad enough we’re only getting them out now.”
“Damn’s a bad word,” Emma chirped from the corner, and Fionn apologised.
I could see that Rebecca was not going to be the only tricky character in this marriage.
I lifted the invites – exceptionally stylish white card efforts with a single calla lily imprinted on the front. As with everything else about this wedding, these invites had style and elegance written all over them. As I read the wording, the kind words from Fionnuala and Alex to invite their nearest and dearest to their most special of days, I felt a little bubble of emotion rise up. For perhaps the first time it really, really dawned on me that this was not just about nice dresses and pink shoes. Nor was it really about calla lilies, or cute flower girls or even my most beautiful ever dress. It was about Fionn and Alex and them being in love, and even though there were some difficulties there – even though it wasn’t perfect – it was enough.
I stamped those damn (sorry, Emma) envelopes and sipped my tea, all the while fighting the urge to cry. I wasn’t sure to be honest if my tears were of happiness, or sadness, or desperation, but I wanted so much just to go home and cuddle someone – not just anyone though. For once my brain was working enough to know that standing outside Manna calling for Pearse or driving down to the beach to throw pebbles at Ant’s window would be pointless and humiliating. I wanted someone who loved me. Someone who respected me. I wanted someone who listened when I talked, soothed me when I cried. I wanted someone who laughed at the same jokes I did and didn’t mind that I sang out of tune or had a weird obsession with bathrooms and the distance between the toilet and the door. I wanted someone who could sympathise with me about how crappy work was and who would wait in the chapel while I performed my bridesmaidly duties on Fionn’s Big Day but who would rejoice in scooping me into his arms on the dancefloor and wouldn’t mind smooching me during the slow set. I wanted someone who would get up on the cold mornings and defrost my car before defrosting his own. I realised I didn’t mind if he snored, or didn’t always shave. I didn’t mind if he wasn’t well off or didn’t have a house on the hill, or overlooking a beach. I didn’t care if he sang off key as well. I didn’t care if he wore boxers and not jersey shorts. I didn’t care – as long as he loved me, and I loved him.
When the invites were done, I kissed Fionn goodbye and took them with me to post on my way home. A wee part of me (the same part which wanted to get Emma drunk or tell her I would be way prettier on the day) thought about not posting them at all and maybe just locking them away in my tiny storage cupboard in a half-baked Miss Havisham impersonation type of effort. I would wear my bridesmaid dress every day – especially when I was signing on the dole, or shopping in Lidl or avoiding Fionn who would no doubt hate me for ruining her Big Day.
But no, I was sensible. Jealous, but sensible all the same, and I went straight to the sorting office and dropped the crisp white envelopes in the postbox.
Then I went home, switched on my laptop and emailed Mr Lover Man Owen – sorry, just Owen.
“I saw you too,” I typed. “In the coffee shop. In Dublin. I did hide. I’m sorry. I won’t hide in Derry.”
I pressed Send and off it went. I sat back, staring at the screen, wondering but not really knowing what to expect. Did I want him to respond? And if so, what did I want him to say?
Part of me (that wee bastard part again) wanted to email him again and tell him all about my bad decisions lately – about Pearse, or more precisely sleeping with Pearse after we had broken up or indeed to tell him about Ant and his virility and how his pleasuring skills made me lose the run of myself entirely and do stupid things – like him – repeatedly.
Thankfully my Very Bad Thing radar kicked in again though and I didn’t send that second email. Instead I went to the toilet and contemplated if it would be possible to protect my modesty if someone did indeed burst through the door at a crucial moment. My answer was no. There would no doubt be some bum-showing, knickers-round-my-ankles fiasco in the making. I promised myself I would buy an extra lock. To add to the two I already had.
32
When I woke up the following morning I checked my email. There was a message from Owen.
“I’m glad you won’t hide. I hate eating on my own.”
I typed back. “I hope there will be wine too? Even just one glass?”
“Oh yes. I hate drinking on my own too,” he replied and I smiled.
Then I phoned Darcy at work. She sounded chipper when she answered which did my heart good. But then again, what other way would she sound when answering the phone at work? It was her job to be personable.
“Hey, Darcy,” I said.
Her personableness continued. “Annie, sweetie, how are you?”
“I have a date. With the Dub. How are you?”
“Still on the shelf, since you asked.” At least she didn’t sound suicidal at the thought.
“Have you heard from him at all?” I asked, not at all sure if that was the kind of thing I should have asked.
“I’m meeting him tomorrow. To discuss things.”
“Things?”
“Yes, things.” Her voice was bright and breezy and ever so professional and I knew there was no way she was going to explain further. This was going to be one of the occasions when I would have to ask the right questions to get the right answers.
“You and him things or boring things like electricity bills and phone bills and the like?”
“A bit of both.”
My heart did a little flip-flop. Was it possible this was salvageable? I wanted to say that to Darcy – to assure her that maybe he had changed his mind and all would be fabulous – but I didn’t want to get her hopes up. Nor did I want to get my own hopes up. Gerry had been pretty determined that children were never in the game plan. Was a week away from Darcy likely to have changed his mind? My heart stopped flip-flopping and started diving again.
“Will you call me after work and talk to me about it?”
“I will,” she replied before hanging up.
I sat back, contemplating cleaning the grout on my tiles, and then noted the sun streaming in the window. No, I wouldn’t clean this morning. I might still shave my legs, but later. For now I was going to take a book up to the roof terrace where I would lie in the sun and maybe get a little burned while losing myself in other people’s dramas. Although in fairness there was enough actual drama around me to keep me going.
At lunchtime I crept back downstairs to a message on my answerphone from Fionn saying she had decided she was definitely going to go with the pink shoes. Then a second asking if I thought that was a good idea? Then there was a third saying to ignore the second message.
Following that was an email from the managers of Love, Sex and Magic to say their end-of-month sales figures were in and all was super. They wanted to thank me for my help. There was a second email from Haven saying they were delighted to have seen their lip gloss papped on said Z-lister’s face in the newspaper that morning and there was an erroneous email from the Speed Dating Night organisers asking Elise for an urgent update as they had heard nothing in several days. A further email apologised that I had been sent the first email in error and asked me to disregard it. As if. A fifth email was from the Features Ed of a well-known tabloid looking for an in-depth interview with Pearse. I toyed with the idea of keeping that one to myself but I knew instinctively that would have been the final nail in my coffin at NorthStar. However, there was n
o way I was brave enough to talk to him, or meet him face to face. So I simply forwarded it on to his address, typing “Hope you are well” at the top.
I figured, all in all, as I gave in and started scrubbing my bathroom tiles with Pearse’s old toothbrush, that was as good a day’s work as any.
“Don’t be getting any romantic notions,” Darcy said as I picked up the phone. “I think he probably just wants to evict me from the flat or fight with me over some old CD or some other such nonsense.”
“What makes you think that?” I asked, staring at my hands which were red raw from some serious over-application of bleach in the bathroom.
“Because what else would he want to talk to me about? He’s hardly going to have changed his mind and be there on bended knee begging me to come back. This is not Hollywood, Annie, it’s Dublin and this is not a city renowned for great romantic endings. Now, if we lived in New York, I could imagine him making a grand gesture at the Empire State, or if we lived in Paris maybe he would sweep me off my feet at the Eiffel Tower, but no. We are meeting in the Hairy Lemon. I doubt anything more than an exchange of CDs will come of it.”
I sighed, wanting to hope she was wrong but knowing she was probably right.
“Well, you know where I am if you need me,” I offered.
“I know, babes. But I’m a big girl. I’ll be fine. Which reminds me, I finally broke the news to Mum and Dad.”
“And?” I knew, whatever their response had been, it was unlikely to have been as supportive as Darcy needed.
“Mum said I was probably better off without.”
Of course Mum and Dad had never met Gerry. They hadn’t been home in several years and Darcy knew better than to risk taking him to Spain to spend any kind of extended period of time with our darling parents. Our parents were fine, but even finer in small doses – especially for those not necessarily used to their ways.
“What did you say to that?”
“What could I say? I told her she was probably right and then finished the conversation as quickly as I could. Oh, she said to tell you she was letting the house out to new tenants and to ask you again if you wanted to give up the flat to live somewhere proper?”
We finished our conversation and I looked around me. This was proper. This was home. This was more home than anywhere else I had ever lived – stupidly big bathroom and stupidly small kitchen and all. I felt like phoning my mum and telling her as much but I knew she meant well. She wanted all for me that I wanted for myself – except it was starting to dawn on me that what I wanted had changed entirely. Now I just wanted to be happy. I wondered why it had never dawned on me before that it was as easy as that – to just want to be happy, content, at ease. I don’t know why I had always thought to be happy I had to have ticked all the boxes that I’d dreamt up when I was thirteen or fourteen and still living in a fantasy world where Barbie loved Ken and Harry loved Sally and Leia and Han were heading for their happy ending. I’d wanted nothing short of a Hollywood ending – that dance at the end of Dirty Dancing where my very own Johnny Castle would lift me above his head and the whole room would cheer and then dance with us. I’d wanted it to be perfect and nothing short of perfect. But, now, I realised I hadn’t really known what perfect was all along.
33
I was watching TV the following morning when the buzzer to my flat went into meltdown. I almost choked on the cherry scone I had been eating for breakfast, not to mention that I almost did myself a serious injury as I hobbled – my toenails wet with nail varnish – to the door. Lifting the receiver, I said my hellos.
“The bitch!” Fionn’s voice came hurtling up the line. “The fucking bitch! You are never going to believe what she has gone and done! No, actually you will believe it because you warned me. You bloody warned me!”
“You’d better come up,” I said, pushing the release button and steeling myself for whatever storm was about to visit itself on my flat.
Opening the door I could hear her stomp her way up the steps, each new tread heavier than the last and a strange groaning and moaning sound going on.
“What is it?” I asked and Fionn just shook her head.
“What have you in to drink?” she asked.
“It’s just gone eleven in the morning!” I exclaimed as she tramped past me to the kitchen and opened the fridge.
“Well, the doodah is over the yardarm then, isn’t it?” she said, pulling out a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc and fishing in my top drawer for a corkscrew.
“But don’t you have to go back to work?”
“It’s Friday and the office is quiet – the only thing doing is that damn Speed Dating Night which, for the record, I might go to.” She opened the bottle, practically hurling the cork and the corkscrew across the room and filled her glass to the very brim. “Except that would mean she would win and she is not going to win. I hope you know that?”
“I know that,” I said as she thrust a second glass in my direction and gave me a look which had me under no illusion whatsoever that I had better drink it – otherwise I might find myself hurled across the room like the cork.
I sipped gingerly – no matter how much I loved a drink or two, I was not usually one for drinking before midday. The wine tasted bitter on my tongue but I swallowed anyway, following Fionn as she marched into the living room, cast open the window and took a few deep breaths followed by a few deep sips from her glass.
“She went to the shop. She actually went to his fecking work. She waved the invitation in his face and asked to speak to him privately.”
By the way the word “privately” dripped from her lips, I became aware it was most definitely not a good thing.
“Did he tell her to feck off?”
“Ha!” Fionn said, and not in a funny “Ha” way. “No. No he did not. He talked to her – privately.”
“But he has obviously told you all about this – either that or you actually went ahead with hiring a private detective to track his ass.”
“He told me,” Fionn said, moving from the window to the sofa, where she downed half a glass of wine in one go before topping it up with the bottle she was swinging around like a very heavy, potentially lethal-weapon-like handbag. “But that is not the point. The point is that she went there. And she told him she loved him. And she asked him not to go ahead with the wedding.”
I opened my mouth to respond but Fionn raised her finger to silence me.
“Oh, that is not all. That is so not all,” she said. “She told him that she never believed we would actually go through with it but, now that she has the invitation, she couldn’t deny her feelings any longer. She has denied them – albeit not really very well – for five years but now, now when she gets her fecking invitation, she decides this would be the best moment?” Her voice was rising higher by the second.
“Could be worse,” I offered. “She could have done it in the church. But, tell me, since Alex told you, I’m assuming he told her to take a long run and jump because, while you are upset, you aren’t ‘it’s all over’ upset. Am I right?”
She sighed, running her fingers through her hair. “He wants to let her down gently. Officially he is horrified, but unofficially I think he might just love that he has two women fighting over him.”
“But what did he tell her then?”
“He said he told her that he was sorry but he loved me and the wedding was going ahead. But he said he couldn’t really talk about it in work. He said he would call over later and then . . .” she was getting animated again, the wine in increasing danger of spilling out of the glass, “then he asked me if I would look after Emma so he could go and talk to her.”
“Fuck that!” I exclaimed.
“Persactly my point of view. Believe me, I trust him.”
I raised an eyebrow.
“I do! But I don’t trust her and with good reason, it seems. I’m supposed to watch Emma while her mammy does her very best to get her claws into him again. You’ve seen Misery, haven’t you? A dime to a
dozen by 8 p.m. she’ll have him trussed to a bed and will be going at his ankles with a hammer. His only escape will be to dump me and be with her. I think the time has come for you, or for us, to go and talk to her.”
“Are you fully aware that my history of going and talking to people has been chequered to say the least?”
She nodded, maybe just a little unsure. “Nonetheless, I think needs must.”
I sat back. “But what could we say? You know, apart from the obvious ‘back off, bitch’ thing.”
She shook her head. “I don’t know, but I think I owe it to myself to be proactive on this one. I’m three weeks away from the biggest day of my life so far – do I really want to leave it to fate?”
I shrugged my shoulders.
“No,” she said, determinedly. “No. I don’t want to leave anything to fate at all. I’ve the florist’s head done in listening to me rant on about lilies and foliage. I’ve had four hair trials. I auditioned seven wedding bands. I ordered sixteen stationary samples before I decided on which one would go with it. I have the Child of Prague in the garden already for fine weather. I’m leaving nothing to chance, least of all the possibility of a psycho ex-girlfriend fucking things up. I love him, Annie. I know you don’t always get that. I know he isn’t perfect, but neither am I. I can’t think of anything I want to do more than marry him.” A single tear slid down her cheek and she wiped away as if it burned her skin. “It shouldn’t be this hard.”