The First Last Kiss

by Ali Harris

  Say ten Hail Marys and two Our Fathers for not coming home while your wife was away.

  My fears gnaw away at me. Suddenly I see our baby, the one that I’ve spent the last few weeks imagining, disappear in a puff of smoke.

  ‘Molly,’ he whispers, and he tilts his lips up to mine and pulls his body closer to me. He begins to kiss me passionately in a way that I’ve wanted him to do for weeks, but he has always been too tired, or stressed or just not interested.

  I’m amazed and repelled that my body responds instinctively, still too in tune with Ryan to be able to do anything else.

  He moans and as he kisses me he presses his body against mine and I let out an involuntarily moan too. We’re still looking at each other, like we’re trying to work out what each other is thinking. We used to know. I suddenly think of the song, the song from Ry’s favourite film, Top Gun. The one about not closing your eyes any more when you kiss. He stares at me and I gulp and focus hard on kissing Ryan the best I can, making it as desirable a kiss as I can muster, like I’m playing at being sexy. I flick my tongue and scrape my teeth along his lip and brush mine against his jaw and I breathe heavily, and all the time I feel like a fraud. The tears are stinging my eyes, the shame is flooding my body because I can’t help but wonder if the last lips to have touched Ryan’s were not mine. I pull back slightly. What if this kiss he’s instigating now isn’t borne of want or need, but guilt?

  I kiss his neck, his chest, anywhere but his lips.

  He cannot see my tears fall in the darkness. I squeeze my eyes shut and focus. Maybe making love will make it all better. Just as I have convinced myself that this will heal us, Ryan’s kisses become lighter and lighter. Then he brushes my cheek gently, rolls over and leaves me lying here, awake and alone, wondering what if . . . what if . . . what if . . . until I think I might go mad.

  It’s official: he has lost that loving feeling. Or, worse, he’s found it elsewhere.

  3.17 p.m.

  I’m sitting eating a doughnut in the lounge, my laptop with the DVD inside is beside me. I know I shouldn’t – Mum will be here any minute – but I’m not sure I can stop myself. I’m about to press play when I notice a new email in my inbox and open it.

  Hi Molly,

  Hope you’re well. Just to confirm that your exhibition will definitely be transferring from London to a gallery in Sydney at the beginning of next month. We have also had offers from New York and Milan. You’ve also been asked to speak at another fundraising dinner at the end of the week. Would you be willing to do this? I know it doesn’t give you long to settle in. Could you let me know and I will reply to them asap.

  Good luck with everything.

  Speak soon.

  Jane

  I fire off a quick response without even thinking.

  Jane, re: dinner, I’d be honoured to. And thank you, for everything. I’m completely overwhelmed by the response. Would like to talk soon about future projects/fundraising ideas. All is good here. Have left everything till the last moment as ever but I’m not stressing, it’ll all get done!

  Molly x

  I press send and close my email. I hover the little arrow over the Shut Down icon in the corner of the screen, but instead find my finger moving the mouse and pressing play on the DVD icon. I turn the shell over in my hand.

  Just one more time then I can put it away. For good.

  Bob pops his head into the lounge where I’m still sitting with my laptop, drowning my sorrows by stuffing the last of my doughnut into my mouth. I mute the film and smile weakly at him. Seeing Nanny Door again and watching this has really thrown me. But then I think of what she said about finding happiness and the guilt fades.

  ‘We’re all done here now, luv!’ he says. ‘Just one more box for storage, which I’ll take out to the van on my way out.’

  ‘Thnnk yow,’ I reply, still with a mouthful of doughnut. He smiles at me, a cheery, eye-winking smile that warms the cockles of my heart.

  He lifts his hand in a wave, his copy of The Sun rolled up under one arm. ‘What time’s your flight then?’

  ‘Not until tonight. There’s just a couple of things I have to do first . . . ’

  ‘Well, we’ll leave you to it, luv.’

  I glance at the DVD that is silently playing on my laptop. It is near the end but I press stop anyway, I know that the time has come.

  ‘Sorry, Bob, is that last box sealed up? I’ve just got one more thing to pop in.’

  We walk out into the hallway and he rips off the masking tape that he’s carefully sealed it with.

  ‘It’s something I want to keep, but I don’t need to keep with me any more . . . ’ I mutter more to myself than to him as I slip the thin DVD box inside.

  Bob takes the masking tape out of his pocket and deftly swipes it around the box, before lifting it carefully up onto his shoulder, like a coffin – I think fleetingly – and then I discard that unwelcome thought and he carries it away.

  The Tell Me It’s Not True Kiss

  Have you ever tried to erase something with a kiss? Expunge an experience, minimize a mistake, a memory, a moment with your mouth? Have you ever squeezed your eyes shut and hoped that your lips had the power to eliminate bad news, to eclipse the entire world that has just come crashing down around you? Have you ever wished, not upon a star, but upon a kiss?

  I have. I just wish I could tell you that what I wished for came true.

  FF>> 26/02/07>

  I need to tell u something. I’m in Leigh. Please come now. I’ll pick u up. R x

  I’m at work when I get the text message from him. It is the one I’ve been waiting for with dread. But it is almost a relief to get it. Soon I will know why he’s been leaving the house and going in the opposite direction to school for the past few days. Who the person is that keeps calling his mobile, causing him to leave the room to answer it. Why he can’t seem to bear to be in the same room with me. I know it is bad news, but nothing can be worse than not knowing. The not knowing is killing me.

  I pop into Christie’s office and tell her I’ve got a doctor’s appointment and won’t be in for the rest of the afternoon before heading back to my desk to shut down my computer. I reply quickly and simply as I pick up my bag:

  OK. Leaving now x

  I sit on the train with my face pressed against the cool window, thinking about the revelation Ryan is about to tell me. I’m prepared for the worst. But it occurs to me there might be an even worse scenario than I’m imagining. Not just a kiss, or a one-night stand, he could be in love. He could have gone back to an old girlfriend. Maybe that’s why he’s in Leigh . . . Who was that girl he was dating before me? The one I met on the Bembridge. What was her name? Stacey. Or perhaps it’s someone I know, but not that well, like one of Lydia’s perky girlfriends maybe? I can’t stop my brain from hurtling at a million miles an hour, the thoughts rushing through my head like the landscape around me, ever changing and yet still the same endlessly depressing view. The sky is as dark with foreboding as my thoughts. I’ll be one of those young women with a marriage and a divorce under her belt before she’s thirty. I’ll be a laughing stock forever; an example of the failure of modern love. Maybe Mum was right. I should never have chosen passionate, undying love over the practical kind.

  I shake my head, berating myself for becoming as naive about men as I used to warn Casey about being. It’s a cruel kind of irony that my marriage is on the cusp of collapse and everywhere I look I am reminded of my big day. The girl over there, ensconced in a copy of Brides magazine, diamond ring sparkling. Her face is alight with love and possibility, her ring still sparkles with promise, not sullied by the everyday toils that make it glitter that little bit less every day. I glance at my left hand now, at Nanny Door’s ring, with the pretty cluster of diamonds and the simple platinum band that it rests on. Until now, I liked that it wasn’t perfect, that it had seen life, survived an entire 50-year marriage with all its ups and downs; like Ryan and me, it had been through the mill. I liked
that it didn’t shout ‘new’ because Ry and I weren’t new. We’ve been together a long time, grown together, grown up together and this ring represented that perfectly. I remember shyly showing it to Nanny Door, just after Ry and I had got back from New York. She had held my hand gently and stroked her arthritic fingers over the diamonds with her eyes closed, as if the precious stones held the love story of her life. When she opened her eyes again she had pulled me close. Nanny Door is not known for being softly spoken but this time I’d had to bend down a little to hear what she was saying.

  ‘The Cooper men have always been regular heart-throbs, doll, but they also choose their women well.’ She stared at me knowingly with her delphinium-blue eyes that drifted in and out of focus, as if she had one foot in the past and one in the present. ‘When Arthur and I were dating, I remember feeling like I wasn’t good enough for him – he was so devastatingly handsome, just like Ry – but as soon as that ring was on my finger I knew that it didn’t matter how I looked, what I felt, or what people thought, I was more than enough for him.’ She’d patted me gently on the hand. ‘This ring will bring you so much happiness and you deserve it. I know how much my boy loves you, Molly, and he’s chosen well. You are a strong, beautiful, caring, insightful woman. A true Cooper. Now you just have to believe it.’

  I’d hugged her and cried, feeling like she had seen me from the inside out, just like Ryan had done on our very first teenage date many years before. I didn’t have to pretend any more. But now, as I twist the band between my fingers, I worry that this ring, the ring I have always loved so much, isn’t perfect. It has the scratches and wear of a marriage before; a marriage – no, a life, that ended too soon. Maybe it has never sparkled as brightly as the girl’s over there and I wonder, was our marriage tarnished before it had even begun?

  I just can’t bear not knowing any more. I don’t want to deal with this on my own. But I have to. No one else will understand. I stop as I realize that there is someone; there’s always been someone who completely understands me, perhaps even more than Ryan.

  I pull my phone out of my bag and quickly text Casey:

  Ryan wants to talk to me. On way to Leigh now. Feel sick. M x

  I want her to tell me not to worry, that it’ll all be OK. I get a text back instantly:

  Oh Molly I am so sorry xxx

  My heart plummets like a rock being kicked off a cliff. She knows this is the end too. She can see it hurtling down the tracks, just like I can. My phone beeps again. It’s another message from her:

  Please forgive me?

  I furrow my brow and look out the window at the bleak identikit houses we are now passing. Forgive her? For what? For telling me? Or for something else? Why is she making this about her when it has nothing to do with her? Typical Casey. Unless she knows more . . .

  My hands shaking, I quickly scroll through my address book and press call. She picks up immediately and starts crying.

  ‘Casey,’ my voice is hard, cold. ‘Your text. What does it mean?’

  Casey sobs. I don’t say anything. I just wait until she can compose herself and string a sentence together.

  ‘Oh, Molly, I’m sorry, I just saw . . . your . . . text . . . and . . . I know Ryan’s going to tell you but I need you to know h-how-how it happened. It wasn’t my fault. I pr-promise—’

  ‘What happened?’ I interrupt. I need fast answers. I need to know what the hell is going on. ‘Are you saying you know that something happened?’

  ‘Y-ye-yess,’ she sobs.

  I pause as a terrible thought occurs to me for the very first time. Worse than the possible worst-case scenario I could’ve ever imagined. ‘Between you?’

  ‘It wasn’t my fault, Molly!’ She splutters. ‘I promise, it wasn’t! You have to believe me. You just have to!’

  I press my lips into a hard line and stare out of the window. The train is just pulling out of Benfleet, we are minutes away from my stop. I’m stopping this now. I want this conversation, this friendship to screech to a halt.

  ‘I don’t know what to believe any more, Casey.’ And I put the phone down.

  Ryan is waiting in his dad’s car at the station. I stare at it for a moment. He’s sitting in the Mercedes, in the driving seat, his arm stretched over the passenger seat, head turned and looking out the window. I can see his face in his rear-view mirror. Looking at his profile like this reminds me of when we used to drive up near Hadleigh Castle when we were dating, and just sit there, talking and kissing. But his expression is sad, scared . . . guilty?

  Emboldened by a surge of energy and the desire to shock him, like I’ve just been, I run over to the car, throw open his door and start pummelling him with my hands.

  ‘You bastard, you shitty fucking bastard! How could you? How could you? How COULD you?’

  He slides out of the car and catches me as I fall to my knees, clutching my chest and moaning with pain, like I’ve been shot in the heart.

  ‘Molly? What the . . . Molly!’ he hoicks me up under my arms and holds me in front of him like a rag doll, his blue eyes flitting between mine. They are glistening, like when the sun catches a wave and I recall how looking at him has always felt like being instantly transported to a summer day. Not now though. Right now I’m in the middle of a storm.

  ‘Molly? What’s going on?’

  ‘You tell me, you fucking . . . fucker!’ I pummel my fists furiously against him, crying harder with every strike.

  Ryan holds my wrists. ‘Hey! Molly, what is all this? Honestly, I don’t know what you’re on about!’

  ‘Casey!’ I cry. ‘I’m talking about you and Casey!’ I see a flash of acknowledgement in his eyes then, but there’s no guilt, just relief.

  ‘Oh that . . . ’ he sighs wearily and drops my hands. He sits back in the car, leaning his head back against the rest as if he can’t quite hold it up on his own. I know how he feels. I grip onto the car for support, knowing that my legs aren’t able to do their work alone right now.

  ‘It was nothing, Molly babe, honestly,’ he says flatly. ‘Nothing I didn’t expect anyway. I told her she was out of order. End of.’

  ‘You’re saying she . . . ? Not you . . . ? And you didn’t . . . ?’ He nods to all three of my unfinished sentences. The next one I finish: ‘Why should I believe you, Ryan?’ I murmur.

  He looks at me, his eyes watery with tears. ‘Because you know it’s true.’

  And I do. I think of my vows. I do. And I know that he’s telling the truth. She has flirted with every single one of his friends and my friend’s boyfriends, she’s slept with men who have girlfriends, wives even. She has always been completely indiscriminate in her romantic choices. And deep down, I guess I’ve always known that Casey was in love with Ryan. I’ve known it since that holiday in Ibiza. Maybe even before. I saw the way she looked at him. But I never thought, I never thought, she would ever do this to me . . .

  I lean my whole body against the car door, clinging on to it for support. I look at Ryan, my saviour, the one who has always kept me afloat. ‘So you really didn’t come on to her, then?’ I say quietly, knowing even as the words leave my mouth that he wouldn’t. Not ever.

  ‘No! Of course not! I would never . . . ’ He reaches up to take my hand and smiles weakly as he rubs his thumb over my engagement and wedding rings. ‘You’re the only girl for me, Molly, you always have been . . . and . . . always will be . . . ’ He turns away and rubs his forehead and I see his shoulders are shaking. He’s crying.

  I feel so stupid. And so confused. I know there’s something more. I run round to the passenger seat and get in the car. ‘What is it? Tell me.’ I’m crying now. ‘I don’t want to lose you, Ry . . . I’ll do anything. When I was in New York I realized that I want what you want. I’m ready. I want to move here, buy a house, have kids. I’ve done everything I ever dreamed of doing and I don’t want anything to take me away from you any more. Being with you is more important than anything else. I love you so much, Ry. Please we can work through whatever
it is that’s happened, whatever it is you’ve done. I know we can. I-I love you so much.’

  I’m sobbing now because somehow it feels like I’m losing him all over again and I can’t bear it.

  Ry lifts his hand up to my chin and smiles. ‘I know you love me, Moll, you silly cow.’ I put my hand over his and stroke it. We sit there for a moment staring into each other’s eyes. There’s something different about him but I don’t know what it is.

  ‘Then what is it, Ry?’ I whisper urgently. ‘What’s wrong? Why have you been so distant since I got back? Why have you brought me here? I’ve been so scared, not knowing what’s going on is killing me. Please just tell me. We’ll work through it, whatever it is.’ I cling on to him and squeeze his hands. He looks down at them clasped together, joined so tightly that it’s impossible to tell which hand belongs to who. Then he looks up and the years have fallen away and suddenly he looks just like the teenager I fell in love with. He takes a deep breath, his voice is soft but laboured. He can’t look at me. He looks at our hands, at his wedding ring glinting at us, shining brighter than the sun.

  ‘Listen Moll, while you were away I went to stay with Mum and Dad for a night, and Mum noticed this mole. On my back. It looked a bit weird and she got me to go to the doctor. I told him about feeling constantly tired and thinking I had flu because my glands were up . . . ’ He looks at me and I gaze at him silently. ‘I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want to spoil your trip and have you worrying over something that was probably nothing.’ Probably. I hate that word. He speaks again but this time his voice is quiet and it cracks. ‘I mean, I thought I’d just have the mole removed and that would be it. Plenty of people have cancerous moles, right?’ He squeezes my hands and then smiles brightly. ‘They removed it and said something about swollen lymph glands which might involve an operation, and the tests they did said that it was stage three. But then they said they wanted me to have a CT scan today. Which I’m sure will show it’s all fine.’ I blink at him.