Cold Feet: The Lost Years

by Carmel Harrington

  ‘How could you?’ Adam hissed at him. ‘That’s my ex. There’s a code about this sort of thing . . .’ He looked down at his now sleeping son, and vowed that he’d never do anything so crass as this.

  ‘She’s a passionate woman. It was hard to say no. And I didn’t know she was your ex at first,’ Bill said. ‘Honestly. She only told me that later on. I haven’t seen her, since you came back. I wouldn’t do that.’

  Fair enough, Adam thought, slightly appeased. But even so. He was aggrieved by this turn of events. He didn’t want to date Jane, but he didn’t want his dad to either!

  ‘Look son, we can talk about this later, but right now I need you to get her out of here,’ Bill said. ‘George’ll be back any second. He doesn’t need to see this.’

  ‘Your mess. You sort it out,’ Adam, petulance lacing every word.

  ‘I thought you liked George,’ Bill said. ‘It will hurt him if he realises I’ve been sleeping with Jane. Please, if you won’t help me out, do it for him.’

  Adam glanced towards the corridor and saw a smiling George on his way back towards them. He’d be gutted if he knew about this. ‘If I do this, then the next ten poonami nappies are yours. Regular ones don’t count.’

  ‘That’s outrageous. Five,’ Bill countered.

  ‘Seven!’ Adam said. ‘Take it or leave it.’

  ‘Done!’ Bill said and shoved Adam out of the seat. ‘Go on. I’ll keep Matthew with me, he’s asleep anyhow, just go buy me some time with herself. Tell her I’ll see her tomorrow as already arranged.’

  Adam said to George as he passed him, ‘Something’s come up. I’ve to head away. But I’ll see you soon.’ Then he walked over to the counter, grabbing Jane by her hand.

  ‘Hey!’ she yelped in surprise.

  ‘Let’s go for a stroll. Dad’s got Matthew. I think it’s time you and I had a catch up.’ Adam started tugging her towards the door.

  ‘I need to say goodbye to Bill,’ Jane said, grinning in delight. Father and son fighting over her. She loved it.

  ‘I’ve said your goodbyes for you. Come on.’

  ‘Oh, I get it,’ Jane said. ‘I was expecting this.’

  And then she gave him a look that made Adam shudder. As he told Bill later that night, it was as if she was about to open her mouth and swallow him whole.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Tom, Dick and Jane and the angry son

  Bill’s house, Malone Road, Stranmillis, Belfast

  Adam had been watching the road, waiting for Bill to arrive home for over an hour. He’d been gone a long time and, with Matthew asleep, he found himself at a loss. There was a time when he’d love nothing better than to slob in front of the couch and throw on some This Morning. But he’d fallen out of the habit of doing nothing. He was never a big reader. Rachel was the one for the books. And he couldn’t even leave the house, not with the wee man asleep.

  He closed his eyes and whispered her name, hoping he could conjure her up. Nope. Nowhere to be seen.

  Finally, he heard his father’s Nissan Primera pull into the drive. He opened the front door and impatiently beckoned his father in.

  ‘Hold your horses, let me get in the door!’ Bill complained, shrugging his jacket off.

  ‘What happened? Did she lose her shit?’

  Bill threw his eyes up to the ceiling. ‘She did not do anything of the kind. I simply told her that it was fun while it lasted and let me tell you, it was fun. The things she could do with a pair of jump leads and—’

  ‘Dad!’ Adam exclaimed. ‘I don’t want to hear it.’ But then he grinned and whispered, ‘Did she do that thing, you know, with her toe?’

  Bill nodded, with a big grin.

  ‘I’m sure her carry on is outlawed in a lot of countries,’ Adam said. ‘But enough of that, go on . . .’

  ‘Well, I just said that I thought it was time for us to call it quits. No more benefits, shall we say. We’d have to stick with just the friends bit.’

  ‘And how did she take that?’ Adam was sure something had been broken. A glass or a plate. And there had to be tears.

  ‘She was a lady. An absolute lady,’ Bill replied. Sometimes his son was so over-the-top dramatic.

  ‘She took it well?’ Adam couldn’t believe it. ‘Jane Fitzpatrick?’

  ‘Yep. Just smiled and gave me a hug, and agreed that our relationship had come to a natural end. Said it was inevitable, she’d been expecting it even.’

  ‘No dramatics, no shouting nor crying?’ Adam asked.

  ‘Nothing. I’ve told you. Would you relax? It’s all sorted. I think she’s a lot more together than you ever gave her credit for, son. A fine young woman.’

  Adam shrugged. None of that sounded like the Jane he knew. And the way she’d looked at him yesterday, well, there was something odd about it. He shuddered again.

  A cry from Matthew came over the baby monitor. ‘Oi oi, someone’s awake and will need changing,’ Adam said.

  ‘This one makes four down, three to go. I swear you are adding something weird into his feed, to make the nappies extra smelly. Mother of God, the one this morning nearly had me throwing up my porridge.’ Bill blanched at the memory, then walked out the door like he was walking the green mile.

  Adam laughed, delighted. Good enough for him. A little bit of penance for his father, the player.

  The landline rang and Bill shouted down the stairs, that he should answer it. ‘Williams house of madness,’ he said when he picked up the phone.

  ‘Hello, you,’ Jane said. Her voice was husky and low. Oh fuck.

  Did she want a shoulder to cry on? No bloody way was he getting roped down that rabbit hole.

  ‘Dad’s upstairs. Will I get him for you?’ Adam said.

  ‘I didn’t ring looking for Bill. I rang for you.’

  ‘Everything okay?’ He crossed his fingers behind his back in the way he used to do as a child.

  ‘It’s okay, Adam, you don’t have to be coy. And I’m not going to make you work hard for it, although goodness knows I should. I’ll be the grown up here and say it first.’ She paused. ‘I feel the same way.’

  Oh fuckity fuckity fuck. ‘About your break-up with Dad?’ he chanced.

  ‘No, silly. About getting back together with you.’ She paused again. Please don’t say it, please . . . Adam thought. But Jane had never been good at reading his thoughts. She paused for a moment and then blurted out. ‘I’ve never stopped loving you.’

  I’m going to kill him. Adam thought, looking up the stairs. I’ll fucking kill him.

  ‘When Bill finished with me, I knew what was really going on. He was stepping aside so that you and I can get back together,’ Jane said.

  This wasn’t good.

  ‘Er, Jane, I think you’ve got the wrong end of the stick there,’ Adam said.

  Silence at the end of the phone.

  Adam took a deep breath. ‘I didn’t ask Dad to finish with you. I’ve no problem with your relationship with him at all, at least not from a jealousy point of view. It’s just weird.’

  Silence again. Then a sigh, which built up to a groan. Then the sound of something smashing. A cup or a glass.

  ‘Did you drop something?’ Adam asked. ‘Are you okay?’

  Bloody typical. His dad got nothing but lovely understanding.

  The sound of tears and hysterical sobbing began to get louder.

  ‘Aw, Jane. I’m sorry,’ Adam said. But in truth he wasn’t even sure what he was supposed to be sorry for.

  ‘You still love me, I know it.’ But her voice didn’t sound as certain as her words.

  Adam felt his irritation grow with every sob she made. He didn’t need this. It felt disloyal to Rachel to be even talking to his ex-girlfriend. Jane had nearly broken them up, had caused them both a lot of pain. He looked around the room, hoping for once that Rachel wasn’t there, a silent witness to this.

  ‘We can be together. Jane and Adam, like we carved on that bench when we were kids. I still go up there to look at i
t. You know you never stopped loving me. Just admit it!’ Jane ended on a scream.

  And that’s when Adam’s thoughts all began to fold in over each other, each turning his irritation to anger. How bloody dare she tell him that he’d always loved her. Was she insinuating that he’d never loved Rachel?

  ‘My wife is hardly cold in the grave. The woman I loved more than any other woman in this world. The woman I still love. I will always love. What the fuck do you expect me to do? Run off with you and live happily ever after? For fuck’s sake.’ The red mist has descended now. Anger at Jane, anger at his father, and anger with the fact that Rachel was gone and he was on his own.

  ‘So you don’t want to go out with me?’ Jane asked in a small voice.

  He slammed the phone down in disgust.

  He was still shaking when Bill walked down the stairs, oblivious to what had just transpired. ‘His lordship had no sooner had me wipe his bum than he was flaked out asleep again. Good lad. Hey what’s with the face?’

  ‘Jane rang.’ Adam had the urge to punch his father. He stomped into the living room.

  ‘Looking for me?’ Bill asked, following him in.

  ‘No, looking for me. Had it all worked out. She rang to tell me she loved me too. Wanted us both to pick up where we left off.’ Adam’s voice was low and cold.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Oh yes. Said you had finished with her to step aside for us two to get back together again.’

  Bill started to laugh. He had never been good at reading an audience.

  ‘I’m not laughing,’ Adam said. ‘You might think it’s okay to live a life where you willy nilly go around sleeping with every Tom, Dick and Jane, but in my world, it’s not acceptable.’

  Bill raised an eyebrow and took a seat. He remained silent and waited for Adam to continue. In his experience, it was wiser to let someone have their say when they were this wound up.

  ‘Is this what you did with my ma? Shagged everything that had a pulse?’ Adam shouted at him. He knew he was being unreasonable and unfair, but he didn’t care.

  ‘No, that’s not what happened and you know it,’ Bill said.

  ‘I know nothing,’ Adam shouted. His anger towards his dad grew wilder. He felt it fire its way around his body, and he started to pace the room. ‘I don’t know anything about your life together. All I know is that you left her! But you didn’t just leave her. You left me too!’

  Bill stood up. ‘Son—’

  ‘I don’t want to hear it. Today, because of you, I have sullied my wife’s name by having to even talk to that woman.’ He pointed in the direction of the hall phone.

  ‘You’ve done nothing wrong.’ Bill desperately tried to think of ways to calm Adam down.

  ‘I know that! But Jane thought that my feelings for my wife were so shallow that I’d move on to her, weeks after Rachel’s death. That’s what she thought. Like father, like son, eh? Anything with a pulse!’ He spat the words out.

  ‘Watch your tone, Adam. I know you’re upset, so I’m giving you some leeway here, but don’t let this get out of all proportion. I won’t be spoken to like that,’ Bill said.

  ‘Does the truth hurt? Am I getting close to the bone here? The fact that you can’t be trusted or relied upon? That?’ Adam couldn’t stop himself. The hurt and pain he’d felt as a teen when Bill disappeared came bounding back at him, at a speed that sent him into a spin.

  He wanted to hurt Bill. He wanted Bill to feel just some of the pain he’d lived with back then. That he still lived with now, it appeared.

  The hurt in Bill’s eyes, the way his shoulders sagged in sadness and the colour that drained from his face, gave Adam pause. But he shoved any guilt he felt to one side.

  ‘I’m going out for a walk,’ Adam shouted.

  As he slammed the door behind him, he also closed his mind to the last words he father uttered.

  ‘I didn’t leave you, son.’

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The granola and the mistaken identity

  Jenny and Pete’s House, Didsbury, Manchester

  Jenny was lying in bed alone, for the fourth night in a row, waiting for Pete to join her. He’d promised tonight he’d be up in five minutes, but that was an hour ago. She turned, trying to heave her body upright, but her back groaned in protest. She called liar, bloody liar, to whichever genius said that the second pregnancy was easier. Ha! It was probably a man, she thought, thumping the pillow in frustration. Her maligned pelvis felt like it was being split in two.

  She looked at the clock and decided she’d stay put and wait it out, rather than go back downstairs to look for Pete. Her eyes stung, gritty with tiredness. If she closed them, just for a moment, she’d be okay. She sighed in relief, as the pain eased, when she gave in to her fatigue.

  Pete’s car leaving the next morning was the next sound she heard. Had he come to bed at all? She couldn’t tell. The other side of their kingsize was a tangled mess, but she could have done that as she moved about in the night. She picked up her mobile to ring him. She wasn’t surprised that it went to voicemail. Even so, disappointment hit her.

  ‘You never said goodbye when you left this morning,’ she said after the beep. ‘So . . . goodbye!’ She hit end. That was such a lame message. Did she sound like a nagging wife? Probably. She didn’t want to be like that. She was beginning to feel that she was trapped in some sort of groundhog day. Only yesterday she’d rung him to say much the same thing when he’d disappeared while she slept.

  And to be fair, his response seemed reasonable, considerate even. ‘I didn’t like to wake you, love.’

  It also was a crock of shit and they both knew it.

  ‘I waited up for you,’ Jenny had replied.

  ‘Did you? Oh, sorry love. I started to watch the Sunday game and before I knew it, it was two in the morning. You were snoring away when I came up.’

  ‘Let’s go to bed together tonight. Promise me.’ She tried to make her voice sound bouncy and light.

  ‘Sure thing, love.’

  Only he hadn’t sounded sure. And she was pretty certain, he’d slept on the couch. Again.

  Jenny was worried. When she’d told Pete she was staying in Manchester, he had appeared over the moon. He had in fact hollered with delight. New York had lost its appeal to her. She was a Mancunian through and through. In New York, her ability to mock was not appreciated, as it was at home. And she missed the camaraderie of the city that always had a kind word or banter to share with its inhabitants. The pace in New York was different and the natives were not as friendly. When Rachel died, her situation, what she must do, became clear to her. She still loved Pete. She missed him and she missed her friends, her beloved Manchester.

  But maybe Pete didn’t feel the same way after all. Was his excitement at her decision because he wanted to see little Adam more? Had she read the signals wrong, misreading that his elation was for her too?

  Damn it, no. When he kissed her that first day, she felt how aroused he was. You can’t fake that kind of electricity. Or response. And for the first couple of weeks after she moved back in, it was great. They fell back into being a family again with ease. It had been so long since she felt that happy, secure and safe. New York had been harder than she’d admitted to anyone. And now that she was back, she didn’t think she could ever leave again.

  Little Adam loved being home too. He blossomed in front of their eyes, each day becoming more settled in his old, new home. He adored his daddy. And the way he lit up when he had both of them together in the same room was a joy to see. He kept calling them to him and shouting, ‘Group hug!’ as he wrapped his little arms around their necks. She had done the right thing. She brought him home to his daddy.

  His daddy. That was the issue though, right there. She was sure of it. She rubbed her tummy gently and said, ‘Will he adore you too, my little one?’

  Tears welled up in her eyes. She couldn’t ignore it any longer. Something wasn’t right and she had a feeling it was to do with this baby. She w
ished that it was his baby she was carrying, not Grant’s. She wished she’d never taken that job in New York and left him in the first place.

  Should have, could have, would have . . . she sighed, the magnitude of her regret overwhelmed her.

  She could no longer ignore that in the past week, every time she spoke about life as a family of four, Pete’s face changed. And his body, his face, his demeanour shut down, as he changed the subject abruptly or walked away.

  She tried everything to get him to talk to her, open up and be honest. He kept saying everything was fine. Yep. Things were just ticketyboo.

  Then last night, things had taken a new turn when she’d suggested they order a Chinese takeaway. He’d given her a look and muttered something about high sugar content. That wasn’t her Pete. Then again, maybe he wasn’t her Pete any more.

  She edged her bum across the bed, then rolled on her side so that she could get up. She was parched and was gasping for a cup of tea. When she was pregnant with Adam, Pete used to bring her tea in bed every single morning. He had this knack of timing it, so that when she woke up it was the perfect temperature.

  ‘Can’t have my princess scalding her little lips, can we?’ he’d say, and she felt like the most precious thing in the world to him.

  Maybe she didn’t deserve tea in bed now. Maybe this indifference is what you get when you disappear across the Atlantic, taking up a flash job as a PA, then come home with your tail between your legs. Or a baby in your tummy, as was the case for her.

  She sighed and made her way downstairs opening cupboards and shutting them with a bang again, as she searched for tea bags. Where the flaming hell were they? Bloody pregnancy brain, she couldn’t retain a single thought. Not to mention the fact that everything in her kitchen was upside down. Bloody Oz woman, Jo, had changed everything. Okay, maybe it hadn’t been her kitchen for a few years – she had left, after all – but it had been for a decade before Pete had married her.

  She located the tea and coffee in the cupboard, that used to hold her drinking glasses. It was all wrong, and made no sense as far as she was concerned. Everything was topsy-turvy, upside down in here. And that made her laugh. Jo was from down under and she had turned her house upside down. Ha!