by Adams, PJ
She looked up at him, waiting.
“Things haven’t been going so well, have they? There’s been a drop-off in your performance. I’m not alone in noticing that. You’ve been taking long lunchbreaks. You’ve been taking personal calls in the office. Personal visitors.” He said that pointedly, clearly referring to Róisín Flaherty’s visit half an hour earlier.
She had to defend herself. “You always told me that we were flexible at Hamilton and Chambers, that you didn’t mind if I kept irregular hours and had meetings in coffee shops as long as I was performing well. I’ve always worked that way, Douglas.”
All the time she talked he was nodding, smiling. Now, he said, “Oh, absolutely, Emily. That’s exactly what I tell people. But you see, Emily, the difference now is that you are not performing well, are you?” As he said that there was a sudden hardening of his tone, a shift from velvet to steel. “We can’t carry people, Emily.”
Was he firing her? Desperately, she struggled to come up with a reasonable defense.
“I think what you need, Emily, is to take some of that leave you’ve been accumulating. Spend some time away from the office, get out of the limelight–” Damn it: he was clearly aware of the press interest in her! “–take a break and find your focus again, and then we can take things from there. What do you say?”
He put it as if it was only an option and she might have some kind of say, but she knew it was not. He was telling her to go away and sort out her private life, or her absence would be made permanent. She felt something surge to the surface then, words coming out that should be held back. “Would you treat me like this if I was a man?” she said. She knew they would not. If she was a man, they’d be having a laugh about the ups and downs of her personal life, probably over a drink or two. That was how this world worked.
Instead, Hamilton kept that patronizing smile fixed on his face and said, simply, “But you’re not, are you? It’s not a man who’s been getting distracted at work and running around with Ray Sandler, now, is it, dear?”
16
“Shit, Emily, I’m so sorry!” said Ray. “I had no idea she’d do that. Really, there’s nothing in it. She’s just stirring. Can’t leave well alone. I know her: she wanted to take a look at you. That’s all.”
She remembered the way Róisín had studied her so closely, how the whole thing had made her feel so inferior in comparison to the exotic creature who had just walked into her office.
She looked at him on the small screen of her phone. She’d chosen to Skype him rather than call. She wanted to see his face. Wanted to read him. Wanted to know what was passing through his mind. But that small, jumpy image only seemed to emphasize the distance between them.
“She seemed to think there was more to it than that. She seemed to think I was invading her territory.”
“She’s a bitch. That’s all it is.”
“A bitch who still happens to be your wife.”
“That’s all over, Emily. Long since over.” He straightened, smiled, trying to move on, and said, “So how’s things?”
“What, you mean apart from the bit where your wife confronted me at work and then I got hauled in by one of the senior partners and almost lost my job?”
“You... what?”
She told him about her conversation with Hamilton, and about how she’d been convinced she was going to be fired.
“Oh babe! What a fucking mess. And here I am, in another country, useless to you.”
She said nothing.
“Why not come out here?” he said now. “You’re on leave from work, so just come here. I’ll fly you out. Everything is so much better when I can hold you.”
But that was exactly what she feared. She didn’t know which reality was the true one: the one where she was in his arms and everything seemed so much better, or this one, where she was distanced from him and able to see things more clearly. Would she ever be a part of his world? Róisín’s world?
“I have to be here,” she said. “It’s Kayleigh’s wedding on Saturday. I need to sort my life out, Ray. I need to get my head straight.”
And when perhaps he should have objected just a little more forcefully, when he should have insisted she go to join him so he could sweep her off her feet, he merely nodded, and said, “Okay. I guess. But you don’t have to do it all alone, Emily. I’m here for you.”
Exactly: his ‘here’ was another country.
§
Thursday and Friday passed in a blur.
Marcia did her best to gee Emily up, but it was a battle. If Douglas Hamilton had thought sending Emily away to mope around at home – or at Marcia’s home, to be precise – was actually going to be good for her in any way then he was more of a jumped up fool than he gave the impression of being.
She tried to read. She did some cleaning – which was easy, because Marcia was so fastidious about looking after her apartment that cleaning involved little more than straightening a few things and flicking a speck of dust off the TV. She had a massage and a facial at a beauticians’ Marcia recommended. She had her hair done, ready for the wedding.
Somehow she filled her days, but she didn’t manage to fill her head.
§
Thom called Friday lunchtime.
“Hello,” he said, his tone far more subdued than the last couple of times he’d said anything to her. “I just wanted to see how you are and make sure you have everything you need for tomorrow.”
Tomorrow... Kayleigh’s wedding. “Yes. Thank you. I’ve got everything.”
“Place was kind of a mess when you came. Easy to miss something. So I just wanted to be sure.”
“It was kind of a mess for a reason,” she said.
“Yes. Yes, I know. I’m sorry about that. Listen... I just wanted to be sure you have what you need–”
“That’s the third time you’ve said that.”
“–and to ask can we just meet up and talk this through? I’m sorry we’ve reached this point. I don’t know why we have.”
Because you’ve been sleeping around ever since I first met you, and despite all your claims to the contrary you never did stop. Because I’m not enough for you, and I’ve finally come to realize you’re not enough for me. She said none of that. She didn’t need another fight right now. Instead, she simply said, “But we have.”
“I know. And I don’t like it. Listen: can we meet? I’m willing to forgive you, and try to move on. This doesn’t have to be the end.”
That was the point when it became too much.
“Forgive me? You tried to punch me. Not just a slap or a push: if you’d connected with that punch I’d be turning up at Kayleigh’s wedding with a black eye or worse. You’d have broken my nose, or my jaw. If I hadn’t already known our marriage was over before then, that would have convinced me. It is over, though, Thom. It’s been over for a long time, it’s just taken this long for me to realize. Goodbye, Thom. Please don’t call again.”
§
While she was still crying, a message came through from Ray. Just a link and an ‘xx’, nothing more.
She tapped the link with her thumb and the screen of her phone changed to what she first took to be a still picture of a set of sash windows. The light coming in was bright, the surrounds of the window painted white, the whole thing over-exposed so that it took on a dreamy, ethereal quality.
It wasn’t a still, though: tiny motes of dust were drifting in the air, catching the sunlight.
The silence drew itself out, and then just as Emily thought nothing more was to come, there was a chord struck on an acoustic guitar, a jazzy major seventh she recognized immediately. As the chord faded slowly to silence the camera view pulled back and there was Ray, dressed all in black against that over-lit white backdrop, an acoustic guitar strung low from his neck. He stood rock-star style, with his legs spread, his head dipped as he looked down at the floor, or his guitar.
His right hand started to move, picking out delicate arpeggios in a minor chord, then a
bass line kicked in, and a thin layer of strings.
His hands fell still, he looked up, straight into the camera and in his rasping croon he started to sing.
“I never knew I could.
I knew I didn’t should.
It always had to be would...
Hey baby, don’t give me no maybe,
Let’s make this thing happen.”
Then his head dropped and his right hand picked up that minor chord dance across the strings once more.
Like the video, the song was stripped back, bare, raw.
It was perfect, and it made her cry some more, but it was a so much better kind of crying than it had been before.
17
Kayleigh looked breathtaking.
Emily peered back through the congregation, and saw her cousin framed in the church doorway, clinging onto the arm of Uncle Bill. Her dress was ivory, tailored tightly in at the waist and then falling away in layers like a waterfall. Her hair was up, a wispy veil covering her face like a drift of mist.
She looked so much like her mother, just then. Something in the eyes and the way she held herself. It brought a big lump to Emily’s throat. Today was going to be full of moments like that.
At Emily’s side, Marcia leaned in and whispered, “It’s all downhill from here, isn’t it? And, God, don’t you know it.”
Emily fixed her friend with a hard stare, but Marcia just smiled and blew a kiss.
Marcia hadn’t been invited to the wedding, but she’d stepped in at the last minute as Emily’s plus one. “Everybody needs a plus one at a wedding, honey,” she’d told Emily. “And it kills two birds with one stone. It saves me from another dull Saturday and it saves you from being the miserable single woman who gets drunk as fast as possible and ends up in bed with Uncle Toby. Or is it just me that happens to?”
They watched Kayleigh and her father walk slowly up the aisle to Pachelbel’s ‘Canon’. “Oh I do like traditional,” said Marcia sarcastically. When Kayleigh reached the groom, she took his hand and the music faded.
“Before we begin,” said the priest, “the bride and groom, Kayleigh and Michael, have made a special request for a moment’s contemplation in memory of the late, and sorely missed, Helen Kempton, mother of the bride and a dearly loved member of this church. If you would please join me in bowing your heads for a moment’s silence...”
Emily managed to clamp down on the rush of emotions and then there was one of those moments when she looked across and saw Kayleigh standing there, holding herself proud and resolute. Bill, too, at her shoulder, his back straight, his head high.
Seeing their strength changed something in Emily. She had spent too long crying recently. Too long wallowing in her own sorry circumstances. She needed to find that kind of strength again. The confidence that Thom had smothered. The drive. She needed to get past this point in her life.
Odd to find such strength in loss but she knew that Helen, for one, would have approved.
Buck up and move on, she heard in her aunt’s voice. She caught Marcia’s eye and smiled, and she was sure then that her friend saw the change in her, because she smiled, leaned closer, and said, “About bloody time. That’s all I’ll say.”
Right then, Emily didn’t know where she’d be without Marcia’s unique blend of positivity, support and good natured ribbing. She leaned in and said in Marcia’s ear, “Thank you. For everything.”
§
“Mum.”
Her mother had arrived after Emily, and taken a seat towards the back of the church, but Emily had caught up with her as they filed out. She paused and turned, her eyes flitting between Emily and Marcia. They hugged, slightly awkwardly, and her mother held on to Emily’s arms as they broke apart.
“Emily,” she said. “You should have called. You should have told me.”
How do you call your mother to tell her you’ve moved out of the marital home? That your husband just tried to punch you? That he’s been sleeping around since even before you were married?
“I should.”
Her mother nodded.
Emily wondered how much more her mother had picked up from the grapevine. Did she know about Ray? “Let’s talk later, okay, Mum? It’s been too long.” With that, she took her arm and they walked out into the sunshine.
§
It would all have been okay if Thom hadn’t turned up at the wedding. But his name had been on the invitation, so he had the right to show up, and so, of course, he chose to do exactly that.
The reception was in a community hall just a couple of streets away from the church. When Emily had heard of Kayleigh’s plans she’d been surprised: to have all the guests, including bride and groom, just walking to the reception through the streets of west London seemed wrong somehow, and Emily’s vision of a typical community hall was so not how she saw her cousin’s wedding.
The reality completely confounded those expectations. It was a beautiful sunny day, and this part of the city was leafy and tranquil – if anything, it reminded Emily of the part of Islington where Ray had his London home. Kayleigh just hitched her dress up around her ankles and led the way with her new husband. All around them everything came to a halt as people paused to watch the procession. There was something incredibly uplifting about seeing the reactions of complete strangers, the smiles and laughter, the honking of car horns, even a ripple of applause as they passed a pub where smokers gathered outside on the street for their lunchtime drinks and cigarettes.
The hall was a timber-framed Victorian building tucked away behind a row of shops. It had been renovated recently and had a little courtyard crammed with flowers, giving it an almost cottage garden look and feel.
The whole thing combined to reinforce Emily’s new spirit. Good things could happen, even amid tragedy and loss.
As they filed inside, Kayleigh leaned forward and gave Emily a big hug.
“Beautiful, beautiful day,” said Emily.
“It’d have been even more beautiful if you’d brought your new boyfriend,” said Kayleigh with a wink. “I knew you were holding something back.”
For a moment Emily was surprised and didn’t know how to react, then she laughed and realized it had become something she could talk and joke about. Something normal. She glanced back, but her mother hadn’t heard. She would tell her later.
They went inside and Emily did the rounds of catching up with family she hadn’t seen in too long, and making sure Marcia didn’t feel too left out.
It really was good to be out and in the thick of things again. She needed this. Needed to feel normal and energized and interesting again. She hadn’t realized quite how much the last few months with Thom had flattened her down.
A paper plate loaded with finger food from the buffet in one hand and a flute of champagne in the other, she was just about to try explaining this to Marcia when she glanced up and in the doorway there he was.
Thom.
He’d put on his old gray suit, which always hung well on him, but his tie was crooked and his hair messed up. If he’d shaved today he hadn’t done a very good job, and that look in his eye: it was only early afternoon but she knew he’d been drinking.
Marcia followed her look and sighed. “You want me to see him off?” she asked.
“No. Thanks, but this is my mess. I’ll deal with it.”
§
He gave a wide smile as she approached and spread his arms as if she would be stupid enough to hug him.
“Will you just leave?”
The smile melted away in slow motion. “I... I just wanted to talk,” he said, too loud.
“And you thought this was the time and place?”
“You’re hard to get hold of. This is the only place I knew you’d be.”
People were looking. Her mother was looking. Emily took a hold of Thom’s arm and tried to steer him back out of the door. He resisted easily and said, “It’s okay. I’m not causing any trouble.”
“You want some help?” It was Marcia. Then to T
hom she said, “Will you just go? Do you realize how ridiculous you look?”
He straightened himself up, trying to look offended. “I just came here to say my piece and then I’ll go. I just came here to say you’re wrong: it’s not over. I want you back.”
“That it?” Even Emily was surprised at the steel in her own voice. “Okay, so you’ve said your piece: you can go now.”
“Don’t you think I deserve an apology?”
“You? You?” He’d lit the blue touchpaper and forgotten to step back. “You think I should apologize because I’ve finally decided to get out of this dead marriage and start to live again? When I’m the only one who ever tried to make it work? When you’ve been cheating on me since day one? How do you think it feels to know what you’ve been up to? That it’s been a hobby for you? Where other men go to the pub or the football, you sleep with other women.”
He’d raised his hands defensively as she hissed these words at him, and now he was the one glancing around the hall, aware that eyes were on them. “No,” he said, when she had ground to a halt. “You’re wrong. It’s not like that.”
“It is. It always has been. I know, Thom. You can cut the pretending.”
That was when a cloud passed over his face. At first she took it for acceptance, but then it became clear that it was something else. It was the same look that had taken over his face when he’d tried to punch her. A fierce, angry look that came immediately prior to lashing out with all that he had.
He looked past Emily to Marcia, and said, “She’d know about that, wouldn’t she?”
With that, he turned and stormed out of the building, but by then it was too late.
Emily turned and stared at Marcia. “You...?” she said, and the look on her friend’s face told her everything.
Marcia reached out to put a hand on Emily’s arm, but Emily batted it away.
“Once,” Marcia said softly, all the strength drained from her expression and her voice. “Just once.”
As if counting made any difference.
“At a party. I was drunk. It was awful. It was just once...”