by Faith Hogan
‘Hello,’ Kevin moved towards the car. ‘You’re here for Valentina?’ he said and they led the way back up to the apartment where Valentina waited in her highest heels, her lowest cut dress and probably the biggest sob story she could concoct in such little time.
*
It actually was not as bad as Jane expected, it was a New Year and perhaps the optimism of that helped, but really, considering what might have been, she knew it could have been much worse. The fire officer had already signed off on the structure and it was safe to walk from the cellar right to the top of The Marchant Inn.
‘The smoke is probably the worst,’ she confided to Carrie as they made their way through the flat she called home. ‘There’s not a lot we can do with so much of it. I suppose a huge skip…’ Teddy barked at that, perhaps he liked the idea of a skip and clearing out the place as much as the notion appealed to Jane.
‘Well, it’s never a bad thing to let things go,’ Carrie said softly. ‘It makes room for more good stuff to come into your life.’
‘That’s a lovely way of putting it,’ Jane said, although she had a feeling Carrie was only saying it to make her feel better.
‘Why don’t we take a few bits with us now?’ Carrie picked up a Toby jug that had been in the pub for years. ‘Just photos and little bits that are sentimental,’ she said. They walked through each of the rooms, selecting knick-knacks that were precious memories in themselves. In the bedroom, Carrie wrapped Jane’s few pieces of jewellery in tissue and placed them carefully in a bag. There wasn’t much, not really, a photo album and her mother-in-law’s recipe book, Manus’s tie pin and a scarf that had long lost his scent but Jane could still conjure him up in her imagination when she held it close.
‘This is probably the most precious thing I have,’ Jane picked up a silver frame with herself and Manus on a day out many years earlier. They were captured in a happy moment, smiling and in love, and even now, when she looked into those eyes, it made her feel he was still close beside her. Teddy nuzzled into her knees, as if he knew exactly what was going through her mind.
They had almost filled a laundry basket with little bits and pieces that each had some sentimental value and Carrie struggled to get it down the stairs.
‘We’ll come back for more, but if we bring these home and clean the smoke from them, it’ll make you feel as if you’ve saved something from the wreckage.’ Carrie loaded the box into the back seat of her car.
‘It’s a strange thing, Carrie, but even with the place burned out, I don’t feel as if I’ve lost all that much,’ Jane said and the realisation had surprised her at first.
‘Well, I suppose, the insurance will cover any damage, so really it’s just the inconvenience,’ Carrie was concentrating on pulling the car out into traffic.
‘I’m not sure that’s even it. Really, it’s the way it’s all happened, you know, I could have been left for dead, but it’s the idea that Luke thought enough of me to risk his own life to get me out.’
‘He was very brave,’ Carrie smiled wistfully.
‘And not just that, but now, look at you, letting me stay in your house, I don’t know when I felt more cared about.’
‘So, out of the ashes…’ Carrie said. They had pulled up at the traffic lights and for a moment, there was complete silence in the car.
‘I want to do something for both of you,’ Jane had already made up her mind. It had occurred to her in the hospital, it was something she could do easily and it was the right thing. ‘I want to make you partners in The Marchant Inn, both of you.’ It would give Luke another reason to stay in Dublin and she had a feeling it would be good for Carrie.
‘You’re not serious?’ Carrie said, and then an irate driver honking behind them reminded her that the traffic lights had turned green. ‘You can’t just…’
‘Oh, but I can.’ Jane smiled. ‘It would be good for all of us and I have a feeling that with the success you made of The Sea Pear, it would be good for The Marchant Inn too.’ Her mind was made up and with it Jane had a feeling that it was the right thing to do for everyone, and maybe especially for herself.
*
Carrie rang Kevin first thing. She asked him to meet her at The Sea Pear for lunch, it was as middle ground as they had and she knew that her news would come as something of a blow.
‘This is nice,’ he said and she realised he’d never been so polite or appreciative when they were together. It was as if their separation had given him an odd unfamiliar respect for her. Sometimes, although she knew it was crazy, she thought she caught admiration in his eyes, but then she convinced herself, she was probably mixing up his signals. ‘We should do this more often,’ his voice was gentle and she sensed their purposes were very different.
‘Well, neutral territory,’ she said lightly. She’d cooked for him, pasta with fish and cheese and chive sauce.
‘Oh?’ He was wearing a musky scent, too much aftershave, as though his mother told him not to spare it.
‘Sit down and eat, then we’ll talk.’ She took a deep breath. Her appetite was not what it had once been, but she knew she had to get this over with. Now, with Kevin before her, resembling an abandoned puppy at the refuge, she wasn’t sure she had the heart to go through with this.
‘Carrie, can I say something?’ He put down his fork, but he’d only moved the food about his plate, like her perhaps he was too nervous to talk. ‘These last few weeks, they’ve been…’
‘Hell?’ she smiled at him and they both laughed at the irony of it all.
‘No, since Valentina left, actually, they’ve been good. They’ve been surprisingly good, because you’ve made them good. You’ve been here, like you’ve always been here, but before, I suppose I didn’t really see you. Does that make sense?’ It was funny, but knowing Valentina was going to get her comeuppance hadn’t really given Carrie as much satisfaction as it had Kevin.
‘I have a feeling that it does to you.’ Carrie knew she should stop him, but she knew too that what he was going to say was long overdue. These were the things she should have been told years ago and maybe some small part of her needed to know that at some point in their relationship Kevin Mulvey had actually loved her.
‘Well, there’s something else too, Carrie. These last few weeks, they’ve made me see that I made a terrible mistake. I thought I was in love with Valentina but the truth is, I’m not sure I knew what love was. I think it wasn’t until I saw you with Luke at the wedding that I realised I was in love with you. ‘I thought the jealousy would eat me up at the wedding. I mean, I was in denial, I think, but looking back, I spent all my time trying to convince myself I was in love with Valentina and even more convincing myself that I wasn’t in love with you.’
‘Kevin, I don’t know what to say.’
‘Say you feel the same. Say you forgive me, that you want to give things another go?’ Kevin was looking at her now, expectantly, as if this might be a real possibility. Of course, the last few weeks, they’d slipped into something that might seem normal to him. She came into work each day, carried on so they could at least balance the books and make sure that all of their creditors were paid. They had been polite, friendly, kind to each other, but each evening she left him to return to Luke and Jane while he… well, she assumed he was staying in the luxurious vacuum of that apartment that had probably seemed like heaven only months ago.
‘Of course I forgive you, Kevin. At this stage, there’s nothing to forgive. I felt, months ago…’ Carrie tried hard to find the words. She didn’t want to crush him, she wouldn’t want anyone to feel as she had felt that night in the rain when Luke had walked into her life. ‘I felt that what you did, breaking up with me, that it was the best for both of us.’ She caught his eye, could see the fear there, but she didn’t love him anymore and, unlike Kevin, she couldn’t pretend. ‘What I mean is that when you finished with me, Kevin, we weren’t in love then. We probably hadn’t been for a long time, we were just going through the motions, but I didn’t realise
it. Then you had a taste of what it was like to fall for someone, and I…’ she thought of Luke for a moment, she had learned with him what it was to be in love. Carrie smiled, ‘I fell in love too. It’s a love like I’ve never experienced before and, Kevin, now that I’ve tasted that, I’m sorry, but I just can’t settle for anything less.’ She wanted a man like Luke Gibson, who would stick by her through thick and thin. She wanted someone who was strong and stable, who had more than just good looks or a fat wallet. She wanted something that she had a feeling Kevin couldn’t even begin to grasp.
‘Oh. I see.’ Kevin studied the table hard for a moment. Carrie felt compassion far greater than she’d ever have expected to feel for him.
‘The thing is, Kevin – I wanted to talk to you today, not because of our relationship, but because I’ve been offered a job, well an opportunity…’
‘Oh?’ He raised his head slowly, his eyes darkened with a sadness she’d never seen so heavy in them before. ‘The reviewing?’
‘No, I’m giving that up, it really was only something to distract me, when I needed… more.’ She smiled, that was the truth of it, really, it was not a job, not something she wanted to do forever.
‘So, something else?’
‘Yes, it’s The Marchant Inn, once the work is complete, I’m going to run it for Jane.’ It was all agreed, Luke had managed to secure a post in the university and they were both happy to let Carrie have the run of the place. They would be partners, even and square, but Carrie would be in charge.
‘So how will it work, I mean, you can’t just be giving up this place to take a job somewhere else. You’re a business owner here, Carrie, even if we’re just clearing our debts, we’ll work our way back into healthy profits very soon.’
‘No.’ Carrie stopped for a moment, considered her next words carefully, then realised there was no easy way of saying them. He was already bruised, in shock perhaps, she would have to be direct, but kind. ‘Jane is making me a partner, Kevin. I’m leaving The Sea Pear and starting up a new business with Luke as a silent partner. That’s the reason I wanted to talk to you today, here…’ she put her hands out, indicating the restaurant they’d built up together.
‘Neutral ground?’ he said, an echo of her earlier words, now they made sense.
‘Yes. The thing is, I still have my stake in this place and I’d like to sell it to you, if you’re interested, but if not, then I’ll put it out for sale openly.’ She tried to keep her voice as gentle as possible, but she knew that even without their earlier conversation it was a lot to take in.
‘So, you’re leaving me? I mean, you’re leaving The Sea Pear? All that we’ve built up, it’s all just being left behind.’ His voice wobbled, the despair in it pulled at her, but she knew, this was for the best, for both of them. They couldn’t go back to how things were.
‘It’s time,’ Carrie said simply and it was just that. ‘This is a great opportunity, I’d be mad to pass up on it. Dublin is a small town, Kevin, and I know I can make The Marchant Inn every bit as successful as The Sea Pear.’ She smiled, hoped that he didn’t feel anything near the emptiness she’d felt all those months ago.
‘I see.’ He got up from the table. ‘I’ll need to think about this. I’ll need to let it settle. You don’t want an answer now, do you? I mean there’s no rush, is there?’
‘Well,’ she bit her lip, just for a second, this was the hard part. ‘I need to start as soon as. I want to oversee the work as the pub is being rebuilt, I can pop over and back here for the first month at least, but after that…’ He needed to know that this was a final split, she would not be holding his hands once she left, he would be on his own.
‘But…’ Kevin said the word, seemed to stumble over what would come next. When he turned to face her, she saw he was crying. ‘But, Carrie, what will I do without you?’
‘I’ll talk to Andrew, see if he’ll take over for a couple of weeks. He’s good with the rosters and all that stuff.’ She was clearing off their plates; neither of them had touched their lunch. ‘We’ll give it a couple of weeks, but then you’ll have to make a decision, Kevin. I’m not coming back to The Sea Pear. You need to know that, the question for you now is if you want to run it on your own or if you’d prefer to take on a new partner.’ She was standing squarely before him. They were equals; however, it was only now, as she was about to leave, that he was ready or able to admit it. ‘I’m sorry, it’s just business, Kevin, you know, it’s not that I’m leaving you personally, that was all done and dusted months ago, right?’
They sat for a while in silence, perhaps just taking in all that they’d built up between them. It was a little strange to think she’d be leaving this place behind soon, but also, strangely liberating.
*
He hated the apartment now that Valentina had left. Strictly speaking, he had asked her to leave, but it had taken time, terrible, awful days when she had been in and out of the local police station and when she was here, she screamed at him and made him feel as if he was in the wrong. By the time he eventually got his key back, he hardly knew why he wanted her in the first place. It seemed that from the very beginning things had started to disintegrate between them.
‘Where is the ring I bought you?’ Because the rest of it, the clothes and shoes and bags, there were worthless now, not that she had left them lying around, they had been packed up and moved to somewhere new.
‘I sold eet. Eet was mine to sell or are you going to say I stole that too?’ She was still claiming her innocence, even here. ‘It was only worth ten thousand euro, in the end.’
‘Ten thousand euros?’ he felt himself fall back into the sofa, he was lucky to be able say the words. ‘But, Valentina, that cost…’ he couldn’t even think about the cost of it, knew this too was a lie, it had been worth far more than that. Later he wondered how he hadn’t had a stroke there and then.
‘You should be paying me to finish our engagement,’ she’d said, twirling her long dark hair through red talons that had begun to revolt him more every day. Occasionally, he wondered how they had at one time been so attractive. ‘You have put my friends in jail and eet looks like you will do the same to me, if you get the chance. I theenk, for all I have put up weeth from you, that this money is the least I should have.’ She was as cool as a breeze and there wasn’t a thing he could do about it. Her bags were packed, thousands of euro in clothes and shoes were gone, her wardrobe yawned wide, with just a few straggling hangers left and old clothes that she no longer wanted.
‘It’s only fair if we agree it. You can’t just sell it on, you’ve taken too much already.’ He still shivered at his own stupidity. Would he have known? When would he have realised, had it not been for Carrie. Carrie had been contrite, she’d wanted to break it to him gently, but what with Luke’s father passing away so suddenly and then the fire at The Marchant Inn, it seemed that Kevin had fallen even further down her list of responsibilities. He had a feeling that she’d put it off as much to spare his feelings as anything else and that only made him feel even worse. ‘It’s daylight robbery.’
‘I theenk, Keveen, that if you decide to challenge me on this, you will find it very hard to prove that you didn’t pay me for my services,’ she’d smiled at him. ‘I wonder, would your mother enjoy hearing what you liked me to do for you een the bedroom? Or some of your fancy customers? How would they feel if they realised you took advantage of a poor girl from Colombia?’ They were pressing charges for the theft at the restaurant, but Valentina would go and do the same thing to the next unsuspecting man she met if something wasn’t done to stop her.
‘That’s blackmail, pure and simple, Valentina,’ he’d said.
‘You can call eet that, but if you try to tell the police that I have taken anything from you, I will make sure that you are a laughing stock in Dublin, you weell never be able to face your friends or your customers again.’
‘Well, now we know.’ She was right, of course, he didn’t really want a court case, but on the ot
her hand, he couldn’t face Carrie if he let Valentina get away with this. For her part, Valentina guessed he couldn’t face the indignity of having her suggest that he paid to have her pretend to be his girlfriend. Maybe it was worse, because he’d always known that if he didn’t own The Sea Pear and drive a nice car, Valentina wouldn’t have given him a second glance. Yes. That was true, he’d known it all along. Funny, because he hadn’t quite thought about it like that before. ‘What will you do now?’ he asked, because he had a sense that she had already made plans.
‘I will be helping the band weeth their costumes,’ she’d said, a little imperiously, considering when she arrived in Dublin she was hardly qualified to clear tables. ‘They are going on tour in a week, so you won’t be seeing me around Dublin again.’
Instead of being heartbroken, Kevin had felt an odd sense of liberation, as if she’d let him off the hook. It was absurd, he knew, to be such a coward, but he couldn’t change now. She was walking out the door with thousands of euro worth of clothes and jewellery and he’d felt nothing but relief. When the door closed, Kevin had picked up his phone.
‘Hello, Detective Sergeant Coleman?’ he’d asked for the older, cynical policeman who had seen straight through him that day in the restaurant. There was no hiding the truth from this man, he could see Kevin for the spineless man he was. ‘I’ve just had a conversation with Valentina and, strangely enough, I must have pressed record on my phone… you might like to hear it, there’s an admission of blackmail on there, at the very least.’