‘Yes, I most certainly do,’ said Eddie with a big beam. ‘I wasn’t bad, was I, if I say so myself.’
‘Well, you left a bit of you in here.’
Eddie sat up in bed. ‘You’re never!’
‘I flaming am!’
He threw his arms around his wife and squashed her to bits.
‘Bloody fantastic,’ he said with a grin that stretched so far across his face, his lips nearly joined around the back of his head. He took her hand and kissed the back of it tenderly. ‘Mrs Flanagan, I love you. You’re chuffing magic.’
‘Well, if magic has got anything to do with it, let’s send some of it on,’ said Catherine, and laid her own kiss on top of Eddie’s, then blew it in the direction of Stevie’s house. Surely not even Eddie could rebuke her for interfering in Stevie’s life on that plain.
Chapter 57
A week had passed when the loud knock landed on Stevie’s door and her heart started racing as she rushed to open it. It dropped like a stone though to find Matthew standing there; nevertheless, she formed a small, welcoming smile, which was roughly a quarter the size of his own.
‘I’ve got some great news!’ he said, angling for an invite.
And Stevie being Stevie, she said, ‘Come in.’
‘Is er…?’
‘No,’ said Stevie, anticipating what he was going to ask. ‘Adam doesn’t live here any more.’
Matthew’s smile suddenly got a bit wider.
‘Coffee?’ said Stevie, because it would have been rude not to.
‘Yes, please,’ he said, because it would give him an excuse to stay a little longer. ‘Lovely cottage,’ he commented, looking around. Not only lovely but also shining and polished and clean, and there was that indefinable something in it that turned a house into a home. His house didn’t have it any more. It hadn’t had it since Stevie left.
‘Yes, it is lovely,’ she said quietly. She would be sorry to say goodbye to it too, so sorry. So many times she had picked up the phone to ring Adam on the pretext of asking him when she needed to get out of the cottage, only to put it down again in case Jo picked it up. He would be a fool to have gone back to her, but Jo MacLean was like a flame to men and she attracted the sorts of hearts that could not stop themselves burning their fragile moth-wings many times against her. Adam must have taken her back; why else would he have left and not been in touch?
‘Sorry I’ve not been across before, but it’s been a mad week,’ said Matthew.
‘Oh yes?’ said Stevie, barely realizing how many days had passed. She had locked herself away in her office when Danny wasn’t around, occupying all thought-space with Damme and Evie, because she did not want to think of her own empty life.
‘I’ve been offered my old job back!’ said Matthew.
‘Good, I’m pleased,’ said Stevie.
‘But…’ He left a dramatic pause. ‘I’m not taking it.’
‘Why ever not?’
‘Because I’ve decided I’m going to have a fresh start. I’m selling the house and clearing some of my debts with the equity, and then I’m moving to London. I’ve got interviews lined up and I’ve found a flat, sharing with some other people. It’s cheap and cheerful but it will do nicely until I get back on my feet. I’ve made too many mistakes here and I want to get away. And by way of an unofficial apology, Doyles are giving me three months’ paid leave and they’ve wangled me a tax-free bonus. I hear it was old Seedy who came through for me in the end, can you believe?’
‘Yes, I can believe it,’ said Stevie. He had looked a decent man. One who must be hurting terribly at the moment too.
‘He’s going to live in New York apparently.’
‘Good. A fresh start for him too. And…Jo?’ asked Stevie, although she still had difficulty saying the name.
‘Got flattened by a stray meteorite, died an agonizing slow death.’
Okay, so she imagined that.
‘No one knows. She didn’t turn in for work the day after you went into the office and hasn’t been back since.’
Adam hadn’t been seen either. He hadn’t been working at the gym. They were obviously together. Maybe they had gone off on holiday–after all, isn’t that what couples did to escape the trail of devastated hearts they left behind–run off to the sun? Not that it mattered really, for the words of Jo’s letter had stung her hard and deep. Even with no Jo MacLean on the scene, Adam’s heart wasn’t going to be fulfilled by a short, lumpy woman and someone else’s kid.
‘Apparently Colin looked rough for a couple of days after your meeting,’ said Matthew. ‘Someone said he was caught crying in his off—’ A five-ton penny dropped. ‘Hey, you don’t think Jo and Colin…do you?’
‘I’m almost sure of it, Matthew.’ Stevie had been instrumental in that avenue of escape being closed to Jo, which would almost definitely have driven her back to Adam as a safe haven. She shooed that thought away and turned her attentions back to Matthew. ‘So how come you know what happened at work?’
‘Well, people started ringing me again–once the truth filtered out that I wasn’t a psycho-woman batterer. I think they felt a bit guilty about believing the stories and tried to over-compensate. Anyway, I got some presents and good luck cards in the post and I’m meeting my department for a night out before I move.’
‘I’m glad for you, Matthew, I really am. I hope you enjoy London.’
‘Unless you…er…’ Matthew stumbled. Stevie looked up into his eyes. They were soft, brown, warm and open, and he was looking nervously at her like the first time he had dared to ask her out.
‘Unless of course you didn’t want me to g-go and…’ he stuttered on.
Stevie gulped. This was the moment she had been waiting for. Adam’s plan had come through for her too, it seemed. So why wasn’t she hearing brass bands playing in her heart? There was nothing but the faint piercing sound of retreating bagpipes.
That week she had finally faced up to the fact that her love for Matthew had started to die as soon as Adam showed her the holiday confirmation; its roots had been wrenched out with the break of trust. She knew she had clung on blindly to the fantasy that it was still a plant alive and growing because a buried but determined part of her wanted to win Matthew back from Jo, to make up for the fact that she had lost Mick to Linda. She wanted so much to see him as the strong, reliable bloke her heart was waiting for. But he wasn’t that man. Someone else was.
‘No, I don’t suppose…you would, would you? C-consider–you…me–again?’
‘No, Matthew.’ She answered him in a kind voice because there had been too many hearts broken, too many emotional casualties.
‘I was a thick twat,’ he said with genuine frustration. ‘My grass was lovely and green and I went looking for better stuff and ended up with Astroturf.’
She hoped his next job wasn’t going to be writing romantic fiction, because he just might give her a run for her money with lines like that.
Matthew looked at her, her spun-gold hair, her lovely blue eyes, warmth and nice-person radiating out from her in waves, and once again he could not believe he had let her go. Ironically, her strength in saying, ‘No’ to him made him want her even more, but her eyes were only looking back at him as if he was ordinary. They weren’t registering that he was special any more. They looked at Adam MacLean quite differently, he had noticed. Jim Bowen’s voice welled up in his head with the Bull’s-eye tune playing in a minor key: Look at what you could have won.
‘It’s him, isn’t it–Adam? You really fell for him then?’
‘Yes, Matthew, hook, line and sinker.’
‘I thought you were just joking at first, you know. You’ll laugh but I thought it was all a sort of plan to get us jealous.’ He laughed at how stupid that seemed now. As if! ‘So what happened?’
‘I don’t know,’ she shrugged. ‘I presume Adam and Jo are together somewhere, planning a new start. I haven’t seen or heard from him since…well, since…’
‘Since I came round
that night, by any chance?’ Matthew said, his shoulders scrunching up with shame and embarrassment. Stevie didn’t answer; she couldn’t. There was a big lump in her throat, and there was no Adam around to perform a Heimlich manoeuvre on her to shift it.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said apologetically. ‘I seem to have developed rather a habit of wrecking your life.’
For once she didn’t say her customary kind, ‘No, don’t be silly,’ to let him off the hook. Matthew knew, by that, just how deeply he had hurt her. The sooner he got to London the better. Maybe there he would finally grow up.
‘When the house is sold, I’ll give you some money from it to cover Danny’s holiday and of course the wedding costs. I’m sorry, Stevie. I’ve been a total bastard. I look at myself and I don’t like what I’ve become. I used to think I was a good bloke. I don’t want to be this Matthew. I want to get right away from him.’
‘When do you leave?’ she asked.
‘Next week–got to pack up the stuff I need and get rid of the rest. Might even do a car boot sale.’
‘You can earn quite a bit on those.’
‘Hey, remember when we did that one, that freezing Sunday morning?’
‘Yes, I remember,’ she said, smiling a little at an old faded memory, of a time when they were happy. A lifetime ago. Those two people didn’t exist any more though.
Matthew was viewing the same memory, although his mind glasses had deeper rose-shaded lenses at the moment: snapshots of them eating burgers at eight o’clock in the morning just to keep warm; the old woman bartering them down from thirty to twenty pence for a leather wallet; the man in the Shredded Wheat wig they’d tried so hard not to giggle at. Stevie had been so sweet, so much fun. He hoped there would be another Stevie in London to meet.
‘Thanks, Stevie, you’re a diamond and I owe you big time,’ he said, and he threw his arms around her and hugged her for the last time. She wasn’t as pliant as he remembered. She didn’t melt against him and envelop him in her affection. But then, she wasn’t his any more.
‘Goodbye, Matthew, and good luck,’ she said, and kissed his cheek, and though she smiled, the light seemed to have gone from her eyes. He wished, at least, he could put that back there for her.
That afternoon, Adam MacLean was watching something mindless on the television about doing up gardens hosted by a woman with jolly features and wayward breasts, as he imagined Stevie’s would be in that garb. He’d always gone for women with scraps of meat on their bones, like his mother, but Stevie had a bottom he wanted to bite lumps out of. She was so soft and curvy and warm, but Jo’s words in the letter had haunted him. Stevie would want more for herself and her son than a ‘unique’ (i.e. ugly) man who made noise wherever he went.
He knew he would have to speak to her soon about the arrangements for the cottage, but he was scared he would turn the corner and see her back in Matthew’s house, and find Humbleby Cottage lying as empty as his heart felt. He would have to face it, but not now. Just a few more days until he found the strength to look her in the eye, wish her all the luck and happiness in the world, let her go for ever.
He looked around at the cold, characterless room and decided that he really needed to clean up. The house hadn’t been vacuumed in days, nor had the dishwasher been switched on. Then again, there had been no plates to wash because he hadn’t been eating. He had managed to drag himself to the shower, but not over to the shaving mirror. He looked half-wild with his auburn stubble and flat, tired eyes. He caught sight of his reflection in the smoky glass of the display cabinet and decided he wouldn’t have liked to meet himself up a dark alley.
He ignored the first ‘bing bong’ of the doorbell, as he wasn’t in the mood for visitors. After the fifth bing bong, he thought he had better address the irritation and get rid of it by telling them that, no, he didn’t want to convert to their religion, thanks, he was quite happy being a Satanist. No, he didn’t want to sponsor them, vote for them, buy their windows, look at their brochure or convert his energy supplies. He had no energy to convert.
The fuzzy shape that he saw through the glass was a man’s, and when he opened the door, it was to a rather pale-looking Matthew.
‘Hi,’ his unexpected visitor said with a big gulp and a hand held up in a ‘how’-like greeting. ‘I realize you might want to murder me, but before you do, can I please tell you something?’
Chapter 58
Stevie dropped Danny off at school then picked up some empty boxes from the Happy Shopper en route to home. As she opened the cottage door, silence greeted her and the quiet was uncomfortably deafening in a way that Adam’s noise could never be. She missed his big, booming voice more each day. She missed seeing his cavernous sports bag by the door. She missed his boxers on the washing line. She missed the heavy tread of his large feet on the stairs, the way he crashed through doors and blasted out ‘Flowers of Scotland’ at three billion decibels in the shower. She missed everything about the man. And Danny’s insistent questioning didn’t help. Where’s Adam? When is he coming back? Will he be back tonight? He hadn’t asked half as many questions over Matthew or Mick combined. It seemed that her little boy was hurting as much as she was.
Her mind had taken her to some horrible places that week–to Majorca, spying on Jo, in her white size-10 bikini and blissfully stretched out at the side of Adam in the sun. She wished she could wish she had never laid eyes on the man, but then she might never have discovered she had the capacity to love to that tremendous depth. This had been no love on the sidelines that made compromises, this had been a fall into an abyss out of which she had never wanted to crawl.
She hoped Matthew would find contentment down south, although she knew deep down that he would. She hoped Colin Seed would enjoy his new life in New York and find someone he could love and look after who would drag him into Burtons occasionally. And most of all she hoped Jo would realize what she had nearly lost and take better care of Adam’s beautiful big heart. Stevie found out that true love made it possible to let someone go to be happy with another.
She started to put books into one of the boxes until her eyes clouded over so much that she couldn’t see what she was doing. She’d gone and fallen for Humbleby too, and having to leave it would half-kill her. It sounded stupid, but the cottage felt ‘sad’ that she would be going soon, as if it had been lonely in its enforced long emptiness and had rather enjoyed having a funny little boy, an incurable romantic and a rather loud Gaelic giant enjoying its warmth and protection.
She was going mad, obviously, thinking about old houses having feelings. What next? Imagining the dishwasher sobbing as it scrubbed the pots clean? She needed to get out. Somewhere in the presence of other human beings doing something that would bat these ridiculous notions of emotional inanimate objects out of her head. Filling up her water bottle, she grabbed her gym card and car keys and headed out to Well Life.
Stevie looked at the calorie counter. Apparently, she had burnt up 350 of them in the last hour and she still wasn’t tired, but then her body didn’t feel connected to her head. Her legs were pounding but her brain wasn’t giving out any messages for them to stop. It was too busy blotting everything out. It wasn’t connected to her ears either so it didn’t hear the track ‘Loneliness’ playing once again and it wasn’t connected to her eyes so she didn’t see the screens showing MTV and Morning Coffee in front of her. Nor did she see Adam MacLean walking up the side of the StairMasters either.
Not until she saw a big, hairy arm put a small jeweller’s box on the water-bottle shelf and heard that big thunderous voice of his saying, ‘Ah hear you’ve fallen for me hook, line and sinker, woman,’ was she even remotely aware of his presence. And in shock, she lost her footing, cracked her head on the control panel and did the sort of backwards flip that would have knocked the Romanian gymnasts off the Gold Medal spot in the Olympics.
Chapter 59
‘So once again I make a complete prat of myself in front of everyone because of you,’ she said in his o
ffice as he applied a bag of ice to the fast-growing egg-shaped lump. ‘Ow, ow, ow!’
‘Wheesht, woman.’
‘And if vibrating me off the machine with your voice wasn’t enough fun for you, you give me an empty box as well!’
‘Course it’s empty. I just wanted to see what your reaction would be.’
‘You are a sadist. I was right all along.’
‘Not at all. Choosing a ring is an important matter. I’d only have got something with too many diamonds on it.’
‘Is there such a thing?’
He smiled a little and had a good look at the lump. ‘I think this might hatch at any minute.’
‘Anyway, what did you mean by you’ve heard that I’ve fallen for you hook, line and sinker? Which mentally deranged nutter could possibly have told you that?’
‘Stop moving your head, woman! Matthew came to see me earlier. Very brave in the circumstances. Said I was an idiot if I’d let you go.’
‘Matthew?’
‘Aye. He said you were the most wonderful woman he’d ever known.’
‘Yes, well, I couldn’t have been that wonderful if he dropped me like a hot brick, now could I?’
‘He also said that he’d asked you to go back to him but you were in love with me. And you were under the impression that I was back with Jo.’
‘Did he now?’ She cleared her throat in preparation for the next question, ‘And are you?’ It came out all shaky.
‘Oh aye, that’s why I’m giving ring boxes to you.’
‘Empty ring boxes though.’
‘I explained the reason for that. You have tae wear the thing for ever, so it’s no’ fair fo’ me to force ma tastes on youse, is it noo?’
‘I suppose,’ said Stevie. Her heart was thumping so loud she thought it might even deafen Adam. ‘But you still haven’t answered the question.’
‘Stevie.’ Adam looked her squarely in the eyes so she could read the truth in them for herself. ‘I don’t know if I ever was in love with Jo. I was besotted, but I don’t even know if there is a real Jo MacLean. I think she just borrows personalities aff a peg and wears them like a suit. The trouble with that is that none of them ever quite fit properly. I certainly didn’t know her–I realized that at Will’s barbecue.’ He didn’t say he could trace that moment back to when she shoved little Danny away and he saw the hurt in the wee boy’s eyes. He knew then she wasn’t the woman she had presented herself to be. She wasn’t the woman he had waited for all his life.
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