If Only You Knew

by Claire Allan

  Ava laughed but she sensed a certain something in Hope which made her feel that she would be hearing details of the Long Sad Story sooner rather than later.

  “Let’s just say we both have a right to be here,” she said. “I’m sure Betty wouldn’t have us here if she didn’t want us both here. She didn’t strike me as the wishy-washy type.”

  “No, she was very much the say-it-like-it-is type, which I loved.”

  Ava lifted the envelope which she had placed on the table and opened it. “I think it might be time to see what else she has to say for herself.”

  My dearest girls,

  Welcome home. Of course I know it’s not your home . . . but that seemed like the right thing to write. I remember the first time I walked over the threshold of this place – I thought all my Christmases had come at once. We’d been married a couple of years, Claude and I, and he told me he had found the perfect bijou residence just outside the village. Bijou!! Ha – this was bigger than most of the houses in Derry. And a pool in the garden? It’s a far cry from the City Baths, I can tell you! And it was a far cry from the pokey apartment ne had lived in before we made our escape from Derry in 1979.

  We knew once we found this place that we would never leave. And we never did. We were here seventeen years together before Claude died and, well, it took a pretty bad dose of cancer to get me out of the place. It seems strange that now, as you read this, neither of us is there. We used to say it was our forever home – seems forever doesn’t last that long.

  I’m sounding maudlin, aren’t I? That’s not the best welcome, is it? Well, anyway, Isuppose maybe that’s why I didn’t put everything in order – not when it came to the house anyway. I can be a stubborn oul goat at times and this was one loose end – one goodbye I didn’t want to say. I suppose I was a coward too. There were some things I so wanted to face while I was still here but I couldn’t. You won’t be cross at me for that, will you? I so wanted to . . .

  But I know you two – you might not think I do but I’m good with people. Shocking with everything else – but good with people. I can trust you with this.

  I know I have a bit of a cheek asking you do to this. To go through all our things, to delve through our personal information. All the memories of me and Claude, my old clothes, the cupboards of mismatched china I never could throw away and the loft filled to the brim with a lifetime of my stuff, and Claude’s stuff.

  I trust you to look after this for me. Please. Protect my memories. Clear out the crap (excuse the language). Keep a couple of pictures, will you? I know that I probably shouldn’t really care about all this now. Afterall by the time you read this I’ll be long gone – but well, just the thought of ‘just anyone’ sorting through it all – it doesn’t sit well with me.

  Jean-Luc has arranged for a skip to arrive tomorrow (late morning – sleep off the wine). Throw out what you will. Keep what you want. And when you are done, I just need you to sign some paperwork.

  I’ll be with you. I’ve left letters – just notes which explain a few things I never could in life which you can read together or on your own. I’ve left a schedule – attached. If you follow it, you should find the letters in the right order. They should explain a lot. A lot that I so wish I could have explained person to person.

  Tonight though . . . relax. Enjoy the wine. And the fire. And the view. Raise a glass for me – for everything I did and everything I didn’t do. My intentions were always good.

  Much love, my girls,

  Betty

  xxx

  Ava felt the lump that had been sitting in her throat threaten to explode as tears ran down her face. She looked atHope who was equally gone in a flurry of tears and then she raised her glass, the sun catching on it and sparkling brightly. “To Betty, Claude, her home and her memories!”

  “And to us! And to doing her proud.”

  They drank and then Hope flicked through the schedule, the lists of rooms which were to be tackled and the order in which they were to be faced.

  “It’s an impressive list,” she said, sipping her wine. “I think we’d better make the most of tonight. It’ll be pretty full-on from here.”

  “Cheers then!” Ava said, clinking her glass against her cousin’s and looking out over the terrace to the gardens and fields below.

  The wine bottle was empty and it was gone seven. Ava found herself yawning. God, she was really bloody going to make a good impression on Hope, wasn’t she? A lightweight who fell asleep after half a glass of wine! Christ, her cousin would have her pinned down as the most boring creature on the planet. She hadn’t stayed on in Belfast for a drink on the day of the will reading. She had burst into tears after reading Betty’s letter and now she was yawning and feeling her eyelids droop. And she still felt sick. She hadn’t even had much of the wine – and had tried to settle her stomach with one of the flaky croissants Jean-Luc had left – but, as she listened to Hope speak of her round-the-world trip and how it had brought her to Saint Jeannet, she realised she was going to have to make a complete eejit of herself and make her excuses and go to bed. Wherever bed was. Her case was still in the hall. They hadn’t investigated further than the kitchen and the terrace and the downstairs loo – which was bigger than her own master bathroom and twice as nice.

  She yawned again as Hope recalled a bout of dodgy tummy-itis in Bali. She felt herself blush. Not only would Hope think she was boring, she would think she was a rude cow as well. That, she realised, could make for a very awkward week indeed.

  “I’m sorry,” she said when a lull in the conversation was reached. “I must be getting old. I feel wrecked. I don’t know whether it was the flight or what, but I think I need to go for a sleep.”

  She watched Hope’s face carefully for any sign that she was annoyed or disgusted with her. If Karen had been there she would have been rolling her eyes with gusto just then and shouting “Fader!” from the rooftops – and then she would huff for a week – or ten days as it was now. The bitch.

  Hope smiled and put her wineglassdown.“Oh God, I’ve been wittering on – it’s just this place. It brings back memories. I’m sorry.”

  “Nothing to be sorry for. I’ve been feeling a little out of sorts the last day or so. I probably just need a good sleep and then you can tell me more. I’m very much enjoying listening to your stories. I never did anything exciting like that. I went to university. Got a job. Got married. Had a baby. Stepford has nothing on me.”

  “Hey, don’t knock being settled down,” Hope said.

  “I know,” Ava said, because she hated when she complained about it. It didn’t mean she didn’t think she was lucky. She knew she was lucky and exceptionally blessed but that didn’t mean that sometimes she didn’t get the urge to run down the street naked, get a tattoo on the back of her of neck or book a holiday they really couldn’t afford just to show she could do something completely unexpected which might just shock the shite out of those who saw her as the sensible, boring woman she was.She would have said that to Hope but she feared she would scare her off altogether. After all, they barely knew each other. Now was definitely not the time for the “look at everything which is so horribly boring and mundane about my life” speech. That could wait till at least day three . . .

  Hope showed Ava to a room on the bottom floor of the house. It was where she had slept when she had stayed there all those years ago and she said it would be weird to sleep there again. There were memories in that room, she said, saying she would take the attic bedroom instead. Neither of them said it, but it went without saying that neither would sleep in Betty’s room. It would be weird, Ava thought. And while she knew this made her sound mildly like a bad person, she also thought it might just be a little creepy.

  The room Hope showed her to was at the opposite end of the house to the kitchen. It was sparsely furnished – a large oak-framed bed, a simple dressing table and chair. A mirror hung on the wall and long voile curtains shielded the room from the worst of the sun. A tall wardrobe
stood at the back of the room and Ava set about unpacking her clothes into it, and the two drawers beneath it. She never had been the kind of person who could live out of a suitcase. She had to make each room she stayed in, even if it were only a hotel room for a night, her own. As she was going to be sleeping here for a week she might as well make herself really comfy. Pulling out the picture of Connor and Maisie she had in her case, she looked at it and smiled. Hope was right, of course. She was lucky. Kissing it, she sat it on the dressing table before emptying her case of her make-up and perfume and stacking them neatly. Lastly she pulled her washbag out and walked through to the ensuite where she felt another wave of nausea sweep over her.

  Sitting on the toilet, she put her hand to her forehead. She was definitely clammy. She needed a lie-down. It would be okay, if she just had a sleep and a glass of water. As soon as she put everything away. Toothpaste and toothbrush. Facial wash and showergel. Shampoo and Tampax. Tampax. Shite. Tampax. She had packed them, of course she had . . . but there in the bathroom she had her very own light-bulb, period-is-late, pregnancy-scare, fuck-this-for-a-game-of-morning-sickness moment. Oh. Sweet. Jesus.

  She sat back on the toilet and felt even clammier. Then she scrambled to the bedroom and hauled her phone from her bag. She had one of the Apps – those silly little Apps which charted when your last period was and when your next one was due. She tried to work it out in her head. Had she had a period since she received Betty’s first letter? She tried to remember. No, she didn’t think so, so it must have been just before. But she couldn’t remember that either. Oh pish sticks, she swore as she swiped through the Apps on her phone to find the right one. Clicking it open, she felt her tummy cramp just a little. She was panicking for nothing. No doubt her period was absolutely and totally just going to arrive. She wasn’t pregnant. She couldn’t be pregnant. It wasn’t like she had been hyper-emotional like she had been with Maisie . . . except she had. She hadn’t felt sick . . . except she had. She hadn’t boobs which resembled torpedoes . . . except (pause for quick glance down) she did. Oh bastard, she swore to herself again. And there it was. Last period. Five weeks ago. Five weeks and three days to be precise. And she was a steady twenty-eight-days girl. Oh bollocks. Oh bastarding, stupiding, fecking bollocks. Had she taken a risk? She thought back. The night of the will reading. The champagne. The sex. She had let her guard (and her knickers) down and thinking back they had thrown caution to the wind. She figured just one time wouldn’t hurt. One night of leaving the condoms in the drawer would be just grand. Sure people tried for months to get pregnant. She should have listened to the nuns. It did only take the once after all. And feck it . . . now she was pregnant. She didn’t even need to test. She knew it, as sure as she knew that she would never, ever drink champagne again.

  Christ, they would never be able to afford to drink champagne again. Or ordinary wine. She wondered did Tesco do a value range of Pinot Grigio? With an extra mouth to feed and an extra childcare place to pay for, she wondered if Tesco did a value range in everything?

  She knew she should have lifted the phone and called Connor but she knew he was probably sitting in his parents’ front room in Blackrock, making polite conversation about how they were all doing and the last thing he needed was a semi-hysterical woman screeching down to the phone to him that she was up the duff and what the holy fuck were they going to do about it?

  She could call her mother, she supposed, but she didn’t want to annoy Cora, who had been in bad form anyway and would more than likely do one of those deep-sigh things. Christ, she was thirty-four and having a stroke about telling her mother. Cora would come round, of course, but she would give her a lecture first about whether or not she had thought this whole thing through, given how hard she found it to balance work, home and Maisie. And much as she loved her mother and was close to her she couldn’t face telling her that no, actually, she hadn’t thought it through at all and she had simply been half cut on a couple of glasses of champagne and had let go of her inhibitions. She would have to admit to her mother that she’d had sex, which of course was a bit of ‘stating the obvious’ but not a conversation she relished.

  If things weren’t so frosty with Karen she would probably call her. Karen, she realised with a thump, would understand her panic more than anyone. She loved her family, she did, but she was barely keeping it together as it was.

  There was Hope, she realised. There was nothing stopping her from marching right out onto terrace right there and then and telling her cousin but of course there was the complete fecking fear of coming across as a nutcase in front of a relative stranger stopping her. Oh this was not good. This was the start of her very own Long Sad Story. Oh crap.

  She lay back on the bed and looked at the App on her phone again. She reached her hand instinctively to her stomach and cursed herself for not catching on before now. This was not like her. She knew everything. She planned everything. On Ava Campbell’s big list of birthdays and anniversaries there was also a small letter P written in blue pen on the day of each month when her period started. How could she have missed that this month?

  Not that catching on would have made much difference, she supposed. Pregnant would still mean pregnant. Fecked would still mean fecked.

  Trying to steady her breathing while repeating a steady mantra of “It will be okay”, she vowed to herself to try and get to a supermarket of some description to buy a pregnancy test just to be sure. She could, she supposed, go to the local chemist but her knowledge of French was shockingly bad and she didn’t fancy either having to speak very loudly and slowly to a random stranger that she thought she might be with the child or, worse still, attempt some primitive form of sign language to that effect . . . (standing with a bloated face, gesturing her hands to make a rounded tummy and then play-acting a birth . . . lovely). Then, when she knew, categorically and without a shadow of a doubt, she would decide what to do next.

  She would worry about it tomorrow. Closing her eyes and trying to block out the thoughts that were swirling through her mind, she did her best to fall asleep. Thankfully the first trimester came with the added bonus of bone-crushing exhaustion and despite her overactive imagination she was able to fall off into a sleep where none of it mattered anymore.

  Chapter 13

  Hope stoked the dying embers of the fire and pulled the throw rug she had found on the bed she would sleep in around her. She had been tempted to open a second bottle of wine but feared that a second bottle combined with the memories crashing at her relentlessly would have ended in a rather messy fashion. Possibly involving tears, hysterical wailing and Ava running screaming from the villa mentally scarred forever.

  She had been expecting the trip to bring back some memories – of course she had – but not this. Not these extremes. Everything about the house reminded her of an interaction she had shared with Dylan or a whispered conversation with Betty or that night . . . that infamous night.

  It had been a long, hot day and she had been feeling homesick despite all the comforts Betty had afforded them. They had spent the day picking grapes at a local vineyard and her back ached and her skin felt dry from the summer sun. She was sweaty, and sticky and feeling decidedly unfeminine. In fact she could barely remember the last time she had felt feminine at all. The last few months had been spent in cargo trousers and string tops and a choice of either sensible walking shoes, or vaguely fashionable but still, by necessity, comfortable sandals. Her underwear had turned a delightful grey colour from frequent hand-washes in tiny basins in youth hostels which could not ever be described as luxurious. Her legs needed to be shaved. Her bikini-line was shocking and her hair was matted to her head in a ratty ponytail. When they had walked through the village on their way home from the vineyard, stopping at a small taverna for a cold drink, she had looked around at the effortlessly chic and glam Frenchwomen and felt subhuman. Their hair glistened in the sun. The only thing glistening on her body was her own sweat. They wore loose, crisp white linens and she was pret
ty sure their underwear was neither grey nor saggy. The feckers probably wore matching sets, with no fear of an unkempt bikini line escaping from their thongs to ruin the look. She had downed half a beer, direct from the bottle, before she had noticed they were all sipping theirs from glasses while giggling delicately and speaking in cute French accents which sounded much less harsh than her Northern Irish drawl. She couldn’t have felt less ladylike without the aid of a moustache and perhaps a very loud and pungent fart.

  She had looked atDylan, who was clearly as intrigued with the Frenchwomen as she was but for clearly different reasons, and said she was going back to the villa to freshen up.

  It was luxury – to have her own bathroom with a shower they didn’t have to queue for, with enough hot water to allow her to luxuriate for as long as she wanted. Hope had stood under the powerful streams of scorching hot water for a full twenty-three minutes – lathering herself time and again with fancy shower gel until she felt she could not get any cleaner. She shaved her legs and other areas and washed her hair four times before leaving on an intensive conditioning treatment to soften it to within an inch of its life.

  When she finally stepped out of the shower, and wrapped herself in one of the fluffy towels Betty had left out, she had wandered to the terrace where she smothered her tanned legs and arms with rich body butter before painting her toenails a fresh pale pink. She had brushed her blonde curls, allowing the sun to dry her hair and, instead of slipping into her cotton pyjamas (built for modesty in the crammed dorms of the hostel), she put on a pair of fancy pink knickers with a matching lace bra. She was not doing that to seduce Dylan. Far from it. She just wanted to feel like a woman again. Slipping on a summer dress, she scanned the list of recommended restaurants Betty had left out for them and decided they would absolutely push the boat out that night. Hope’s stomach rumbled at the thought of a proper meal in a proper restaurant – one that was not a roadside stall or a basic café serving anything you wanted as long as it was pizza. She had already vowed that she would never, ever eat pizza again.