Angel Avenue

by Sarah Michelle Lynch

  Chapter Thirty

  Warrick

  I am so in love with her, you cannot imagine. I didn’t ask for this nor did I ever expect it. It was just impulse one day to talk to a lonely looking girl and now look at me! Now the prospect of being without her makes me feel light-headed. We’ve been boyfriend and girlfriend for a month and it’s not been without its ups and downs.

  I remember we spent one Saturday in absolute silence because I told her I was spending another evening without her. She’s gotten used to me being part of her Saturday nights now and I know she’s upset about it but what can I do? When I gotta go, I gotta go. Despite our silence I told her to get in my car and she and I went to the submarium. We sat staring at sea creatures, on a bench placed in the middle of the large viewing room. We didn’t speak but actually there was no need to. We didn’t break our hand-holding as we sat staring at nothing and everything, just watching screaming children chase around us. We saw videos about sea life conservation and listened to mothers chat about their busy husbands and their brood of kids that are getting difficult to cope with.

  I never thought I would ever want anyone to get close to me, ever again. I consigned myself to believing that life was over, for me. I had my chance and blew it, then what should happen, but I meet a beautiful girl on a street corner one day and find she’s even more screwed up than me! I mean that in the nicest possible way.

  So, after we viewed the tropical fish, the penguins, the sharks, lizards and whatnot, I took her to a café in the building and she ate a three-course meal of soup, lasagne and chocolate sponge. I admire her appetite, I do. It’s impressive. I wish I had such an appetite then maybe I would look a bit more like Henry Cavill rather than Matt Smith.

  I remember in my darkest days the smallest things used to make me smile. The poppers on a duvet that are so much easier to fasten than buttons. A spare pack of dish cloths hidden behind some tins in a cupboard, just when you thought you’d run out. A tin of custard under a bag of crisps that brightens your day just because you didn’t think there was anything in for pudding. A £10 note on the pavement. A woman who stops and thanks you for holding the door and remarks that nobody holds doors anymore, but because I do, it makes me special. Little things like that. I grew to appreciate the little things when I found myself divorced, alone, bereft and ‘screwed up’.

  On a separate Saturday, I took her to the football and she almost bit my head off because she hates football. However, I told her I hate it too. I do. Well, not the game. But I hate having to sit among people calling the referee a ‘W’. I hate having to pay £4 a pint and I hate seeing our team being controlled by mega advertising deals instead of doing it for the simple glory of the game, like we used to. I said it was a test of both our endurance and I said I was paying and would buy her as many pies as she wanted, so she agreed.

  We sat together in the crowd. She’d had two pints and two portions of pie, peas and gravy even before the game began. I had half a lager and a cucumber sandwich. Am I a total pansy or what? Probably.

  When the jeers and the swearing began, we shared a few quiet smiles. When the crowd went wild when we scored, we joined in and threw ourselves into a tight hug and her breasts crushed my chest. Christ, I am obsessed with her breasts.

  Anyway, we went home with our voices hoarse and our bellies full of beer and pie. On the bus back, I was thinking it’s important to stay together, whatever the cost or the compromise. I can’t be without her now.

  Regret is a tricky thing. It’s not simple or black and white. I regret marrying Anna sometimes. But then how can I regret the child I had from that marriage? I could never regret Joe. He’s amazing. He plays football and has been scouted by City. He could join the Youth Squad in just a year’s time. I do worry for him. He may get in and then he’ll travel the country and be signed and it frightens me that we’re already facing that ‒ Anna and I ‒ that our son is no longer ours and has a life to embark on without us. We keep it amicable in front of Joe but, it was hard when we split. She went to her parent’s and took our boy and I was left in an empty house with nothing but tins of food and a cold bed. I don’t know why I still live there to be honest, it’s unwelcoming and bare. I hate it. Too big for just one man. I should sell it. Perhaps all this time I have been in denial about losing my family and I don’t want to leave the nest, not yet. Joe was born in that house.

  But where there’s despair, there’s hope. There’s also a Vespa scooter Jules now makes me get on. I thought she was joking when she first asked me to get on the back. I think she is a bit ashamed of owning it to be honest. She told me she keeps it under covers behind the house and only gets it out for special occasions or rides out. I think she should ride it past all the schoolchildren every morning with pride and not a hint of embarrassment that Miss Simonovich is a petrol head.

  It amused me, it did, until I had to get on the bloody thing. Baby blue and not designed to carry a six foot man with extraordinarily long legs.

  She rides like a loony. I saw the pearly gates at least three times while she rode that thing like a madwoman. She mentioned the bends and leaning, what she didn’t mention was that we’d be doing 40mph at the time! Got to hand it to her though, she can ride. I was impressed. If only I hadn’t looked such a tool ‒ a grown man ‒ on the back of a baby blue, puny machine with a matching open-face helmet on. I thought about smashing the headwear just so I wouldn’t have to wear it. Well, it’s only her spare…

  I suppose at least she opened me up to a new experience. Don’t know why, but I have never felt the urge myself. I prefer to be in a box with four walls and an airbag. Safer that way.

  She got us tickets to the theatre one night. She blabbed on about how she preferred the old building the theatre was housed in, the one resembling a cowshed on a nothing backstreet with a pothole-riddled car park behind it (the original, before the new state of the art one was built).

  She said it was called Ladies Day and I thought she was kidding. It sounded like something I was going to snooze through. It did. A re-enacting of some trollop’s day at the races? I guess I haven’t really filled my life with culture or plays, art or the cinema, you know. I didn’t think it would be her thing either, but hell, it was! She laughed like a witch and that alone made me happy. I am changing and I don’t know myself!

  Some nights we just watch DVDs and while she lies back against my chest, she marks books and I stroke her hair. She told me once that having her hair brushed is one of the lasting memories she has of her mother so I give her that whenever I can. Brushing her hair is such a special thing in itself. I love her and find her so beautiful and then she has this hair too, with golden streaks running through like silk thread.

  Some mornings I wake early just to study her beauty as she sleeps peacefully. Ingraining the image on the inside of my heart. She has an overhanging top lip I adore. I love it when it gets stuck on her top teeth. I also adore it when she’s deep in thought over a book she’s marking and she chews a pen and one side of her face scrunches up in disdain.

  My mum was one of those things I relied on. Even the idea of her got me through some of the toughest times; thinking of her and the love we shared and the way she smelt or made me feel, like she would protect me no matter what. To have that one certainty ripped out of your life is soul-destroying. She was that one person I could guarantee would always say or do something to put a smile on my face. I always associated my mum with happy things and then, she was gone. My mum was cuddly, soft, bubbly, the only thing that made my dad tolerable and the only person never to say a bad word about anybody. She was comfort epitomised.

  I guess I am sat here contemplating all these things because from the look on Jules’ face, she’s got something she wants to thrash out with me and I sense it’s not going to be pretty. She’s working herself up to it and my mind is chasing through all these memories at the mere prospect of Jules throwing me out of her life.

  When she even turns off the sequins to address me, I gulp
down my gut instinct of fear and she says, “Warrick, we need to talk baby.”

  Baby? It must be bad.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Jules

  I’ve been unsettled ever since he started going out at night. A part of me which sees but sometimes doesn’t like to admit what is right before her eyes is grappling for supremacy inside my addled mind.

  He’s not moved in but he’s as good as living with me. His stuff is piled everywhere and I’ve had to chuck out a load of my magazines to make room for him. He has a drawer now and a toothbrush here too.

  “What do you want to talk about?” he asks with his finger in his mouth, biting his nail. I see a tick in his jaw; he’s already giving himself away.

  “Why the fuck do you go out all night sometimes?”

  Wow. That came out well. I am angry and unable to curb my hurt. I wince and curse myself. I am a bit silly. He bites and nibbles still. I just didn’t want to face this. My tongue escaped my brain’s vetting system.

  “I don’t stay out all night. I come back most nights and I always make love to you, no matter the hour. I told you I will always keep you serviced.”

  “That’s the thing. You’re using sex to avoid this. It’s annoying.”

  “Annoying? You’ve never mentioned that before.” His eyes are dark like they are in post-coital bliss and he smiles tentatively. Still, it won’t wash with me.

  “You’re trying to use sex to sweeten me.”

  “I thought I was sweetening you but the way you just spoke to me a moment ago proves everything to the contrary.”

  He smoothes his jeans and I watch him. He’s nervous.

  “Why have you been weird ever since we went to see my dad? Why?”

  “Can’t say,” he mumbles.

  He is now scratching his hair: telltale sign, number two.

  “Also, I know you’re hiding things. I know because you switch personalities. When we’re out, you’re silly and geeky Warrick. When you’re with me at home and we’re alone, you’re desperate and needy, clinging to me. I don’t mind that but I want to know what is making you distressed.”

  “I’m just one man, Jules,” he says in a tired voice, “just a man in love. When I am with you, you’re getting the real me. You know you are. I’m just simple really but how I feel for you isn’t. I want to be worthy of you but I don’t know if I am. All I ask is that you trust me.”

  His voice drops an octave and I sense his hurt, his desperate unspoken plea for me not to push this. But I am a pusher. I discovered that after I fell in love with him and realised I have so much more to lose than I ever did before. I shall keep pushing now until I discover what is really up with him.

  He comes home sometimes, moody and sad, until we make love and he’s okay again. He prefers it if we sleep face to face, because he can’t bear to be without me. I wish we could go back to being friends and only seeing each other on a Saturday night, then maybe I would still be his pet project. Nor would I have started noticing so much more about him that I didn’t before – like the fact he’s more sensitive and complex than he’ll ever admit.

  “I don’t want you spending nights away. You shouldn’t have to. There’s no good reason. There, that’s just how I feel.”

  “You always knew I did volunteer work. I do it for no reason other than nobody else can do this like I do.”

  “Do what like you do?”

  I home in on the truth.

  “Trust is an invisible thing, Jules. It costs nothing except your faith. It grows with time. You know I love you. I am madly in love with you!”

  I shake my head. “I work hard all week, you do too. I don’t understand why you go out and why you are different these days. I am not sure whether you’re the man I thought you were!”

  A low blow, but I am getting emotional.

  His eyebrows crease and narrow so he’s got a unibrow. I know he’s really upset now.

  “Just come out with it,” he mutters.

  “You’re doing something. I spoke to Anna. She said this is what you did when you were living a double life before.”

  “You spoke to Anna?”

  He stands to pace around and I watch him carefully. I will unpick him bit by bit if I have to.

  “I was worried.”

  “It’s like I am being ganged up on!”

  “I’m just worried!”

  He stalks towards me and throws his arms around my shoulders, pulling me into his body. He kisses me and shudders.

  “Jules, I love you to pieces. Please just trust me, please babes. Don’t talk to Anna about me. She’s my past. You’re my absolute future.”

  “I love you too but like I said, I am just so worried. You’ve changed. I am frightened.”

  I wrap my arms under his shoulders and fight tears.

  “I can’t tell you anything. I am so sorry, but I am working on something at the moment. Something I can’t divulge.”

  “Divulge? The old Warrick never used words like that.”

  He wrenches himself from my arms and creeps to the window to stare at the foggy scene outside.

  “Your word usage must have crept into my vocab somewhat,” he says, folding his arms and turning to me. “This is something that’s not easy to explain, but I will try to tell you some of it, if I can?”

  “Okay.” My voice is small and strained. I dare not imagine what he’s going to tell me.

  “For so long, I’ve lived to serve others. In other people’s shadows. I joined the police because of Anna, I do social work because my mother did. So my other stuff is for me, yeah? Okay?”

  “No, I don’t buy it.”

  He strides back and takes my hand in his, placing it over his heart.

  “Feel that, Jules? Do you?”

  I do. It’s thwacking for me. It’s like a monster inside his chest crying out for me to soothe it. I nod slowly and catch his eyes. His are full of fear.

  “I feel it.”

  “If you can’t trust anything else, trust this.”

  “I know you play the fool, the nice guy, the hero. I know you are clever, Warrick. I know there’s something beneath this,” I pat his chest, “something that needs a challenge. I can relate to that.”

  “I can play the characters, you’re right. Just know, this doesn’t lie,” he nods down at his heart.

  “I love you,” I tell him.

  He lifts me into his arms and I wrap my body around his. We stare into each other’s eyes and he walks us to the bedroom and throws me down.

  “This is the real me,” he reiterates, pulling my clothes off.

  He makes love to me like I am delicate and liable to crack. I adore the way he touches me, the way he spends time kissing me slowly, whispering his devotion. I want to trust him and I want to believe everything he says. We fall in each other’s arms afterwards, panting, shivering and sweating all over one another.

  This is one Saturday evening he is here so I take it and embrace it. When he’s holding me, I study his face and I only see the man I love. He’s the guy I didn’t think much of to begin with until he shone through with his personality and heart, his spirit and his love.

  “I trust you.”

  “I love you,” he replies.

  We spend the rest of that night kissing each other all over our bodies and holding one another.

  “I want to be your wife,” I tell him boldly.

  His eyes twinkle when he smiles and takes my hand against his heart.

  “What else do you want?”

  “Babies,” I say petulantly.

  I hide my face in his shoulder and he groans into my hair.

  “You never wanted any of this, did you?”

  “No,” I admit. I never did. “You changed me.”

  “You changed me too.”

  “How?” I ask.

  “You’ll never know the full extent, trust me. Maybe for now, all you need to know is that you reminded me how so many people suffer in silence… and I have it in my power to stop
that.”

  I smooth my hands along the shoulders and arms that are now my home.

  “You brought me back to life,” I declare, “and sometimes I will get upset with you, but I could never not love you. My vocabulary doesn’t include indifferent, not anymore.”

  He sighs and kisses my forehead. “Just a bit of patience, that’s all I ask.”

  If only I possessed that virtue.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Jules

  It’s nearing the end of Winter Term and that means parent’s evenings. I hate this part of my job. Mostly, because it means I have to remember all the kids’ names and usually, I remember them by their alphabetical seating. Dear me.

  Warrick has been winding me up about Miss Simonovich being a hardcore nut job at school and I accept, that is how I portray myself to the kids. It’s the setting. I can get away with acting like this as a teacher. Any other environment and I would totally come undone.

  I am very diplomatic with the parents and try to put suggestions to them gently, such as Charlie needs to read a bit more at home or Lexi would benefit from some help with her spelling. They may huff and puff a bit until I compliment their children’s personalities or their capacity to become a great scholar, if only they did their homework on time. I try, and I try, sometimes, and with some it just doesn’t work. If things get really bad, I just smile and wink at the fathers and they gently tell their wives, “Perhaps we will have a word with [him/her] when we get home.”

  If the child has had the unfortunate luck to have been dragged along to the parent’s evening too, the child sometimes gets it in the neck right in front of me. I hasten to add, I do not take any pleasure from that whatsoever.

  When Hetty’s mum comes to my tiny, makeshift desk in the school hall, I smile and ask, “Did Hetty not come along with you? I thought she might have done?”