Beyond Angel Avenue

by Sarah Michelle Lynch

  I turn in his hold to stroke his cheeks and catch his tears between my fingers. “I want you to be selfish from now on and tell me when you’re hurting, or when you’re upset, listless, confused. I want you to reach out for me and I’ll sit through it all with you. I’ll stay. I’m not leaving you.”

  He nods. “Julianne?”

  “Yes.”

  “When you were gone,” he says, catching his breath, “I read through all the books on your shelves and even though apart, I was with you, every night I spent reading the same stories you’ve read and the same journeys you’ve been through in those books. None of those journeys have anything on ours though, do they?”

  I wrap my arms and legs around his body, the bath suddenly a snug fit. “Are you ready to cash in yet?”

  He tugs me close and holds me tight. “I’m always ready.”

  “Don’t I know it,” I smile, shifting into position on top of him. I grip his hair severely in my hands and beg, “Tell me you love me.”

  “I love you baby,” he growls, taking me in his grasp and helping to join our bodies, aligning us. I’m robbed of breath just looking at him, the shadows of the room making his cheekbones look pronounced, his hair matted and wild because of the steam of our bath. His purple lips parted, he looks up at me, expectant. I spread my hands over his chest and smile, watching as my fingers flatten his body hair as I stroke him. I draw his hand up to my mouth and kiss the back of it, holding his fingers against my cheek.

  My eyes shut, I gasp, “I love you, Rick. More than anything on earth. I fell for you the moment you wore a mud pack for me and danced in the street drunk. I’m beyond in love with you… I’m invested with you, for all time.”

  “Me too, baby, me too. I hate that I let you go! I hate it!”

  “Hush,” I console him, pulling him into my breasts, “it’s all gone, now. It’s all gone.”

  He sucks my nipple, hard. I throw my head back and mewl, asking for more. He rubs his beard all over my chest and nips and bites along the way, taking me, my ruffian lover returning. He pulls on my buttocks so we meld and I believe this time, nothing will tear us apart. We’re destined to be together. Now I don’t have to remind myself of that, I just know it.

  ***

  A week, married. Honeymoon over already, we’re heading home. We had plans to visit Loch Ness, to visit the Three Sisters and travel by train over the same viaduct Harry Potter did, but with the weather so bad and the bed so warm, we’ve explored nothing but each other.

  The roads are sort of clear, the SUV kicking up loads of grey sludge on the narrow, winding roads where cliff faces greet you on every corner. We left Fort William at 7.30 a.m. and now it’s nearing nine, Warrick says to me, “I keep seeing signs for Oban. Shall we get a hotel and extend our stay?”

  I shrug, absentminded. Signs we pass seem to say either Oban→ or ←Glasgow. We’re practically crawling along the roads in the slush and I’m worried we may be driving ten hours today or get trapped in a sudden avalanche of snow, somewhere.

  “You’re at work on Monday?” I remind him.

  His nose wrinkles. “Fuck it. I’ve been told Oban has the best fish and chips, and we know your predilection for those, don’t we?”

  I rub my stomach because I’m feeling quite grim, it being early in the day. “I do like my fish and chips, you’re right. Morning sickness may test my appetite yet, though.”

  With those words, I feel the utter, dire need to instantly vomit and within seconds, I’ve grabbed an old shopping bag and heaved my breakfast into it. Just when I feel better and think I’ve done, I’m puking again.

  Rolling my head back against the seat afterwards, I close my eyes and try to chill out. I’m clutching my bag of sick, strangely cradling it to me. Bloody hell, I hope there are no air holes in this thing. I feel murky to say the least. I’ve felt icky the whole Honeymoon but now I’ve actually finally vomited, I feel dreadful, sort of drained and beyond weary. My mind cannot function without food.

  “I’ll just drive us straight home,” he relents, “but we’ll deposit your sick somewhere along the way.”

  “But you want to visit Oban?”

  “Only for some whisky.”

  “He admits it.” I smile to myself, eyes still closed, trying to concentrate on not being sick again.

  “Well, I thought it would be romantic. Like the seaside but, yeah, with whisky instead of lukewarm ale… and ice instead of ice cream… and posh seagulls instead of darting little scrote seagulls with no manners.”

  I burst out laughing. “What’s a flaming posh seagull when it’s at home?”

  He chuckles, rolling his shoulder. I glance at him in the driving seat and it becomes him driving a family-sized vehicle, rather than the Mini he can barely squeeze half a leg inside without bending himself double. “Julianne, seagulls know… they know what class of visitors they’re dealing with, place to place.”

  “That’s bollocks,” I groan, shutting my eyes again. He’s just saying stuff to distract me from my icky state.

  “It’s an epidemic, like a lot of other shit in this country. They’re vicious little bleeders, attacking more people all the time,” he tells me, something about the tone of his voice alerting me he wants to talk.

  We’re making our descent down the A82, through the sort of countryside I only ever thought I’d see in Bond films. The snow is melting as the temperature pushes above five Celsius but there’s mist and fog as far as the eye can see and the roads are taking us right by lochs. I need only wind the window down to reach my hand out and touch a mountain by the side of the road, the narrow lanes wrapping right round the base of the vertiginous landscape. It feels like the edge of the world and all the snow is trickling in rivulets between cracks and down cliff faces.

  “Can you remember that programme, Monarch of the Glen?”

  “Hmm, yeah,” he replies. “Some fit bird in it.”

  I giggle. “Dawn Steele, yeah.”

  He glances at me and winks. “Always did like a brunette.”

  Taking his eyes off the road even for a second almost puts us in a collision with a big, white van, and Warrick grips the steering wheel harder, swearing under his breath, “Cockhead white van driver.”

  I snort and continue, “Loved that show. Used to watch it every Sunday night as a teenager, tucked up in bed with my tiny, little telly, hidden from the world. You don’t get shows like that anymore, you know? Innocent stuff, if you know what I mean. Frilly escapism. All everyone seems to want these days is horror or bad comedy. Not to mention reality shows–”

  “Joe and me just love sitting, taking the piss out of them OCD people.” He grins and I see the cogs behind his eyes turning. “But… I know what you mean.”

  I feel the warmth of the sick bag against my knees and think to double bag my little sack of yack. My brain functions must be returning – and I dump my leavings on the backseat.

  “Being away, I was able to put it out of my mind… I mean, what goes on all around us. I haven’t forgotten, though.”

  He swallows and I stare at him, waiting for him to explain. “I have so many families destroyed by alcohol, by drugs, it kills me to see it. It kills me I can’t do more. I can’t fix them all.”

  This trip has been complete, total escape from everything for not just me, but for him too. I sense he really needed it. Now he’s thinking about getting back to the grindstone.

  I touch his knee and squeeze. “I told you before… you can’t save the world, nobody can. You just take one case at a time and do your best, right?”

  “Maybe.” He looks contemplative and I wonder whether social work is something he’s giving second thoughts to. “Anyway, what about you? I noticed Jack was trying not to rush and grab you at the wedding. He wants you back at St. Clare’s, clearly.”

  “Hmm, yeah, he was dying to ask, wasn’t he?”

  “Bulging at the seams!” Warrick laughs.

  I purse my lips. “God knows my travelling will give me the
edge as the cool dancer-slash-hippie English teacher, but I’m not going back full-time, not until our little one is a year old at least. I’ll supply teach when I feel a bit better but right now, some days I hardly know how I’m standing. I’m so exhausted.”

  He grunts in agreement. “Supply is a good way to get warmed to it again.”

  I’m either dirty-minded or everything we say to one another at the moment could easily be misconstrued as euphemistic.

  Another wave of nausea washes over me and I grab a paperback from my bag, one of the many tomes I never had chance to read the past week. In my hand I hold Sherlock Holmes’ many tales of consulting detection and The Hound of the Baskervilles seems fitting for my current concentration span and the added atmosphere of the road we’re on.

  “I need something to distract me,” I warn my husband, “bloody stomach.”

  He switches to the Chris Evans’ Show on Radio 2 and hums away happily to a mixture of tracks. He’s still a great singer and he still avoids, all the time. He wants me to see him as my cheeky chap when in fact, I’ve always known a lot of layers might need peeling before I get to the bottom of him.

  Perhaps that was always the attraction.

  Chapter Nine

  Warrick

  Two Months Later

  I’ve been here before so by rights you would think I’m experienced enough to let this wash over me. However I am anything but cool today. Jules has been so sick and crying all the time, I’m a nervous sodding wreck.

  She’s squeezing my hand like we’re enduring the worst turbulence we’ve ever been through when all that’s happening is that she’s laid on a bed, clear jelly on her still-flat stomach and an ultrasound wand in the sonographer’s hand. We’re both just praying everything is okay and when we first hear sounds emit from the monitor, the nurse and the male sonographer look at one another.

  “What is it?” Jules demands, seeking my help, like I’m an expert on all this.

  “We just need to check something,” the nurse explains gently, rubbing Jules’s arm.

  The sound is turned up and a load of loud thumping beats hit all our ears. The sonographer turns the wand around and about, seeming to take forever. When I’m ready to combust with exhaustion from the sleepless nights spent holding her hand as she voms, to now these people giving us funny looks, the sonographer reveals, “There are two heartbeats! Definitely two hearts! Twins!”

  “What?” I ask, feeling short-changed for some reason.

  The sonographer lifts one eyebrow. “Any twins in the family? Either side?”

  “My dad was,” Jules says, “non-identical.”

  I couldn’t look at her. Twins? I was wracked by stress already and they hadn’t even been born yet!

  The sonographer nodded. “There you are.”

  I watch as they carry out the examination and as Jules stares at the blobs on the screen, I try to avoid her glances by fixating on the screen. We’re being told the blobs are arms and legs but I can’t tell the difference. She’s squeezing my hand but I’m now totally numb to the pain. I’m scared, there I said it, I’m scared. I can admit it to myself, just not Jules. She’s terrified of having a child, let alone two, and I’m going to be a useless support in all this, I know I am.

  “Due date is October the sixth. You’ll have a scan at twenty weeks but the due date won’t change. That will just be to do a full physical assessment and make sure everything is developing as it should be.”

  “Am I okay?” Jules asks quietly. “Are they okay?”

  The nurse stands by Jules and takes her hand. “You’ve just been carrying two babies around without knowing it. Probably just hormones and sickness, yes?”

  Jules smirks. She’s had double the fun growing inside of her.

  We’re asked to wait outside the room while they do their paperwork.

  “You okay, Warrick?” She takes my hand and laces her fingers through mine.

  I bite my lip. “In shock, I think. Reminds me of Joe. Reminds me I wasn’t really in love with his mum when I was here the last time. I was as cool as a cucumber. Never loved her as much as you.”

  I turn my head and holding her cheek, kiss her neck. She shuts her eyes and breathes deeply. I love the scent of her; she’s emitting something else at the moment and it’s making me hugely protective of her.

  The nurse exits the room with our photographs and smiles, not a worry in her eyes. “Good luck, Mr and Mrs Jones.”

  “That’s it?” Jules asks.

  “Yes.” The nurse busies off to some other appointment, calling out the names of a different set of parents.

  Jules sits there, not moving. “Maybe I should’ve agreed to that needle thing? I am over thirty and carrying twins? I should’ve been more sensible.”

  I laugh.

  “What?” She quirks an eyebrow, glaring at me.

  “Everything’s going to be fine. We’ve been worried over nothing. The extreme sickness is just ’cause you’re carrying twins.”

  She takes my hands. “Twins!”

  I throw my arms around her, both of us taking a deep breath. I try to suppress long-buried memories but I can’t, they’re right here in my mind, images flashing before my eyes. Fights. Deathly silences. Unhappiness. Escape into my work. I was a rubbish father the first time round, with Joe. Anna hated what I became after we had him.

  Jules pulls away from me. “There’s something wrong, I know it. You’re somewhere else today.”

  “Like I said, the last time, I was doing this with someone I didn’t love even half as much as you. It scares me just how much I love you.”

  “Come on, let’s go and treat ourselves,” she says, dragging me up and away. We head for a café in the hospital and indulge in cinnamon-raisin patisserie and cream-topped hot chocolates.

  Sat facing one another over our food and drinks, I watch her concentrating really hard on not feeling sick. If she’s not trying to fight actually being sick, she’s fighting feeling sick. It’s insane how sick she is but she tries to smile through it, not complaining.

  “Harder it is at the beginning, easier it’s meant to be at the end,” I say to her, having overheard the saying from someone.

  She smiles. “I think you shagged me too much. I think twins running in families is bollocks.”

  I chuckle, taking a large gulp of hot chocolate. “I think it’s just another challenge sent to test us, must be.”

  She stares hard at me, searching my eyes. “After what she did recently, posting poops and all that, I reckon there’s a lot more you’ve yet to tell me about Anna and your previous marriage?”

  I twist my lips, reaching across for her hands, our fingers caressing each other’s. “This is weird for me, I’m not going to lie!”

  She shifts in her chair, happy to find I am opening up. We both know I hate dredging up the past but it seems to inform my present at times like this.

  Jules’ eyebrows bob up and down as she fights to blurt out what she so desperately wants to get off her chest.

  “Say it, Jules.”

  She shakes her head and covers her mouth with her hand. For a second I think she’s going to wretch but then she removes her hand and no spew falls out. “I don’t think it’s my job to interrogate you. I just think that when you have any worries, you should voice them with me. I may be pregnant and sick all the time, but I’m somehow keeping these two kids alive aren’t I, so I must be stronger than I think?”

  I study her and realise she just needed the scan for all of this to become real. Now it is, she’s forgotten her own issues and gone back to worrying about me and my reluctance to ever say how I feel. I always try to hide my emotions, everyday, because once upon a time I was married to a woman who assessed, questioned and criticised everything I said, did or was. Anna was a cruel wife at times but I’ve never forgiven myself for the breakdown of our marriage. It’s the guilt of looking back and knowing I said I do with a woman I never really loved. I was just a young fool doing what I thought was ri
ght but maybe that’s hindsight talking. Maybe I actually did love her at the time, but can’t remember that anymore. When I was undercover as a policeman, I slept with one of my marks not because I was too buried in the job, but because I was desperate for a get-out clause and I’d been pushed to the brink of insanity. In the very furthest recesses of my mind, I can admit the truth to myself – I cheated on my wife as a test to myself, my marriage and my sanity. I wanted Anna to hate me and I wanted out of a marriage that had become suffocating.

  “You know Jules,” I begin trying to explain, “I look back and half the time, I don’t know if I’m giving the past a spin I can deal with, you know? I admit, sometimes, I try to make excuses for her because I just feel so guilty about everything. Yeah, there were bad times with Anna, really bad times.” She nods, watching and waiting for me to elaborate, deducing we’re on the cusp of some massive breakthrough here. “Some of it was me, I’m not going to lie. Some of it was me, some of it her.”

  Jules’ lip wobbles. “We were apart three years because of that bitch!”

  I cover my eyes with a hand. I can’t take it when Jules cries, it shreds me inside.

  “Maybe,” I mumble, “or maybe,” I look at her, imploring her not to make me cry too, “there was a reason why you had to go and there’s a reason you came back. I think everything happens for a reason, it’s just that the reason just doesn’t always make itself clear straight away.”

  She uses a napkin to clear her eyes and sniffs back her hormone-induced tears. “Warrick,” she shakes her head, “I swear if she comes near me, I will throttle her. One more move, and I will strangle her, I swear. Whatever it is she’s got against you still, you need to deal with it before we have babies. I’m worried out of my mind our kids are going to go crawling into letter box feculence.”

  We both burst out laughing, her language hilarious for some reason. She covers her mouth and I toss my head back, tears of joy escaping the corners of my eyes.