After which, we sit by the fire and watch a couple of hours of TV together.
Mum loves all the soaps and the family quiz shows. She has the TV set up to record all her favourites. So, we don’t have much in the way of conversation before she goes to bed at ten p.m. Not that there is much left to say now as we’ve talked nonstop for a couple of weeks.
We must have exhausted every subject on earth.
I open a bottle of wine and a packet of crisps and flick through channels on the TV.
It’s all the same old stuff I’ve seen before on repeat.
I feel like I’ve somehow slipped back into something that could resemble my boring old life before I’d travelled. Only now, because I have lived a more adventurous life, it all rather feels like tedium and monotony. I settle on watching the National Geographic channel in the hope of catching a conservation programme that features Ethan. I know he’s done lots of filming for programmes featuring on the likes of the NG and for Animal Planet. But disappointingly there’s no sign of him.
Instead I watch a fascinating programme on the Galapagos Islands – a group of over a dozen islands in the Pacific Ocean some 1000km off the coast of South America – and very much somewhere I’d love to explore one day. These islands are so isolated that they have the most unusual animal life on them. Iguana and giant tortoises and unique birds. The narrator explains that it was on Galapagos that Charles Darwin had been inspired to come up with his theory of evolution by natural selection. At this point, I wanted to yell at the TV screen.
This was because Ethan had recently told me that it wasn’t only Darwin who had discovered the theory of evolution. According to Ethan – and I’m sure he is absolutely correct – the theory of evolution was co-founded by one of his all-time heroes, Alfred Russel Wallace. This was the same nineteenth Century biologist and explorer and direct descendent of William Wallace who had discovered the giant butterflies of Waterfall Cay and had tried to save them from extinction.
And it was Wallace who, while he was in Galapagos, also according to Ethan, had discovered that insects and birds and small mammals can successfully migrate between islands – usually during storms and clinging to chunks of driftwood – and establish themselves elsewhere. A perfect example of the survival of the fittest and the theory of evolution.
I knew that if Ethan was here with me right now, we’d have had a lengthy and interesting discussion about this subject. I sigh and can’t help but to wonder what he’s doing right at this moment. I picture him in Antarctica leading a dog sled over glaciers on a mission to save penguins and seals. And I wonder if he might be missing me as much as I’m missing him.
It’s Friday again and I’ve hardly seen my mum. I’ve been housebound most of the week as the weather is cold and miserable outside and I’m a bit cross because I haven’t seen my kids since last weekend. Even though we’ve all still been here in the same small town as each other. In the very same country. On the same side of the world. That’s not to say we haven’t been in contact – I’ve chatted with them several times over our group chats as usual using Facebook, Messenger, Snapchat and WhatsApp – in exactly the same way I would have done if I’d been away. So I could in fact be anywhere and I’d be missing them in exactly the same way!
On Saturday morning, I get a call from Josh. He says that he and Lucas want to meet me for lunch. I’m beyond excited. I know the pub. It’s one of those lovely old traditional pubs a few miles out of town with real ales behind the bar and low beams in the ceiling and a menu that is traditional with meals like steak and ale pie and fish and chips.
It’s freezing cold and pouring with rain outside, so I start to look up the bus time tables.
Mum kindly offers me her car. All she asks in return is that I drop her off at the food bank this morning and pick her up again afterwards. I accept and I’m grateful.
But then I realise that I haven’t driven a car in a whole year.
I do hope I haven’t forgotten how to drive or lost my confidence.
Now, what to wear for a lunch with my sons? Not that I have many options.
In the bathroom mirror, I sigh and curse the layers of woolly clothing in which my body looks to be mummified. And what about my hair? On a beach or onboard ship, my long heavy tresses would be left to dry naturally in the warm and humid air and might look a bit salty or windswept until I’d tamed it with a bit of coconut oil. But here, in the UK, I have the look of an unkempt wild woman. I give it a brush and decide I look quite mad.
I pick out a plain black long-sleeved high-neck jumper and decide I’ll wear it with the same pair of jeans I’ve been wearing all week, albeit alternatively with my chavvie-looking fleecy jogging pants. I spray a bit of deodorant under my arms and around and about and resign myself to the fact that I haven’t knowingly perspired even once since arriving back in the UK.
After dropping off mum at the food bank, I drive slowly and cautiously along the bypass as the roads are slushy with wet snow. When I arrive at the pub, I spot Josh’s car in the car park and go dashing inside with a happy spring in my step. It might be cold and miserable outside but it’s busy and warm and cosy and welcoming inside. The contrast between the two environments doubles my pleasure. I pause to admire a lovely big Christmas tree at the entrance decorated with oversized gold bauble decorations and there’s a festive menu on a chalk board on the wall offering turkey or baked ham. I realise how much I’ve really missed a British pub.
Of course, there’s a lot to be said for sipping beer while sitting on a beach, but in my experience, in reality, there’s always those pesky sand-flies to spoil the ideal. Whereas here, there’s a real fire flickering in the fireplace and Bing Crosby is crooning White Christmas in the background. I’m asked by a rushing waitress if I have a table reservation just as I see Josh at the bar. I wave to him and dash over to kiss and say hello.
He buys me an orange juice when he hears that I’m driving and then I dutifully trot behind him and follow him back to the table where I can now see Lucas. He’s sitting next to someone; an older man who is tall and slim and balding and whom I now recognise as my philandering ex-husband. Bowled over by shock and with legs suddenly like jelly, I take a step back into my own tracks. Charles stands up when he sees me. ‘Hello, Lorraine, you’re looking well.’
For a moment we stare at each other without blinking. I can’t help but to think back to the last time I saw him: in our bed, butt naked, and on top of Sally. It’s not the most attractive vision to hold onto for a whole year and certainly not a welcome memory right at this very moment. I consider how the time between then and now hasn’t been very kind to him.
He looks so much thinner and leaner, which makes him look somehow taller and bent, in the same way that an old knurled tree might look bent after spending a year braced against a consistently cold wind. I turn to my sons. ‘I can’t believe you’ve done this. This is entrapment.’
‘Yeah, well, we thought it’s about time you two talked to each other.’ Lucas declared.
‘About that unfinished business.’ Josh reminded me.
I hissed between my gritted teeth. ‘You could have told me you’d invited your father.’
Not knowing what else to do, I tentatively took a seat opposite Charles. Then in that very same moment, to my horror, our boys got up and disappeared together into the pub’s snug room to claim the pool table. Leaving Charles and I alone. Even though the pub was crowded and noisy, it still felt like there were just the two of us in this face-off and in this room.
Just me and the man with whom I’d had two children. Me and the man I’d once been married to for twenty-five years. The man who’d betrayed me. The man whom I’d once loved. This was not how I expected to confront Charles for the first time since he’d become my ex-husband: in a pub, without a stiff drink in my hand, wearing unflattering clothes and a very red face. I realised I was now perspiring profusely and all the words I’d specially crafted in my mind over the past year for his benefit – the scathing come backs and
the witty responses – all escaped me now.
‘I meant it when I said you looked well, Lorraine.’ Charles continued to say. ‘Forgive me for staring, but I’d swear you look ten years younger these days. I do believe it’s your exotic suntan and much longer hair. You look very pretty.’
He gave me a toothy grin and I noticed one of his teeth was missing.
I stood up and grabbed my handbag.
Rather than feeling overwhelmed I was in fact now feeling rather underwhelmed by it all.
I had absolutely nothing that I wanted to say to this man.
‘But Lorraine, please, we need to talk. I need to explain. I want to apologise to you.’
My eyes darted away from Charles’s silly grin into the other room where I could see our boys playing pool while also keeping watchful eyes on us. Seeing me up on my feet, looking like I was about to leave, I could see that Lucas was frowning.
Josh caught my eye and slowly shook his head.
I sat down again and took a sip from my orange juice.
‘I don’t want an explanation Charles, but I will accept your apology.’ I said to him calmly.
‘Lorraine, I’m sorry for what I did. I apologise for hurting you.’ He said writhing in earnest.
A silence hung between us as he waited for my response.
‘And?’ I prompted.
‘And for betraying you.’ He obliged.
‘With my best friend’ I extended on his behalf.
He nodded. ‘Yes. That too. I apologise, and I hope somehow you can forgive me.’
He lowered his head and his eyes and I saw his lower lip was trembling.
I’ll admit that I felt oddly satisfied by this display of remorse.
‘I accept your apology, Charles.’
‘You do? Then you also forgive me, right?’
I laughed at this seemingly preposterous assumption. Apology? Yes. But forgiveness?
‘Charles, I have just realised something.’ I said to him.
‘What? That you still love me? Because I still love you, my Lorraine!’
‘What? No. I have just realised that all the emotions and all the angry words that I’d saved up to throw at you in this moment are no longer needed. Life has moved on for both of us. Immeasurably. I’m not your Lorraine anymore, Charles, and I don’t love you. I haven’t for a very long time. I’m my own person now, thank you very much.’
I stood up, kissed Charles on the top of his balding head and wished him a merry Christmas.
I walked away not feeling wretched but feeling free. Really and truly free.
There was a lightness in my step. It was like I was walking on air.
I burst out of the pub door and stood outside. A blast of icy air took my breath away.
It was still raining and so I started to dash back to the car, gasping and fumbling in my bag with cold fingers for the keys, when I heard Lucas shouting me. ‘Mum! Stop! Wait!’
I turned and smiled at him to make it clear there should be no animosity between us.
‘Mum, I know Dad is truly sorry. He regrets everything. He needs you to forgive him.’
I looked at my disappointed son, who’d obviously had every intention of reconciling his parents. ‘Look, my darling. Your dad and I love you and your brother very much and we appreciate your efforts. But we are divorced. There can be no reconciliation. You have to understand, it’s no longer about what your father did but rather that I’ve moved on and now love someone else.’
Lucas nodded. ‘Okay. You know Josh and I just want you to be happy, don’t you, mum?’
I reached out to touch his face and I kissed him on the cheek. ‘Thank you. Likewise. It’s what I want for all of us. Now go back inside. It’s freezing out here. I’ll see you soon.’
I watched my son walking back into the pub. The collar of his jacket tugged up against the shards of freezing rain, his hands rammed into the pockets of his jeans. I was proud of my sons for trying. And, thanks to their intervention, I had got the angst about seeing Charles again over and done. How strange that when it came down to facing him, expecting bitterness and angry words, what I’d actually felt for him was sympathy. It had been the same with Sally, in the end.
And, of course, I feel I now have closure at last.
Chapter 8
It’s now the middle of December. Our little artificial tree, that I’d dragged from the loft a couple of weeks earlier, is now decorated with baubles and lit up with tiny lights. It’s snowing outside. Not the magical slowly fluttering kind of white snow that lays deep and crisp and even and looks ever so pretty on the ground, like a traditional Christmas card. This was the blowing a blizzard kind of messy brown snow that turns into slush as soon as it contacts wet urban tundra.
So today, once again I’m housebound, and getting seriously fed up with my own company.
Consequentially, I’ve taken to cyber-stalking Damion and Gloria Goldman.
It’s all in the name of research and in preparation for the plan to get Ethan’s island back.
With no sign of a copy of the lease from Ethan’s lawyers, I’ve now decided that negotiating or sweet talking or even pleading with them into handing over the island is back on. It’s amazing really, how all this personal and business stuff about them is freely available on the internet. So, it’s not like I’m doing anything questionable or illegal.
And I’m finding every click to an article or a feature about their lives is quite fascinating.
Clearly, the Goldman’s are a Golden Couple. They are often referred to as ‘The Goldmines’ and they have their discerning fingers in many rich pies and their names on many affluent boards. Interestingly, as well as the technology company in Silicon Valley and the casino complex in Las Vegas and their Trump-esq tower in New York, they also have a portfolio of super-exclusive hotel resorts throughout Europe that they call The Goldman Collection.
It’s this upmarket ‘collection’ of hotels that has my utmost attention.
Because in a recent online interview for GQ Magazine, I read that Damion has said that he intends to “expand our luxury hotel enterprise globally over the next year” starting with an exclusive flagship resort on a recently acquired private island hideaway to be opened in time for the next holiday season. When pressed in the article, he refused to name the actual location of the island but went on to refer to the venture as ‘the best kept secret in the Caribbean’.
I can only assume he’s referring to his dastardly development plans for Waterfall Cay.
He then claimed not just to be building a hotel resort in the traditional sense but creating a ‘retreat par excellence’ with a superlative marina for the mooring of world-class superyachts as well as an extensive waterpark featuring a Perspex tube slide into an aquarium filled with marine life, a zipwire ride through the rainforest canopy, and an exotic zoo of animals from all over the world. There were boastful hints of his multi-million-dollar budget, his impressive conglomerate of ‘big-name’ shareholders and how he is now under ‘extreme pressure’ to open this new venture on time.
In my mind’s eye, I can see all the industrial cranes and the power drills at work to develop the marina, where the beautiful lagoon and the untouched coral reef once were. My thoughts darkened, as I imagine a modern multi-storey hotel complex being constructed alongside an ugly array of waterpark slides and swimming pools that would form a tragic scar on the surface of the tiny island. My heart aches with pity for all the island’s creatures that will lose their perfect habitat and their lives. I shudder with fear for those so called ‘exotics’ that will be imported into the Goldman’s new zoo.
My brow is furrowed as I stared at the screen at Damion Goldman’s smiling airbrushed face.
Like Ethan, Damion is an incredibly handsome man, but he also looks fearsome in a way that Ethan never could. It was in the mouth, I decided. Damion’s lips were set to stoic by default. In contrast, Gloria’s lips were red and plump and glossy and set into permanent camera-ready smile. I see she is a
keen Instagrammer with an impressive 2M+ followers and her own hashtag. At first glance, I assume her popularity is simply down to her model looks and great fashion sense, but to her credit, she also seems incredibly active on the charity fundraising circuit. Her great #passion is with #humanitarian work.
It’s on her IG feed that I see photos of her looking pious while posing with little children at a school project in Africa. Then looking even more glamourous wearing a khimar headscarf in a desert somewhere while helping to set up a healthcare facility.
Maybe, on second glance, there is more to #GloriaG than a pretty face?
I realise that I’m starting to admire her even though I’m trying very hard not to like her.
I thought back to that fateful day on Waterfall Cay, when she’d caught me off guard with her familiarity over Ethan, and with her perfect model figure and her long vibrant red hair.
But, unexpectedly, she’d also been unpredictably friendly towards me.
She’d cast a wry smile and a covert roll of her almond-shaped grey eyes in my direction as her husband and Ethan had rallied strong words at each other. It was as if she’d found amusement in the two of them almost coming to blows in front of us. For some reason she came over as a woman’s woman. And an ally rather than a rival?
Just as I pondered this thought, a new Instagram photo of Gloria suddenly appeared.
In it she was wearing her underwear – designer lingerie of course – pouting suggestively into a full-length mirror while holding up two strategically placed gowns. Which #StellaMcCartney shall I wear to my fundraiser in the Bahamas? #Gloria #Art4Humanity #ChristmasChildren
Clearly, the fashion designer had sent her a whole rail of gowns to choose from to wear at the fundraiser she was attending soon. Did I groan? Did I actually have pangs of dress envy?
Wait a minute? Gloria Goldman was attending a Christmas children’s charity fund-raiser in the Bahamas? My mind started whirling with possibilities at the potential in this information.
A couple of internet clicks later, I’d found out that she was due to attend an art exhibition and a charity auction at the Atlantis Hotel on Paradise Island in the Bahamas and it was happening tomorrow night. I caught my breath as Plan A began to fully form in my head.
The Next Adventure Page 10
