I can’t breathe.
I can’t breathe because I’m drowning again.
And this time I don’t think Ray is going to be able to save me.
Sunday
AMY – FRIENDS AND PARTNERS
I can barely keep the tremor out of my voice as the horrible truth of it all clicks into place. None of it makes any sense, while at the same time making absolutely perfect sense.
It was Cara.
Cara Rowntree who altered the time on the calendar so that we missed that stupid meeting.
But why?
Why would she do such a thing?
‘Is it true, Cara?’ Joel asks her, his face even whiter than it was when Ray yanked him out of the ocean. ‘Did you go into my calendar and change it?’
The silence she responds with is more than enough to convince me that she did.
For a few seconds, Cara Rowntree remains struck dumb, caught between the choice of continuing the lie or defending her actions. She knows her dirty little secret has come out into the open in front of all these people – but let’s see if she’s stupid enough to keep going with it.
‘I did it for you, Joel!’ she squeals, hands out in an imploring fashion.
Ah . . . good.
No more bullshit, then. That’s just as well. I’m sick to death of it.
‘What do you mean, you did it for me?’ Joel replies, and I can see the betrayal writ so large across his face it nearly breaks my heart.
All this time he’s blamed me and I’ve blamed him . . . and neither of us was to blame.
That look on his face breaks my heart because it’s one I’ve seen him use on me. Hell, it’s the same look I’ve returned back in kind at him so many times.
But on this occasion, it is entirely justified.
He’d better say or do something soon to retaliate to what she’s done, otherwise I’m going to take matters into my own hands and punch her into the middle of next fucking week.
Cara stabs her finger at my face. ‘She was no good for you, Joel! I could see that! I saw how unhappy you were with her! How broken you were with her!’
‘I wasn’t broken!’ Joel replies in disbelief.
‘Yes, you were!’ she argues. ‘Like a wounded little animal! I saw your marriage breaking down . . . saw how she made you so miserable! I had to do something! I had to save you from her!’
‘I didn’t need fucking saving!’ Joel roars back. ‘Okay, things weren’t that great between Amy and me when you saw us, but for a long time I was happy!’
‘Were you?’ I blurt out.
‘Yes!’ he exclaims, turning to me. ‘Well, most of the time, anyway. I think. To start with. It seemed pretty good, didn’t it? Those first few years, especially?’
I stand there trying to cram six years of memories into (wait for it) a split second. It’s not an easy thing to do, and it’s even harder to make a general assessment about it all right here and now. There were times when I felt giddily happy about being married to Joel – but all those times very much feel like they happened towards the start of the relationship.
I was certainly happy with him on this silly bloody island six years ago, I remember that.
‘I guess so?’ I say, being as honest as possible. ‘We definitely had our moments.’
Joel gives me a look that for the first time in years has no edge to it at all. It rather takes my breath away. ‘We did. Some great moments.’ Then he smiles, and it’s the smile of the man I once loved.
That smile disappears the instant he looks back at Cara, though. ‘You had no right, Cara. No right to do what you did. No right to interfere with my bloody marriage!’
Now Miss Rowntree looks distraught. You’d think that given the circumstances, and the fact that I finally have a definite villain on which to focus my anger, I’d feel good about how bad she looks – but frankly, I’m far too tired of this whole thing to feel that way. About the only emotion I can summon as I look at her shrink back is a combination of pity and regret.
‘But I love you, Joel!’ she pleads. ‘I have since the first time we met!’ She wipes a snotty hand across her nose. ‘You were always nice to me! Always better than the other men! You didn’t start every conversation by looking at my tits! You were different! You deserved so much better than Amy. You deserved me!’
Oh dear.
Things are rather falling into awful place, aren’t they?
Cara did come into the office a fair bit back when I was there. And I suppose I remember her hanging about with Joel – but no more than anybody else? And it never came across that there was any kind of infatuation with my husband. She managed to hide it very well. To me she always just seemed like a granddaughter interested in getting into her grandfather’s line of business. A notion borne out by the fact that she did indeed join the agency not long after I’d gone.
. . . after I’d been sacked.
Oh my GOD!
A revelation hits me so hard that I’m nearly knocked on to my backside. All this time I thought it was Joel going behind my back to Roland Rowntree to get me fired.
But it fucking wasn’t Joel, was it?
It was somebody much closer to the old man, with much more influence over him!
‘Oh, you little fucking bitch!’ I roar, all the anger rushing back into me as I realise the depths of Cara’s Machiavellian deceit. ‘You got me fired, didn’t you? You told your grandfather he should do it after you were the one to sabotage our meeting with Lord Ponsonbollocks!’
‘Is that ’is real name?’ Sandra pipes up, from where she’s stood chewing on one fingernail with the tension of it all.
Snorkelling among tropical fish clearly can’t hold a candle to watching a soap opera play itself out in real time right in front of you on the deck of a boat.
‘No!’ Joel snaps at her. ‘His name was Viscount Alastair De Ponsonby Long!’
‘Lord Ponsonbollocks sounds better,’ Trevor chimes in, chuckling to himself.
‘Did you?’ Joel says to Cara, trying to ignore the heckling from offstage. ‘Did you get Amy sacked?’
‘I wanted her to be far away from you, Joel! Because she was so bad for you! Being around her was hurting you! And I . . . I wanted to be the one who was close to you!’ she wails, confessing everything at last. ‘I wanted to be with you, Joel! Because you’re a good and kind man! Because you were broken and I knew I could fix you!’
‘So you ruined my life?’ he retorts, voice cracking with the pain and betrayal of it all.
I want to hug him. I truly, truly do. He doesn’t deserve any of this. I don’t deserve any of this. But I can’t. It would be completely inappropriate. How would it make Ray feel? Watching me do that?
I turn to look at him and see that his face is a mask of stunned anguish at what’s playing out in front of him. He has absolutely no good reason to feel any empathy for my ex-husband, but he does anyway. I’m not going to betray his good nature by hugging Joel in front of him. No matter how much I want to.
‘I didn’t ruin anything!’ Cara disagrees at full volume. ‘I made your life better, Joel. Because I’m better than her!’ Again with the stabby finger.
Boy, Cara Rowntree really hates me, doesn’t she?
Joel takes a step back, which forces him to sit down hard on the seat behind him. I’ve never seen someone look so dejected in my life. ‘We’re done,’ he says in a quiet voice. ‘You and I are done, Cara.’ Then he looks at me, and my heart really does break. ‘I’m so sorry, Ames. So sorry for all of it.’
The tears are running down my cheeks before I realise they are there.
What a sad, stupid situation.
All the pain, misery and hurt we’ve both suffered and felt for two years – all brought about by this idiotic little girl with her obsession for an older man.
. . . an idiotic little girl who is now taking steps towards me, clenching and unclenching her hands into tight fists.
Oh crap.
Cara Rowntree may be a silly litt
le girl, but she also has a lot more muscle packed into that tight frame than I do. And now her deceit has been unmasked there’s a marked change in her personality for the worse – and potentially psychotic.
‘You!’ she snarls. ‘This is all your fault!’
This must count as the worst case of psychological projection in history, but it’s not something I have time to consider further at this moment, because I think I’m about to get punched in the face or have my eyes clawed out.
‘Cara, just stop,’ I say, raising my hands.
Hang on, why am I the one being conciliatory here? She’s the villain of the piece. I should be the one starting on her!
‘Fuck you!’ she screams, both arms up as if she’s about to slash me with her nails.
Oh, no. We’ll be having none of that, missy . . .
I move quickly away from Cara, turning my back on her as I push my way past Harry and Faraz, the captain of the catamaran that Ray has made best friends with. Cara gives chase, because that’s probably all she’s capable of doing now that she appears to have regressed into some sort of animalistic rage.
I attempt to run away from her by skirting around the deck of the catamaran, which is incredibly slippery thanks to all the sea water sloshing about on it.
Our fascinated onlookers get out of my way as best as they can, as I awkwardly traverse the deck – all the time fearing that a woman in her mid-twenties is about to jump on my back and start savaging my neck.
‘I’ll fucking kill you!’ Cara screams, underlining the seriousness of the situation.
‘Stop that!’ I hear Ray cry from somewhere even further behind me.
I only manage to get as far as the other side of the boat before things underfoot become too damn precarious for me to run any further. I may not want to get clawed by Cara, but even that is preferable to breaking a leg by falling over.
I spin back around as Cara quickly closes the gap.
‘Now look here, Cara,’ I remonstrate. ‘You need to stop this! This is very stupid!’
‘I’ll fucking kill you!’ she repeats, indicating that my salient line of reasoning is not getting through at all.
Instead, she launches herself at me with all of her might.
Sadly, all of her might is not able to compensate for how slippery the deck is, and rage turns to horror as her left foot goes out from under her, and she stumbles right past my quivering body, slamming into the seat behind me, and tumbling head over heels over the side of the boat and into the ocean, with a loud – and no doubt very painful – clatter.
For a moment, everyone left on deck is shocked into silent immobility.
We can’t have all just witnessed an athletic woman in her mid-twenties tumble off the side of a catamaran like the world’s worst stuntwoman, can we?
‘She’s in the fucking drink!’ Sandra exclaims, proving that – yes, indeed – we have just all seen that very thing.
Everybody then rushes over to the side of the boat, to look down at where Cara is now thrashing around like a lunatic, spitting sea water everywhere.
Ray is by my side, looking down at her with an odd expression on his face. When he sees that I’m staring at him, he turns and regards me with a grave look on his face. ‘Well, I’m not bloody saving her,’ he says in the most matter-of-fact voice I’ve ever heard him use.
Luckily for Cara, Harry the snorkelling guide has no such qualms, and jumps over the side of the catamaran to render his assistance.
As he swims over to Cara to help her, I look up and behind me to see that the only person who hasn’t joined the rest of us watching the rescue take place is Joel. He’s still sat down with a look of utter dejection on his face.
I take Ray’s hand in mine and look him in the eyes. ‘I love you with all of my heart, you know that don’t you?’ I tell him.
He swallows hard. ‘Yes, of course I do.’
‘Okay.’
I let go of his hand, and walk carefully back across the deck. ‘Joel?’ I say as I reach him. ‘Joel? Look at me.’
He does this, and it’s like staring at a black hole – formed in the first split second of the universe’s creation.
‘Come here,’ I tell him. ‘It’s okay.’
For a moment he doesn’t move. But when I make beckoning gestures with my hands, he slowly rises to his feet, and puts his arms around me. I do the same, and hug him as fiercely as I am able to.
There’s passion in that hug.
There’s also rage, and frustration, and guilt, and shame, and love, and hate – and a thousand other things I cannot put into words.
But above all, there’s forgiveness in it.
Oceans of forgiveness.
A silent, joint apology – carried out with no words or movement whatsoever, while a very silly little girl gets all the attention over on the other side of the boat.
I can feel Joel’s breathing slow against my chest and the tension release from his muscles, as we stand there in an embrace that just a few days ago I would have told you was completely impossible.
In the years to come, I will look back on this hug, and it will always be one of the best and most important of my life.
It’s often very hard to know when you start a new chapter in your life. But I will always be able to mark this embrace as being the very firm and solid point at which a new one started for me. A better one. One not filled with hurt and anger towards a past love, and equally not filled with guilt and shame towards a current one.
Joel is the first to eventually move away, looking over at where Ray is standing and watching us both with a sad expression on his face.
‘It’s okay,’ I say. ‘He understands.’
Joel laughs grimly. ‘Does he? Do you think he could explain it all to me then? Because I’m frankly fucking clueless.’
I also laugh at this, and the moment – important as it was – is finally broken.
We move away from each other, and both take very deep breaths.
‘Well. That’s certainly the last time I’ll ever go snorkelling,’ Joel says, as we look over at where Harry is helping Cara back on to the boat.
Ray moves towards us, taking Faraz gently by one arm as the man tries to pass him. ‘I think,’ he says, in a tone that rather indicates he won’t be listening to any disagreement, ‘that we should return to the island now. Given the circumstances.’
Faraz, looking from Ray, to Joel, to me, to a banged-up and bruised Cara Rowntree, gulps and nods his head.
Thank God for that.
If we have to stay on this boat any longer, I’ll have to start charging the audience an admission fee. Christ knows what we’d do to top Cara’s tumble into the water, though.
I’d have to start riding a dugong around naked, I think – but unlike in my dream, there’s not a Chinese restaurant in sight, so that’s not going to be on the bloody cards, is it?
The trip back to the island is conducted through what can only be described as the fifth circle of hell. I think the fifth circle is the one all about avoiding the gaze of people you hate, while confined to a small space, isn’t it?
Cara sits with Harry, Trevor and Sandra on one side of the deck, while Joel sits with Ray and I on the other. In the middle, a small wormhole has formed, created by the weight of all the contained animosity. I’m hoping it doesn’t get any larger, because the last thing we need is eldritch horrors from beyond existence invading our world thanks to a right cow changing a calendar appointment.
This is why I’m making sure not to look in Cara’s direction. I don’t want to add fuel to the interdimensional fire and bring forth the invasion of Cthulhu and his many-eyeballed pals.
I have never taken such a huge interest in the horizon in my life.
This isn’t so bad, to be honest, as the sun is down now, and I can just see the last vestiges of deep blue fading away into nothing. It’s as beautiful as it is melancholic.
That’s another sunset missed, then.
I look at Joel, who is s
itting with his hands between his legs, head down, lost in thought, and playing idly with the sticker on a plastic water bottle.
I want to say more to him, but there’s every chance Cara would hear my words, and the last thing I ever want is for Cara Rowntree to hear anything that comes out of my mouth again. Unless it’s a well-constructed insult that compares her to some sort of tentacled monstrosity from beyond time. Carathulhu, possibly.
I then watch Joel as his eyes narrow, and he nods to himself.
Oh dear.
He’s about to do something very Joel-ish . . .
My ex-husband then rises from his feet and walks slowly across the deck of the catamaran to stand right in front of Cara. I would be worried, but I can see the strong set of his shoulders – which is a posture I’ve not seen him adopt any time recently. This almost looks like the Joel of old, not the Joel of now.
Blimey.
For her part, Cara looks up at him, a sullen expression on her face.
‘You lied to me,’ Joel begins. ‘You manipulated me. You did everything you could to ruin my marriage.’
‘No, I didn’t, I—’
‘Be quiet,’ Joel responds, in a low tone of voice that is threaded with pure steel. Cara instantly falls silent again. ‘You did all those things, Cara . . . but you wouldn’t have been able to do any of them if I hadn’t been in a bad place anyway.’ He briefly looks back at me. ‘If we hadn’t been in a bad place. So . . . I’m going to choose not to hate you, Cara. Because I don’t think you actually deserve that. You just took advantage of something for your own ends, because you had feelings for me.’
‘Yes! I do, Joel! I do have feelings for you! I lov—’
‘I said, be quiet,’ he repeats, the steel now fully tempered. ‘As I say, I don’t think you did what you did out of malice. I think you did it out of love. So I don’t hate you, Cara. But we are over. Do you understand me?’
You Again? Page 26
