‘Can I ask you a very strange question?’ Dolly placed her cup in its saucer.
‘Of course you can.’ Rae laid her forearms on the table and sat forward.
‘Would it be easier, better, do you think, if you didn’t know about Howard? About what happened?’
Rae took a moment to steady her breathing and formulate her response. ‘But I do know.’
‘Yes.’ Dolly paused. ‘But the point I’m making is, for however long you didn’t know . . .’
Weeks, mere weeks . . .
‘Life carried on as normal; you and Howard were the same as you always were—’
‘But we weren’t – it was just that I was operating with half the facts, half the picture, and that makes me feel like such a mug, as if I don’t count. I only thought everything was as it had always been.’
‘I understand, but I have been awake half the night thinking and I was wondering whether maybe, just to get through it, to move on, you could pretend at some level, just until you heal properly?’
‘It’s not that simple, Dolly.’ Rae felt an uncomfortable wave of dislike towards her friend. This request was so telling, placing Dolly firmly in her brother’s corner, the suggestion made to allow him to save face – better they all pretend . . . ‘He lied to me and he was unfaithful to me and it has changed things, changed the way I feel about him.’
‘You thought he was perfect?’ Dolly challenged.
Rae halted the first response in her mind: pretty much . . . ‘Not perfect, no, but perfect for me. And straightforward. I thought he was honest.’
‘God, one slip-up, Rae; one blot on a beautiful landscape. As I say, can’t you just pretend? I think it might make it easier to heal.’
‘One slip-up? Really? We are not talking about someone who forgot my birthday or picked up the wrong cheese! He has broken my trust. It’s not a case of whether I can pretend things are okay, or how long I didn’t know, or anything like that!’ She took a breath. ‘It’s a case of whether I can carry on at all knowing what I do now, knowing he isn’t the person I thought he was.’
‘He is! He is, though, Rae. He adores you and he adores his kids! You can’t give up on him! He loves you!’ Dolly’s passion sounded a lot like coercion.
‘And as I said to him, saying that doesn’t magically erase the mistake. It’s indelible – it’s stamped on my skin and on my heart.’
Dolly shielded her eyes and looked down, as if in prayer.
‘Do you know how long it lasted?’ she asked eventually.
‘Two weeks, he says.’
‘And you believe him?’
Rae considered this. ‘I have no reason not to. Unless you know different?’
‘No, not at all.’ Dolly shook her head emphatically.
This assurance Rae met with no small sense of relief. ‘I don’t know why he would lie about it being two weeks or ten; it’s irrelevant, really, in the grand scheme of things.’
‘You can’t throw a lifetime together away for a two-week mistake. I can’t imagine what life would be like if you guys weren’t a couple. And I am saying that as your friend and not just your sister-in-law. I would be saying the same to him if it was you who had done it.’
‘But it wasn’t me, was it?’ Rae took a glug of her orange juice, frustration lacing her words. ‘Can you imagine how you would feel if it was Vinnie?’ She watched the twitch of an uncomfortable smile form on her friend’s mouth. ‘God, Dolly!’ She leaned forward. ‘That little smile; that thought that just went through your head – which I am guessing was something close to “Don’t be so ridiculous! Vinnie would never do that to me! Vinnie and I are solid, unbreakable!” – that is exactly how I felt, word for word. That is the same thing I would have thought about Howard and I would have smiled in the same way. And I am so shocked, as you would be; it’s unbelievable to me. No matter how many times I chase it around my brain.’
Dolly nodded and folded her arms across her chest. The silence felt like an impasse.
‘When you said you wanted me to meet your brother, I said I was worried in case things didn’t work out and it would make things weird between us.’
‘Yes, you did.’ Dolly held her gaze.
‘I meant it then and I mean it now. And things do feel a little weird right now. I don’t like it.’
‘I can’t help it.’ Dolly spoke quietly.
‘I know.’
‘And I don’t like it either, Rae.’
Rae tried to find the verbal balm that might help shake off the awkwardness. ‘I guess we have to accept that inevitably we are both going to feel a little thrown, a little bruised, but it will pass, okay?’
Dolly threw her napkin on to her breakfast plate, her smile wide but a little askew, forced. ‘Okay. Come on! Let’s go out and start the day again; let’s go shopping and enjoy the sun and try not to let things get weird or weirder. What do you say?’
‘Let’s do it.’ Rae spoke gaily, wishing she could adjust her feelings, alter her mood, as easily as she could speak the words.
Heritage Quay was busy. A vast cruise ship had docked and disgorged some of its seven thousand passengers on to the dock. They scattered like ants into the souvenir shops, cafes and the marketplace where artisan stalls sold their wares.
‘Look, Rae, it’s one of them big boats!’
They both laughed, shielding their eyes as they looked up at the ship that filled the immediate horizon. Its proportions were breathtaking, impressive and a little frightening. It sat like a sideways skyscraper, a huge building-like structure.
‘I don’t understand how it floats.’ Dolly spoke for them both. ‘I mean, it’s the same principle as the little plastic tugs George and Lyall used to push around in the pool, but so vast, so heavy! I wouldn’t trust it.’
‘It’s science, Dolly. And we don’t know much about science.’ Rae stared at the acres of shiny metal handrails that reflected the sun, and the immaculate white paintwork that shone.
‘I don’t think science was an option for us at our college, was it? Certainly not in our department; we were there for the typing.’
‘Fucking nirvana,’ Rae reminded her, remembering how easily she had capitulated when her parents told her cookery was not for her, wanting so badly to please them and heartily believing that they knew best. This followed by the usual pang of regret.
‘Fucking nirvana,’ Dolly confirmed, smiling at her mate.
Rae linked her arm through Dolly’s and they strolled the quay with their closeness restored a little and some of the weirdness diluted. It felt good, and the relief was a reminder of how important their friendship was.
After sauntering from shop to shop and buying the kids T-shirts, leather bangles for Hannah and Ruby and a crocheted tablemat for each set of parents, the two, as recommended by their taxi driver, took a table on the first-floor terrace of Hemingways Caribbean Cafe. With relief they stepped out of the glare of the midday sun, stowing their shopping bags by the table under the green and white striped awning. A welcome breeze lifted the checked tablecloths and they had a perfect view of the comings and goings on Thames Street below.
‘Phew! It’s hot!’ Dolly pushed her sunglasses on to her head and fanned herself with a menu.
‘I gotta tell you, Dolly, it’s not going to get any less hot in the next ten days or so. So feel free to stop telling me about the temperature. And in case you hadn’t noticed, I am here with you, right in front of you – experiencing the same weather. I know it’s hot!’
Dolly hit her friend on the arm with the menu. ‘I see you are still taking those sarcasm pills the doctor prescribed. Have you upped your dosage?’
‘I thought I was taking Make-Me-Extra-Boring pills?’
‘You, my friend, are on a veritable cocktail of drugs!’
‘What can I get for you today?’ The young smiley waitress stood with pen and pad poised.
‘I’ll take the crab cakes and a fresh orange juice, and nothing for my friend – she is nil by mouth at t
he moment.’
‘Please ignore her.’ Rae laughed. ‘I’ll have the same.’
The food when it arrived was plentiful and tasty. Rae forked the salad into her mouth. ‘It’s weird, isn’t it, how things can taste so different depending on where you eat them? Like, a bit of salad in the kitchen at home, grabbed on the run, can be nothing short of dull, but the same leaves and a bit of tomato, eaten here under this warm sun with all the time in the world to enjoy it . . .’ She closed her eyes and savoured the flavour. ‘I want to know more about ingredients. I mean, I can whip up a meal with very little, but I would love to really understand food.’
‘You should write for the Latimers website; you are such a foodie!’
‘I wouldn’t know where to start.’ Even the idea frightened her.
‘You could start with a blog: “Tomatoes and lettuce and all the places I have eaten them . . .”’
‘You’re taking the mick.’ Rae sighed and continued her lunch in silence. Dolly’s comedic dismissal of something she held dear left her feeling more than a little deflated. It was another blow to the equilibrium they were trying to achieve in the wake of the previous evening’s discussion.
Having devoured the delicious fare and now sipping iced coffee, Rae rotated her neck and enjoyed the warmth in her bones. There was something quite wonderful about the unhurried pace of this holiday life; it was seductive, and it had taken until now, her third day, to truly slip into the rhythm of it. She barely looked at her phone, just responding politely to the texts that came in from Howard and sending the kids messages of love with the odd amusing picture of her and their aunt holding a cocktail or standing in front of pale sugar-almond-coloured buildings that gave the island a fairy-tale quality.
‘I was thinking about what you said earlier, about how I would feel if it was Vinnie.’
Rae looked at her friend. She had her attention.
Dolly took a while to form her words, the topic still prickly, distasteful, and Rae wasn’t sure whether she was delighted or distraught that they were going back to it.
‘And I have to admit I would be devastated, absolutely devastated, I can’t deny it. But I like to think that I would forgive him, because I wouldn’t want to put my kids through a break-up and wouldn’t want the whole family to suffer, or to put everyone through something so hard. And I can’t imagine that I would throw away all the years we have had together and all the lovely years ahead. I would try to move on.’
Rae listened to her words and felt a surge of disappointment. She had hoped that Dolly might provide a sounding board, or at least offer insight that might help Rae process what had happened. Instead her suggestion was a missive, wrapped around a rock and hurled at her. She felt the full force in her gut. ‘But supposing the years ahead weren’t lovely? Supposing they were years of living a half-life with the fallout from his actions clouding each day like a swirl of dust after something has collapsed? Choking you? What then?’
Rae felt a little breathless from the heartfelt verbal torrent that had rushed from deep inside her, and Dolly looked taken aback.
‘I’d open the windows.’
‘I can’t even joke about it, Dolly.’ It was a new sensation for Rae to find her sister-in-law’s humour an irritating attempt at diversion and not in the least bit funny.
Dolly shook her head. ‘I just don’t know what to suggest. But I think you need to find a way to make it good for all of our sakes – the kids, my parents, everyone . . .’
‘Really? So you think I need to turn a blind eye to make things more comfortable for you and for Arturo and Mitzy?’ Rae was aware that her voice had once again gone up an octave, in anger that her needs appeared to be one of Dolly’s last concerns. She expected more.
‘No!’ Dolly fired. ‘That’s not what I am saying. I think you should make it good for you and Howard – and as a consequence life carries on, unharmed, for everyone.’ She sighed and rubbed her eyes. ‘I can’t imagine what it would be like if you guys split! Christmas, for example, birthdays, gatherings or, God forbid, if anything bad should happen, like a bereavement – that’s when we need to stick together, family!’
‘So you think to leave or ask him to leave would be selfish?’ Rae asked steadily, feeling aggrieved that the onus was once again on her.
‘No, I don’t, but I think to stay or ask him to stay would be selfless.’
Science-aware or not, her friend was clever.
‘It sounds so easy, doesn’t it, just kiss and make up. Throw a party, take a holiday. But it’s not that simple. And the crazy thing is, Dolly, I was happy.’ She leaned forward and banged the table with tears of anger and frustration pooling. ‘I was happy! I thought I had it all. I didn’t question anything; every day I went to bed feeling blessed. Like I had won a prize. Now I climb into bed feeling duped, foolish and bloody angry. And it was Howard who ripped the lid off, not me.’
‘That will pass. It will fade.’ Dolly swallowed and looked into her lap. Rae supposed she was unused to having to deal with outbursts like this from her friend, and felt the balance of power shift a little more.
‘Will it? I don’t know. The irony is that Howard is now unhappy and asking for forgiveness and saying the same things as you – that we need to make it work for the family, that it was a small slip-up and however else he justifies it – but the genie is out of the bottle and it’s not going back in.’ She took a breath and a mouthful of her iced coffee. Dolly blinked furiously, clearly uncomfortable. ‘I am being made to feel like the baddie, the one who holds the key to future happiness; me, who hasn’t done anything wrong except run around at everyone’s beck and call! And let’s forget the family for a minute – this is my marriage, my life; what about me? What about me, Dolly? What about making me happy again?’
‘I think fixating on blame doesn’t help anyone. It doesn’t help you move on.’ Dolly spoke with a tight mouth and Rae could feel the judgement coming off her in waves.
‘I’m not fixating on it, but it’s important. It’s a fact. He messed up! And now if he doesn’t like the consequences that’s just too bad.’
‘You don’t mean that.’
Rae looked at her sister-in-law, whose expression was torn. She felt a jolt of sympathy for this woman whose very loyalty was being pulled in this terrible emotional tug of war. ‘I guess one of the consequences is that it has made me stop and look back at my life. I felt like everything was moving so fast and it has since the day we married. We were always planning for and working towards the next thing, the next big Latimer project, and I was so happy to be a part of it, swept along, but it was all I could do to just hang on! Trying to keep up, as my life rushed by like I was watching out of a window of a train, and each scene, each event whizzed past so quickly that I could only feel the rush of it on my face but not truly feel the event, if that makes any sense.’
Dolly stared at her. Rae took this as her cue to continue. ‘I have put the Latimers first, always.’ She thought about Debbie-Jo, who she knew had struggled since giving up her dreams of the limelight, and of her parents, who were so glad to see her when she popped in on the odd occasion and who deserved more than a rushed cup of tea and to have their groceries delivered by the Tesco man. ‘I have put Howard first, and I did so willingly, but this is how he has rewarded me.’
‘But you are a Latimer.’ Dolly spoke now with confidence. ‘And you have had a good life. Howard has always taken care of his family—’
‘You think that’s a good trade-off?’ She cut Dolly short, her tone a little pricklier than she had intended, drawn from a place that felt the sharp tip of disappointment that this woman, her best friend for all these years, thought she could be so easily satisfied. Did she not know her? ‘The fact that he provided me with a spare bedroom and the odd bit of sparkly jewellery? Do you think that makes it okay for him to do what the hell he wants? You think that’s my price? A Georgian house in Lawns Crescent? A pretty place to clean and wander in? It’s a cage, a gilded cage, and no ca
ge is big enough to contain all that I gave up on to become his wife!’ Rae raised her voice and several patrons of Hemingways Cafe turned to gawp. She felt her insides cave with shame.
‘What did you give up on exactly?’
Rae gasped. The question and its delivery felt like a punch. Dolly jutted her chin in defiance, challenging: Dolly, whom she had idolised since she was sixteen years of age. Rae thought she above anyone else would understand because she knew what made Rae tick, knew that she had always put herself second, third . . . This apparent dismissal, the questioning, was more than just a woman defending her beloved brother; they were the words of a woman who did not have Rae’s back. It was unsupportive and it hurt. Rae felt a naked flicker of fear at the first stirring of awareness that it might not only be Howard that she stood to lose in the wake of the whole horrible episode.
She composed herself. ‘Okay. Maybe it doesn’t seem like much, but . . .’ She struggled to find the words. ‘I gave up on discovering myself. I used to think I might achieve great things, do stuff; become a chef! But instead I morphed into Howard’s wife at eighteen and I got stuck. I am still stuck! And I only realised it when he held the mirror up, when he pulled the veil away from my eyes.’
Dolly rubbed her eyes. ‘I think you need to be a bit less dramatic.’
‘Is that what you think, really?’ Rae appraised the woman sitting opposite her and realised with an ache in her chest that she had assumed the two of them would always be tight, joined by the moments that defined them – laughing as teens until they nearly peed on a bus, and holding each other’s newborns with tears in their eyes. ‘You think that having my marriage and my whole existence exposed as a sham is a bit dramatic?’ She cursed the catch in her throat.
‘That’s not what I am saying, Rae, not at all.’
‘Well, it sure sounds like it!’ She grabbed her hat, sunglasses and bag and made her way down to the roadside, her cheeks aflame with embarrassment and something that felt very close to rage.
Dolly caught up and hailed a cab to take them back to the Blue Lodge. The two women sat as far apart as the narrow back seat would allow, comical in any other situation, each staring out the window in silence. This in no way matched the cacophony of words and reasoning flying around inside Rae’s head as the row continued in her mind. It reminded her of the journey to the airport with Howard, the tense atmosphere and the passive-aggressive stance. It did nothing to help allay the thought that she might have exchanged vows with Howard but had in fact married the whole bloody family. They paid the driver and stood by the grand reception.
The Girl in the Corner Page 15
