The Girl in the Corner

by Amanda Prowse

  ‘I want you to marry me . . .’ He’d looked up at her.

  ‘Really?’ Her heart felt like it was going to jump out of her chest.

  ‘Yes, really!’

  ‘I’d love to marry you, Howard! I would!’

  They had hugged closely, keenly, with a new understanding, and she had kissed him goodbye and practically run home, bursting into the lounge where her Mum and Dad sat on the sofa watching the news, with empty supper plates on their laps, still fresh with the licks of gravy and stray peas, and cups of tea in their hands. They’d looked up and she’d jumped in front of the television; her dad cocked his head to look around her as she spoke with tears falling down her face. ‘I never expected this! But Mum, Dad . . . my boyfriend – Howard, my amazing boyfriend – he wants to marry me!’ And she’d stood there in that room with joy filling her right up and she knew what it felt like to be someone special, someone so special that a man as incredible as Howard Latimer, who had met Simply Red, Bryan Adams and the woman who cut Annie Lennox’s hair, wanted to marry her! Quiet, dull, flat-chested Rae-Valentine Pritchard. And in that moment she’d felt memorable, like a rock star, like a Latimer and not in the least bit like something forgettable, in the background . . .

  ‘I could only picture us happy,’ Howard whispered, squeezing her hand. ‘Happy together. I assumed we’d be lucky and have kids and that was it. I really didn’t want anything more. The way it felt, just you and me on that path . . .’ He took a breath. ‘I know this is going to sound ridiculous, but it was at that moment, when you said yes, and the way you looked at me – that was when I felt married, connected to you. The actual wedding and that whole circus, it was a great party, but the soul-to-soul, body-to-body thing, that for me had already happened.’

  Rae felt moved by his words. ‘You sounded pretty certain that we’d stay together.’

  ‘I was. I am,’ he corrected. ‘Because if I think of anything different, that loneliness looms large on my horizon and I can’t stand to think of it. I just can’t stand it.’

  She felt the pull of his hand against hers, and just like that she pictured him hand in hand checking into a hotel; Karina hovering in her heels, wearing a smug grin and walking in her cocky way towards the lift . . . Rae pulled her hand away and turned towards the wall.

  ‘Night, Howard.’

  ‘Goodnight, Rae. I am talking too much, I know. Go to sleep. I don’t know what’s in The Idiot Returns, but I definitely want another one tomorrow.’

  And just this one line was enough to send them back to the verge of laughter, quickly followed by her silent tears that seeped into the pillowslip.

  NINE

  Dolly and Vinnie were at the breakfast table by the time Rae and Howard made their way to the restaurant.

  ‘Here they are!’ Dolly shouted across the room and waved.

  Rae tried to ignore the turning heads of all the other residents, who had no doubt been informed by Nick and Nora, now tutting in the corner, of how the two women had picked up these nameless fellas. Rae was treading a fine line. She didn’t want to ruin this time away for everyone, but was damned if she was going to be bulldozed into a show of forgive and forget just to keep the status quo. She did feel better this morning, a little calmer, and this was due in no small part to her and Howard’s whispered exchange in the dim light; but with images of him and Karina still fresh in her mind, she was miles away from playing happy families.

  Howard went straight to the buffet table in search of bacon and eggs. Vinnie went to join his mate and Rae slotted into a chair.

  ‘Well?’ Dolly stared at her, chewing on toast and marmalade.

  ‘What do you mean, well?’ Rae reached for the coffee pot, irritated that her friend sounded like a teen wanting an update on romantic progress rather than a grown woman who was aware that her friend’s marriage hung in the balance. Dolly had made it quite clear that she thought it possible, if not prudent, for Rae to sweep the whole thing under the carpet and pop the kettle on for tea.

  ‘I mean how did it go last night – any progress? Did you guys talk?’

  ‘We talked.’

  Dolly beamed and stamped her feet, again reminding Rae of when they were excitable teens, with the associated level of hysteria. ‘Tell me! Tell me everything! If you don’t I might literally die!’

  ‘Yes, we talked, Dolly, but we are a long way from sorted. As I might have mentioned, it’s going to take a bit more than a cocktail or two and holding hands in the moonlight to wipe the slate clean.’

  ‘So you held hands in the moonlight?’ Dolly leaned forward.

  Rae sipped her coffee. ‘Not exactly. Kind of.’

  ‘This is good, this is good, Rae.’ Dolly unwittingly mimicked the words of her brother. ‘Vinnie wants to take a boat out. What do you think?’

  Rae could tell by her friend’s wide smile that she was keen. ‘I am not a fan of boats, as you know, but I really don’t mind.’ Her heart didn’t exactly leap with joy at the prospect, but she knew it was all about getting through the day.

  ‘It’ll be lovely! Out on the water, catching the sun!’

  ‘Whatever everyone else wants to do.’ Rae realised that her days of mental healing on the beach with a cool drink under a parasol were probably gone.

  ‘So, a boat trip. I think we should hire a beautiful yacht and go out a bit, and we can sit back on the deck with a gin and tonic and make a day of it.’ Vinnie rubbed his hands together excitedly as the men took their seats at the table.

  ‘Sound great!’ Howard enthused, tucking in to his bacon and eggs with gusto, as Vinnie pulled out a map and began to trace the coastline with his finger, planning their route.

  ‘Better get my fancy hat!’ Dolly beamed and gave an excited clap.

  And just like that, with the other three plotting and planning with enthusiasm for the jaunt ahead, Rae realised that she was a passenger, in the background, in the corner.

  She reluctantly followed the three of them along the dock, but looked back towards Max’s bar and felt a ridiculous yearning to sit at the bar alone and talk to the young barman who had made her feel happy, even just for a moment or two. Her husband had spoiled that too. Rae felt unjustifiably robbed.

  Twenty minutes into their trip, the two couples bobbed silently on the ocean in their small catamaran with the single sail of the Hobie Cat flopping dejectedly for the want of wind. They each perched on the mesh between the two narrow fibreglass hulls. Rae sat next to Dolly, who was wearing her fancy hat, and they both sat opposite their husbands with their hands in their laps, their legs outstretched. Huddled together, they reminded Rae of sardines in a tin, which apparently when cooked over a fire on the beach were the best thing to eat, tasting of sea and sunshine . . .

  It was eerily quiet, the only sound the waves hitting the bottom of the catamaran and the squeak of the large life jackets, which rubbed against their skin or under their chins whenever they moved.

  ‘Remind me again why we couldn’t hire a boat with an engine and more than a few square inches of space to move in?’ Howard asked Vinnie.

  ‘I told you, they said the reefs and the water around here were dangerous for non-yachtsmen and this was all we were allowed.’ Vinnie sighed.

  ‘You should have told them we have taken pedalos out every year in Majorca since we were kids! And you were very good on that inflatable banana, Vin!’ Dolly enthused.

  Rae smiled at Howard from behind her sunglasses. ‘I don’t think that’s what they mean when they use the term “yachting”, Doll.’

  ‘Well, what are we supposed to do now?’ Dolly sighed. ‘I wish I’d brought snacks.’

  ‘You’ve only just had your breakfast!’ Howard reminded her. ‘Plus, snacks are a bad idea: they attract the sharks.’

  ‘Sharks?’ Dolly screamed. ‘Oh, please don’t say that, Howard! I don’t like it! I want to go back!’ She grabbed Rae’s arm.

  ‘He’s only joking, Dolly; not that it’s funny. But you don’t need to worry – ther
e are no sharks here.’ Rae glared at the men, who laughed. ‘And be under no illusion: we all want to go back. But therein lies the problem. No bloody wind.’

  Dolly seemed to relax a bit. ‘I need the loo.’

  ‘Oh, Dolly!’

  ‘For God’s sake!’

  ‘Why am I not surprised?’

  All three laughed and made their views known.

  ‘Don’t all shout at me! I can’t help it!’ she shrieked. ‘I was cursed with a bladder meant for a shrew!’

  ‘Well, I wish you’d learn to tame it,’ Vinnie chortled. ‘See what I did there? Shakespeare!’

  ‘We got it, Vinnie,’ Howard snapped, ‘but it’s hard to find you amusing right now when you have taken us out on this floating postage stamp, which we don’t know how to make move without wind – and thus the lack of the aforementioned breeze means we face the prospect of being out here for bloody hours. And anyway, if we were linking Dolly with Shakespeare, I think Macbeth would be more up her street.’

  ‘Because of Lady Macbeth being mad?’

  All three looked at Vinnie, who essentially bought fruit and veg for a living, and tried to hide their surprise at his literary knowledge.

  ‘Nice one, but no, I was thinking of the witches.’

  ‘I am here, you two!’ Dolly shouted. ‘And I am not a witch, although I do admit to having more than a passing interest in the spirit world.’ She adjusted her bosom inside her floral swimming costume, which had got rucked up inside the life vest.

  ‘Oh, please! Not the bloody ghost visit again!’ Vinnie wailed.

  ‘I for one would really like to hear the story.’ Howard spoke calmly.

  ‘I’ve told you it before!’

  ‘I know, Dolly, but I think at this time of quiet reflection, here in the middle of the ocean, it would be good to hear it again.’ He smiled at Rae, and she knew her friend wouldn’t need too much persuading.

  ‘Well, if you insist.’ Dolly adjusted her position, making the whole catamaran list slightly and causing a gasp of concern until it settled again. Rae tried not to consider that the only thing sitting between her and the vast, dark ocean was the thin stretch of webbing and the two narrow hulls of this inadequate craft. ‘I was in my late teens and I was asleep in my bedroom when something woke me up in the early hours – and I know I was awake and not dreaming because I remember seeing my glass of water on the bedside table, which was actually there, not a dream at all. I sat up in bed and a white, shadowy figure walked into the room.’ She pre-empted the question: ‘The door was open, and he stood by the side of my bed. Yes, a ghost.’

  ‘How do you know it was a male ghost?’ Howard asked, feigning interest.

  Rae pulled a face at him, the rotter.

  ‘He had a man’s face and a penis.’

  They all roared their laughter. It was in these moments of improvised humour that Dolly was at her funniest.

  ‘Okay, I am joking about the penis – I couldn’t see inside his nightdress/cloak thing – but it was definitely a male; he looked like a man and he had a man’s voice.’

  ‘Ah, yes.’ Howard nodded his encouragement. ‘I forgot he spoke to you. And what did he say?’

  ‘I was coming to that.’ Dolly took a deep breath. ‘He said, “Don’t scrimp on conditioner and always get your ends trimmed; your hair is very important.”’

  Rae laughed softly until her tears sprang. Vinnie, Howard too, all three were tittering, trying to hold in the loud laughter that was on the verge of bursting from them.

  ‘Oh, sod off, all of you! I know what I saw!’ Dolly tried and failed to fold her arms across her generous bust, encased inside the rather unwieldy life jacket.

  ‘Why? Why, Dolly?’ Howard gasped through his laughter. ‘Why would a ghost bother making contact – coming all the way from wherever and selecting you out of all the people on the earth – only to tell you to take good care of your hair?’

  ‘I don’t know, Howard; I am not a ghost expert.’ Dolly seemed to be considering this. ‘Maybe it was the ghost of a hairdresser?’

  This suggestion served only to make the three of them laugh harder. Dolly sat, mock stony-faced.

  ‘Was it Vidal Saswhoooooo-hoooon?’ Vinnie was in fine form.

  The laughter eventually subsided and Rae felt the inner glow of happy embers that had been cold for some time. These people . . . She had forgotten just how easy it was to be in their company. Days like this reminded her of how and why she loved them all. The recognition was tinged with sadness. She liked the life before, when she was untroubled by the image of Howard and the waitress, before she’d starting thinking deeper about her life and asking the question that was new: are you happy, Rae-Valentine?

  After a minute or two of silence a strange noise reached her ears. She sat still and noted that Howard and Vinnie were similarly concentrating, heads turned, trying to locate the source of the deep trickle that sounded like water running, bizarrely right there, out in the ocean.

  Dolly looked skyward and at that very moment Rae, Vinnie and Howard realised that Dolly was peeing through her swimming costume and out through the webbing of the boat.

  ‘Jesus Christ, Dolly!’ Howard shouted. ‘You have got to be kidding me!’

  Vinnie removed his glasses to wipe his eyes; his hysterics rendered speech impossible. Rae looked at her friend and shook her head.

  ‘What?’ Dolly asked, laughing. ‘A girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do!’

  It was a day Rae knew she would never forget: getting stranded out at sea, only to be rescued by a rather indifferent waterski-boat driver, who hitched the small catamaran to the back of his sleek vessel and hauled them to shore – that, and the fact that her sister-in-law had peed publicly in front of them all. She laughed to herself as she slipped into her nightdress, feeling the sting of cotton on her shoulders: her skin, a little taut, had not fared too well bobbing about in the midday Caribbean sun on that bloody boat.

  There was a newly relaxed air between her and Howard, something she could feel – a softening in their demeanour, and recognition that each interaction was kinder, slower, without the rasp of anger, the chill of regret or the harsh tone of blame. It wasn’t that she’d forgiven him; nor had she forgotten – her emotional wounds were still raw. But there was certainly a thawing in her ice-cold rejection of him and in truth she felt better for it, less preoccupied and not so ill. Their friendlier exchanges made her think about what it might feel like to put his infidelity behind them and move on, made her consider a life where that was actually possible. And if it were not, then at least being friends would make everything easier, especially for the kids, for the family.

  Howard and Vinnie had been in Antigua for a few days now; for Rae and Dolly, it was the end of day nine. It had been a long, sunny day spent on the beach and playing cards over a lazy lunch on the terrace. Dolly behaved as if their altercation before the men arrived had never happened and Rae envied her the ability to move on, knowing she would be in less turmoil if she could do likewise. But still the nagging thought remained: did Dolly know her at all? And how could she expect Dolly – or anyone else, for that matter – to know her if she felt like a shadow of the person she had always hoped she might become?

  That night she climbed between the sheets and Howard cleaned his teeth while she rubbed in her hand cream. He switched off the main light and got into bed, lying back with a loud, satisfied exhalation.

  ‘I keep remembering how Dolly peed off that boat!’ he tittered.

  This was still the highlight of the last few days and the thing they kept going back to when there was a lull in the conversation; the kind of happening that they would, she figured, talk about for years to come. She pictured them as octogenarians sitting around the table, recalling Dolly’s lack of bladder control, and Rae noted that it wasn’t only the idea of being that age, when the issue might be common to them all, that plunged her into dark thoughts – but the idea that she might be there at all, plodding on in her half-life,
keeping her thoughts to herself, playing along.

  ‘Nothing surprises me about her any more.’ She spoke the truth. ‘To think, I used to be completely shocked by the things Dolly said and did – but now I just shrug it off and add it to the list.’

  ‘Yes, but here’s the thing, Rae.’ Howard turned on to his side to face her across the Grand Canyon. ‘I have no choice about knowing Dolly – nature hitched my wagon to hers on the day she was born. But you? You chose to be her friend!’

  ‘Yes, and I chose to marry her brother. I guess that was when my wagon was properly hitched.’

  ‘I guess it was.’ He paused. ‘Can I hold your hand?’

  ‘No.’ She spoke bluntly, irritated by his cockiness.

  It didn’t feel right, a little forced maybe. This conversation and the atmosphere were very different from a few nights ago, when holding hands had felt like the most natural thing in the world. The last couple of nights she had gone to bed first and, having fallen into a deep sleep, hadn’t heard him come to bed. It had taken the pressure off a little.

  The two lay quietly for some moments until Howard whispered into the darkness, ‘Are you awake?’

  She hesitated before responding. ‘Yes.’ Turning on to her side, she faced him and pulled the blanket up to her chin.

  ‘I want to tell you something.’ He spoke softly.

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘I’ve been thinking about this for a long, long time, but I want to tell you now.’

  There were seconds of silence before he spoke again, and she lay waiting for him to begin.

  ‘I . . . I saw him.’

  ‘You saw who?’ She wondered if in her sleepy state she had lost the thread.

  ‘Our baby. Our little boy.’