by Shari Low
Josie cracked as I knew she would. She loved my family like they were her own and she wouldn’t keep anything from me if she thought I should know about it. Would she?
‘OK, but Val, you’ve got to promise to say nothing. Swear to me.’
‘I promise,’ I said, my stomach beginning to turn just a wee bit with apprehension. Oh God, don’t make it anything bad. We were just on the cusp of pulling ourselves off the floor and I wasn’t for lying back down there.
‘They’re both denying it, but they got so close for a while there that I think they decided they were better backing off.’
I was stunned. ‘What do you mean by “close”?’
Josie sighed and adopted a serious discussion posture, her elbows on the desk, leaning towards me. ‘Right, don’t get your knickers in a fankle, but Jen was sleeping in his spare room for a while because neither of them wanted to be on their own. No funny business though. Don’t worry, I checked. I think it was Jen that decided it was a bad idea and moved back out. She was worried what people would think and maybe more worried about what it could lead to. Are you OK, Val?’ she asked, looking at me with concern. ‘You look like Barry Manilow has just walked in and smacked you with a shovel.’
That would have been less surprising, and definitely less confusing than the conflicting riot of emotions I was feeling. Luke and Jen? No. They couldn’t. He was Dee’s husband and Jen had no right to move on in there… Anger. And what was Luke thinking? Jen was vulnerable, the poor lass had lost everything and there he was taking advantage… Disappointment. But then, God love them, it had been so hard on them both… Sympathy. I’d had my Don to get me through it and I couldn’t imagine what it must be like to do it alone… Understanding.
‘I don’t know how I feel about that, Josie,’ I confessed.
‘Well you don’t have to worry yourself with it because, like I say, Jen moved out before anything happened and they’ve… what is it the young ones say nowadays…?’ she pondered, before a triumphant, ‘Moved on! That’s it. They’ve moved on.’
Another fear popped up like one of those bloody whack-a-mole machines that our Dee used to love when we took her for day trips to Largs. Luke was down in London spending a bit of time with his brothers. If he’d had a fall out with Jen, what was to stop him moving down there permanently? What was to keep him here now? His parents lived in Edinburgh and his brothers were his only other family. Between Dee’s passing and now this, maybe he’d decide there was nothing to keep him here.
Dread had taken over now. I’d taken Luke into my family and clichéd or not, he was a son to me now and I didn’t want to lose him too. Too much loss. Too much.
‘I’m away to put the kettle on,’ I told Josie. Distraction therapy. It was a quiet afternoon, and there was no sign of a stampede of customers, so I needed to do something to keep my anxiety from running riot.
‘There’s caramel wafers in the cupboard above the sink,’ Josie said, as I bustled off.
When I returned clutching two mugs, with a packet of Tunnock’s wafers dangling from my teeth, Josie was posing in front of a mirror. I put the tea and biscuits down on the desk before I did someone an injury. ‘What in God’s name are you doing?’ I asked, collapsing with hilarity. That woman was a tonic, she really was. She still had on her standard uniform of black polo neck and trousers of the same colour, but now she’d pulled the teabag swimming costume over her clothes and was rearranging the strings to make it fit her. Badly.
Tears of laughter were blinding me when the ding of the door interrupted the carry-on. Finally, a customer! A pretty blonde woman in her thirties, maybe, carrying a tiny baby in one of those papoose things, and credit to her, she didn’t even flinch at the sight of Josie in that get-up. My maternal instinct was about to propel me closer to have a look at the baby, when she spoke.
‘Hello, I wonder if you ladies could help me,’ she said, a warm smile, the whitest teeth I’d ever seen and an accent, maybe Australian. Or Canadian. Sometimes I got them confused.
‘I’m looking for Dee Harper.’
No matter how often it happened, it still took my breath away. Thank God Josie, in all her bizarre finery, stepped in.
‘I’m sorry, dear, but Dee isn’t here anymore.’ She didn’t go into detail. We’d learned over the months that it was best to leave it at that and not cause an uncomfortable situation for the customer or us.
To my surprise, the woman’s face fell and she looked absolutely gutted.
‘Is there something I can help you with?’ I asked her, but she shook her head.
‘Thanks, but it was Dee I was looking for. Is there any way I can contact her? It’s pretty important.’
Josie came to the rescue again. ‘Love, I don’t want to upset you but I’m afraid Dee passed away.’
Her eyes widened and for a moment I thought she was going to cry. ‘Passed away? But…’ The sentence got stuck there. Going by her reaction, she was clearly more than a customer. Maybe a friend from Dee’s travels? Someone she knew on that Facebook malarkey?
The baby yawned and this seemed to restart the young woman’s thought process. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘it’s just that I was actually looking for Dee because I thought she might be able to help me find her brother. Sorry to have troubled you.’
‘Wait!’ I blurted, confused, as she turned to leave. ‘I’m Dee’s mother, Val.’
Her expression lit up like a fluorescent bulb.
‘You’re trying to find Mark?’
She nodded, but before I could say any more, Mark, maybe hearing his name, popped his head out the door again. ‘Mum, did you shout…?’
His eyes went straight to the stranger.
‘Tara?’ he said with obvious astonishment, and I swear to the heavens I hadn’t seen that face since the days that a wee boy would run downstairs and burst into the living room and see his pile of presents on Christmas morning.
And, going by the lassie’s delighted grin, she was feeling the same way. My gaze met Josie’s wide-eyed stare and then we both immediately flicked back to Mark and… what did he say her name was?
‘Hey,’ she said, with an irrepressible smile that was so contagious, Josie and I were already jumping on the bandwagon.
Och, this was lovely. A pal of Mark’s come all this way to see him.
Mark finally got his wits about him. ‘Sorry, mum, Josie…’ He noticed Josie properly for the first time since he’d popped his head out and couldn’t help but laugh. ‘Josie, I’m not even going to ask what you’re wearing. Anyway, mum, Josie, this is Tara.’ I watched as his gaze left her face and went downwards, to the tiny person strapped to her chest. ‘And this is…’
Silence. Tara’s hands went to the bump, cradling it as she answered Mark’s question.
‘This is your daughter.’
Chapter 43
Jen
‘Jen?’ he stuttered.
I shared his overwhelming shock. ‘What are you doing here, Pete?’
Even as he tried to shade them, I could see his eyes darted to the right. Searching for someone? Oh for bollocking bugger’s sake, don’t tell me that I’d managed to come halfway round the bloody world and end up in the same place as Pete and bloody bollocking Arya on their bloody bollocking honeymoon?
My gaze flicked skyward as I sent a silent message to my pal. Dee, if you did this, you have a sick, twisted sense of humour.
‘Ah, shit. How did you know?’ he asked, going somewhere between weary and defensive.
‘Know what?’
‘About here? Today?’
I didn’t understand. What about today? Was it special? And… oh bloody bollocking not again – don’t tell me he was here to get married and I’d just gatecrashed the party. This couldn’t be happening. It just couldn’t. It must be a hallucination. Maybe I didn’t have enough fluids on the plane.
‘What are you talking about?’
Realisation dawned on him, followed by an unmistakable flinch of guilt as he picked a pebble off the sand
and launched it into the sea, spitting a tortured ‘Fuck!’ with the kind of vehemence I’d never heard before.
‘What is it? Pete, you’re seriously freaking me out. What’s going on?’
I sank to my knees next to him and saw the raw, visceral pain in every line of his far-too-handsome face.
‘Dee,’ he whispered. ‘I was supposed to be here with Dee.’
I froze, synapses of my brain exploding.
No.
This made no sense.
And yet…
The weariness was like a blanket of pure exhaustion lying on top of me, forcing me into the sands, removing every ounce of energy or free will. I was utterly defenceless and the most horrific thing was that, in that split second, I knew. He didn’t even need to tell me, because it was all so crystal clear that I couldn’t believe I hadn’t seen it before.
Yet still… ‘Tell me!’ I demanded, while internally screaming that I didn’t want to hear what he had to say. ‘You were having an affair?’
He had the decency to hang his head.
‘Pete, if what we had meant anything, you’d better tell me the truth now because anything else would be beyond cruel.’ I saw a shift in his body language and decided to go on. ‘For how long?’
The sands were burning my knees now but the pain barely registered.
‘A few months,’ he said, wearily, sorrow seeping from his words. ‘But there had been something there for years…’
Years. I retched and he immediately stopped speaking. Bit late now for concern.
‘Keep talking,’ I spluttered.
‘There had been something,’ he repeated and I realised I was fighting the urge to punch him in that beautiful face. ‘But we’d never acknowledged it. We spent so much time together…’
That was true. Dee and Pete were the sporty ones, the runners, the adrenalin junkies, while Luke and I were content to lounge in the background. It was a standing joke with us. Suddenly, it wasn’t funny anymore.
‘…and then a few months before she died we realised we couldn’t ignore it anymore.’ He paused. ‘That’s not true. I realised. It wasn’t Dee.’
‘But she admitted it too? She had feelings for you?’
Say no. Please say no.
He nodded. ‘Luke was putting her under pressure to have kids and I think it freaked her out, and there I was, a diversion.’
Poor Luke.
‘When did you sleep together? The first time, when was it?’ I couldn’t even scream or yell, my voice like the low, deadly demands of a stranger.
‘We didn’t. She said she couldn’t…’ My spirits spiked until he continued, ‘…while you and I were still together.’
‘She knew you were going to leave me?’
There was a pause as he thought about what I’d asked him. ‘Not really. We made a pact. Sounds crazy now. That we would both try to make it work. One year, we agreed. She would give it her all with Luke, and I’d do the same with you. We stopped meeting up…’
I heard the waitress from the coffee shop’s comment in my head. There was another one, she’d said. ‘You met in the cafe across from your work?’
‘Yeah. How did you know that?’
For the first time since I’d met him today I knew more than him. Small victories.
‘Doesn’t matter. Go on.’
‘We still ran and worked out together because if we stopped you might notice and wonder why, but other than that we didn’t see each other alone.’
Everything about this made no sense, yet so much sense at the same time. My mind was reeling.
‘So why are you here?’ I asked, still not grasping the facts.
‘Stupid dreams,’ he said. ‘I saw this place in a brochure and I told her that I’d bring her here, on my birthday, if we’d found a way to be together. I didn’t mean it. It was a pipedream, but I couldn’t stop thinking about it.’
His birthday. It was today. What did it say about the changes in my life that I’d completely forgotten, but I was distracted from that thought by another memory that was clearing in my head.
‘I remember seeing you looking at those brochures,’ I said. ‘I thought you were planning a surprise for me. Oh God, I think I actually suggested we take the trip after Dee died and you freaked out, left that night.’
‘Guilt,’ he admitted. ‘And grief. But mostly guilt. If it hadn’t been for me she would still be here.’
‘What do you mean?’
A pause and I could see it was killing him to go wherever his mind was taking him.
‘She’d gone to the car to get her mobile because she knew I’d text her. Then she called me instead. She was speaking to me when it happened.’
For the first time since that day, my mind went back further than the sound of the grinding engine and the horrific thud.
Dee. Across the road. Smiling as she spoke. To Pete.
How could she have done that? How could the person I’d grown up with, who was closer than a sister, have gone there? Who was she? Didn’t I know her at all?
I don’t know what shocked me more. The revelation or the fact that, for the first time in our lives, I saw that he was crying.
My anger was instant. Crocodile fucking tears. How dare he? His treachery, her treachery, both of them… they’d wrecked all our lives for some cheap, tawdry, cruel affair. Their lies had killed her. And he was going to have to live with that.
‘I’m sorry Jen, but I loved her,’ he spluttered.
He was pathetic in every sense. If I didn’t know him and I was hearing him speak now, for the first time, I’d think he was a broken man. I didn’t feel a shred of sympathy, but seeing his guilt, his suffering, realising that torture would be with him for the rest of his days, made my fury pull back like the pale blue waves that were crashing around us.
‘All this time I thought it was Arya,’ I said, the fight draining out of me.
‘It is now, sometimes. Has been for a while. But it’s nothing serious. Friends with benefits,’ he shrugged, and I tried not to react to his cavalier nonchalance.
How had I lived with this man for fifteen years and never seen this side of him? Since we were fourteen, I’d shared his life, watch him grow, change, mature, and I had absolutely no idea.
His turn to ask the questions. ‘Why are you here?’
‘Dee wrote the name of this place in her diary for this week. I saw it and decided to come.’
‘She wrote it in her diary?’
That’s when I saw it, right there, in the curve of his mouth and the light in his eyes. He was happy that she’d done that and he couldn’t help showing it, even in front of me. No heartfelt apologies. No hint of remorse. All he could think about was what could have been instead of what he destroyed in the process.
The crashing noise in my ears didn’t come from the waves. It was yesterday, crumbling to dust.
‘You disgust me,’ I said, quietly. I wanted him to hurt. To feel pain. To pay. But what more was there to say? ‘She was seeing someone else.’ It was out before I could stop myself and I could see it hit the target.
‘What? No. She wasn’t.’ He was aghast, horrified, yet even in his shock, I could see a glimmer of belief.
‘She was. Had been for years. So you see, the “thing” with you and her? Not that special. You were just one of many.’
His head fell back, eyes closed, as if bracing his body to accept the pain, flinching under torture.
Good. I’d never wished another human being hurt. Until now.
Time to go.
He wasn’t getting another beat of my heart, another moment of my time.
I got up, and walked away, across the sands.
And if I could have had my way, I’d have kept on walking all the way to the rest of my life.
Chapter 44
Luke
I’d been dreading coming home and now that the cab was pulling up outside the front door, the heaviness in my gut made it feel like it was lined with lead. I’d made the decis
ion while I was in London – time to leave here. I couldn’t do this anymore. Couldn’t live in a shrine to the incredible wife and the great life I once had. Couldn’t face empty rooms and empty hours. Couldn’t go to pick up the phone a dozen times a day to call Jen and then remember that our friendship – or more – had been damaged. There was nothing here for me now. Matt and Callum were both making a great life for themselves in London and there was nothing to stop me joining them. Our agency had an office there, so a transfer would be painless. It would be a fresh start – no looks of sympathy, no casual avoidance because people didn’t know what to say to me, no Callie rolling her eyes when I walked into the office because I’d flaked out on her and wasn’t up for a repeat of that night.
Not her fault. She wasn’t Dee. She wasn’t Jen.
My holdall made a thud on the floor as I dropped it, deciding I’d unpack later. First, a beer and something to eat, then a flick through the pile of mail that was waiting on the dining table. Josie must have been here. The place was spotless and there was a whiff of some kind of polish. I must remember to buy her something nice to thank her and say goodbye. Unless of course I could persuade her to pop down to London once a month to keep the new place gleaming. If I could tie it in with anything to do with Tom Jones, the Rolling Stones or an Elvis tribute, I might be in with a chance.
In the kitchen, the fruit bowl had been filled, there was a French loaf on the counter and when I opened the fridge I saw that there was fresh milk and cold meats. So Val had probably been here too. Whenever Dee and I had travelled, Val always stocked up for us coming back. God, I’d miss her and Don. My own parents were great, but I’d been living in Val and Don’s pockets for so long they felt like my family too. Telling her I was leaving was the thing I was dreading most. Well, that and saying goodbye to… I didn’t want to think about it. See! This made my point. I was back in the door ten minutes and already I was thinking about her. This was why I needed to leave.
I twisted the top off the bottle of Budweiser and headed across the lounge. Dee was the one who’d wanted this big open-plan space because she said it was great for parties. She was right, but my days of partying here were done. Time to sell up and keep on going.
