Please Forgive Me

by Melissa Hill

  ‘She’s grand,’ Grace supplied, an understanding glance passing between the two of them.

  But Alex seemed to understand too. ‘Goddamn men – why do we even bother?’ she said, casting the photographs aside. Then, she picked up the half-empty bottle of wine. ‘So, who needs a top-up?

  On Grace’s third and final night, she and Leonie went out for dinner, just the two of them. They were in The Stinking Rose, a hugely popular Italian place on Columbus Avenue.

  ‘I can’t believe I’m going home tomorrow,’ Grace complained, tucking into a starter of garlic steamed clams. ‘The days have just flown by.’

  Leonie smiled. ‘Well I hope you enjoyed it.’

  ‘I’ve loved every second. But Lee, you’re not going to stay here forever though, are you?’ she asked. ‘I mean, you have to think about coming home sometime.’

  She knew this conversation had been brewing all weekend, but it was still difficult to talk about it. ‘Maybe, but not now. I’m really enjoying life Grace, it was the best decision I could have made.’

  ‘Would you not at least tell Adam where you are, though?’ she persisted. ‘At least if he knew, then maybe -’

  ‘I’d still rather he didn’t.’ Leonie interjected, pushing her chicken around the plate. Then she sighed. ‘Look, I suppose it’s hard to explain, and yes maybe I should make contact or at least give him an idea of where I am, but then what? At least this way, I’m still in control of what happens – even if it’s nothing. It was my choice to leave everything behind.’

  Grace nodded. ‘I think I know what you’re saying. Surely you must still care a little bit about him, though?’

  A little? Leonie smiled tightly. ‘Of course I do, but I also know that after what happened things could never be the same again. There’s no going back.’

  ‘Yes but -’

  ‘Look, Grace. I know that you’re only trying to help and I appreciate that, but there’s nothing you can say that will change my mind. What happened, happened, and no matter what way you look at it, it changed our relationship forever. There was no way we could get married after all that. I know I couldn’t forgive -’

  ‘Yes, but I think that’s part of the problem. This really isn’t about Adam at all is it Leonie? It’s more about you and what you can’t do. You can’t move past it.’

  ‘You’re right, I can’t,’ she admitted honestly. ‘So how could I possibly expect him to?’ When Grace didn’t reply she went on. ‘Anyway, from what you’re saying, he seems to have moved on just fine without me,’ she continued, referring to the fact that Adam hadn’t been in touch with Grace recently.

  ‘I wonder how things panned out with Andrea in the end?’ her friend mused. ‘Do you think they’re still –?’

  ‘I don’t care.’ Leonie said shortly, feeling a physical pang at the mention of the woman’s name. ‘I’d imagine so or at least, I hope so – for Suzanne’s sake, if nothing else.’ Then she sighed. ‘But I don’t think we should ruin your last night by talking about that witch.’

  Grace helped herself to another portion of garlic bread. ‘So, there’s really no talking to you then, is there?’

  ‘Nope,’ Leonie said determinedly. ‘But,’ she continued, deciding now was as good a time as any to broach the subject, ‘seeing as you’re here, I have a favour to ask.’

  Chapter 26

  Having seen off Grace at the airport on Monday morning, Leonie took a cab back to the city, her thoughts still full of the conversation they’d had the night before.

  It was interesting that her friend believed that she and Adam could still possibly have a future together, even with everything that had happened.

  Looking back, she herself wished that she had spotted the signs, or recognised the coincidences before everything came to a head. But back then, never in a million years could Leonie have anticipated what was about to happen, and for this she only had herself to blame.

  Dublin – Six months earlier

  A couple of months after the layoff from the factory, Adam still hadn’t found a job. It wasn’t for lack of trying; he’d applied to every organisation in the sector he could think of, and registered with every recruitment agency in the city, but to no avail.

  As a result, he was becoming more and more dejected by the day.

  ‘I just feel so bloody useless,’ he complained to Leonie, who by then was almost too tired to argue any different, not when she was coordinating all the evening events she could to claim more overtime and try and keep things going.

  After much grumbling on Andrea’s part, they’d eventually agreed a substantial reduction in maintenance for her, but had no choice but to put a stop to Suzanne’s additional pocket money, (something the teenager had been livid about). Notwithstanding these savings, things were still very tight indeed.

  Adam had since taken over the majority of the housework and cooking (always insisting on washing up afterwards while Leonie tried to stay awake in front of the TV), but as the weeks went by, he gradually seemed to become more and more disillusioned, and started to neglect this aspect too.

  ‘There was nothing in the fridge, so I thought we’d just get a takeaway,’ he said one evening when Leonie came home to find him sprawled across the couch watching TV. The breakfast dishes she’d used that morning still lay unwashed on the countertop, and the living room was strewn with dirty coffee-cups and the remnants of whatever Adam had been eating that day.

  She’d had a busy time at work and was bone-tired, so discovering that he hadn’t bothered to clean up today, let alone even attempt to make dinner was the last straw.

  ‘A takeaway?’ she repeated disbelievingly. ‘Adam, we can’t afford to be wasting money on takeaways, not when I’m barely keeping our heads above water as it is!’

  She hadn’t meant to sound so bitter and accusatory but she was frustrated and downright annoyed at his lack of effort on the domestic side that she couldn’t help it.

  He looked at her, clearly wounded. ‘So you keep reminding me.’

  ‘Reminding you of what?’

  ‘Of the fact that you’re keeping our heads above water,’ he clarified, and Leonie could have kicked herself for her choice of words. ‘But you’re the one lucky enough to have a job, aren’t you?’

  This was another change she’d noticed in him recently, a growing tendency towards self-pity. It was inevitable she supposed, but hardly helpful in the circumstances.

  ‘That’s not what I was saying,’ she argued tiredly. ‘I was merely pointing out that takeaways are a luxury we really can’t afford at the moment.’

  ‘Oh, come on,’ he retorted. ‘A couple of quid is hardly going to break the bank.’

  She felt her irritation rise again. ‘That’s not the point Adam, and you know it. There’s no need for us to order in, not when one or either of us is perfectly capable of cooking dinner.’ She was trying to choose her words carefully, but a side of her wanted to come right out and tell him to cop on.

  ‘But there’s nothing there to cook, I told you that.’

  ‘Then why not go out and get something, Adam? Food doesn’t automatically appear in the fridge you know.’

  ‘Oh, I see,’ he said, wounded. ‘So now I’m a selfish bastard as well as an unemployed one is it?’

  ‘Oh for goodness sake!’ Leonie exhaled deeply. I know you’ve had a tough time lately, and it must be hard trying to keep going when you’ve had so many knock-backs, but you have to understand that it’s tough for me too. I hate seeing you like this, all depressed and full of negativity, but for both our sakes you have to snap out of it.’

  ‘Snap out of it! Snap out of what exactly? What the hell do you expect me to do, Leonie?’

  ‘Well, there are plenty of things you could be doing around here, like washing the dishes or making dinner, but lately, you’ve decided to just sit around feeling sorry for yourself.’ Leonie hated, hated berating him like this, but at this point it was a case of having to be cruel to be kind.

  Adam
stared at her, stung. ‘I can’t believe you think I’m lazy -’

  But their discussion was temporarily (and perhaps fortunately, Leonie thought) cut off by the sound of the telephone ringing. As the handset was nearest to him, Adam answered, while she went through to the bedroom, and tried to calm herself down. Was she awful to talk to him like that? A takeaway would hardly have killed them, would it? But at the same time, he was being thoughtless, whether it was intentional or not. The place was in a heap and he hadn’t done a tap of housework in days. Not to mention that he didn’t seem to truly understand the perilous state of their finances.

  The bedroom door opened and Adam’s head appeared around it. ‘I have to go out,’ he said gruffly.

  ‘Oh, where to?’

  ‘Down to Wicklow. That was Suzanne; there’s a problem with her computer and she wants me to take a look at it. They were going to call out a repair guy but…’

  But Andrea knew that this time she couldn’t land us with the bill, Leonie finished silently, amazed at the fact that yet again his ex had managed to inveigle her way into their lives. And wasn’t her timing just wonderful!

  ‘You’re going out now?’ she said. ‘What about dinner?’

  ‘It’s OK, they’re having theirs later so Suzanne put my name in the pot,’ he told her, before adding meaningfully, ‘so no need to worry about me.’

  Clearly not, Leonie thought, but despite herself couldn’t help but feel very worried indeed.

  After that, there followed a multitude of ‘little jobs’ at Andrea’s. The chimney needed cleaning, the roof needed repairing and one time there was a complex issue with the washing machine, all of which required Adam’s more frequent presence at his ex’s house.

  ‘See how she’s manoeuvred this situation to her advantage?’ Leonie complained to Grace. It was a Saturday morning and they were having coffee in her friend’s kitchen, Adam having yet again been summoned to Andrea’s rescue. ‘We’re no longer paying her usual king’s ransom, so she’s been forced into finding more imaginative ways to have Adam bow to her every whim.’

  ‘I really don’t like the sound of this,’ Grace said worriedly. ‘It’s bad enough that you two aren’t getting along at the moment, without her being stuck in the middle of it all too.’

  Leonie bit her lip. ‘I know, but there’s nothing I can do to stop it, is there? I can’t very well refuse to let Adam help her out – not when I was the one who suggested cutting her maintenance in the first place.’

  Adam had admitted as such when Leonie had tentatively raised the subject of how many odd jobs suddenly needed doing at his ex’s house.

  ‘Well she used to get tradesmen in before but she can’t afford that now…’ he said, the implication left hanging in the air.

  Leonie wanted to retort that for someone who was apparently so strapped for cash, Andrea seemed to have no problem acquiring the new Prada coat she’d been wearing the last time she’d dropped Suzanne off, but she didn’t want to start another argument.

  Now she wondered if curtailing Andrea’s maintenance payments had been the biggest mistake of her life.

  Suzanne had barely spoken to Leonie since they’d reduced her pocket money and evidently taking her mother’s lead, seemed determined to put all the blame on her.

  ‘It’s like, so embarrassing,’ the teenager had whined during a recent visit. ‘What am I supposed to do for clothes? The girls will think I’m such a loser on Saturdays if I don’t buy loads in Bershka.’

  ‘Primark have got some great, cutting-edge stuff these days,’ Leonie had suggested, but by the murderous look on Suzanne’s face she might as well have recommended she wear hand-me-downs. Like Grace, Leonie thought it would do Suzanne good to have to prioritise her spending for a while. The girl had absolutely no concept of the value of money as it was.

  ‘I mean, in our day we were lucky to scrape together enough for a ticket to the pictures, let alone have our own DVD collection,’ her friend said and Leonie had to laugh.

  ‘In our day?’

  ‘Well, you know what I mean. There’s certainly no way I’ll be mollycoddling my two like that. As soon as they’re old enough, if they want money, then they’ll just have to go out and get jobs for themselves.’

  ‘I agree with you, but Andrea obviously thinks very differently to us. She sees it as Suzanne’s due.’

  ‘But that’s what I don’t understand. Adam’s been more than good to them both over the years; it’s not as though he has to make up for lost time or anything.’

  ‘I know, but he’s a very dedicated father.’

  ‘Maybe more so than the father of my own two!’ Grace laughed. ‘But you’re great for putting up with it too; I don’t know if I could.’

  Leonie made a face. ‘Clearly I’m not so good any more. I don’t know Grace, maybe I shouldn’t have been so insistent about cutting funds from the outset. Then Andrea wouldn’t be calling on Adam so much now, which means he might have a better chance of finding another job.’

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ Grace argued. ‘There’s no way you could be expected to keep two households going, what do they expect you to do – work twenty four hours a day? But Adam should know better if you ask me. Doesn’t he ever stop to think how difficult all this must be for you too? I mean, how would he feel if you’d lost your job and ended up spending all your free time at your ex-boyfriend’s?’

  Leonie’s head shot up. ‘You think there’s more to it than meets the eye?’ Obviously this was something she’d considered herself, but because they’d split up so long ago, and Andrea was supposedly in a relationship of her own, she really didn’t think there was anything to worry about. Most of all, she loved and trusted Adam and firmly believed that he loved her too. OK, so they were going through a rough patch at the moment, but didn’t all couples?

  ‘No, no, that’s not what I meant.’ Grace was quick to reassure her. ‘I just feel that Adam’s being very thoughtless really, considering you’re the one who’s under pressure to keep things afloat.’

  Perhaps this was true, but Leonie was sure that this was just a temporary phase they were going through. What with Adam disillusioned with his work situation, and Leonie stressed out with hers, there were bound to be some pressures. But at the end of the day, what all of this boiled down to was money, which with any luck would be a temporary problem at best.

  And, her and Adam’s relationship was way too solid to be undermined by something as trivial as that, wasn’t it?

  ***

  A few weeks later, and much to Leonie’s relief, Adam found a job; a mechanical engineer’s position in a firm based in Kildare. Although the salary was slightly lower than the one he’d got from Microtel, he was over the moon at being back in the workforce.

  As a result, tensions between them had lessened considerably and while Leonie still wasn’t happy about all the time he’d been spending at Andrea’s, there was no denying that keeping himself occupied had a positive effect on Adam’s mental state.

  ‘I suppose it was just nice to be able to do something,’ he confessed to Leonie one evening over dinner, a meal he’d prepared himself from start to finish.

  Upon her return from work that day, she’d found the apartment spotlessly clean, and Adam in the kitchen surrounded by newly bought groceries. ‘I just felt like such a bloody waster all the time, whereas when I was there, I felt useful.’

  Leonie smiled, trying her best to conceal her hurt that it had been essentially his ex who had brought of him out of himself, and made him feel better about everything.

  ‘Well in the beginning, I did suggest you do a few bits and pieces round here to try and keep your mind off things…’ she began tentatively, not wanting to go over old ground.

  ‘I know, and you were right. But I was so focused on finding another job that I just couldn’t see the wood for the trees.’ He reached across the table and took her hand in his. ‘I’m sorry for being such a gobshite Lee, and especially sorry for taking so much of it out on
you.’

  ‘Hey, that’s what I’m here for,’ she joked, pleased that he was back to himself.

  ‘I know, but it wasn’t until Andrea pointed out how much you were doing to keep things going…’

  At this, Leonie raised an eyebrow. Andrea had pointed this out? Well, miracles would never cease! And to think that briefly, she’d worried if she might be in serious danger of losing Adam to her… Now it seemed she owed the woman a favour.

  ‘I shouldn’t have taken you for granted,’ Adam was saying. ‘I was an idiot.’

  ‘Look, you didn’t take me for granted; you just weren’t yourself,’ she reassured him. ‘And while I’m glad we’re back on track now, I really was worried about you. I’d never seen you like that before, so down and disheartened about everything.’

  ‘Well, it wasn’t much fun for me either,’ he said with a wry smile, ‘but thank God it’s all over with now. I don’t want to go through anything like that ever again.’

  Neither do I, Leonie thought, silently thanking the heavens that the old Adam was back.

  After that, things pretty much began getting back to normal.

  Leonie and Adam re-established their wedding plans; deciding to have the ceremony in spring of the following year, rather than this year. This would give Adam plenty of time to settle into his new job, and allow him to make the necessary arrangements with the new company to take time off for the honeymoon.

  The two of them decided on a fortnight trip to the US; Leonie eager to return to the land of her birth, and Adam just as eager to visit it for the very first time. ‘I’ve always wanted to explore the Deep South,’ he’d said when they were discussing their plans. ‘New Orleans and Mississippi sound cool, well at least they do in Grisham novels.’

  Leonie agreed but was also keen on heading over to the West coast to California, a part of the country she’d never been, but which had always held a huge attraction for her. Either way, they had plenty time to decide and thanks to Adam’s new job were financially on track to cover both the honeymoon and the wedding.