The Birthday That Changed Everything

by Debbie Johnson

  ‘I just want to come home. To you. To the kids. For good.’

  Chapter 47

  I didn’t know what to say to all that.

  Yet again, a man was standing before me giving a speech I’d once been desperate to hear. First James telling me it was over with Lavender. Then Simon saying he wanted to come home.

  What was it with them both? And why hadn’t either of their speeches made me happy? I knew why with James – I was frankly too scared to consider going near him again. I’d almost lost my mind last time, and I wasn’t willing to chance it again.

  And with Simon…well, yesterday’s philandering bastard was today’s security blanket. It kept me warm, but I didn’t want to have sex with it. I liked having him around, but I didn’t want him back full time. I liked it just the way it was – a lot of companionship, a few dates every week, and the occasional snog on the doorstep as I insisted he went back to his own flat.

  ‘The thing is, Simon,’ I said, carefully, trying to find a way to say all of this without hurting him unnecessarily. ‘I—’

  ‘Never mind,’ he said, interrupting me. I could tell from the focus that had snapped back into his features that he was now thinking about something else entirely.

  ‘Never mind,’ he repeated, grinning at me, ‘there’s always the tennis. You know I’m good at tennis. I’m off to find that coach, Heather, and practise my serve. See you later, Sal.’

  And he was gone, limping purposefully towards the tennis courts, watery blood running down one leg. Nutter.

  Ollie had been sitting on the edge of the pool eating an ice cream, studiously looking in the opposite direction. He stood up and came over to me.

  ‘Want a lick?’ he asked, holding the cone towards my face.

  ‘Erm…no, though it’s very kind of you to offer. Were you ear-wigging on all that, you nosy little shit?’

  ‘Mother! Language please! Of course I was. So what’re you going to do? Are you going to let him move back in?’

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘I don’t think you should be asking a sixteen-year-old boy for advice on your love life, for a start. But as you are – it’s a bit like a Mills & Boon, isn’t it? The hunky Irishman and his punishing kisses versus the suave, debonair surgeon – and you stuck in the middle. Not that you look like a Mills & Boon chick, though, you’re too old. You need to be twenty years younger and a governess, really.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I said, knocking the ice cream out of his hands so it splashed in a pink puddle on the floor, ‘and I think you should stop reading those bloody books – sexual politics have moved on since the 1970s.’

  ‘I’ve moved on too,’ he replied. ‘I’m into Jackie Collins and Jilly Cooper now. Then I’ve got Bridget Jones lined up – by the end of all this I’ll be a world expert on women. I’m giving Fifty Shades a miss ’cause it might traumatise me, though.

  ‘But honestly, Mum,’ he said, ‘I don’t know. I wouldn’t object to Dad coming back – but I’m not arsed if he doesn’t either. I like James, and when you were happy with him it was the happiest I’d ever seen you. But when it all went wrong, well, it was crap, wasn’t it? I just want you to be okay, ’cause you’re better than the two of them put together.’

  I filled up a bit, and felt guilty about the ice-cream thing. I’d get him another later.

  ‘That’s very sweet, Ollie. And I think you’re already an expert on women – at least the old ones like me. Look, here’s Jake. He’ll be after you.’

  Jake was now eight, and obsessed with Ollie, the coolest boy in Christendom. And after that little speech, I couldn’t argue.

  ‘Hi, Sally! Hi, Ollie!’ he squeaked, scampering up to sit next to us.

  ‘Do you want to play hide-and-seek with me?’ he asked.

  ‘Sorry, sweetie, I’m busy right now,’ I said, stretching back down.

  ‘You don’t look busy. You’re just lying in the sun.’

  ‘I know that’s what it looks like. But in my head, I’m creating a new chemical formula that makes cabbage taste like chips.’

  He giggled.

  ‘I’ll play with you, Jake, as long as you promise not to go in the ladies like last time – I can’t get away with it like you,’ said Ollie, ‘and Mum’ll give us the money for some ice cream, won’t you, Mum?’

  ‘You know where the purse is – you’re in it often enough,’ I said, gesturing under the sun lounger with my head. Ollie leaned down to pick it up, then paused mid-stretch and mid-breath, his mouth hanging open.

  I followed his gaze across the pool. A-ha. The female of the species. She was short, maybe a shade over five foot, with a long black ponytail bouncing from the top of her head. About the same age as Ollie, from her face, but about twenty-two, from her body. If she was mine I’d have locked her in a cupboard until she was old enough to know what to do with those boobs.

  ‘Who’s that?’ said Jake. ‘She’s really pretty.’

  ‘That’s Tabitha,’ replied Ollie. ‘She’s like the hottest girl ever. I’m going to ask her out.’

  I did a double take at my beloved son. Six foot two, scrawny, glasses, floppy hair, and a T-shirt that said ‘Geeks do it in binary’. Then I looked at her – drop-dead gorgeous and clearly the coolest girl in school.

  ‘Go for it, son. She’d be mad to say no.’

  Chapter 48

  ‘Where are you going this early?’ said Lucy, yawning and foggy-eyed. She’d heard me pottering around and come through to investigate the noise. She looked at the unmade bed.

  ‘And where’s the prick?’

  ‘If you’re referring to your father, he’s gone to the gym.’

  ‘God, he’s so dumb. He’s never going to look like James, no matter how much time he spends there. How can you bear to be near him? And doesn’t it freak you out being in the same bed as him after all this time?’

  Yes, it did. But all the interconnecting rooms had double beds in one section, so I was living with it. Every night I barricaded myself in on one side, with the sheets shoved down the middle like a checkpoint. There had been a few security breaches, but nothing a good slap couldn’t sort.

  ‘Are you offering to swap rooms? Then you’d have to share this with me, and I can’t see that happening.’

  ‘Fuck no. It’s bad enough I even have to be in the same room as the geekazoid. If I come next year, Max and I are getting our own room.’

  She’d fallen backwards on to my bed and was stretching out like a very long cat.

  ‘Right. So you’ll be paying for it as well, will you?’ I asked, tying my hair back into a ponytail and doing up my laces.

  She snorted and ignored me, rolling round so she was face down in the pillows.

  ‘Where are you going, anyway?’ she said again, her voice muffled, the back of her head a mop of tangled blond hair.

  ‘I’m going for a bike ride. With Mike.’

  I heard her laughing into the mattress. She sat up and turned round, pointing an accusatory finger at me. ‘You? On a bike ride? With Mike? That’s fucking hilarious. You must be the two biggest couch potatoes on the entire planet. I know you’re not fat any more, which is annoying, but you’re still a slug. It’ll be like Little and Large on a road trip. I wonder how many times you’ll fall off. Can I come? I could be like the official first-aider, and carry water and those foil blankets…’

  ‘No you can’t come, you cheeky cow. And I’ll tell Mike you said all that. He’s trying to get fitter, that’s all. He wants me to go with him, so I’m going. Now bugger off back to your own room.’

  As usual, though, Madame Malicious did have a point. I tended to wobble and topple an awful lot when I rode a bike. We went to Center Parcs once and it was disastrous. I had permanently skinned knees and pine cones up my bum for days. I ended up getting a comedy tricycle instead, and rode it round, ringing my bell, like a physically incompetent Mary Poppins.

  Mike was probably the perfect companion for me. We could do half a mile, downhill, then go the pub.
That sounded like an excellent plan.

  I skipped down the stairs and headed for the restaurant for a quick coffee before I left. Marcia and Rick were there, with their Greek God. Or Andrew, as they called him. I went to join them while I drank. My libido might be in retreat, but I wasn’t dead – Andrew was foxier than Basil Brush.

  ‘Morning!’ I said, sitting down and gazing at him over his waffles. Marcia and Rick were doing pretty much the same. It was a meeting of the Andrew Fan Club. He was even taller than Marcia, which put him well over six foot, all of it made up of long, lean muscle. He had deep brown eyes, shiny dark hair, and Hollywood teeth. He lived near them in Surrey, but had the sexiest Newcastle accent I’d ever heard.

  ‘Morning!’ they all chorused in response. Andrew smiled his magnificent smile and I looked at him some more. He didn’t mind you looking. Or touching, I suspect, from the time he’d caught me eyeing his bum in shorts. He’d grinned and said: ‘Feel free. Rick and Marcia won’t mind sharing if you’re interested.’

  I shoved an apple in my pocket for later, reluctantly made my farewells, and went to meet Mike at the bike sheds.

  When I got there, he was lying on the floor. At first I assumed he was drunk, but then I noticed he was clutching his left foot. He was perfectly still until he saw me, then he started writhing around in the dust and groaning as though he was trapped under a heavy goods vehicle.

  ‘Mike! What’s up!’ I said, running over and crouching down next to him.

  ‘Oh, Sal, it’s my ankle – I twisted it on the stairs. Is it broken?’

  I supported his foot in my hands and took off his trainer and sock. I rotated it as gently as I could, and moved his toes. No swelling, no bruising, no heat. No Odor-Eaters either, from the pong. Mike yelled with every touch, holding his head in his hands. I looked up at him and smiled.

  ‘You’re an old ham, Mike. There’s bugger-all wrong with this ankle. I’m an almost-trained professional and I can tell. If you don’t want to go on a bike ride, just say so. I don’t either.’

  ‘No, honest, love, it really hurts. I don’t want to disappoint you, I know how much you’ve been looking forward to this—’

  ‘No I haven’t. I’d be happier if I was still in bed. I was only doing it to keep you company.’

  ‘I know how much you’ve been looking forward to this,’ he repeated, completely ignoring me, ‘why don’t you go with James instead? Look, here he comes – what a coincidence.’

  ‘Yeah, what a coincidence,’ I said, dropping his foot from my hands without warning, so it slammed hard on to the floor.

  ‘Ow! Careful, Sal, that bloody hurt – you could give a man a sprained ankle like that,’ he said, sitting up and straining over his belly to put his sock back on.

  ‘Are you all right?’ said James as he approached. ‘You did say nine, didn’t you?’

  He nodded at me and I nodded back. Gone were the days when we greeted each other with love bites and lusty kisses. Now we were like a pair of nodding dogs.

  ‘He’s fine,’ I said, ‘apart from a really bad case of lying bastard-itis. The only cure is a good kick up the backside, and I know exactly the person to administer it.’

  ‘Oh, don’t be like that, Sally – I’m still grieving, you know. Can’t be held accountable for my actions. Go on – go for a little bike ride with James. It’s what Allie would have wanted.’

  I’d heard that one too many times now. I was about to object when I saw the pleading look in his eyes, and felt him squeeze my hand. Jesus Christ. He actually meant it.

  ‘Okay. Mike, you’d better go rest that foot – I’d suggest putting it up on a bar stool. James – shall we? I must warn you I’ll probably fall off at some point, so don’t come too close or I’ll take you down with me. You know what to expect by now.’

  We pushed the bikes to the hotel exit, and I strapped on my helmet. James did the same, and threw one leg over his saddle. Just once, it would’ve been nice if he was rubbish at something. If he careened sideways on to the pavement, or crashed into a tree, or tried to do a wheelie and landed on his awesome arse. But no, as usual, he was all grace and power, effortlessly pushing off as the pedal bashed the bony bit of my ankle.

  ‘Shall we go to Leyla’s?’ he shouted over his shoulder.

  ‘Isn’t that…up a hill?’ I replied, weaving from side to side as I followed.

  ‘Not much of a one – come on.’

  And he was away. I tried to keep up, and must confess to a few less-than-platonic thoughts every time I was within sight of him. He was leaning over, bum inches from my face when I was close enough, the muscles in his calves bunching and knotting as he pedalled.

  When we arrived, I lowered my bike down to the ground, then took off my helmet. James stared at me.

  ‘Yeah? So I have huge helmet hair. Do you have a problem with that, golden bollocks?’

  ‘No! Not at all. It looks lovely,’ he said, pulling a face that said just the opposite. Well, frankly, he could go screw himself.

  Leyla dashed out, looking as harassed as the last time. She was also about eight months pregnant and the size of a submarine. I felt guilty making her move at all. She was so big she should be on wheels.

  ‘It didn’t seem to take as long to get here this time,’ I said, looking down at the azure blue of the bay.

  ‘That’s because you were on a bike. It’s faster. And you’re, well, you know, thinner.’

  ‘Yep. I finally got rid of those wobbly bits.’

  ‘I liked the wobbly bits. I liked you just the way you were.’

  ‘That’s touching. Especially as you liked me so much you buggered off with another woman by the end of the holiday.’

  Leyla brought the tea and cakes, took one whiff of the atmosphere, and scurried back into the house. I didn’t blame her – you wouldn’t want your unborn child exposed to this kind of karma.

  ‘I always loved you. I was an arsehole, and I’ve paid the price for it.’

  ‘We all paid a price, James. I did, Lucy and Ollie did as well. Even Simon got dragged into the fallout. What happened, anyway? Did she get an offer she couldn’t refuse and dump you all again?’

  ‘No…no, she didn’t,’ he said, sighing out his anger. ‘She’s back in New York. From day one I made it impossible for her. She tried, really hard, but my heart was always with you. I picked on her. I found fault with everything she did. I’m not proud of any of it; I was a bastard to her as well as you. Eventually we decided we had to call it quits or we’d end up hating each other. So she packed up and left in June.’

  I knew he was trying to explain, to make things better between us – but it wasn’t working.

  ‘June. She was there for a while, then. Did you find so much fault that you didn’t sleep with her, or did you manage to overcome your repulsion on that front? Your heart might have been with me, but I’m assuming your dick was with her?’

  He looked off over my shoulder and I saw his nostrils flare in shock. He paled slightly under the tan as he sipped his drink, ignoring me. I wondered if he was formulating a lie, but that wasn’t James’s style. He could be as much of a blunt instrument as me.

  ‘Yes. I did sleep with her. But not for months after we got back, and only a few times, and it was never any good for either of us. Does any of that make you feel better?’

  I’d tortured myself with images of him and Lavender for a long time when we got home. My memories of James naked and James having sex were all too vivid – but in my mind, I’d replaced myself with her, which drove me half mad. I didn’t answer.

  ‘Okay. I’ve been honest with you, and it’s probably done me no good at all. Now you tell me – what’s going on with you and Simon? You’re sharing a room. Are you sleeping with him? I don’t believe he can be in the same bed as you and not want to.’

  ‘He does want to. I don’t. Yet. That might change.’

  ‘Even though he left you? Even though he chose another woman over you? Why does he get a second chance and I
don’t?’

  I looked at him, that beautiful face, the golden hair shining in the sun. The magical hands that could turn me to jelly. The broad, muscular shoulders. And I imagined it all rolling down the hill, faster and faster, until it landed in the middle of a road and got run over by a melon truck. Splat.

  ‘Because he was there for me, James, and you weren’t. You destroyed me, and he cleaned up the mess. When I couldn’t get out of bed because I was so depressed, he was there. When I couldn’t eat without throwing up for months on end, he was there.

  ‘When you were busy forcing yourself to have sex with Lavender, he was holding my hair back while I was sick in the toilet. He cooked for me and made me drink Lucozade. He phoned work and pretended I had swine flu. He looked after the kids and came round every single day to walk the bloody dog while I sat in my pyjamas, having my nervous breakdown. He did it all – the dirty stuff, the nasty stuff – because he cared about me. So I’m not bothered if you think he’s a knob. Sometimes he is. But I wouldn’t have survived the last year without him.’

  He looked sick himself by the time I’d finished. He reached out a hand to mine, thought better of it when he saw my expression, and pulled it back. His blue eyes were vivid with tears.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Sally. If I could take it all back, I would, I swear. I’d give anything for things to be the way they were. I made the biggest mistake of my life. I love you, I never stopped. Is there any way you can ever forgive me? I’ll do anything it takes if you’ll just give me a chance.’