After You Left

by Carol Mason

  He looks at me, uncomprehendingly. ‘Marrying? God, Alice, I’m not thinking about that. At least, certainly not at the moment. All I can focus on is my son, and what we might be able to do to help him.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I say, wishing I could retract the question. I am sorry for everything. Even for the things I had nothing to do with.

  He gazes out on to the street. Not a part of him moves. I study his handsome profile, imprinting it in my memory, thinking that this could well be one of the last times I ever see him.

  He’ll marry Lisa at his first opportunity. They have a child. His Catholic values will see to it that he does the right thing.

  But it doesn’t really matter. I think I realised that this afternoon. I think I knew then that even if he had wanted to come back to me, I wouldn’t take him back. And even if he asks to come back tomorrow, or in four years’ time, my answer will be the same. Sally was right. Justin is a good man, but he’s an emotional wild card. He has morphed into something else altogether, and it doesn’t matter if the old Justin I once loved could ever return; I don’t think I want either of them any more.

  I look down the length of the bar with its long mirror and its wall of shiny booze bottles. There is some relief in my epiphany. I lost a husband and gained a father. And somewhere along the way, I made new friends. Evelyn said that perhaps I need someone less buttoned-down. If I am ever to meet another man I want him to be more like Michael. Uncomplicated and easy-going. Even if he carries sweaty sports socks in the pocket of his car door.

  I look at Justin and, for the first time, I see the possibility that everything is going to be okay.

  The few sips of alcohol have hit my empty stomach hard. ‘Shall we go?’ I say.

  He frowns, looking momentarily confused by my haste. I suddenly correct what I concluded earlier. This will definitely be the very last time I see him, outside of, perhaps, a courtroom. And by the collision of messed-up emotions that register on his face, I can tell he’s thinking the same thing, too.

  I pull off the platinum wedding ring – it’s already left a small impression in my skin, even though it’s spent such a short time on my finger. I place it on the table by his martini glass.

  ‘Justin.’ I watch him stare, uncomprehendingly, at the ring. ‘I wish your little boy all the luck, and all the good health, in the world. I wish him the best life anyone could have.’

  And then, when I feel I can say more without choking, I add:

  ‘And you.’

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  There are cards with cuddly bears, butterflies, balloons and gothic fairies. Cards with cakes, cupcakes and my age in gold or silver foil. Cards for a Special Daughter. Gradually, the themes become more grown up with the passing of time. Always, he’s written the same thing. For April, my daughter, who I think of every day. With all my love.

  Out of each one falls a ten-pound note.

  I sit cross-legged on Evelyn’s floor. We are going through her ‘treasure trove’ of a storage box, as I call it.

  ‘I found them among his things when we were moving him into Sunrise. I saw that they were all addressed to your home in Stockport, and they’d all been returned.’

  There are cards right up until I turned nineteen, then we moved. Or at least, my mother and Alan moved as I was off to Uni by then. ‘I still can’t get my head around how any person could hate someone so much that they wouldn’t even let him send a birthday card to his only daughter,’ I say to Evelyn. My eyes are blinded with tears. Since learning that Eddy is my father, all I can picture is a tall, lean man sitting alone on a bench in the middle of an art gallery, a man who wears a shirt the colour of bright tomatoes, and how different that is from picturing nobody at all.

  ‘You just have to remember she loved you, otherwise you will go insane.’

  ‘It’s not enough.’ I stare at the card that has Look who’s turning 8 on the front, along with a package wrapped in a pink bow. ‘I wonder how he felt when he was posting it, knowing that in a few days it would be sent back.’

  ‘However he felt, he didn’t give up.’

  ‘No.’ I smile sadly. ‘You know you mentioned going to my ballet school to get a look at my mother and me . . . ? Well, the other day I remembered those lessons! I think my father took me once. I can vaguely picture him sitting quite out of place amongst all the mums, and I kept turning around to watch him while I was supposed to be dancing. I remember the teacher trying to coax me to pay attention . . . It’s so vivid – not his face, but more a feeling.’ I look off into the distance. ‘I felt proud.’

  Now, every day, memories are unlocking themselves like tiny, almost tangible miracles. All I do is grasp at them like snowflakes before they melt. ‘Then I was on the swings at the park, and he was pushing me higher and higher, and I was a tiny bit panic-stricken, yet thinking, My dad won’t let any harm come to me . . .’ I almost can’t continue. ‘Again, I can’t really picture him; I just have a sense of him being there. A sense I’ve always had, I think.’ Frustration beats me down. ‘It’s so little! Two or three damned memories. It’s all I have of him.’

  ‘Your father loved you,’ Evelyn says, gathering the cards into a neat stack. ‘That is what you have of him. Like a lot of men, he was impulsive. He never saw it in terms of having to lose you in order to gain me. He foolishly saw himself as having everything. Once in a while, we all have that fantasy.’

  ‘I don’t know why she kept him from me, Evelyn!’ There is no getting over this. ‘Even if she did it for the right reasons, it amounts to dishonesty, doesn’t it? She let me go on believing something bad about him. She never gave me enough information so I could make up my own mind.’

  A flash of rage and hate suddenly comes to me, but just as quickly, it dies back. It isn’t hatred; it’s just a profound sense of betrayal. When I was small, that was one thing. But when I got older, I had a right to the truth!

  ‘I’d be so curious when she said things like, You’re just like him! The way she said it: him. The venom! It was so odd being told you had something in common with someone you didn’t have the first clue about.’

  ‘I can’t really imagine,’ Evelyn says.

  ‘I confronted her when I was about fourteen, and she flew into a rage. All I was ever led to believe – he was a shit who left us for somebody else.’

  ‘I’m so sorry, Alice.’

  I think of what Justin said on our first date. ‘I should have tried to find him. I must admit my own wrongdoing in all this. I was an adult. I didn’t need their permission. I should have gone looking for him so I could make up my own mind. Instead, I spent all that wasted energy on crappy relationships that were going nowhere, without realising my father was actually out there, so close by. I was too wrapped up in my own life . . . Then my mother got sick and had treatment, then the cancer came back in her liver, and then shortly after she died, my stepfather died. I was just so caught up . . . Running down to Stockport between working full-time . . .’ I recognise the inadequacy of my excuses.

  ‘I suppose I just kept thinking they must be right about him. In all these years, he never once tried to find me. I always thought there must be something he could have done to be in my life. I wanted him to move mountains to find me. I was his little girl!’

  ‘But now you know he did try.’

  ‘He was my blood, Evelyn.’ As Justin had so keenly reminded me. ‘He was part of me, and yet I never knew which part of me was like him, did I? Because I never got the chance to know. He’d done something wrong, yes. But he paid, didn’t he? His punishment was to never see me grow up.’

  ‘Alice, people are complicated beings. You will never truly know your mother’s side of things. I personally have never fully grasped why I am the way I am. Why I could never be happy. Why what I had wasn’t enough.’

  I curl on her floor in a foetal ball, and she rests a hand on my hip. Just the sound of Evelyn’s voice is like cool ointment on a wound. ‘I think part of the reason I didn’t want to find h
im was in case it proved what I’d already thought – that he really didn’t care. I think it was plain fear. The fear of finding out for sure that I wasn’t worthy of being loved by my own blood parent.’

  Justin had once hinted at this being at the root of my insecurity. I’d been horrified to think that my self-doubt was so transparent.

  ‘It’s a big thing to do. It’s something you have to be ready for. You can’t be pressured into it,’ Evelyn says. ‘Don’t focus on what you did or didn’t do. Just focus on what you can do now.’

  ‘Hmm . . . You’re a great one to give that advice, Evelyn!’

  ‘But I learnt from my mistakes, Alice! All that matters is what I’ve done about things, not that I let them nearly destroy me in the process. And you will do it all so differently.’

  I swiped at tears. ‘I’m tired, Evelyn. I lost a husband and gained a father in such a minuscule time frame. It says something positive about life. But it’s taking some adjusting to, nonetheless.’

  ‘I think we should both try to get some rest. It’s been an emotional time.’

  ‘That’s the understatement of the century, isn’t it?’

  She smiles. ‘You’re welcome to stay here tonight. The guest room is always made up.’

  ‘Thank you, Evelyn. I would like to stay the night. And thank you for something else.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘For loving him the way you did. You’re an amazingly good woman. If it weren’t for you, I’d have assumed he was out there somewhere, maybe remarried, with another family – maybe another daughter whom he loved in my place. I’d never have known he was a lonely old man with dementia who would never remember me – not because he didn’t want to, but because he couldn’t help it. And the truth isn’t pretty, but it’s important. More important than what we choose to believe, and the reasons we choose to believe it.’

  We are both too choked up to speak. People were wrong. Love wasn’t about never having to say you’re sorry. Love was forgiving. ‘I’m so pleased it was you that he loved.’ I take her hands in mine. ‘That he was lucky enough to have you love him. No matter how it turned out.’

  ‘And I’m so very pleased that he has a daughter as fine as you,’ she says.

  THIRTY-NINE

  ‘I want to go somewhere loud and crazy and fun!’ I say to Sally as we trot down the Quayside’s cobbled path from the restaurant, looking for a bar to have a nightcap.

  ‘Okay.’ She hiccups from dinner. She’s a little drunk. It’s amazing how keen she is to go out at night now suddenly. Or perhaps she’s just being a good friend.

  We go into the one bar that has people spilling out on to the road. ‘Just to finish what we were saying,’ Sally says, as we order a drink. ‘Maybe your mother sent you your father, given you lost her and you lost Alan. You know . . . if the dead can affect the lives of the living. Maybe she sent him because she knew you’d lost Justin and you needed a silver lining.’

  ‘Maybe,’ I say, rather than brush it off. I suppose it costs nothing to think positively about the situation, but far more to think negatively. Evelyn would no doubt approve.

  ‘Anyway, on another topic . . . I meant to tell you, there’s a nurse. A male nurse. At the care home . . .’ I’m only saying this because I’m drunk. ‘I quite like him.’

  Sally looks blown over by a feather. ‘Oh my God! Alice has got a new man already!’ She raises a brandy glass. ‘I wouldn’t have thought that even you could manage that so fast.’

  ‘I’ve not managed anything! I’m not interested in him! Not like that! I just . . . I like him.’

  She grins. ‘I think those are two of the same thing! But go on . . . What’s he like? Describe.’

  It’s just mindless conversation. ‘Hmm . . . He’s kind of, well, Italian. Or, half Italian—’

  ‘Which half?’

  ‘His father.’

  ‘Thank God.’

  ‘He looks a bit like a young Mark Ruffalo—’

  Sally’s eyebrows shoot up. ‘So he’s one of the sexiest men on earth?’

  ‘That might be a stretch,’ I chuckle. ‘But he’s got nice eyes. Big, kind, brown and soulful.’ I can see them right now. ‘And he’s funny, in a dry kind of way. He’s not particularly tidy. He’s got loads of sisters. A warm personality. I love the tender way he treats Eddy, and he seems a little in love with Evelyn, which is cute.’ I sigh.

  ‘You’re crazy about him and you don’t yet know it!’

  ‘Oh! I knew I shouldn’t have said anything! You’ve got the wrong idea. Completely.’

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with having someone else lined up. He sounds charming.’

  ‘He’s four years younger than me. He is charming. And he’s not lined up.’

  ‘Uh-oh.’ Sally makes a thumbs-down gesture. ‘A toy boy!’

  I know when I’m being teased. I take a sip of her drink, mainly because I’ve finished my own. ‘If anything is to happen, it won’t be for a very long time. I know you think I bounce back fast, but this time’s different. My heart is still very confused. But it gets a tiny bit less confused every day. I suppose the good thing is, despite what I said about being back with Justin and making it work with his baby, I’m not sure I’m cut out for that, to be honest – even if it were an option. To be with a man while his ex hovers on the periphery of our lives . . . And even on the topic of children, I do want to have one of my own – if I can. When I said it didn’t matter and we could adopt, I think I lied. I mean, I think it was just desperation talking.’

  I draw breath. This is new insight into myself. I’m gaining it as I speak.

  ‘And all this is to say . . . ?’

  ‘That I’m not unhappy with my life.’ I plonk her empty glass down.

  Sally studies me, and her face suddenly changes. ‘I am unhappy with my life.’

  I stare at her, unmoving. ‘Say again?’

  ‘I said, I am unhappy with my life. Very unhappy with it, actually.’ She looks down into her lap, briefly, before giving me a pleasureless smile. ‘Or, I should say, with aspects of my life. But this particular aspect happens to be a big one. In fact, I think we need another drink.’ She lands the barman’s attention and orders us another round.

  ‘What aspect are we talking about, exactly?’

  ‘Exactly? John.’

  ‘John?’ I was sure she was going to say work. The anti-social hours. The endless client dramas. It’s a regular lament.

  ‘I’m going through a phase. For a while now.’

  A crowd of punters arrives at the bar, so we have to crush up. ‘What kind of phase?’

  ‘A “have we run our course?” phase. I thought it would pass if I never mentioned it. I thought that mentioning it would somehow make it self-fulfilling. But it happened again right before your wedding. I got that horrible feeling that your life with Justin was just beginning, and mine with John was somehow over.’

  ‘What?’ I could not be more astonished. ‘But you never said!’

  ‘Naturally, I didn’t want to say anything ugly and pessimistic about marriage to an upcoming bride. Then, after your honeymoon, well, Justin disappearing tended to eclipse the fact that my marriage has lost its sparkle.’ Sally looks across the room, disconsolate again, for a second or two. ‘I feel I’ve known him for so many years, Alice. And that’s because, well, I have. It’s been practically all of my adult life! He’s the only man I’ve ever slept with, and I love him with my whole heart, but I love him like I’d love my brother. And I don’t want to have sex with my brother. I don’t even want to kiss my brother. Frankly, I don’t want my brother curled up on the sofa with me watching telly every night. To be honest, I just want rid of my brother. That’s all.’

  I have never heard her speak like this. I can barely keep disbelief off my face.

  ‘But how can I have known you all this time and not heard this before?’

  ‘Because I’ve felt bad about even thinking it. I suppose I haven’t wanted to be the person I’m findin
g out I am – if that makes sense. I’ve longed to be satisfied with a warm, true love with my first boyfriend that lasts forever. But it’s not real. At least, not for me. Our marriage is a smokescreen. It has been for a long time.’

  ‘But you have your precious girls . . .’

  ‘Of course. And we’ve had some very happy years. John is a truly lovely man, and I wish we could be one of those couples who reach their golden anniversary knowing they never wanted anything different. But I think, if we’re all being honest, many of us probably recognise that our relationships have a lifespan. Some of us push through that because we’re afraid of the alternative. But I’m not actually sure if I’m afraid. I think there might be someone else out there.’

  ‘You’re talking like it’s over.’ Of all my married friends, Sally and John are the ones I’d be least likely to imagine splitting up.

  ‘I think it probably is. It’s over in here.’ She prods her chest.

  ‘God! Does he know? Does he feel the same?’

  ‘Yes, I imagine he does. He’s not an idiot. Every night, when we sit there watching telly, I’m sure it’s going through his head too: that we’re in a dying relationship. But neither of us is going to be the first to say it. Because once it’s voiced, something will have to be done about it. And maybe we’re only just starting to see that the time might be nearly upon us. I think we’ve tried to make it work for the girls, but they’re nearly grown up now. We can’t use them as our excuse much longer. Alice, we’re nearly empty-nesters, and we’re both only in our thirties! It’s mad! I look at my daughters and I envy them, because I just wish I had that same, fresh, looking-forward feeling – like life is all ahead of me, rather than behind me.’

  ‘But you’re always so physical with each other!’ I remember Justin saying that couples who were forever molesting each other in public usually were the ones in crisis. I had thought that was very cynical.

  ‘It was an act,’ she says. ‘Probably for each other, rather than for other people, though.’

  We sip our new drinks, with this thing out there now: Sally’s secret sadness.