by Dani Atkins
‘Are you sure you don’t want me to come with you?’ Max had gamely offered, when I had finally decided there was a certain serendipity in returning on the night of the ball. ‘Even Cinderella took a few old rodents along for moral support, you know.’
I had squeezed his hand gratefully, but had shaken my head. ‘Thank you for the offer, Max, I love you for it, but I think this is something I have to do by myself.’
It had been far easier to be brave back at my house, especially with Max bolstering my confidence by whistling in admiration as I twirled before him in the red satin floor-length dress David had bought for my birthday.
‘I can’t accept this, it must have cost a fortune,’ I’d said, as my fingers busily peeled back the layers of tissue paper from the oblong box with the embossed gold lettering. Hidden beneath the crinkling white paper was a dress I had first seen in the window of the most exclusive boutique in town. I had no idea how much he’d spent on it, because it wasn’t the type of shop where they put the prices in the window. Enough said.
‘This was the one you were looking at, wasn’t it?’
‘Yes, it was,’ I admitted, gently lifting the dress out of the box, ‘but I still can’t accept it. It’s too much.’
David had shrugged away my objections, as though they were trifling and inconsequential. ‘Well, they won’t take it back, and it’s going to look stupid on me, so I guess you’re stuck with it.’
I had held the dress against my body, loving the rich texture of the fabric against my skin, even while I was trying, as graciously as I could, to decline the gift.
‘Look, if it worries you so much, why don’t we call it a combined birthday and early Christmas present?’ David had suggested.
‘What, for like the next ten years?’ I joked.
He had smiled slowly at me then, in the way that could still make my heart forget the rhythm of its own song.
‘Why not,’ he said, his brilliant blue eyes twinkling as they met mine. ‘We’re going to be together for all of them.’
I swallowed, and felt my cheeks grow warm and my pulse quicken at his casual and easy acceptance that our future paths were interwoven. He sounded so sure. So certain.
I broke free of the memory as I smoothed down the satin of the fabric over my stomach. Max circled me slowly, as though I was a thoroughbred horse he was considering buying. ‘Gorgeous dress,’ he declared, all fashion student. ‘And gorgeous girl in it,’ he completed, all best-friend-for-life.
As I pulled onto the university campus it was hard to keep that small confidence boost pinned in place. I followed the arrowhead signs and parked the car in the designated area and walked briskly over to the marquee entrance, shivering beneath the thin wrap I had thrown across my bare shoulders.
For a moment it felt as though I had actually stepped back in time. The same sparkling white LED lights were threaded through the same branches of the trees, and up ahead I could see a familiar arch of twinkling fairy lights beckoning me towards the marquee entrance. I closed my eyes and saw the empty pathway suddenly peopled by ghostly silhouettes in party clothes, retracing the footsteps they had taken twelve months earlier. I swear I could even hear the echo of the shouted ribald comment after David had saved me from falling on the ice. ‘Not got another girl falling at your feet?’ The irony, that despite every good intention or obstacle in our path, I had done exactly that, was not lost on me.
I waved my ticket under the eye of the solitary security guard on the door, who was busily involved on his phone with something far more diverting than door duties. He barely glanced at it before nodding, sweeping his arm in a flourishing gesture, and waving me into the marquee. I checked my wrap in the cloak area and took a quick glance in a nearby mirror. The cold night air had brought an attractive blush to my cheeks, and my hair gleamed with an unaccustomed shine my conditioner rarely managed to achieve. I pulled myself up a little straighter, took a deep grounding breath, and prepared to enter the main marquee.
The feeling of déjà vu hit me even more powerfully here than it had done on the pathway. I guess the organisers of the event had found a formula that worked, and they’d stuck with it. Here once again were the ice sculptures – leaping dolphins this time rather than penguins – and just like last year, a canopy of colourful balloons bobbed in captivity behind a ceiling net, waiting for their release. I looked around the room, taking it all in. Last year I’d been one of the performers, and it definitely felt different to be a legitimate guest.
The meal had long since been served and cleared away, and even the Moonlighters must have finished their set, for the students were mostly out of their seats, milling around the marquee, moving from table to table and catching up with friends. Shrieks of laughter coming from the direction of the chocolate fountain made me turn around. Cheered on by the rest of their party, two boys appeared to be in competition to see who could stuff the most marshmallows into their mouths. I suddenly felt too old to be there. I’d never really embraced that element of student life, and I wasn’t at all sorry that I would soon be leaving it behind.
Someone swore and apologised all in one breath, as they bumped into me. I turned around to an accompaniment of beer bottles clinking and jostling together on a tray, because I’d recognised his voice. ‘Hi, Mike.’
David’s housemate swayed a little, and the bottles did another Do-si-do, before miraculously remaining upright, despite the alarming kilter of the tray. I reached out and straightened it, but Mike scarcely seemed to notice. Several emotions rippled across his face, none of them stayed in place long enough for me to name.
‘Ally,’ he said at last. ‘I didn’t know you were coming tonight.’
‘I had a ticket,’ I said, waving the embossed card that was still in my hand. He looked down at it with a great deal more concentration than the man on the door had done.
‘Of course, David bought them, didn’t he?’ I nodded, totally unprepared for the inexplicable lance of pain I felt at the sound of his name. ‘Did David know you were coming tonight?’ Mike questioned, enunciating each word so carefully, I wondered how many trays of drink he had already transported across the marquee to his table.
‘No, he didn’t,’ I answered truthfully. ‘To be honest, I didn’t decide myself until quite late this afternoon.’
Mike nodded, as though that explained everything. Perhaps it did for him, but I still had a thousand unanswered questions. ‘He is here tonight, isn’t he?’ I asked.
‘Who?’
I tried not to sigh with impatience. This was like pulling teeth. But I’d seen Mike the worse for wear enough times to know that the way his eyes kept darting nervously around the room wasn’t just down to the amount of beers he’d consumed.
‘David. Is David here?’ I asked, aware that my heart had started to pound uncomfortably within my chest.
‘Yeah, he is. Somewhere,’ Mike replied vaguely. He paused for a long moment. He might have been considering what to say next, or simply just trying to remember where on earth his table was. He was pretty wasted. ‘I think the last time I saw him he was heading for the silent disco,’ Mike said at last, and there was something about the tone of his voice that made the small hairs on the back of my neck prickle in alarm.
I thought he might accompany me to the annexe off the main marquee where the silent disco was set up, but when I’d taken a dozen or so steps, I turned around and saw he was still standing exactly where I’d left him, the tray of drinks at a forty-five-degree angle, and a worried expression on his face.
I didn’t see them to begin with. The room was largely in darkness, lit only by the pulsating multicoloured lights from the DJ’s podium. Overhead a rotating spotlight beamed flashes of strobe lighting onto the headphone-wearing crowd. My eyes travelled the room, watching the dancers in the disorientating light as they silently moved to their chosen music. There’s something quite spooky in watching a room full of people energetically dancing to something you can’t hear. Some of the crowd were
singing random snatches of whatever they were listening to. It was like the very worst of karaoke, and I couldn’t recognise a single tune. But, to be fair, I wasn’t exactly concentrating on music at that moment.
I don’t know what drew my eye to the darkened corner of the annexe. Perhaps a prism from the overhead glitter-ball had caught it, or was there something more powerful that caused me to slowly turn my head towards the small recess beside an exit? I don’t remember crossing the dance floor. Either the gyrating students had parted before me like a biblical sea, or I’d simply mown a few of them down in my path. I wasn’t looking where I was going, because my eyes were fixed only on the darkened corner, where my boyfriend stood with his arms wound around the one person I had always feared I would find there.
They were completely absorbed with each other and never saw me approach. Charlotte said something and laughed, and then pointed up at the large cutting of mistletoe suspended above their heads.
Don’t do it. Don’t do it. Don’t make me have to see this. But perhaps seeing it was exactly what I needed, to finally accept that our temporary separation had just become permanent.
David’s mouth lowered to hers, and she arched her body into him as her hands left his shoulders and her fingers threaded through his thick, dark hair. Something inside me died. I felt its passing, like a ghost. I didn’t say a word. I didn’t have to. The same intuition that had allowed me to find him in the dark alerted him that I was there. His eyes were on me, even while she still had claim to his mouth. I saw the horror in them as he levered himself from her. He opened his mouth, but no words came out. There was nothing he could say, no excuse he could conjure that could undo this moment. At least he had the grace to realise that.
‘Ally,’ he said eventually and even his voice sounded different, as though the taste of her had tainted it. ‘I’m sorry. I never . . . This isn’t what you think it is. What are you doing here?’
‘Don’t,’ I said, lifting a trembling hand as though it could hold back the lies and excuses. ‘I don’t want to hear it.’ David’s face was stricken with sorrow and guilt. I could hardly bear to look at either of them. ‘I don’t want to hear that you didn’t know what you were doing, that you’re as drunk as the rest of your friends, or that it meant absolutely nothing to you.’ I saw Charlotte wince at that one. ‘I don’t care if all of that is true, or none of it is. It doesn’t matter. Not any more.’
‘Ally,’ David began, taking a step forward and reaching out for me.
I don’t know how I would have reacted to his touch, but I never got the chance to find out, because Charlotte laid a stalling hand on his forearm and stopped him. Suddenly, from nowhere, a fiery cauldron of rage erupted within me. If I had stopped to think for even a millisecond, then what happened next could have been averted. I abhor violence. It scares me. And that made what I did next even more terrifying. It was over in a split second, but I saw it all in slow motion: I saw my hand arcing through the air, the palm flat, the fingers slightly spayed. I saw the look of horror on Charlotte’s face as she read my intention. I saw the four red lines marking her perfect cheek as my hand fell away. Then everything speeded up.
Charlotte gasped in shock, and so did I. Only then did David move, swiftly positioning himself between us in protection. Hers or mine? I wondered bitterly. Mortified by what I had just done, I looked at David and saw his eyes were two hard glittering sapphires, frozen in ice. They bored into me with an expression I knew I would never be able to erase, before he turned to her. ‘Are you alright?’ The concern in his voice tore the skin from me, leaving me raw and injured. And alone.
‘I’m fine,’ she said, her hand cradling her cheek.
‘What the hell were you thinking of?’ yelled David, turning back to face me.
‘Funny I was about to ask you the same question.’
David looked uncomfortable, and then frowned as he looked over my shoulder at the dance floor. I glanced behind me, noting with embarrassment that our altercation had attracted the attention of quite a few onlookers. I saw headphones being eased off, as the mini-drama unfolding before them drew them away from the disco.
I heard the vague tinny strains of music still playing from discarded headphones, as David spoke. ‘What are you even doing here?’ he asked. ‘You made it pretty clear the other week that you didn’t want to see me again. So why the big entrance tonight, Ally? Three weeks of silence and then you just turn up like this. What was I supposed to do, fall into your arms?’
Anger and pain twisted and folded the speech I had mentally prepared, so that it became not a white flag, but a venomous dart. ‘No,’ I refuted. ‘But you weren’t meant to fall into hers either.’ I nodded in the direction of Charlotte who was watching us both very carefully, but saying nothing.
‘That’s not how it was—’ he began, and then broke off and ran his hand distractedly through his hair. ‘You know what, think whatever you like. You’re going to anyway.’
I looked at him as though he was a total stranger, in much the same way as he was looking at me. Where was the man I was so sure I’d been in love with? How had this all gone so horribly wrong? We stared at one another, two gladiators with no strength left to go in for the kill.
‘I think you’d better go,’ David said eventually, inclining his head towards the exit. ‘We both need time to cool off.’ He glanced over at Charlotte. ‘And I’m way too angry about what you’ve done to talk to you tonight.’
I too looked across at Charlotte, meaningfully. ‘Likewise.’
I turned to leave, everything I had wanted to say to him had dissolved away, as though it had been written in invisible ink. I reached the pinned back canvas flap leading to the cold December night and turned to face him one last time. ‘I’m not coming back, David.’
Perhaps he thought I was just looking for a dramatic exit line. He had no idea that I was deadly serious. ‘I’m not asking you to,’ he replied, his words scything me to the ground in one deadly blow.
He didn’t realise it then, or perhaps he did, and just didn’t care. Maybe he’d never really cared enough. But my words weren’t an empty threat. I wouldn’t be returning in January. I couldn’t stay here and watch Charlotte deconstruct everything that had once been mine and make it hers. I looked at him one last time, as though it was important I engraved this moment into my memory.
‘Goodbye David,’ was all I said, as I slipped through the exit into the night, and out of his life.
Charlotte
Hospitals are different in the middle of the night. For relatives, that is, not patients. Anyone who is unlucky enough to have sat up through the small hours at the bedside of someone they love will know what I mean by that. For a start, the night seems endless. During daylight hours the wards are buzzing with activity. Doctors, nurses, cleaners, technicians and administration staff make it seem as though you are resident in the middle of a very busy city, in rush hour. That all goes away at night. Stripped to its bare bones, the hospital seems remote and deserted, like an island where a few unlucky castaways have been washed to shore, hopelessly waiting for rescue. Or in this case, for morning.
Despite the urgings of the nurses, I didn’t want to sleep. Sleep was for normal nights, for our real life. Sleep was for our over-sized bed, with the marshmallow-thick duvet and the down and feather cushions that had cost a fortune, but had been so worth it. It felt disloyal to allow myself to slip away for even a few minutes into oblivion, and leave the horrors of the day behind. So I sat by David’s bedside, in the hard plastic chair that didn’t fit a single contour of my anatomy, and rested my head on the mattress beside his hand. But my eyes felt hot and gritty, and eventually, despite my best of intentions, they closed.
The nurse’s hand on my shoulder woke me.
‘Is something wrong?’ My eyes went to David, who was still deeply sedated in faux sleep from a cocktail of medication. It was a stupid question really. Everything was already far beyond wrong. What I should have asked was: Has it all j
ust got even worse?
‘No. There’s been no change. But it’s not your husband I’m worried about. It’s you. You need to rest properly. You need to lie down.’
I shook my head, wanting to dismiss her concerns. Don’t worry about me, I wanted to say. My heart’s not the one that’s in trouble here, it’s his. I’m the tough one. Ask anyone. ‘Charlotte Taylor? I’ve heard she’s quite formidable to work for? Very successful, though. Built up quite a reputation in her industry. I don’t suppose she and David will ever have kids. Well, would you give up their kind of lifestyle to have a family?’
I’d overheard all of those comments and more besides. And they were all wrong, so wrong. That wasn’t me at all, just a façade that I’d worn for so long I’d forgotten how to take it off, how to unglue it. There was only one person who saw beneath it. He was the one who would rub my shoulders until the stress of the day finally seeped out of my knotted muscles. He was the one who would take me in his arms in the hospital parking lot, after I’d sat dry-eyed and silent in the consultant’s office while they spoke of exploring ‘other options’. He was the one who would hold me until the shoulder of his suit jacket was damp from my tears. His were the hands that would gently unfurl my fingers to remove the crushed fertility leaflet from my fist.
He was the strong one. He was the one with the good heart. Only, not that good at all, as it turned out.
‘I don’t want to leave him,’ I whispered to the nurse.
She patted my back. ‘You won’t be leaving, you’ll be just down the corridor. If he wakes, we’ll fetch you, you have my word.’
I got to my feet, wobbly with exhaustion, and noticed the pillow and the two blankets in her arms. ‘Even if you only manage an hour or so, it will help,’ she said kindly. ‘You’re going to need your strength for tomorrow.’ She nodded towards David. ‘He needs you well and strong, not dead on your feet.’ Her voice brooked no argument. She passed me the bed linen as she gently propelled me towards the door.
