Forever Is Over

by Wade, Calvin

  On 4th July 2000, everything changed. Love, health and money are all alike in that you do not appreciate what you have until you no longer have them. I still do not enjoy thinking back to the events of that day, but they happened and nothing can change that now. All I would say, is that it is only in moments of adversity that you can truly understand how strong or weak a relationship is. We were like a building feeling the full force of an earthquake. 4th July 2000, tested whether our relationship was structurally sound or had already begun to subside, collapsing around us, leaving only memories of what used to be and scattered debris.

  Very recently, Dorothy, Richie’s Mum, said something to me which turns out was a quote from a seventeenth century Frenchman called Jean de la Bruyere. She simply said, “Out of difficulties grow miracles”. Back in 2000, no day had ever been as difficult throughout our relationship as 4th July. That day turned everything on its head. Perhaps saying that subsequently ‘miracles grew’, would be stretching the truth a little, but it is certainly true to say that everything that happened that day, changed the relationship I had with Richie, and also with my sister, Kelly, forever.

  Richie

  It all felt very peculiar. Sitting on the “Sunny Road”, looking across to the Welsh hills one way and Blackpool Tower the other, with the adult version of my teenage sweetheart sitting by my side on the grass verge. It was all a little difficult to take in. Part of me felt like a time machine had transformed me back to the era of the Birch’s party. I felt young again inside but old on the outside. To an extent, it was like being one of those old dears they feature in the national papers who stumble across their first true love, seventy five years after first getting it on and get married in their nursing home wearing a veil, false teeth and incontinence pads! There was definitely still an attraction, there was definitely still a spark, but there was something uncomfortable about it all. I was on the adrenalin rush of the old drug but I knew the following morning I would feel like shit! The following morning at the latest. I was already starting to make myself feel sick with guilt, the fact that I had slid my wedding ring off my finger and into my jeans pocket was no doubt a contributory factor!

  We had spent the first five minutes together making mundane conversation as old friends who are trying to rekindle that old energy do.

  “You look well!”

  “What do you do these days?”

  “Where are you living now?” etc.

  Inevitably the conversation was going to come around to marital status. Kelly’s marital status from four years previous had already been established in her letter and I was assuming not a great deal would have changed otherwise she would not have been here, but mine was still a mystery to her. She would be asking about it, I knew that, I just did not know how I would answer. I knew I wasn’t going to be telling the truth, I just wasn’t sure whether I would be running with the white lie or the outright lie. I had slid my wedding ring off whilst making that judgement call.

  Kelly still looked fantastic. Her face had thinned slightly since her teenage years and the odd line had crept tenderly onto her face, but she remained slender, porcelain skinned and those green eyes continued to mesmerise me like they always had. Emboldened as the familiarity of the conversation and company returned, I asked a straight question, figuring attack was the best form of defence.

  “So who was the guy?”

  “Which guy?” Kelly asked puzzled.

  “The guy who did a runner as I arrived!”

  “Oh! That was just Roddy!”

  “A boyfriend?”

  “No, just a friend. He’d like to be my boyfriend and he’s a lovely, lovely person…”

  “I sense a but.”

  “But I want to be loved not worshipped. It would be a long way down from that pedestal.”

  I shrugged. I wasn’t in total agreement. At that point, I felt adoration from Jemma would have resolved many of our problems.

  “Kelly, maybe you would enjoy being in a relationship with someone who feels that strongly for you. I used to adore you.”

  I blushed a little. There was no need.

  “Yes but that was mutual, I don’t think I could ever be that emotionally passionate about Roddy.”

  “So you’re still single then, Kelly?”

  “Yes, I said in my letter that there have been a number of ships that have passed in the night but none that I have taken to port. Well, it’s been a dry dock since then!”

  “That analogy is not meant to be sexual is it?”

  “NO! Richie Billingham! You and your dirty mind!”

  We were smiling at each other, slightly lovestruck but that was just old feelings, I guess. Nothing more than old feelings.

  “So, you have no children, Kelly?”

  “No. No marriage, no children, I am destined to die a lonely old spinster! Me and my dry dock are going to have to get used to that.”

  “Yes, there’s nothing down for you, Kelly! I mean look at the state of you! In no time at all you’ll be eighty six, sitting on the prom at Blackpool, feeding breadcrumbs to pigeons! How old are you? Twenty seven?”

  “Twenty eight.”

  “Past it either way! Your best years are behind you, Kelly!”

  “Honestly, sometimes it feels that way!”

  “Don’t be daft!”

  “Well, life seems to have lost its sense of fun a bit recently, that’s all.”

  “Yes, because you spent years travelling around the world. Normality isn’t going to seem quite as much fun as that! You are beautiful, independent woman, enjoy your life. Maybe this Roddy isn’t the guy for you, but there will be plenty of others for you to choose from.”

  I could not believe I was trying to encourage Kelly to go out and find someone. When I had made the decision to meet her, I thought I would be trying to lie and cheat my way back into a relationship with her, but everything was stopping me - personality, guilt, Jemma, the kids, everything.

  “I’m sorry, Richie! You just seem to get me to open up, to reveal how I am really feeling. You were always good at that. That was one of the things I liked about you, Richie, you were always so open and honest.”

  “Go on, ask me who I’m married to?” I thought to myself.

  “So anyway,” Kelly continued, “enough of my moaning on. Tell me a bit more about what you’ve been up to. Are you married?”

  Spooky!

  “Am I married?”

  “It’s not a difficult one, Richie! You must remember! I noticed you don’t wear a wedding ring, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you aren’t married, so are you?”

  “I’m sorry,” I stuttered, “yes, yes, I’m married.”

  “OH!” was all Kelly said. The fact that I was married seemed to catch Kelly off guard. I think because I was there, on the ‘sunny road’, she was at least expecting me to say I was separated or divorced, but I was nothing of the sort. I was married. It was one of those uncomfortable moments that seemed to last forever.

  “How come you don’t wear a ring?” Kelly continued, regaining her composure and continuing as though her letter to me had never been sent and we were just two old friends meeting up.

  I decided it was time to come clean. To an extent, anyway.

  “I do wear a ring. I just slipped it off before. See, it’s here in my pocket!”

  “Why did you take it off?”

  I sighed.

  “Oh, I don’t know. When I finally received your letter, which is another long story, involving my Dad and his gambling, when I finally received it, my marriage wasn’t in a happy place.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “No, no, it’s not your fault. It’s my fault really. Anyway, I liked the idea of meeting up with you. I suppose realistically, I didn’t expect it to be anything other than an afternoon spent together, but I just thought it would be nice to go back in time for a while. You know, to pretend we were seventeen again, sitting here, just the two of us, like we used to, watching the world go by.”

&
nbsp; “We can still do that.”

  “I know, but to an extent it feels like a betrayal now.”

  “So your wife doesn’t know you’re here?”

  “No, there are a lot of things we don’t talk about, Kelly.”

  “You need to.”

  “I know.”

  “Do you have children?”

  “Yes, two children. A girl and a boy, Melissa and Jamie.”

  “Really! That’s lovely, Richie, congratulations! How old are they?”

  “Melissa’s nearly five and Jamie’s nearly three.”

  “Do you have any pictures with you?”

  “Yes, in my wallet.”

  I took my wallet out and carefully withdrew two photographs, one showing Melissa before a friend’s party dressed in a fairy outfit, a mass of blond curls and little white teeth, whilst the other was of Jamie, in a pirate outfit with an eye patch, beard and sword, looking cheeky and mischievous.

  Kelly studied the photos for a minute before handing them back. “They’re both gorgeous, Richie! You must be very proud of them. Melissa will have the boys all chasing her when she’s older!”

  “Thanks! I’m sure I’ll be the protective father, throwing teenage boys out the house and administering a chastity belt which can only be unlocked on her wedding day or when she’s twenty five!”

  “Is she a real Daddy’s girl?”

  “To be honest, she’s more of a Mummy’s girl.”

  “Really,” there was a brief pause, “where did you meet your wife, Richie?”

  Sometimes the line of questioning made me feel like Kelly knew very well who my wife was and was just asking me these questions to make me squirm.

  “I’ve known her for a long time, Kelly, she was in my year at school.”

  “Honestly! Wow! I’ll probably know her then! What’s her name? Was Jemma friendly with her?”

  I’m glad she asked me two questions as it enabled me to focus on the latter.

  “No, she wasn’t a friend of Jemma’s.”

  That much was true.

  “I might still know her. What was her name?”

  “Gillian.”

  A lie.

  “Gillian what?”

  “Gillian Billingham!”

  “I meant before she was married to you, smart arse!”

  “Gillian Sorensen”

  Kelly scratched her head.

  “I don’t remember a Gillian Sorensen.”

  Surprisingly enough!

  “Well, she wasn’t a friend of Jemma’s.”

  “Do you love her, Richie?”

  “I do love her, yes.”

  “Then how come you are here?”

  “Oh, I don’t know….like I said before, I just wanted to be seventeen again for an afternoon. I just wanted to disentangle myself from all my commitments temporarily and just feel free.”

  “Are you happy?”

  “Depends on what you mean by happy. I have children I love, I have a wife that I love, I have a job that does not involve getting shot at or digging coal out of the ground, but for some reason, I don’t know why, I feel like I’m missing something.”

  “I know what that something is, Richie.”

  “Don’t say God! My Dad’s a born again Christian, he’d tell me it’s God!”

  Kelly laughed. It was a familiar laugh, stored in my memory banks from those halcyon days of old.

  “I wasn’t going to say God! I was going to say the chase. You miss the adrenalin rush of the chase. The feeling of new love and all its endless possibilities.”

  Was this what I was missing? I thought for a while.

  “There’s probably some truth in that. That’s not what I miss the most though. I miss the woman I married. The spontaneous, cuddly, witty, passionate, live life for the moment, woman I married. She died when the children were born. Sometimes…often…I just want her back.”

  “Richie, it’s selfish of you to want that. She’s a mother now. It’s not all about you any more.”

  “I know that. There’s a tale told amongst men that you should not do anything early in a relationship that you are not prepared to do for its entirety. If you start off buying flowers and chocolates, you have to do it forever otherwise your wife or girlfriend will start accusing you of not loving her like you used to because you used to buy her flowers and chocolates.

  This is the same but the other way around. My wife should not have shown me all those vibrant characteristics she had, if she was going to box them up and put them away once she had children. I know I’m sounding like a selfish, stereotypical male but she’s a different woman these days. Various events have taught me to value my life, Kelly, to live every day like its your last but my wife does not have that mentality. She’s just consistent these days. A steady person. She’s changed and I did not want her to.”

  “Maybe she wanted you to change and you haven’t.”

  “I have changed, but I’ve never forgotten who I used to be. That’s my wife’s problem. She’s forgotten who she used to be. Anyway, I’m the one moaning on now, I’m sorry I didn’t mean to. Let’s talk about you again. Going back all those years, why did you really go and why did you take so long to come back? Jemma needed you.”

  Whether that was a clue or not to the secret I was hiding, I’m not sure, but Kelly stood up.

  “You know what, Richie, let’s not go there. I think I need to go now.”

  “Hang on, Kelly! What’s the matter? I’m sorry if you don’t want to go over all that, we don’t have to. After so long not seeing you, I don’t want to leave you on a sour note.”

  “It’s not that, Richie. I left because I was scared and I didn’t come back because I was a selfish bitch who was protecting number one but that’s not why I want to go.”

  “Then why?”

  “We just shouldn’t be doing this! When we were kids, we talked about sitting here and talking things over, but you said it yourself, Richie, from your perspective this is a betrayal. I contacted you because every relationship I’ve ever had has crumbled to dust eventually and I wanted to re-kindle the hearts and flowers of our ‘Sunny Road’ days, but we are no longer teenagers, Richie. You aren’t the boy I used to love. You’re more cynical, tougher and your problems are not our problems any more, they are yours and your wife’s. They are your families problems. Go home and stop looking at the hurdles as something that’s stopping your marriage, just look at them as something to get over. Marriages only fail because people stop trying and start focusing on the negatives. For the sake of your children, Richie, do not stop trying.”

  Everything Kelly said seemed to make sense. I felt overwhelmed with guilt.

  “I’m sorry, Kelly.”

  “What for?”

  “Turning up.”

  “Don’t be.”

  “No, I am. I turned up for selfish reasons. To make me feel excited again. To temporarily resurrect those feelings I had during “the chase” as you so succinctly put it. I only thought about my feelings though, Kelly, not about my wife’s or my children’s or about yours.”

  Kelly smiled sympathetically.

  “I came here for my own selfish reasons too. I didn’t want to move on with my life still wondering about what had happened to you. Wondering what might have been. Wondering if you were my “Black Jack”! I have been given my answers today, Richie. I can move on with my life now in the knowledge that you weren’t. You were a lovely boyfriend for me to have as a teenager but that’s it.”

  “I feel the same. My wife is my “Black Jack” and I’m hers, we just need to work things through.”

  “Richie, I genuinely hope you do. You sound like you want to, which has to be a massive step.”

  “Thanks Kelly! Where are you staying?”

  “West Tower.”

  “Can I give you a lift back? I parked my car at the top of the road and walked down.”

  We carried on chatting on the short walk back to the car, climbed in and set off towards West Tower. Setting
off is the last thing I remember. For a long while, try as I might, I could not remember a single second of that journey until we came to a stand still. I didn’t think I ever would.

  The problem I had, was that I could recall the twenty seconds following on from that. I remembered them in the day, I remembered them at night and I remembered them in my dreams. Those memories will be with me until my last breath. Constantly haunting me, constantly making me question why it had to happen. Nothing will change though. Everyone tells me it was not my fault, but how can I be sure? As I say, until we came to a standstill, I could remember nothing.

  Richie

  There was a buzzing in my head. A buzzing noise like you used to have on television channels at night, when they went off air, high pitched, constant, irritating. I opened my eyes, there was smoke drifting up from my bonnet, but it was also managing to edge its way into the car through the shattered windscreen. My immediate reaction was to put my hand to my nose, as that’s where I sensed pain. I was expecting blood but at that stage it was still gathering pace internally on its journey to my nostrils, like water to a waterfall.

  It was only then that I saw her, laying on my concertinaed bonnet. It was a young woman. Was it Kelly? I tried to tilt my head around to check the passenger seat, but the intense shooting pain in my neck and shoulders stopped me. A gentle sobbing that punctuated the high pitched shrill re-assured me. I looked again on the bonnet. The woman was on her side, facing away from us, her lower body, dressed in light blue, faded, jeans was pressed against the broken windscreen. Without moving my neck, my eyes journeyed up her body, she wore a white, flowery blouse which was speckled with blood and glass and her head, with a mass of straight, long blonde hair, was tilted backwards at an angle which immediately struck me as uncomfortable. She did not move.