Forever Is Over

by Wade, Calvin

  “Richie.”

  Surely not? Maybe it was a co-incidence. Surely after all that she had just said, she would not do this to me.

  “Richie? Not Richie Billingham?”

  I was numb with shock. I was beginning to regain some self-belief, some hope for the future until this moment.

  “Yes, Kelly. I am married to Richie Billingham. The man you were with in the car, when it crashed, is my husband.”

  Richie

  I don’t know why, but one day it just came back to me, weeks later. I was heading out for the evening with Jemma, waiting for her to come downstairs and all of a sudden the last words that Kelly said to me before the crash just came back to me. I could picture myself back in the car with Kelly. I was slowing down, ready to turn into West Tower and we were justing talking away, saying amicable goodbyes and then Kelly said, out of the blue,

  “Richie, can I just ask you something?”

  “Fire away.”

  “Why did you never tell me you had cancer?”

  I wasn’t expecting it. I was expecting something about Jemma, maybe something about that night at the Birch’s when Kelly accused me of sleeping with her, but I was not expecting the cancer question. I hesitated, not sure how to respond. I was going to tell her the whole story, how I had met with Jemma and how she had comforted me and urged me to tell Kelly all about it, but I had panicked and not managed to get the words out, scared of revealing the truth. It felt like a good time to tell her, to piece things together for her, so I was about to say,

  “Jemma told me to tell you everything, but I did not have the courage to. I was scared.” but I only got as far as,

  “Jemma told me…..” and then out of nowhere came the other car, swerving around the corner at enormous speeds. Before I had the time to answer Kelly’s question, our worlds and our cars collided, leaving two lives behind us on that quiet road.

  Jemma

  I needed to say it. I had nothing to be ashamed about. I had married a man I had fallen in love with and when we did fall in love, he was not married, he did not have a girlfriend, he was bloody single! I knew Kelly would go potty but what did she expect, the world to stand still until she came back like something out of a fairytale? As soon as I mentioned that I was married to Richie, Kelly laughed, but it was not an amused laugh, it was more a disapproving, sarcastic laugh.

  “It’s all about one upmanship with you, isn’t it , Jemma?”

  The tables had turned now. Kelly’s whole approach had been ‘Please Forgive Me’ but now it was, ‘You’ve Wronged ME, Bitch!’ Her tone was more aggressive, her manner more confident, Kelly knew when she had to fight her corner and she had shown me before that she was a pussy cat when things were going her way and a tiger when they weren’t. I knew she would think she had the upper hand morally now, but that was bullshit and I was not going to apologise for anything I had done.

  “One upmanship? How?”

  “You always have to get in on the act. Go one better than me.”

  “Kelly, I married Richie because I loved him.”

  “That’s garbage, Jemma! There are twenty million men in Britain between the ages of sixteen and sixty and you just happen to fall in love with the ONE, the ONLY ONE, that ever meant anything to me. Both choosing the same man out of twenty million! That’s some coincidence, Jemma! I remember you even said that if Richie was the only choice you had, you wouldn’t even bother. There’s no two ways about this, you did this to get at me!”

  I loved Kelly, but she had it all wrong and it was annoying me that she could, after everything, accuse me of stooping so low.

  “Married someone and had two kids with him, just to get at a sister that I haven’t seen for years and for all I knew may never see again! Don’t flatter yourself, Kelly!”

  “The reason you were attracted to him though, Jemma, was because he was mine! Ever since the Birch’s party when we were teenagers, you have always made sure you bettered me!”

  “You’re talking rubbish, Kelly!”

  I could feel myself doing the ‘Big Sister’ thing. I know I shouldn’t have done, but sometimes when we are put back into familiar territory of yesteryear, we revert to type. Kelly did not take well to being patronised.

  “I am NOT talking rubbish! Ever since the Birch’s party, you have tried to better me! At the Birch’s party, I start talking to Richie, we hit it off, next thing I know, you’re telling me you shagged him! You saw me talking to him, let me tell you how much I liked him and then you went upstairs, slipped your knickers off and asked him to come inside to play. Literally!”

  I protested but not very well.

  “Kelly, it wasn’t like that! I was smashed off my head. I thought it was Richie but it might not have been!”

  “Are you trying to make yourself sound like less of a whore, Jemma, because if you are, you are making a crap job of it?”

  The simple solution here would have been to slap her, but slapping a patient sat up in a bed in intensive care would not have looked good at all! I just bit my tongue.

  “Then, Jemma, when I was absolutely besotted by Richie, when he was my total world, I found you cuddled up with him in Coronation Park.”

  “He had cancer, Kelly!”

  “I know now he had cancer, but I didn’t know it then. You could have told me. Do you think I would have disappeared like I did, if you had told me? Of course not! That’s why you didn’t tell me! You let me go, so you could have Richie all for yourself. Richie even told me, before the crash that he was going to tell me about his cancer but YOU told him not to! Everything has always been about you going one better than me. Even when I killed our mother, you had to go one better, take the blame and play the innocent victim in bloody prison!”

  “Kelly, I was in prison for a murder that I didn’t commit, how is that playing the innocent victim?”

  “You orchestrate things though, Jemma! That night, when Mum died, when I pushed her down the stairs, would I have killed her if you hadn’t been waiting for her to come in, with a knife in your hand? For years and years, I have felt guilty for destroying your life but I didn’t destroy your life, did I? You are here playing happy families with the one man I truly loved and the kids you have created together. I have not destroyed your life, you have destroyed mine and you know what, I think that’s what you wanted to do. Mission accomplished, Jemma!”

  “All of that is complete bunkum, Kelly! I don’t know why Richie would have said I stopped him telling you about the cancer, because the opposite is true. I begged him to tell you.”

  “You expect me to believe that?”

  “It’s the truth. I don’t care whether you choose to believe it! IT IS THE TRUTH! I did not do anything ever because I hated you. I did everything because I loved you and then, when you went away, I grew to love Richie too. There is no sinister sub-plot. I loved you and I loved Richie, at different times.”

  “I don’t believe you, Jemma! I believe you loved me and I believe you loved Richie but I reckon the two overlapped. Do you know what, knowing what I know now, I wish I hadn’t come out of my room that night. In those few seconds when I charged at Mum, my life was ruined. I wish I’d have just stayed in the safety of my room, left the pair of you to slug it out.”

  “Kelly, you don’t mean that!”

  “Oh but I do! Can you go now? I despise you, Jemma. I can’t believe it has taken me so long to see through you, but I’m so glad that I have!

  Can you leave me alone now, Jemma. Forever!”

  “Kelly, this is stupid!”

  I moved towards her but she turned over in bed and faced away from me.

  “Kelly, I am not going to stand here and grovel. I’ll leave now and one day, when you’ve grown up a bit and come to realise that the whole world does not revolve around you, track me down and apologise. I am overjoyed you survived the crash, but whilst the Doctor’s are doing their medical checks on you, Kelly, get them to do a reality check too, because you could do with one!”

>   “Just go, Jemma.”

  “I’m going! I’m surprised at you, Kelly! I always knew you would be annoyed with me for marrying Richie, I just didn’t think you would be so pathetic!”

  “Keep away from me, Jemma!”

  “I intend to.”

  “And next time you have sex with your husband, look in his eyes.”

  “Why?”

  “To see whether you see your reflection in them or an image of me.”

  Richie

  Melissa was sat on my knee, in the lounge, watching Dora The Explorer and Jamie was running around the house, pretending to be a firework, when the front door slammed.

  “What a bitch!” I heard Jemma say to herself in the hall, “after everything I have done for her! The cheeky bitch!”

  I gathered Melissa up off my knee, placed her back down on the settee, she was fully concentrating on helping Dora find Diego so she barely noticed I’d moved and headed to the hall, closing the lounge doors behind me. It had been raining relentlessly all day, so Jemma was shaking her umbrella off in the corner and removing her coat with her other hand.

  “That woman has a bloody cheek!” she growled, this time for my benefit.

  If I hadn’t managed to involve myself in this mess, I would have made some jokey, sarcastic comment about it not being a teary re-union, but as I had been partially responsible for the mayhem in our personal lives, I kept my expression serious and my attitude sympathetic.

  “I’m sorry it didn’t go well, Jemma. What’s Kelly have a problem with?”

  “Me, basically!” Jemma said as she hung her coat at the bottom of the staircase, “she thinks I married you to get at her!”

  “You didn’t even know where she was when we got married!”

  “I know! It doesn’t make sense. Do you have a tattoo on your arse that says ‘Property of Kelly Watkinson’, because that’s what she seems to think?”

  “No, just the one on my willy that says blow here to inflate!” Jemma gave me a look that said ‘Men In The Doghouse Should Not Tell Rude Jokes’.

  “Very funny,” she said as if it wasn’t, “by the way, did you tell Kelly that you were going to tell her about your cancer, before she ran away, but I stopped you?”

  “NO! When?”

  “When you met her before the crash?”

  “No. As far as I knew, Kelly didn’t even know I had cancer. I’ve never told her.”

  “Well, take it from me, she knows.”

  “Right….I suppose there’s a chance I may have told her when I was driving her back to West Tower before the crash, but I have no recollection of that journey and I don’t see why I would have done. It’s a random thing to come out with, ‘By the way, did you know I used to have testicular cancer, I was going to tell you but Jemma stopped me!’ There’s just no way I would have blamed you for not telling her, you told me to tell her!”

  Jemma threw me a quizzical look.

  “There’s no way you could have had an alterior motive?”

  “What alterior motive?”

  “I don’t know, a romantic or physical one?”

  “What? Slag you off to get her to sleep with me? No, absolutely not! We’ve been through this over and over again, Jemma! It was not a romantic meeting, by the time we got in the car, I just wanted to drop her off and come back to try and kickstart a better relationship between you and me. I had no reason to lie about my cancer or to say you told me to keep quiet.”

  “OK. Kelly’s got it in her head though that I told you not to tell her. That’s not the only thing that she’s pissed off about though. She’s pissed off about Mum’s death and even about us sleeping together at the Birch’s party.”

  “Kelly needs to get a grip. The world does not owe her a favour. Anyway, I didn’t sleep with you at the Birch’s party!”

  Jemma sighed.

  “Let’s not start that one off again, Richie! We both know you did!”

  There was little point arguing. I had failed to persuade Jemma in the past that I was not the perpertrator and the penetrator of that crime but she would not believe me. I only ever entered into an argument these days if I thought there was a potential victor, this one was always going to end in stalemate.

  “Fine!” I conceded.

  “She’s making me feel like a bad person!” Jemma continued, there was no stopping her when she went off on one, “Kelly is the one with feelings for my husband not the other way around, yet I am the one who’s supposed to feel bad! I was prepared to put that issue to one side and move on, but instead, bloody Kelly wants to dredge things up from donkeys years ago! I am not a bad person! I’m a good mother! I am not a bad wife, even if sometimes you think I am! I’m a caring person and in my life there’s no-one I’ve cared for more than Kelly, yet I get it all thrown back in my face.”

  People don’t say things like ‘I am a good person’, unless part of them has an element of doubt about whether it’s true. Its called fishing for re-assurance. Jemma started to sob. I tentatively moved over to her and gave her a gentle hug.

  “Why does everybody hate me?” she asked between cries.

  “No-one hates you, Jemma!”

  “Yes they do! Kelly hates me! You hate me!”

  “I don’t hate you, Jemma!”

  “You nearly left me for my sister because you think I neglect you!”

  “Jemma, I screwed up! You know I screwed up, I know I screwed up. I would never have left you, Jemma, I was just being an idiot. I’m sorry.”

  “Do you think we will make things right again?”

  “Of course I do! We have a fantastic marriage. We just steered off course for a little while, that’s all.”

  Jemma took her head out of my arms and looked up at me tearily. “So when you make love to me, you won’t be thinking of Kelly?”

  “No! Definitely not! You’re the only one for me, Jemma!”

  “Kelly said you’d be thinking of her.”

  Jemma sniffed.

  “Kelly lashes out when she’s hurt, Jemma, you know that.”

  “I do too. It’s a Watkinson trait. Richie, I’m sorry too, you know.”

  “What for?”

  “For lacking imagination. Since the kids have been born, I have felt so lucky to have them that I have forgotten that I am also so lucky to have you.”

  Romantic gush was not something that Jemma had ever really spoken. This was a rare moment!

  “We’re lucky to have each other, Jemma!”

  “I know but we’ve let our lives and our relationship become one monotonous treadmill. Every day from now on, we need to work together to make things more fun. We allowed things to go stale between us. I promise I will never let that happen again. Never!”

  I kissed Jemma on the forehead.

  “Neither will I, honey. Neither will I!”

  Roddy

  I had deliberately made myself scarce to give Kelly some time with her sister. I nipped down to the nearest pub from the hospital, ‘The Ropers Arms’ for a quick pint of lager. There was a sign up in there saying ‘Free Pints Of Lager For Pensioners - As Long As They Are Accompanied By Both Parents’. My Dad had just retired after forty years working in Ford Dagenham and my grandparents are both still alive, so I said to the landlord that I’d drive them all up, so they could all get pissed at his expense! There’s no chance they’ll come up here, my Nan’s incontinent and my Grandad has dementia so they keep him to a routine, but I just wanted to see the look on the landlord’s face!

  A couple of hours later, when I ambled back cheerily to the hospital, I went into the Ward to hear a gentle sobbing which I could soon see was Kelly. I wanted to be and tried to be sympathetic but by this stage in affairs, I was tired and my nerves were on edge.

  “Kelly! Kelly! Why are you crying? Come on! It’s alright!” I gave her a hug. As I pulled away, Jemma kissed my cheek. “Roddy, it’s not alright, Jemma hates me!”

  “She told you she hates you?”

  “No, I told her that I hated
her, but only because of everything she’s done. She married my boyfriend!”

  This whole saga was becoming tiresome. I felt I was turning into Kelly’s doormat. Kelly’s dramatics about some tosser from ten years back who didn’t give two hoots about her and had a good looking wife and kids of his own, was now getting on my tits.

  “Kelly, you haven’t got a boyfriend!”

  “I know, but the only boyfriend I have ever had in the past that still means something to me, Jemma married! She knew how much Richie meant to me. She’s just done it to get at me, to get her revenge on me for leaving. I even think the hatred she has, may have built up when we were children. I think she spent so much time as a kid having to look after me, that she grew to resent me. Did I tell you about the party we went to when we were teenagers when she slept with Richie?”

  About a million times, I thought. Change the bloody record, woman!

  Someone had knocked my ‘Infatuation with Kelly’ button to OFF. I felt that day that I had gone from being totally in love, completely in awe of Kelly’s every move to cynical, rational and blunt. I reckon the way she was behaving, it had to happen at some stage. OK, she had been through a massive trauma, but it ain’t that hard to be decent in any circumstance.

  “Kelly, just hush for a minute, will you. Look, we’re friends, aren’t we?”

  “That’s a daft question, of course we are.”

  “Good friends?”

  “Yes.”

  Kelly said that ‘Yes’ slowly and suspiciously, like she knew something more was coming but she didn’t quite know what it was.

  “And over the last few days, since you’ve come around after the accident, would I be right in thinking your attitude towards me has changed a little?”

  Kelly stopped crying. “In what way?”

  “Well, either you have been a complete prick tease or you’ve started flirting with me in a way you’ve never done before.”

  “I have?”

  Kelly feigned innocence but she knew she was guilty as charged.