by Sharon Owens
What happened was (and I heard this from the woman herself, mind, just a few days ago when she rang me to say she was sorry for causing so much upheaval), our supermodel called unexpectedly to take a look at our goody-bag samples. We weren’t expecting her because she was an international model! But anyway, she happened to be in Belfast to take part in a photo-shoot for a prestigious new department store so she took a taxi out to visit Julie and me afterwards. But we weren’t in. Because Julie and myself were up a ladder at the castle Julie had finally chosen for the wedding venue, dangling rubber bats off a piece of invisible thread to get a feel for the puppet show. I know, it sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it? But, actually, the bats did look amazingly alive, bouncing up and down with their little wings flapping. And we knew it’d look even better at night, backlit with some yellowish spotlights.
So yes, the model landed out to the lighthouse and who should answer the door but Jay O’Hanlon, topless and wearing his sexiest faded jeans over bare feet. His hair still damp after a quick dip in the miniature sink, and a pot of black coffee and some deep-fried gourmet sausages wafting their aroma up and down the stairwell. It would have been rude of her not to come in and wait, no doubt. And she was as powerless to resist our Jay’s charms as Julie had been before her. A few pleasant words about the new decor in the lighthouse, a sip of black coffee, a suggestive nibble on a fat pork sausage, and our model ends up on the end of Jay O’Hanlon’s legendary doo-da.
Oh, Julie.
The biter, bit.
It started in January, the affair, apparently. I didn’t find out about it until March, and to this day I blame myself for not telling Julie when I did find out. I caught them at it one afternoon, you see? Doing horizontal gymnastics on my old sofa bed in the office. The two of them prone on the beautiful cushions I’d chosen with such care and attention to detail. And paid for with my own money. That Jay, naked as a sandboy. Whatever a sandboy is. And her fully dressed, high heels still on, on her extremely large feet. The only drawback to being six foot tall, I expect? I mean, she had massive feet. Yes, fully dressed except for her pink floral cami-knickers which were hanging from the drawer handle of Julie’s desk. The cheek of it! Cheating on Julie Sultana! Doing the wild thing on Dream Weddings’ hallowed premises. Her endless, honey-coloured legs wrapped round Jay’s neck and him smoking a cigar with his eyes closed. She wasn’t saying much but then I saw he had her mouth loosely gagged with one of our stocking samples, ‘Winter White’ I think it was called. She was giggling and panting and I think she mumbled something about a little Irish house with a huge big chimney on it, but then my French isn’t the best and she did have a silk stocking lashed across her face.
I don’t know what I ought to have done, if there’s some sort of handbook available giving guidance on these things. But anyway, I just closed my eyes and stepped back onto the stone staircase. Tiptoed down again all the way to the bottom, went outside and set off along the coastal path for a good long walk. I didn’t phone Julie to tell her what I’d seen. Or to make sure she didn’t discover them too by sending her off on a lengthy errand or something. My mind had gone slightly blank. And so I just sat on an old wooden fence looking out to sea, waiting for them to finish. Had a nice breath of fresh air and felt so pleased with myself that I haven’t ever been tempted to cheat on Bill during our twenty-odd years together. Not even one time. This is not my problem, I kept telling myself. This is nothing to do with me. And anyway, Julie had stated categorically on several occasions that she didn’t genuinely love Jay. It was only the hot sex she was keen on and the idea of having a much younger lover. So it wasn’t exactly betrayal on a major scale, not really.
I thought the French model was only amusing herself with a bit of rough from the Emerald Isle and, as soon as the wedding was over, she’d forget Jay and get on with the business of being very rich and famous. And besides, I was still feeling a tiny bit sorry for myself over Alicia-Rose leaving for Australia again. And worrying she might never come back. (She was raving about her new home all over the holidays and I said to Bill, ‘Just you wait and see, she’ll be emigrating for good next, like Ann and Elizabeth.’) And, okay, maybe I was also being a total cowardy-custard.
But, honestly, by then I had lost all faith in my own judgement. Maybe Jay and the model have genuinely fallen in love, I thought to myself. They’re both gorgeous and of a similar age. Maybe this is the real thing at last? And we can’t go around telling people who they can and can’t fall in love with, can we? I mean, that’s what Western civilization is based on, isn’t it? Personal freedom? And God knows I didn’t want to be the one to tell Julie what was going on – she might have punched me in the beak with the shock of it. So yes, I crept back down the stairs and pretended I knew nothing about it. Bubble integrity and all that. It was getting too much for me, all the kinky-bondage shenanigans. Day and night, there was no getting away from it. It was putting me off sex with Bill, to be honest with you. And I didn’t want that to happen, no way. The day that Bill’s feather-light caresses fail to move me is the day I become an old woman.
So I blocked it out of my mind, and made sure there was plenty of noise when I was coming up the stairs from that day onwards. And I went on washing the dirty dishes in the lighthouse and making hundreds of phone calls and collecting mountains of receipts for our various wedding projects. The rock-star wedding was fixed to take place on 1 May and Julie didn’t find out about Jay’s affair until halfway through the actual marriage ceremony. And when she did find out, well, there were fireworks aplenty all right but they weren’t all in the sky.
16. Alexander
Alexander and Emma got back together over the Christmas holidays, did I mention that? Not officially back together but things were going that way. The signs were there. Bill told his eldest son not to push things, romantically speaking. To play hard-to-get for once in his life, to treat Emma like he was doing her a massive favour by even speaking to her. And to make a few mysterious calls on his mobile phone and then say it was nobody if she asked him who he was chatting to. So she’d think he was seeing other girls. And he was to pin a few posters of curvy celebs in skimpy outfits to his bedroom wall, for good measure. Nothing too obvious, no bimbos with their fingers in their mouths, no. But nice arty black-and-white ones, which’d be more convincing, Bill said. Which I declared was grossly and totally unfair behaviour towards a (hopefully) recovering anorexic young girl. But Bill said all was fair in love and war and that Emma needed something else to obsess about besides calories and inches. And it worked. Honestly, my darling husband might be a humble, hardworking plumber but I reckon he could have been a top psychiatrist if he’d had the education. Never mind knowing your inner self! Nothing gets most people fired up like a bit of serious competition.
Emma went raving mad, went absolutely mad as a hatter when she saw the sexy posters in Alexander’s room and she tore them off the walls, ripped them to shreds and stamped on them. Quite a feat if you’d seen the state of her at that time. But Alexander just said that was okay, Emma could take the posters down if she wanted to, but he was still ‘so over’ the waif look. And then he nipped into the bathroom to answer a text message. Emma checked his mobile phone later for missed calls and questioned him endlessly about his social life. But he was giving nothing away. He was magnificent, actually. He looked guilty as hell yet he’d done nothing whatsoever except hang about the house for ages contemplating suicide. And driving the rest of us demented with his depressing music played at top volume and his unpredictable mood swings. I was out a fortune on fish and chips around that time too, trying to pamper my son and keep his appetite healthy.
And then Emma started eating again.
Just little bits and pieces at first. A small orange, a finger of toast with a scrape of butter on it, a solitary carrot grated and sprinkled with finely crushed rock salt and black pepper. But it was a start. Next, she stopped weighing her muesli and even cut the workout sessions down to thirty minutes a day. One time, when
we were all having fish and chips in the kitchen (yet again), she said she’d send out for a cheeseburger if that was okay, seeing as the rest of us didn’t eat red meat very often. We were stunned. And she did get the cheeseburger too, and she ate every last bit of it. Even the garnish. And no, she didn’t pop up to the bathroom afterwards – we were all holding our breath and checking our watches, and she didn’t go to the bathroom until the burger would have been safely past the point of no return.
Alexander was delighted with himself and so was Bill. I worried that if Emma did transfer her free-floating anxiety onto her relationship with Alexander, we might end up with a stalker on our hands. Or, worse, if Alexander changed his mind about loving Emma, she might not be able to live without him. And the situation would simply flip over. But Bill said Emma was almost dead anyway so the poor girl starting to eat again could only be a good thing, and we’d deal with any resulting problems as and when they arose.
When the time came for her to go back to the clinic in January, Emma said she’d be well again in no time and she asked Alexander to let her have another chance. To give him his due, he didn’t agree right away. He said he would think about it. When Emma’s taxi set off he didn’t cry and he didn’t wave goodbye. He just stood on the footpath looking moody while Emma blew kisses to him through the back window. I never thought I’d say this, but that was one occasion when the man was a lot smarter than the woman. Bill and Alexander went to the pub to celebrate the success of their little scheme and I took down the Christmas decorations and ate the last of the pretzels and the Brazil nuts. Well, I do hate to throw good food in the bin.
At the end of March, Emma reached her target weight of seven and a half stone and she was released into the community once again. Hooray! Of course, there’d be years of therapy ahead of her and possible relapses and all kinds of setbacks to get over. But Emma was off the danger list and we all cheered down the phone and congratulated her and told her to visit us the minute she got back to Belfast. And she did. She came straight round to our house and formally asked Alexander out on a date. He said he’d check his diary. Casanova Grimsdale! Attaboy!
Well, nearly.
By midnight they were curled up in bed together. Listening to some lightweight pop music on the radio and eating chocolate biscuits. Though he didn’t tell her about his crafty scheme to make her jealous. On Bill’s advice, Alexander was to maintain his penchant for arty glamour models indefinitely. And the following morning they told us they were getting engaged to be married.
Oh, my God! A miracle had happened!
We were so pleased for them both, of course, but we did remind them that Emma’s parents had spent a lot of money on the private clinic and they might not be able to pay for a lovely big wedding any time soon. And they shouldn’t get their hopes up. But Alexander said not to worry, they had promised themselves a budget of only £1,000 to pay for the wedding and the honeymoon (no more and no less) and it was going to be so much fun shopping for bargains and making things on a shoestring.
Alexander was earning a regular wage as an apprentice-plumber by then and he said he wanted to spend it on renting a little apartment for himself and Emma. He said they wanted to live on their own as soon as possible, and thanks anyway for our offer of a bedsit. And would you believe, they found a place that very night in the local paper. A lovely brand-new apartment in a converted convent on the Ormeau Road. (Honestly, they’re converting anything and everything in Belfast these days. Turning factories and bakeries and convents galore into luxury turn-key flats. It’s all down to the halt of emigration and the rise of the white-collar sector, apparently.) On the third floor of the development, the flat was. Sorry, the apartment. Two button-flush bathrooms and a sleek modern kitchen, all stainless-steel cupboards and green-glass bricks. Tiny little place but very nicely designed, with a dainty balcony and a built-in ironing board. Well, there’d need to be an ironing board built-in, I thought to myself when I saw it, because there wasn’t enough room to erect an old-fashioned one. Five hundred quid per month to rent, which I thought was a bit steep. It would amount to almost half of his wages but Alexander said he could afford it and they agreed a date with the owner for moving in.
I told you the rented sector was really taking off here. Time was, you couldn’t rent at all in this country unless it was a featureless government unit on some rundown concrete estate. But the fancy building that Alexander and Emma have moved into has ornamental bell towers, electronic gates and stained-glass windows on the gable walls. It’s really fabulous. I wouldn’t mind moving in myself, say I wanted to downsize sometime. I hoped they would have nice neighbours, but that was only me being fussy again. I’m sure any undesirables will be evicted right away before they do any damage to the hanging baskets.
Emma’s massive haul of designer clothes and shoes were safely installed in the built-in wardrobes by the end of the week. Bill and I went round to visit them a few days later and they seemed happy as anything. The metallic fridge was full of yoghurts and fresh fruit and there was a big wooden bowl of mini-chocolate bars on the breakfast counter. They’d bought a nice print of the old shipyard to hang in the sitting room. Alexander was brimming over with pride and enthusiasm and I had to admit I wasn’t as gutted as I had been about him dropping out of university. I suppose we’re brainwashed into wanting a university education for our children. But these days you can make a better living as a plumber than you can as, say, a science teacher in a grammar school. And as long as our beloved son was happy, we were happy too. We told Alexander and Emma we were delighted with everything. And we gave them a puffy all-white patchwork quilt and a quirky lime-green tea set with gold handles as house-warming gifts.
The funny thing is, next day Emma dropped out of college too. She said she found being in third-level education just too stressful – she had even failed her resits because of the exhaustion she was suffering. And she got a part-time job in a fancy gift shop across the street from their apartment building so she could start paying her way in life. And when she saw how long it actually took to earn a hundred pounds she was totally cured of her addiction to high-end clothing and accessories. Which was a brilliant stroke of luck because the private therapy sessions were expensive enough to be getting on with. The engagement was still on, however. Oh, yes!
Alexander bought Emma a big chunky silver ring with a row of red-glass stones on it. It cost £58 from a posh little fashion boutique on the Lisburn Road. The shop assistant wrapped the ring up in a beautiful pink satin box and gave Emma a free sprig of glittery roses for her hair when she heard about their plan to get married on a strict budget. Wasn’t that lovely of her? And so, the silver ring was the first thing they bought with their £1,000 budget. The second thing was the marriage licence itself from Belfast City Hall. That was £130 (weekday rate). They didn’t have an engagement party because Emma was still feeling rather tired after her stay in the clinic, and also from her new job, which involved quite a lot of unpacking crates and dusting bronze Buddhas. Instead, Alexander took Emma out to see a comedy play at the Grand Opera House, though he did stump up a little extra for a private box that cost £80, including tickets and a bag of chocolates. So, all together they’d spent £268 on a gorgeous quirky engagement ring, a wonderful night out at the theatre and a marriage licence from possibly the prettiest city hall in the UK. I was madly impressed. Mind you, Julie did tell me to shut up and stop ‘bloody rabbiting on’ about how sensible my son and his wife-to-be were being about the whole thing. Julie found it all a little too quirky, to be honest.
‘Remember, Mags,’ she said to me (surprisingly darkly) one day when we were making up black feather corsages for the rock star’s 666 wedding guests. ‘It’s women going crazy with wedding fever that keeps you and me in a job. So don’t go telling any of our clients about this shoestring wedding of your Alexander’s, do you hear me? We don’t want the punters getting any of these poverty-is-cool ideas. There’s nothing romantic about pinching the pennies, my dear!
Nothing romantic in any shape or form.’
‘Yes, Julie,’ I said at once. But my heart was singing with joy.
I’d actually forgotten about Jay’s affair with the French model for a few moments (even though I had one of the black corsages in my hands) and the knot of guilt that was forever gnawing away at my insides temporarily relaxed. Of course, it came back with a vengeance when I did remember. But no, I kept saying to myself, this is nothing to do with me and maybe it’s better if Julie never finds out about Jay’s infidelity? And I wouldn’t have known about it either, if I’d banged the door of the lighthouse shut when I came in that day.
And so on.
Emma and Alexander set the date for their wedding for 10 May. Which was nice, I thought, because by then I’d be well rested after the ‘wedding of the century’ and I’d be really looking forward to the much smaller and more intimate day Alexander and Emma were dreaming of. They weren’t going to invite anyone from my side of the family (thank goodness) as we were still smarting from the trauma of our Gothic wake. And not too many from Bill’s side either as they would have had to travel from ‘across the water’, as some people here like to call the Irish Sea. Just close friends and immediate family, really. Emma didn’t want to have too much fuss, so close to her remission from the eating disorder. About thirty guests in all, we reckoned. A civil marriage ceremony in the City Hall was duly booked, just like our own wedding day. And then the happy couple were going to serve a modest buffet in their apartment, which they would prepare themselves the day before. They were going to make their own invitations using rice paper from the gift shop, and Emma was planning to wear an ivory-coloured evening dress and a pair of shoes she already had. And, of course, she had the glittery roses she’d got for nothing – they’d suddenly become one of her most treasured possessions.
