by Shari Low
‘Are the boys okay?’ I asked, suddenly concerned that her state of upset was something to do with them.
‘They’re fine,’ she reassured me, as she sat down on the leather stool next to me at the breakfast bar. ‘I’ve sent them to my mother’s for the night.’
‘You could have sent them to me. They could just have stayed at our house all week. And by the way, of course they can come over this weekend. Just send them over when they get back from your mum’s.’
‘Thanks. I hope Shauna doesn’t mind. I know she must have enough on her plate right now...’
That made me bristle slightly. Why would Shauna mind if they were there?
‘Of course she wouldn’t. She loves having them around.’
‘They love her too. I don’t know if I’ve ever told her, but I’m thankful for how great she’s been to them.’
‘I’ll tell her you said that – she’ll appreciate it.’
There was an uncomfortable pause, which I ended by jumping right in. ‘So are you going to tell me what’s happened here?’
‘Steve and I have split up,’ she said and puddles of tears filled her lower eyelids again. When a couple dropped down her cheeks, she wiped them away with the sleeve of her grey sweatshirt. ‘Sorry. I don’t even know why I’m crying. It’s not like it’s new or as if it’s not what I want.’
Little cogs were clicking into place in my mind. The last time I was here… his behaviour… the trip to the office on a Sunday.
‘He’s seeing someone else?’ I said calmly.
She nodded. ‘He is. He swears he didn’t start until after we split but I’m not so sure. Don’t suppose it matters.’
‘Of course it matters!’ I didn’t know the guy particularly well, but I thought he was better than that.
She shook her head dolefully, ‘I really don’t think that it does, and to be honest, I wouldn’t blame him. It was me who ended it.’
That surprised me. I took a sip of tea and immediately spluttered. Sod this. ‘Do you have any booze? A beer?’
‘I’ve a bottle of tequila in the fridge.’
‘That’ll do nicely.’ The train journey to Manchester would be a blur, but that probably wasn’t a bad thing. I waited until she’d filled two shot glasses and we knocked them back. It burned the mouth off me, but it was still less painful than her tea.
I didn’t understand any of this. They’d always seemed happy. Content. This didn’t make sense.
‘So why?’ I asked, when my vocal cords recovered from the shock of the liquid.
‘Why what?’
‘Why did you end it?’
Jess shrugged. ‘I didn’t love him any more. I’m not sure that I ever really did. No, that’s not true. Maybe in the beginning…’
‘But you’ve been with him for years. Why stay if you didn’t love him?’ I tried to work out how long they’d been together. Ten years? Twelve? More? I couldn’t remember, but it was definitely long-term.
‘Because there was no reason not to. He loved me, we had a nice life, he was great with the boys. We were happy.’
None of this was making sense – or changing my firm conviction that there were some emotional situations that would forever be unfathomable to me. I knocked back another tequila. The heat as it passed my throat went straight to my nerve endings, forcing them out of the foetal position they’d been in since the fight with Shauna. I stretched my neck from side to side, enjoying the warm feeling as the muscles relaxed.
‘So what changed?’
‘You,’ she told me, staring straight at me.
That one required another shot, before proceeding.
‘Me? How?’ Oh crap, what had I done? Had I said something? Caused a fight? If I had it wasn’t deliberate and, shit, how was I going to explain this one to the kids?
‘You got sick,’ she said simply. ‘And I saw how quickly and unexpectedly it could all be taken away and I decided…’
Another shot.
‘I decided that I’d regret living a life where I never felt the kind of love you and I had ever again.’
That one came right out of left field. I had no idea. None. And I had no clue as to how to respond.
A single tear ran down her left cheek and this time it was me who leaned over and wiped it away. The timing sucked, but I really needed to go. I was going to miss my train if I didn’t get out there and get a cab right now. Yet, I felt like the biggest arse for leaving her like this.
‘That was a different time, Jess. We were young. Had no worries. No cares. It was before life came and gave us a kicking.’
‘I know,’ she shrugged, almost embarrassed. ‘But I have to hope it’s out there and I’ll find it again. Otherwise, what’s the point?’
Again, I had no answer. She wanted to recreate something that was long gone, yet I understood that. How many times since the day I sat in the surgeon’s office and heard him say ‘brain tumour’ had I wished I could go back, do stuff again, have another chance to relive the best bits? So many. It must have been the tequila but suddenly my eyes were stinging, my throat was tight, something deep inside me was hurting, a physical pain.
‘Oh God, Colm, I’m sorry.’
‘For what?’
She didn’t answer. She just leaned towards me and stroked my cheek, and that’s when I felt the wet tears, tasted the salt as they touched my lips, realized that they belonged to me.
Now Jess was wiping them away, and holding me as my shoulders shook, rubbing the back of my neck and…
My lips were on hers and I was kissing her, my tears mingling with hers, my desperation matching her need for me.
The train to Manchester left the station without me.
34
2009
After Annie…
Colm leaned over and kissed me. ‘Right m’darlin, see you later – assuming you don’t get a better offer and leave me for someone far more attractive.’
‘That would never happen,’ I objected. ‘However, if it was someone with more money…’ He laughed as he opened the door and jumped out, grabbed his bag from the back seat, then stuck his head through the open window.
‘You sure you’re okay?’ he said, serious this time. Concerned. What was I to say? No, I’m not. I’m dying inside. Sometimes the pain of Annie being gone hurts so badly I feel like my heart will stop and that would be a mercy. He didn’t want to hear that. This was Colm. He wanted flippancy and cheer.
‘I’m fine. Honestly. Now go.’
He blew me a kiss and headed off, throwing his bag over his shoulder as he headed into Richmond station, the first leg of a journey that would end with two days of motivational training for an IT company in Brighton. Yes, the irony was glaring. Colm, the guy who liked an easy life, who preferred to take the stress-free, effort-free path and hope that everything would work out in the end, training other people in motivational techniques
I drove off, dread and depression blending with the relief of not having to keep a smile on my face for a second longer. I’d miss him, but the truth was I welcomed space to breathe. The car journeys on my own had become treasured moments of respite, the only time I could allow myself to feel. Sometimes it would overwhelm me and I’d pull over and just sob, buckled over in my seat, head thudding off the wheel until the physical pain overtook the one in my heart.
Today, I just kept going, driving towards the inevitable. Vincent had suggested that he do this job alone, but I’d refused. It was an eightieth birthday lunch for a darling lady I’d worked for before. When I’d taken the booking a couple of months ago, I’d commented on the coincidence.
‘May 19th!’ I’d exclaimed. ‘That’s my grandmother’s birthday too. She’ll be…’ I quickly counted it up. ‘Seventy-five this year.’
‘Ah, a young thing,’ Penelope had said, laughing.
There was no laughter now. Penelope had made it to eighty. Annie hadn’t made it to seventy-five.
I felt my heart begin to race and a scalding heat work its way
through me. I couldn’t do this. I just couldn’t. I should be picking my gran up today, taking her to lunch, maybe on to a show. Or throwing a party for her where she’d sing and dance and tell inappropriate jokes. Then at the end of the night, we’d drink tea and gossip until our sides hurt with laughing.
Suddenly, I couldn’t face the void of having absolutely nothing to do but think about her. I was about to call Vincent, tell him I wasn’t coming, but I stopped, Annie’s voice echoing in my head. ‘You just need to get on with it, love. No one else is going to do it for you. Just pick yourself up and keep going. You’re a strong lass, Shauna, there’s nothing you can’t do.’
All my life I’d heard her say those things to me, or variations of them, and every time I’d roll my eyes and… well, get on with it. She’d instilled it in my DNA. The Annie gene. The one that was making me put my phone back down and drive to Penelope’s house.
If Vincent was surprised to see me, he didn’t show it. I was grateful there was no time to talk – we unpacked the food set it up, served it, cleared it away, wished her a happy birthday, hugged her and left with her grateful thanks ringing in my ear. The whole time, I ignored Vincent’s quizzical glances, answered his concerns over my well-being with a breezy, ‘I’m fine.’ I smiled at the relatives, admired their love for their matriarch, and closed my eyes when they threatened to burn with tears, before opening them, shaking it off, and carrying on, Annie still with me, talking, cajoling, reassuring, repeating her encouragement over and over. ‘You just need to get on with it, love. No one else is going to do it for you. Just pick yourself up and keep going. You’re a strong lass, Shauna, there’s nothing you can’t do.’
So I did it. I carried on. And I managed to do it until I got out of the house, where Vincent had finished packing up the van.
‘You did great today,’ he said and we both knew why it mattered, but I was hanging on by a heartstring and I knew if he said one more sympathetic thing it would snap.
‘Thanks. You too.’ Bright. Breezy.
‘Are you sure you don’t want to come back to my house and hang there this afternoon? I’ve got no plans other than movie, food, very attractive snoring on the sofa while wearing nothing but my pants. Although obviously if you come I’ll remain clothed.’
‘Thanks. Tempting, but I’m fine. I’m just going to go home and chill.’
It was a lie. The truth was I didn’t want to infect him with my sadness.
‘You sure?’ Concern and care were in every crease of his gorgeous face.
‘Absolutely. I’ll see you tomorrow.’
I jumped in my car and I drove off, waiting until I got to where I was going before I stopped, choked, let the grief consume me, rip me to shreds, dismantle me like Lego, piece by piece, until I was just skin and bones, and muscle, my heart and soul eviscerated.
Annie’s grave had a simple headstone. Black. Gold writing. In the vase in front of it, the lilies I’d left there last week. They were wilted now. Next to them, the plant I’d left the day we buried her. A sunflower. It was her favourite. Nothing from anyone else. I doubted my parents even remembered where she was.
I sat on the grass. Just sat there. Closed my eyes. Formed a picture of her in my head. She was there. Laughing. ‘How’re you doing my darling?’ she was saying.
‘I don’t know how to do this without you, gran.’
In my mind, she rolled her eyes, shook her head, a sad smile.
‘Of course you do,’ she said. Not harshly. Quietly. But in a way that conveyed she absolutely knew she was right. And then her image left me. I tried to get it back but it was gone. I ached with the loss, the feeling of unwanted solitude, a pain that was compounded by the distance that had grown between Colm and I.
Our crippling workloads and the fertility struggles hurt, but they were pushed aside by the pain of losing Annie and he wasn’t the guy who could give emotional support. He just didn’t have it in him. He tried to make me laugh when I wanted to cry. Tried to ignore my pain when I wanted to talk. Behaved like nothing was wrong, when nothing was right.
And all the while, the ache was still there.
So now I sat. Unable to move. Broken. Minutes passed. Hours. Still I sat. Staring. Numb.
At some point, I’m not sure when, I went back to the car, started the engine, pulled away. I’ve no idea how it knew where to go, or who was driving. I felt nothing. Made no decisions. It just happened. It moved until I was sitting at the end of the path, then I was out of the car, walking, banging on the door. It opened.
His face.
I didn’t say a word.
Vincent opened his arms and I walked into them.
35
2016
Forsaking All Others
It was dark when I woke up, and for a moment I couldn’t understand why I had warm breath on my neck and soft hair on my cheek. Beth. The smile was automatic, but followed by a pounding in the front of my scalp, the one that comes when you’ve fallen asleep crying.
Then I remembered. Colm. The fight. The things he said. The things I said.
My stomach churned with instant regret. How had that happened? How had we gone from packing a suitcase to screaming at each other with such malice, saying such cruel things?
I know he didn’t mean them. I didn’t either. The words had come from his damaged brain and my fragmented heart. Damn. I just wanted to rewind yesterday and have him here with me.
I pushed myself up and rearranged Beth’s cover so that she was snuggled up in the warmth of the duvet, then padded out of the room.
Downstairs, the house was in darkness, so I flicked on the kitchen light as I searched for my mobile phone. Found it. I checked the screen. There were a couple of messages – one from Lu, one from Rosie, one from Joe. I quickly read them, then checked the time – after midnight. Too late to call or text back.
Nothing from Colm. For a moment the hurt resurfaced but I pushed it away. How could I judge or criticize anything he did? How was a dying man supposed to act? There was no handbook or guidelines. Sure, he’d lashed out at me, but that’s what happened in any lifetime – people in pain took it out on those closest to them. And this was so much more than that. It was a guy facing the certainty of losing a future. And how had I responded? By fighting back, unloading a whole load of petty, self-centred stuff that, while true, I should have been smart and strong enough to handle. Bugger, what an idiot. All I wanted to do right now was hear his voice, hold him, make this right.
I dialled his number, not even thinking through what I was going to say, other than the fact that it would start with ‘sorry’. No answer. It rang out then went to voicemail. Maybe it was on silent. Yes, that would be it. He’d have put it on silent on the train, in case he got an incoming call that disturbed the other passengers. Or maybe he left it on the train. His memory was getting worse by the day.
I did a calculation in my head and realized Colm would have checked into the hotel, a five-minute walk from the station, half an hour ago. He’d still be awake.
I searched my phone for the copy of the confirmation email, then dialled the number. It was answered immediately and I asked to be put through to Colm’s room.
There was a pause on the other end, and I heard the click of nails on a keyboard. ‘I’m sorry, but Mr O’Flynn hasn’t checked in yet.’
‘Are you sure? It would have been about an hour ago.’
‘Absolutely positive. I’ve been here since ten o’clock and he definitely hasn’t arrived.’
‘Okay, thank you.’ I disconnected, a creeping sense of unease rising. I chided myself. Don’t panic. The train must have been late. Of course, that was it.
Back on my phone, I connected to the Internet and checked the real-time arrivals for Manchester station. Nine p.m. train, arrived on time.
The unease escalated, a chill of anxiety added on for good measure. I’d known this was a bad idea. Why had I let him do it? He could have collapsed, maybe had a seizure – the surgeon had said seizures were
a possibility. Or maybe he was so exhausted that he’d fallen into a deep sleep and was now lying on an empty train in a deserted Manchester station.
I tried his phone again – still no answer.
Full scale panic now. What to do? I couldn’t phone the police. They’d laugh when I said he’d been missing for an hour. I tried the hotel again and recognized the same voice as before. ‘I’m really sorry, but it’s me again. Has my husband checked in yet?’
‘I’m sorry, but he hasn’t.’ Her voice oozed sympathy.
My heart was racing now, my legs shaking. What should I do? I had nothing. No clue. Who could I call at this time?
I settled for texting the only person I knew who’d be up.
Are you awake?
Send.
Lulu replied immediately.
Yep. You okay?
No. Can’t find Colm. Prob overreacting but he hasn’t checked into hotel. Am freaking out.
Send.
I’m coming over now.
No, don’t! Like I said am probably overreacting. Will call hotel again. You don’t need to come. Don’t want to create a drama.
Send.
My heart was already racing, hands shaking.
‘I’m here.’ That wasn’t a text. It was Lulu’s voice, behind me, marching in the back door, in men’s boxer shorts and a gent’s shirt, wearing a pair of Converse trainers several sizes too big. ‘Sorry, it was this or the sequined mini-dress I was wearing when I entered your garage two hours ago.’
‘You’re spending the night with Dan?’ I asked, astonished.
‘I know. Go figure. I bumped into him at a bar tonight, and yes, I realize there’s humour in having a one-night stand with your own husband.’
‘But why didn’t you go to your own house?’
‘Dunno,’ she shrugged. ‘Here was closer and we were horny and…’
‘Stop! I beg you. I don’t need details.’
‘Sorry. So what’s happened?’
The panic that had been temporarily assuaged by the surprise of her arrival came flooding back. ‘Colm’s train arrived in Manchester just after eleven p.m. It’s less than a five-minute walk to the hotel, but he’s not there yet.’
