by Claire Allan
“Ah, the Long Sad Story at last? I had a feeling it might be about Mr Wrong.”
“If I’m going to tell you this I am going to need more than one stiff drink and you are going to need more than one cup of tea and both of us are going to need very comfortable seats.”
Glad of the distraction and grateful that she wasn’t the only person in the room who felt like her life was spinning out of control, Ava followed Hope to the kitchen and then through to the living room where her cousin proceeded to tell her all about her best friend – the man she loved but who loved someone else.
Chapter 16
As it happened Ava was a very good listener. She nodded in the right places, made the appropriate shocked noises in the right places, and didn’t mind when Hope kept returning to the topic as they returned to Betty’s room and sorted through the rest of her clothes and what was left of her make-up and toiletries.
The conversation had flowed easily, effortlessly even, between the two of them. Hope shared her fears that Dylan would perhaps never love her back – at least not in the way she wanted him to and Ava had spoken about her fears about having another child – fears she was trying desperately to rationalise in her head. And they had spoken, a lot, about Betty and what her life must have been like.
At teatime, the famous letter still not found and the bedroom almost cleared out, Ava had given in to exhaustion and excused herself, saying she absolutely needed to lie down before she fell down.
Hope had retired to her room to think about what had been yet another exceptionally strange day when she noticed her phone still lying on the bed from where she had thrown it earlier.
She realised she still hadn’t responded to Dylan’s text message which she knew was pretty childish. Dylan wouldn’t pick up on it, of course not. He, like most men, wasn’t renowned for sensitivity to her ignoring his text messages. She would have to spell out that she wasannoyed with him and she wasn’t prepared to do that. It would do no good whatsoever to declare loudly that his completely ignoring the fact that they’d had sex annoyed her almost as much as his falling in love with someone else had really, really pissed her off.
Falling in love with each other had never been part of the deal. But he could have acknowledged that night . . . even just a little bit. She sighed and blew her fringe from her face. She tried to remind herself she was a responsible adult, in her mid-thirties, and that she should act her age and not her shoe size.
As she stared out over the luscious green rolling hills, she thought about just how sophisticated and grown-up Ava seemed, even if she was having a panic about being pregnant. She had a serene quality about her which Hope envied. She seemed like the kind of person who always made sensible decisions. Instead of splurging on designer shoes and bags, she would put the money towards a new sofa or getting her bathrooms refitted. Hope was pretty sure Ava didn’t have a credit card – or that if she did she was the kind of person who actually did pay off the full balance at the end of every month. Needless to say, Hope was not that kind of person and, even if she had wanted to be, there was no way she could have afforded to pay off the rocketing balances of her plastic with just one month’s wages. One year’s would be a struggle.
Logging onto to her laptop to check her email she saw that the internet seemed to be working just fine without her being attached to it 24/7. She had a few emails including a few referrals for freelance work which she would follow up when she got back to Belfast and a credit card statement that made her want to weep. She vowed not to use that particular flexible friend for the rest of her holiday as refusal could cause embarrassment.
She clicked onto Facebook to see that Dylan had changed his profile picture – he wasn’t there with his trademark toothy grin and slightly foppish hair anymore. His picture was two pairs of feet, which at first kind of turned Hope’s stomach. She couldn’t stand the look of feet – especially not big man feet – but when she saw the dainty pair beside the big man feet, with the toenails French-manicured and a very small floral tattoo twirling its way towards the big toe, she felt even more sick.
There were certain things which signalled a couple were ‘very much in love’. Moving in together was not necessarily one of them. Moving in together could just be an act of convenience and a cheaper way to live. Shagging morning, noon and night was not necessarily an act of love either. Lust, yes. Love . . . meh . . . maybe not. But taking a photograph of your feet, naked and side by side, and posting them as your profile picture on Facebook could only mean one thing.
Cyndi with a Y and an I and Dylan with ugly, albeit impressively big, feet were ‘very much in love’. Indeed, she gasped when she saw his status update which confirmed, as she had guessed, that “Dylan McKenzie is very much in love”. She gave the laptop a bad look, wished a bad dose of Athlete’s Foot on the pair of them and closed the screen in a fit of pique. It might just betime to pour another glass of wine.
The sun was starting to set – bold pink streaks were colouring the sky – when Ava woke from her nap. The first thought which entered her head was that, yes, she was pregnant. The second thought was that she had told someone and the world hadn’t ended. The third thought was that, sadly, that person hadn’t been Connor and she still had that hurdle to jump over.
He wouldn’t be annoyed. She knew that. Connor Campbell didn’t have a bad-tempered bone in his entire body – but he would be worried. He had been feeling the pressure lately – with his lengthy commute and increased pressure on the accountancy firm. He often brought work home with him and would sit up until the wee small hours working to keep up to speed before getting up for his drive up the road. By the weekend he was exhausted and had complained that he was seeing less and less of Maisie. How they would fit a new baby into that routine was beyond her but then again before they had Maisie they didn’t see how they could ever fit a child into their free and easy lifestyle either. And they had.
She lifted her phone and dialled Connor’s number – just to hear his voice. Telling herself that the tone of his voice would indicate just whether or not everything would be okay, she listened to it ring before he answered with a whisper.
“I’m just settling Maisie down,” he said, “I’ll call you back.”
She went to answer but he had already hung up so she sat back and stared at her phone and wondered how she would open this conversation. “Hi, babe, I’m pregnant” or “You’ll never guess what I’ve just found out” and then she remembered her dreams of telling him a nice way – in a way that belied her underlying panic and fear. So when the phone did ring and he said hello, sounding delighted to be hearing from her, she decided to keep quiet for another little while.
“Hello, pet,” he said, his voice smooth and warm and just gorgeous and she wanted to reach down the phone line and hug him.
“It’s lovely here,” she answered, “Betty’s house is lovely, the weather is gorgeous. She was thankfully quite tidy so the clearing out is not as scary as we thought it might be.”
“And the wine?” he asked.
She thought back to the one glass she’d had the previous night before the penny dropped. It had been perfect but she wouldn’t be repeating that experience again for the rest of the week. Of course, if she didn’t want him to know, just yet, that she wouldn’t be drinking for the foreseeable she would need to lie through her teeth.
“The wine is lovely. And the cheese. Oh, and the pâté is divine.” She thought she might as well go for overkill and list as many pregnancy-forbidden foods as possible.
“Sounds perfect.”
“And Dublin and Maisie?” she asked, not trusting herself to say much more in case she gave anything away.
“Dublin is the usual madhouse. My sister has been over today with the kids. What a handful! And Maisie didn’t know what do with herself, surrounded by all her cousins all talking in strong accents. I was worried for a bit, but you know Maisie, ten minutes in and she was bossing them all about. She was wrecked going to bed – tears and ev
erything. She misses you,” he said softly, before adding, “I miss you.”
She melted. He sounded lonely and she wished she was there to take his hand and give him a hug. “I miss you too, more than you know,” she said.
Wide awake now and knowing there was no chance whatsoever of her getting back to sleep, she decided to go for a quick dip in the pool before doing some more sorting in Betty’s room. When she met this Jean-Luc the following day she wanted to be able to tell him they had made great inroads and hadn’t, instead, spent a great deal of the time gossiping about whatever crises they were going through in their own lives.
The wardrobe was mostly cleared, as was the chest of the drawers and the bedside tables. Most of what they had uncovered would be going to the local charity shop, they decided – with Hope holding onto a few items and Ava, of course, holding onto the purple shoes. She didn’t care that she didn’t have a single thing that would match them. She would buy something. Or keep them just to try on when she was on her own in her bedroom wanting to feel glamorous and not like a big old mammy machine.
Delving into the back of the cupboard, Ava pulled out a dark wooden box with four drawers at the front – each with a tarnished brass handle. Gently pulling the first drawer open, she saw it contained a range of bangles and bracelets – gold and silver mixed together. She would definitely have to wait for Hope, to delve any further. Except she was nosey, and she wanted to see what else was in the box. And, as it happened, as she pulled open the second drawer an envelope, folded in two, unfurled and she lifted it – once again seeing Betty’s handwriting. Aha! She had found the letter. She had to stop herself from giving a girly scream. Feck you, Charlie Bucket and your Golden-Ticket finding, I’ve found the letter! It was sad, but it gave her a thrill. Carefully tearing it open, she pulled out the single sheet of handwritten paper along with three rings and looked at them. Two solid gold bands, one large, one small and a gold engagement ring with three sapphire stones surrounded by diamonds.
She started to read:
My dear girls,
I hope this letter finds you well and happy. And enjoying the house. I hope I haven’t given you too much work. I should have done more myself, but well, things got a little tough.
Ava, my pet, can you do me a favour? Please take care of these rings. Keep them safe. I know I said you could sell on anything at all you wanted but I’m trusting you to keep these for me. They are my most prized possessions. These are the symbols of our marriage – mine and Claude’s.
He was very much insistent that he didn’t want to be buried wearing his ring. He wanted to pass it on. We had thought, at one stage, we would pass our rings on to children of ourown but well, we never did have children, the two of us. Don’t feel sad about that – we were blessed in a million other ways.
Ava, I’m asking you to keep the rings and maybe you would pass them on to your darling Maisie when she is old enough, and if she finds a young man of her own? I trust, Hope, you won’t feel put out by this but you will both understand, in due course.
Can I tell you, Ava and Hope, about my engagement ring? About how he gave it to me? I remember it all so well. Claude had been working in Derry – so strange for a Frenchman. Dear Lord, Derrymen found it tough enough to find work in Derry in the 70s but there he was – working in a very good job. He had twenty men under him and I, well, I was his secretary. That sounds really cheesy, doesn’t it? A secretary falling for the boss, but that was how it happened. I was young and flighty and he would sit and talk to me for hours about his travels. Claude had seen the world and, God, I wanted to see the world but I couldn’t see myself ever leaving Derry so I listened and lived my life vicariously through him. God, the world sounded amazing. Anything outside of check-points and bombs and riots on the streets sounded amazing. Not that we let it get us down. It’s true, you know, what that Phil Coulter yoke sang about – how people in Derry just got on with things.
But, anyway, as we chatted – as we talked – I found myself falling for him. It probably wasn’t sensible. I had other commitments which should have come first . . . but love . . . love can come when you least expect it. We just fell so very madly in love with each other.
But things started to go wrong. You know Derry was tough. The history books are filled with how Derry was tough. And Claude, he knew stuff. He had a background in the French army and some boys, well, they started to get heavy. They wanted him to, you know, help them with stuff. Bad stuff. They were not the kind of men you could say no to. If you did . . . well . . . So Claude knew he had no choice but to leave. He didn’t want to put his life, my life, or my family’s life, at risk – never mind that he felt Derry was his home now. I was heartbroken – devastated to the core. I had just started to feel my life coming together and now everything I knew was being torn from me – for what? Because he wouldn’t get involved. Because he didn’t want to be a part of someone else’s fight.
The very thought of him leaving was horrible. I cried myself to sleep for a full week before he was due to leave and, the night before, he arranged to take me for dinner. I couldn’t eat a bite. I could barely talk I was so distraught about it all.
All night I kept thinking, this is the last meal we will share together. This is the last conversation we will have. This is the last time he will kiss me. Does that sound very melodramatic? I had nothing to compare it to. I’d never been truly in love before, not with someone who loved me back anyway, and it just felt like my life was ending. He was quiet too and I was sure he was feeling the same as I was – as it turned out he was nervous.
Because as we walked home, hugging each other, me unable to speak, he stopped, right there as we walked along the quay and he turned to me and took my face in his hands. I can still now, if I close my eyes, feel the warmth of his breath on my face and the heat of his hands. He kissed me – a proper, deep kiss. (Is that too much information, as you young people would say?) And he whispered that he simply could not live without me. He would understand if I said no, he said as he presented me with the ring – it was his grandmother’s. He’d had his mother send it over from France especially and even though I knew it would be horrible – unbelievably horrible – to leave my family, I knew I had found the person I was meant to be with. I would have to leave with him. I knew that. There was no way we could stay. I knew that I risked a lifetime of upset with my family – walking away from here and all that I had here. The family would say I was being selfish but I was making the least selfish decision of my life.
Claude and I – we would be okay. We would be better than okay. We would be happy. And my family? They would be okay. They would be better than okay and they would be happy. It might have been tough for them to see that but they would be fine. I knew it.
It’s gorgeous, isn’t it? The ring? All the same it doesn’t mean as much to me asthat plain gold band which I wore along with it. Almost nothing in the world is as precious to me as that ring and all it symbolised. If Claude didn’t want to be buried with his ring, I wouldn’t be buried with mine either so I’m leaving it here for you. Keep them safe. Use them. Pass them on to Maisie. Tell her I wanted her to have them. I know she is only a baby – but it’s nice to think they will be around for a long time to come. That people will think of me, and Claude, and our love.
I want these rings to have a happy ending.
Love always,
Betty
xxx
Chapter 17
As Ava slept earlier that afternoon, Hope had spent the time in the farthest reach of the garden, amid the clematis and the wisteria with a bottle of wine for company, still trying to come to terms with the fact that he, Dylan, the man she was supposed to be with was very much in love with someone who most definitely was not her.
She sat on the wooden bench in the shade sipping her glass of Merlot and thought how strange everything was. Ava was pregnant. Ordinarily when such a juicy piece of gossip came her way, Hope would have been on the phone within a matter of seconds to Dyla
n and they would have started to dissect the details over a cup of coffee.
But things were different now. Weird and strange, even if he was acting like they were just the same – that they were still best friends – and that they hadn’t had sex just over a week before. And he had enjoyed it. She knew he had enjoyed it. Men aren’t so great at the whole faking-it thing. But yet he was toe-curlingly in love with Cyndi. The very thought made her feel dizzy – and not necessarily with lust or anything remotely exciting like that. She was dizzy with confusion and that strange unsettled feeling that she did not know what was coming next.
She couldn’t imagine that Dylan and Cyndi with a Y and an I would want her tagging along for much longer, not if they really, truly were very madly in love indeed. Who wants a third wheel clogging up your living room and spare bedroom when you want to fornicate in those rooms in the manner most newly together and very much in love couples want to do? And what if Cyndi found out what had gone on the night before she had moved in? Not that Hope had any intention of telling her. Sweet Baby Jesus, she wasn’t that mad! She was under no illusions that Cyndi could be feisty when she wanted to be and would pound her into smithereens given half the chance.
No, it was pretty inevitable that a lot had to change and that just wouldn’t be so easy. She didn’t earn enough to rent her own place in Belfast. Staff jobs in the media were like the Holy Grail just now and she didn’t want to move back to her parents because, much as they were very proud of her, living back home at the age of thirty-four was verging on the shameful side of things.
Suddenly, and more than likely buoyed by the half bottle of Merlot she had necked at breakneck speed, she felt an urge to phone Dylan, regardless of how things were. He was her friend, even if she could feel that friendship slipping through her fingers.
