Beyond Angel Avenue

by Sarah Michelle Lynch

  I’ve been walking around our neighbourhood for the first time since I got back – familiarising myself – and now, I’m on my way into town. It’s not that cold but the drizzly rain and grey cloud seems to be closing in on me, demanding I explain why I went – and more importantly – why the hell I’ve come back for this.

  The city’s grey, but never dull, and whenever I pass over or beneath the Humber Bridge on the way home, I always get this feeling of happiness wash over me because it’s a symbol with so many connotations. They say home is where the heart is, and Warrick is my heart.

  I’m walking down the Avenue, intending to hop on a bus at some point. I don’t need to walk the whole length because there are bus stops all along the way, but I just want to reacquaint myself and find out which places have changed and which haven’t.

  Reaching the fated corner I met my fiancé on, I stop a moment and hang by the wall, leaning back against it. This used to be a posh Italian bistro and now it’s a live music venue. Closing my eyes I try to put myself in the place of the girl who once stood here every Saturday waiting for life to unfold, to rewind, and take me back to a time when I was ignorant and happy. That innocence I once possessed, I now realise, was taken from me the day my mother died of an overdose. I never mourned her, never got her back either. I gathered ghosts around me for so long, not realising she was the only ghost I refused to acknowledge. Warrick was the only guy to stop and ask why I was standing here. He’s the only man I trust because he’s the same as me – battered by life. When we spent more time together, we fell so hard I realised what real love was for the very first time in my life and all the cobwebs and decay of my mind whooshed away – Warrick’s love a slingshot to the demons of my past.

  If only it were that simple…

  I wander and spot my favourite holistic shop still standing. I walk inside and pick up some natural toiletries. I used to buy henna from here and it was a split pot of henna that led me to Laurie, a guy who did a number on me and made me realise I was chasing away from my ghosts but they were always round a corner. The ghosts included a father who was constantly high and a mother who got off the drugs but secretly got my father onto them. Abandonment left me feeling worthless for so long.

  My travelling abroad was partly because I needed to go off and be like her – to travel and see if I might succumb to the same sins and addictions my mother did when she was a ballet dancer on tour. Well, I didn’t. In some respects, I’m the same old me. I yearn to work, to live, to love. It’s all very simple really. Well, in theory.

  My time abroad included a ten-day spiritual retreat in Japan. I took a vow of silence for the whole of that time and it was enlightening.

  Warrick says I ramble a lot, girls say I’m the best to gossip with. Yeah, so I guess I like to chat. The retreat was interesting because alone with nothing but my own company, I was forced to realise a lot of things. For months I waited on that street corner, for someone or something to rescue me. I waited in all weathers, at all times of the day, and some people may even have mistaken me for a working girl (what with how I dressed and how I was just there, seemingly with nothing better to do). I was waiting, waiting, waiting…

  I was so alone, I was waiting for a friend. That’s all I was waiting for.

  So now as I pay for my goat’s milk soaps and strawberry shower gel, I look around the shop for the henna and I smile. I don’t use henna anymore because my hair’s too light, having spent so much time under the sun. As I look around, I don’t see it.

  “Do you still sell henna?” I ask the girl as she rings in my purchases.

  “No. You can get it online but it’s not very popular anymore and anyway, it became too expensive. We barely used to sell a pot a month.”

  “Yeah?” I nod along just to be friendly.

  “Where do you have your hair done, if you don’t mind me asking?”

  I self-consciously touch my long hair, tied back in a half-up, half-down style today. It’s so long, it almost reaches the bottom of my back.

  “I haven’t been to a salon in years! I’ve been travelling and all these are natural highlights. It might change once the dark starts growing through again… along with the grey.”

  “Grey?” she laughs. “You can’t be more than thirty?”

  “I’m thirty-one, nearly thirty-two, and I’m pretty grey. It sounds like I used to be your only henna customer, too.”

  She hands me my change and I wink, leaving her there with whatever thoughts she has. My thoughts are this: if that shop never sold henna, I would never have dropped my pot and never met Laurie. If I didn’t get a reality check, I never would’ve started stalking street corners and never would’ve met Warrick. The what-ifs could drive people crazy and in fact, during my ten-day retreat, they did.

  At the end of the day, life comes down to two things: the decisions we make and the people we allow to love us. And yes, they are the most difficult life lessons to master. The retreat also gave me time to realise how my mother’s death left me feeling abandoned and worthless – but more importantly, how I became defeatist after she died and let people walk all over me. I never lost my fight, but for a long time, I lost my guts.

  The Jules walking the streets today is not the Jules who left this place three years ago. Yes, I ‘found’ myself while I was abroad, but I also realised my worth, my purpose on this earth and my strength – I never gave up. I guess I didn’t always fight like other people do, but in my own way, I was clawing my way back into society.

  As I’m walking along, I spot a familiar figure up ahead, a woman I recognise among the crowds of strangers filling the pavements. I’m chasing her before I even know what I’m doing. It could be her, it really could! My feet are carrying me because my heart has hope but my mind knows this is impossible. I see her though, with hair as long as mine, flowing down to her waist. It’s dark whereas mine has always been lighter, like Dad’s, whereas Mum’s was black. Mum used to be a dancer but after having me, she wasn’t able to dance anymore. I think she developed some sort of condition in her hips.

  I’m chasing the figure of a woman who reminds me so much of Mum when I hear a bus approaching behind us. There’s a stop just up ahead I can probably make it to in time. I jog a little but as I muscle through the people in front of me, I get to the front of the pack and find the woman gone.

  Gone, again.

  I’ve not felt her presence or seen her like this, not in all the time I have been away. I’ve not told Warrick that she haunts me. I’ve never told anyone. They would think I’m crazy. All I know is how strongly the figure pulls me towards her and how bereft I feel after she vanishes into thin air, like normal.

  As I step onto a bus around midway down the Avenue, I try to shake off reminders, memories and a sick feeling in the pit of my gut. I’ve been back here a week and already, I’m seeing her again. I’m sick, I must be, or maybe it’s this Avenue which makes me sick. I shake it off and think about Warrick, my future husband, and suddenly a slice of sunshine pokes through the rain.

  Out of the window I notice a lot of shops have been replaced by coffee places and bars. It’s a hive of entertainment down here. It’s a pity because I liked it just the way it was. Things change; people and places move on. I just have to hope Warrick and I aren’t the same and will sustain, exactly as we are.

  Chapter Three

  Jules

  “Jules, you home? Jules!?” he shouts from downstairs.

  “Up here.”

  I hear him chuck his coat and shoes off in the hallway and he comes bounding up the stairs and flying straight towards me. I’m standing in front of the full-length mirror checking out one of the many purchases I made today. I had to buy some new clothes because for months I’ve been living in bikinis and shorts.

  “Love it,” he says, holding me from behind, his face buried in my hair.

  “Missed you too,” I say to ease his worry, and turn into his arms and hold him. He kisses my lips and looks at me like it’s the fi
rst time he’s ever seen me. “What’s up?”

  “The day just seemed so long, I just wanted to be here with you,” he tries to convince me.

  “Is work that bad? I mean, more than usual?”

  “While you were away I got my MA in social work, funded of course, and now I’m the lead drugs and alcohol social worker for the area. I go into schools and all kinds of places to talk about it. Sometimes I even tell them my own experiences. I thought I mentioned all this to you already?” I shake my head. “Oh, I thought I did?”

  I raise one eyebrow. “That’s a big deal, darling. I didn’t know you’d been promoted?”

  Why didn’t he tell me?

  He pulls away from me, unbuttons the top two buttons on his shirt and lifts it over his head, tossing it in the wash basket. He removes his black work trousers and drapes those over the suit stand.

  “I think because of my former lifestyle,” he begins explaining, “it made me want to do this. Maybe, also, I guess… when you left, I threw myself into work. I guess that might have something to do with my promotion.”

  “Oh, well,” I pause, sensing he’s avoiding again, “I understand. I totally understand.”

  He starts pottering around the room in his boxers, looking through my purchases, checking out the price tags.

  “You’re surprised?” I challenge him.

  Sat on the edge of my clothes-covered bed, he looks up into my eyes and remarks, “You never would’ve treated yourself like this before.”

  He handed me his credit card this morning thinking I wouldn’t use it but I have.

  “She’s gone, Warrick. The woman I was, she’s gone.”

  “Hmm,” he musters and stands up, folding his arms, his feet far apart. “You scare me. Buying nice stuff, actually feeding yourself… plus the bedroom action has been a little more wild and I didn’t think it could wilder, actually.”

  I throw my head back laughing and as he passes by me, walking out of the room, he slaps my bum and lets me know, “I’ll run a bath but I want to see all this stuff on you afterwards.”

  “Okay,” I smile.

  I listen to Warrick burst into laughter when he finds the bath already drawn, candles around the edges, and all my favourite products on display. “I fucking missed you so fucking much, Julie!” He comes stomping down the corridor and back into the bedroom, falling at my feet.

  “I’m sorry, I can’t hold it in any longer, I’m sorry!” he bawls, tears wetting my nice, new jeans. I run my hands through his hair and feel glad he’s finally crying. I cried a million when I first got back.

  “Warrick, you cut your hair. You went back to the gym. You got promoted. You must’ve had offers while I was gone. I wouldn’t blame you if you were lonely. I wouldn’t–”

  “God, no,” he groans, clinging to my legs, “I couldn’t. They weren’t you. Yeah, I got hit on since I gave myself a bit of an overhaul… but I couldn’t get over you!”

  I join him on the floor, on my knees too, and brush my lips all over his face to collect his tears and his cries of pain. I sense he’s been through the gamut of emotions I have – feeling lonely, being propositioned, tentatively striking up possible new bonds then chickening out because the bond we had wasn’t quite unbroken. When you love like we do, it’s hard to explain how being apart can sometimes be better than being together and dealing with the murk of life at the same time. This is what worries me now: are we finally ready to settle down, make a go of it, and promise not to part, no matter what happens?

  “What about Anna? What happened… after I was gone?” I ask, feeling cautious. I couldn’t care less about other women, except her. Her. She’s still a raw subject but I need to know.

  He cleaves to me and murmurs in my hair, “We don’t talk anymore. After you left, she was a nightmare. She wouldn’t leave me alone. Then she divorced Jake, and Joe got caught in the crossfire.”

  “Oh?” I try to comfort him, try to hush him.

  “She was adamant with you gone, there was nothing standing in our way of her and me getting back together. She just didn’t get how much you mean to me, she didn’t understand. She couldn’t see how much I love you. We had a few dinners out together and I thought I was helping her, I thought she was beginning to see it could never be how it used to be. She got angry when I laid down the law and said I was waiting for you and I would wait forever. She said some unpleasant things and went too far. Now, we don’t talk but if it were up to her, I wouldn’t see my son. Luckily for me I always get to drive him home from training every night because she’s too drunk to pick him up. The amount of times I’ve dropped him off, you know, and two minutes later he’s come chasing down the street to stay here…”

  Warrick looks up into my eyes, his glazed expression asking I interpret that for myself. “Because she’s drunk, or because–”

  “She has company,” he replies immediately.

  “Oh.” I suck in both my lips, not sure what to say. When I rationalise it all, I reason with him, “She had a good thing with Jake. He was good for her and she chucked it all away like she chucked you away when the going got tough. It seems to me she doesn’t know how to stick by a man through the hard stuff.”

  He kisses the top of my cleavage in the sheer ivory blouse I’m wearing. I finally got some bras that fit and I’m sure he’s noticed.

  “Will you stick by me through the hard stuff?”

  I raise one eyebrow and brush my hand against his boxers. “Especially the hard stuff.”

  He grins and purses his lips. “So, why three years? Why not three months?”

  He finally asks the question that’s been hanging over us, ever since I got back.

  I look away, feeling shameful. “It ended up being three years for a number of reasons. The first reason was I had money to blow. I told myself I’d spend it all and then come back home… except you know I’ve always been pretty good with money and it turned into a working holiday along the way. I picked grapes in New Zealand, waited tables in Australia. I wasn’t running from you. I was healing. I was trying to release myself of the regrets I might have had. The thought of you kissing her in a state of undress when you were meant to be in love with me–”

  “I was drunk and didn’t mean for it to happen! We didn’t sleep–” he begins to protest, fury in his eyes.

  I press a finger over his lips. “I’m trying to be honest and I’m honestly telling you that the thought of it all still feels like a hot poker to my heart. Walking over coals would be easier. I’d hate her if I didn’t pity her for losing two good guys. I’d hate her if I didn’t understand what it is she lost in you. Nevertheless when I left…” I take a breath, trying not to let myself get upset, “…it was because I had to get away before we started tearing chunks out of one another, before we ended up like you and Anna are now. You and me might have been stuck together in this house and we’d have just started hating one another and that’s why I had to go. Every step that took me away from you hurt so bloody much but it got easier and I knew you’d be proud of me for all the things I saw and did and all the people I was brave enough to make friends with after having no friends for so long. I kept going because I could feel you, in my heart, right here,” I press his hand to my chest, “and I could feel you spurring me on and I could feel my love for you growing and I prayed you felt the same, I prayed everyday you were safe and well and still loved me as much as I love you. I came back because I ran out of money but I never ran out of love for you. You said you would protect me but I’ve never been the one who’s needed protecting, Rick. You know that.”

  “What if I had slept with her?” He scowls, provoking me. “Would you be married to someone else by now?”

  I shake my head. “You wouldn’t. You love me. You never loved her like you love me. You were young when you met Anna and didn’t know yourself yet. It’s me you love.”

  He winks. “How can you be so sure?”

  I help him lie back on the floor and pull him free of his boxers. He�
��s rock hard, hot and throbbing. “I’m about thirty shags in one week sure,” I tell him as I begin pleasuring my lover, my best friend, the man of my dreams.

  “Wild,” he reminds me, threading his hands in my hair.

  “Just free,” I tell him, feeling at peace, “finally free of everything that went before. Free to love you.”

  “Jules?”

  “Yeah?” I ask, trying to seem light, what with his length being in my hand.

  “She tried to rape me. I’m not joking. You might not believe me but it was attempted rape. It’s why I never told you about it until much later. I’m sorry, but men can get raped. You didn’t see the look in her eyes when I rebuffed her, it was hateful–”

  I frown, thinking it unbelievable. “I don’t–”

  “I didn’t know how to explain it all… I didn’t know. I know how it seems, but you weren’t there. It’s taken me all this time to get over what she did to me. It was horrible.”

  I try to find some courage and decide, “None of that matters now. I’m back and I’ll protect you… except when I get a bit nasty… you might need to protect yourself, then.”

  We both grin and I giggle as I lick his shaft, hearing him moan so sexily.

  Chapter Four

  Jules

  A couple of days later, it’s Saturday night. Inevitably it means facing the firing squad, i.e. Warrick’s dad, Terry. We’ve invited him around for dinner along with his girlfriend Wendy and Warrick’s son, Joe.

  Joe’s the first to arrive and I know it’s him without checking because he bangs on the door rather than using the ‘farty doorbell’ (as he terms it) which plays Greensleeves through the house when it’s rung! What can I say, the tune came with the house when I bought it and neither of us have had the heart to change it.

  I’m busy in the kitchen so Warrick answers the door and I hear two very similar voices booming through the hall. I left this place while Joe was only a boy but now he sounds like a man. Whoa. So, that’s something else I will have to face up to – I’ve missed Joe growing into a man and if I had been here, I might have been able to protect him from the nightmare of his parent’s arguments in the wake of Anna’s second divorce.