Magic Sometimes Happens

by Margaret James

  ‘Fifteen minutes, Patrick – is that all your family is worth to you?’

  ‘So how long do you need?’

  ‘I guess fifteen, twenty minutes will be fine. Patrick, I don’t quite know how to say this, but—’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘You’re still mad at me?’

  ‘No, Lexie, I’m not mad. But, like we both know, we don’t have any future as a couple. So I’m trying to be civilised, which is what you always wanted, right?’

  ‘You’re still with that woman?’

  ‘I don’t wish to discuss it.’

  ‘Oh – okay.’ She sighed and then she disconnected. I was surprised to realise I felt – nothing. No anger, no regret, no irritation, no desire to hurt or wound or throw a pan of pasta at her head. I’d changed, moved on, and there was no way I could go back to being how I used to be, to feeling how I used to feel.

  It shocked me somehow. I felt like I was grieving for somebody who died. I guess that somebody was part of me.

  Lex was running late.

  But she was never very punctual, so I was expecting that and I had brought my laptop. I got myself a latte, was drinking it and working through my emails when she came in hot and flustered, gasping like she ran a marathon and saying she couldn’t find a place to park.

  ‘Sit down, get your breath back.’ What was the etiquette for people who were friends and lovers once but weren’t friends or lovers any more, although they didn’t hate each other, didn’t wish each other any harm?

  Did we air-kiss, cheek-kiss, shake hands or do nothing?

  The seconds ticked on by and we did nothing.

  ‘What would you like?’ I asked. ‘A cappuccino, brownie, smoothie? Do you want a sandwich, croissant, muffin?’

  ‘Just an espresso, please. I need to watch my weight.’

  Yeah, you do, I thought. Your thighs have gotten heavy and you’ve thickened round the waist. You ought to climb some stairs.

  But then I felt mean.

  I went up to the counter where the dumbest snail of a barista in the universe was serving, so I stood in line a time. When I got back to our table in a quiet corner, Lex was looking worried. She was fussing with a paper napkin and tearing it in shreds. Did she still think I was mad, in spite of what I said?

  I wasn’t mad at all. I didn’t care what Lexie thought, what Lexie did, what Lexie felt or said. She would never jerk my chain again. So talking with my wife was easy, after all.

  We discussed the kids, Joe’s school and Polly’s day care. It appeared that Mr Wonderful was no longer so keen to drag my wife and children all around the world with him. There would be occasional trips abroad. But from now on, Lexie and the kids would spend most of their time in the Twin Cities.

  ‘You were telling me about some conference when we talked a while back?’ she continued as she stirred more sweetener in her coffee which I saw she hadn’t touched.

  ‘Yeah, it’s on thought-to-text, on all the new developments in experimental software. Delegates are coming from all over – Europe, Asia, South America, the Middle East.’

  ‘Where is it?’

  ‘Colorado.’

  ‘You’ll be busy getting stuff together?’

  ‘I need to do some preparation, yeah. I’m scheduled to give a couple lectures and various presentations. I’m chairing several meetings.’

  I expected her to make some smart remark about my work, how she knew it was important, more important than my family, how I cared about my work more than I ever did about my wife and children, how it was the reason we broke up, all stuff I heard before. But I got a shock. ‘I’m sure you’ll do it very well,’ she said.

  ‘It’s kind of you to say so. Thank you, Lex.’

  ‘Good luck, although I don’t suppose you’ll need it.’

  ‘Lex, I’m sorry, but I have to leave. I need to see a student.’

  ‘Okay. It’s been good to talk.’ She stood up, found her purse. ‘Pat, I hope we’ll meet from time to time? Just the two of us, I mean, as friends?’

  ‘I hope so, too,’ I said and was surprised to find I meant it.

  We said goodbye, shook hands. But then she stood on tiptoes and kissed me on the cheek. ‘Goodbye, Pat,’ she said. ‘You take care, now.’

  ‘You take care as well.’

  ‘I shall, and listen, Pat – if we can both be sensible and calm, we don’t need to have a great big fight.’

  ‘Of course we don’t,’ I said and then I thought: one day when things have settled down, I guess it’s possible we might be friends again?

  ‘We’re adults,’ continued Lex.

  ‘We are.’

  ‘We’re parents, too. We love our kids. Whatever we decide to do about our own relationship, we want the best for them.’

  ‘Of course we do. Lex, I have to get back now, but I’ll be in touch about the money, schooling, day care, regular access – all that stuff. I can’t imagine there’ll be any problems.’

  ‘I’m so glad it’s working out,’ said Lex.

  ‘Yeah, so am I.’ As I watched her walking out the door, I thought, I loved that woman once. I was so sure our love had died. But she was so sweet today, so reasonable, so generous. She was the Alexis I had loved.

  Perhaps a little spark of love remained?

  ROSIE

  FROM: Patrick M Riley

  SUBJECT: Cool it!

  TO: Rosie Denham

  SENT: July 26 15.27

  Rosie, I’ve been thinking about us.

  It was so great to be with you. But now I’m home again, I realise my life is here in Minnesota with my wife and kids.

  Lex and I are going to try again.

  It’s time for you and me to draw a line.

  You take care now.

  Pat

  I had half expected it, of course.

  But when the actual email pinged into my box at half past nine that evening, while Tess and I were having a late dinner at my flat, I was so shocked that Tess kept on repeating stay with me, Rosie, darling like they do on Casualty.

  Then, not like they do on Casualty, she revived us both with Chardonnay. It was lucky she was there for me, or heaven alone knows what I might have done – run mad and torn my garments and my hair, or something equally Victorian and ridiculous?

  We must have made a very touching tableau. It was like she was my maid or mother and I was a nineteenth-century virgin whose fiancé had been killed in Africa or up the Khyber Pass. I could have posed for one of those revolting every-picture-tells-a-story sentimental paintings depicting fainting women, weeping children, howling dogs, entitled Dreadful News.

  Two or three days later, I still couldn’t believe that Pat had told me it was over, that it was – how exactly had he put it – time to draw a line. Well, I could believe it. He was safely home again, back in the USA, and it turned out I’d been what I always feared I’d be – a temporary diversion, after all.

  ‘I’m not worth it, surely?’ he had asked me.

  Well, he got that right.

  It was the follow-up that really hurt.

  FROM: Patrick M Riley

  SUBJECT: Okay?

  TO: Rosie Denham

  SENT: July 30 13.34

  Rosie – haven’t heard from you in days.

  Please let me know that you’re okay?

  Pat XXX

  FROM: Patrick M Riley

  SUBJECT: Talk to me?

  TO: Rosie Denham

  SENT: July 31 14.59

  Rosie, you’re not picking up my calls on your new cell. Did I get the number wrong? Do you have a problem with your laptop, too? On the blink again?

  Pat X

  A casual email asking if I was okay. The mention of my laptop, was it on the blink again? So he must have realised he’d blown it, had decided he might like to see me if he came to London, if he wanted casual sex. We will be forever in your debt. You need me, I’ll be there. Did I dream it, or was that what Patrick Riley said?

  He clearly hadn’t m
eant a word of it.

  PATRICK

  It looked like I messed up. Rosie didn’t reply to emails. When I rang her cell phone she refused to take my calls. Or I was calling the wrong number. She ignored my texts.

  I guess if I was calling the wrong number, the person who was getting all my stuff would be deleting it? The chances were they wouldn’t call me back.

  I was worried now, so worried that I called her parents on their landline. When her mother finally picked up, she sounded very cross. But she didn’t sound distressed. So that was a relief.

  ‘No, Professor Riley, Rosie isn’t here,’ she snapped, like she was talking to a disobedient dog.

  ‘I’m sorry to disturb you, Mrs Denham, but she isn’t taking calls from me. Please could you assure me she’s okay?’

  ‘She was very well four hours ago. Mr Riley, if my daughter wished to speak to you, I’m sure she’d get in touch. This is a very antisocial time to ring, you know. It’s the middle of the night.’

  ‘I’m sorry if I woke you.’

  ‘You did, and now I’ll find it very difficult to sleep without some form of medication.’

  ‘As I said already, I’m sorry to disturb you, Mrs Denham.’

  ‘Goodnight, Mr Riley.’

  August

  ROSIE

  ‘Just go on ignoring him,’ said Tess. ‘The man’s a total jerk.’ She glugged down more red wine and poured a second glass for me. ‘Laptop on the blink again – my arse.’ She glanced towards my laptop, which was fine. ‘Look, there’s another text.’

  Darling, won’t you write me?

  ‘Delete?’ I asked.

  ‘Of course delete, you muffin-head.’

  So I clicked delete obediently then took another gulp of my Shiraz. I’d bought four bottles from the Waitrose in the Edgware Road on my way home and meant to drink them all. ‘Tess, do you ever hear from Ben?’

  ‘Yeah, this week he’s been emailing and texting fit to bust a gut.’

  ‘What does he say?’

  ‘Let’s have a look.’ Tess found her phone and started scrolling. ‘Oh, the usual rubbish you get from stupid tossers who realise they’ve messed up. When will you be coming back to Minnesota, darling? Miss you, babe! Honey, won’t you call me up some time?’

  ‘My goodness, you can tell the man’s a novelist. I hope he’s copied all that stuff to whatsername, the woman who’ll be writing his authorised biography.’

  ‘So do I. After all, his fans deserve no less. But before this latest lot, I hadn’t heard a dickybird for months. He didn’t answer any of my texts. He didn’t seem to care when I took off. But now it seems he’s changed his mind. I thought that was a woman’s privilege?’

  ‘I never thought I would be dumped by email. I thought at least he’d ring me. Men are all such cowards.’

  ‘But we need them, don’t we, for when our girly bits need servicing? Men have the perfect tools to do the job.’ Tess sighed. ‘I know Ben Fairfax is a git. But for a couple of lovely months, I thought he was the one. I thought meeting him in Vegas had to be my lifetime highlight, that he was Prince Charming, my happy-ever-after.’

  ‘You didn’t think that at all.’

  ‘I sort of did, when I was drunk.’

  ‘The trouble is you can’t always be drunk. Well, you can, but it’s not good for you. It’s difficult to put on your mascara while you’re drunk.’

  ‘What are we going to do?’ asked Tess. ‘I’m getting old. I have all these fine lines around my eyes. Or when I smile, I do. I’ve got others coming round my nose.’

  ‘You haven’t any on your actual nose.’

  ‘Of course I haven’t any on my actual nose. You’d have to do some serious skin-neglecting to get lines on your nose. I’ve never seen a wrinkled nose, have you? Well, not on anybody under eighty, anyway.’

  ‘Let’s start another bottle,’ I suggested.

  ‘Yeah, why don’t we?’

  ‘Damn those Yankees, eh?’

  ‘I’ll get the alimony first then I’ll damn ruddy Ben. Maybe we should find ourselves some British guys? I know this cool club in Dagenham—’

  ‘No, Tess – no guys. British, Yankee, aliens from outer space, none of them are any use to us. Okay, there might be good ones out there somewhere, special pebbles on life’s great big beach. But you’d need to shift a million tons of worthless shingle before you found a gem.’

  ‘Oh, come on, it’s not as bad as that. You’re being very glass-half-empty now.’

  ‘Yes, that’s right, I am – but at least I haven’t dropped the glass and broken it. I haven’t cut my fingers on the shards.’ I shook my head and sighed. ‘That Y chromosome, it fouls up almost everything. Tess, I promise you, I’m done with men.’

  ‘What are you going to do then, work and work and work like Fanny, end up rich and powerful and alone?’

  ‘It might be a plan. But Fanny’s not alone in any case. She’s got her gorgeous Caspar and probably half a dozen lovers, too. The last time I saw Fanny, she had a great big knuckle-duster of a brand new ring on her right hand and great big smile on her face. Tess, forget the alimony. You don’t need Ben’s money.’

  ‘Yes I do.’

  ‘You don’t. You’re not a parasite, a feeble-minded gold-digger who preys on ghastly men. Listen, sell your diamonds. Get a flat and come and work for me.’

  ‘You mean in your PR business?’

  ‘What else would I mean, you muffin-head yourself?’

  ‘You’re serious, are you?’

  ‘Yes, of course I’m serious. Tess, you’re smart. You’re sharp. I think you could be brilliant at promotions and PR.’

  ‘Why would you think that?’

  ‘You come from a family of market traders, right?’

  ‘Yeah, people who sell cauliflowers and spuds.’

  ‘Then you worked for a salvage merchant, didn’t you?’

  ‘Yes, but I—’

  ‘So you could sell stuff for my clients, couldn’t you? Cauliflowers or antique bathroom fittings, selling’s in your blood. You’re used to doing deals?’

  ‘I suppose. Okay, I’ll come and work for you. Tess and Rosie sort your life, eh? Yeah, let’s drink to that. When shall I start?’

  ‘What about immediately?’

  PATRICK

  I still can’t believe I was so dumb.

  After all I tell my students, after I tore Rosie up about her carelessness, I messed up spectacularly. I’m a full professor of IT, and what did I do? When I went to get Lex her espresso, I forgot to log out of my email application.

  So any burglar could walk in and shit over my stuff.

  So any burglar did.

  While I was at the counter, Lex wrote Rosie. She sent the message through my email application and then she deleted it from my Sent folder and from my Deleted one as well.

  So I wouldn’t see it on the app because it wasn’t there.

  So I would not suspect a thing.

  How did I work out what must have happened? A week after I met with Lex, my email application failed. It was usually reliable. But once in a while it got the screaming heebie-jeebies and packed up.

  So I had to go into my Gmail. My app sent and received all of my messages through Gmail and Gmail doesn’t delete anything.

  So as I was looking for something else, I found it. There it was as large as life and twice as toxic in my Sent Mail folder.

  FROM: Patrick M Riley

  SUBJECT: Cool it!

  TO: Rosie Denham

  SENT: July 26 15.27

  Rosie, I’ve been thinking about us.

  It was so great to be with you. But now I’m home again, I realise my life is here in Minnesota with my wife and kids.

  Lex and I are going to try again.

  It’s time for you and me to draw a line.

  You take care now.

  Pat

  ROSIE

  I was surprised to find how much it kept on hurting.

  But I knew I had to work on that,
get over it. So I did cool and capable, at least during the day. While I was with Tess, we even had a laugh, a girly giggle. I pretended I was fine.

  I also knew Tess would be good. But she was more than good. She was persistent and determined and she also worked extremely hard. She chose not to understand when anyone said no. She just kept on at them until they gave in and said yes. She didn’t waste her time on niceties or idle chatting. She put her offer on the table and demanded an immediate response. She got more done in twenty minutes than I did in an average working day.

  Whenever Tess picked up the phone, she sold – catering to private functions, interviews to local radio stations, a range of articles to magazines. I reckoned she could sell a brand new range of vegan wholefoods to a pride of lions in the Serengeti National Park. So I was not especially surprised when she had no trouble selling cupcakes made in a client’s kitchen up in Leicestershire to Harrods.

  ‘We’re winning, aren’t we, mate?’ she asked me, beaming as she disconnected after she had closed a deal on a range of cushion covers I’d been trying to sell to national chains for weeks and weeks.

  ‘Yes, we are, all thanks to you,’ I said. ‘Tess, could you go to Manchester tomorrow?’

  ‘Who or what’s in Manchester?’

  ‘A woman who makes special jams and marmalades and stuff – her lemon curd’s sublime. She wants to sell stuff locally.’

  ‘Why would she sell it locally when she could probably sell it nationwide, if it’s that brilliant?’

  ‘Well, precisely, Tess – and that’s why I’m sending you to see this lady. You could get some sales locally and encourage her to be a little more ambitious, couldn’t you? She’s got all the necessary certificates, so she—’

  ‘Yeah, I know – so she can sell to shops, at markets, to the general public. I’m a market trader’s daughter, right?’

  ‘Of course, I was forgetting. Okay, I’ve tasted all the stuff she makes. Mum has tasted it as well and if my mother passes anything it must be close to perfect.’

  ‘I’ll have her jams in Fortnum’s by tomorrow afternoon. Or I’ll have some orders, anyway.’ Then Tess looked at me with narrowed eyes. ‘As for the other rubbish in your life – you’re dealing with it, are you?’

  ‘I suppose.’

  ‘You mind you do. You tell yourself a hundred times a day – that man is worthless, that man is a waste of oxygen, that man is bad.’