At First Sight

by Hannah Sunderland

  ‘Ah, he’s nice enough. Doesn’t deserve to have this goin’ on behind his back, that’s for sure.’

  ‘Yeah, that hug at the door made it pretty clear that Carrick wouldn’t be taking up a guest bed tonight.’

  ‘I know, right. I’ve told them to be careful. One day Darlow’s gonna come out with somethin’ and drop ’em right in it. But I guess that if I was in their shoes and that was the only way to have the person I loved, I’d probably be doin’ the same thing.’

  I felt that gnawing, unpleasant feeling in my stomach again, the one that I’d not been able to pinpoint before.

  Green-eyed monster gettin’ yer down? Poor Nelly. I heard Abi’s voice from somewhere behind me but I didn’t react, didn’t even flinch, because I knew she’d be coming. Every time I saw her was whenever this feeling began unfolding in my gut, this deep irrational jealousy and feeling of inferiority, all sparked by the woman he had loved, still loved, and all of the things they’d done together that we never would. He probably had memories with her in every corner of his hometown and mine for that matter. Every bench had, at one time, probably been witness to a tender kiss or a late-night fight on the way home from an evening out. Every person in this town knew Charlie as Abi’s Charlie, not Nell’s, and it would probably stay that way forever.

  It’s not his fault. Abi’s voice came again, closer this time, so loud it sounded as though her lips were pressed to my ear. I’m pretty hard to forget.

  I swallowed hard and pushed myself up to standing.

  ‘We should probably get going if we’re gonna help with dinner.’

  He looked back out to the view, sighed and stood up. ‘Right yer are.’

  As we walked back towards Steve, I thought about asking him how he was feeling about tomorrow, but I didn’t. Tomorrow was the day for mourning, the day he’d been dreading for the last two years, and I didn’t need to help bring that pain on a day early.

  Back at the lighthouse, we found Carrick rolling pastry while Orlagh fried something delicious on the stove. She quickly set us to work whipping cream and cutting strawberries for the Victoria sponge she’d made.

  ‘The other guests should be back soon. They went out to see the abbey,’ she said as she filled the pastry-coated pie dish with whatever was in the pan. My mouth watered with the smell of it.

  ‘There’s an abbey here?’ I asked Charlie, and I saw him flinch a little at my question. It wasn’t until I’d spoken it that I realised that it was the homonym causing the discomfort.

  ‘Yeah, just a wee one,’ Carrick replied. ‘You remember the pirate queen I told yer about on the way into town?’

  I nodded.

  ‘She’s buried there and her castle’s down by the dock. Charlie can show it to yer before we leave tomorrow.’

  The sound of voices in the hallway made us all turn and Orlagh transformed from flirting chef to charming hostess. She wiped her hands on a green and white checked tea towel and moved to the doorway where they shared a muffled greeting and when she returned, she brought the two of them in with her. A woman stepped in behind her. She beamed across at Carrick, her brown hair blown wild by the wind.

  ‘This is my dear friend Carrick, his nephew—’

  ‘Charlie,’ she said and suddenly, the stranger was rushing forward and flinging her arms around him.

  Charlie reciprocated the hug rigidly and tapped her shoulder awkwardly, the knife he’d been using to chop strawberries still in his hand, until she pulled away. ‘How the devil are you?’

  ‘I’m okay. It’s been a long time,’ he said in a voice that wasn’t his. ‘Are you here for the memorial?’

  She nodded and looked from Charlie to me, confusion on her face.

  ‘Sorry, how rude am I? Who is this?’ she asked.

  ‘Nell,’ Charlie said.

  ‘Hi, Nell. I’m Una.’

  Una, where had I heard that name before? And was that the slightest hint of a Brummie accent I detected? ‘Were you a friend of Abi’s too?’

  ‘No, she didn’t know her,’ Charlie said before I had chance to. I’d have been annoyed that he wasn’t letting me speak, if I didn’t know that it was because he was trying not to say something else. I’d had verbal diarrhoea enough times to know when someone was trying to hold it back. ‘Are the girls here?’

  She rolled her eyes and grinned from ear to ear. ‘They’re with my parents,’ she said, her pinched lips hinting that there was more to this. ‘We thought we’d get away while we still can.’ Her hand dropped to her belly.

  ‘Your … again?’ he asked.

  She nodded. ‘Twins again, can you believe it?’

  ‘I can’t,’ Charlie said with vacant eyes.

  ‘Oh,’ Una responded unsurely before turning back to Charlie. ‘Jamie’s gonna be so excited to see you.’ She looked over her shoulder and shouted, ‘Jamie! Look who’s here!’

  Jamie, why did I know these names? Why did I know …

  As Jamie stepped through the door, I remembered where I knew them from. Jamie, Charlie’s ex-friend who’d forced him out that night and Una, the wife who’d been betrayed against the wall of a nightclub smoking area.

  I saw Charlie bristle, his hands fidgeting around the knife in his hand, the blade still stained watery red. I hoped that that shade wouldn’t be getting darker in the next few seconds.

  Jamie was tall, broad and you could tell that he was ripped just from the way his shirt hung over his body. Beneath his clothes he probably looked like Chris Pratt, only a gross, unfaithful, lecherous, detestable version. His hair was blond and slicked back, although the wind had done its best to cast it into disarray, and he came in wearing a smug smile, as if he was feeding from Charlie’s obvious discomfort.

  ‘We tried to contact you a few times, but it seemed like you’d dropped off the map. You’re skinny,’ Una said, looking him up and down, as Jamie came to her side, slotted his arm around her shoulders and kissed the top of her head.

  ‘It’s been a while.’ Jamie extended his hand to Charlie and for one horribly tense moment, I thought that Charlie was going to turn away. But he didn’t and I exhaled a relieved breath as they shook hands, Jamie’s fingers brushing the hairline scars across Charlie’s knuckles that had been made on the same night that was the cause of all this awkwardness. Did Una know? Had he confessed and were they working through it? Or was the girl at the club one of many who would never be spoken of?

  ‘Doesn’t seem like that long to me,’ Charlie said, his eyes holding Jamie’s gaze in a look of abject disgust.

  ‘Well, we should probably get changed out of these muddy boots,’ Una said, trying to break the tension.

  ‘Dinner won’t be long now,’ Orlagh chimed in.

  ‘Excellent,’ Una said, taking Jamie’s hand and leading him back towards the door.

  ‘Good seeing you, Charlie.’ Jamie narrowed his eyes. ‘We missed you last year and the one before that.’ He sent Charlie a grin and then he was gone.

  I reached over and took the knife from Charlie’s shaking, angry fingers, placing it on the worktop and taking Charlie by the hands.

  ‘Come on, let’s get some air,’ I said and led him towards what I presumed was the back door.

  As far as I could see by the tattered love stories of everyone around the table, love and life were often incompatible things – Darlow excluded, although I’m sure he’d have a story to add to our list of doomed love affairs in around fourteen years. Love was the Disney film of emotions. It was the tender kisses and the sunset dances, the fade to black after happily ever after. But there was no such thing as happily ever after; there was only happily ever now or happily ever then. Love cannot last forever. It’s slain by poor decisions, lack of compatibility, selfishness, greed and, eventually, death.

  With Joel, love had been fleeting and all-consuming, but looking back now, something had always felt ever so slightly wrong. A canker that grew and grew until the love was overcome by it, gradually turning it to hate.

 
Abi may have died, but Charlie still loved her, as did Carrick and Kenna and countless other people in the town we’d left behind on a motorbike named Steve. But when Charlie died, so would his love. Which begged the question: is there any point in loving? Yes, it makes you feel good at the time, it gives your day purpose and allows you someone to moan to when you return home from work after a bad day, but eventually that love is going to cause someone pain, if it hasn’t already. Even the greatest love has hurt someone. Everyone goes on about the love of Romeo and Juliet, but what about Paris? Does anyone spare a thought for him, cast aside and forgotten in a heartbeat as soon as another floated Juliet’s boat?

  I knew that Charlie felt something for me, but what was it? And even if it was love, how would it compare to the love he felt for Abi? Would he forever find the love he felt for me lacking in some way, unable to put his finger on the reason why his heart never leapt as high, why his palms never grew to the same levels of clamminess as when he’d been holding her hand?

  Charlie raised a forkful of piecrust to his mouth and ate it as Carrick regaled us with a story of when he and Orlagh had been married. How could it be that I was jealous of Abi? Someone who I’d never met and never would. Someone who was no threat to me, because she was literally dead and buried. But death did silly things to people’s minds. Even the angriest little shite of a person in the whole world could die and still there would be someone who came out with the phrase you hear at every funeral. ‘He was someone who touched many lives and who will be missed by all who knew him.’

  No, he wasn’t. He was a rodent with small-man syndrome who instilled pure hatred in anyone who knew him. But he died and so now he is put on the pedestal that only death can award.

  I’m not saying that Abi was a horrible person. I’d never met her so I couldn’t possibly know, but her death had canonised her, raised her up to godly standards that I could never dream of reaching while alive.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Sometime after dinner, I found myself sitting on the ledge of the actual lighthouse part of the hotel with Charlie, sipping on whisky and listening to the waves crashing somewhere in the distance. I glanced down at the drop below and my stomach lurched when I wasn’t able to see the shadow-blackened ground. I looked down at my feet dangling through the railings and felt a sense of pride inside me at the small victory, even if the lack of solid ground beneath my feet did make me feel a little sick.

  ‘Twins!’ Charlie exclaimed, his voice thick with quiet rage. ‘Two sets of them.’

  ‘I know, but who needs that many children really?’ I sighed in reply. ‘As soon as they’re born he’s going to be living in a constant state of sleep deprival and be perpetually covered in some form of bodily fluid. Is that really what you want from your life?’ Charlie swigged from the bottle of bourbon that he’d grabbed on the way out of the kitchen and promised to replace before Donal got back.

  ‘Well, no. Maybe not four children, all under the age of five, all in one sticky, snot-covered go. But one would be nice.’ The wind was less here than it had been on the cliffs, but it was still cold enough to leave goose bumps in its wake, strong enough to make its way through my clothes. ‘All I’m saying is, what the feck am I doing wrong if a person like him is getting rewarded for being a complete prick?’

  ‘You’re not doing anything wrong. Life just isn’t fair.’

  ‘You’re damn right it’s not. He has Una, kids, a distressingly nice house and a sweet job and, what do I have? Feck all, that’s what.’

  That last comment smarted a little. You have me, I thought.

  ‘What is it with you and towers?’ I asked to get on to a different topic, my mouth burning from the whisky.

  ‘I like being high up,’ he replied. ‘Like a cat, but not my cat because my cat sucks.’

  ‘Hey,’ I said. ‘There is nothing wrong with Magnus. He’s just a very good judge of character, that’s all.’

  ‘Ouch. You wound me, Nell Coleman.’ I could feel him easing a little the further away the conversation got from Jamie.

  ‘How are you feeling about tomorrow?’ I asked.

  ‘Tryin’ not to think about it,’ he said, swigging from the bottle again and passing it to me. The glass was warm from his hand. ‘Scared shitless of seein’ Siobhan. Think she might try’n flay me on the spot.’

  ‘Don’t worry, you’ll have Carrick and me to protect you,’ I said, although I wasn’t half as confident as I sounded.

  ‘Ha! I think yer mean you and only you. Carrick won’t want to get blood on his pretty green suit.’

  I chuckled and took a swig from the neck of the bottle.

  ‘Why would Siobhan want to flay you anyway?’

  He paused before answering while I took another swig and passed the bottle back to him.

  ‘When it happened, I completely shut down. I didn’t call anyone and tell them, I just lay on the sofa and spent all of my energy tryin’ to continue breathin’. Then, one day, the coroner rang and asked what plans we had for the body.’ Charlie shook his head, as if trying to shake off the memory. ‘I couldn’t talk about it, couldn’t even think about Abi being referred to as “the body” so I gave him Siobhan’s number and told him that she’d be dealin’ with the funeral arrangements and gettin’ Abi back to Ireland.’ He held a hand to his temple and shook his head. ‘The first thing that woman knew about her daughter being dead was a coroner calling, two weeks after it’d happened, asking her where he should send the body of Abigale Murphy.’

  ‘Wow.’ I was trying to keep my opinions on the matter from showing up on my face. ‘So, that’s why they’re all so mad at you?’

  He nodded. ‘That and the fact that I didn’t come to the funeral or the memorial mass the year after. They think it’s because I couldn’t be bothered to make the trip, but that’s not it at all.’

  ‘It’s because, if you did any of those things, it would force you to admit to yourself that she was really gone and that there was nothing you could do about it?’

  He nodded. ‘And that’s exactly what I’ll have to do tomorrow.’

  His voice gave way at the end, a shuddering breath that dislodged sudden tears that ran down his face, collecting in his stubble and sitting there like dewdrops on blades of grass. He pursed his lips and blew a calming breath between them.

  ‘What happened the first time you went to the clock tower?’ I asked.

  He glanced at me, his face blanched by the sterile moonlight shining from the almost full moon. He took a deep, trembling breath and looked back to the dark view. ‘Life just suddenly became so much harder than it’d been before. Breathin’ became a conscious thought, not something that happened in the background. I would have panic attacks if I was in the house for too long and I couldn’t bring myself to even look at the bed, let alone sleep in it. I couldn’t stand the thought of staying with friends because then I’d have to tell them what had happened, so I spent a few nights sleeping on benches around town. This one time, a man brought me a sandwich and put a tenner under the bench while I slept. I found a homeless person when I woke up and gave him the food and the money.’

  He took a deep breath to power his next sentence, rolled his neck and continued. ‘About a month after she died, I made a decision. I left the spare key where Mrs Finney would find it and put a note through her door, telling her that I was going to be away for a while and asking if she could look after the cat while I was gone. I wrote a letter to my family and put it on the coffee table and I made my way to the clock tower. I sat up on that ledge for four hours, until I was so cold that I felt as if I was frozen to the spot. I don’t think I wanted to be dead, I just wanted it all to stop. I didn’t want to wake up every morning and have that split second where I didn’t remember what had happened, before reality would click and I’d remember that she was gone and that I could have done something to stop it.’

  ‘You can’t blame yourself for her death, Charlie. There’s no telling that you could have saved her even if yo
u had checked her earlier.’ I wanted to reach out and hold his hand, but I didn’t know if that was something that he’d want me to do right now. So, I just laid my hand on my knee, ready for him to take hold of if he wanted to.

  ‘But I did blame myself; I do blame myself,’ he said, more tears rolling down his cheeks. ‘So, there I was standing on the ledge of the clock tower, my heart thunderin’ in my ears. I was completely terrified and after a second, I fell back onto the wall, pulled myself over and curled into a ball on the floor in front of the clock face and cried like a little bitch for God knows how long.’

  ‘Crying doesn’t make you a little bitch, Charlie,’ I chastised him for his man-up attitude. ‘Why would you have evolved tear ducts if you weren’t meant to use them?’

  He took a breath and carried on. ‘I saw the sticker on the wall, called and got through to Ned. We spoke for over an hour and he told me that I should call my uncle.’

  I felt a hot rush of panic in my chest at the thought of him there, so close to the edge, so close to never setting foot in my life.

  ‘Why wait so long between then and the second time?’ I asked, trying not to let the panic run away with itself. It had been so very recently that Charlie had been back there, that he’d been prepared to jump for a second time, the feelings inside him no less than the first.

  He cleared his throat as a few more tears gathered in that thick line of dark lashes around his eyes. ‘I did what Ned said and called Carrick. I told him about what I’d thought about doing. He came straight over and spent a month livin’ in the flat with me on suicide watch. He took the sofa and I had a fold-out IKEA futon on the floor. I forbade him from ever tellin’ my parents about what I’d thought about doin’, on pain of death, and he said that he promised he wouldn’t, if I gave him a year of trying and so I did. Then at the end of that year he asked me to give him one more. He said, take it one hour, one day, one year at a time until breathing get easier. So, I made a sort of routine that helped me keep my promise to Carrick. After the first year I found that, even though it didn’t feel possible at the beginning, I’d survived a whole three hundred and sixty-five and a quarter days without her. So, I agreed to another year and I found that, if it didn’t hurt too much, if it wasn’t unbearable, then I could stick around.’