Out of Control

Chapter 22

Fiona was missing her usual confidence when Joe left her in the car park of the pub. Confidence went hand in hand with control and there were people and situations in her life now that she couldn’t control. People who, even though they didn’t say so directly, disapproved of tonight’s outing and felt she was neglecting some sort of duty that she owed to them. It was this sensation of doing wrong that was sapping her confidence. She was about to phone Joe and ask him to come back for her when she heard her name.

“Fiona, isn’t it? You’re new to the group?”

Fiona nodded, trying to conjure up a name for the short, silver-haired woman in front of her. She might be the club treasurer. “I’m sorry, I’ve had to miss a couple meetings and I can’t remember your name.” It was always best to be brutally honest.

“Alison. I’m the programme secretary.”

“Of course, I remember now.” They went through the door together and someone else waved a greeting and pointed the way to the function room.

“Can I get you a drink, Alison?” Queuing at the bar would give Fiona a few minutes to pull herself together, gather some topics of conversation and see if she could spot any vaguely familiar faces. She didn’t want Alison to think that she had to nursemaid her all evening.

The function room was heavy with the drone of voices. Fiona glanced from her place in the bar queue to the closed groups and huddles of friends catching up; none of them looked sufficiently open for her to gatecrash. She let her eyes rest on the Christmas tree, dressed in red and gold ribbons with a waterfall of tiny scarlet lights trickling from top to bottom by the magic of a microchip and electricity. The staff behind the bar were sporting matching Santa hats and scarlet T-shirts emblazoned with ‘Merry Christmas’. The piped music was cycling all the seasonal classics. As she shouted her order she was in competition with Slade’s ‘Merry Xmas Everybody’.

“Two medium glasses of house red, please.” She swiped her credit card, picked up the glasses and tried to find a pathway through the growing throng of people in the room. Then she saw him. At first, she wasn’t sure. His face was fuller and his hair thinner but the height was right. He was broader in the torso but, in full conversational flow, his gestures and facial expressions were unmistakable. It was Rob. She felt like someone had punched her in the gut. She looked around wildly, not sure whether she wanted an escape route, a quiet corner or to actually go up to him. Did he remember that this Christmas Eve would be their thirtieth anniversary? Pearl, in wedding speak. Pearl — she liked that thought: a gentle white gem for the loveliest, most innocent baby. Had he written the letter about reparation because he knew it was a big anniversary?

“Fiona, are you all right?” Alison arrived by her side and claimed one of the glasses. “You look dazed. Do you need to sit down? The place cards are all out, so feel free to find where you’ve been plonked. It’s all random, so don’t take it personally if you end up next to the biggest bore in the room.” The programme secretary moved away.

Fiona felt too blindsided to approach Rob immediately. She needed to decide on her opening gambit and what she wanted to get out of the meeting. Did she want to speak to him at all? There was nothing to be gained by going over old ground. They hadn’t been able to help each other back then and it was highly unlikely he could offer her any empathy or understanding now, despite his apologies in the letter.

Fiona turned away and found the place card with her name in stylish black italic handwriting. She put down her wine next to an unlit scarlet candle embedded with glitter, its base encircled by a miniature wreath of fresh green leaves. She fiddled with a cracker and then noticed her glass was already half-empty. She drank more when she was nervous, and talked more too. She was at the very end of the table, which would give her fewer conversation options, either the person opposite her or the person on her right. She tried to decipher the name card opposite in order to determine whether it was a man or a woman but it was impossible to read the fancy writing upside down. Then she saw the name on the card to her right: Robert Washington. No! Her heart thudded and then missed a beat. It must be someone else with the same name as her ex-husband. But she couldn’t risk being trapped for the whole meal. She took Rob’s card, meaning to swap it with another one further down the table.

“Not allowed!” Alison had reappeared. Her voice was jokey and she was smiling. She meant no harm but Fiona still felt chastised and immediately put the name card back down in its original position. “Ah! This is unfortunate,” Alison continued. “The lady who was supposed to sit opposite you has cancelled. Upset stomach. But I’m sure Rob will look after you. He’s fairly new to the club as well. And here’s the gentleman himself! I’ll leave you to introduce yourselves.”

Now he was next to her. His mouth dropped open in the same way as when she’d told him she was pregnant.

“Hello, Rob.”

“Fiona! I heard via our mothers that you were a member here.”

“And that’s why you joined?”

“Not the whole reason. Did you get my note?”

She nodded.

“I had to send it via your mother because she was very cagey about giving your address or mobile number to my mum.”

Thank you, Mum. At least you do have my interests at heart some of the time.

“I’ve recently moved back to the area, obviously. Joining Retired Means Active is partly a way to get to know people — and partly I hoped to see you too.” He paused and looked across the table at the empty seat opposite Fiona. “Where’s your significant other?” He’d chosen his words carefully, she realised, because her bare left hand was laid in full view on the table. She moved it to her lap, her empty fourth finger making her feel vulnerable.

Acknowledging a significant other existed was a new experience for Fiona. Although, given Joe’s performance over her outing tonight, he might not be forever. “At home. I’ve only just joined and I didn’t realise bringing partners was a thing. The lady who was supposed to sit there is ill.”

Fiona took a sip of wine while she waited for Rob’s reaction to the news that she had a partner; she was sure her mother wouldn’t have divulged this. Rob picked up his pint. The silence seemed to elongate awkwardly, though it was probably only a few seconds. Then they were saved from any further explanation by the arrival of their starters. Unsurprisingly, Rob had gone for the chicken wings; he’d been an avid carnivore when they were together.

“Still on the healthy stuff?” He gestured to her salad. “You always did have more self-discipline than me.”

There was nothing to add to that; he was the compulsive gambler.

The seat opposite Rob remained empty as well. After the last wing he wiped his greasy fingers on the napkin. “It looks like we’ll have to chat between ourselves. What do you think of the club so far?”

He was making small talk as if everything they’d been through together had never happened. No — ‘been through together’ wasn’t the right phrase. Fiona had gone through it alone. Rob had closed up after the loss of Amber. She’d wanted to talk. She’d wanted them to comfort one another. She’d wanted them to acknowledge their feelings. And she’d wanted apologies and explanations about the bailiffs and the debt and, ultimately, the gambling. Rob had wept huge sobs beside her hospital bed after an ultrasound scan had confirmed the miscarriage, but after that there’d been hardly any emotion at all. For Fiona the burden of grief had sometimes been too heavy for her even to lift her head from the pillow.

“Too early to say. I haven’t been a member for long.” If he wanted small talk, he could have small talk.

“The food’s good, isn’t it?” He paused. “Do you remember me bringing you here for your birthday, about six months after we started going out?”

Fiona frowned. So much of their early relationship had been forgotten in the blackness of what came later. It was possible they’d been here.

“It’s been remodelled since then,” Rob continued. “It was August, obviously, and we sat close to those French windows. They were open and you started flapping around because a wasp landed in your wine.”

Fiona stared at the curtained doors and tried to imagine them open and full of evening sunshine. She pictured the room devoid of tinsel, garlands and Christmas cracker detritus. Yes, she did remember. It was like a mist clearing in her mind. “It was the first time you said I love you . To me.” The first sentence was out before she could censor it and the second had to be added to dilute any meaning that he might read in to it.

“I didn’t think you’d remember.”

She shrugged. “You know me, Little Miss Attention to Detail.”

They’d both gone traditional over the choice of main course and it was a relief to focus on requesting the bread sauce and redcurrant jelly from further up the table rather than on any more details of that long-ago birthday. Fiona didn’t want Rob to remind her that it had also been the first night they’d slept together. She unwound the bacon blankets from her two sausage pigs and placed them at the edge of her plate. Bacon made her thirsty.

“Do you mind if I . . . ?” Rob was gesturing at the two rashers. “You always used to plonk them straight on my plate.” He paused. “Not that we actually spent that many Christmases together. And for that I am truly sorry.”

Fiona ignored his last sentence and transferred the slivers of cured meat to him. In return, and without asking, he tipped his plate and scraped red cabbage onto her slices of turkey. She felt heat rise in her cheeks. Swapping food like this after a gap of so many years felt like an act too intimate to be done in public.

By the time the raspberry roulade arrived, Fiona’s stomach was suffering not only from food overload but also from the emotional tightness of being in such close proximity to her ex-husband and the memories he evoked. He’d released the cork by mentioning that birthday, and now past images were overflowing in her mind like the magic porridge pot: paddling in the sea at Blackpool on their first weekend away together, a visit to the zoo the day after she discovered she was pregnant, massive ice cream sundaes on their Lake Garda honeymoon because there was no more worrying about fitting into their wedding outfits. She took two mouthfuls of the roulade and put her spoon down.

“May I?” Rob gestured at her plate.

She nodded. He gave her his well-scraped Christmas pudding and custard bowl and started on the roulade, using her spoon.

“I run marathons now,” he said when he’d finished the soft pink and white roll. “It keeps the weight down and helps the mental health.”

“Wow!” The old Rob had derided any exercise other than football, and the term ‘mental health’ would never have passed his lips.

“I thought that would surprise you. The mental health bit anyway. Back then, it would have been seen as a weakness. Society always gave the message that the man had to be strong to care for his woman. That didn’t work for us, did it?”

There was no answer to that.

“But times have changed. My last job before I retired was with a big multi-national organisation who bombarded us with emails about mental health and the things they offered to help us achieve a healthy mind. I had nothing to lose except the baggage from that dreadful time. So, I took up a personal recommendation from someone in my support group and went to counselling.”

Rob was metamorphosing into a new man before her eyes. Fiona was seeing a part of him that he’d kept well hidden. Physically, he was little changed. His dark hair was now verging on silver but it was still all there. He was a little stockier than in his youth but she could imagine him pounding the streets in Lycra. She had a new respect for him.

“It’s pearl, this year,” he said. “Thirty years on Christmas Eve.”

A sharp little arrow hit the bullseye in her heart. “I think about her every day.”

“Me too. And the woman she might have become. The counselling doesn’t take away the memories and the love but it goes some way towards managing the guilt. Not that you’ve got any guilt to manage.”

Their chairs were now angled towards each other, shutting out the rest of the room.

“Coffee? Tea?” The interruption from the waitress brought Fiona to her senses. Getting too close to Rob was dangerous, but on the other hand it was a luxury to be with someone who had shared that awful time thirty years ago.

He still drank his coffee black with one sugar. On request the waitress fetched Fiona an individual pot of decaffeinated tea. Rob laughed. “On your birthday they didn’t do anything decaffeinated. Now it’s as common as vegan options on the menu.”

“I just came to check that you two newbies were OK.” Alison had slipped into the empty seat opposite Rob. “But you seem to have hit it off.”

“We used to know each other back in the day,” Rob explained lightly.

“Well, don’t hog each other all evening. There’s dancing and mingling to be done.”

“We should meet up again, for old time’s sake.” He handed Fiona a business card. “Just in case you binned my letter. Most of the information’s not relevant now I’m retired but the mobile number’s still the same — give me a call and we’ll go for coffee. Please.” There was a barely discernible note of pleading in his voice.

Fiona looked at the card. He’d written reparation and underlined it twice. She slipped the card into her handbag. She’d think about whether to act on it later. Coming face to face with her ex-husband hadn’t been the emotional catastrophe she’d feared; it had left her with a surprisingly positive feeling and a reminder of the closeness they’d shared early in their relationship. But taking the decision to actually instigate future contact was a big step and probably a further complication her life didn’t need right now. He appeared to be a new man wanting to make amends for the past, but what would that demand of her? If she opened up the compartment labelled ‘Rob’, would she enjoy increased warmth and light or would she release the evils of Pandora’s box?

Alison was serious about getting everyone to mingle after the meal. She made a point of introducing Fiona and Rob to different sets of people and there was no further chance for them to converse with each other that evening.

Joe texted to say he was outside in the car thirty minutes earlier than they’d arranged. Fiona bristled as she apologised and said goodbye to the group who were discussing setting up a book club within the Retired Means Active membership. Getting her teeth into organising something like that would have embedded her into the club. She wondered whether Joe didn’t trust her to be out on her own.

In bed he reached for her but she pleaded a headache from the wine — in reality, she wanted to be alone in her head to process the re-emergence of Rob and whether she should bin his business card or dial the number.