Thirty-Five
Spring turns to summer and life continues in St Felix.
The town becomes busier as we enter the first months of summer. Claire’s school reunion moves ever closer, and Rob still won’t let me tell anyone what’s happening to him.
I became so quiet and withdrawn for a while after Rob’s shock confession, that Claire began to wonder if my depression was rearing its ugly head again. But when she questioned me about it, I lied – well, partly lied. I said I wasn’t depressed, just feeling a little low lately. Which was the truth. Rob’s news knocked me for six.
But luckily Claire was knee-deep in both her work and organising the reunion, so, for the time being at least, I was managing to hide my true feelings from her.
One Wednesday afternoon in mid-June, I’m sitting at the back of my shop finishing off the painting I’ve been commissioned to do by Muriel, the lovely old lady who got in touch with me before the terrible afternoon that Rob told me his news.
I’ve got behind with my painting over the last few weeks, and I’d had to telephone Muriel to apologise for the delay. But she was perfectly lovely, and said there was no hurry, she wasn’t due down in Cornwall until early July anyway, so I had plenty of time before she needed to collect it.
The shop bell rings, so I look up expecting to see a customer, but I almost drop my paintbrush when I see the person standing there looking a little lost among all the paintings.
It’s Mack.
I haven’t seen Mack in person since 2019. After I moved back here to St Felix with Rosie, it took me a year or two before I got fully back on my feet again, both financially and mentally. Claire was great, helping us out, and as soon as I could start paying her rent, I did. As time went by, not only was I able to pay Claire money to help out with the monthly bills, and provide for myself and Rosie, but I was able to save some money as well. And in 2019, for Rosie’s fifteenth birthday, I surprised her with a trip to New York in the autumn, or as it’s called in America – the fall.
The gallery needed someone to go over and sweet talk a local Cornish artist who lived over there, and persuade her into allowing us to display her work. This, if I could pull it off, would be huge kudos for both the gallery and for me. Not only did I manage to do just that, I swung an extended holiday out of it for both myself and Rosie, and of course while we were there, we spent some time with Mack.
We didn’t stay with him, as Mack suggested we might way back in 2014. We stayed in a hotel on the Upper West Side, partly funded by my employer and partly by me. But we did manage to spend quite a lot of time with Mack while we were there, which Rosie and I both enjoyed immensely.
After we did all the touristy things like the Empire State Building and the Statue of Liberty, Mack showed us around other places like parks and galleries, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which I absolutely adored, just as Mack knew I would.
One evening after dinner – a takeout from a Chinese restaurant a few blocks away from Mack’s apartment in Brooklyn – white boxes sat empty on Mack’s coffee table with disposable chopsticks still resting inside. Rosie was asleep on one of Mack’s two sofas, overcome by a day spent walking the Brooklyn Bridge and shopping in Bloomingdale’s and Macy’s.
Mack quietly re-entered the sitting room carrying two cups of coffee, which he placed down among the takeaway boxes on the coffee table, before sitting next to me on the other sofa.
‘She’s tuckered out,’ he said, looking at Rosie sound asleep.
‘Must be all that shopping! Can’t say I blame her – it’s all I can do to stay awake myself. I really need this coffee, thank you.’
‘My pleasure. In fact, these last few days have been my pleasure too. It’s been wonderful to have you here at last – both of you. It’s been some time coming, eh?’
‘Yes, it has. But we’re here now and I’m so grateful to you for taking time out to show us around.’
Mack looked at me a little oddly. ‘When I said it’s been my pleasure, Frankie, it really has. I feel guilty now for not coming back to St Felix again. But you know with my dad and all.’
‘Please don’t apologise. Your family comes first. It must have been incredibly difficult for all your family to deal with. Alzheimer’s is a horrible disease.’
Mack nodded. ‘His passing has been a blessing to be honest – both for us children and my mom. He didn’t know us at all towards the end.’
I put my hand on Mack’s arm to comfort him. And Mack stared at my hand.
I was about to remove it, wondering if I shouldn’t have done that, when slowly he raised his head.
‘I wanted to, you know,’ he said quietly. ‘To come back and see you. But as time ticked by, I wondered if . . . well, if I’d dreamt some of it up.’
‘Some of what?’ I asked innocently, wondering if he was thinking the same thing as me right now, which was how much I wanted to kiss his gorgeous, soft mouth and run my fingers through his dark wavy hair.
‘This . . . ’ Mack gestured with his hand between us. ‘This feeling I get when I’m with you. Do you know what I’m talking about, Frankie?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I know . . . exactly what you mean.’ I’d always thought Mack was an attractive man, but this trip made me realise he wasn’t simply attractive, he was incredibly
attractive . . . especially to me. ‘Are you feeling it right now?’ I asked him, in what I hoped was a suitably seductive voice. I felt very rusty. I hadn’t been in this kind of situation for a very long time.
Mack nodded his head slowly and then he glanced over at Rosie. ‘Would it be wrong to kiss you when your daughter is asleep on my sofa over there?’ he whispered.
‘Not if we don’t wake her, it isn’t . . . ’
Mack leant across on his green velvet sofa and kissed me ever so quietly, and ever so gently, and it was one of the sexiest kisses that I’d ever had the pleasure of enjoying . . .
‘Mack?’ I say now, in a voice almost as quiet as that evening in New York. I clear my throat. ‘Mack?’ I say again. ‘What are you doing here?’
He turns towards my voice. ‘This is your gallery, then?’ He smiles. ‘I thought the paintings looked good.’
‘I can’t believe you’re here?’ I stumble to my feet and hurry towards him. Then I stop myself. I haven’t seen him in nearly five years; his feelings might not be the same as mine any more.
But the look on his face suggests otherwise.
He moves towards me too, and without saying anything else he pulls me into his arms and kisses me, and it’s every bit as wonderful as the first time.
‘Mack is here?’ Claire asks, as I breathlessly tell her what happened this afternoon in my shop. ‘Why?’
The huge, dopey smile, which hasn’t left my face since Mack walked through the door a few hours ago, immediately drops.
‘I don’t really know,’ I say, hating having to lie to Claire like this. ‘I think he’s come to see Rob.’
This isn’t exactly a lie. Mack is here to see Rob. He’s also here to see the pub Rob has asked him to buy.
‘You’re going to buy the Merry Mermaid?’ I asked when Mack told me why he was actually here. ‘Why?’
I closed the shop as soon as Mack and I could finally bear to pull ourselves away from each other. I tidied myself up a little, washed away the day’s paint from my hands, and we went for a walk. Partly so we could talk, and partly in an effort to suppress our feelings, as my little shop, on a busy street in St Felix, perhaps wasn’t the most private of places to resurrect our relationship, and I think we both knew if we’d stayed there then things would have got very steamy indeed.
‘I know you know why,’ Mack said as we paused high up on one of the cliffs to look out over the beach and the sea. ‘Rob told me he’d told you everything.’
I breathed a huge sigh of relief. ‘Oh, thank goodness you know. I couldn’t bear to keep this a secret from you as well.’
‘I know. It’s the pits, isn’t it? But Rob seems to be bearing up quite well.’
‘You’ve seen him then?’
‘Yes, he was the one who told me where your shop was.’ Mack looked at me and frowned. ‘Frankie? What is it?’
‘I feel guilty,’ I replied, tired of telling fibs and white lies over the last weeks. ‘Guilty for feeling like I do about you when Rob is going through what he is.’
‘I feel exactly the same,’ Mack said, turning towards me. ‘I’ve always known how Rob feels about you, Frankie. I feel like I’m doing the dirty on him by feeling like I do.’ He paused, and I got the sense he didn’t want to ask his next question. ‘What I need to know is . . . how do you feel about Rob?’
I’m jolted back into the present by Claire’s voice. ‘He’s come all this way again just to see Rob? Frankie, are you listening to me?’
‘Yes.’
‘Has he then?’
I look at Claire.
She sighs. ‘Has he come all this way just to see Rob?
I shake my head. ‘No, Mack is buying the Merry Mermaid.’
‘What?’ Claire looks even more confused. ‘Why? Rob’s only been here five minutes. Don’t tell me he’s bored with it already.’
I shrug. It’s getting harder and harder not to tell Claire anything. I’d have to speak to Rob about it. I can’t keep lying to her like this – she’s my best friend.
‘What’s happened, Frankie?’ She narrows her eyes. ‘Something has. In the same way you know me, I know you too well.’
‘I’m in love with Mack,’ I burst out, desperate to at least share one secret with Claire. ‘And I have been since Rosie and I visited New York in 2019.’
After our trip to New York, Mack and I promised to stay in touch, with Mack announcing he would definitely be coming over to England early next year.
But then the thing happened. The thing that had so much of an effect, not only on my life, but on the lives of so many.
The pandemic kickstarted me back into serious painting again, and as a result allowed me the chance to give up my job at the Lyle gallery and paint full time, something I’d always dreamed of. But at the same time, it also stopped me from seeing Mack.
At first, we jumped on the new trend for video calling, and we spent many hours on Zoom chatting to each other at times when it wasn’t the middle of the night for either of us. But as the pandemic continued and New York closed down altogether, Mack not only had himself and his family to worry about keeping safe, but he also had the responsibility of keeping his business afloat and the jobs of his many staff. So our chats became less frequent and when we did finally manage to arrange a call, it was clear Mack often had other more pressing things on his mind.
Realising he wasn’t quite himself, he of course apologised and said maybe we should wait until it was all over, and he could go back to being the happy-go-lucky chap I was used to him being.
I agreed, reluctantly. And I missed our chats desperately. But what could I do? I was halfway around the world, I couldn’t exactly pop over there – there were no passenger flights between the UK and the US for some time, and even when the world began to open up again, both Mack and I had so much on our respective plates – me with starting my own business and he with saving his – it just wasn’t the right time to try to resurrect what little relationship we had. So, like many things when you don’t put effort in, eventually it simply wilted away.
But now things are different. We have a chance at a new beginning. The problem is, Rob has exactly the opposite.
‘I know you love Mack,’ Claire says without surprise. ‘I’ve known that for a long time. Perhaps even before you did?’
‘Really?’ I ask.
She nods. ‘You two are great together. Your problems have been caused by external influences, not by something either of you has done. And Rosie agrees with me.’
‘She does?’
‘Yep, we’ve talked about it a few times.’
‘When?’
‘When you returned from New York I think was the first time. She told me she’d seen the two of you kissing and holding hands when you thought she wasn’t looking.’
I should have known my daughter was a bit too sharp for us to hide that from her.
‘And then a few times over the years since, I suppose. Mainly when you were video calling each other a lot during the pandemic. Rosie really likes Mack. She’s sad the two of you never properly got it together. You didn’t get it together, did you?’
‘Maybe a couple of times . . . ’ I say, smiling coyly. ‘And if we hadn’t been in my shop today, it might have happened again. It got pretty steamy for a while.’
‘Enough!’ Claire holds up her hands in mock horror but is smiling at the same time. ‘What is it the young folks say? YGTF?’
‘What does that mean?’
‘You’ve gone too far? Isn’t that right?’
‘No!’ I laugh. ‘You mean TMI. Too much information. Oh dear, we are getting old, Claire.’
‘I am. It sounds like you’ve still got some fire in you, though. I say good on you. If you and Mack have got another chance after all this time, then go for it. Is he going to move here then if he’s buying the pub? Or is it in name only and he’s going to remain in New York?’
‘He’s talking about moving.’
‘Great! So what’s the problem, then?’
‘Rob is,’ I reply, knowing I have to tell her. ‘Rob is the problem.’