Erin #2
An innocuous name, wrapped in barbed wire now.
Handling it too much risked injury. But Erin couldn’t stop wondering why she had been in this car, sitting in this very seat.
Wearing this scarf while sitting beside Jason.
Where had they been going? What had happened when they got there?
Questions stuck in Erin’s throat, blocking her airway, threatening suffocation unless she coughed them up and asked them.
But she couldn’t bring herself to.
Jason took her hand and lifted it to his mouth, pressing his lips to it.
‘God,’ he said, his eyes on the road, ‘I’m so glad you’re back.’
The hope had been that she’d return to Solna refreshed and re-energized, with enough resolve to stick it out. Erin didn’t actually want to leave the programme, if only because she didn’t want to have to tell everyone she had. But when she got back, everything seemed so much worse.
She wasn’t enjoying the work. The simplest tasks felt like an almighty effort.
And there was never any relief up ahead, no fun at the weekend to look forward to, no one to even talk to, really.
So why was she doing it? What good was all the travelling and adventure and being interesting if, in reality, you didn’t like it?
Two weeks after her weekend at home, Erin flew back to Cork again, for good.
She got a job with a health insurer that sounded like it was related to her degree but in reality didn’t require it; she was mostly just processing paperwork.
She and Jason moved into their own apartment.
They booked a weekend in Lisbon in December and two weeks in the Canaries in May.
They fell into a routine: a takeaway at home on a Friday night, out for dinner and a few drinks on Saturday, cleaning the apartment on Sunday.
Erin convinced herself she was happy.
Jason seemed to really be.
When she told Sharon this, her friend sighed and said, ‘Well, no wonder. He can relax now that you’re finally equals.’
On Christmas Eve he proposed in the car while he was driving. Erin had to dig through the glovebox detritus, in the dark, to find the box that contained a ring she would never have chosen, the ring that wasn’t even an engagement ring, but a simple band set with a tiny, cheap stone.
On their last night in Lisbon, two weeks earlier, in a restaurant glowing with candlelight and halfway down their second bottle of wine, they’d started talking about where they might go on a honeymoon.
They had never actually spoken about getting married, but it had always felt inevitable, assumed, the natural destination for people living like them.
Erin had walked the conversation back a little, to the wedding itself.
She wasn’t big into them, she told him. Her dream was to fly to Vegas, go to one of the tacky chapels and announce it on Facebook with a photo containing at least one Elvis.
He said that sounded cool. He suggested they go to the Grand Canyon afterwards, with him still in his tux and her still in her wedding dress, to take photos.
On the walk back to their hotel, he’d switched the ring she wore on her right hand – a cheap, plated cubic-zirconia thing she’d bought herself – to the ring finger of her left.
That, she decided in retrospect, had been the real proposal.
A year later, they married in a country village church and then moved to a marquee in the grounds of a country estate for the reception.
Erin wore a ballgown-style dress in ivory and Sharon, her maid of honour and only bridesmaid, wore deep emerald-green in a cut that her mother had disapprovingly referred to as ‘slinky’.
They went for tables in long rows with rustic place settings, church candles in lanterns, and centrepieces of heaped fresh foliage and baby’s breath.
They couldn’t really afford any of it, but Erin’s parents had given them a cheque and they were relying on the gifts to cover the rest.
After dinner, the furniture was pushed to the sides to reveal a dance floor and a much-in-demand wedding band began blasting out hit after hit.
The first song was, of course, ‘Iris’. As the sun went down, the canopy of fairy lights hanging above their heads glowed brighter and Erin thought maybe this kind of wedding was what she’d really wanted after all.
It had been perfect.
Almost.
There were a few things that, in the coming months and years, she’d have to remember to forget.
Like the moment just before Jason slipped the platinum band on to her ring finger, when he’d got this look on his face.
Fleeting, but so familiar. She hadn’t seen it for a long time, but she recognized it instantly: a kind of smug bemusement, a brand particular to him.
When Jason had looked at her like that in the past, it was to let her know she’d said something stupid and that he was about to correct her, and that he would relish it.
But this was their wedding. He’d just promised to love her for ever, to cherish her above all others, to be her teammate for life.
And then he’d made that face.
When they’d first entered the marquee, it wasn’t the enchanting table settings Erin had noticed, or the smiling faces of their friends and family, or even their three-tiered cake showcased on a plinth in the corner, but the two dozen paper sheets Sellotaped haphazardly to the marquee’s soft walls.
They were all copies of the same photograph, printed on plain paper but badly, by a machine running low on ink.
The fact that it was a picture of a teenaged Jason passed out on a poster of Baywatch-era Pamela Anderson, his face aflame with sunburn and visibly drooling directly on to her breasts, was horror enough, but the horizontal white lines cutting through its already low resolution pushed Erin over the edge.
She searched the sea of faces for her wedding planner and found the woman looking back at her, stricken, making a face that said, I’m so sorry, I tried to intervene but there was nothing I could do.
After the dinner, she’d say that to Erin too, and explain that the best man – Jason’s cousin that he’d been close with when they were kids – was responsible.
Jason thought it was funny and told her to lighten up. He reminded Erin, somewhat petulantly, that it was his day, too.
Near the end of the night, Erin had spotted Lisa heading outside into the dark and hurried to follow her.
They saw each other maybe twice a year now and only had the weakest grasp on the latest news in each other’s lives, but it was unthinkable that Lisa wouldn’t be here.
Erin watched her old friend lean against a wall, spark up a cigarette and then throw her head back to exhale the smoke.
‘Can I have one of those?’
Lisa startled at the voice from the shadows, then laughed when the woman in white emerged.
‘You’re the bride,’ she said. ‘Have the whole box, if you like.’
‘One will do.’
It ended up being three. They smoked and talked about the day and how weird it was that one of them was married now, Erin’s tongue loosened by the fizz she’d been sipping all day.
‘I have a husband,’ Erin said, trying the word on for size.
Lisa took a deep drag. ‘And it’s Jason.’
The first cigarette had left Erin feeling lightheaded; the third was making her feel genuinely sick.
But she wanted Jason to smell it. To taste it. She might have more.
One for every fucking blurry pair of Pamela’s breasts.
‘Can I tell you a secret, Lisa?’
‘Always.’
‘I don’t know how I’ve ended up here.’
They were both leaning against a wall, side by side, looking out into the dark. They could hear the party still going on inside the marquee but not see it. Erin felt Lisa turn and look at her, waiting for Erin to turn and meet her gaze, but she didn’t. It was easier this way.
Lisa faced front again.
‘I don’t remember making any decisions,’ Erin said.
‘When did I decide on this? Like, when was the actual moment? Because I feel like …’ She searched for the words she’d been trying to find all day, since she’d woken up this morning and realized that this was her wedding day. ‘I feel like I drifted here.’
Lisa took a drag, exhaled.
‘When you decided on him,’ she said then. ‘When you chose him.’
And Erin had, hadn’t she? Every day for the last six years. Every night she’d gone to bed with him, every morning she’d woken up beside him and stayed.
Until today, when she’d made the decision to stop choosing.
Tomorrow, there was no decision to make.
They were married now. It was too late.