Chapter Fifteen
It had been an emotional day, a tiring one. Aiden had listened quietly when she recounted Holly’s visit over supper. Losing his appetite, he had put down the fork and abandoned his pasta.
‘I’m just not hungry right now, Mum. I couldn’t eat a big dinner. Think I’ll have an early night.’
‘I understand, love. See you in the morning.’
And just like that her flames of anger at how much Holly was hurting, and the reasons for it, were partially extinguished.
She was torn, feeling sorry for her son, who was guilty of being young and impetuous, while at the same time only able to imagine what it was like for Holly.
It was a desperate situation that felt fragile for them all.
Even trying to figure out how to successfully tread this middle ground was exhausting.
‘What am I going to do, Jonathan?’ she asked her husband, who sat in his chair, legs stretched out, as they watched Death in Paradise on the telly.
‘And Angela can talk, but it’s not easy.
I feel like I’m adjudicating the whole carry-on, and I don’t know how I manage it without you.
I wish you were here. You’d know what to do. ’
Desolation wrapped her tightly, threatening to suffocate her.
She felt his absence, knowing she would give anything to feel his arms around her, his hand holding hers, just for a second.
It was an unwelcome pull of emotion that made her cough and sniff, wary that if she gave in to them, those darn tears just might not stop.
As the credits rolled, she let Pickle out for the night, kissing her head and giving advice about not mixing with any of those rough cats who might try and lead her astray.
‘Make good choices, little Pickle, and do not, under any circumstances, shit in Maeve’s garden. It might send her over the edge and over our wall, neither of which we want.’
She planted another kiss on her cat’s pretty head before letting her go, watching as Pickle slipped quietly into the shadows.
Enya really did hope she’d steer clear of Maeve’s house, unable to cope with another turd on the patio incident, fearing becoming another topic of discussion among the neighbours who used to be her friends.
She checked the doors and windows, clicked off the lamp and made her way up the creaking stairs.
Her bones ached and she decided to take a hot, deep bath before bed.
Their third bedroom had been indulgently converted into their en-suite bathroom, a fact that estate agents and their neighbours thought was crazy, as a three-bedroomed property was worth significantly more than a two.
She and Jonathan had tried to explain that they had to live in the house and having a lovely bathroom as their en suite brought them more pleasure than if they hadn’t made the conversion, safe in the knowledge that when they died, it would be worth more money on the open market.
It was an odd concept to them, prioritising a future cash value over their everyday lives.
With a candle lit, and a liberal slosh of her favoured amber-scented bath oil in the water, she let her clothes fall in a soft nest by the bathroom door and climbed in.
Eyes closed, she lay back and let the warmth calm her soul and soothe her body.
It was here that she hovered for some minutes, entirely lost to the peace of it, able to switch off the tick-tick-tick of worry over her son’s muddled love life, her guilt over her flirtation with Dominic, and the fracture in her and Jenny’s friendship.
A welcome hiatus from the shittiest of days.
Her phone, languishing on the sink, buzzed.
It was odd to receive a call at this time of night and as ever she hoped there was no emergency, prayed her parents were okay, Angela too.
Aiden was now struck from this mental worry list as he slumbered in his room at the end of the hallway, and she assumed that any potential threat or injury would be quickly heralded by a yell.
Stretching her arm, she managed to reach the phone. Without her glasses on, it was hard to make out the number.
‘Hello?’ she said as she lay back beneath the water.
‘Enya, Enya, hi. It’s Dominic.’
She felt her body shudder at the sound of his voice, sending goose bumps across her skin. It was an instant and automatic response to the sound of him. Guilt lined her throat as she managed to get the word out. ‘Hello.’
Instantly, she placed one arm across her chest, hiding herself as if he might be able to see down the line, mortified by the thought alone. She wondered why he was calling.
‘Hope it’s not too late?’
Yes, because it’s the hour of the call that’s the issue here...
‘No, no, I was just, just cooking.’ She squirmed. It was the first thing that popped out of her mouth.
‘Oh right, what are you cooking?’
‘Spaghetti.’ She closed her eyes and shook her head.
‘Nothing like a bit of late-night spaghetti I always say, what sauce?’
‘It’s erm,’ she looked around the bathroom, hoping for inspiration, ‘it’s erm,’ she stared at the fancy glass bottle of bath oil, ‘olive oil with garlic and lemon.’ Her face twisted in cringing agony.
‘Sounds delicious!’
‘What can I do for you, Dominic?’ Her tone now a little officious, urging him, the man married to Trish, to get to the reason for the contact. Her toes were curled with the stress of it all.
‘Right, yes.’ He paused. ‘I thought I’d call because, well, how to put it,’ he gave a nervous laugh, ‘I wanted to. And I feel there are things left to say.’
‘I thought we had agreed that it wasn’t wise to call me. Not a good idea for us to speak like this.’ Her voice was steady.
‘I don’t recall that.’ He sounded sure. ‘I know you said that it had been lovely to talk to me, and nice to meet me, and then there was a brief discussion about life in general – what we want, what we deserve and what we settle for, that kind of thing.’
‘Oh, in that case, maybe I should have been more direct. What I meant to say was that I cannot become involved with you in any way because you’re married. And that was before I knew you were married to Trish and that our children were getting married. Is that any clearer?’
She gave a long sigh, knowing the right thing to do would be to put the phone down.
End the call and brave the inevitable awkwardness that would envelop them in the coming months when forced to face each other, and the memory of him speaking to her while she lay nudie-dudie in a deep bath rattled around in her head.
Yet she didn’t end the call because it was contact, it was someone, reaching out to her in this, the loneliest of hours at the end of the longest day.
And it was him. She slipped deeper into the water. Hiding as best she could.
There was a second or two of silence; she heard him swallow, could hear him breathing. When he eventually spoke, his voice sounded pained and thoughtful, mirroring her own emotions that her rather abrupt words had failed to erase.
‘It’s hard for me to, to,’ he paused, ‘difficult for me to accept that we are—’
‘There is no “ we ”, Dominic!’ It felt important to interject.
‘And you’re okay with that?’
She sat up in the water. ‘It’s not a matter of being okay with it.
It’s a case of accepting the facts and the many obstacles and barriers that are piled up, too high for us to overcome, to even get started.
Because we haven’t started. We are nothing.
We don’t know each other, strangers! A two-minute exchange in a car park that has been blown out of proportion for whatever reason.
An attraction, yes, I’ll admit, but no more, the kind of attraction that is always on a timer. No more.’
‘I don’t think you believe that any more than I do.’
‘I don’t, I don’t know what else to say. A married man is a non-starter for me, that’s... that’s it!’
‘Yet you don’t deny there’s something there. You feel the attraction too, you’ve just said as much, I mean how can you not, it crackles around us like electricity! I can’t stop thinking about it.’
She lay back once again in the water, flattered no doubt, transfixed by his admission of the very thing she had felt too. But more than this, she was alert to the unalterable facts that would guide her, nothing else.
‘And I can’t stop thinking about how horrible it feels to be pulled into whatever it is you have going on, the whole I’ve got a flat ruse. I’m not stupid and it feels...’ She ran out of words.
‘You think it’s a ruse?’
‘Uh-huh.’
She heard him exhale loudly. ‘Shit!’ he spat. ‘Really?’
‘Yes.’ She held her ground.
‘It’s not.’ His voice now a little clipped, as if affronted by the suggestion.
‘It’s not. I signed the lease on the day we met, a small flat near a boat shed in a marina.
I told Trish, and she has asked me to stay until after the wedding, to help everyone get through the next few weeks, as me moving out and planning for Iris’s big day was a little more than she could cope with.
So I agreed. We haven’t told Iris. Don’t want to spoil her moment.
That’s why I’m still going home, but the flat is real.
My intentions are real. I don’t know what else to say. ’
Enya felt the uncomfortable gulp of sudden tears. It all felt a little more than she could cope with, on top of the shitty meeting with Jenny and the sharp cut of loss at what that meant.
‘It’s never about intentions, it’s about action. Not that I’m telling you to act, nothing like that! But words are easy and I’m not,’ – strong enough, healed enough – ‘not ready to deal with words and the complexity of it all.’
Dominic was quiet for a moment and when he spoke his voice was calm, softer once more.
‘You’re crying because you know this is something, you know we’re not nothing. And that’s okay.’
‘It’s not okay,’ she managed, ‘nothing about this is okay.’ I am Jonathan’s wife, still, very much Jonathan’s wife...