Chapter Twenty
Angela leaned on the outside wall and was breathing deeply as Enya opened the front door. Her face softened with relief.
‘Just to be clear, you’re paying for every speeding ticket and taking any points incurred on my licence. I made record time and even beat a fancy motorbike away at the lights.’
‘There was no need for that.’ She smiled, kind of glad that her sister hadn’t spared the horses and was here, right where she needed her to be. It was reassuring. Jenny might not be coming to see her any time soon, but she could still rely on Angela.
‘I thought there was every need for it, you sounded, I don’t know, you sounded terrible.’
Enya nodded, unable to deny that she not only sounded but also felt terrible, weakened and disrupted by the afternoon spent. Having admitted to Dominic how she felt was exposing, and the way he had left her felt like the saddest ending of something before it had even started.
‘Wine or tea?’ she asked as Angela followed her into the kitchen. She had, as she awaited her arrival, swilled the abandoned rosé down the sink and popped the glasses in the dishwasher.
‘Tea, but Ens, don’t worry about a drink, please just come and sit down, I’m worried about you. My head has come up with every awful scenario you can imagine on the way here, ranging from you being diagnosed with something I don’t want to hear about, to possible alien abduction.’
‘You got me, it’s alien abduction.’ She pulled a face.
‘Actually, no, we’re not going to laugh our way out of this. I know you. I know what that call meant, you never sound like that, never ask me to come over, not since...’
‘I remember.’
That last time, with hysteria edging her words , Please, Ange, can you come here now, please just come... he’s not got long, I can feel it...
Angela reached for her hand and led her into the lounge, and she was happy for her sister to do so, wanting someone to take the reins, to care for her in the way Jonathan had when he was here and when he was able, before his illness robbed them both of so much.
The sisters sat at either end of the sofa, their pace unhurried and the agenda unset, in the way it was when you were close to a sibling.
‘I don’t know where to start, really.’ She pulled her knees up to her chin and wrapped her arms around her shins.
‘Take your time. We’re not in any rush.’
‘I’m quite surprised by how my life has ended up,’ Enya began.
Angela laughed out loud. ‘Who isn’t? I mean, good Lord above, do we ever get the life we envisaged for ourselves? If someone had told me I’d end up with Frank who was vice-captain of the football team when we were at school, I’d have laughed in their face!’
‘You just laughed in mine,’ Enya pointed out, half in jest.
‘True, but that’s because it’s just as absurd! First, this is not how your life has ended up, because that would suggest it’s the end and you are far, far from that.’
There was a second of shared knowledge where she knew that her sister, like her, was thinking that it had ended for Jonathan, a reminder there were no guarantees.
‘Second,’ Angela continued, ‘the idea that things are set in stone, or that we have anything other than the smallest of control over how events turn out, is bonkers. Life is full of incidents, surprises, trip hazards and one-way streets! We don’t ever know what’s around the next corner, good or bad, so how can we picture a life that is an unwritten book? ’
‘I guess you’re right.’ It helped, a little, to think of it in this way, adding hope to a situation that only minutes before had felt hopeless. ‘It’s been a strange couple of days, that’s why I needed to see you.’
‘What’s happened, my love?’ Angela asked softly, the older sister falling into the role of matriarch as she always had.
‘Holly’s pregnant.’
‘No!’ Angela gasped.
‘Yes.’
‘Wow! Oh my God!’ she yelled. ‘I don’t know what to say! Really?’
‘Yep, she and Jen came into the office to tell me. I had to break it to Aiden. He’s seen her and they have made some kind of plan.’
‘Jenny never said – mind you, she’s gone a bit quiet on me.’
‘She’s got a lot going on.’ Enya decided not to divulge the whole sorry unfriending conversation and the dismissed letter, believing in the phrase ‘least said soonest mended’, and not wanting to affect Jenny and Angela’s relationship any more than was necessary.
She loved them both too much to allow them to experience the punch to the throat that Jenny’s words had left her with.
‘Oh, Enya.’ Angela closed her eyes, acknowledging the less than perfect timing.
‘I know.’
‘Is Holly okay?’
‘Not really, she’s distraught, it’s horrible to see. She’s ten weeks, her hormones must be going haywire as well as having to deal with what’s happened. Her whole world is spinning.’
Something she understood too well.
‘And Aiden?’
Enya liked that Angela registered it would be impacting him too.
‘Shocked, putting on a smile, planning the wedding and I think trying to figure out which way is up.’
‘What did Iris say about it?’
‘I don’t think he’s told her yet.’
‘Do you think it’ll affect the wedding?’
‘I don’t honestly know.’ She pinched the bridge of her nose. ‘Dominic, Iris’s dad, came over earlier,’ she whispered, understanding the level of subterfuge it implied and all the connotations of it.
‘What do you mean, he came over?’ Angela’s tone and confused expression said it all.
‘I mean he turned up! I opened the door and there he was!’ She pointed towards the hallway. ‘He wasn’t going to come in, but I just...’
‘That’s odd, you have no contact and what, he appears suddenly like ta-dah!’ Angela fanned out her fingers dramatically.
‘Well, we have had some contact.’ She hated the flush of guilt about her face.
‘What kind of contact?’ Angela held her eyeline.
‘Just a couple of calls. He called me, both times, just before bed.’
‘Wow!’
‘That’s your second wow of the evening.’
‘Yes, I’m aware, but both with very different meanings. My first wow was as in, that’s a surprise! A shock! Give me a second to take it in.’
‘And your second?’ She wasn’t sure she wanted the answer.
‘That was, wow, as in, I can’t imagine sitting in the kitchen or reading in bed while Frank called a woman with whom he has a spark. Me planning what to make for his packed lunch, worrying about whether we’ve enough milk in, while he flirted with someone on the phone.’
Her sister’s words settled like sharp things in her breast.
‘It wasn’t,’ she shook her head, was about to deny the flirtatious suggestion, but couldn’t, knowing she would only be kidding herself, ‘you’re not bringing up anything I haven’t already thought or voiced. I know how it sounds.’
‘Do you?’
Her sister’s accusatory tone was less than helpful and the last thing she needed; it hurt, mainly because Angela only spoke the truth.
‘I do, and just to bring you up to speed, he and Trish have agreed to part, he’s taken the lease on a flat. All before us, before... before me... not that there’s an us or...’
‘I see.’
‘Anyway, the last time we broached the subject, you were laughing about me playing footsie under the table with him at the reception!’ Enya reminded her.
‘I thought it was a joke, really. I had no idea that you might.’
‘I haven’t. I didn’t. I won’t! Anyway, it’s all irrelevant because I told him not to call me and I made it clear he’s not to come here, no contact. I won’t see him again unless it’s in a crowd or at the very least, a small group.’
‘How do you feel about that?’
‘Truthfully?’
‘No, no, make something up to placate me. Of course, truthfully!’ Her sister tutted.
She took her time, wanting to get the words right. ‘I guess, I forgot for a moment.’ She cursed the slip of tears down the back of her throat.
‘You forgot what?’
‘When I was talking to him, when I was with him – Dominic, I forgot that I was getting older, that I’m a widow.
I forgot that sometimes I can feel so lonely it radiates like pain through my limbs.
I forgot I’m getting close to the downward slope of my life.
All the treacle I’ve waded through to get to this point, I forgot all of it.
And you know that, that lightness you feel in your teens or your twenties, that sense of excitement fizzing in your blood and that the whole wide world was out there to conquer, that you could and probably would do it all and have it all once you got out of the blocks. ’
‘Yes.’ Her sister nodded, her sharp edge now softened, her voice low, as if Enya’s words had struck a chord.
‘Well, it was just like that. And I liked it.’
‘Of course you did, darling.’
‘I just wanted to touch him, to touch his wrist, that little spot where all his veins gathered under the surface of his skin, the place where his watch rested. I wanted to touch his skin and for him to hold me. That’s what I wanted, Angela.
’ Her voice was barely a whisper, but it felt good to say it out loud, no matter how cautiously.
‘So if he’s as free as you say he is, what’s stopping you?’ Angela held her gaze.
She took her time. ‘I can’t imagine Aiden having to deal with that on top of everything else. He and Iris have got some tough times coming up.’
‘True.’ Angela looked into the middle distance.
‘Plus, Aiden is still mourning his dad, and this is his haven and I’m all that’s left. How would he feel if I dismantled all Jonathan and I had, started over with someone new, anyone! Let alone his father-in-law! What would that look like around the Christmas table!’
‘Well, that’s just bullshit.’ Her sister as ever pulled no punches. ‘You can’t put your life on hold for Aiden or your deceased husband! It’s not practical, not smart!’
‘I think it’s smart not to rush headlong into something that might be nothing, to cause disruption for no reason.’
‘Have you told Aiden that?’ Angela raised her eyebrows. ‘Sorry, that was below the belt. Carry on.’