Chapter TEN
Lou
THEN
Christmas Eve, 22 Years Ago
Olivia Major first came to Ballyheaney House in the summer while I was away working as a barista in Wildwood, New Jersey, with my friends from school, before we parted ways for university.
She was a leggy, super-confident twenty-year-old socialite type, with flame-red waist-length hair, an award-winning background in showjumping and a modelling contract on the horizon around her performing arts studies in Dublin.
My first thought when I saw her mucking out the stable was one of pure awe of her beauty, but then relief when her true colours emerged from the second she uttered her first hello.
‘So, you’re the hired help,’
she sneered.
‘You don’t look like someone associated with the Heaneys, do you?’
I just laughed in her face. She had no idea.
While I only had to pop home from Belfast once the holidays came in, Ben had a bit further to travel from Paris and it seemed he’d left it later this year. But we’d already made lots of plans. Long mornings on the boardwalk down by Lough Beg, cosy evenings by the fire in the local pub, and all the fun of the Christmas Eve party, which by then was more than special to both of us.
I looked up at Uncle Eric as he stretched the string of lights along the wood panelling, his mouth tight and his eyes steely with concentration.
‘Are you sure you don’t want to swap roles?’
I asked him for the third or fourth time. He was sprightly and fit, but I’d noticed that he couldn’t stop talking for long enough to fully concentrate on the job at hand.
‘I can reach higher than you think, you know. I’ve grown since you last saw me. Look. No, don’t look for real or you might fall!’
We’d spent the best part of two days lighting up evergreen firs on the lawns, we’d scrubbed and polished windows until they glistened in the midday winter sun, and every room on the ground level of Ballyheaney House was a feast for the senses, with glowing hearths, polished floors and the smell of turf mixed with cinnamon and citrus filling the air.
In just a few hours, this place would be full of friendly chit-chat, song, and hustle and bustle; Christmas Eve was something I looked forward to all year round.
And in just a few minutes, Ben would be home to join in on this year’s celebrations.
‘Nobody brings cosy comfort and festive cheer to this place like you two do. The ultimate dream team,’
Cordelia told us as she made her way to the kitchen. She and I had bonded recently over boyfriend trouble – hers – and I’d so enjoyed getting to know her much more over recent days.
‘Put our names on at least two cookies and three gingerbread men,’
Uncle Eric told his niece.
‘Each, that is. We’ll call you for the big pre-party Ballyheaney Christmas Eve toast very soon.’
‘No, wait until Ben comes,’
a high-pitched and rather out-of-place voice piped up from behind me.
‘Tilda said his flight was in at three, so she should be home with him any minute.’
Olivia Major clasped her hands with unashamed glee, which made me feel far too competitive for my own good.
She was a vision in her cream jodhpurs, fitted black jacket and riding boots, framed by cascades of tumbling red hair. Worst of all, she was returning from spending the afternoon riding on Little Eve around the village. Now that was a step too far in my book. Not only did she have her manicured scarlet nails set on clawing into Ben, she had also taken over the care of our precious Little Eve. And she did it so well too.
‘Perhaps, Olivia, you could offer some assistance in the kitchen? Cordelia is slaving away in there on her own, so I’m sure she’d welcome a bit of help,’
Uncle Eric said to her.
I could hear the sting in his voice. Uncle Eric was right on my level when it came to Olivia. He knew that to do such a thing would be very far removed from her grand inner notions. She was much too precious to bake or cook, even though she didn’t mind traipsing in there with horse manure on the boots she was on her way to discarding in the boot room. Being hidden away in the kitchen was not her style.
‘Oh, Eric, I would love to,’
she said on her return.
‘but I need to change into something a little more suitable before Tilda gets back with Ben. I can’t be around hot ovens in smelly jodhpurs ahead of meeting him for the first time. Mind you don’t fall, Eric. Maybe you should listen to Lou and let her do the donkey work instead? That’s what she’s here for, after all.’
She walked upstairs with her nose in the air. I closed my eyes and counted to ten.
‘Have you ever heard of the saying “familiarity breeds contempt”?’
Uncle Eric muttered as he slowly clambered down the steps of the ladder.
‘That one thinks she was born and bred here. She was only meant to come for a bit of work experience in the summer, but she’s hanging in like a dung fly hoping that Ben will arrive home today like a knight in shining armour and fall madly in love with her. I know my nephew. There’s no chance of that happening.’
Uncle Eric patted himself down. I suspected he was a lot gladder to be back on solid ground than he was letting on.
My tummy flipped at the thought of seeing Ben again, even though we’d spent more time together that year than ever before.
He’d flown home to be with me for my father’s funeral in early spring, when an accident on the factory floor claimed my precious daddy’s life in a cruel heartbeat. Right before he died, Dad had taught me to drive, and taken me to a rock concert: he was helping me to bridge the gap as I became a young adult and there was so much more we had planned for that summer and the future. The raw pain of grief made me want to run away, so I did exactly that in the summer with my mother’s blessing. I ran away from it all.
Ben came to see me there, in New Jersey, for a few days, and held me tight as he mopped up my tears, but no matter how much we talked or no matter how much we grew closer and closer, spending those summer nights between the sheets where the passion was inescapable, neither Ben nor I made the move to commit further.
‘I know you have girlfriends in Paris,’
I stuttered out one morning when we were having coffee before my shift at work in Wildwood.
‘I’m not as popular as you might think,’
he laughed.
‘Though I’ve no doubt you’ve many admirers too.’
I couldn’t deny it. I never took things seriously, but now that my A levels were over a whole new social scene had opened up where I partied and dated occasionally.
‘So why do we keep drifting back to each other, letting our paths cross or deliberately making them do so?’
I asked him.
He shrugged.
‘Because we want to,’
he said.
‘It will stop when we don’t want to any more, though I can’t see that happening.’
‘Fair enough,’
I said, stirring my coffee, even if I secretly wished for more.
Distance was a huge obstacle, but why didn’t one of us suggest we give it a proper try? Why did everything that happened in my life, good or bad, make me want to run and tell him first? And he was the same. Apart from his love life and mine, we knew everything there was to know about each other.
Physically, we knew every inch of each other too. We were lovers as well as friends, with a passion we both agreed was incomparable with anything we could have hoped for.
‘That’s him,’
I said when I heard Tilda’s car pull up outside. I was doing my best not to let the joy I felt be so palpable, but my glistening eyes gave me away.
‘That’s him,’
said Uncle Eric, as Cordelia bounced into the hallway, followed by a very sultry Olivia, who pouted and preened herself as she waited.
We all watched the huge front door until it clicked open.
‘Welcome home!’
we clapped and cheered in unison when Ben and his mother came inside, their shoulders already damp from the afternoon sleet outside.
Ben dropped his bags, looking right at me almost with disbelief, even though he knew I’d be here.
‘Ben, this is Olivia, who I’ve told you all about,’
said Tilda, extending her arm in Olivia’s direction, but Ben only glanced at her quickly without saying a word.
He didn’t need to say a thing. He could see no one else in the room, not even his sister, who had been so looking forward to welcoming him home as much as I was.
After the toughest months of my life, full of grief and despair for my daddy, I felt a glimmer of happiness at last.
Ben was back home. My favourite person in the whole world was here at last.
‘Penny for your thoughts,’
I said when we sat in our usual corner of the local pub that evening after the party had subsided.
‘You’re quiet this year. Is everything OK in France? Or are you planning something with that new girl, Olivia? You can tell me. I can see your mother is trying to play matchmaker.’
He fidgeted with a beer mat, his eyes darting round the room everywhere except in my direction.
‘You can read me like no one else can, Lou,’
he said, laughing at first but then turning serious.
‘But no, I’ve hardly noticed Olivia, despite her insane efforts to throw herself my way. And my mother will see through her eventually, I’ve no doubt about that.’
‘Phew,’
I replied, trying to keep things lighter than it really felt.
‘I was sure she was going to swoop in and snog your face in front of us all earlier.’
Ben put the beer mat down, took a deep breath and finally looked me in the eye.
His voice cracked as he spoke.
‘Lou, this has been such a tough year for you, and I’m so glad I was there to see you through some of it,’
he told me.
‘But now we need to talk. Wouldn’t you agree?’
‘Go on,’
I said, as a lump the size of a small planet formed in my throat.
‘I love you, Lou,’
he said, his eyes so full of pain, his hand holding mine tightly now.
Oh God.
‘And I’m not saying that just because it’s Christmas, or because I’m so sad you lost your dad,’
he continued.
‘I love you and I want you to know how much you matter to me. You matter more than anyone else in the whole world, you know that?’
My tummy swirled and my eyes widened as I sensed a ‘but’
coming. How ironic for me to hear the words I’d been longing to for so long, only for them to be laced with conditions?
‘But I can’t do a long-distance relationship when I’m at uni in a different country,’
he continued, swallowing hard as he spoke.
‘and I don’t think it’s fair to expect you to settle for that either. We deserve more. We both deserve it all when the time is right.’
I did my best to stay calm and cool, but the truth was, I’d been thinking of this too, tossing and turning at night, giving up nights out with my friends in Belfast to stay in waiting for a call or a text from Ben. It wasn’t healthy. It wasn’t good enough. He was right. We deserved so much more.
‘I understand,’
I whispered, staring at the table.
‘You do?’
‘Ben, I don’t want to half-love you over texts and phone calls either,’
I told him. He reached across and pushed my hair so tenderly off my face.
‘I want you for real. All of you. And that can’t happen now.’
I was agreeing with him, but inside I was screaming at the unfairness of it all.
‘My love for you will never change,’
he told me, kissing my forehead long and slowly.
‘Please always know that, but maybe for now we leave space. Real space. And when we find our way back … which I know we will one day soon, then it’ll be when we’re both ready to make it work for real.’
I looked away. I knew he was right, but that didn’t make it any easier to hear.
‘Say something, Lou,’
he whispered.
‘Say anything.’
I took my time, doing my best to find the right words. I could hear him breathing beside me despite the noise in the busy pub, with revellers toasting Christmas Eve to the sounds of Shane MacGowan and Kirsty MacColl.
‘It’s hard, but yes, I guess it’s where we are for now,’
I replied. My voice was shaking. My hands were shaking too.
‘I love you too, Ben. Just so you know that. I love you too and I always will.’
‘Same,’
he replied.
I put my head on his shoulder, staring at the Christmas tree lights across from us, and sat with his hand in mine for what felt like forever, knowing we had made a very difficult decision but one that was long overdue.
We were choosing love, and we were letting go, all at the same time.
It was a conversation and a Christmas Eve that would change both our paths for the rest of our lives.