Chapter EIGHTEEN
Lou
NOW
Three Days to Christmas Eve
When Cordelia Heaney unexpectedly knocks on my yellow door at Katie’s Cottage late Sunday morning, it’s almost like history repeating itself. Only this time, she has no idea how exhausted, confused and ever so slightly hungover I am from the night before when Ben and I had dinner.
‘Seriously, Lou, how bloody gorgeous is this cottage?’
she cries after almost squeezing me to death on the doorstep.
‘I’m jealous, I can’t lie. Every time I come back home, I’m more and more convinced of how I want to find my proper place in the world back here on Irish soil. I’m thirty-nine years old, so it’s really time I knew what I was doing with my life.’
I think she’s selling herself short. Cordelia has long been admired for living the kind of carefree, nomadic life that many others yearn for.
‘Don’t be so hard on yourself,’
I tell her.
‘You’re a highly sought-after freelance chef, you’ve lived and worked in some of the most beautiful cities in the world, and you’ve a family who are immensely proud of you. Not to mention a niece who idolises you too. She’s been counting the days until you get here.’
Cordelia doesn’t seem convinced.
‘I get all that and I appreciate every bit of it, but you know when something isn’t filling your soul any more, no matter who you meet or what you do?’ she says.
‘I know exactly what you mean.’
‘Anyhow, I’ll figure it out,’
she tells me.
‘Christmas always makes me nostalgic, so I’ll soon snap out of it or finally give myself the kick in the ass I need to do something about it.’
I go to make a pot of coffee, then set it down on the table with some shortbread from Buds and Beans and a small selection of chocolate brownies. Two empty wine glasses sit on the draining board. Grey ashes from last night’s turf fire lie in the grate. If Cordelia hadn’t unexpectedly called in when she did, I’d probably have given in and curled up on the sofa, licking my wounds.
‘Hopefully you’ll get to relax over the holidays, once the embers of the party die down,’
I say to her.
‘Sometimes, stepping out of your own world and letting your brain switch off can spark the best ideas.’
She nods in agreement as she indulges in one of my American-influenced brownies.
‘I’ve been longing for a walk by Lough Beg to clear my head for weeks now,’
she tells me. Then she stops mid-chew, as if she’s studying my face properly for the first time since she got here.
‘Oh my goodness, Lou, I don’t mean to be rude, but you look exhausted.’
I was hoping she wouldn’t notice my red eyes. As much as I was thrilled to see her, I was partly hoping she wouldn’t stay very long so I could crawl under a duvet and flick through Netflix, even though I was already showered and dressed, doing my best to plod on and face the day ahead.
But the conversation from the night before has been replaying again and again in my mind like an old movie. As I struggle with how I’m feeling about what he told me, I can still hear every syllable he said as clearly as if he were sitting here now. I was lost for words at first.
After our heart-stopping kiss on the street outside the restaurant, we’d cuddled in the back seat of the taxi all the way home while I sang along in cosy bliss to Shakin’
Stevens on the radio, wondering what my younger self would have made of the evening we’d just had.
‘Say something, Lou,’
Ben had pleaded with me when he broke the news not long after we’d got to the cottage.
I thought it was a joke at first. I think I may have even laughed, but the way he held both my hands and looked into my eyes brought me up sharp. He was very serious. It was true.
Everything had been heading in the direction we’d both dreamed of until he’d started to confess to something that I know I’ve no right to be upset about deep down.
But he’d lied to me. And about her, of all people.
‘Olivia Major,’
I repeated. I let go of his hands and stared into the dancing orange and yellow flames from where we were sitting on a rug by the fire.
‘You and Olivia? Together? You spent years saying you couldn’t have a long-distance relationship with me, yet you went the distance with her as soon as I was off the scene? Ben! How could you?’
‘I’m sorry!’
‘But I asked you last week if you’d ever seen her since and you said no,’
I reminded him.
‘You looked horrified at the very idea, yet now you’re telling me that only days after we said goodbye you were with her – not once but lots of times. That you were a couple. You were in a proper relationship. How? Why?’
He closed his eyes.
‘Revenge, maybe?’
he said, his voice dropping to not much more than a whisper.
‘That, mixed with a spurge of hot-blooded hurt and a young, busted ego after that last horrible scene at the party, I guess.’
I was puzzled.
Olivia was a beauty, there was no doubt about that, but Ben couldn’t stand her. He couldn’t bear to be around her for more than about five minutes, and most of all he knew every detail of how she’d done her best to bully and belittle me that Christmas at Ballyheaney House, humiliating me at every turnaround.
‘You were a couple,’
I said, my brain unable to process it.
‘We never were a couple. It was all I ever wanted, but for years you said you couldn’t do it. Not while you were in a different country. Yet you instantly made it work with her.’
‘It’s like I’m being stabbed every time you say that,’
he told me.
‘Look, I swear it was meant to be nothing, but time went on and it turned into something before it became nothing again. It was nothing!’
‘Please don’t say it just happened,’
I said, laughing even though it was far from funny.
‘All I ever wanted was for you to make that commitment to me, but you left it until it was too late. Then you hooked up with Olivia long-distance style in the blink of an eye.’
‘I’m doing my best to explain here, Lou,’
he told me.
‘And I’m not blaming you or Olivia. I was a mess.’
The few drinks I’d had and the way Olivia had behaved towards me heightened my emotions as I remembered things I’d buried deep down in my mind. The time she’d mocked my music plans as .
‘Mickey Mouse career’
or how she would talk to me in front of others while deliberately staring at my clothes or hair with a sarcastic grin in an attempt to intimidate me.
‘Her family came to Ballyheaney House to help clear up after the party that disastrous Christmas and ended up staying a while,’
Ben recounts.
‘As the days rolled on, I was missing you so much, so I played along with her games, thinking I’d nothing to lose as I’d already lost you.’
A million thoughts ran through my head. It wasn’t really my place to be offended or angry with him for being with Olivia, or anyone else for that matter, especially given the bombshell I’d dropped on him that last Christmas Eve.
‘Of all people, though,’
I said.
‘She knew what we had, and she didn’t care one bit.’
‘She didn’t,’
he said.
‘She told me as much. In fact, knowing we had something deeply special seemed to drive her on more.’
The wine I’d chosen so carefully for our romantic late night was tasting sour in my mouth.
‘I’m a bit taken aback, mostly because you said you hadn’t heard from her since, yet you did,’
I told him.
‘So, how long were you a couple?’
The very word ‘couple’
when it came to Ben and Olivia made me sick to my stomach.
‘A few months,’
he told me.
‘Lou, I don’t want any secrets between us, so you can ask me anything and I’ll tell you.’
‘How many months?’
I asked, knowing no matter what the answer was, it was only going to sting me more.
‘Five, maybe?’
he said. My mouth dropped open.
‘Six? She came to Paris to see me a few times before it very naturally ran its course. It was her call in the end.’
I covered my mouth, then got up from the floor from where we were sitting and went over to the armchair by the fire. He looked different already. He wasn’t the person I’d missed for so long after all. He had lied to me.
‘She made the call to end it?’
I asked. ‘Why?’
‘Ironically, she said she couldn’t do long distance,’
he told me.
‘She couldn’t connect with me because I was a mess over you. A broken, drunken, horrible mess and not the dashing, eligible bachelor she thought I was. I’m so sorry I lied to you, Lou. I really am.’
I gathered up our drinks and saw him to the door, then I watched him leave in a taxi. This wasn’t how I’d predicted our evening would end. Instead of the making-up-for-lost-time making-love buzz we’d both been on as we left the restaurant, I was left alone in my cottage feeling empty inside.
Where do we go from here? He said it was up to me. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
‘I’d a later night than I should have, that’s all,’
I tell Cordelia.
‘Ben and I had a little bit too much vino.’
‘Good! I was afraid you were upset over something. He told me you’d had dinner,’
she says to me from my kitchen table.
‘I think he’s off getting Mum a new car, though she’ll definitely need some refresher driving lessons if that’s the case. Whatever it is, my brother is on some sort of secret mission and isn’t telling a soul what this secret present is.’
I’m only half listening as Cordelia contemplates her brother’s Sunday-morning whereabouts.
‘Turns out he’s good at keepings secrets,’
I say, unable to conceal the bitterness that lies inside me still.
Cordelia raises her eyebrows as I sit down to join her, doing my best to shake myself into the present and stay there rather than keep going over old ground that can’t be fixed any more, but still I do.
‘Just so you know, I felt so bad about abandoning you all that last Christmas Eve,’
I tell her, hoping to put a lid on the past once and for all.
‘But your father made it clear I was getting in the way of family business.’
Cordelia, as always, has a way of setting things back on the straight and narrow.
‘Lou, you had enough on your plate back then to be worrying about how the party ended up,’
she reminds me.
‘My family’s financial mess on Christmas Eve was out of everyone’s control, including yours. But Uncle Eric came to the rescue. My father was a stubborn so-and-so, but I did feel sorry for him getting into such trouble. It was an investment gone wrong. If it hadn’t been for my uncle, we’d have had to sell up. And it looks like one of us is going to have to step in again very soon.’
‘That bad?’
I ask, slightly taken aback.
‘Not as bad as before, but the clock is ticking,’
she says.
‘Not as bad as my father’s mistake when he turned our whole lives upside down. It took years to get back on our feet after that.’
‘How sad,’
I reply.
‘And the famous Ballyheaney House Charity Afternoon Tea Party was never to see the light of day again.’
‘Until now, baby!’
says Cordelia, standing up with her arms outstretched to shift the energy.
‘We’re back and we’re even better, bitches. Even the weather is on our side. There’ll be no rain this year, that’s for sure, ‘cos it’s all in feckin’
Spain where I left it.’
Her enthusiasm lifts my mood a little.
‘The dream team,’
I chuckle.
‘Isn’t that what we used to call ourselves?’
‘The absolute best around,’
she says, reaching for a high five.
‘Ben sent me pictures of your centrepieces for the tables, Lou. They’re amazing, and such a nice touch to remember Dad with the white roses. Thank you. You really do think of everything.’
I can’t help but smile, knowing my efforts haven’t gone unnoticed.
‘I chose New Dawn white roses in memory of your dad and his walled garden, fir branches from the shores of Lough Beg for everlasting connection, and gold ribbon to represent the prestige and pride in Ballyheaney House,’
I explain further.
‘The pine cones I threw in purely for aesthetics, but yes, I’m glad you think it all works.’
She sits back down again and takes in her surroundings, looking in wonder at the old-fashioned grandfather clock as it chimes midday, the dinky net curtains that belonged to the previous owner and that I simply couldn’t replace, and the framed black-and-white photos on the walls depicting scenes from our village, including one of the bronze statue of a turf digger outside the historic house Bellaghy Bawn.
‘We need this as a family more than anyone could ever know,’
she says quietly.
‘I’m still pinching myself that Ben agreed to being part of it after all he’s been through with losing Stephanie.’
Her eyes skirt around the room some more.
‘That was hard for you all,’
I say.
‘So heartbreaking. I can only imagine how hopeless you all felt watching Ben and Ava wrestle with grief for all these years. It’s a cruel old world.’
‘She was something special,’
she tells me.
‘So positive, so graceful and so damn realistic, even when facing up to her own mortality.’
‘I’d love to know more about her,’
I say, genuinely touched at how Cordelia is opening up to me.
Cordelia smiles as she remembers her late sister-in-law.
‘She adored Ava of course,’
she tells me.
‘Children were high up on her priority list. She used to joke how she’d love to fill the house with them. She loved this time of year too, with all the hustle and bustle, but her favourite season was summer. She’d never miss a glimmer of sunshine. I think of her every time I’m basking in the sun in Spain, knowing she’s really not that far away as long as the sun is out.’
‘She sounds like an angel,’
I say, shifting in my chair.
‘I’m so sorry you lost her.’
Cordelia lets out a deep sigh.
‘My brother has made some silly mistakes in his love life, but Stephanie made up for them all,’
she said.
‘She reminded me a lot of you. The same tenacity, the same creative energy and an endearing loyalty to those she loved. I’d easily class losing you as Ben’s biggest mistake, though I’m sure he’d come right back at me with a list of some of the mistakes I’ve made too.’
I’m very touched at Cordelia’s honesty. It’s good to hear a little more about Ben’s late wife, who sounds like a darling.
‘Stephanie was adamant that Ben and Ava should make the best life together as soon as they felt strong enough to,’
she says.
‘She told us all how she’d cheer them on from the clouds above. She joked that if they didn’t learn to be happy without her, she would haunt them both.’
We sit in silence, both lost in thoughts of our own, though mine quickly drift back to the night before and how any glimmer of happiness that might have been coming our way had been quickly squashed by Ben’s big revelation.
‘He told me about his five-month relationship with Olivia Major,’
I blurt out, addressing the elephant in the room at last.
‘Or was it six months?’
‘Oh shit,’
she laughs.
‘What a joke that was!’
‘That’s one way of putting it,’
I say, doing my best not to scowl.
‘I had no idea they were a thing, Cor. And I’m kicking myself for reacting this way, as I’ve no right to feel anything about what happened after me.’
Cordelia frowns before taking a deep breath.
‘So that’s why he was so quiet over breakfast this morning,’
she tells me.
‘I kept asking how you two were getting along, meaning the party planning with a hint of whatever else may have happened by now, but he was so vague and kept changing the subject to Ava and her newly found baking skills, or how she can now whip Uncle Eric in a game of chess.’
I shrug.
‘Five or six months,’
I say to her.
‘How did he tolerate her for six days, never mind six whole months?’
‘Five or six whole months with the safety of the English Channel and the Irish Sea between them,’
she explains.
I bite my lip.
‘He doesn’t owe me an explanation and neither do you,’
I say to her.
‘My only disappointment is that I asked him directly last week if he ever heard from her again and he said no. She tried to make my life hell, Cordelia. And she took such pleasure out of it too.’
Cordelia looks out through the window. I follow her gaze to see a tiny robin help itself to the bird feed I’ve hung from a tree in the field across the way.
‘He doesn’t tell me everything, so I can’t claim to have any big insight into what he saw in her back then,’
she says.
‘Don’t get me wrong. We’re very close as far as siblings go, but Ben can be a closed book when he wants to be. We all can. What he did tell me was that the last Christmas party conversation broke his heart, that he’d never get over you, nor did he want to. He enjoyed the pain, which took me years to understand until I had my own heart broken, and then I knew exactly what he meant. Feeling pain for someone you love is better than feeling nothing at all.’
I feel fresh tears prick my eyes as a hard relate comes to mind. I took myself off to New York in denial of the turmoil Ben was in back home, but just like him I didn’t want to completely ease the pain. Part of me needed it to still feel that connection with him, even if silently and from afar.
Feeling nothing would have been worse.
‘We were so worried about him, Lou,’
she continues, hugging her coffee cup with both hands.
‘Mum and Dad were afraid to take their eyes off him for ages. He wouldn’t tell us why at first, but all over Christmas he said he wasn’t going to go back to Paris, then he launched into the drinks cabinet and spilled his guts out to me when our parents were asleep. He’d lost heart in his degree course, in his friends, in everything, so Olivia was a timely distraction who made her move without knowing what he was going through, or how he felt about you at the time. I can only imagine that Ben acted on it out of sheer grief, Lou. I know he beat himself up over it for a very long time.’
I pour some fresh coffee into both of our cups, wondering how much more of our broken romance Ben had told his family about.
‘It’s not my place to be angry or to blame Olivia or Ben,’
I reply, doing my best to create some space.
‘There’s been a lot of water under the bridge between us, over twenty whole years to be precise. It was a shock when he told me and it still is, yes, but I’m a big girl. I’ll shake it off eventually. After all, I’d rather we keep moving forward and let bygones be bygones.’
Cordelia reaches across and lightly touches my hand. When she smiles, I see the years have been kind to her with her sparkling eyes and sun-kissed skin. She has lived and loved too, I’m sure, yet I can see in her a longing to put down some roots and get her teeth into something. Perhaps a bit like I felt when I knew I wanted to come back here.
She has changed. I have changed. We’ve all changed so much since we were last together.
‘I was always rooting for you two,’
she says, her face so relaxed and open now.
‘From the very start, when you both came into the millennium party with flushed faces and the joy of delivering the new baby foal, I saw something between you that could never be matched or denied. I was only a kid, but I was cheering you both on from day one.’
I sit back and fold my arms, mirroring her cheeky smile.
‘You knew we had something going on even then?’
I ask her, shaking my head in disbelief.
‘And all this time we thought we were the best-kept secret of Ballyheaney House.’
Cordelia clasps her hands on the table and leans towards me.
‘Even the dogs on the street knew you two were love’s young dream,’
she says with a wink and a smile.
‘Uncle Eric was almost as devastated as Ben was when you left. I think it reminded him of losing his own one true love, though he still won’t tell us who she is or was. What is it with my family and secrets?’
I furrow my brow and tilt my head.
‘He nearly told me her name once, you know,’
I divulge as Cordelia’s eyes widen.
‘He was so close to telling me until your father, bless him, totally burst our bubble by coming into the drawing room looking for his reading glasses. That was it, subject closed. I’ll never forget it.’
Cordelia looks wistful at the mention of her father.
‘You’ve no idea how good it is to have you back in our lives,’
she tells me, her voice now soft.
‘Even if you and Ben never get it together, we all love you, Lou. I hope you’ll never forget that. No matter what comes next.’
Her words soothe my bruised and battered heart a little.
‘We’re getting far too serious and heavy for a crisp Sunday in December,’
I say, gently squeezing her hand.
‘Now, how about we take a day off from reminiscing and party planning and instead we go let our hair down somewhere for a few hours?’
I don’t need to ask Cordelia twice, that’s for sure. She is already on her feet, looking around for where she left her red woollen coat and thick cream scarf.
‘That sounds like a plan,’
she says, dancing on the spot.
‘You and I have so much to catch up on, so let’s go somewhere nice for a big fat Sunday lunch. My treat?’
‘Only if it’s a Ben-and-Olivia-free zone?’
‘You’d better believe it,’
she agrees.
‘Remind me to tell you about the illicit festive romance I had in Edinburgh last year with a fine Scot called Angus. You’re not the only one to have jingle bells ringing at this time of year, you know.’
We slip and slide, arm in arm, across my yard, already in wrinkles from laughing on our way to the car.
‘I want to hear every single spicy detail of your Scottish fling, Cordelia Heaney,’
I tell her.
‘You’ve made me feel so much better already.’
We drive out of town with the radio blaring, leaving my thoughts of Olivia back in the past, where I know they belong.
The only question lingering in my mind is whether I can let go of the fact that Ben lied to me, so that I can focus instead on the wonderful time we’d had at the restaurant last night and what might happen between us next.
Ben still has my heart. There’s no question of that. He believes we still ‘fit’.
I so want to believe him.
With only three days until the party, I really hope I can.