Chapter Twenty-Five #2
She rolls her eyes but it’s anything but flippant.
“Yes, but barely. Their marriage was a shambles. My father had something of a double life.” She pulls in another breath.
“He had a long-running affair with the woman he is now married to, Carol.
I'm still not sure exactly when they got together, but I know it was for a long time before Mum died, and we all knew about it.
She would even tell us when he was 'at Carol's' although they didn't explain what that meant to us. It just was. And then, after Mum died, I understood much clearer. Him and Carol were married within six months. She became my stepmother.”
“My God,” I whisper.
“Yeah. It's a bit fucked up, isn't it? Honestly, I'm just grateful it happened when I was fifteen and not five. Carol didn't want kids, so we were a big inconvenience, messing up this fantasy life she wanted with my dad. The thing is, what makes it a bit easier to look back on now, I do believe she and my father genuinely loved and still do love each other, so yes, they should have always been together, but that’s not easy to think about either. I think I'm at peace with how my mum and dad weren't in love at all, but it was still hard to not see my father really grieve for the mother of his children. And of course, Jake and I have always wondered how much of a role my father played in Mum’s depression. Not that it was his fault, we understand that. But did he support her enough? Did he even understand it? Was it his affair that made her feel so utterly hopeless? I don't think it was just that.” She pauses and looks down at the sand, and I let her take her time. “I know she loved us, but I also always felt like there was somewhere else, or someone else, she’d rather be. I’ve always wondered if we could have managed it better if she'd had more support and more...” She sighs but this seems to create space for a small smile. “I guess what I’m trying to say is that I wish my mother had had more love in her life.”
I let silence fall so I can also lock those words away somewhere, although where I don't really know. Then I ask her the one question that I always want people to ask me when they find out I’ve lost someone I love.
“What was her name?”
“Catalina. Cathy,” she says, and her dazzling smile makes me so glad I asked. I commit the name to memory. “Her mother, my grandmother, was Spanish. I never met her sadly, but I always loved my mum’s name.”
“Jake's older than you?” I ask.
“No, three years younger. It was much harder on him,” she says, picking up a slice of watermelon.
“It must have been hard on you both.”
She chews for a while before replying, thinking.
I like how she does that. “I think at fifteen, I already knew quite a bit about myself. I knew I wanted to be a writer. I knew what I liked - boys, clothes, books, boys, music, my friends, and did I mention boys? - and so I had those things to focus on, and I really did.” She sits up straighter and laughs at herself.
“I was obsessed with having a boyfriend but then I got bored pretty quickly and would dump him and try another one, and repeat.
I kept myself busy and even had fun, despite what was happening at home.
Dad gave me a lot of freedom and honestly, for a few years after Mum died, life felt easier.
Carefree, almost. Now, I know I was just postponing my grief, and that caught up with me once I hit my twenties.
But even then, I was okay. Jake wasn't so lucky.” Her smile drops completely.
“Jake and Mum were really close. He didn't mind being around her when she was in her worst episodes.
Me, I wasn't so good at that. It drained me.
I'd rather be reading alone, with my boyfriend at the time, or out with friends.
But Jake would often just curl up in bed next to her and stroke her back or comb her hair.
He'd stay there for hours and hours listening to The Archers or reading the Radio Times listings to her.”
“Shit. He was what, twelve?”
“Yeah, when she died. Jake always had more patience than me. But he also needed more from my parents than I did; reassurance, validation, encouragement. And sadly, Dad wasn't the best at giving that.”
“What's he like now? Your father?”
She rolls her eyes again. “Living in Edinburgh with Carol and three sausage dogs. I haven't seen them for over two years.”
“And Jake? He seems to be so well put together and sort of larger than life,” I say, thinking about all the banter I've had with him in the last few days. “Does he see your dad?”
“Jake's amazing. He's my best friend. I'm so lucky to have him,” she says, her smile firmly back. “But no, he also hasn't seen them for just as long. I think he’d like to change that, actually.”
“So that's your big before and after, the first big dividing line in your life.” I nod, understanding now what she means. I can't help thinking how her having this, that grief, is something we have in common. It maybe explains why I feel so comfortable with her.
“Yeah, it is. But you know, the older I get, the more the before feels like a dream.
Not a totally unpleasant one, I have to say.
I think I've put those memories through a heavy rose-tinted filter, but I also know that who I am now is not defined by that single event and for a long time in my twenties - when I finally did grieve my mother - it felt like it would be the axis my whole life would turn around.
But now, it isn't.” Jenna tilts her head up and pushes air through her nose and then it stops, as if a thought has just popped into her head.
“Maybe that's because of my divorce. Maybe all it takes is another dividing line to appear for the other one to fade in comparison.
My divorce certainly didn't feel as dramatic or tragic or confusing - it was what I wanted - but it definitely felt like it had just as much, if not more power. It really stopped me in my tracks, made me question everything.”
“You were the one who asked for a divorce?” I ask, unsure if I'm surprised or not.
“Yes,” she says but she doesn’t elaborate.
“You didn't want to be married to him anymore?”
“No, I didn’t. He was, is, a good man. He took great care of me and supported me in lots of different ways. But...” She stops. Shaking her head, Jenna finally puts the watermelon slice in her mouth and sucks so hard I can hear the juice get pulled out of the fruit.
“But...” I prompt her after a few seconds.
She nods as she quickly chews. “I wanted things he didn’t want.”
“The sex things? The kink?”
“Not only that, but also...” Jenna looks up at me then as if remembering something she forgot. “Oh, Marty, this is not a great first-date conversation.”
“Who said this was a first date? I think when you've shagged like rabbits like we did last night and done some excellent wet-humping in the sea together, well, then we've already moved on from that.
Also, we've had two sunset dates together,” I point out.
“I would therefore say this is at least a fourth or fifth date.”
“Sometimes I feel like you just say more words than is really necessary so your accent distracts me from thinking up counter-arguments,” she says, with more head shakes.
“That wasn't what I was doing, but I can't promise you I won't in the future.” I wink at her. “You like my accent, huh? I like yours too. All those prim and proper English sounds.”
“You're doing it again.” She points the watermelon rind at me.
“And you're hoping I forget my question, but I haven't. Tell me.”
She narrows her eyes on me. “You really want to know?”
“I do.” I nod.
She puts her sunglasses back on then but stays looking at me. “It wasn’t just the kink.” She sighs, and it sounds almost guttural. “I changed my mind about children. I decided I did want to have children with him.”
I don't mean to fall silent. I'm just noticing how her body is different, her torso bent forward over her legs, her shoulders sloped and her hands stroking her shins, almost as if to comfort herself.
“And he didn't?”
“No,” she says and stares out at the blue sea again. “We always said no to children. From one of our first dates, actually. And that's how I felt then, and it was how I felt for a long time. But a few years ago, I changed my mind.”
“Why?”
“Why did I change my mind?” She scoffs, looking at me.
“All the usual reasons. My friends started having kids, and my goodness they were cute.
Well, some of them were. Some were ugly little buggers, but others.
.. I mean, have you ever cuddled a helpless little newborn baby, or heard them sneeze, or sniffed the top of their head?
You probably haven't, actually. But it will happen, and you better be ready for how that makes you feel.
So yeah, I guess my ovaries woke up. I also found myself looking at my life and realising the only thing I had to focus on was my career and that was getting harder and more conflicted as my own relationship – and specifically, our sex life - stagnated quite a bit.
Also, at the time, I still loved Robert.
He was a good partner for a long time, so I thought he'd be a brilliant father. And stupidly, stupidly, part of me even thought that having a child might bring us closer together... but he was firm and resolute about not wanting children, no matter how I felt.”
I swallow and have to ask the only question that seems to matter after all that new information. “Do you still love him?”
Jenna looks back to the sea when she speaks again.
“A part of me will always love him. In the same way part of me will always be in love with Jonathan Kennet and Tomas Dobrowski, the first and second boys I fell in love with.
In the same way I'll always be the eleven-year-old girl sitting in the corner of a library learning about erections for the first time in a Judy Blume book. And I will always be the fifteen-year-old who read a Christina Rosetti poem at her mother’s funeral.
I'll always be the sixteen-year-old losing her virginity in the back of Liam Crowe's VW Polo.
So yes, I'll always be the woman who fell in love with Robert. But right now, I am not his, and he is not mine, and my heart...” Jenna lies back then, stretches her hands above her head and turns her head to look at me.
“My heart has never felt as free as it does now, which is so bloody exciting but also, utterly, utterly terrifying.”
I clear some of the plates and then lie down on my side next to her.
I have every intention of lying back and staring up at the few clouds that decorate the blue sky but before I do I realise there is another question I am curious about.
It's nowhere near as important, but I feel like I need to ask.
“And... kids? How do you feel about them now?”
Again, Jenna takes her time to answer. “Can I say that I really don't know?
Because that is my honest answer. I think maybe I do still want them, but I'm definitely not ready to do that alone.
I'm also not ready to rush into another relationship and get pregnant immediately. So, yeah, I just don't know.”
I wait a moment before responding. I suddenly don't want to say a single thing that could make me sound so much younger than her wise and informed years, but I also want to be honest, and I think what I have to say could help her.
“I think not knowing is okay. I don't know how I feel most of the time.” I smile down at her.
“You know more than you realise,” Jenna says and her hands come up to comb my hair. “And you're right, not knowing is totally okay.”
I lean over to kiss her lips, tasting champagne, watermelon and strawberries - all the sweetest, juiciest things in life.
Then I turn and lie down on my back, my head touching the side of hers, and I close my eyes.
The calm that washes over me as I feel the sun's heat tightening the skin on my body is enough that I feel almost like I could fall asleep.
Just after I remind myself that I probably shouldn't because then I'll burn as red as a boiled lobster, a very clear thought slices into my mind waking me up.
Startled and alert, I can't let go of it, but nor do I want to hold on to it too tight because it unsettles me as much as it soothes me.
Because if Jenna hadn't got divorced and Arnie hadn't died, I wouldn't be lying where I'm lying now, beside someone I want to know for much, much longer than the days we are going to share on this island in the sunshine.