Chapter 37
It was Monday morning in the office and before she turned on her computer, Kitty looked at the ring on her hand. It was gaudy and horrible and made her hand look as though it belonged to someone else. She felt she was living a life which no longer belonged to her. Why had she thought marriage was the answer to her problems? She sat at her desk and then realised that there was a light sprinkling of dust on her computer screen. She hadn’t wiped anything down for a week or so now, and everything was okay. She could see the screen and she hadn’t died from bacteria or germs. In fact, the orchid on her desk looked even perkier and was coming into bud again. All those routines and rituals that she had staked her entire existence to were just a waste of time. Where had all that control and order and neatness got her? Precisely nowhere.
Kitty picked up her phone, typing first a message to Shazza and then one to Annie.
Kitty
I’m sorry. Will you forgive me?
Kitty
I am so sorry for all the things I said. Will you forgive me?
Her phone remained still, the messages not read, making Kitty feel totally alone. How could she make everything better? Or perhaps it was too late for all of that. Kitty’s self-loathing settled into her bones like a rainy Sunday. She deserved everything she got, she’d brought this on herself.
Annie
You were absolutely right to speak the truth. I love u. Nothing changes anything!!!! Let’s just forget about it!!!!
Annie
Will pay you both back!!!!!
Kitty felt even worse. Annie was just such a sweet person. It was like kicking a dog or a cat. How horrible Kitty was. She put her head in her hands for a moment, the ring on her finger pressing into her forehead. How could she have treated Annie so badly? And Shazza? This was dreadful. She would have to talk to them both. A text just wasn’t enough.
‘Is that an engagement ring?’ She looked up to see Mary Rose staring at her hand.
Hughie’s eyes were also on the ring. ‘What,’ he said. ‘The. Flying. Jesus. Is. That?’ His expression was one of revulsion combined with complete and utter bewilderment.
Mary Rose was also looking slightly confused. ‘I think,’ she said, ‘it’s diamanté and faux-meralds.’
‘Faux-meralds?’ said Hughie. ‘Do you mean what I think you mean?’
Mary Rose nodded. ‘My family owned the jewellers in Fairview for thirty years, I know my way around gemstones and their pretenders. Not,’ she said quickly, ‘that there is anything wrong with faux-meralds and diamantés… I’m quite partial to a saphfaux myself… it’s just that the settings are unique… the way the stones are so randomly placed. It’s either art or it’s…’
‘A mess,’ said Hughie. ‘I thought you had taste, Kitty. You work in an advertising company. Bling is not king, here. Tat is not all that.’
‘It’s the ugliest ring I’ve ever seen,’ agreed Kitty. ‘But what can I do?’
‘Not wear it?’ suggested Hughie. ‘But why are you wearing such a thing?’
‘I think it has a certain folksy charm,’ said Mary Rose. ‘As though it’s an anti-ring, so wrong it’s right. But am I right in thinking that it is an engagement ring? And if so, then it doesn’t matter what we think, if you love it…’
‘I don’t,’ said Kitty. ‘But what can I do?’
‘Wait,’ said Hughie. ‘So Dave asked you to marry him?’
Kitty nodded.
‘And you said yes?’
Kitty nodded again.
‘But…’ began Hughie, looking bewildered and perplexed as though Kitty had suggested she was moving to the moon or giving up chocolate for Lent. It did not compute.
But Kitty was thinking of Tom, wondering where he was, and what was he doing. She hadn’t answered his text because she didn’t know what to say. If she allowed some time to pass and not go to practice, then they might be able to move on and beyond what had happened. They just needed a little bit of distance and with the benefit of the passing of time and – if she avoided leaving the house and remained a hermit – perhaps they could be friends.
Except… she didn’t want to be friends with him. She wouldn’t be able to sit there across from him in The Island and not want to reach over and touch him. At the end of the night, she would hate having to say goodbye, knowing that Dave was at home waiting for her.
‘Change it for another ring,’ Hughie was saying. ‘Honestly, it’s worse than one you might get in a cracker.’
‘I can’t… it’s his mother’s…’
‘Well, give it back,’ said Hughie. ‘Tell her the ring is shite and you will not disrespect your hand for one moment longer…’
‘It’s not that easy,’ said Kitty.
Even Alex was looking at the ring with a slightly horrified look on her face.
‘Kitty,’ said Mary Rose, ‘one day you will realise that you don’t have to please people and that you can say no.’
‘That day,’ said Hughie, ‘is obviously yet to arrive. And BTW are you sure you want to actually marry Dave? As in betrove yourself, be bound by him in those gridirons of patriarchy, stay with him through sick and thin. Of all the men in all the world, he is the only one for you? There is not a single other man who does it for you? No one sexier, handsomer, more intelligent… kinder… because leaving you to go to his mam’s isn’t what I would call a kind thing to do…’
Kitty thought of Tom again, her heart crumpling like an old drinks can. ‘No one,’ she said, her voice breaking slightly. She cleared her throat. ‘No one else.’ She really had to move on and forget about him. That was a dalliance, a diversion in the road of life. Nothing more to say, except to get on with her life.
But Hughie was peering at her. ‘Oh my God,’ he said. ‘There is! There is someone else. I have watched enough Judge Judy in my life to know when someone is lying, and you are lying! Am I right?’
Kitty tried to shake her head, but somehow it turned into a nod. ‘But there’s nothing I can do,’ she said, desperately. ‘Someone once said that you have to be careful about ending up down a rabbit hole with the wrong person and that’s exactly what’s happened to me. I can’t get out. How can I hurt Dave after everything?’
Hughie was looking incredulous. ‘You just do,’ he said. ‘Like ripping off a plaster. Done. Gone. Sayonara. Adios. Slán go foill.’
Kitty shook her head, miserably. How had being proposed to made her feel totally out of control? Where was that woman who had been drinking in The Grace O’Malley only a week ago, swimming off the islands of Dublin Bay, and scoring goals and… well, scoring Tom? She had thought she and Shazza were changing their lives for the better, but it was only Shazza who had the real strength to do it. She was stuck and couldn’t see a way out so all she could do was crack on and make the most of it.
But Hughie and Mary Rose were both looking concerned.
‘Everything’s fine,’ Kitty insisted, trying to smile, but knowing she looked deranged. ‘I mean, I’m getting married! It’s all I’ve ever wanted!’