Chapter 13
13
‘I’m thinking of trying paragliding; apparently there’s no freedom like it. You’d be up for that wouldn’t you, Wendy?’ It took a moment for her to realise that Gwen was waiting for an answer, and she didn’t even remember what the question had been. She’d got up after a night of reaching out into the empty space in the bed where Gary should have been, which had made anything but fitful sleep impossible.
Making a pot of tea, she’d headed out of the side door of the house, planning to knock on the camper van door and apologise for how she’d acted the day before. Gary was bound to be back by now, the frustration he’d clearly felt the day before at least partly out of his system; except the camper wasn’t there. He hadn’t cooled off and come home, and the instant she realised that, the dread had come back. What if he never came back, and she really had blown it? Rushing back inside, she’d tried to call him, but it had gone straight to voicemail. Her WhatsApp messages went unread, and there were no replies to her texts either. She’d thought about calling Drew or Beth, or even Gary’s parents, but what was she supposed to say? That she had no idea where he was, and that she’d been such a jealous cow she’d somehow convinced Gary she was still in love with Mike.
It had taken all of about ten minutes after he’d left for her to put herself in his shoes. If he’d thrown a hissy fit because his ex was getting engaged, she’d have assumed that meant he still had feelings for Rachel. So it was no wonder he’d assumed the same about her. In the dark of the night, she’d forced herself to face up to that question and whether there was any truth to it. She’d really thought about it, and she was absolutely certain there wasn’t.
The idea of being with Mike was so alien, as if their time together was a life someone else had lived, or something she’d watched in a film. She couldn’t imagine being his wife, and the thought of touching him, or worse still of him touching her, was horrifying. But, somehow, a part of her was still grieving for the picture she’d envisioned, of a perfect family unit that had never been split apart by divorce. She had no idea how to reconcile that, without somehow leaving Gary feeling like what they had was ‘less than’ as a result. All she knew was that she had to try, because she couldn’t lose him. Their conversation from the night before had been playing on repeat, ever since she’d discovered the camper still wasn’t back, so it was no wonder she’d barely heard what Gwen was saying. She’d only come to the Miss Adventures get-together in an attempt to stop obsessing over how she’d left things with Gary, and the easiest thing to do was to murmur incoherently and nod along. She didn’t even realise what she was agreeing to, until Caroline’s mouth dropped open.
‘You’re going to go paragliding with Gwen?’ Caroline looked at Wendy, shaking her head. ‘Please tell me you’re not up for this too, Connie, and that I’m the only sane one here.’
‘Oh no! I can hold Wendy’s coat, and you can hold Gwen’s. I’ll also take as many pictures as you want, but you won’t get me up there.’
‘I didn’t mean—’ Wendy’s protest was cut off as Caroline turned to Frankie.
‘What about you, are you on team crazy or team sane?’
‘It depends how you look at it.’ Frankie grinned. ‘Because I have signed up to do a tandem parachute jump. A few of us from the Port Agnes midwifery unit are doing it to raise money for the MS therapy centre. They’ve done so much to help Ella since her diagnosis, and they do some really great work. I’m scared out of my mind at the prospect of jumping, but I just think about how scared she must have been when she got her diagnosis, and any fear I have doesn’t even compare to that.’
‘That’s such a great attitude.’ Wendy looked at her friend. Frankie was probably a decade older than she was, and from what she’d shared since they’d joined the group, it was obvious she’d been through a lot. Her own marriage had broken down, her son had tried to force her to choose between him and her new partner, and her daughter had been trapped in an abusive marriage thousands of miles away, until she’d finally escaped back to Cornwall. There must have been an imagined future that Frankie had grieved for when her marriage had broken down, but if she was still struggling with that, she never let it show. She wasn’t the only one who’d been through a tough time. Connie had been separated from Charlie for almost four decades, after his adoption, but she’d said the last thing she wanted to do was to waste the years she would now get with him, wishing that the past could be different. And Wendy had a sneaking feeling she could learn from all of the others in the Miss Adventures club. Maybe doing something she’d never have dreamt of doing in her old life would be the start of shaking it off altogether, and letting go of what she’d expected her life to look like. Mike would have laughed at the idea of her paragliding, and told her she could never do it. Gary, on the other hand, seemed to believe she was capable of anything. So, if she hadn’t completely messed up, she already knew she’d have his support.
‘How do we sign up for this paragliding, then?’ She wanted to put her name on the dotted line of an agreement she couldn’t get out of, before she chickened out. And there was something else she could do that would make her even less likely to back out. ‘Maybe we could join forces with the midwives, and get some sponsorship for the paragliding to raise more funds for the MS centre.’
‘That’s a brilliant idea.’ Gwen picked up her mobile phone. ‘This is the site I’ve found. We can either do a tandem jump taster session, or a full day with training where we get to fly solo along the Atlantic coast. If we’re talking sponsorship, we could always do it with a twist.’
‘If you’re about to suggest naked paragliding, I’m retracting my offer of coming to take photos!’ Connie laughed. ‘I love you both, but there are some things that can’t be unseen, and there’s a reason not all of us would have made good midwives.’
‘I was thinking about fancy dress, or seeing if we can get some local businesses to sponsor us, if we wear a shirt with their logo on, but maybe Connie is on to something.’ There was a mischievous glint in Gwen’s eye, which suggested she was joking, but you could never be sure. That would be one adventure too far for Wendy, and she needed to shut it down.
‘Fancy dress it is then? Shall we choose a date and get it booked in now? I’m guessing we might have to wait until the spring, as the weather is bound to break soon. But I want to pay up front; that way I won’t be tempted to back out.’ Wendy’s feet were already tingling at the thought, the same way they did whenever she was in a tall building. This was definitely feeling the fear and doing it anyway.
‘How about the last Sunday in April? That gives us six months, which should be plenty of time to drum up sponsorship.’ Gwen raised her eyebrows as she waited for a response, and it was Wendy’s last chance to duck out. Instead she found herself nodding vigorously, and handing over her credit card for Gwen to secure the booking. It was time to embrace the new life she’d found herself in, and taking to the sky above the Atlantic coast might just make her appear cooler than Chloe in her daughters’ eyes. At least this once.
There was no urgency for Wendy to return the serving dish her sister had brought with her to the barbecue, laden with her famous macaroni cheese. But when Gary still hadn’t got back with the camper by the time she returned from her get-together with the Miss Adventures girls, she needed someone to talk to. It had been all very well in the heat of the moment agreeing to go paragliding with Gwen, and it felt like she was taking a huge leap out of her comfort zone, but doing that wouldn’t suddenly solve her problems. A future that might not include Gary felt very bleak, and no amount of adventure would make up for that. She had to do something to fix the rift she’d caused between them and, if she confided in her sister, Louise would offer up some advice. She always did, whether it was asked for or not.
‘You didn’t need to rush over with that. We’re meeting up at Mum’s on Saturday, aren’t we? It could definitely have waited until then.’ Louise was already eyeing her up suspiciously when she opened the door to find Wendy standing there clutching the large Pyrex dish.
‘You really know how to make a girl feel welcome.’
‘Don’t be daft, you’re always welcome.’ Louise stepped aside for her sister to come in. ‘But why do I get the feeling that the reason you’re here has nothing to do with returning a dish?’
‘I don’t know, why do you get that feeling?’ Wendy’s eyes met her sister’s for a moment, and Louise shrugged.
‘Because you look like you’ve been awake half the night worrying about something; your eyes are red rimmed and your cheeks are all blotchy.’
‘Maybe I should just book into your place and have myself put down.’ Louise worked as a veterinary nurse at a practice on the coast road that led towards Port Tremellien, but she should have been a mind reader.
‘Or you could just tell me what’s bothering you, and what you think you might have done to mess things up with Gary.’
Wendy shouldn’t have been surprised; her sister had always been able to see right through her. As soon as Louise ushered her into the kitchen and turned on the coffee machine, it all started flooding out. By the time Louise put a coffee in front of her, Wendy had recounted the whole sorry tale and her sister was giving her another appraising look.
‘So you think you’re grieving for this amazing life you were going to have with Mike, one that was going to be just like Mum and Dad’s?’
‘Well maybe not amazing, but at least it would have been neat. A family with a husband and wife, a couple of kids, and no cobbled-together extension that I didn’t ask for, tacked on to the side of it.’ It was the only way Wendy could explain it. She’d described her version of the picket-fence lifestyle she’d envisioned, with 2.4 children, but Louise was already wrinkling her nose.
‘There was a slight flaw in that plan though, wasn’t there? Mike was already erecting extensions, or at least erecting something, all over the place, when you were supposed to be this neat little family . What Mum and Dad have is built on nearly sixty years of togetherness, and continuing to choose to be together because they make each other happy. You and Mike didn’t do that. And, yes, he might have been the one who cheated, but I want you to look me in the eye and tell me honestly that he made you as happy as Gary does. And that you wanted to spend time with him, the same way you do with Gary.’
‘I wanted us to spend time as family and?—’
Louise held up her hand, cutting her sister off. ‘No! I’m not talking about what you wanted for the girls , I’m talking about what you wanted for you . I don’t think it was Mike; I’m not sure it ever was. He made you feel bad about yourself and criticised you all the time, doing whatever he wanted while you picked up the slack. I’ll never understand why you put up with it for so long and, even when you first got together, you never lit up around him like you do with Gary. I mean sometimes it makes me want to throw up.’ Louise laughed. ‘But it also makes me incredibly happy to see you like that. I used to laugh when we were teenagers and you told me he was the only boy you were ever going to love and that all you wanted to do was marry him one day. I thought you were wrong, but you weren’t. He’s still the only man you’ve ever really loved, isn’t he? And you still want to marry him, don’t you?’
‘Yes.’
‘So what the hell are you playing at?’
‘I’ve got no idea. I just want Gary to come home, even though I still feel bad for the girls that things with their dad have come to this. I should have known Mike wasn’t up to the job of fatherhood.’ It was a relief to admit it, even to herself, but she still couldn’t shake the nagging guilt that she’d built her daughter’s lives around a relationship that her heart had never been in, in quite the same way as it was in this one. She would never regret having a relationship with Mike, because without him she wouldn’t have the girls, but as irrational as it was, she still wished she’d given them a different father. Things would have been so much better if Gary had been their father, but she’d saddled her children with a dad who only really cared about himself. And she couldn’t help wondering if part of the fault for that lay with her. Maybe if she had loved Mike with the same intensity she loved Gary, he might have been able to focus on someone other than himself, and that was why she felt guilty, but Louise had seen right through her once again.
‘Quite frankly it’s a miracle in a world full of chance meetings that you found Gary at all, and what you feel for him is something an awful lot of people don’t get to experience in their lives. So don’t you even for a minute feel guilty because the one man you’ve ever truly loved turned out not to be your children’s father. The girls are happy, they love Gary, and they clearly love Chloe too. The new people who’ve been brought into their lives as a result of the divorce are just a bonus as far as they’re concerned. So you can stop beating yourself up about it and start enjoying it.’
‘I want to, more than anything, but I seem to be intent on spoiling what we’ve got, by being jealous of Chloe.’
‘Because she’s with Mike?’ Louise sounded as if it was the most ridiculous thing she’d ever heard. ‘You should feel sorry for her.’
‘I do, but I hate the fact the girls love her so much and, before you say, I know that’s stupid and that I should be grateful she’s so kind to them. Even I can see she’s a lovely person, but I just can’t seem to get used to the idea of sharing them. Chloe has really helped with some issues with Zara, and I thought I’d turned a corner as a result and started to adjust. But the girls seem to want to spend all their time with her and it really hurts. I wish it didn’t, but it does. That’s why I’ve been harking after the neat little family that never even existed. It’s got nothing to do with wanting Mike back.’ It was true, she knew that without a shadow of a doubt now, because the news from the girls that Mike and Chloe were engaged hadn’t bothered her a bit, in the wake of Gary leaving. All she wanted was for him to come home.
‘And you think that’s something worth sabotaging your relationship with Gary for?’ Before Wendy even had the chance to answer, Louise shook her head. ‘First off, all kids of the girls’ age want to pull away from their parents in one way or another. There’s nothing remotely unusual about that. Secondly, you said yourself that the family you’re grieving for never even existed, so let it go and be thankful that the girls are surrounded by people who care for them, despite the fact there are no biological ties. No one can have too many people who love them, and it’s not a competition. Just because they love Chloe, it doesn’t mean they love you less. Any more than them thinking Gary is amazing affects their feelings for you. Did the love you had for Alice diminish because of how much you loved Zara once she was born?’
Louise finally hesitated long enough for Wendy to answer. ‘Of course not.’
‘Well this is exactly the same.’
‘How did you get to be the sensible one out of the two of us?’ Wendy smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes. She’d been such an idiot, and she was terrified of just how much her stupidity might have cost her.
‘I always have been. You just need to listen to me more.’ Louise put an arm around her sister’s waist. ‘You can still put this right.’
‘What if it’s too late, and Gary doesn’t want to come back?’ Even saying the words out loud was like a kick in the stomach.
‘Just bloody well tell him you’ve never loved anyone the way you love him, because it’s obvious he feels the same way about you. Or even better, find a way to show him. Strip naked and invite him to come and ravage you, whatever it takes.’ Louise was starting to sound like Gwen’s apprentice, but Wendy had a better idea, one she hoped might just work. She was going to have to go to her parents’ house first and hope to God that their tendency for hoarding hadn’t diminished over the years, because she needed all the help she could get to make things up to Gary, after the way she’d been behaving.
The text Wendy had sent Gary had been simple:
I’m so sorry for yesterday, if you get this message, please meet me by our cave, at Ocean Cove, at four o’clock xx
She’d looked at her watch approximately every ten seconds since she’d arrived at about half past three. She didn’t want there to be any chance of him arriving before her, but if he was more than fifteen minutes late they’d run out of time for her to say what she needed to say. The tide came in quickly at Ocean Cove, and far too many people had been cut off by the water over the years, and had needed to be rescued. But it wasn’t just the threat of the incoming tide that was making her obsessively check her watch, it was the fear that he might not turn up at all.
It was about five minutes past four when she looked up and saw him walking along the beach towards the mouth of the cave where she was waiting, sitting on a rock. It had been their hideout when they’d dated the first time around. Ocean Cove was in Port Agnes, far enough away from their homes in the neighbouring village, but still easy enough to get to whenever they wanted to escape. It was somewhere they could go to kiss, and talk, and kiss some more, where no one would rap their knuckles against the door, or worse still, fling it open to check whether the two of them were up to no good. She understood now why their parents had done it, but back then she’d just wanted time on her own with him.
They’d gone on lots of dates in the two years they’d been together as teenagers, simple things like the cinema, or to the travelling funfair that pitched up on the old common grazing ground in Port Tremellien twice a year. But the cave had still been the place she’d most loved being with Gary. They’d set out a little picnic blanket, pretending they were in their own apartment somewhere and talking about how they’d do it for real one day, when they were both grown up and earning good money. Except Wendy’s father had been made redundant and had taken a job in Birmingham, which had been the start of all those plans for the future unravelling. The whole family had followed him a year later, and it had broken Wendy’s heart. She’d begged to be allowed to stay, and she and Gary had hatched every plot they could come up with to make it work. But they were barely sixteen and they didn’t have enough money for a deposit on a shoebox, never mind a flat.
They’d written at first, in the days before mobile phones and emails, never mind social media. But when she hadn’t got a reply to two letters in a row, and her friends at the new college she went to had spelled out what that meant, she’d given herself a good talking to and had vowed never to write to Gary again. What she hadn’t known then was that he’d been in hospital with a burst appendix. By the time he’d recovered and written back to her, she’d decided it was too late. Her friends had told her not to be the sort of girl who waited around until someone found the time for her. So when the letters with his distinctive handwriting began to arrive, she’d thrown them straight in the bin, without even reading them. She’d known if she looked at them the temptation to reply would be too much, and she didn’t want to let her new friends down. Eventually he’d given up too, and even when Wendy and her family returned to the Three Ports area a few years later, they didn’t speak. She heard from mutual friends that he was engaged to Rachel, and not long afterwards she’d met Mike.
It was only when Gary had reached out on Facebook, more than three decades after the last letter they’d exchanged, that it became obvious how easy it would have been to avoid so much heartbreak. All she’d needed to do back then was be honest, to ignore what her friends had said about needing to be ‘cool’. It was so ironic when she thought about how little notice she’d taken of that advice once she’d met Mike, and all the things she’d put up with from him. She should never have been persuaded into ignoring Gary’s letters. She should have reached out to him, to tell him how she really felt, and that she wanted him in her life no matter what, even if she had to take the risk of getting hurt. But she wasn’t about to make the same mistake twice; it was time to be completely honest. Except it was Gary who spoke first in the end.
‘I’m sorry I’ve been a pig-headed idiot all day and not answered your texts. I just needed a bit of time to think, but I should have let you know instead of giving you the silent treatment.’
‘I deserved it.’
‘No, you didn’t.’ He reached for her hand as he drew level with her. ‘We’re not fourteen any more, but I acted like a spoilt kid yesterday. It just gets under my skin when I realise Mike still has the power to hurt you. He was never good enough for you, and I wish you could see that.’
‘I do; there’s only one person who’s ever been good enough for me.’ She took a deep breath. ‘I just have to hope I’m good enough for him.’
‘And who exactly is this lucky man?’ He was smiling now, and she finally felt her shoulders relax a bit.
‘He’s standing in front of me.’ She moved to the side slightly, so he could see into the entrance to the cave. ‘I thought you might like to join me for a picnic for old times’ sake.’
‘Oh my God, is that what I think it is?’ Gary laughed as he spotted the spread she’d laid out on the picnic blanket behind her. There was a plate of French Fancies, a big bowl of cheesy Wotsits, some cocktail sausages, and a bottle of Tizer. All of which the two of them had thought were the height of sophistication back when they were fourteen. As she nodded, he spun her around and kissed her, before pulling away again, still laughing. ‘This is brilliant! Why didn’t I think of this?’
‘Because it was my turn to try and show you how special you are to me; you do that for me every day. And if a French Fancy washed down by some Tizer can’t seduce you, I don’t know what will.’
‘All you have to do is look at me. Exactly like you did back then.’ When he kissed her again, for a moment it really was like the hands of time had been wound back all those years, only it was better now. He’d been a good kisser even then, but he’d definitely perfected his technique over the years, and she appreciated everything about him more this time, because she’d already lost him once.
‘Come on, we haven’t got long before the tide turns, and you risk having to watch your French Fancies float away. There’s something else I need to show you too. Something I found at my mum and dad’s place.’ She grabbed him by the hand, pulling him into the entrance of the cave. It was more of hollow really, just deep enough to fit the spread-out picnic blanket and to partially obscure them from view.
‘If it’s an artic roll, I think I must have died and gone to heaven.’ He laughed again and she joined in, even though nerves were beginning to flutter in her chest. It had been a running joke back then, whenever her parents had invited Gary round to tea, that they needed to stockpile the artic rolls, because it had been his favourite dessert and no amount of it was too much. She just hoped he wouldn’t be too disappointed when it didn’t turn out to be that.
By the time they were sitting side by side on the blanket, her heartbeat was thudding in her ears. She was about to give Gary something she’d found in a drawer, under the divan bed in her childhood room. The scrap book had survived a lot: the four years they’d spent in the Midlands, while the family home had been rented out, and even half a day in a bin in Birmingham, where she’d thrown it when she’d made the vow never to write to Gary again. But something had made her retrieve it, and when it hadn’t been ruined, it had seemed like a sign. She’d told herself she was keeping it so that the grown-up version of her could one day look back at the memories it contained, and smile at the innocence of the young girl who’d written it. By then she’d be incredibly successful, of course, and even more sophisticated than a French Fancy. She’d probably be married to Simon Le Bon, or George Michael, and they’d laugh together at her childhood romance with a boy named Gary, who she could hardly remember. Except he’d never faded from her memory, and deep down she must have known her decision to keep the scrapbook was because she couldn’t bear to part with it. Either way, she was just glad that she hadn’t. Pulling it out of the large canvas bag she’d hidden it in, she let go of another long breath.
‘I want you to have a look at this. It’s where I kept every photo, every cinema ticket stub, the cards you sent me, and the letters I got from you when I was first in Birmingham. All the pages are headed up.’ Her hand was shaking as she handed it to him.
‘Oh Wend, this is amazing.’ A smile lit up Gary’s whole face as he turned over the first couple of pages, laughing at a photograph on the page labelled up ‘Beach Days’. ‘Although I’m lucky you ever agreed to go out with me, when I had hair like that.’
‘You were the best-looking boy in Port Kara; you still are.’ She rested her head on his shoulder, smiling as she watched him reliving old memories every time he turned a page. When he got to the first of the letters he’d sent her in Birmingham, which was stuck onto one of the pages, he started to read it, but she reached out and touched his arm.
‘You can read them all later, but we’ll run out of time if you read them now. I want you to skip past the letters to the next part.’ Gary looked at her quizzically for a moment, before doing as she asked, stopping when he came to a flyer for the restaurant where they’d had their second ‘first date’, stuck onto a page labelled Second Time Around . It turned out old habits died hard; she’d rifled through the memory box she’d been keeping ever since their reunion, finding things to add to the scrapbook once she’d retrieved it from her parents’ house, but it was the first empty page she really wanted him to see.
‘Just flick a few more pages further on.’ She was holding her breath as she watched him do as she asked, and she didn’t breathe out even when he turned to the page where she’d written the last label: Our Wedding.
‘Does this mean—’ She kissed him before he could finish the sentence, following her sister’s advice and showing him in the best way she could think of how much he meant to her, because she knew she’d start crying if she tried to speak. When she pulled away, she finally found her voice.
‘It means I want to marry you, even more than I did when I started that scrapbook. I love you, I always have and I always will. So, if it’s not too late, I want to say an unreserved yes to the question you asked me when you had your accident, and to thank you for coming back into my life and making me happier than I’ve ever been.’
‘I can’t imagine anything better than being your husband, but what’s happened since yesterday? You seem like a different person.’
‘I decided to go paragliding dressed as a flying squirrel.’ She couldn’t help laughing at the look that crossed his face. She’d explain it to him later, but all he needed to know for now was that she loved him in a way that she’d never loved anyone else, and there wasn’t a single thing that could happen that would ever change that. She’d never felt so certain, so secure, or so loved in return. It might not be the neat little image she’d had in her mind of how things would turn out, but she wouldn’t change it for the world. And she’d rather let the tide come in to carry her away, than ever risk losing Gary again.