Chapter 10 #2
‘Yes way,’ he says, a hint of a smile curling his lips.
‘He had a turnaround, and no mistake. But that day, I thought he’d taken it – and maybe now I realise it wasn’t him.
The poor wee sod was innocent all along.
It was them… it was Mum and Dad. They sent you that message, Jane, and they must have erased it afterwards.
Your parents had to have been in on it – it’s too much of a coincidence that your dad walked into your room and confiscated your phone just after you’d got it.
They finally found something that united them. ’
He’s staring at me as he speaks, and the roam of his eyes on my face is almost as intimate as his touch.
Could he be right? Could it have been a ploy, a dastardly plan to tear us apart?
It’s the only thing that makes sense – because I sure as hell never went round to see his mother and father to tell them I was finishing things.
Even if I had wanted to end it, they were the last people on earth I’d have talked to.
And yet they must have sold it to him, convincingly enough that he believed them.
I suppose, after waiting for me all night, then hearing that, and then finding I’d left the country… the evidence must have stacked up. Just like it did with me, and the message, and the note.
I feel so many things at once right then. Sadness at all we went through. Anger at my now-dead parents, who I will never be able to ask.
I feel resentful at having part of my identity taken away from me. That heartbreak has defined my life in so many ways it’s become deeply ingrained. If none of it was true – if the man sitting across from me was as much a victim of that heartbreak as I was – then who am I? Who could I have been?
My parents were doing what they felt was right – as were his.
But they were wrong. They were arrogant and cruel and they almost broke me for good.
It took me years to recover, and I never did go along with their plans.
There was no English at Oxford, there was a business admin diploma at the local college.
There was no good marriage to a suitable man who could pass muster at my dad’s golf club.
There was a disastrous partnership with Peter, Beth’s dad, a man who could sell coal to Newcastle but had not one ounce of sincerity in his soul.
I never became the woman they dreamed I would be – and I wonder now if they regretted it.
Did they see what they’d done to me? Did they understand how deep those cuts went?
Or did they still assume, as many parents do – as I might with Beth – that they knew best?
That sometimes parents have to make the tough calls?
I can almost hear myself, a few weeks ago, when she wanted to go to a music festival with Lily and camp over for the weekend.
I’d said no, she could go for the day, but she was too young to be at an event like that without me.
She’d informed me with much contempt how lame I was, how cool Lily’s mum was for saying yes, how she was so much better than me.
‘Yeah, well,’ I’d replied, hiding my hurt feelings, ‘being a mum isn’t a popularity contest. The answer’s no. ’
Is that what they thought they were doing – saving me from myself?
‘Mine are both gone,’ I whisper to Rory. They were in their forties when I was born, and they passed within a year of each other. ‘Yours?’
I am suddenly flooded with a barrage of questions about his family, his life, about everything.
I have missed so much, and I want to know it all.
Except… nothing has really changed. Whatever the reasons, what happened, happened.
Although it was harsh, maybe it was actually for the best, who knows?
It’s not like we’re suddenly Romeo and Juliet again after all these years – there is too much to unpack.
Too much to understand. Too much time has gone by.
We might have been separated by our parents back then, but now we are separated by years.
Besides, if I ask him questions, then he might do the same to me – and there are things I am still not willing to discuss. Secrets that are best kept in the dark, forgotten and buried. The past, I tell myself, is the past. Let it be.
‘We lost Dad eight years ago. Heart attack. My mum’s still going strong – lives in Cork with Niamh.’
It doesn’t surprise me that his mum is still going strong.
It’s impossible to imagine her any other way.
I see a cloud cross his face, and I know how he must feel right now.
Betrayed, confused, wondering how it could have come to pass that his own darling mammy had a part in inflicting these hurts on him.
Will he confront her? Will he confirm his suspicions?
Does it even matter? It’s done. It’s gone. The ship has sailed, and it was not called the Juliet.
‘I don’t know what to say, Rory,’ I manage, glugging down the last of my horrid tea/whisky hybrid. ‘This is all… it’s a bit too much, isn’t it? I mean, we’re strangers now. We have nothing in common apart from young love, and this bloody awful thing that was done to us. It’s a mess.’
‘Aye. That it is. Will you stay? You can stay. You’re welcome to. We don’t need to see each other. I’ve got work to do, and Moira will have plans for you…’
‘She will?’ I ask, slightly concerned.
‘Oh yes. She will. You’ll be slaving away in the bookshop, or roped in to some harebrained scheme or another.’
‘Um. I did tell her I’d look at their grant application,’ I admit. ‘And I might have suggested an idea she liked the sound of. A gallery display, portraits of local fishermen and that kind of thing.’
Gosh. When I say it out loud, it sounds both an insane thing for me to be doing, and also amazing. He pauses, a hint of a smile on his lips.
‘There you go then. Though that’s not so harebrained at all.
It’s a grand idea altogether. So, if you stay, we won’t be in each other’s faces is what I’m saying.
I feel… oh God, Jane, I don’t know what I feel, except it’s a lot.
I feel pretty much bloody everything in the entire world of human feelings.
It’s too much. I feel like my head is going to explode… ’
I know exactly what he means. ‘That would be terribly messy,’ I say, trying to put some humour into my words.
‘And a shame to get blood splatter on this lovely parquet flooring. But yes. I think maybe… I should go to bed. I have some work to do, and I’m tired, and I’m not sure we should continue this conversation right now anyway.
I still… I still kind of feel angry with you, even though I’m starting to believe I have no right to that anger. ’
I feel like an idiot now I’ve said it out loud, but he nods. Arches his eyebrows, and replies: ‘The feeling is entirely mutual, Jane. Maybe it’s like a pan of boiling water – taking it off the gas doesn’t make it cool down. That takes time.’
Huh. How ironic that we both began this day oblivious to each other’s presence, and then were both plunged into this maelstrom of barely suppressed rage – both convinced that we were the injured party.
Both convinced we had every right to be furious.
And now? Now neither of us really knows what to do.
‘Yes. That’s exactly it,’ I say, standing up unsteadily, keeping a hand on the back of the chair for support. I feel slightly drunk, on both the whisky and on emotion. ‘So, I’m going to leave now and see how much cooling down I can do overnight. Tomorrow, as they say, is another day.’
He raises the bottle of Glenfiddich to me in acknowledgement, and pours another full measure into his mug. I don’t say a word, just leave him to it. My ageing Romeo, and his bottle of booze.