Always You (18 page)

‘You and Jim?’ he said stupidly, as the disbelief turned slowly into numb understanding.

‘I haven’t even tried to be discreet, Ian. At first I did it to try and make you jealous, to get you to just notice me. And then I realised that you didn’t give a damn. You never once questioned where I was all those nights I came home late.’ And with that she turned and strode determinedly out of the room.

He sat down abruptly on the chair and listened to her moving around upstairs, slamming drawers and wardrobe doors, stunned by the fact that she’d committed adultery. And yet he could not condemn her. Hadn’t he done the same in thought, if not in deed, by yearning after Sarah? No, he could not blame her and he wished her well. Maybe Jim could make her happy in a way he could not.

Picking up the fallen chair and setting it to rights, he was surprised to find that his heart was not as heavy as it ought to be. In fact, it was not heavy at all. For even though his marriage was in tatters, he could not help but feel a great sense of relief.

He was there, sitting on the bench by the river in front of The Big Fish, when Sarah arrived with her sandwich in one hand and a confusion of emotions in her heart. If he had not been here she would’ve been disappointed. But the fact that he was filled her with nervous apprehension. Evelyn had only been a slip of a girl when she’d risked everything she knew for an uncertain future. Was she brave enough to take a chance with Cahal, to risk being hurt a second time?

When she got close she saw that he had a phone pressed to his ear and she said, ‘Sorry, am I disturbing you?’

He shook his head, removed the phone from his ear and smiled. ‘Just listening to some voicemails the boys left me.’ He pressed a button on the phone and the smile fell from his lips. ‘Harry, the littlest, was crying.’

She sat down beside him on the bench. ‘Oh, how awful. What was wrong with him?’

‘I couldn’t make out what he was saying. Something about a boy at school.’ He pressed the phone to his chest and stared out across the river, the colour of sheet-metal under a blank grey sky. The sound of traffic and gulls calling filled the air. His throat moved. ‘You know, I don’t know what I’m doing here, Sarah. I hate being away from them. I can’t even speak to Harry until late tonight by which time it’ll be morning in Melbourne. I feel like I’ve let them down.’ He paused and shook his head.

‘I’m sure they understand that you had no choice.’ She stared at the back of his hand where it lay on his lap, recognising the lump where a hurling stick had fractured it in the Ryan Cup finals at uni. She’d kissed his bandaged hand with such tenderness, feeling his pain as if she herself had been wounded.

He hung his head. ‘I wanted to put as much distance as possible between myself and Adele and Brady.’

‘Brady?’

He looked up. ‘Adele’s new husband. He’s moved into our old house. It’s one of the reasons I came here. I couldn’t deal with it. Not because I still love Adele,’ he added hastily. ‘No, I’m pleased to see her happy. It’s Brady.’ He paused and stared hard out across the river before bringing his gaze back to Sarah. ‘His favourite things in the world are beer and sport and he’s more easy-going than me. I haven’t told anyone this before, but … well … I’m worried that the boys’ll like him more than me.’

‘That will only happen if you let it, Cahal. You’ll always be their Dad. And it’s only six months.’ Six short months and then he would be gone again. ‘Maybe with a stepfather as well as a father, they get the best of both worlds.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Just because Brady’s different from you, it doesn’t make him a bad influence. Maybe the boys will benefit from having two male role models in their lives.’

‘I hadn’t thought of it like that,’ he said, frowning. He looked at her, a look of fierce determination on his face. ‘I’ll never leave them again like this. It was a mistake to come here.’

Her heart sank. She’d thought he still cared. Had she misread the signals?

‘Except for meeting you again, of course,’ he said, his voice soft.

She looked into his eyes. ‘You mean that?’

His black pupils contracted. His hair, longer now than when he’d arrived, brushed the collar of his jacket. ‘Yes.’

She swallowed. And could not look away. ‘I know we said that we wouldn’t talk about the past, Cahal. But there’s something that I must ask you.’

‘There’s something I want to ask you too.’

She looked at him sideways and he said, ‘You go first.’

‘Okay.’ She took a deep breath. Her heart pounded. Whatever he told her, she hoped she could forgive him for it. ‘Why did you not write to me?’

He put a hand on his thigh, his elbow sticking out, and said crossly, ‘What are you talking about? I wrote dozens of letters.’

She turned away from him then, sorry that she’d asked. She felt so disappointed. An honest admission would’ve been so much more honourable than a blatant denial.

‘Don’t say that, Cahal,’ she said quietly, looking at her hands. ‘There were no letters.’

‘Look at me.’ Reluctantly she brought her gaze up to meet his. His eyes were grave and his chest rose and fell rapidly. ‘I wrote to you, daily to start with, begging you to join me in Australia. But you never answered a single letter. That’s what I wanted to ask you. Why you never wrote to me. I waited months and nothing came.’

She opened her mouth but no sound came out. What he said made no sense. She stared into his unblinking sea-green eyes and a creeping numbness spread through her body, like standing still in the freezing cold on a winter’s day. She so wanted to believe him.

If what he said was true, he had not abandoned her. If she’d received those letters, they would’ve given her the courage to follow him. An alternative life played out before her in snapshots. She would’ve married him, she would’ve had his children and her life would’ve been so different, so happy, because he was all she had ever wanted. It was only after he’d emigrated that she’d realised that she would never be happy without him, but by then it was too late. She looked back at the wasted years and felt a terrible sense of injustice – and confusion. ‘But I don’t understand. How come I didn’t receive the letters?’

A silence followed. Cahal screwed up his face in puzzlement. She said, ‘Maybe you got the address wrong or put on the wrong postage or something?’

He shook his head firmly. ‘I could see one or two going astray, maybe, but not every single letter. I wrote over twenty, Sarah. No, someone must have taken them.’

Immediately she was transported back to that long, miserable holiday. Dad was working day and night. Becky spent most of her time inside, unwilling to leave Sarah’s side. Sarah lay in bed, physically sick with illnesses the doctor could not diagnose, and Aunt Vi was a constant presence, rarely going out, as if afraid to leave Sarah alone …

‘Someone picked them up,’ he said.

Aunt Vi! And though she said nothing, she slapped her hand over her mouth.

‘And there’s something else. I called your house and left a message with the man who answered the phone. He didn’t say much, but I can only imagine it was your father.’

A chill ran down Sarah’s spine. ‘I never got any message.’

‘But he told me that he would pass on the message that I had called – and give you my number in Australia.’

Sarah gasped. She didn’t know what to think. She couldn’t believe that her father had deliberately withheld this information.

‘When you hadn’t called back a week later,’ he went on, ‘I phoned again. But this time the phone was dead.’

Her mind raced. And then, like a light switched on in a dusty loft, illuminating all the things forgotten, she recalled a tiny detail. ‘Dad had to change the number,’ she said, becoming animated the more she remembered. ‘We were getting nuisance calls. I remember thinking that was odd because our number was ex-directory – because of Dad being in the RUC, you see. I stayed in my room most of that summer.’ She bowed her head, the misery of that time painful to recall.

Cahal blinked rapidly, colour rising to his tanned cheeks, and he said bluntly, ‘Nuisance calls weren’t the reason the number was changed. I was. Your dad changed the number because he didn’t want you to speak to me.’

‘No,’ said Sarah with a firm shake of her head. ‘He wouldn’t do that without … he just wouldn’t …’ Her voice trailed away.

‘And the letters?’ he said.

She shook her head. She had never believed her aunt capable of such deception, but it seemed the only logical conclusion in the face of the facts. How could she do such a cruel thing? ‘If only we’d had mobile phones and Twitter and Facebook back then. None of this would’ve happened.’

‘If only.’ He rubbed his chin and stared at her. ‘What would you have done if you’d got my letters, Sarah?’

She pushed aside the nagging doubts that nibbled at her consciousness. ‘If I’d received even one letter from you I believe it would’ve changed everything. I would’ve followed you to Australia.’

‘It … makes me so bitter to hear that.’

She said, ‘I sent you a letter shortly after you left. Did you ever get it?’ She told him about slipping it through his parents’ door. ‘I assumed they forwarded it to you.’

He snorted derisively. ‘They wouldn’t have bothered going to the post office and buying a stamp. It would’ve gone straight in the bin.’

She swallowed, forcing down the lump lodged in her throat. ‘I don’t know what happened to your letters, Cahal, but I thought that you’d abandoned me,’ she whispered. ‘I thought that you didn’t care.’

‘That’s what I thought too.’ He paused, his eyes filling up, and said angrily, ‘Our lives would’ve turned out so differently if we’d stayed together. And now we both have families and baggage and …’

His voice trailed off and she finished the sentence for him. ‘It’s so complicated, isn’t it? Before, in a way, it was so very simple.’ Previously, it had been a straightforward choice between Cahal and her family. But now there were children and ex-spouses and thousands of miles to consider too.

There was a long silence. Against the grey, sunless sky, a lone gull swooped and dived. And the river, the tide about to turn, was still as glass. The unfairness of it all pressed in on her and she sniffed back tears. ‘I thought of you every day for the last twenty years, Cahal.’

‘Oh, Sarah.’ His hand closed over hers. ‘Is it too late for us? Or do you think we could start over?’

He was the only man she had ever wanted. But could she trust him? ‘Maybe.’

His smile travelled all the way up to his eyes.

She so wanted to believe in him. She so wanted to believe that they had a future. What had Evelyn said?
The future has a funny way of taking care of itself.
She tried to cling to these wise words but they gave little comfort. For she could not honestly see how the obstacles that lay before her and Cahal could be overcome. And yet, she wasn’t ready to give up hope altogether.

‘But let’s not rush things,’ she said. ‘Let’s take it one step at a time.’

Sarah looked at the enormous bunch of flowers in her aunt’s arms with dismay.

‘Oh! They’re absolutely gorgeous,’ gushed Aunt Vi, her face partially obscured by lilac tulips, white germini and cream spray roses. ‘How did you know it was my birthday, Tony?’

He winked at Becky, standing beside him in the small hall in her father’s house. ‘A little bird told me.’

Becky grabbed hold of his arm and grinned delightedly.

Tony handed Dad a bottle of wine and he said, ‘Very nice.’

Sarah dusted her hands on her apron. ‘Hi everyone. I’d better just see to the dinner,’ she said, scuttling back into the kitchen.

Alone with her thoughts in the overheated room, she put on oven gloves, yanked the roast chicken out of the oven and set it on top of the cooker. Then she stabbed the thighs viciously with a metal skewer. Tony shouldn’t be here. It was a family celebration. But Aunt Vi had insisted. Every moment in Tony’s company was an agony for her, waiting for the awful moment she knew would one day come and ruin everything.

‘How’s it going?’ said Becky coming into the room and filling a glass with water at the sink. ‘Do you need a hand?’

‘No thanks. I think it’s all under control.’

There was a pause. ‘Sarah?’

‘Yes?’ she said, ripping off a sheet of foil and placing it over the chicken before returning it to the oven.

‘Is everything all right?’

‘Of course.’ Sarah smiled stiffly. ‘Why wouldn’t it be?’

Becky took a sip of water and frowned. ‘Have I done something to annoy you?’

‘Don’t be silly. What makes you think that?’

‘It’s just … well, you do like Tony, don’t you?’

Sarah swallowed. ‘Yes, of course. It’s just … well, things seem to be moving rather fast, that’s all. You’ve only known him for a short while and here he is at Aunt Vi’s birthday lunch.’

‘Oh,’ said a dismayed Becky. ‘But Aunt Vi invited him.’ She set down the glass of water and regarded Sarah coldly for some long moments. ‘I expected more from you, Sarah. If Aunt Vi and Dad can welcome Tony into the family, why can’t you? What’s wrong with you?’

‘There’s nothing wrong with me. All I’m saying is –’

‘Spare me the explanation,’ said Becky and she walked out of the room slamming the door shut behind her.

Sarah ran her hand through her hair. Tony was coming between them and she didn’t know what to do about it. She was on edge now in Becky’s company in a way she had never been before, constantly worried that she would let slip her secret.

She tried to put Becky out of her mind and focused on Cahal and the conundrum of the missing letters instead. She wanted so much to believe he had sent them and made the phone call. It meant he had not abandoned her. But could he really be trusted after all that had been said and done? If he had sent the letters, what had happened to them? It was still inconceivable to her that her aunt and father who had done so much for her, had kept both letters and phone calls from her. The simplest thing was to ask them, of course, but she could not bring herself to do so. If they denied all knowledge, where did that leave her and Cahal? Was it better not to know, to take a risk in trusting Cahal, like Evelyn had done the night she eloped with Harry? Was it a risk she was willing to take?

Aunt Vi bustled into the kitchen with the flowers, laid them on the table and got out a vase. ‘How’s the chicken?’

‘Nearly done.’ Sarah took a tray of roast potatoes out of the oven. She glanced sideways at her aunt. Was this woman really capable of the deception Cahal would lay at her door?

Sarah took off the oven gloves and Aunt Vi peered at the potatoes doubtfully. ‘Are you sure I can’t do anything to help?’

‘Absolutely not,’ said Sarah, turning the potatoes with a pair of tongs. ‘Just you relax and enjoy someone else cooking for you for a change.’

‘Thanks, love. Aren’t these just gorgeous?’ swooned Aunt Vi, turning her attention back to the flowers.

‘Mmm,’ said Sarah, slipping her hands back into the oven gloves.

‘So very thoughtful of him.’

Sarah shook the tray of roast potatoes so vigorously, fat splattered all over the place, narrowly missing the bare skin on her arms. ‘Don’t you think that he’s a bit old for Becky though?’