Always You (7 page)

For some reason he shook his head, though what she said was true.

‘No, I wasn’t a good wife. I pushed you away. I built barriers between us and then I couldn’t seem to pull them down.’

‘Why?’

‘I don’t know.’ She looked away and he felt, as he had often done in their marriage, that she wasn’t being entirely straight with him.

‘Once Molly was born, I felt that you lost interest in me, Sarah. And it only got worse when Lewis came along. I couldn’t see a future for us. I couldn’t see how we would ever be happy again. I gave you so much and got so little back in return.’

‘Maybe we shouldn’t talk about the past, Ian,’ she said, rubbing the back of her neck. ‘We both made mistakes and it doesn’t change where we are now.’

‘Yes, let’s look to the future.’ He smiled at her then, resisting the urge to reach out and touch a strand of hair that had escaped her ponytail. ‘And let’s not be too hard on ourselves. I mean, there aren’t many divorced couples who can sit down and talk to each other like this.’

She smiled weakly. ‘I guess that’s true. I’m glad we’ve remained friends. In spite of everything.’

He stared into her silvery eyes, the pupils wide and black as night. From somewhere deep inside, courage and hope rose in his breast like twin flames, and he blurted out, ‘I loved you the first moment I set eyes on you. All those years ago in Sunday school.’

She looked at him with wide eyes and her mouth opened slightly. Her face paled.

He blushed and smiled. Now that he’d broached the subject of his feelings for her, there was no going back. Nor did he want to. ‘I deeply regret our divorce, Sarah. I wish I’d fought harder to save our marriage.’

She shook her head slowly, a look of bafflement on her face. ‘It wasn’t just down to you –’

‘It’s bound to have affected the children, hasn’t it?’

‘Well, naturally, but the children are fine, really. They’ve grown up with you not living at home. It’s all they’ve ever known, in Lewis’ case anyway. In that respect they’re much luckier than other kids of divorced parents.’

‘Still,’ he said, steering her gently back to the topic that had lately come to preoccupy his thoughts. ‘Wouldn’t it be so much better for them if their parents were together?’

She lifted her shoulders and looked away. ‘Well, yes, in theory that’s what everyone wants for their children.’ Her shoulders dropped and the corners of her mouth turned down. ‘But life doesn’t always deliver dreams.’

‘Why did you never marry again?’

Colour rose to her cheeks once more and his heart leapt in his chest. He’d thought long and hard about it and he’d come to the conclusion that she must still have feelings for him. ‘You do care for me, Sarah, don’t you?’

She frowned, her expression deeply troubled. ‘I’m fond of you, Ian, of course. But you’re married to Raquel.’

He broke eye contact then and looked at the floor. Raquel. The thorn in his side. And then, as if on cue, the phone rang and Sarah jumped to her feet. ‘I’d better get it, in case it’s the nursing home.’

Ian stood up and pulled his mobile out of his pocket. The battery was dead. Damn! What if the staff had been trying to contact him? His mother was asleep when he’d left, but what if she’d taken a turn for the worse?

Sarah snatched up the phone, listened for a moment and frowned. ‘Yes, he’s here,’ she said rather coolly, then thrust the receiver into his hand.

He took the phone from her hand, as cold dread settled in his stomach.

‘What are you doing over there?’ said a sharp, ill-tempered woman’s voice and, while the dread evaporated instantly, his heart sank. Why did Raquel have to ring now when he and Sarah were having the most important conversation of the last eight years?

‘Raquel,’ he said, and sat down abruptly on the nearest chair. ‘Thank God it’s you. I thought it was the nursing home.’

‘I’ve been home for over half an hour. I tried calling you on your mobile.’

‘You got my message?’ he said, watching Sarah wipe splashes of tomato sauce off the cream tiles behind the cooker. Tiles he’d spent an entire weekend putting up. He’d done a good job and Sarah had been so thrilled.

‘Yes, but you didn’t say where you were going. What are you doing over at Sarah’s?’

‘I’ll explain when I get home.’

‘It had better be good,’ she said meanly and hung up.

Ian sighed. ‘Sorry ’bout that,’ he said apologetically. He put the phone in its cradle and Sarah yawned.

‘Tired?’

She nodded. ‘Late night last night. Work thing.’

‘Well,’ he said, fumbling in his jacket pocket for the car keys. ‘I guess I’d better go. I’ll just pop into the lounge and say goodbye to the kids. Give me five minutes.’

He sat between them on the sofa, an arm round each of them, marvelling at how big they’d grown, how two unpromising scraps of life had turned into the most beautiful children he’d ever seen. Molly placed her head on his shoulder and Lewis cuddled up in the crook of his arm. Oh, what he would give to be back here, on this sofa every night, with his children in his arms.

His hand was on the front door latch when Sarah called his name. He turned and she padded noiselessly up the hall, the now empty wine glass pressed to her chest, her hair fallen from the ponytail. ‘Between us, we’ll take care of her, Ian. And everything’s going to be all right. Try not to worry.’

Her blonde hair, back-lit by the lamp on the hall table, was like a halo. Goodness shone from her, pure and bright. Why hadn’t he fought harder to save his marriage?

When the children were in bed and the house was finally quiet for the night, Sarah threw together a stiff gin with out-of-date tonic she’d found lurking in the bottom of the fridge. Standing over the kitchen sink she swallowed the bitter drink in one, grimaced, and waited for the alcohol to slow her racing pulse and unscramble the thoughts inside her head. Bisto rubbed his back against her leg and meowed.

‘Oh, I’m sorry, Bisto. I’ve forgotten to feed you, haven’t I?’ He meowed again as if he understood. She spooned half a tin of cat food into his bowl and he gobbled it down appreciatively.

She’d got home late last night from the Europa Hotel and then lain in bed for hours, tossing and turning, unable to sleep, replaying over and over her meeting with Cahal.

She remembered every little detail of his changed appearance; the smattering of grey hairs in his dark sideburns; the deep zig-zag crease across his brow; the slight slackness of the skin on the back of his tanned hands. She’d noticed too the things that hadn’t changed like the barely visible, half-moon- shaped scar on his cheekbone, a war wound from a long-ago hurling match. Lying in the darkness staring at the digital clock display, as the minutes and hours ticked by, sorrow and anger welled up like twin demons. She tortured herself with scenarios of what might have been. The life they might have had. All the old regrets came rushing back and with them came anger. She had been a fool to believe in him. For all his talk of love, his promises had been empty. He should not have come back. He should not be here, invading her space and making her question the life she had so painstakingly constructed.

After a restless night, she’d been exhausted all day at work, on edge the entire time, expecting him to walk through the door at any minute. Yawning, she rinsed out the glass and decided on an early night.

Upstairs, in the bedroom where she’d slept alone these past eight years, she changed into her pyjamas and opened the heavy bottom drawer of a mahogany chest – one of many items that Ian, in his haste to shed his old life like a skin, had left behind. Under a pile of lycra gym wear she’d bought after the divorce and never worn, she found the old shoebox that was home to her special things. She sat down on the bed with her legs crossed and took off the lid.

Under the black-and-white photographs she found the small, hand-carved green-and-blue lacquered box that she’d owned for so long she could no longer remember how she’d come to possess it.

She opened the hinged lid that didn’t quite fit properly. Inside was a magpie assortment of tarnished trinkets collected in her youth, which she could not bring herself to throw away. Pieces of insubstantial jewellery from old boyfriends; a thin silver bracelet she’d bought with her first pay packet from her Saturday job in the hairdressers; a silver alloy and marcasite bracelet with a broken clasp that had belonged to her maternal grandmother.

Finally she found what she was looking for. Her fingers closed around a twist of tissue paper, yellowed and crisp with age. She set the box on the bed, unravelled the paper and a delicate necklace and a ring, both dirty with neglect, fell onto the dove grey satin bedspread. She picked the necklace up and stared at the tiny pendant that hung from the chain, browned with tarnish like coffee stains.

Cahal had given it to her on her nineteenth birthday, a silvery disc suspended within a half-moon-shaped arc. Back then, the silver had gleamed bright and shiny like her hopes. The pendant had peculiar markings on it, resembling hieroglyphics, that didn’t at first seem to make any sense.

‘Let me show you,’ he said. He flicked the little disc with his nail, sending it spinning, and conjuring out of thin air the words ‘I Love You’. She gasped silently and watched the words floating in the space between them. But, as soon as she touched the pendant, they were gone.

She placed the necklace in the palm of her left hand, closed her fingers around it and sighed. For six months, she’d worn that necklace nestled between her breasts, never taking it off even to shower or bathe.

‘Mammy,’ said a voice and Sarah, looking up, blinked back tears and smiled at her thin and willowy daughter, dressed in fleecy tiger print pyjamas to ward off the chill of the cold March night.

‘What’re …’ she croaked, cleared her throat and found her voice. ‘What’re you doing out of bed, Molly?’

‘I couldn’t sleep. When I lie down my throat gets all tickly and then I cough and cough.’ She coughed as if to prove her point and her whole body shook. Her face was as white as the stubborn pockets of snow that still clung to the north-facing pavement outside. She sat down beside her mother and looked at the things on the bed.

‘If it’s not any better in the morning, you might have to go to the doctor’s.’

Molly shook her long hair, thin like Sarah’s but a lighter shade of blonde, and picked up one of the photographs that were spread across the bed. ‘Who’s this?’ she said, holding up a picture of two women, in fifties-style skirts and buttoned-up cardigans, leaning against a railing with a shoreline as backdrop.

Sarah craned her neck to see more clearly and smiled. ‘Oh, that’s your nan and Aunt Vi.’

Molly frowned. ‘It doesn’t look like Aunt Vi.’

‘That’s because it was taken a long time ago.’ She took the picture from Molly and peered at it. The women’s full skirts flared in the wind and they fought to hold the skirts down in an effort to protect their modesty. Maybe that was why they were laughing so hard. She smiled, warm memories of her mother flooding back. ‘Look how young they both are. I think it was taken when your Gran and Grandad were going out together, before they were married. I guess Grandad must’ve taken the picture.’

‘Aunt Vi was really pretty,’ said Molly, sifting through some more photos.

‘Yes, yes, she was,’ said Sarah, wondering how the carefree girl in the picture with the tiny waist and shapely legs had turned into such a worrier. And why too, she had never married.

Losing interest in the photographs, Molly plucked the ring off the bedspread. She held it between her finger and thumb and observed, ‘This is really dirty.’

‘Yes,’ said Sarah, dropping the photograph. ‘It’s been in the box a long time. It’d come up fine with a bit of gold polish though.’

‘What is it?’

Sarah swallowed. She had not shown the ring to anyone in over twenty years. She told herself that talking about it now was harmless. It was a relic from her personal history; that was all. But still, her voice caught in her throat when she said, ‘It’s a Claddagh ring.’

‘What’s a Cla-da ring?’ said Molly, stumbling over the unfamiliar syllables.

‘It’s a friendship ring. Sometimes people use them as wedding rings. It’s named after a little village in Galway. Here, let me show you.’ She held out her hand and Molly dropped the ring, cold as clay, into the palm of her hand.

‘The heart in the middle stands for love,’ she said, holding the ring up to the light, its history told in the rounded corners of the soft metal and the many little scratches that covered its surface. ‘The two hands holding the heart mean friendship, and the crown here, on top of the heart, it means loyalty.’ She paused. ‘At least that’s what people say,’ she added.

‘Loyalty?’ frowned Molly, staring at the ring.

‘You know, being true. Always standing up for someone. Like the way you and Nicola are with each other.’

The mention of her best friend’s name ironed out the frown on Molly’s brow. ‘Did Dad give it to you?’

‘No, love. A friend.’ She dropped it into Molly’s outstretched palm.

‘If Dad didn’t give it to you, why don’t you wear it?’

Sarah flinched. She had thought that the child would not notice that she no longer wore her wedding or engagement ring, nor any other piece of jewellery Ian had given her. But of course she had noticed, because children miss nothing. ‘Because it was a long time ago. And I’m not really friends with them, not anymore.’ She plucked the ring from her daughter’s palm and stared at it, remembering the thrill when Cahal had slipped the ring on her finger. And the horror on her father’s face, and her aunt’s, when they’d first seen it, one evening after tea …

‘Where did you get that?’ Dad said, with a quick, sharp glance at Aunt Vi on the opposite side of the kitchen table.

Sarah nervously twirled the ring around the ring finger on her right hand, her pulse quickening. ‘Oh, from someone I’m dating,’ she said as casually as she could muster.

‘Who?’

Sarah thought of the promises she had made to Cahal and told herself determinedly that she was nineteen now and an adult and free to make her own decisions and choices. So why did she feel like a kid again, caught doing something wrong? She’d always known her father and her aunt wouldn’t approve of Cahal, but she had to face up to them sooner or later. She and Cahal would be engaged soon and married before the summer was out. Steeling herself with this knowledge, she took a deep breath and said, ‘Cahal Mulvenna.’

‘Mulvenna?’ said Aunt Vi and stared at Dad, her eyes wide open. ‘Where from?’

‘Ballyfergus. His family live in the Drumalis estate, though I’ve never met them.’

There was a long and heavy silence.

She didn’t of course expect them to be cock-a-hoop at the news that she was dating a boy from the Drumalis council estate. And her father knew without being told – because he knew everyone in Ballyfergus – that Cahal was a Catholic. Which wouldn’t exactly help matters. But their reaction was a whole lot worse than she’d expected. Aunt Vi’s face went pure white and Dad said, as grim-faced as she’d ever seen him, ‘I don’t want you seeing him again.’

‘What?’ said Sarah in disbelief.

‘You heard what I said.’ He tapped the handle of a teaspoon on the table and Aunt Vi stared wordlessly at the table, her mouth, which was never usually at rest, hanging slightly open.

‘That’s ridiculous.’ Indignation inflamed Sarah’s cheeks.

‘You heard what your father said,’ said Aunt Vi.

‘Because he’s not good enough?’ demanded Sarah, glancing at her aunt, then focusing on her father again.

‘Yes,’ he said.

‘Or because he’s a Catholic?’

‘That too,’ he said and, though he would not look at Sarah, he gave Aunt Vi a hard, knowing stare.

Becky, who was only eleven at the time, bless her, said quietly, ‘But isn’t it up to Sarah?’

‘No, it’s not,’ snapped Aunt Vi, her voice all high and shrill, like the way she sang in church. ‘His father’s been in prison, Sarah, for heaven’s sake.’ She clutched the neck of her blouse tight between shaking fingers.

‘So what?’ said Sarah, indignation giving way to anger. ‘That’s not Cahal’s fault! I knew you two were prejudiced, but I didn’t expect you to be out-and-out bigots.’

‘We’re not bigots,’ said her father calmly, setting the spoon on the table. ‘We respect other people’s views and beliefs.’

Sarah blushed because she knew this to be true. Her father played golf with Dr Flynn and he was a Catholic. And her aunt was never done sending meals and home baking over to old Mrs Riley who lived alone next door and insisted on flicking ‘holy’ water over Sarah every time she stepped through the front door with a plate of food.

Anger made her brave. ‘So what is it then? Because he’s working class?’ she said nastily.

Dad’s face hardened even more, the muscles in his jaw twitching. ‘I’m sure this Ca-, or whatever his name is –’

‘Ca-hal,’ interrupted Sarah, emphasising the two syllables slowly, taking offence at her father’s inability to pronounce the name.

Dad’s gaze flicked over her. ‘I’m sure he’s a decent boy but I didn’t raise you to mix with people like that.’

‘People like what?’

‘Stick to your own kind, Sarah,’ shouted Aunt Vi, who had never before raised her voice in Sarah’s presence. ‘That’s what your father’s saying. People who’ve been brought up the same way as you and believe in the same things. People with the same standards.’

‘You’re both just snobs, pure and simple,’ cried Sarah, slapping the table with both palms. And she jumped up and ran out of the room.

‘Can I have it?’ Molly’s dove grey eyes, the same colour as the bedspread, were wide, her expression expectant.

‘What?’

Molly pointed at the ring in Sarah’s hand.

‘Oh, no, love. I don’t think so,’ said Sarah gently, letting her hand fall onto her lap, her fingers closing around the ring.

‘Just to borrow?’

Sarah shook her head and her fingers tightened.

‘Please?’

‘It’s too big for you.’

‘I could wear it on a chain,’ she said, touching the pale delicate skin at the base of her throat.

How on earth would she explain its appearance round Molly’s neck to her father and Auntie Vi? They would recognise it immediately. Sarah put a hand on Molly’s arm. ‘Not this time, darling. You can have that silver bracelet though. I bought it for myself when I got my first job.’

Ignoring this comment, the child persisted. ‘But what’s the point of having it if you don’t wear it?’

Sarah’s hand slipped from Molly’s arm. ‘Because it’s a … a memory, Molly. Sometimes people like to keep things to remind them of happy times.’

‘But it’s not making you happy. It’s making you sad.’

Sarah forced a limp smile. ‘Sometimes happy memories make you a little sad.’

Molly screwed up her nose, folded her arms across her narrow chest and shook her head stubbornly. ‘I don’t get it.’

Sarah sighed. ‘It’s a little hard to explain,’ she began and floundered. How could she explain the bitter-sweetness of her memories? Or how the desire to remember, suppressed for so long, had been cracked open last night by the mere sight of Cahal Mulvenna. How could she admit to herself, never mind Molly, that seeing him again had brought with it not only pain but a stupid, fevered hope?

‘I think I might give it back to the person who gave it to me,’ she announced, realising as she said it that it was the right thing to do. The ring had never been hers, it had only ever been borrowed. It belonged to Cahal.

‘Who’s that?’

‘Come on, time for bed,’ she said sharply, dropping the ring and necklace into the box, and snapping the lid shut before shoving it back in the drawer, slamming it firmly shut.