Julie

Love is blind.

I was warned. God, I was warned.

Even before Harry proposed.

I ignored what everybody close was telling me. I ignored my own gut.

I didn’t want to hear it. I was already too far gone.

The first piece of unwanted advice came at the Christmas party of my final year in college. A gang of us were squashed around a tiny table in the Buttery Bar, drinking cheap wine and the occasional shot of what the barman claimed was tequila but tasted like lighter fuel.

I was sitting in between my sister Helen and my best friend Grace. Helen was the oldest in our family, ten years my senior, but we were the closest. She’d come to Dublin to shop and was staying in our bedsit with us. I kept apologizing for the size of our place and having to go out that night with college friends, but Helen had dismissed all my concerns with a wave of her hand.

‘Pet. I left a two-year-old at home. I’d sleep in the back of a car and be happy to squeeze the dregs from a barman’s sock. That’s how thrilled I am to be liberated for the weekend. Hang on a minute.’

She paused.

‘What the hell are you wearing in your ears, Julie Ferguson?’

I’d tucked my hair back so I could tip a shot glass into my mouth without using my hands. In doing so, I’d put my earrings on display.

‘They’re just costume, aren’t they?’ Grace said, squinting at the large diamonds.

‘They are not costume!’ Helen exclaimed. ‘Christ, you’re a lost cause to womankind. They’re real diamonds. You can spot that from twenty miles away. ‘Course, I’ve exceptional taste.’

‘And still you married Barry the civil servant,’ I snorted, and got a flick to the side of the head in return.

They were real diamonds. An early Christmas present from Harry. It was 1995, and we’d been going steady for over a year. HM Capital had grown and Harry was doing very well for himself.

‘I tell you, you’ve landed on your feet, girl,’ Grace said. ‘He’s either smitten with you, or he thinks you’re a high-class hooker. Here, let me out. If I don’t pee, my bladder is going to burst.’

‘Get some drinks on the way back, will you?’ I asked, not wanting to join the five-person-deep throng at the bar. Grace was shagging one of the barmen; she was our go-to woman for supplies. ‘A vodka for me this time. The wine is burning the lining of my stomach.’

‘Do you think she’s capable of carrying drink back to the table?’ Helen asked, as we watched Grace’s tinsel-wrapped head weave unsteadily through the crowd.

‘As soon as she emerges, one of us can grab the tray,’ I said.

‘It’s serious, so.’ Helen couldn’t let the topic of the earrings go. ‘They cost more than few bob.’ She moved my hair back to look at them again.

I blushed and waved her hands away, pulling my curls over my ears.

‘You know we’re serious,’ I said.

‘He’s older than you.’

‘By a few years, Helen. The blokes my age are …’ I indicated the far side of the table, where one of the lads from the course was standing on the couch, flexing his muscles like he was Popeye, the front of his shirt splattered with Guinness.

‘Yeah, but he’s older older, Julie. He wants to settle down. You can see it in him. He’s got the job and the money and now he wants a wife. He’ll be proposing to you next, and you’ve seen nothing of the world. You’re only just about to get your degree. You’ve so much potential, pet. I don’t want to see it wasted.’

‘Says the woman who lives three miles up the road from Mam and Dad!’

‘I’m the settling sort. You know what I mean about Harry. Don’t play dumb, Julie.’

I did know. Harry had no family of his own. His parents were both dead, though he had a living stepmother, with whom he had no contact. His mother had died a couple of years after Harry was born, back when they were still diagnosing cancer in Ireland post mortem. He never outright criticized his father, but I got the impression he’d been a cold fish. He was good with Harry when he was very small, reading to him each night before bed, bringing him to rugby matches, that sort of thing. But when Harry entered his teens their relationship changed. I guess his father didn’t know quite how to cope with having a moody, lanky strap of a lad hanging about the place. He sent him away to boarding school, a bit of a rarity in Ireland.

His father married again but then suffered a stroke that killed him. He’d left his wife and Harry well off (he’d been a banker too, though in the far more traditional, conservative sense) and the two had gone their separate ways. They’d never got on, according to Harry, who had filled the gap of his real mother with all the romance and myth that only premature death can allow. It didn’t help that his stepmother spent her life diagnosing herself with various maladies, when Harry had watched his mother die from a real illness.

He’d been popular in boarding school. Harry was smart, a keen sportsman, quick-witted and handsome. He’d fitted in perfectly and it was there that he started to build up the vast network of contacts he’d need to start his own business. But that feeling of abandonment by his father, following on from his mother’s death, marked him in ways beyond my comprehension.

Harry was looking for family.

‘Well, what if he does ask me to marry him?’ I snapped at Helen. ‘Do you think I could do better? I love him.’

‘I know you do. I’m just saying that when you came up to college you had more ambition than marrying the first man you met. And he’s possessive. Anybody can see that. You must be able to. I just worry, though, that he might have double standards for himself.’

‘He’s not the first man I met,’ I said. ‘And in any case, aren’t you getting ahead of yourself a little? He bought me some bloody jewellery. It’s not a ring. And he’s not that possessive. He loves me, he doesn’t own me. I’m out alone tonight, aren’t I?’

‘I don’t want to fight with you,’ she said, sliding out of the seat to help Grace at the bar. ‘I’m just telling you to be careful. Be young. Live your life. Harry will please himself. You should too. That’s all I’m saying.’

A week later, Harry popped the question.

I was due to go back to Leitrim for Christmas Eve. It was the first time I wasn’t looking forward to the trip. I was leaving Harry alone, and while he spoke convincingly about the friends’ houses he’d be visiting and all the festivities he’d be a part of, I knew he wished I was staying.

But I couldn’t avoid going home for Christmas. Mam would never have forgiven me. The unspoken condition attached to me moving to Dublin had been that I would return for every special occasion – no exceptions. Nor did I have the option of inviting him down. Mam was Catholic to her core. She only made up the spare bed if you were married.

Harry had booked a table in a little Italian restaurant off Dame Lane, and we took our seats just as soft flakes of snow started to fall on the shoppers who dashed about under the street lights outside, laden with Christmas packages and last-minute purchases.

It was our final night together before I left. He seemed anxious, and I put it down to him wanting it to be special.

When we got to dessert, Harry produced a little box wrapped in gold paper and tied with a red bow.

‘Happy Christmas, baby,’ he said, smiling as he placed it in my hands. He fidgeted nervously in his seat, not at all his usual calm self.

‘Harry,’ I tutted, taking it from him. ‘You already gave me a present. This is too much.’

I was thrilled, but also a little irritated. I’d bought him something small and thoughtful – a rare copy of The Count of Monte Cristo, a book he’d loved since childhood. It had cost me a week’s wages. It was important to me that he didn’t think I was with him because he spoiled me. He had enough people around him sniffing after his money, and I was my own woman, after all.

I opened the box, perhaps expecting to see a watch or a bracelet to match the earrings.

Inside was an engagement ring set with a large diamond solitaire.

‘Oh my God!’ I gasped, realizing immediately. Harry was kneeling beside the table, smiling from ear to ear. The restaurant was more or less empty bar us and the waiting staff, but my heart still beat like I was on a stage under a spotlight. My mouth felt dry and I couldn’t summon any words.

‘You shouldn’t have bought this,’ I managed to get out eventually.

‘You don’t want me to propose?’ Harry looked panic-stricken. I noticed then that a waiter was hovering in the wings with a bottle of champagne in an ice bucket. He’d thought of everything, and it was as romantic as anything I could have dreamt up. My dad had proposed to Mam with the words: ‘I think it makes sense that we wed, Mary, what with the two of us stepping out a year now and me needing help with the farm.’

Harry’s eyes were so full of hope and desperation, I think, even if I’d wanted to, I couldn’t have said no.

‘Of course I do, Harry,’ I said. ‘But this ring? You must have spent a fortune. It’s too much.’

Harry laughed, trying to sound relaxed, but there was still more than a hint of nerves in his voice.

‘You’re worth every penny. Are we going to keep casually chatting about this ring or are you going to answer the question? Will you marry me, Julie?’

I smiled.

He leaned close and whispered, ‘I’m not as young as you, sweetheart. That old rugby injury in my knee is fucking killing me and I don’t think Giovanni there can keep the cork in that bottle much longer.’

‘Do I really want to marry some old fogey who can’t pop the question without whining about joint pain?’ I whispered back.

‘A rich old fogey. You left that part out.’

I laughed and put the ring on my finger. ‘It fits.’

‘Of course it fits. It’s meant for you.’

‘It really is,’ I said, admiring it.

‘Is that a yes, then? Can I get that in writing?’

‘You and your bloody contracts!’ I smiled. ‘It’s a yes. Holy crap. It’s a yes. I’ll marry you.’

Harry whooped and planted a big kiss on my lips.

‘I love you, Julie Ferguson,’ he said, as the kitchen staff emerged and began to clap and the hovering waiter poured us a toast.

‘I love you too,’ I said, and I meant it.

And yet a little part of me, a very small part, wondered about the timing of his proposal, a day before I was due home, hours before he was going to be left to celebrate Christmas on his own.

Just a little part, but it was there nonetheless.

And there was Helen’s warning, her prophetic words ringing in my ears, making the champagne taste a little more bitter than it should. Was it too soon to be getting engaged? I was madly in love, but still young.

Still, I resolved to let nothing ruin the moment.

Even then, I think I’d already accepted that Harry could be manipulative.

I was so crazy about him, I just didn’t care.