The shop was unusually busy on Monday and by the end of the day there was a dull nagging pain at the base of my spine and I was tired and irritable. As I pulled on to our drive I was looking forward to the prospect of a quick dinner and a very long soak in a deep bubble bath. Only I couldn’t get my car in its usual space, because that spot was occupied by the last thing I wanted (or expected) to see there. Richard’s car. ‘What the hell,’ I muttered, as I pulled up alongside it and glanced within. Empty. So he was already inside.
A fleeting movement at the window caught my eye, which meant someone had heard me pull up. No chance now to make a hasty retreat and drive the streets aimlessly until he’d gone, which had been my gut reaction.
I should have been expecting this, I thought, sitting in my car and quietly fuming. It was almost inevitable, given how my parents had reacted to the news of our break-up. I’d put off telling them for days, but once I knew our broken engagement was public knowledge, I’d had no choice but to sit them down one night after our evening meal and effectively break my mother’s heart. To watch her face crumple as I explained as slowly and patiently as I could that Richard and I had decided we would no longer be getting married, was every bit as terrible as I thought it was going to be.
‘We’ve decided that perhaps we may have rushed into things a little,’ I’d said gently, wondering if the lie sounded as false to them as it did to me.
My father, sitting on the settee beside my shocked and dismayed mother, hadn’t accepted such a vague explanation. ‘But you’ve known Richard for twenty-five years, how is that rushing?’
Thanks for that, Dad. I had reached over to take hold of my mother’s hand, wondering if this was how torn and desperate parents must feel when they tell their children that they’re getting divorced. My mum certainly looked as bereft as a child on hearing that her world was about to be torn apart.
‘I think we may have rushed into the engagement,’ I clarified. ‘We really hadn’t been back together long enough to make that kind of decision. I think we’ve both changed a lot while we’ve been apart. We aren’t the same people we were when we were teenagers.’
My mother had nodded mutely back at me, which might have meant that she understood, except her eyes were confused and awash with tears.
‘When you really love each other, then how long you’ve been together isn’t the issue. Your mother and I got engaged after only three months.’
Again, Dad, thank you.
‘Maybe you’ll change your mind?’ my mum had asked in a tragically hopeful voice.
‘I don’t think so, Mum.’
‘Everyone has the odd tiff,’ she had said, as though enlightening me to a world I might never have glimpsed before. ‘It’s probably just a little touch of cold feet. That’ll be what it is.’
Cold feet. Cold heart. Cold everything, actually, Mum.
My father hadn’t bought the version of the truth which I had so carefully rehearsed, but at least he had enough good sense not to pressure me further.
‘I had an outfit and a hat, and everything,’ my mum said sorrowfully. ‘You two are just so perfect together. Everyone says so.’
I couldn’t hold it together for much longer, and thankfully we were almost done. And then came my father’s parting question: ‘Emma, does this decision have anything at all to do with Amy?’
I saw a racing kaleidoscope in my head: the shattered windscreen, Amy’s terrible injuries and then her body entwined in hot and sweaty passion with Richard’s. ‘No. Not really,’ I had lied, then escaped to the privacy of my room before I lost it completely.
When I dropped my bag and jacket on the hall table, I could hear the sound of voices coming from the dining room. I caught a glimpse of my reflection in the gold-framed wall mirror, and was surprised at how normal I looked. There should have been steam coming out of my ears, because I was definitely only a few degrees from boiling point.
‘There she is,’ cried my mum delightedly as I opened the door, and three faces turned in my direction. Two of them were smiling, but the third looked guarded and wary, with very good reason. The table was set for four, and there were covered serving dishes and a steaming casserole at its centre. Richard was occupying the chair he usually claimed during the numerous meals he’d shared with us over the years. He had a glass of lager half-raised to his mouth, and eyed me cautiously over its rim. With admirable restraint I resisted the urge to rip it from his hand, or tip it all over him, although both ideas had merit.
‘What’s going on here?’
I saw my mother give a nervous swallow, and my father laid his hand comfortingly on her shoulder. ‘Nothing’s “going on” here.’ His voice was placating. ‘We’re just having dinner, that’s all.’
I turned to stare meaningfully at Richard, just in case they hadn’t noticed that someone who definitely didn’t live here had joined our table. My mum shifted uncomfortably in her chair, but this time it was my ex-fiancé who reached across the table to reassuringly squeeze her hand. Terrific. Between them, they had now made me the bad guy.
‘It’s okay, Frances, Emma’s just surprised to see me here, that’s all.’
Surprised wasn’t the word I’d have gone for, and I’m sure he knew that from the silent daggers I shot at him across the room.
‘Could I have a word with you, please, Richard? Outside.’ It was a wonder I got the words out as my lips were so tightly compressed. Richard got easily to his feet, and turned to smile apologetically at my parents.
‘You’d better make it a quick one,’ my dad advised. ‘I’m just about to serve, and it’s that chicken dish you like, lad.’ Just the thought of food made my stomach twist in protest, or was it hearing my father talk to my ex so warmly?
Richard deliberately took his time, carefully pushing his chair back to the table and dropping his serviette beside his plate while I waited at the door with growing impatience. Why was he bothering? Surely he realised there was no way he was coming back to the table?
He followed me into the hall and I made sure the dining room door was tightly shut before rounding on him like a kick-boxer. ‘What the hell are you doing here?’ I spat out.
‘Are you going to deck me if I say “having dinner”?’ He realised quickly it was a bad moment to have gone for humour. ‘Look, your parents phoned me today, and invited me over. What was I meant to say?’
‘Er… “No” would have worked.’
‘How could I, when your dad said your mum was really upset about… you know… you and me?’
‘There is no “you and me”. Not any more. Remember?’
He went on as though I hadn’t spoken, ‘Then when he told me she hadn’t been sleeping properly because of it, what was I supposed to have said?’
His explanation stung, but it also rang painfully true. Even Richard wasn’t so insensitive that he’d have come round without an invitation. But why hadn’t Dad said anything to me about how my mother was coping?
‘And then,’ Richard continued, with somewhat less confidence, ‘I thought that… maybe… you might have asked them to call me? That you wanted to make the first move…?’ My eyes widened in disbelief, but before I could say a word, he quickly added, ‘But I see now, that wasn’t the case.’
I shook my head despairingly. This was probably all my fault. If I’d just told my parents the real reason why I’d broken things off with Richard, my dad was more likely to have approached him with a shotgun than a casserole dish. But they both still thought we’d only had some stupid row, or that I had a case of pre-wedding jitters. Now, unless I threw him bodily from the house and risked upsetting them even more, I was going to have to stomach an evening sitting across the table from him.
‘Come on, you two, it’s getting cold,’ came the summons from beyond the panelled door.
‘This is not over,’ I hissed, turning on my heel and gripping the door handle. But he also reached for the brass knob, his fingers covering mine as he stepped close behind me. For just a moment we stood on the edge of a déjà-vu chasm of memories.
‘No, Emma. It’s not,’ he confirmed on a low promise. ‘It’s not over at all.’
It wasn’t the best of meals, but it wasn’t the worst either. No one stabbed anyone with an item of cutlery, or emptied a piping hot dinner into anyone’s lap. That’s not to say I didn’t think about it, though. Richard’s recent school trip occupied most of the conversation, which was fine with me. The less opportunity we had to speak to each other, the less likely we were to end up in a slanging match.
I hated being so defensive and prickly in my own home, hated the feeling that he was invading my personal space. There were boundaries and he wasn’t respecting them, and that wasn’t going to change if my well-meaning parents kept trying to matchmake us back together again. It was hard to ignore their expectant and hopeful expressions throughout the meal. They were like scientists studying a polar icecap, eagerly anticipating the first moments of a thaw. They were in for a long wait.
When the oven timer pinged and my father disappeared to get the apple pie and custard (another Richard favourite, Dad really was pulling out all the stops) an awkward atmosphere fell over the table. Although Mum listened attentively to conversations, she wasn’t much of a contributor since her illness. But her chaperoning presence meant neither Richard nor I could say exactly what we wanted. Instead we spoke through our eyes and in our body language. When my father returned I was sitting ramrod straight in my chair, as though awaiting the arrival of an executioner instead of dessert. By the time the plates were cleared I had a colossal headache, and wanted nothing more than to retreat to the sanctuary of my room.
‘Coffee anyone?’
Richard opened his mouth to accept, and then caught the look on my face.
‘I can’t, I’m afraid, Bill. I’ve a stack of marking I have to get through tonight.’ He got to his feet.
‘Oh what a shame,’ said my mother with regret, ‘but actually I’ve got a pile of homework to mark too before morning.’
For just a moment the wall between Richard and me crumbled to dust as we exchanged a meaningful look.
‘I’ll see you out,’ I said, and he nodded in agreement. He dropped a kiss on my mum’s cheek, thanked my father for the meal, and followed me once again to the hallway.
There was less anger in me than before, chiefly because it required more energy to summon up than I currently had left. I was running on empty.
‘You can’t do this again, Richard. I can’t have you turning up at my work, or finding you here in my house. It’s just not fair.’
‘I can’t get you to see me any other way.’
I sighed heavily. ‘Then what does that tell you? You can’t force me to change my mind. Not like this. If you carry on this way you’re just going to make me hate you even more.’
He gasped at my brutality. ‘You hate me?’
I shook my head in weary confusion at the slip. Was that how I felt? ‘I don’t know. Sometimes, yes. Yes, I do. Tonight certainly came close.’
He had the grace to look abashed. He reached out a hand towards me, but let it fall limply back to his side when I stepped back. ‘I’m sorry. It’s just that I don’t know what to do, what to say. I don’t know how to play this, to win you back.’
‘It’s not a game.’
‘I know that.’
‘There are no winners here. We all lost.’
‘It doesn’t have to be that way,’ he pleaded, his voice throaty with emotion.
‘It does. At least for now.’ I thought I was firmly closing the door with my words, but he heard something hopeful hiding between the lines.
‘But maybe – not just yet, I get that – but, in time… one day…?’ His voice trailed away.
‘No, Richard. I honestly don’t see that happening.’
He shook his head, his blond hair falling across his eyes, but not enough to hide the pain in them. ‘I’m not going to stop trying to get you back, Emma. I can’t just walk away.’ There was nothing I had left to say. ‘Please don’t throw away everything we had, everything we were.’
‘You did that. Not me. The only thing I threw away was my damn ring.’
He gave a humourless laugh. ‘Yeah. Don’t I know it? I spent a couple of hours scrabbling around in the rocks and weeds looking for it.’
Despite everything I’d said about not caring what happened to him, I couldn’t stop my instinctive reaction at his recklessness. ‘You climbed down into Farnham Ravine after I left? Are you crazy? You could have broken your leg or your neck. What if you’d injured yourself or dropped your phone? How the hell would anyone have known you’d been hurt?’
Strangely, the fact that I was mad at him for taking such a stupid risk seemed to please him. ‘Well as you can see, I broke neither. But I didn’t find your ring either.’
I shook my head at the futility of even attempting to look for it. It was long gone.
‘I thought, that if… when you change your mind, you’re going to want your old ring back.’
‘I’m not going to change my mind, Richard.’
‘Not just yet,’ he conceded.
There was nothing left to say. We were going round in circles. I opened the door and waited for him to use it. He was almost across the threshold before he added, ‘Although incidentally, if I had fallen, the phone wouldn’t have been any use to me.’ I frowned. ‘No signal,’ he said bitterly. ‘Nothing. After I finished searching for the ring I had to walk for another hour before I could phone someone to come and get me.’
I opened my mouth to speak, and I’m still not sure if ‘I’m sorry’ or ‘Serves you right’ was going to come out, but in the end I said neither, as a noise from the direction of the dining room stopped me. I turned and saw the door was slightly ajar. Through the gap my mother’s silhouette was shadowed against the wall.
‘Goodbye, Richard,’ I said, holding the door even wider.
‘Goodnight, not goodbye,’ he corrected.
I didn’t hear her come in. It could have been that the rustle of taffeta and silk, which stubbornly refused to stay folded on the bed, masked her footsteps on the bedroom carpet. It could have been the crackling crunch of tissue paper as I attempted to encase the most expensive dress I had ever bought – and never worn – into its storage box. But most likely it was the sound of my softly hiccupping sobs which prevented me from hearing that my mother had silently joined me in the spare bedroom as I struggled to pack away my wedding dress.
I felt her lightly touch my shoulder. I turned my face until my cheek lay upon the back of her hand. Gently she pulled the strands of hair away from my face, easing them back from my damp cheeks. She ran her free hand down my hair, stroking and soothing. I closed my eyes and felt as though I was ten years old all over again.
‘Move aside,’ she said softly.
I shuffled up the bed and she took my place, her hands reaching out to the folds of ivory material. With a surety that made it look as though she had spent her entire life working in a dress shop and not an art department, she skilfully began to fold the metres of fabric into place. She worked silently as the gown began to compress into a manageable shape, glancing up and checking on me with a mother’s intense concern that I hadn’t seen on her face in a very long time.
I watched her hands as they worked. I knew them so well. They lived on in a thousand memories of my childhood. They were the ones who supported me as a toddler when I took my first step; they wiped tears from my eyes when the nightmares woke me, and placed plasters on grazed knees when I fell off my bike. Those hands, so skilled in painting and sculpture, had belonged only to me when they’d brushed my hair each night, or when they’d held tightly to mine when together we’d said our last goodbyes to my grandmother in hospital. Those hands were supposed to hold her own grandchild in them one day in the future. That possibility, as she now packed my wedding dress into its container, had never seemed so unlikely.
When at last she was done she turned to me with a sad smile. ‘Don’t worry, Emmie Bear, everything will work out, you’ll see.’
I’m not sure what made me cry the most: her eternal optimism, the use of my childhood nickname, which she hadn’t called me by in almost twenty years, or the fact that by morning only one of us would remember that this had ever happened at all.