The exhaustion was like something Tadgh had never felt before, an absolute bone weariness in his body, combined with a brain that was racing on overtime. What the feck was he doing?
From the minute he’d returned to his seat, he’d had his eyes closed, but his jaw was beginning to ache from the pain of clenching it. Less than two hours until landing. Adding on the time to get through the airport, travel to the hotel… That meant that it was only going to be a few hours until he discovered the truth. Or the lies.
The time difference in St Lucia put them five hours behind, so although it was evening in the air, it was only late afternoon down below. He wondered what Cheryl was doing now. Lying by the pool? Chilling out, waiting for her fiancé to come and marry her? Or pacing the floor of the hotel room, trying to find a way to tell him that she didn’t want this any more?
He pulled out his phone and sent a text.
Landing in a couple of hours. Are you coming to the airport, or will I just come find you at the hotel?
…
Three dots again.
Just twinkling.
Moving from side to side.
Then… nothing.
What was that about? It was so unlike her. Cheryl was an ‘answer back straight away, don’t give it a second thought’ kind of girl. Always had been. It was one of the things he’d always loved about her – she didn’t play games or keep him guessing. It was ridiculous to think that had suddenly changed in the week since he’d kissed her goodbye at Dublin airport, waved her off as she flew to London with her girlfriends for a hen party in the city, then their flight out to St Lucia the next day. Had something happened before she left? Or after? Or was he reading too much into this as well? Maybe there was just a delay in the signal. Slow Wi-Fi here on the plane or at the hotel… Or maybe it wasn’t.
For obvious reasons, in some ways he wanted to buy the story that Shay was actually seeing Cheryl’s sister, Cindy. It left his relationship with Cheryl protected. Kept them together. Salvaged their wedding and their future.
But it wasn’t a perfect solution, because if Shay was seeing Cindy, well, that was their mate, Jay’s wife. And Tadgh didn’t know if he could keep his mouth shut about that.
‘Sandwich? Tea or coffee?’
‘Coffee, please,’ he murmured. No food. He couldn’t face it.
A voice beside him said, ‘Same, please,’ and he turned to see Hayley giving Marian, the cabin crew manager, a grateful smile.
As Marian moved on to the next row, Hayley turned to him. ‘You know, I’m just thinking that 99 per cent of the people on this plane will be so excited right now, and we seem to be the only two people who are letting the side down.’
Tadgh ran his finger around the rim of the plastic coffee cup. ‘You could be right about that. How are you doing? I saw you speaking with yer man back there. If you’re still in the Downer Club with me, I’m guessing that it didn’t go well.’
Hayley shook her head, let it fall to one side so that she was facing him, her whole body half turned so that her back was to that bloke, Dev, on the other side. Not that he noticed – he and Bernadette seemed engrossed in something he was showing her on his laptop.
‘Okay, so we’ve got under two hours left. We could do that thing…’ she suggested. Without even realising it, Tadgh mirrored Hayley’s body language, turning towards her, their faces maybe half a metre apart now.
Curiosity made the corners of his mouth turn up. ‘What thing is that, now?’
‘You know,’ she said. ‘What’s said on a plane stays on a plane.’
There was a split-second delay in his response because he was thinking how beautiful she was. It wasn’t just her face, although that was undeniably pretty. There was something else: the kind of hypnotic, bright light in her eyes, that people wrote songs about. The crazy thing was, he wasn’t even convinced that she realised that.
His grin came easy. ‘I think you might be making that up.’
‘No, really, it’s a thing!’ she argued, pulling her blanket around her. ‘Okay, so maybe Bernadette along at the end invented it with me a couple of hours ago, but that still means it exists. I’m making it official.’
‘Fair play,’ he went along with it. What else was he going to do for the next couple of hours? Stare at the wall. Or at something on a TV screen that he wasn’t even absorbing? Or put the music on and get back inside his own head? He’d had enough of hanging out there for today. The novelty had definitely worn off. ‘I can say anything, then?’ he asked, ‘And it never leaves this…’ He struggled for the word.
‘Bubble,’ she finished the sentence, drawing an invisible line in a circle around them. ‘This is our bubble. It’s sacred. What’s said here stays here. Okay, you go first.’
Tadgh wasn’t sure what he was supposed to say. Unburdening his soul didn’t come easy to him. His mam could always get the truth out of him. He could walk into a room and she’d do that thing. ‘Right, what’s going on? I can see it in yer face,’ she’d start.
‘Nothing, Mam, everything is cool.’
‘Tadgh Eamon Donovan, don’t you dare lie to yer mother. Now what’s going on? And don’t be giving me that “cool” nonsense. If you keep stuff in, it’s bad for your digestion.’
Or ‘it’ll give you piles.’
Or ‘yer hair will be grey before the year is out.’
Or whatever other medical scenario she could come up with, all of which were based on no actual science other than the theories developed at the Jean Donovan School of Tactical Interrogation.
He didn’t believe a word of it, but it would be enough to make him laugh, and shake his head, and spill out every detail of whatever was on his mind. After she died, he missed that. When something was troubling him, he’d write songs instead. The ache of watching his da trying to live without his mam, and the loss Tadgh felt every day without her too, was where ‘Everywhere Without You’ came from. ‘Yesterday’ too. Just a feeling, a pain that he wanted to release.
Back in the day, he would share everything with Cheryl too, but she’d been so busy lately with the wedding that their moments of conversational intimacy had tailed off. At least, he’d thought that was the reason. Maybe he’d called that one wrong too.
Christ, when did life become so complicated? He was a pretty simple guy. All he wanted to do was work, play music, love someone, be loved back. That was enough for him. Why wasn’t it enough for everyone else?
‘I think the woman I’m about to marry might be having an affair with my brother.’
There it was. He’d said it aloud. And the woman beside him was now choking on her coffee.
‘You what?’ she spluttered when she eventually caught her breath. Dev, on the other side of her, began thumping her back, while saying, ‘Bernadette, we might need the Heimlich here,’ to their fourth row-mate.
Shit, this had suddenly become a spectacle. Not what he had intended at all.
Hayley took charge, defusing it all. ‘No, really, I’m fine. Just some coffee went down the wrong way. Totally fine now,’ she assured the other two, before coming back to their bubble, eyes wider now, brow frowning. ‘I’m so sorry,’ her voice was low, almost a whisper, so that they couldn’t be overheard. ‘Why would you think that?’
Weariness made his sigh catch in his throat. ‘This morning, before we got on the flight, I saw a text on my brother’s phone from her. At least, I think it was from her. It might have been her sister. Sorry, I know this is confusing…’
‘Keep going, I’ll catch up,’ she said, and he could hear the genuine concern in her voice.
‘I thought it was from her. From Cheryl. But I was talking to my mate back there and…’
He carried on with the story, leaving out no details. He told her about his conversation with Conlan, about the story Shay gave Conlan about seeing Cheryl’s married sister, about the potential consequences of that for their family, their band, their future.
‘And you know what bothers me most?’ he said, half an hour later, when he’d told her the whole sorry tale from start to finish.
‘Tell me,’ she said softly.
‘Even if he’s done something awful, I still feel like I want to defend him. He’s my brother. I mean, I want to kill him, but I want to defend him too. What the feck is that about?’
‘I think it’s about how much you love your brother. I get it. Sometimes I feel exactly the same way about my husband. It’s because there’s love there, and care, and it’s almost like you want to save them from themselves, because no matter how low they go, it’s hard to let them drown.’
‘It’s not just for my sake. This will kill ma da’ too and I don’t want to hurt him. He’s a good man. He lost my mam a couple of years ago. I don’t want him to lose Shay too and I’m not sure he’d be able to forgive him. I don’t want to be responsible for that.’
A single curl had escaped from the knot as the back of her head, and she pushed it back. ‘You’re not responsible for that. It’s on them. It’s their relationship to work out.’
Tadgh nodded, appreciating the perspective she was giving him.
‘But I think that what you need first, more than anything, is the truth. Do you really think your fiancée would do that to you?’
‘If you’d asked me before this morning, I’d have said no. You know, me and Cheryl…’
He saw her flinch when he said that and wondered if she was about to have another choking fit, but it passed.
‘We’ve just been together forever. It’s the way it’s always been. I’m marrying her because I’ve loved her all our lives and because she wanted to do this. Why would she push for it if she was capable of doing something like this with Shay?’
‘Maybe she isn’t. Don’t give up on trusting her, because maybe this is all an innocent misunderstanding.’
‘I get that. And it scares me that I can even doubt her, because surely there should be no question in my head over whether or not this is even possible.’
‘Don’t do that. Don’t beat yourself up for questioning what you saw. You’re only human. Could you forgive her?’
Tadgh shook his head. ‘I don’t think so. I think I’d never understand it so couldn’t forgive it. I’d ask myself every day how it happened. How could someone do that to the person they love?’
‘Because sometimes we think we want something, and we’re so focused on making that happen that we lose sight of what’s best for us. Maybe she’s changed. Maybe she’s realised that she wants something else. Or maybe she just made a mistake.’
‘You sound like you’ve got some experience in this.’
The sadness on her face when she nodded made something in his gut ache with sorrow for her. What the feck was going on here? This woman was clearly having a shit time and he was banging on about himself.
‘Can you do me a favour?’ he asked. ‘Any chance we could stop talking about me, and shift our bubble over to you?’