‘You have got to be joking! What? How?’
I lean both my hands on the island unit in mine and Jack’s city centre apartment and stare at the photo in front of me as my sister stares at me, waiting on my reaction. It’s the sunniest March in almost a hundred years so I’m dressed like a summer’s day, and I was just about to launch into some spring cleaning with only some old-school Bruce Springsteen for company when my sister dropped round with a bombshell that has hit me like a wrecking ball.
‘I didn’t mean to upset you,’ she says, ‘but I nearly choked when I saw it in the salon! I had to come straight round to show you.’
I hold the magazine closer to get a better look as Emily rambles on.
‘I mean, there I was, casually flicking through whatever magazine I could get my hands on to pass the time when I almost jumped out of the chair! Have you even heard from him lately? Did you have any clue he was actually famous?!’
I shake my head, then nod, then shake it again, still squinting and staring in disbelief at the glossy image of ‘Blind Generation lead singer Tom Farley and his actress girlfriend Joanie Brown at the premiere of Fifty Shades Darker in London’ a few weeks before. On the same page is the movie’s main star Dakota Johnson in a striking Alexander McQueen dress alongside the very handsome Jamie Dornan, but all I can see is Tom in his three-piece suit, slicked-back hair and with a girl on his arm who looks distinctly like … oh my God she looks exactly like—
‘Do you see what I see?’ asked Emily, nodding like one of those dogs you see in the back window of a car. Her eyes are like dinner plates.
‘Do you think she looks like—’
‘She looks like you! She’s like your long-lost twin!’ she says, taking the magazine from my clutches and pointing out the similarities. ‘I mean, look at her hair! Long, bleached blonde, big chunky plaits like you wear sometimes! Look at her frame – she’s tiny like you are! Look at her—’
‘Clothes,’ I say, and then I lean my head in my hands onto the worktop in the kitchen and let out a deep sigh. ‘She’s in a dress exactly like something I would wear. Oh Tom!’
Emily folds the magazine back into her handbag, guessing it probably wouldn’t be the best idea to leave it around for me to examine any further.
I busy myself by filling the chrome kettle, which Jack and I chose after I moved in here with him a month ago, then I push my hair back from my face, run my hands under the cold tap and dab my cheeks to cool the flush I feel.
‘He isn’t over you, Charlotte,’ Emily whispers from behind me. ‘His latest girlfriend looks exactly like you! That could have been you.’
It could have been me. It should have been me if I’d given our love more of a chance. Whatever happened to my big New Year resolution that time when I pledged to take more risks? He waited for me for longer than I even expected him to and now we’re living in polar opposite worlds. I’m going one way, he is going the other.
‘When did you last hear from him?’ asks Emily.
I look out onto the leafy green views of Merrion Square, one of Dublin’s largest and grandest Georgian gardens, where I can see in the distance the famous statue of Irish poet and playwright Oscar Wilde leaning so dramatically back on a huge stone.
I love this view, but I hate myself for hurting right now. I haven’t felt hurt over Tom in months and months now, yet even though it makes me sad to see him with his new girlfriend, it also makes me so happy and proud to see him enjoying success he would never have had if he’d hung around Dublin to be with me.
‘I knew that he …’ I gasp. ‘I knew he had a new band called Blind Generation and that they’d signed with Sony or some other big name. I knew from checking Google, but then I stopped looking because I couldn’t bear to see him get on with his life without me. I’m so pleased for him, Emily. I’m happy for him, but it’s hard to look at that photo, sorry.’
I feel Emily’s arm around my waist. She leans her head on my shoulder.
‘If you can’t be with him, and it upsets you in any way, you did the right thing to block anything to do with him,’ she says to me. ‘Gosh, I knew I shouldn’t have shown you that stupid picture. Me and my big mouth! Has he been in touch with you at all?’
I look up at the ceiling and breathe out.
‘He messages me sometimes,’ I confess to my sister. Her face drops in shock. ‘Not every day or every week, not even once a month, but just sometimes.’
‘Oh dear,’ says Emily.
‘Just as a friend, but I’ve asked him not to,’ I plead with her. ‘I’ve told him about Jack and how we’ve moved in together, but sometimes, I guess when he’s had a drink or is feeling lonely after a gig, he sends me a late-night message that just smashes me into pieces. Why does he still have this effect on me, Emily? Why?’
Emily turns me round to face her, folds her arms and tilts her chin up just like our dad always does when he’s getting it tough emotionally or is going to make a point.
‘Because leaving each other or being apart was never a choice you made of your own free will, neither of you,’ she tells me emphatically. ‘You didn’t want to see him go to London and he didn’t want to go without you, Charlotte. Your feelings were never in your own control. You made a decision, not for you, but for others, and sometimes that happens in life. Do you still feel for him? If you do, you need to do the right thing by Jack and let him go, darling.’
Her words, although soft and subtle in tone, hit me like a freight train and I lose my breath for a second.
‘I can’t do that,’ I say, shaking my head again.
I think of how far Jack and I have come, of how no one on earth makes me feel as safe as he does when he wraps his strong arms around me. I think of some of the road trips we have taken together, how we’ve laughed at the silliest things, how excited he gets when I tell him about the kids at school and how much we lean on each other as we talk about our day when things don’t go as planned. I think of him asking me to move in when I was already living out of a drawer here most of the time anyhow, and how excited we were when we shopped for bits and bobs to make this place ‘ours’ more than ‘his’. I think of how I’ve moved on in my heart and mind so much and how I’ve healed by being with someone as tender, loving and strong as Jack. I would never throw all that away.
‘I love Jack,’ I tell my sister. ‘We have a great life here in this apartment and I’ve met some of my dearest friends through him. I couldn’t just up and leave.’
I think of Sophie Darling in particular who I’ve become so close to. We have everything in common, even if our upbringings were poles apart. She’s a former professional dancer, a violinist, and oozes creativity. She lost her only sister to a sudden illness when she was a teenager and has never got over it, so she understands exactly the ties I have with my family since Matthew’s accident.
I’ve created a very full life with Jack. We have the full package.
‘I can’t throw this all away for some whimsical idea of a life with Tom that I don’t even know is real any more,’ I whisper.
Emily takes two cups from the frosted-glass cupboard, pops a teabag into each and fills them with steaming hot water from the kettle as I stare out through the sash windows again.
‘If it wasn’t real, you wouldn’t react like that over seeing a photo of him in a magazine, would you?’ she says. She hands me a cup after squeezing out the teabag and adding a dash of milk. ‘And he wouldn’t be still texting you when he’s drunk or lonely or both.’
I know she has a point.
‘Just saying,’ she continues, ‘but if I thought Kevin reacted in any way over a picture of an ex, I’d be having second thoughts about our relationship. I’d much rather he let me go than go on living a lie.’
I hold the cup with both hands, blow into it then take a soothing drink that warms me and settles my insides.
‘Would you like it if it was the other way round with you and Jack?’ she asks me to drive her point home. ‘Would you like it if seeing an ex hurt Jack as much as it hurts you?’
I go to speak but she does so for me.
‘Please don’t live a lie, Charlotte, love,’ she tells me. ‘For goodness’ sake, don’t ever live a lie. Look what doing just that did to our Matthew. It’s not worth it.’
I also know that for Matthew’s health and for the sake of his future progress, I don’t really have a choice. But am I living a lie?
Jack has picked me up when I was on my knees with worry over Matthew, he has spurred me on when my confidence was on the floor, he knows from how my voice sounds if I’m worried about something or when I need one of his manly hugs. He knows I love spring more than summer, that I prefer dark chocolate to milk, that I take two sugars in my tea at certain times of the month but don’t bother with it the rest of the time. Jack knows me inside out. Tom has only seen me at my best, whereas Jack has seen me at my worst and he loves me even more for it.
Would I give up what I have with Jack for a stab-in-the-dark chance of another me? No, I wouldn’t. I’ve turned a corner at long last.
‘Happy birthday, gorgeous!’
It’s the most beautiful Saturday afternoon in late March, the streets are lined with fluffy pink cherry blossoms and I’m celebrating my twenty-ninth birthday and the beginning of my thirtieth year on this planet with a glass of Prosecco, a picnic lunch of exquisite bites, including black-bean crunch wraps and stuffed focaccia, in Phoenix Park. It has all been prepared and arranged by Sophie, who is sitting with me watching the world go by.
‘Is turning thirty as scary as it sounds?’ I ask her, feeling the bubbles from the drink in my hand making me merry already. The sun is shining, Sophie’s dogs Milo and Jess are running around enjoying the freedom of the open space and I turn my face up to the sky to catch some rays.
‘It definitely raises some questions,’ says Sophie in her clipped Dublin accent, which is so different to my own more rounded, country twang. ‘I know that when I turned thirty, even though Harry and I were just married, was when my mother stepped up her game in wanting me to push out a set of triplets in a puff of smoke, but I still don’t feel ready for motherhood. Do you?’
I take a sip of my Prosecco and contemplate the question.
‘It has crossed my mind, yes, especially when my days are filled with children and mothers with babies at the school gates,’ I admit, ‘but to be fair, I can’t say that Mam expects anything from me just yet. She understands that Jack and I are still in early days.’
I hasten to add that my mother and Sophie’s are like chalk and cheese in every way possible, plus I adore my mother. Sophie hates hers.
‘And your sister?’ she asks. ‘Doesn’t she feel the pinch now she’s married or is that a really personal question? Gosh, my mother will have a fit if I don’t give her a grandchild to show off sometime soon. The pressure!’
I scrunch up my nose, wondering if it’s appropriate for me to talk about Emily and Kevin’s fertility issues.
‘I suppose it’s each to their own when it comes to things like that,’ I say to her, hoping she will read between the lines. ‘Sometimes it doesn’t happen just as easily as we’d like it to, unfortunately.’
Sophie leans across and squeezes my arm, telling me I needn’t say any more on the subject. She has fast become one of my dearest friends since the night we met at the wine bar in Dun Laoghaire back in December. In fact, any nerves I had about meeting her and Harry were swiftly shoved to the side when she asked to try on my shoes in the middle of the very upper-class seafood restaurant, then paraded to the toilets and back in them to see if they suited her as much as they suited me.
We spent the whole evening in fits of giggles and walked home in our bare feet, even though it had been a rainy night at the height of winter, and when we got back to her apartment we talked until morning about our shared love of music. Sophie had been a concert violinist in her school days and we ended up singing into the early hours, much to Jack and Harry’s surprise, who recommended we start up our very own girl band and let them retire early.
‘Do you ever think that there is a parallel version of you existing, doing the things you could have done had you made different decisions in life?’ she asks me, staring up at the blue sky. ‘Like, another you? Is that a weird question? Am I drunk?’
I burst out laughing and turn towards her, totally getting her drift and loving the topic of conversation. ‘Oh Sophie, I think about this all the time! I can’t believe you think that way too!’
She pushes her sunglasses onto her head, squints at the sun and puts them back on again. Sophie is pixie-like, with her cropped black hair and petite, dancer’s frame, and to me she is a darling by name and by nature.
‘You’re going to laugh your head off at this but at one point I did think I’d end up with Jack, you know, in one of those “if we’re not married by the time we’re thirty” pacts you hear of in the movies?’ she giggles. ‘We didn’t have an agreement at all, but it was always in the back of my mind.’
I throw my head back and laugh. ‘Don’t hold back there, Soph!’ I joke with her. ‘Ah, that’s kind of sweet in a way.’
She is laughing now too. ‘But instead my future was formed because I spontaneously went to Wales for a rugby match with my dad, only because I felt sorry for him as his brother had to cancel last minute. I was at a kiosk ordering a hot dog, chatted to Harry who was quite pissed and the rest is history,’ she says, in genuine wonder. ‘Like, if my uncle hadn’t had man flu, I wouldn’t have gone to that match, I’d never have met Harry, so what on earth would I be doing right now? Where would I be and who with? It’s weird, isn’t it?’
It is weird when you think of it. I’ve thought about it so often my head spins, but I’ve never actually had a conversation with anyone who thinks the same way about it.
I wonder all the time if I’d taken Tom’s advice that day when I sang for him back in 2010, if I’d had the courage to send out my work to record companies, would I be living in America now like he suggested? Would I ever have crossed paths with him again, would Matthew ever have had to hear his name again, would the accident have happened, would I have met Jack? One thing in life leads us to another and another and another – how much of it is really under our own control and how much is already mapped out for us, no matter how we try to change it?
Sophie sits up to pour us another drink, both of us lost in our own ‘other version’ of ourselves, and I feel a little dizzy. I stop her pouring mid-flow and she looks at me with a hint of concern.
‘You know, Charlotte, I also often remind myself that just because things could have worked out differently, doesn’t mean they’d have been better,’ she says to me, a little bit more serious now. ‘That’s what I tell myself anyhow. There’s no point worrying about “what if” even though it’s sometimes fun to wonder from time to time.’
I look at her and smile. She’s absolutely right. I briefly imagine how I’d be travelling the world with Tom had we stayed together. I’d be living out of a suitcase, I’d barely see my family, I’d find it hard to do something as simple as have a picnic in the park with a friend like I’m doing right now. It could have been fun, but that’s all it is now – something that could have been.
‘Yes, sometimes it’s fun to wonder,’ I agree. She continues to fill my glass to the top despite me stopping her seconds ago.
I love spending time with Sophie, and I love going home every day to Jack.
We clink glasses.
‘So, back in the real world, what are your plans for your thirtieth year on this beautiful planet?’ Sophie asks me as she lies back again on the grass. One of the many things I love about her is how she always brightens my day by looking ahead, discussing the possibilities of the future and finding something to plan or look forward to.
‘Well,’ I contemplate, plucking some daisies from beside me. ‘I would absolutely love to get a break away from here, you know, and I don’t mean that I want to run away from anything. I just would love a change of pace, a change of scenery.’
‘Ooh,’ says Sophie, liking my style already. ‘So what are you thinking? A city break? A week in the sun?’
‘Paris,’ I say, feeling a gnaw in the pit of my stomach for a city I’d always dreamed of going to. ‘I really want to go to Paris.’
I picture it in my head – the most romantic city in the world with its boulevards and gothic architecture filling my soul and feeding my creative senses.
‘I’d also love to start writing some songs again,’ I confess. ‘I’d love to see if I could still do it, but I’ll need to search inside myself to find the courage! But I’ve a feeling it will come back to me one day soon.’
‘Yes!’ Sophie tells me. ‘You need to be true to your soul and Jack would be behind you one hundred per cent. Don’t ever hide your talent in a box in your head, Charlotte, or wherever you’ve been storing your writing since Matthew’s accident. Get it out there. The world deserves to hear the wisdom of Charlotte Taylor, and you know it.’
In a way I believe her. I can feel the urge to write niggling at me in a way no one understands unless they write themselves. It’s like an itch waiting to be scratched, a part of you that can’t be ignored.
‘I’d love to someday show that side of me to Jack,’ I say to Sophie. ‘He honestly has no idea how much I’ve hidden a whole part of who I am for way too long now.’
It does sadden me to think that Jack doesn’t know the depth of my passion for music, and it’s by no means his fault, only mine. I’ve muted it, I suppose, unable to separate my passion for writing songs from my history and long-time thirst for Tom Farley. Jack knows I can play guitar and that I use it to entertain the little people I teach sometimes, but he will never really understand how much it runs through my veins and is bursting to get out. If only I could let it.
‘Well, on that point, I think the main thing that struck me when I turned thirty was how important it is to make changes where you need to in your life,’ says Sophie from behind her Gucci sunglasses. ‘Relationships mean more, being around the right people, finding your own tribe you might call it, I suppose. Does that make sense?’
I put my glass down onto the dainty little wooden holder that Sophie bought for the occasion today and contemplate her words. I have so, so much to be grateful for right now. I’m healthy, as is all my family, even if Matthew is sometimes a grumpy bugger to be around when he’s having a bad day for any one of many reasons, from the serious to the simple things. I have a job in a school I adore, I have the most beautiful home in the city in a top location, I’ve great friends both old and new, plus the man in my life treats me like I’m the most important person in the world. I’m one of the lucky ones. I’ve plenty to celebrate today, and lots to smile about.
I lift my glass again and raise it to my new close friend, Sophie.
‘Here’s to my next trip around the sun and all it brings,’ I say to her, feeling a tiny glow of excitement at all I have to look forward to in my life. ‘I’m glad I met you, Sophie. You’re one of my tribe for sure.’
Even though I don’t like to admit it, Sophie gets me, more than even Emily or Kirsty does. She knows I’ve an itch to travel, she knows I’ve creativity and music bubbling in my veins, she knows I’m a free spirit longing to break free from the ties to my brother but that I am afraid to do so at the same time. It’s like she can see the real me behind the façade I sometimes feel I’ve created and, in many ways, the way we connect reminds me of the only other person I feel that way around. The one I’m so determined to disconnect from. I’m glad I’ve found a soul mate in Sophie; it reassures me I’m moving on at long last.
After a few hours’ shopping for new clothes, a trip to the hairdressers for a revamp of my usual look, which takes me away from the long tousled do I’ve sported for so long now into a sleek, slightly darker shoulder-length style with a blunt fringe (all booked and paid for by Jack), new Chanel perfume and some make-up treats from Sophie, I’m feeling spoiled and special in a way I haven’t done in a long time. So much of my energy over the last year and more has been consumed by fear and hope about Matthew’s recovery, but now, I decide, it’s time for me to really step up on my own self-care.
In the original plan, now that Matthew is on the up, it would be the perfect time to go and find Tom to see if we can start again where we left off. However, twelve months later, he has his new ‘actress girlfriend Joanie’ and I have Jack. I can’t keep thinking ‘what if’ any more. This is where life is taking me, and so this is where I’ll keep going.
Jack Malone loves me and he isn’t afraid to show it, not only in materialistic ways like he did today, but also by being there for me and cheering me on in so many ways in my teaching career when self-doubt creeps in. When I get home that evening, he has more surprises in store for me than I could ever have imagined.
‘Hang on a minute! You’re taking me where?’ I say to him, my lip trembling with raw emotion. ‘I don’t understand! When? How did you know?’
Jack pops open a bottle of champagne, expertly fills two flute glasses and hands me one, then kisses me on the cheek.
‘Happy birthday, beautiful,’ he says to me. ‘Let’s just say a little birdie told me this afternoon how it was on your wish list, so I booked it while you were off getting your hair done. We go at Easter when you’re off school so you don’t have to worry about taking time off. Is that OK? We’re going to Paris, Charlotte!’
A shiver runs through me from the tops of my shoulders to the tips of my fingers and I start to cry, totally overwhelmed that he would do something like this for me.
‘I can’t believe this! Oh Jack, I love you,’ I say to him, meaning every single bit of what I’ve just told him. ‘How on earth did I ever find you?’
He smiles at me and pulls me close to him, kissing me firmly on the lips, then lifts me up onto the kitchen table and shows me just how much he loves me too.