He shakes his head, his dark hair soaked through in the rain that patters off his broad shoulders, with his hand still on my face.
‘This is our special place, Roisin,’ he says, taking my sodden hands in his and holding them tightly as the waves crash and roar in the distance. ‘I wanted to meet you here to remind you of how we used to be and how we stillcanbe. It’s you I love, not Rachel, I promise you. I need you to believe me.’
I want him to kiss me.
I long to take him home and lie together in the warmth of my living room like we used to as Ben entertains us with stories and games, or as we watch movies and argue about silly things that we’ll later laugh and hug over and forget about, but that was just a fairy tale, one made of imagination and false hope. Those days, as perfect as they were at the time, weren’t real, and the love I feel for him now will disintegrate soon, won’t it? I wish someone could tell me that this deep, gut-wrenching pain won’t last for ever.
‘I believed everything you told me,’ I tell him, searching so desperately to stay strong and true to myself, but looking at him now with his beautiful face tilted, his lips that I once thought were mine, and the person I thought I knew so well, is making me feel as if I’m fighting a losing battle.
‘And everything I said was true!’ he says, his voice rising above the noise of the sea and gulls that fly above us on this blustery, dark autumnal day. ‘I never lied to you, Roisin! I just had to play the game over there, but that’s all it was. It was just a silly PR game composed by Bruce and Rachel to pull in the biggest contract of their lives that will all come to fruition in just a few weeks. They need me on this job pitch, and they need us all to pull together and show a united front of happy families so they can clinch the deal. After the awards event on October 28th I’m free! You’ve got to believe me. I can’t lose you over this. It’s killing me!’
‘I want to believe you, Aidan!’ I sob like a baby now. ‘Heaven knows how much I want to believe you, but I can’t go on feeling as vulnerable as I have lately. I need to look after my heart, and the only way I can is for us both to move on. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, but I just can’t let this ever happen to me again.’
Standing here with him is making me dizzy with frustration because deep down of course I do believe him. Deep down, I know what he is saying is true. I know that he’s been living a lie with Rachel and that she is bleeding every ounce of time she has bargained with him for business reasons before their big deadline. I know he wants to be with me as much as I want to be with him.
‘I’m struggling, Aidan,’ I sob. ‘I want this just as much as you do, but I don’t know how to fully give myself to you when part of me is still so full of fear.’
And deep down I know that I’m not really angry athim. Instead I’m angry atmyself, for allowing the demons of my past to continue to choke me. I long to give in to him as my heart so desires to, but my head is working overtime with reminders of a flurry of mistakes from my past. Jude is haunting me, I know he is. He is reminding me that he hasn’t totally gone away and that he probably never will. The scars he has inflicted are still raw and, despite all the love I have for Aidan and how much I know I want him and need him in my life, I fear those wounds from Jude haven’t been healed as much as I thought they had.
‘Just give me a little more time,’ he pleads. ‘I’ll show you everything you need to see to trust me. I’ll do everything you want me to do. We’re so close to being together properly, Roisin.’ I stand there helpless and frozen on the spot as Aidan breaks down right in front of me, holding his hand to his eyes as he pinches back tears, but the way his breath catches when he tries to speak tells me his emotions are no longer in his control.
‘Do you know how much I longed to find someone like you?’ he asks me, crying now in the rain, his gorgeous mouth unable to disguise the pain we’re both feeling as he tries to find the right words. ‘Do you know how many nights I wished I’d a proper relationship, one that didn’t make me feel lonely in a crowded room, one that I felt complete and content in and where I knew I’d my best friend in the world by my side? I wished for you, Roisin!Don’t do this to us and destroy what we had over some old insecurity, when we’re this close to being together in the way we’ve always dreamed of. You’re breaking my heart and I know your heart is breaking too! Please! Just let me prove it to you. Give me one more chance, please!’
The pain I’ve been denying for so long now scalds me inside again and I feel tears spill uncontrollably from my eyes at how unfair this is. I want to be with him so badly, but I can’t let my guard down again. I want him to hold me, I hunger for his arms to hold me tightly. I yearn to rest on his chest right now and let the world pause for just a few more blissful moments of heaven, but that will only set me right back to the start of all this, and I’m trying to heal myself.
‘This is what love is meant to feel like,’I hear Jude’s voice from years ago before we were married, when he too was filling me with lies about his ex-wife who he was still meeting up with right up to our wedding day. ‘All my mistakes from before just disintegrate when I look at you. We are meant to be. We are perfect.’
I really did believe that we would be Mr and Mrs Perfect from the sincerity of his promises. I believed him when he said we were yin and yang. We were Jude and Roisin, we were everything.
But very soon we were nothing. And in the end, we were a big fat lie.
‘And Jude is gone for ever,’I hear Mabel whisper to menow.‘So why are you letting him control you from beyond the grave? He doesn’t deserve that power, Roisin! You don’t deserve this and neither does Aidan. Let Jude go! Let him go once and for all and live the life of love you’ve always longed for.’
I can’t breathe. Aidan reaches out to touch me again and I wince and gasp for air, shaking my head as flashes from the past come back and grip me in a fist of fear.
‘You’ll never let me go! You’re just not good enough,’Jude roars again. I physically block my ears.‘You’ll ruin this because you’re weak and a runaway. Runaway Roisin! Run away again!’
‘I can’t! I can’t do this, Aidan,’ I tell him, wiping my tears with the back of my hand. ‘I love you too much and I’m hurting so badly, but I can’t risk my whole sanity and undoing all the good stuff in my life since I came here. I’m too scared. You have no idea.’
‘But I do, Roisin! I do have an idea. We’re both hurting. Don’t do this, Roisin. Don’t walk away!’
But I have to. I have to do just that. I have to walk away.
And so I take a deep breath and I leave him standing there, a grown man crying in the rain, and when I get to the pick-up, I lean my head on the steering wheel, gripping it with both hands, and I howl for all this hurt to go away. I scream for some relief from all this heartache and pain. I long for the mother I never had and for her to soothe the despair that is breaking me into millions of pieces inside.I yearn for Mabel’s advice, for her strength and for all the good work we did together to find its way back to me as I come undone.
And beneath all that, I know I’m longing for people I can never have to save me, and I know that all these faces that race through my head now as I sit here in a steamed-up pick-up represent the one person I want most of all.
I still want Aidan. I still love him. A love like this will never disintegrate. It might linger and it will settle someday, but it will never, ever go away.
And I know I’ll want him until the day I die.
32.
Istare at the envelope when Mickey hands it to me at work the next morning, frozen in time and with deep sadness as I know this is the last seasonal message we’ll ever receive from Mabel.
The brown envelope in my hand contains her last words of wisdom, our last connection to her in this lifetime, and a good reason for Aidan and me to put our feelings to one side and pull together to hear her final goodbye.
I distract myself for as long as I possibly can to put off contacting Aidan, who is due to fly back to New York tonight after signing off the sale of Mabel’s home, a task that I’m sure he isn’t taking lightly. In fact, just picturing him signing off on something so final makes me feel a little weak inside.
