I was cursing myself for not continuing with divorce proceedings. But after moving, I hadn’t wanted to fill my mind with anything to do with Ryan. It was short-sighted, though. He still lived in the house we jointly owned; we were still, on paper at least, married. ‘We need to start divorce proceedings,’ I told him. ‘I should have done it a long time ago.’
‘There must have been a reason you didn’t,’ he said softly.
‘I didn’t want to even think about our toxic relationship,’ I said angrily. ‘I still don’t.’ But I had been burying my head in the sand.
‘Come on, Edie. It was always you who wanted to talk,’ he cajoles. ‘That’s all I’m asking.’
‘It’s too late.’ My body was like a coiled spring. ‘I don’t want you here. We can never be together again.’
‘I’ll leave then.’ The familiar bolshy look was back.
‘I think you’d better,’ I said, calmer now that he was going.
I went back inside, closing the door and leaning back against it, listening as I heard Ryan’s car start before it drove away.
Coming out of the kitchen, you were ragingly angry as you rounded on me. ‘I thought you said he’d never come here.’
‘I didn’t invite him, Lexie. I would never do that. He took it upon himself to just turn up.’
‘So what’s to stop him doing it again?’ Your eyes flashed.
‘Lexie’s right.’ Ollie’s face was white as a sheet. ‘None of us want him in our lives.’
‘I’ve told him there’s nothing to talk about.’ I looked at you both. ‘He was sober.’
‘So what? We all know it won’t last,’ you said. ‘It never does.’
But as I looked at you and Ollie, I was rocked to see how fragile you both still were. ‘Look, he’s gone. And even if he does come back, there’s no way I’m letting him in,’ I said. It was painfully obvious that there wasn’t, never would be, space for Ryan in your lives.
Ryan’s reappearance triggered a turning point in all our lives. Rippled the smoothness of us: three of us equalled calm; four was a violent storm.
‘What the fuck was he playing at?’ Lucy was outraged when I told her. ‘Doesn’t he have any idea of how much trouble he’s caused you?’
‘Probably not. I don’t think he ever thinks about anyone else. But he was sober,’ I said.
‘So what?’ She looked furious. ‘You have to be insane if you’re considering letting him in your life again. You said it yourself. That man only ever thinks about himself.’
‘I’m not, Lucy.’ I couldn’t. I’d given my word to Ollie and you. I owed it to you both.
The air of disquiet between us persisted into a rare weekend there were no weddings to set up, when I was having a lie-in.
‘Mum?’ you yelled up the stairs. It was early – 8 a.m. Especially early for you. When you weren’t at the animal shelter, you’d developed a teenager’s ability to sleep into the afternoon, when you’d stumble out of bed in one of Ollie’s oversized hoodies, then huddle for hours in front of the TV.
Pulling on my dressing gown, I went to the top of the stairs. ‘What is it?’ I took in your jeans, your hair tied back in a messy half-up do, the well-worn trainers you lived in. ‘You don’t need to be at work till nine.’ But I guessed already there would be a reason. There always was: one of the animals was sick, another rescue was coming in.
‘I need to be there now,’ you said agitatedly. ‘One of the ponies is sick. They need me.’
I dressed, then quickly made a sandwich and pressed it into your hands. You begrudgingly accepted it, food being less important than extra minutes with the animals that needed you.
As I drove you to the animal shelter, I was already steeling myself for the heartbreak that invariably followed another homeless dog or scrawny cat that couldn’t be saved. The sickly boy calves like the one you tried to save before, who were the unwanted byproduct of the dairy industry. And today, a pony. You’d told me so many times about the owners who could no longer afford to keep them.
This world is guilty of so much, you’d told me. There are all these layers of suffering that people don’t see; so many victims.
You’d found your cause, of that I was in no doubt. But the days you fought hardest were when you were at your most troubled. Obtusely, on another level, I knew you were at your most fulfilled.
What I do makes a difference, you told me earnestly.
And you did make a difference. As more time passed, it was you who’d made me think more about the flowers Lucy and I ordered in, prompted us to look closer to home. The world was changing. People wanted sustainability, not flowers that had flown halfway around the world.
