‘I hope so. I’m sure we will. But it’s tough because I’m not able to be there with him all the time to help him through this.’ He stares at his feet. I know that Conal finds living apart from his children tough. They still live close by, with their mum. Conal’s divorce was reasonably amicable – or at least as much as divorces can be. He keeps in regular contact with them but they’re older now and not so interested in sleepovers at his house or Saturday afternoon trips to McDonald’s. They just want their own rooms, and to hang out with their friends. He misses the physical contact desperately – the ability to just live his life alongside theirs and see them do all the little day-to-day things that a father should see his children do. My heart hurts for him.
‘You’re a good dad, Conal. You are there for him when heneeds you and even when he doesn’t realise he needs you. No one could say any different.’
‘I’m not sure it’s enough.’
A familiar, unwelcome sensation starts seeping into my bones. I’ve seen this before. This scenario. I’ve watched it on TV – isn’t this exactly what happened with Aidan in that rather suspectSex and the Cityoffshoot? And didn’t Aidan end up sleeping with his ex-wife?
To my horror, an image of Conal and his ex-wife, Shannon, getting it on plays in my mind. I can’t help but shudder. Is this what he wanted to talk to me about? His need to be there for Ryan – and his desire to be there all the time so that he can do so? Or is this where he tells me he has already slept with Shannon again and is in love with her and it’s all going to be over, but unlike Carrie Bradshaw, I will not be left with a huge house in Gramercy Park to nurse my broken heart in?
It will just be me and an equally heart-broken Daniel.
I vow I’m not going to fall to pieces. I am a strong, independent woman. Sixteen-year-old me would be devastated – not that she had a boyfriend, but she imagined what it would be like to be in a long-term committed relationship with Fox Mulder and that’s almost the same thing. I will just throw myself into my work, sing my broken heart out badly at choir practice, lavish love and affection on the very beautiful Miss Clara and perhaps become obsessive about yoga like Niamh. It doesn’t have to be a tragedy.
I’m not sure, therefore, why at this moment it feels like a tragedy.
‘Look, Conal, I totally understand your kids have to come first. God knows I have been there for mine over the last year and for Adam in particular. I can’t see me becoming any less involved in Clara’s life either and I don’twantto be less involvedin her life. So, I’m the very last person to kick off because you want to spend more time with Ryan, even if that means you moving back home…’
‘Woah!’ Conal stops walking. ‘Where on earth did you get “moving back home” from?’
I turn to look at him, unable to tell if he is amused, confused or maybe a little bit annoyed. While I’m trying to find the right words to say, this awkward silence just seems to stretch between us and I can see that I have clearly got this very wrong. It’s not really going to sit well with him if I float theSex and the Citystoryline as my inspiration. Or my rampant paranoia. Or the fact that he has had me on my nerves since yesterday and of course I was waiting for things to go wrong, but things of a romantic nature have tended to go very much wrong for me.
‘You said we need to talk,’ I say to Conal in a small voice as we stand in the deserted country park in the fading light, with the sight of mist rolling in off the sea and onto the River Foyle. It would be quite cinematic if it wasn’t real life and he wasn’t holding my heart in his hands.
‘And you somehow turned that into me wanting to move back in with my ex? My ex who is seeing someone. Never mind the fact that I am seeing you and I thought we were kind of in love and in this together.’ Conal looks as confused and hurt as I have felt, and suddenly I can see how ridiculous I’ve been and I’m desperate to paddle this whole situation backwards and bring us back to a very comfortable and safe shoreline.
My mouth is as dry as the mouth of a twenty-year-old the morning after a particularly heavy night before, but I don’t know what to say. I don’t trust myself not to make this worse and, God knows, I do not want to make this worse. I want to make it better, and fast. Ideally I’d like to go back in time about ten minutes and make it not have happened at all, but I havenot yet perfected the art of time travel and there is no sign of either Doc Brown or Marty McFly and their DeLorean about either.
In another location – of a more private nature – I might be able to distract him from my stupidity by doing something silly, like flashing my boobs. The park might be empty, but I don’t think an act of lewdity would be right just now. This feels bigger than something that can easily be brushed over with a quick flash of tit.
And besides, it’s cold. I’m going to have to use my words instead.
‘We were,’ I say, immediately panicking at my own entirely unintentional use of the past tense. ‘I mean, we are. But… but you said we need to talk and I… well… I…’
‘Put two and two together and came up with seventy-five?’ he asks.
‘Something like that.’
Conal shakes his head slowly, turning away from me and directing his attention to the dogs again. I follow him as he sets off towards Daniel and Lazlo at a pace. This is an angry walk. I’d know it anywhere, even though I’ve not seen it from Conal before. It’s obvious in the way he hunches his shoulders, and in the length of his strides. It’s there in the way he has pushed his hands down deep into his coat pockets and very much out of the hand-holding arena. If I wasn’t worried I was actively being chucked, it would really be quite sexy in a Colin Firth as Mr Darcy inPride and Prejudiceway.
But as I am worried, it is not sexy. It just very, very worrying.
‘Conal!’ I call after him. ‘Hang on!’
I’m walking as fast as my legs can carry me, but still he is getting further and further away. I don’t want to start running after him, because as we’ve already ascertained, running and Iare not friends. Think Phoebe fromFriends, but with less grace and more need for ibuprofen afterwards.
‘Conal! Please!’ I hate that I can hear desperation in my own voice, and I hate more that this is my fault, and I have caused a problem where none existed.
Conal and I have not fallen out before now. We’ve been sickeningly happy with each other. Not so much as a cross word. It’s just been every kind of lovely and I have very much enjoyed the every kind of lovely phase. I had hoped that it would continue and last for the longest time. It had made me believe that happy-ever-after might actually be possible.
But now?
Tears prick at my eyes, along with a really deeply unpleasant suspicion that I might actually be inherently unable to maintain a relationship and that I don’t deserve one anyway.
An embarrassingly loud sob is about to burst forth from my lips, when suddenly Conal stops his angry march dead.
I freeze to the spot, not sure if I should move closer to him or just turn and walk away and ugly cry to myself until I get to my car. Of course, I have to hope that Daniel will come when he is called and doesn’t decide to show off in front of his doggy pal by acting all defiant.
I’m still frozen in that indecision when Conal turns around and looks at me, his face set in a serious expression. ‘I don’t want to move back in with Shannon,’ he says. ‘Yes, I want to be there for Ryan because he needs me to be there for him. But when I say he’s acting up, I mean he’s just being a bit of a ball ache. I don’t actually think he’s doing hard drugs and robbing old ladies. He’s being a bit lippy and going a bit too hard on his mum’s drinks cabinet. So while yes, I do want to be there for him, I don’t feel the need to live under the same roof as him to do that.’
