I feel resentful at having part of my identity taken away from me. That heartbreak has defined my life in so many ways it’s become deeply ingrained. If none of it was true – if the man sitting across from me was as much a victim of that heartbreak as I was – then who am I? Who could I have been?
My parents were doing what they felt was right – as were his. But they were wrong. They were arrogant and cruel and they almost broke me for good. It took me years to recover, and I never did go along with their plans. There was no English at Oxford, there was a business admin diploma at the local college. There was no good marriage to a suitable man who could pass muster at my dad’s golf club. There was a disastrous partnership with Peter, Beth’s dad, a man who could sell coal to Newcastle but had not one ounce of sincerity in his soul.
I never became the woman they dreamed I would be – and I wonder now if they regretted it. Did they see what they’d done to me? Did they understand how deep those cuts went? Or did they still assume, as many parents do – as I might with Beth – that they knew best? That sometimes parents have to make the tough calls?
I can almost hear myself, a few weeks ago, when she wanted to go to a music festival with Lily and camp over for the weekend. I’d said no, she could go for the day, but she was too young to be at an event like that without me. She’d informedme with much contempt how lame I was, how cool Lily’s mum was for saying yes, how she was so much better than me. ‘Yeah, well,’ I’d replied, hiding my hurt feelings, ‘being a mum isn’t a popularity contest. The answer’s no.’
Is that what they thought they were doing – saving me from myself?
‘Mine are both gone,’ I whisper to Rory. They were in their forties when I was born, and they passed within a year of each other. ‘Yours?’
I am suddenly flooded with a barrage of questions about his family, his life, about everything. I have missed so much, and I want to know it all. Except… nothing has really changed. Whatever the reasons, what happened, happened. Although it was harsh, maybe it was actually for the best, who knows? It’s not like we’re suddenly Romeo and Juliet again after all these years – there is too much to unpack. Too much to understand. Too much time has gone by. We might have been separated by our parents back then, but now we are separated by years.
Besides, if I ask him questions, then he might do the same to me – and there are things I am still not willing to discuss. Secrets that are best kept in the dark, forgotten and buried. The past, I tell myself, is the past. Let it be.
‘We lost Dad eight years ago. Heart attack. My mum’s still going strong – lives in Cork with Niamh.’
It doesn’t surprise me that his mum is still going strong. It’s impossible to imagine her any other way. I see a cloud cross his face, and I know how he must feel right now. Betrayed, confused, wondering how it could have come to pass that his own darling mammy had a part in inflicting these hurts on him. Will he confront her? Will he confirm his suspicions?
Does it even matter? It’s done. It’s gone. The ship has sailed, and it was not called theJuliet.
‘I don’t know what to say, Rory,’ I manage, glugging down the last of my horrid tea/whisky hybrid. ‘This is all… it’s a bit too much, isn’t it? I mean, we’re strangers now. We have nothing in common apart from young love, and this bloody awful thing that was done to us. It’s a mess.’
‘Aye. That it is. Will you stay? You can stay. You’re welcome to. We don’t need to see each other. I’ve got work to do, and Moira will have plans for you…’
‘She will?’ I ask, slightly concerned.
‘Oh yes. She will. You’ll be slaving away in the bookshop, or roped in to some harebrained scheme or another.’
‘Um. I did tell her I’d look at their grant application,’ I admit. ‘And I might have suggested an idea she liked the sound of. A gallery display, portraits of local fishermen and that kind of thing.’
Gosh. When I say it out loud, it sounds both an insane thing for me to be doing, and also amazing. He pauses, a hint of a smile on his lips.
‘There you go then. Though that’s not so harebrained at all. It’s a grand idea altogether. So, if you stay, we won’t be in each other’s faces is what I’m saying. I feel… oh God, Jane, I don’t know what I feel, except it’s a lot. I feel pretty much bloody everything in the entire world of human feelings. It’s too much. I feel like my head is going to explode…’
I know exactly what he means. ‘That would be terribly messy,’ I say, trying to put some humour into my words. ‘And a shame to get blood splatter on this lovely parquet flooring. But yes. I think maybe… I should go to bed. I have some work to do, and I’m tired, and I’m not sure we should continue this conversation right now anyway. I still… I still kind of feel angry with you, even though I’m starting to believe I have no right to that anger.’
I feel like an idiot now I’ve said it out loud, but he nods. Arches his eyebrows, and replies: ‘The feeling is entirely mutual, Jane. Maybe it’s like a pan of boiling water – taking it off the gas doesn’t make it cool down. That takes time.’
Huh. How ironic that we both began this day oblivious to each other’s presence, and then were both plunged into this maelstrom of barely suppressed rage – both convinced that we were the injured party. Both convinced we had every right to be furious. And now? Now neither of us really knows what to do.
‘Yes. That’s exactly it,’ I say, standing up unsteadily, keeping a hand on the back of the chair for support. I feel slightly drunk, on both the whisky and on emotion. ‘So, I’m going to leave now and see how much cooling down I can do overnight. Tomorrow, as they say, is another day.’
He raises the bottle of Glenfiddich to me in acknowledgement, and pours another full measure into his mug. I don’t say a word, just leave him to it. My ageing Romeo, and his bottle of booze.
ELEVEN
RORY
I stare at the bottle, and decide I will empty it. I can’t cope with all of the things that are hitting me right now, the kaleidoscope of regrets and anger and, most terrifying of all, hope.
I have lived my adult life hiding from anything that feels as big as all of this, and now it feels like decades’ worth of suppressed emotion are rampaging free inside me. The dam has broken, and I’m suddenly drowning. In the space of an hour my whole perspective has been tilted, my world view turned upside down.
I’m sad, mad, and badly in need of anaesthetic. I gulp down more whisky, the tea now long gone. Not even any ice, like a savage. Like the drunken Irishman the villagers wind me up for being.
I keep going over it all, piecing it all together, and can’t come up with any other conclusion than the one I’ve already reached. Jane was not lying. Those tears were real, that distress was authentic. It explains the way she reacted when she first saw me – the way she froze. All these years, we’ve blamed each other. Hated each other even, because there is indeed a fine line between that and love.
And all these years, we were wrong.
