Emer seemed impressed. ‘Well, fair play to you. You can’t put a price on family.’ She pushed herself away from the table and went over to the fridge to fan herself with the cold air. ‘It’s nice to know that perfect marriages like that really do exist, and not just in cheesy songs.’
‘I’m not saying it was perfect . . .’ Juliet began, and now, fanned by Emer’s reaction, the emotion was licking around her stomach, catching light on the dryness of many tightly packed thoughts.
‘You make it sound pretty perfect,’ said Emer.
‘It was,’ protested Juliet. ‘Most of the time. I mean, that’s what’s so scary about starting again with someone new. Ben knew me inside out. He knew me better than I knew myself. The thought of having to learn everything all over again with someone who can’t possibly know me that well and never wi—’ She stopped, mid-word, and clamped her mouth shut. Things were tumbling out that she hadn’t actually officially let herself think.
Emer took a Coke out of the crammed fridge, then a bowl of olives, and shut the door. She gave Juliet a long, considered look. With her tumbling brown and copper curls and strange kaftan tunic over her jeans, she looked like a Celtic fertility goddess, if the gods had started shopping in Monsoon.
‘Can I give you a word of advice?’ she said.
‘So long as it’s not “Time’s a great healer” or “Get a kitten,”’ said Juliet. She tried to make it sound light, but she heard her voice harden.
‘My mam died when I was fifteen,’ said Emer. ‘And overnight, it was like she’d been replaced by the Virgin Mary. My dad claimed they’d never had a cross word, never spent a night apart. She’d certainly never been one for the drink, and she’d definitely never caused the chip-pan fire that nearly wrecked our house. We missed Mammy, ’course we did, but seriously – after a year or two, we were gagging for him to remarry. He couldn’t even make a sandwich.’
She rolled her eyes. ‘I gave up the chance to go to Norway in a Transit with the best metal band Cork ever produced, because my daddy couldn’t be trusted to feed himself, let alone the dogs.’
‘Maybe he was still grieving,’ said Juliet. ‘You can’t put a deadline on grief.’
Which was stupid, because she had, hadn’t she? A year.
God, I’m as bad as the rest, she thought. Repeating grief catchphrases.
Emer pointed at her. ‘He wasn’t grieving. He was guilty. Guilty that he hadn’t been better to her when she was alive. It was only Father Nolan that kept those two together. And Daddy’s way of dealing with it was to make her this perfect woman in his head. No other woman ever got a look in from that day. Everyone was setting him up with the loveliest women, but they’d all come back looking shell-shocked, saying, “I had no idea Theresa made her own bread, and looked after Mrs Flynn while she had the cancer.”’
‘But Ben and I never fought!’ said Juliet. ‘Well, not really. Not about anything that we couldn’t make up.’ Her face felt hot. This wasn’t in the script. Emer was meant to be all sad about what a lovely marriage she’d lost. Instead, Juliet was getting distinct flashbacks to that conversation with Louise, where Louise had told her to stop whining about Ben and just get on with it. That if it came to a choice between a man who did budget spreadsheets and finished DIY projects, and a man who made her feel like she was made of sex and flowers, she knew which one she’d go for.
The conversation had headed into very dangerous waters after that. Very dangerous.
Emer was looking at her, taking in her flushed cheeks.
‘Never? Ever? Oh, come on. Not even about leaving the toilet seat up? Or shelves that never got fixed?’
‘No.’ Juliet felt stubborn. If she stopped believing in the lifebelt of the Perfect Marriage, then she was in real trouble.
‘Then he must have had you drugged,’ concluded Emer. ‘The better the love, the bigger the fights. And the longer the making up. If you never fight, then aren’t you just flatmates?’
Emer’s grey eyes were kind, but they were also perceptive. The effect of her gaze, and also her undivided, unbiased attention, started to unpick Juliet’s defences.
‘Well, it wasn’t always sweetness and light,’ she admitted. ‘We’d been hoping to start a family and things weren’t happening, which was a bit . . .’ She hunted for the right word. The looks. The doubts. The silences, where there never used to be any. ‘. . . depressing. And we were both self-employed, and things were tight with the new mortgage, and the recession.’ Good. The recession was much safer ground. That was nobody’s fault.
Emer said nothing, and Juliet heard herself filling in the silence with more honesty. ‘I sometimes get a bit uptight about money, and Ben was always more que sera sera than me, which is fine when you’re in your twenties.’ She looked away, at the collages on the pinboard, at the huge Rolling Stones posters on the walls, anything except Emer’s face.
They had had rows. Just in that last year, though, little skirmishes where once they’d have agreed to disagree. Small rows about big things, then big rows about small, stupid things.
Two days before Ben died, they’d had their first, truly bitter row, sparked by something really silly – him not telling her about renewing the van tax, so she’d bought it too and gone overdrawn. It had turned nuclear, though – after an initial round of ‘Why don’t you ever tell me things?’ on both sides, Ben had yelled that he didn’t want to sign up for IVF, even though Juliet hadn’t even mentioned it, and she’d yelled at him, through her stress headache brought on by dealing with the bank, that maybe it was better if they didn’t have kids, if he was going to behave like one for the rest of his life.
The ferocity of the argument had scared Juliet, because as they were yelling at each other, her anger brought all kinds of unwelcome thoughts floating to the surface in its wake. Had she suddenly grown up into a boring adult, or had Ben never wanted to travel anywhere you couldn’t get a McDonald’s? Was he really going to do the work on the house, or was she going to have to arrange it and pay for it all? And could you actually start to dislike someone you loved deep down?
Stupidly she’d decided to confide in Louise, going over there in the hope that she’d tell her that all married couples had rows, that she and Peter had tried for months before Toby was conceived, and had squabbled badly in the months before.
She hadn’t. Louise had just looked shocked, and that had made her feel even worse.
Oh God, thought Juliet now with searing clarity. Why can’t I go back and take a Nurofen before he walked into the room that night? Why can’t I just rewind the clock and not say some of those things? Would that change what happened? I’d give anything. Half my own life to share another half of his.
Emer was speaking, wandering round her family kitchen as she went, probably not even noticing the lovely homeliness of it.
‘I’m not saying you were being kept together by the parish priest,’ she went on, ‘but don’t do what Daddy did. Don’t make it all so perfect in your head that no one else’ll ever be able to come close. It’s not what he’d want. Ben would want you to be happy now. And your man’s a dog owner! It’s like Minton’s brought you together – now doesn’t that sound like interference from a higher place to you?’
Juliet said nothing, but her shoulders were shaking with the effort of keeping in the tension bursting up through her chest. It was as if someone had a remote control that could turn her emotions up to ten, without her even being asked.
Before she could do anything else, Emer was by her side, her arm around her, and her ample bosom pressing into her face like a pillow.
‘Jeez, I’m sorry. I wasn’t meaning any disrespect to your marriage, honestly.’
‘It’s not that,’ hiccupped Juliet.
‘What is it, then?’
‘I just feel so . . .’ Juliet probed around the dark feeling, trying to identify it ‘. . . guilty.’
‘Why?’
‘Because everyone always used to think Ben and I were perfect, and I let
them because it was our thing. We were the childhood sweetheart story, like my mum and dad. Then the one time I even mentioned to Louise that things weren’t right . . .’ She struggled to keep herself together.
‘Is this your sister who’s the hot-shot lawyer with the perfect baby and the husband with his own business?’
Juliet nodded.
‘Well? What happened? Did she confess she’d been having an affair with him?’
‘No! He died the next day. And the last thing she remembers about Ben is me saying he wouldn’t listen to me about starting a family, and her telling me I didn’t know what I had, and that I should go to counselling before our marriage hit the rocks.’
Emer squeezed her. ‘Juliet, you know it’s daft to think he died because you said that, don’t you? I mean, I don’t have to tell you that?’
In her bleakest, most irrational hours, that was exactly what Juliet thought – that her confession had broken some kind of cosmic luck spell – but she didn’t want to admit it to Emer.
‘I feel like every time someone says what a great marriage we had in front of Louise, she’s remembering what I said and thinking what a hypocrite I am.’
‘No one will be . . . Listen, Juliet, you’re entitled to have everyone say how wonderful your man was.’ Emer turned her shoulder so she was looking into her face. ‘That’s fair enough. What I’m saying is that you don’t have to stop loving the past to enjoy the rest of your life. The universe has got more in store for you yet. Who knows what?’
Juliet made a noise that wasn’t agreement or disagreement. That’s what the books said.
‘It’s like I said to Lorcan, the Foo Fighters are a great band, but if Dave Grohl had said, “Nope, no more for me. I’m going to grieve for Nirvana for the rest of my life,” we’d never have had the enjoyment of them, right?’
‘Um . . .’
Had Lorcan lost someone? Juliet frowned, but Emer was carrying on.
‘Are you telling me that you’ve never talked to your sister about this since Ben died? In all these months? Juliet, that’s crazy. What do your family talk about?’
‘My nephew’s babysitting rota, mainly. It’s not that simple,’ said Juliet. ‘It was a really awkward conversation.’
‘Awkward how? Did she have a gun out?’
‘No! She . . .’ How come it was so easy to tell Emer this? Still, if it made her look less crazy. ‘Louise more or less told me that she had something going on with some other man. I don’t think she meant to say so much, but she was all twinkly and girlie, like she had to tell someone.’
‘Really?’ Emer leaned forward, agog. ‘Who?’
Roisin clattered in from the garden. ‘Muuuuum, Spike is all red.’
‘Get his hat. And take his inhaler.’ Emer flapped a hand in her general direction. ‘We’re talking.’
‘Can I get some—’
‘Get whatever you want. But not the red Coke – that’s for Lorcan.’
Roisin gave Juliet a particularly penetrating stare and lingered by the open door of the fridge, taking her time over the drinks selection, her ears practically swivelling like satellite dishes.
‘Roisin! You’ve five seconds before the bar closes,’ commanded Emer. ‘One, two, three, four . . .’
‘Aren’t you meant to leave gaps between the numbers?’ asked Juliet.
‘. . . five!’
Roisin grabbed the cans and half a bag of fun-size Twixes and ran out.
‘Louise didn’t say—’ Juliet began, but Emer was holding up a finger.
‘Wait,’ she mouthed, then spun round and clapped.
There was a clunk as Roisin, concealed behind the vegetable rack, dropped two of the cans, and a muffled ‘Feck!’
Emer got up, shooed her out and closed the back door. ‘That girl is going to grow up to be a spy or a gossip columnist,’ she said, not disapprovingly. ‘So what you’re saying,’ she said, settling herself back down at the table, her chin in her hands as if she was watching the telly, ‘is that every time you see your sister, she thinks about spilling the beans about her affair, and you think about slagging off your late husband. Well. You should have said.’
‘I know,’ said Juliet. ‘It’s been horrible.’
Emer gave her a sympathetic smile. ‘Juliet, I bet she barely remembers it. Don’t you think your husband dying would kind of take priority in most people’s memories?’
‘Not in Louise’s,’ sighed Juliet. ‘She’s the kind of person who remembers what you got her for Christmas in 1998. She’s the perfectionist in our family.’
‘Doesn’t sound so perfect to me. Is she still seeing this guy?’
‘No idea. She’s gone back to work and seems to spend every second when she’s not there with Toby.’ Juliet tried to dredge up what details she could remember. ‘To be honest, I was so annoyed that she’d been telling me to go to counselling when her own marriage was obviously not all it was cracked up to be that I left quite soon after that. I didn’t want to know any more.’
‘You didn’t even ask where they met?’
‘At some group or other, I think. I was a bit stunned. She went on about how he made her feel like a new person, not just a mummy, like Peter did. Peter’s an IT designer, bit of a geek. Quite a rich geek now, though. He likes those online games where you’re a wizard.’ Juliet tried to think of some other facts about Peter that didn’t make him sound dull. She couldn’t. ‘This other bloke was a bit more . . .’ She tried to remember exactly what Louise had said. ‘More in touch with himself. More physical.’
As she spoke, she saw Emer’s eyes gleam with intrigue.
‘What?’ Juliet asked.
‘Definitely not an unrequited crush on your husband?’
‘She’d hardly be telling me, would she?’ snorted Juliet.
Emer widened her eyes so much that Juliet could see white all around them. ‘Stranger things have happened.’
Suddenly, Juliet felt defensive and annoyed. ‘Well, not in my family. Ben and Louise . . . were friendly, but they didn’t have anything in common.’
‘OK,’ said Emer. ‘Forget I said anything. I’m an awful gossip. Back to the man in hand. This guy Mark. Do you like him?’
‘I think so,’ said Juliet. ‘Yes, I do.’
‘Then there you are!’ She clapped her hands. ‘Call it a date. What harm can it do?’
Juliet felt a fizz in her chest. Hearing that from Emer’s mouth, rather than her mother or Louise, somehow made her more inclined to agree.
Chapter 17
The days began to move more quickly now Juliet was busier and the exercise made her sleep through the night, and before she knew it, the day of the private view that Mark had talked about was upon her – the date that had seemed so far in the distance.
Juliet stood in front of her bedroom mirror, trying to work out what to wear while the pile of ‘wrong’ clothes on the bed got bigger and bigger. Nothing looked right, and she was running out of time and options. That was what was making her feel sixteen again, not the going-on-a-date part.
It’s not a date, she reminded herself. It’s just an evening out.
But it still felt weird. Juliet didn’t quite know the effect she was going for – she didn’t want to look like she was trying too hard, but at the same time there was a fizzing in her stomach that made her reach for something a bit more stylish than her usual jeans.
Minton sat on the bed and watched her, which wasn’t doing much for her churning emotional state either. He seemed confused. Juliet in a skirt wasn’t something he’d seen a lot of recently.
‘What do you think?’ she asked him lightly, twisting so she could see the back. ‘Black skirt and the gypsy top that maybe isn’t very fashionable any more, or denim mini and the black V-neck top that Louise said washed me out unless I wore twice as much lipstick as normal?’
Minton wagged his tail, uncertainly.
‘OK,’ said Louise. ‘Denim mini and the black top and the lipstick it is. And the big boots th
at your daddy never liked me wearing because he said I looked like I was about to kick over a motorbike.’
In for a penny, she thought. Might as well go out looking nothing like myself.
As she was zipping up the boots, the doorbell rang and Minton launched himself off the bed and skittered down the stairs to investigate.
Juliet followed more slowly. The boots meant she had to clump down each bare tread sideways and then moonwalk across the hall using entirely different muscles from normal. But it was liberating to have no one tell her she was an idiot for having bought boots she couldn’t stand up in.
‘Sorry to keep you,’ she said, when she eventually got to the front door. ‘Oh, hi!’
It was Lorcan, holding a couple of tins of paint.
‘Whoa!’ he said, looking up dramatically. ‘Are stilts back in?’
‘Shut up,’ said Juliet. ‘It’s fashion. And I’m going out somewhere I might need to look over people’s heads.’
‘You could just pay more and get tickets for the front,’ he pointed out.
‘It’s not a gig. I’m going to a private photography viewing, actually.’
‘Are you now? Who knew such things happened in Longhampton?’ Lorcan raised his eyebrows, pretending to be dazzled. ‘Bit out of my social milieu, private views . . . Anyway, how are you fixed for a bit of bathroom painting tomorrow? I can teach you the mysteries of bathroom gloss.’
He lifted the cans so she could read the colour: Indian Tea. It was exactly the old-fashioned green she’d wanted, to pick out the swimming-pool tiles around the shower, even though she didn’t remember telling him that.
‘Won’t bother fetching my ladder,’ he added. ‘I’ll let you do the high bits.’
Juliet couldn’t help noticing he was barely suppressing a giggle, and she gave him a light shove.
‘Stop laughing at my boots, Lorcan. They’re fashionable.’ She paused, suddenly struck with doubt. ‘Do I look ridiculous?’
‘Noo,’ said Lorcan. ‘You look great. Really . . . great.’
‘Really?’
He nodded.