‘The usual mayhem. Well, I’d a very productive weekend. My course was excellent.’
‘You’re cured now?’ Tim asks.
‘Cured. Happy. That’s me.’ It’s impossible to tell if he means it, but even if he does, it won’t last. It never does. ‘So how about you, Amelia? Nice weekend?’
There’s a horrible pause.
‘What?’ Alastair asks. He looks from me to Tim and back again. ‘What?’
‘Ehmmmm. Hugh is taking time out for six months.’ I listen to myself saying the words. ‘Going back-packing. Leaving tomorrow.’
‘Hugh?’ Alastair chokes. ‘Your husband Hugh?’
Almost worse than Alastair’s shock is Tim’s silence – he’s totally got the entire situation.
‘When you say “time out”?’ Alastair asks.
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Time out. Or time off, whatever you want to call it.’
‘Even, like, other women? Jesus Christ.’ Alastair looks scandalized. ‘I always thought you guys were rock-solid.’
Yes, well … I am dying here.
‘And what about you?’ he asks. ‘Are you on time off too?’
‘Stop it!’ This is Tim’s first comment.
‘I’m not … I don’t mean it like that.’ Alastair’s hurt is genuine. ‘I’m only asking. Amy’s like a sister to me. You are, Amy. Like a sister. I care. So, was it a sudden decision? Or coming for a while?’
‘Sort of both. It was a shock, a big one. But it probably goes back a while.’
‘Since his dad died?’
‘Mmm.’ Or maybe even longer. Try sixteen months.
‘Stop with the interrogation,’ Tim says to Alastair. Then, to me, ‘Would you like a break from here? A few mental-health days?’
People say that Tim isn’t much craic, and even though that’s probably true, he can be deeply kind. I shake my head. ‘I need to be busy.’
‘If Hugh is leaving tomorrow, you want Alastair to take your meetings in London? You can stay in Dublin and say goodbye properly,’ Tim says.
No. No way am I going to the airport to wave Hugh off, like he’s going on a gap year, like I approve. Nor am I running the risk of having a public meltdown. No, we’ll say goodbye the way we do every Tuesday morning at five thirty. He’ll be still in bed, barely awake, and I’ll give him a quick kiss before I hare out of the door to the airport. For a while I’ll let myself pretend that when I get home on Wednesday night he’ll be there, like he always is, and not halfway across the world.
‘Would you like a hug?’ Alastair asks.
‘From you?’ I ask doubtfully. ‘I wouldn’t have thought so.’ Then I add, ‘But thanks anyway.’
‘If you change your mind …’
I wouldn’t. ‘Lads, please, I don’t want a big deal to be made of this,’ I say. ‘I’m ashamed and afraid and I just want life to be normal. Come on, let’s get to work.’
‘Give us a minute.’ Alastair goes to ‘his’ cupboard. Tim and I widen our eyes and exchange a knowing nod as Alastair takes a little volume of Rumi’s poetry from a pile of about twenty he keeps in there.
Alastair has definitely met someone, a new lady-friend, on his course – we always know he has a new girl on the go when we see him putting one of the books into a Jiffy-bag, along with a handful of dried crocus petals, then trying to slip it into the outgoing office mail. The poor girls are usually gullible enough to think the Rumi means that Alastair is deeply spiritual, but as Tim says, he’s so heart-centred he won’t even pay the price of the postage. (Although, these days, Alastair makes a big deal of putting a fiver on Thamy’s desk and announcing loudly, ‘To cover the cost of mailing a personal item,’ then giving Tim a baleful stare.)
But Alastair flicks through the pages of the book, finds one that he likes, then puts it in front of me. No! The Rumi poetry is for me! ‘Read that.’
Tim looks appalled and sympathetic.
I read the poem.
This being human is a Guest House
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
Some momentary awareness comes
As an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
Who violently sweep your house
Empty of its furniture.
Still treat each guest honourably,
He may be clearing you out for some new delight.
I don’t want any ‘new delight’ – and by ‘new delight’ Alastair doubtless means I should sleep with some new man. Not himself, that’s not what he’s getting at. But some man. Honest to God, everyone is fixated with sex – last night in the cinema foyer three separate women friends made you-go-girl noises. As if it’s a good thing that Hugh is going, when what I feel is nothing but loss, terrible loss.
17
Thamy puts an elaborate arrangement of autumnal branches and berries on my desk.
Unlikely as it is, I get a surge of ridiculous hope that they’re from Hugh, saying he’s changed his mind. I tear open the card: ‘Thank you for giving me back my life. Bryan (Sawyer) xxx.’
Oh.
‘Who from?’ Alastair asks.
‘Bryan Sawyer.’
‘The klepto?’
‘Ex-klepto,’ Tim says. ‘All shiny and new and respectable again, thanks to Amy.’
Tears of disappointment gather in my eyes, then spill down my face. Discreetly, I swipe them away: I can’t be a person who cries at work. Behind me, I hear Tim get up and I try harder to compose myself. Something is put beside my mouse – a small box of tissues. Surprised, I turn to thank him, but he’s already back behind his screen. His silent kindness makes my tears flow faster.
I sniff, trying to do it quietly but Alastair hears.
‘Y’okay?’
‘Hay-fever.’ I indicate the bouquet from Bryan.
‘Hay-f–? Oh, right, hay-fever.’
‘I can see you’re hurting.’ Alastair corners me later for a pep-talk. ‘But you should make the most of this time.’
I know exactly what he’s getting at. ‘Stop, would you? My confidence is in bits. I’m forty-four and feeling every second of it, and even if I wanted to, there’s no way I’d reveal this elderly body to a new man. It’d be like Game of Thrones when Melisandra takes off her necklace and ages nine hundred years.’
‘You’re not that bad,’ Alastair says. ‘Seriously. I would.’
‘I thought I was like a sister to you?’
‘Weeeell, I could probably get past that.’
‘Could you?’ For a moment I’m genuinely curious.
‘Sure!’ He sounds way too emphatic to be believed.
Nevertheless, I consider him for a long moment – the cheekbones, the jaw, the famous mouth – then think, Reverse cowgirl, and the notion vanishes. It would be AWFUL.
‘Ames, are you certain you can’t talk Hugh out of this?’
‘Certain.’
‘But he’s so … easy-going.’
‘Only up to a point.’ Because when Hugh wanted something, really wanted it, he did it.
‘Well, look, I’m your friend. If I can help, let me know.’
Off he goes, leaving me alone with a memory of something that happened a couple of years ago.
Hugh is a bit of a muso, always was, and he often says that if Carlsberg did lives, his would be as front man for one of those jangly guitar bands. He loves going to gigs. But for me they’re a living hell – being slopped with beer, unable to see anything because of my shortness, having to wear flats because heels sink into the grass … misery, all of it.
When we moved back to Dublin, Hugh got in touch with three other lads he’d been in a band with as teenagers (The Janitors) and they decided to start it up again. Hugh played lead guitar and shared the singing with Clancy (they called each other by their surnames, just like they had as kids, Hugh is ‘Durrant’), and all four of them took the endeavour semi-seriously. Thursday night was ‘band practice’, and it didn’t matter how inconvenient it was, Hugh staked that time out for himself.
‘I need it,’ he’d told me. ‘I can show up in every other part of my life if I have this.’