CHAPTER 29
CERYS
Since the letter with the mediation appointment arrived a week ago, I’ve refused to communicate with Craig. Phoebe attempts to persuade me to talk to him; I think the fact I’ve agreed to attend a meeting with Craig is enough of a concession because I’m furious.
The woman running the meeting, Carol, takes us into a room with a plump-cushioned brown sofa and a scented candle burning on her desk. She’s dressed down in a long floral skirt and floating blue top. The calm she’s attempting to create doesn’t come into the room with us. There’s a choice between the sofa and a desk chair for us to sit on and I choose the chair, shifting it closer to the wall as far away from Craig as I can. We haven’t said a word since we arrived and luckily, he was late so small talk while we waited wasn’t needed.
After a brief introduction about the process, she asks us to discuss what we want.
“I want Ella to live with me,” announces Craig.
I can’t help myself. “What the hell?”
He turns to me, brown eyes hard. “I don’t believe she’s safe with you and your new partner.”
To my alarm, Carol scrawls something on her notebook. “What’s your concern, Craig?”
“Cerys is involved with someone who has a lifestyle that doesn’t suit children. He’s had drug involvement in the past and I worry about Ella being around this. Now Cerys has moved Ella into this man’s house.”
“You make it sound like I moved her into a drug den! That is so wrong!” I protest. “Liam isn’t involved with drugs. I would never let anyone like that near my daughter.”
“He’s been arrested for it in the past,” says Craig coldly.
“In the past!”
“Okay.” Carol sets her pen on the table. “I do have to make a note of the allegation, Cerys. The child’s welfare is at the heart of any decisions made. But I would urge you to make a decision between yourselves and I can help you mediate this.”
“I want Ella with me,” says Craig.
“No. You hardly see her, and then suddenly want her around all the time? You work full time and are on call at all hours! Who would look after her?”
“She starts school in September and my mum... her grandmother will help,” says Craig to Carol, ignoring me. “Seeing Ella on the odd weekend isn’t enough.”
“Why don’t you discuss sharing care of Ella so she can stay alternate weeks, or something similar?” suggests Carol.
“No! Craig, this isn’t fair. Don’t disrupt Ella’s life. If you want, you can see her every weekend!”
“Oh, yeah, that’d suit you; leave you the weekends free for you and that loser.”
I focus on the picture hanging behind Carol, an abstract painting covered in circles of bright oil colours. Why is he doing this? I fight down the tightening anxiety in my chest.
“Craig, I’m happy to arrange something reasonable with you, but please don’t do this.”
“She lives with me,” he says firmly.
“I have to agree with Cerys that coming to a mutual agreement is a lot simpler than taking things further,” Carol says.
“Taking things further?” I ask.
“If you can’t come to an agreement and don’t agree to full mediation to solve this, the next step would be court involvement. I would strongly advise you avoid that.”
Craig twists to look at me. “It’s not just the drugs and lifestyle; what if this gets serious? Would you move overseas? Then how would I see her?”
I blink. “We’re nowhere near that stage! I can’t answer that question.”
Craig looks back to Carol. “Can I stop her taking my daughter away to another country?”
“That situation is something that would need to be addressed if it arose, and would depend on Ella’s residency arrangements at the time. If Cerys doesn’t have sole parental responsibility, she would need your permission, yes.”
“Well, as long as I feel Ella’s welfare is threatened, I will fight to get custody.”
The vanilla scent of the candle turns my stomach, the fake smell matching the mock concern of Craig’s for Ella’s wellbeing. His motivation for this goes beyond concern for her welfare.
****
LIAM
I miss Cerys when I’m away, her calming influence and the natural connection we have where I can sit in silence with her and feel as if we’re communicating. I worry that my constant trips away will interfere; that she won’t want a half-baked relationship or she won’t trust me. Her implicit acceptance is part of what I love about her; a contrast to Honey’s insecure accusations and jealousy. If you love someone, you don’t try to run their life.
I’m supposed to be on a break but even without Blue Phoenix, I’m tightly held by my music world. I can’t say no when people ask me for help; and without Steve making the decisions for me, I’m saying yes a hell of a lot more than I should. The session work is over, but bloody Jem drags me around the country with Ruby Riot. I get he likes the band, understand his passion for their music; but he’s not their manager. I’m worried this will end badly, especially with the girl, Ruby.
Cerys pushes Ella on the swing while I sit on the wooden bench beneath the willow tree and send some texts. I’m rearranging tomorrow’s plans because I’m positive Cerys needs my support. Something’s wrong, she’s pale and quiet. On the drive to the playground, Ella whined about wanting an ice-cream, and Cerys’s reaction was over the top. I’ve heard her scold her daughter before, but always in proportion to the behaviour.
Cerys’s knee-length summer dress catches the sun, which shines through the thin, white material emphasising her curves. Her brown hair has grown over the last few months; and now is clipped out of her face. The huge brown eyes that once hid beneath her fringe are visible and hold a secret I don’t understand. Am I too complacent? Has she had enough?
Ella jumps down from the swing and heads for the slide. Cerys walks over and sits on the bench next to me; I place my hand on her knee, wishing I could feel the soft warmth of her skin beneath the cotton.
“What’s going on?” I ask.
She smoothes the dress where I’ve wrinkled it so I take her hand instead. “Craig’s being a pain in the backside.”
I should’ve guessed. “Has he been turning up at all hours demanding to see Ella again?”
“Worse.” The tears brimming in her eyes are unlike this Cerys and more like the hurt girl from Christmas.
“What’s happening?”
“He wants Ella. He’s taking me to court for full custody.”
“What the f-uck?” She winces as I grip her hand so I rub her fingers. “Sorry. He can’t do that!”
“No, I don’t think he’ll win. He’s being selfish; we could’ve sorted this out through mediation, but he point blank refuses.”
I slump against the bench unsure what to say. I have no clue about this shit; but what I can’t understand is how someone who treated Ella and Cerys like he did, could achieve what he wants.
“I’ll get my lawyers onto this,” I tell her. “He won’t win.”
Cerys picks at the hem of her dress, head dipped. “He’s telling people you’re a drug addict endangering his daughter.”
“What the f-uck? You have to be f-ucking kidding me!” The desire to wring this guy’s neck increases every day.
“It worries me. Blue Phoenix’s media image isn’t great recently.” She stares straight ahead and her refusal to meet my eyes prickles my neck. “I don’t know...”
“Why? When was the last time I was implicated in anything? Can’t you see he’s doing this to cause problems? He’s jealous!”
“Yes, but I don’t think it’s me and you he’s jealous of.”
Ella. She swings upside down on the climbing frame, her long brown hair hanging toward the ground as she grips the bars with her legs.
“This is about me and Ella?” I ask hoarsely.
“This is about Craig thinking we’re going to take his daughter from him. If you’re not around, I think he’ll show his true colours and drop this.”
Not around.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I say sharply
“Can we pause things for a little while?” she asks in a small voice.
“Pause? I can’t pause, Cerys! It’s bad enough when I don’t see you for a week!”
Cerys stares at the ground. “We paused things for nearly six months.”
“No, we didn’t! That wasn’t pausing. That was losing each other because we didn’t f-ucking communicate!”
“Liam, I’m sorry; I have to think about Ella.”
“What about you? Think about you!”
“I am!”
“Then think about us.”
“I am,” she repeats softly.
“No, you’re not. Don’t you care how I feel?”
The park is quiet, just a few people gathered on benches closer to the playground equipment, but Cerys looks around, uncomfortably. “Of course I do,” she says.
“Look at me.”
“Please, Liam, can we talk about this later?”
“You started the conversation.”
“I didn’t expect you to react like this. You’re away some of the time anyway, just stay away a bit longer next time?”
“Do you understand what you mean to me?” I ask, touching her face but she continues to stare at the grass. “Look at me!”
“Liam.” Her voice is pleading me to stop, but she doesn’t get to ignore this.
“Cerys, I’m in love with you. I’d go to the f-ucking moon and back for you, but I won’t leave you when you need me.”
Cerys wraps her arms around her head and I stare in shock. Doesn’t she feel the same way?
With awesome timing, Ella appears, face flushed from play. “What’s wrong with Mummy?”
Cerys looks up and smiles at her daughter. “Nothing, baby.”
But Ella can see the tears as easily as I can and she scowls at me. “Did you make Mummy cry?”
“No, I didn’t. She’s sad because she worries about you.”
“But I didn’t fall; I’m good at climbing!”
Cerys laughs. “I know. We should go for ice-creams.”
She’s switched off and shut me out so easily. My world shifts from the balanced centre I had with the heart-rending realisation, Cerys doesn’t feel as much for me as I do for her.
We buy ice-creams; but I can barely eat mine, I’m dazed by her out of the blue decision. Nothing more is said and I know until Ella is out of earshot, the topic won’t be discussed again.
Cerys hints at me dropping her and Ella home then leaving straight away, but she doesn’t get away with things that easily. I take them home and position Ella in front of the television. If we talk anywhere downstairs, Ella could hear us so I storm upstairs.
“Where are you going?” shouts Cerys after me.
“Come here and talk to me,” I call back.
Outside our bedroom window, children play on bikes in the street, cars parked in driveways of identical box-like houses. Worlds apart from mine. Have I made a mistake trying to be part of Cerys’s world?
“I’m sorry, Liam,” says Cerys, as she hovers in the doorway, as far from me as she can.
“Every time I tell you that I love you since we came back from the States, you pretend not to hear,” I say.
“I do hear.”
“Then why don’t you ever respond?”
“Now I’m back in reality, I worry if I give my whole self to you, you won’t want me anymore.”
“You have my heart, Cerys. I left it with you at Christmas. Why do you think I came back and I’m still in the UK? I want to be as close to you as I can. I want you.”
Cerys fold trembling hands beneath her arms. “Please, can’t we just pause again?”
“How? How can I pause the way I feel about you? I can’t switch on and off.”
“Then end this.”
“No! You end this if you are sure you don’t love me.”
Cerys runs her fingers through her hair and holds tight. “I do love you! But I love Ella more! I can’t do anything that would threaten her happiness. Ella’s dad already messed around with her life; he’s not doing it again.”
“But what about you? What about your life?”
“She is my life!” Cerys breaks, tears spilling as her face falls into the sadness she’s held back. She slumps onto the bed. “My life went on hold at sixteen; she’s now the centre of my world.”
What do I say? There’s so much wrong here. She stayed with Craig in a loveless relationship because of Ella. Now she’s pushing me away. I don’t believe our relationship is as big a threat as Cerys says. Underlying all of this is her fear of getting close to me.
“You can live your own life and still love her,” I say. “Don’t throw this away.”
“I’m not! I just need time out until this mess is sorted, Liam. Please. I don’t want to lose her.”
I sit next to Cerys on the bed and take her hands in mine. She’s avoiding looking at me again, but I want her to see what she means to me. “Did I not stay with you enough? Am I not showing you how much you mean to me? I try.”
“Sometimes, I think you try too hard, Liam.”
“I try too hard to show you I love you?” I ask, stunned that someone could see that as a problem.
“You try too hard to fix everything. I know how much you care about the people around you and that you want their lives to be easy, but you end up making bad decisions.”
“Bad decisions about what? You’ve lost me.”
Cerys takes my hand. “Don’t get mad with me for this.” The wary look in her eyes worries me – so she’s going to end this? “When you told me about you and Honey, you said what a mess she was and how you wanted to help her. You made it sound like you wanted to marry Honey to look after her, not because you loved her.”
I drag my hand away. “What the f-uck has this situation got to do with Honey?”
“This.” Cerys waves her hand, indicating the room. “Me. My life’s a mess, too; sometimes I think you’re trying to fix me.”
“That’s bullshit, Cerys! I’m doing all this for you because I love you!”
“I’m not saying you don’t love me; but it worries me that I’m a new Honey, someone else for you to look after.”
“Stop talking about Honey! You’re nothing like her! This is nothing like her! Why are you twisting it round to this?”
“Because if you’re too busy looking after me, you’ll stop loving me!”
“What? How?”
Cerys stands and moves toward the window, as if she needs to keep a distance. A distance I think she’s about to make permanent. “You stopped loving her when you woke up to what you were doing.”
“No, I stopped loving her when she had an affair.”
“Liam, you went back to her when it wasn’t right for you. You did that for her, I think; but look at what happened. It’s like you’re afraid to hurt people, and then you hurt them more by ignoring what’s really happening until it’s too late.”
“Jesus, Cerys, how much time do you spend obsessing about me and Honey?”
“I do not obsess! I see similarities! What if one day you wake up and realise doing all this for me isn’t what you want, but hang around because you think you should? What if you stay with me because you don’t want to hurt me, and then end up hurting me more?”
Cerys shakes, pointing to the real reason behind her desire to ‘pause’. I can’t take in everything she’s accusing me of. What the f-uck have I done wrong here? Nothing.
“You’re crazy,” I say quietly. “How can you even begin to compare how I feel about you to what I felt about Honey? She doesn’t even come close!”
“When you can’t fix my life, you’ll go!” she shouts.
“No! I won’t! How is my wanting to take care of you wrong, Cerys?”
“Because you think the more you do for me, the less likely I’ll reject you.”
I rub my temples, blown away by the criticism for doing the right thing by her. The frustration builds pressure in my head; this is as far as I go with confrontation. “f-uck this, I’m going.”
Cerys’s eyes widen, confusing me further. Didn’t she just say…? I don’t f-ucking understand women. I give her my heart and she tells me I don’t love her?
I take a calming breath. “Cerys, I’m going. If you want me to stay away, I will. Sounds like you need to decide what you want. But don’t think I’ll let you go so easily.” The emotion surges inside and I’m desperate to grab Cerys and kiss her until she can’t breathe, to hold her and never let her go. The ferocity of my emotions around this woman and her little girl surprise me. I never realised how attached I was and how big a gap in my life there would be without them.
But apparently, loving them is the problem.