‘No, actually I’m looking for someone staying here. Henry Carlisle? He’s English.’ I added the last bit when the name didn’t seem to register.
‘Oh, Henry, of course. No, love, he’s gone back home.’
‘Home?’
‘To England.’
I staggered back a little, as though I’d been shot. I couldn’t take it in.
‘Are ya all right? You look a bit pale there, if you don’t mind me sayin’.’
I nodded and tried to say something coherent. ‘When did he leave?’
‘Oh, it’s a couple of days ago now.’
‘I-I …’
‘Sorry, love, the match is on the telly,’ he said with a longing gaze back down the hall to where the sound of a team scoring a goal could be heard.
‘Oh, no worries.’
The door was closed before I had time to say anything further. The shock gave way to another feeling. Humiliation. I checked my phone. There wasn’t even a text from him. It was obvious now; he must have known after kissing me that it was a mistake. And now he regretted it. Of course he did. I pressed the heels of my hands into my eyes. Maybe he just felt sorry for me. That was it. He pitied me and I mistook it for something more. It probably meant nothing to him. Or else he realised too late that he’d made a mistake and now he didn’t know how to tell me. My fingers trembled as I pulled up his contact details on screen. I tapped the block button before stuffing my phone back in my pocket.
I staggered back down the street. I hadn’t expected it to hurt so much. I always knew he would leave, but I never thought he would be so cruel as to pack up without a word. I stopped and took a deep breath. I wasn’t going to give another man the power to hurt me. If there was one thing I was good at, it was being alone. Nothing could harm me now.
Time passed erratically. I would lose entire days to flashbacks and memories, then find myself jolted forwards into a reality I could scarcely believe was happening. Being back in the village was a shock to the system. Being back in the village for my husband’s funeral was another thing altogether. It felt surreal. People had always thought I was a bit ‘off’. I tried to act like everyone else but I could never quite fit in like other people did. Never really felt like I belonged there.
Shane’s mother ran the local supermarket on her own after his father’s death and she was often described as a pillar of the community. She had always treated me well, if somewhat standoffishly. She knew there was something different about me too. Or maybe she knew their son better than she let on. Better than I did. Maybe she saw the bruises and wanted to keep me quiet. She couldn’t have a scandal like that ruining her reputation or her trade. And I silently went along with it. I didn’t want to disrupt things either and somehow believed that I was partly to blame for it all. I must have been doing something wrong. Reading her, all I could see was a woman who loved her family to the point of blindness.
Madame Bowden had offered to accompany me but I didn’t want her there. I was embarrassed by the town and everyone in it. I just had to get through the day and it would all be over. At least that’s what I told myself.
I was in a black car with Shane’s mother.
‘Well, I hope that job in Dublin was worth it.’
‘Sorry?’
‘What kind of a wife would put a job before her husband.’ She had been staring straight ahead at the road, but now her red-rimmed eyes were trained on me.
‘I didn’t.’
‘And my poor Shane, he’d never stand in the way of your dreams. Said he didn’t mind if you were away for a few months. Oh, but he was so looking forward to bringing you home with him.’
He hadn’t told her I’d left him. I took a deep breath in. Of course he didn’t tell anyone. How would he explain it? Either she had no clue about the violence, or her mind wouldn’t let her see what was staring her in the face. Not my son.
‘If it hadn’t been for the accident—’ She broke off, swallowing her words in one big gulp and pressing a handkerchief to her nose. ‘Why weren’t you there, Martha?’
‘I …’ My voice cracked. ‘I’m sorry.’
She took my hand in hers so tightly I thought my bones would crack.
‘I know what people are saying, that it was a suicide, but I don’t believe them.’
I nodded and felt the mixed sensations of guilt and relief shudder through my body. No one suspected anything.
The day passed by in flashes, like some kind of avant-garde movie. His uncle making a speech at the church. The open coffin. Shane’s cold, white face that looked as innocent as a child’s. The graveyard and the cries of his mother when the coffin was lowered into the ground. The hotel afterwards and his friends retelling the story of how Shane and I had first met. Love at first sight. My two brothers toasting pints, saying what a sound man he was. Always fixing their cars at mates’ rates. Never missed his turn paying for a round of drinks. As though that was what made a good man. I never cried once. I worried that people might think it was odd, but the priest assured me that we all express our grief differently.
My parents offered to drive me back to the apartment I had shared with the man who almost tried to kill me. The man who was now dead and buried himself. It was a terrible accident. I had repeated that line so many times to myself, like a mantra. If you say something enough times, it becomes true. Or at least that was the plan. I turned the key in the lock, but as soon as I stepped inside, I knew I could never stay there again. Everywhere I looked, I could see all the times he threatened me, yelled at me, hit me. Short films, with no beginning and no end. I never knew where the arguments began. I would try to trace them back to some logical starting point, but there wasn’t one. Anything could spark his anger and the more and more I tried to cut off the parts of me that seemed to annoy him, the less and less there was of me. I was only existing in his world, on his terms, just trying to survive this ‘love at first sight’.
I turned to my mother and without even speaking the words, she understood what I was asking. I went home with them.
I didn’t sleep. I just lay in my childhood bed wondering how I had ended up here. By the time the first rays of morning light came through the thin curtains, I had made some decisions. I would never come back to this town again. Regardless of how it had happened, I had been given a second chance to start over. I dressed quickly and tiptoed out to the back door. Just as I lifted the latch, I heard a voice from behind me that I hardly dared to believe.
‘I’m glad he’s dead,’ she said.
I turned around to see my mother standing there in her old dressing gown, her arms wrapped tightly around herself. These were the first words I had ever heard her speak. Rusty and half-whispered, they confirmed what I had suspected all along – she had silenced herself. But why? That was when all of the unshed tears released from within me and we held each other for the longest time.
‘Come with me,’ I said eventually.