Stella let out a wheezing laugh, which set Elene off. They were having a good time.
‘I didn’t know you were in town. Where you staying, Meg? With lover boy?’ Elene smiled. ‘Ah, don’t look so worried.’ She batted the air with her hand. ‘I didn’t expect you to stay with us, not now you and Mr Kelly are so close. I’m pleased for you. I really am. Hopefully we’ll be seeing a lot more of you in the Village now?’ she fished.
Meg simply nodded and prepared to walk away, but Salvatore placed his hand over the back of her palm, which rested on the table. ‘You did good, kid,’ he murmured. And he winked at her with the beginnings of a smile that quickly faded.
Meg felt the tears rising at his unexpected gesture and words of kindness; it was enough to push her over the edge. ‘I must go and freshen up.’ She pointed towards the back door, trying to smile; it was becoming harder and harder.
‘Hey, talk of the devil! Here he is!’ Elene pointed over Meg’s shoulder.
She felt her blood run cold and her heart jump.
Oh please, no!
She heard Juno’s voice echoing with excitement. ‘Monsieur l’architecte! You made it!’
Turning, Meg instinctively felt her face wanting to smile at the sight of him. He looked wonderful in his crisp white shirt and navy jacket – over jeans, of course. Not that she had expected him to change in any way; it had been less than a week since she had seen him in person, only a couple of days or so since he had watched her fall asleep across the miles. Meg felt anchored to the spot. Her legs shook and her heart thudded as she saw his stricken expression.
Without acknowledging anyone or anything, he made his way over to her. She watched his hands twitch in her direction, wanting to take hers, but deciding against it, thank goodness.
‘Ma… Me—’ he stuttered.
‘It’s Meg,’ she assisted. ‘I understand it must be hard to keep track.’ She spoke quickly but quietly, not wanting to bring her domestic disaster to work on this day of celebration.
‘I know it’s Meg, Meg! I was going to say Mary, but I didn’t think you’d find it funny.’ His expression was doleful.
‘I never did,’ she lied. ‘And incidentally I’m not finding anything very funny right now.’ She was aware of her shallow breaths and that her chest was heaving with all that it contained.
‘I get it. I dumped the grocery bags and came here as quickly as I could.’ Edd scanned the crowds around them, looking for a quiet spot.
‘Oh, well, thank you so much for coming.’ Her sarcasm wasn’t lost on him. ‘I hope your girlfriend puts the groceries away. I can’t stand to think of you two love birds having spoilt milk.’
Edd grabbed her arm and steered her more forcefully than she was comfortable with towards the back of the shop. He led her down the service stairs and out into the small courtyard at the back of the kitchen. She was irritated that he had taken control and had marched her so determinedly out of the café and doubly irritated by the way her body folded and sang at the touch of his hand on her arm. Flavia’s words floated into her head, ‘
Flavia, Edd’s girlfriend…’
, and her tears finally broke their banks, falling down her cheeks and splashing from her nose and eyelashes.
‘Oh God, please don’t.’ Edd placed his hand over his mouth as his own eyes misted over. He reached for her, but hesitated as he watched her shrink from him. Finally he placed his hand inside his jacket, resting it on his hip as he paced in circles in front of her. ‘I can’t bear to see you cry,’ he whispered.
Meg stood in front of a trio of large metal bins and folded her arms across her chest. She let her head hang forward and her hair dangle over her face; she was glad of the veil.
‘We need to talk,’ he said.
‘No.
You
need to talk!’ Her words when they did come were fired from lips contorted with anguish; they were delivered quickly and with anger. She tucked her palms under her arms. Her muscles ached with the effort of trying to stop herself from trembling with distress and cold.
Edd exhaled and raised his hands as if in submission. ‘I love you.’
‘Don’t start with all that bollocks!’ she shouted.
‘It’s not bollocks. I love you, Meg. I do. And even though this is a mess, I am so pleased to see you. I hated every second of being away from you.’ His tone was pleading.
‘Is it true? Is Flavia your girlfriend?’ She cut to the chase, unable to cope with the sugar-coating when they were yet to establish the fundamentals.
‘Yes.’ His voice was calm, directed at the floor.
‘Oh God. There was still a tiny space in my head that was hoping it wasn’t true, that it was some kind of horrible mix-up.’ Meg shook her head. ‘I don’t believe it. I am so fucking stupid.’
‘You’re not, you’re not stupid.’
‘I must be, don’t you get it? You made me the other woman again! And yet again I wasn’t given the choice because I didn’t know. So yes, I must be fucking stupid.’
‘You didn’t know…’ Edd offered.
‘No, I didn’t. Not that it makes it any easier. You lied to me and you promised you wouldn’t and like an idiot I believed you.’ This she uttered through clenched teeth. ‘I can’t believe I fell for it!’
‘I never lied to you. I never said Flavia and I had finished.’ He caught her eye.
‘No, you’re right, clever Edd. You didn’t quite, did you? And you might not have lied outright, but there are many ways to be dishonest and lying through omission is one of them.’ Meg felt a swell of anger inside her. ‘I met her, Edd, and she was lovely and beautiful and she has big boobs and I had to look her in the eye, knowing that I had slept in her bed, with her man and it was shit! You put me in that position.’
‘It’s not her bed, it’s my bed. She doesn’t live with me.’ He shook his head.
‘Oh, well, that makes it okay then!’ Her words dripped with sarcasm. Meg pictured the mauve sequined cushions, at odds with the masculine design of the apartment. A woman’s touch.
‘I know it doesn’t make any difference and I can’t imagine what it was like to turn up and find her there. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.’ His voice was quiet.
‘Well, sorry is easy, too easy and doesn’t mean fuck all. I’m sorry for assuming you were single. I can’t think where I got that idea.’ She placed her finger over her lips as though in contemplation. ‘Oh, actually, thinking about it, it might have been something to do with the fact you picked me up, we had sex in your apartment and then you took me to meet your mother. Oh, and the church visit, that was a nice touch, completely reeled me in. Don’t even get me started on the fricking million texts and messages all telling me about our fantastic fucking future!’
She watched what could have been a look of hurt flash across his face, but that was too bad, she wasn’t done. ‘I have flown around the bloody world to see you, to spend Christmas with you.’ As these words left her mouth, she thought of Lucas and hearing him saying the word ‘Edd’ and the joy it had brought her. ‘I have waved my little boy off for Christmas without me! Something I said I would never do and I did it because I believed you. I thought I was paving the way for our glorious future, the one you told me we would have. I’m such a fucking idiot!’ She banged her clenched fists against her thighs.
Edd stepped forward with his arms wide, waiting to encircle her, comfort her.
‘Don’t you dare touch me! Don’t you dare. You’re a fake and a liar and a bastard!’
Edd shook his head. ‘No. I’m not. I’m really not. I love you, Meg!’
‘Stop saying it. Just stop it. It doesn’t mean anything. Not now,’ she howled.
‘Well it means something to me,’ he countered. ‘I have never lied to you. It’s just that it has all happened so fast and it’s not straightforward. Things are not what they seem between Flavia and me. And they haven’t been for a very long time.’
‘Oh well that’s good because she seemed like your girlfriend and you seemed to have been stringing me along with your bullshit!’ she shouted.
Edd sighed, ‘She’s, she’s fragile.’
And I’m not?
‘I’ve known for a while it wasn’t right, maybe always, but I didn’t do anything about it because I was chicken and working such crazy hours that I hardly ever saw her. I admit I avoided the conversation because I hate hurting people and I was waiting for the right time. I feel sorry for her. She lost her mom this year and she hasn’t got anyone else. I didn’t want to add to her hurt.’
‘Have you slept with her since you met me?’ Meg looked him squarely in the eye, picturing the beautiful girl in the kimono top who had offered her coffee.
‘No, we’ve shared a bed a couple of times, but nothing happened,’ he admitted. This made her tears fall afresh as she recalled his words, after her night in his bed,
‘… just a little making out. But no more than second base, I swear!’
She pictured him and Flavia together and her gut twisted with sadness and jealousy.
He took a step closer to her. ‘And the only reason she stayed over was because I couldn’t figure out how to get her to leave.’ He closed his eyes. ‘I can hear how shit that sounds.’
‘You think?’ she managed between sobs.
‘I don’t love her in the way I should. I don’t think I ever have. We were just friends to start with and we supported each other through some tough times, me missing my dad and her mom dying. After a while we drifted into bed with each other and I haven’t had the heart or the guts to admit that I wanted out. I’ve just avoided the discussion, but then I met you. I love
you
.
You
, Meg. You haven’t been out of my head for one second, not one single second since we met.’
‘What, even when you were snuggling up to Miss Carb-Free-Organic?’ she quipped, wanting to dislike Flavia, but finding it almost impossible.
‘Yes, even then.’ He whispered his admission.
‘Fucking hell. You are the limit!’
‘I know how this sounds, how it looks, but, Meg, just let me say—’
‘No. I will not let you say anything, because nothing you can say will change this. You’re just like all the others.’ Meg turned around and banged the bin with the heel of her hand; it gave off a loud, metallic thud that rattled around the courtyard. She thought of Bill, of her dad, thought about everyone that had let her down, lied to her or abandoned her. ‘I don’t want to see you ever again. Ever. And I wish to God I’d never met you; you turned my world and my son’s world upside down for nothing. That’s a cruel trick to play.’
‘It’s not a trick. I love you.’ It was as if he could think of nothing else to say.
Meg straightened her back and pushed her hair behind her ears. She sniffed and wiped her eyes. ‘Fuck off, Edward. Go back to your needy girlfriend and your controlling mother.’
Edd opened his mouth to speak but thought better of it. Turning, he reached for the handle and opened the door that would take him from the courtyard and out of her life.
‘Incidentally,’ Meg called. He looked back and she was shocked to see the tears that fell from his eyes, turning them instantly bloodshot. ‘If what you’re saying is true, which I don’t believe for one second, then why are you still with her? If you’ve been waiting for the right time, why wasn’t the right time when you met me?’
Edd looked up as the sky clouded over and it began to snow, just as it had when she had skated in his arms at the Rockefeller Center and when they had kissed for the first time on top of the Empire State Building. Flakes settled on his eyelashes and his thick auburn fringe.
‘Because it’s Christmas,’ he managed, before slipping through the door.
Without adrenalin and excitement to counteract the fatigue, Meg felt completely exhausted. All she wanted to do was close her eyes and go to sleep. She had little memory of the flight home, conducted in the dead of night with an eye mask on and a blanket over her head. She rejected both meals and movies as she cried across the time zones. Every time she closed her eyes, she pictured him standing in the courtyard as it began to snow. ‘
We’ve shared a bed a couple of times
…’
It was midday when the taxi dropped her off and exactly a week before Christmas. Judging by the groups of men in sharp suits and women in sparkly tops and heels, it was office party time and some seemed to have started the celebrations earlier than others. She dodged a cluster of women of various ages and sizes, linked arm in arm and talking loudly, laughing open-mouthed without restraint as they teetered along in a cloud of wine fumes. Most were revealing ample amounts of cleavage, wearing tops that paid no heed to the cold bite of winter. They clutched coordinating handbags that were too tiny to contain much other than their lipstick of choice, a slim phone and a travel card. Meg hovered on the kerb with her suitcase by her feet, waiting for them to pass, her eye trained on the front door that would mean a soft pillow and some privacy.
‘Cheer up, princess, it might never happen!’ a dark-haired man in a navy pinstriped three-piece suit shouted at her, drawing a smile with his index finger from cheek to cheek.
If only it were that simple.
She gave a little nod, trying to join in, but the truth was it had already happened.
‘Leave her alone, Ricky, she’s well out of your league, mate!’ His friend slapped an arm across Ricky’s back and moved him along the pavement.
Placing the key in the lock, Meg trod quietly up the stairs to her flat. Without putting on the lights or opening doors to other rooms, she slipped into her bedroom and after pulling off her boots, still in the clothes she had been wearing for countless hours, slid between the sheets. No matter that it was lunchtime. ‘
Cheer up, princess!’
The man’s words echoed in her mind as she fell into a slumber of sorts.
Meg was jolted awake by a horrible dream, but when she sat up and glanced at the clock on her bedside table she realised it wasn’t a dream at all. Screwing her eyes shut, she thought of Lucas, thought of the seaside, anything other than the reality of the situation in which she found herself. Laying her head back on her tear-soaked pillow, she forced herself back to sleep, welcoming the dark escape it offered.
When she woke again at three o’clock in the afternoon, her arm immediately snaked along the cushions, searching for the reassuring warmth of her lover’s skin. But he was in a different country, in a different time zone and he was not hers to love. The future that she had envisaged had gone for good. This caused her tears to pool again. In her jet-lagged, sleepy state, confusion reigned and she didn’t know if she was crying for Bill or Edd or the fact that Lucas was so far away from her so close to Christmas. And even though she had heard it from the horse’s mouth, she still found it hard to believe that Edd was a fake and a fake with a girlfriend. She loved him – well, she thought she did; at least the beginnings of love.