The Betrayal (5 page)

A
Shard retrospective
.
Our business is falling apart and Jake talks about offering fans a chance to relive their youth.
At night when he’s not rehearsing he closes the door of his music room while I try and catch up on the backlog of work.
We could be facing bankruptcy but his eyes glaze when I try to discuss this terrifying possibility.
Ed Jaworski’s decision fell upon us like the sword of Damocles and we’re still reeling.
We can take legal action, of course.
Spend a fortune and face a team a STRUM lawyers across a courtroom.
They will beggar us, rubbish our reputation, break us down before the first hearing has concluded.

Tonight, when he returned from band practice, he stood outside the door of my office.
I heard his footsteps stop then move on.
I heard the door of his music room close.
We live in a house with many rooms, spacious and stylishly furnished, yet the two smallest rooms are the ones we use most frequently.
Our refuge from a marriage we tolerate for everyone’s sake but our own.

We don’t fight anymore.
Not the way we did in the early years, hurling insults without caring where they landed and forgiving each other in bed with the same pent-up ferocity.
Now, we use evasion, a polite chilliness, reasoned discussions that respect each other’s point of view, even when it doesn’t tally with our own.
I remember these youthful rows with a certain indulgent nostalgia.
We were so aware of each other then, conscious of tinder boxes and the danger of a hapless remark.
One particular row when I was expecting the twins stands out in my mind.
It began as a casual discussion about what we would be doing if we were still free and single.
I was lying on the sofa in the breakfast room in Sea Aster, heavily pregnant and Ali and Brian, still babies, were sleeping upstairs.
My wish list included art college, living in flatland with Jenny, a gap year in Australia, Euro-railing through Europe; aspirations vague enough not to offend Jake.
He was more specific.
Recreational drugs and eventual rehab, all night parties, riding a Harley Davidson on Route 66, the rise and rise of Shard, and an occasional threesome
.
The latter was meant to be a joke, he insisted afterwards, but by then it was too late.

‘
What a pity we didn’t make it a threesome at the time,’ I snapped.
‘Then, maybe, the other girl would have become pregnant instead of me.’

‘Just my luck,’ he retorted.
‘Think how wonderful my life would be if she’d been blonde, beautiful and sexy, instead of always moaning about her fucked-up marriage.’

‘Whose fucked-up marriage are we discussing?’
My anger heaved with resentment and the twins kicked frantically at my drum-stretched stomach.
‘You’re the one who feels trapped.
You’re the one who can’t wait to take off on your Harley Davidson.
If you’d known how to use a condom…’

‘Oh, here we go again.’
He hinged his arm exaggeratedly and studied his watch.
‘Now it’s time to bring up the subject of the defective condom ― ’

‘It wasn’t the condom that was defective….’

On and on we went, one word borrowing another until it seemed as if our bitterness was beyond healing.
But it did heal and that night, before we slept, we promised each other that if we still felt trapped when the twins were eighteen and independent we’d give each other the freedom to pursue the life we would have led if we had not been so heedless.

I wonder if Jake ever remembers that hurt-filled night.
I doubt it.
Each row is a fresh one to him, unencumbered by the past whereas mine are weighted with history and etched on my memory cells.
This is a female trait, he believes, rather like premenstrual tension or the ability to carry hot objects to the table without scalding my hands.

We left our twins at the airport last month.
They never looked back.
No last, lingering glances, their eyes eloquent with gratitude for eighteen years of nurturing and unconditional love.
Instead, they looked ahead to their futures, unaware that their departure would snap the last fragile link holding their parent’s marriage together.
I’ve poked at this truth, worried it like a dentist prodding a tooth nerve.
I’ve waited for a reaction, the jerk of reality that signals pain.
Nothing.
Our marriage has a serene surface, a veneer that has taken us to the point where Jake seeks solitude in his music room rather than opening my door to say goodnight to me.

Ed Jaworski’s brutal decision has proved that a contract is not worth the paper it’s written on.
Vows can be broken and the sky does not fall down.
What I feel for Jake is affection and gratitude for the years we’ve shared.
I remember what it was like in the beginning but that flame has cooled into ash.
Only an odd spark reminds us of what we’ve lost… and how it all began.

I
danced with Jenny
, handbags at our feet, short skirts swirling over leggings, stonewashed denim jackets.
We were seventeen years of age and dizzy with the wonder of it.
The mirror ball spun a kaleidoscope of colour across our upturned faces.
Moonflowers exploded, strobes pulsated, and I danced harder, my eyes swallowing the sight of him.
His black hair streaked with blond, skin-tight jeans, leather vest — rangy and sexy and ready.
Two years since we’d met in Monsheelagh but all that was behind me and I was living in the thrilling, exhilarating now of a new beginning.

Alone at last, away from the sweat and the noise and the crush of heaving bodies, he unhooked my bra.
My body glowed with a hot, shivery excitement, as dangerous as it was demanding.
His tongue caressed my nipples, strummed my pleasure, darts of fire low in my stomach.
He’d borrowed his mother’s car for the night.
We laughed over the First Affiliation posters in the back seat.
Something about a Divorce Referendum.
Eleanor’s smiling mouth and watchful eyes staring at us.
We shoved the posters to the floor and came together again.
My legs trembled, opened under the pressure of his hand, his slow deliberate journey between my thighs, delicately stroking upwards and he, sensing my nervousness, waited until I relaxed and the smear of desire glistened his fingers.

Fate was waiting in the wings, sly smiling, as I pulled down his jeans, touched him, held him, guided him in.
We were meant to be together, one flesh, one beat.
Our future was shaping but the present was all that mattered as we lay there, pressed limb to limb, mouth to mouth, ready to be engulfed, engorged, ravished.
How was it that such a moment would so easily be forgotten in the dread that followed?

My mother was the first to guess.
Dismay in Sara’s eyes as she stood outside the bathroom door listening to the retching sounds from within.
Morning sickness in all its misery consumed me for the first three months.
I emerged eventually, goose pimples on my skin, eyes streaming, and stood facing her in my school uniform, unable any longer to hide the truth.

I met Jake’s mother for the first time and was terrified by this impeccably groomed woman, who summed me up in a glance as ‘trouble’ then set about resolving the problem as swiftly as possible.
Her contacts were excellent in the mother and baby home where I’d stay throughout my ‘crisis pregnancy.’
Every time Eleanor said ‘crisis pregnancy’, and she said it often, I felt like a statistic to be shunted out of sight, out of mind.
Everyone agreed that we were too young to be parents.
Jake was nineteen and I would have just turned eighteen when our baby was born.

Sara remained implacably opposed to adoption but my father, not being a man to disguise his feelings, was on Eleanor’s side.
My untimely pregnancy was interfering with his Big Plan, as he called it.
My parent’s house was sold and we were moving to Australia.
I’d argued, wept and fiercely resisted this decision but Eighties Ireland was in recession and Eoin was determined to make a new beginning.

In the weeks that followed there were meetings, discussions, angry scenes and decisions made.
Jake and I were in the eye of the storm, right at its heart where we belonged, but no one was listening to us.

My parents were arguing when we entered the house one night, unaware that we could overhear every bitter word.

‘I’m not letting her hold us back.’
Eoin’s voice was flinty with determination.
‘She was careless enough to get herself knocked up by some guy she hardly knew and now we’re supposed to deal with the consequences.’

‘She’s our only child, Eoin.’
Sara sounded distraught.
‘We need to be here to support her.
Otherwise, she’ll be bullied by that dreadful woman and our grandchild will be adopted.’

‘Adoption is the best solution,’ my father shouted.
‘At this stage in my life, I’m not prepared to cope with a baby.
And neither are you.
As for Nadine, what does she know about parenting?
Zilch, that’s what!’

I heard the snap of his fingers, a pistol shot in the immediate silence that followed this statement.

‘But that’s why she needs our support.’
Sara’s anger spilled over into sobs.
‘I want to be with her when her baby is born.’

‘Where are you supposed to live?
Our house is sold.
In six week’s time we’re supposed to be flying to Australia.
Nadine comes with us.
I’m not delaying our departure date.’

‘She wants to be with Jake.
This is also his child.’

‘And he’ll walk out on her the first chance he gets.
If she won’t have the baby adopted and she won’t come with us then she can make her own bed and lie in it.
You and I go together as planned or I go alone.
Make up your mind, Sara.
We’ve come too far to allow this mess to change our plans.’

Unable to listen any longer, I gripped Jake’s hand.
We left the house as silently as we’d entered it.

This argument changed everything.
It strengthened our resolve.
Instead of seeing a problem that needed a solution we were able to visualise a baby.
Our baby.
We became fiercely protective of this life we’d so wantonly created.
This gave us the courage to stand up to Eleanor.
No adoption.
She insisted on a quiet, swift wedding.
Ali moved in my womb as I exchanged wedding vows with Jake, a butterfly patter, almost imagined.
New life kicking into action while my old life disappeared.

A week later my father left for Australia where a job in construction was waiting for him.
Sara would stay with me until her first grandchild was born.
Gentle Rosanna took care of us all in Sea Aster.
Ali was two months old when I embraced my mother for the last time.
The farewell at the airport.
The sense of unreality as I watched her disappear through the departure gates.
I waved goodbye and held Ali high in my arms for her to see.
Then she was gone, heading towards a new life that was extinguished eighteen months later when she was killed in a road accident.

I flew with Jake to Australia, travelled through day and night when I received that shattering phone call from my father.
Sara was on life support.
Dark bruises on her forehead and hands were the only external marks I could see but, internally, all was lost.
Hearing, said the hospital chaplain, was the last sense to go.
I’d time to whisper in her ear, caress her hands, kiss her repeatedly before Jake led me away.