The Love Market (30 page)

‘I think it was just something I had to go through. I had to hold out some hope I’d get you back, just to lessen the pain of losing you. But now I know I’d never want to go back. Thinking you’re happy isn’t the same as being happy. I know that now.’

He continues shaking his head long after he stops speaking. ‘I don’t know what you’re really asking me, or really saying, but I hope you’re not even thinking that you want to get back together, Celine. We had our chance. Now you have to take a chance on somebody else, and so do I.’

‘Are you going to marry her?’ I remember what he said long ago, about how we learn things: that just because you’re in love doesn’t mean you’re going to be happy, and just because you’re not in love doesn’t mean you’ll be any worse off.

‘I don’t see me marrying anyone again, actually,’ he says. ‘I think being married to you was probably as good as anyone could really expect marriage to be. But if that’s as good as it could ever be, well then it’s not worth it.’

He watches me passively, while the blood rushes to my head and my heart hammers as his words cut through me. ‘But the good thing is, if I do marry again, and it doesn’t work out, I know it’ll never feel as bad as this, so there’s some comfort in that. Because this has been pretty bad, I have to admit.’

He nods me up and down, as though he might follow this with Goodnight, or I’m going now, or something. But nothing.

When he’s out the door and half way down the path he turns and looks back at me. ‘Don’t kid yourself, Celine, you don’t want me back either. Not really. And you know you don’t. Not deep in your heart. Go with your heart,’ he says. ‘You’re the kind of person who should, maybe more than others. It’s the only thing that works for you.’

The party preparations, and Christmas, consume me. A month to go, and I have seventy confirmed guests, most of whom intend to bring a friend or two. Paula—David Hall’s photographer girlfriend—is going to take some snazzy photos, hoping to land us in the local newspaper. My event planner client referred me to the world’s finest hors d’oeuvres caterer who knows how to do things with an asparagus spear that boggle the mind. And Trish, who claims she’s an expert in alcohol, has been having tonnes of fun designing weird and wonderful martini concoctions that I’m going to serve. All I need to find is my dance instructor and I’m all set. Aimee claims she doesn’t want anything for Christmas, only the right to spend up to a hundred pounds on buying things for her costume.

The article on the Love Market came out in the November issue of
Hers
magazine, angled slightly differently. They ended up sending a photographer here to shoot me, and a lovely picture of me led the piece. Because of the publicity, I’ve had eight phone calls from women keen to join, and, interestingly, one from a man: a thirty-nine-year-old consultant heart specialist. He filled out my personality questionnaire, and sounds interesting. By his picture he looks quite nice, and while I don’t have time to fake date him, I suggested he come to the party.

Aimee has a copy of the invitation she designed pinned up on her wall. ‘It’s good,’ I tell her.

‘I’m crap at art. Granddad says my wave looked more like an unclipped toenail.’

I tut. ‘Your granddad thinks being hard on you will motivate you.’ I remember how he used to encourage me to draw. But because I knew he was trying to mould me into an image of himself, I deliberately made myself fail. ‘He liked the sand dunes you did.’

‘He said they looked like breasts.’

I groan.

She wipes the back of her wrist over her cheek. ‘I’m useless. I can’t even get a good mark when I copy somebody’s exam.’

‘You copied somebody’s exam?’

‘Once.’ She flushes. ‘But I copied the wrong person. He was even dumber than me.’

‘Aimee! Don’t ever call yourself dumb! I never got good marks in school and I’ve done fine! There’s more to life than being measured against everybody else. Sometimes you have to just be proud of what you achieve for yourself, and stop comparing yourself to other people, or you’ll never be happy. There’s always somebody better, cleverer, prettier.’

‘You really don’t think I’m useless then?’

I smile. ‘On a scale of one to ten—ten being the least useless you could ever be—you’re a seven.’

She looks horrified. ‘You could still try much harder to beat your dad at Wii tennis. You could try putting a load of dark laundry in without washing my white blouse with it. You could get a Saturday job as a farmer.’

I see her smile.

‘But other than that, I can’t really think of anything else that’s useless about you.’

~ * * * ~

On Thursday night, before we officially roll into December, I do what I know has to be done. The decision toys with me and tests me. I believe in it with every ounce of me, one minute, then I doubt it. I doubt it so strongly that, for once, I’m sure about everything, suddenly, in my life: and I’m so relieved. Until I’m besieged again with the reality that I want to fight, but can’t.

I phone Patrick, and when he answers I tell him that I can’t do this any more.

‘Having you come back into my life made me believe in something. And you know what? It’s a lovely dream. But I don’t honestly see how it can be anything else any more.’

I’m done, but he goes on listening. After a long silence, he says, a very quiet, ‘I’m sorry you see it that way.’ And those few words, and the way he says them—disappointed, but not crushed—make me wonder if I was right: that Patrick has loved me, but perhaps he hasn’t loved me quite enough.

‘You were the one who said we were dreaming,’ I tell him.

‘I know, but I didn’t mean it. I knew that as soon as the words came out of my mouth.’

‘Patrick, I just know that I can’t get on with my life talking to you nearly every day on the phone and not being able to really have you in my life, and having this be so open-ended.’

‘When did you decide this?’ he asks, sounding a bit more human again.

‘Maybe when I heard you were taking the job.’

‘Celine...’ Exasperation.

‘I’m just saying that’s when I knew it was impossible. I’m not blaming you. You have to work. I understand that. Who would not understand that?’

‘But if I hadn’t taken it, I’d have probably gone back abroad again—to what I know, to what I’ve done for twenty years—so how is this different?’

I laugh now, a little. ‘It’s not. That’s the point. It doesn’t make it any better; it just makes it the same. And for me, I just know I’m not the kind of person who can keep coming over there to see you, having such a fabulous time, falling more and more in love with you, and then having to come home, and live my life looking forward to the next time, however many months away that will be.’

‘Celine…’ he sighs. ‘Aimee’s nearly a teenager. In a few years she’ll be grown up and moved out, and you can go and live and be who you want to be, and do what you please.’

I laugh again. ‘A few
years?
Patrick, no!’

‘Why not? We waited fifteen to meet again; what’s a few more?’

‘Just… no.’ I shake my head. ‘And the funny thing is, I think I already am who I want to be. In some ways I’m already doing what I please now. Maybe this is all too much too fast. Maybe I have to get used to me being on my own, it just being me and Aimee. I might have to start with that.’ If I were my own client, would I not be asking myself if this is not another slightly more storybook version of the classic rebound situation?

‘I don’t know what to say,’ he says. ‘I really don’t. Except that I disagree. Strongly.’

‘Let’s just agree to leave it,’ I tell him. ‘To recognise what we had for the lovely thing that it was. And leave it.’ Then I say the hardest words I’ve ever said. ‘Goodbye Patrick.’

~ * * * ~

Jacqui comes back up for Christmas and we celebrate it with my dad and Anthea, and Mike. Jennifer was invited to a cousin’s in Dundee, and Mike said he didn’t feel like going. We eat turkey with our paper hats on that Aimee made, and listen to Bing’s White Christmas.

After, we watch two films, my father squeezed on the couch in the middle of Anthea and Jacqui, and we drink copious amounts of red wine, and pass around various boxes of chocolates, some better than others—the handmade ones that Jacqui bought in London, definitely the star. Around six p.m. my company starts to go home.

We won’t have many Christmases together like this, I think. But I’m pleased we had this one. I know that by this time next year, we will all have moved on, becoming more sure of the new steps we have taken. There will not be this need to gravitate to what’s familiar. Because it won’t be so familiar any more. That’s just the way life is.

When I see Mike off at the door, he kisses me once on the cheek. Mike won’t be coming to my party. He’s going up to Scotland to spend New Year’s with Jennifer. As I watch him walk down the garden path, in his skinny jeans with his thigh-length sheepskin jacket, I realise something that not so very long ago would have made me come apart at the seams:

I will always love Mike. I will love him equally as much as I have always loved him. But Mike was right. Mike knew something I didn’t know at the time: that I don’t want him back. Divorce is like hacking down a mature tree; it leaves an unsightly gap and you want something to quickly grow in its place. You find yourself staring at it and remembering not why you cut it down in the first place, but only how nice it used to look. But eventually you can look at it and a part of you forgets it was ever there.

David Hall’s stately pile opens its doors to, among the more notable: a masked red devil, masked playboy madam, masked phantom of the opera, masked Cinderella, a masked black cat, masked batgirl, masked batman, and four masked court jesters. Jacqui dons a stunning silver sequins floor-length gown and is, she tells me when I can’t guess, “a masked Hollywood actress at the Oscars.” She tuts. ‘Isn’t it bloody obvious?’

‘Which one?’ I ask her over the top of Barry White singing “Let The Music Play”.

‘Angelina Jolie and Kate Winslet all rolled into one,’ she grins showing white teeth under disco lights, lined in ample red lipstick.

‘When are you coming home?’ I ask her.

‘Never.’

‘Please?’

‘Sorry. I’m never coming back up to this dump.’

‘Don’t call Newcastle a dump! Just because you’re a Londoner now!’

She laughs. ‘I’m just happy down there now! Except for missing you. It’s almost perfect. And maybe almost is as good as any of us gets in this life.’

‘Oh. My. God!’ Someone taps me on the shoulder as Jacqui and I are trying to move a giant candelabra that got placed dangerously too close to the edge of the martini bar. When I turn around it’s Trish and James. ‘Your dress!’ she says. James whistles as I do a twirl for them.

‘I’m one of the professional dancers on Dancing With The Stars,’ I tell them, holding out my arms to show off the dramatic slit bell sleeves of my frock that I ordered from a second-hand ballroom gown shop off the Net.

‘It’s the most stunning thing I’ve ever seen!’ Trish says.

I look down at myself, still amazed that other than a minor little let-out around the hips, the dress fit me so well. It’s aquamarine, with an asymmetrical neckline and a low waist that leaves my entire back bare. The bodice is what the description called “cracked ice” lace, and the skirt a full soft charmeuse satin. As it came with a wrap that I knew I’d never wear, I had a seamstress cut it up and sew a mask out of it. Aimee helped me choose my high sliver stilettos—insisting on only one thing: that she could buy the same pair.

‘What are you?’ I ask Trish, happy to see her and giving her a hug, then introducing her and James to my sister. She’s wearing a white towelling bathrobe, a white towelling hair-band pushing her hair back off her face, and a bright orange silicone eye-mask with two holes in it for her to see out of.

‘Can’t you guess? I’m a spa diva!’

‘Oh!’ I chuckle along with Jacqui.

‘Truth is, we went to the costume rental shop and they didn’t have much left. So we had to use our imaginations, which was quite hard, given we don’t have one between us.’

‘And I’m…. well guess what I am?’ says the extremely handsome but un-costumed James who has his arm around her like a man who never wants his arm to be anywhere else. I can feel Jacqui doting on them with her eyes.

I look him up and down. ‘Well, unless I’m missing something, you’re a man in a T-shirt and a pair of jeans, with a navy blue mask around your neck—which breaks the rules by the way! You know I said it’s supposed to be faces covered all night. No masks off until midnight! Then you finally get to see the person you’ve met.’

‘But I’ve met her already!’ he says, squeezing her into him. ‘Thanks to you. But then I’d met her before you. So, truthfully, I’m all confused.’

‘But this girl has so many
issues!
’ I joke, remembering his comments about the last ten women he dated.