Ellie's Return (13 page)

If they were to be together then where
would they live? Ellie had known as soon as her taxi had pulled up at the
arcade on the day she arrived she could not come back and live here. She had
read a quote from someone who said that life is a journey and that if you never
travel you are reading the same page over and over. That struck a chord with
her when she read it, and she did not want so much to stay in Venice as to go
and live somewhere else in the world, to live elsewhere, to travel, to be
engaging with the world all the time instead of trying to carve up a niche of
it and hoping nothing ever comes along to threaten it. She wanted Tom though,
and in three years she had not been able to forget him, and this night was the
first time she had felt complete since he had cut her off three years ago. She
did not know why he had done that but perhaps she would find out now, even if
the reason why seemed less important now.

***

Tom had gone out to look for something for
Ellie. Since the days they used to come to this village it had changed, it was
much busier now, and there were all sorts of gift and craft shops open, though
he could still find nothing, until he had a sudden inspiration and charged off
to fulfil it. He was walking on air this morning. He was tired, but he was
always tired. Every time one of them had turned over or reached out during the
night, the other had been there to enjoin them. It was as far as it was
possible to be from his day to day life now, where usually he slept in a
sleeping bag on the sofa and when he slept in his own bed he would wake up on
the edge of the it, subconsciously repelled with the beautiful monster on the
other side. It was so long since he had known the warmth that he could only
feel from Ellie, and had all but given up on. Yesterday he was determined to do
the impossible and forget about Ellie, now he would not have to, and they could
move on.

Could he forgive her for the way she left
him? If he could believe that she would not do it again then perhaps he could,
he wanted to, but he did not want to live in fear of her leaving him. What was
he talking about, why did he think he was going anywhere? He could not expect
the woman he loved to come back and be the other woman while he married the monster
and watched his own hard earned business and that of his family slip through his
fingers. The properties seemed less important now, but he had worked so hard
for so long at them, and it was just wrong to have that woman come along and
cheat him and steal it all away. Was that how she did everything, was it how
she had accumulated those shops? Tom had not been idle in his attempts to find
a solution; he had set in motion steps to regain the business but if he did not
have time to see through what he was attempting to do, he could lose the
balance of power too soon and never get it back. Speeding up the process was
dangerous, and as much as Ellie’s return had given him an impetus, it could not
be more badly timed in terms of the risk of losing everything instead of
winning. He would need to know that Ellie was not toying with him, that she
really wanted him back, and that making the sacrifice of his business was the
right thing to do.

Twenty-Two

When he arrived back they fell into each
other’s arms again, and having missed breakfast at the hotel they now missed
lunch as well. They decided to stay another night, in which case Ellie said,
she would have to go out and get some emergency provisions since all she had
were the clothes she had arrived in. Tom could only then think of the maid’s
apron, and agreed she would need something more practical if they were going
out to eat. Tom drove Ellie into the main shopping drag and she was kitted out
in minutes. He knew that Ellie loved to shop and could spend hours trying on
shoes before going back for the first ones she had tried, but he loved the more
pragmatic shopper who could buy a t-shirt and a fleece in less than ten
minutes.

They found a small café near to the brook,
and took a table outside. They were both surprised how hungry they were and did
not talk much until they had eaten. Even them there seemed no rush to say
anything. Partly it was because the pleasure of each others company was so
great after so long that it bought its own peace that should not be
interrupted. There was also concern on both sides, however, that enquiring too
deeply into past events may shatter that peace. Each was sure that the other
would need to apologise or explain themselves soon, and neither wanted to put
the other under too much pressure to do it. After all, if they had all the time
in the world, they would get to it eventually. That was assuming they did have
all the time in the world. Tom was aware that Ellie may need to return from
where she had just arrived, and Ellie was aware that Tom could not just up and
go, with all the properties he had to look after, so maybe there was an urgency
after all. They talked about old times, things that already happened being the
only real certainty, and they passed a couple of hours that way before heading
back to the hotel and spending another couple of hours together, communicating monosyllabically.
 
They were both avoiding talking but were
both desperate to know what was going to happen next. Tom broke the ice.

“Are you back for good?”

‘No,” said Ellie, “Flying back on Monday.”

“Are you expected?” he asked.

Ellie realised that they knew nothing
about each other’s lives at the moment. He must think she had come after him
when she still had someone in Venice. She did not reply.

“Why did you come back?” he asked.

Again there was no reply. He decided not
to ask her anything else until she had spoken.

“Is Lola expecting you back tonight? Won’t
she be suspicious?” she asked him.

“Who told you about Lola anyway? Did she
tell you?”

“No. Claudia told me. Yesterday.”

“Yesterday?”

“She says she told me before. She may
have.”

“Really. It’s a forgettable kind of fact
is it?”

“No, I don’t mean that.”

Tom did not know what she could mean. She
either knew or she did not, and if she knew and forgot, perhaps he was barking
up the wrong tree thinking that any of this mattered to her.

“I don’t want to talk about Lola, “ he
said. There was no way that woman was going to ruin this day for them.

Ellie took it to mean that he was indeed
feeling guilty about Lola, and she wondered if she ought to feel guilty as
well, but she did not, because she suspected that Lola had a hand in them
splitting up.

“What would she say if she saw us now?”
she asked.

“Let’s not talk about Lola,” he said, taking
her face in his hands. She looked hurt. Lola could ruin anything.

“How can we not talk about her,” she
asked. “She’s my best friend isn’t she?”

“She’s really not your friend, Ellie, not
in any way. Not yours or mine.”

‘You don’t love her? I find that hard to
believe. You left me for her didn’t you, and you’re still with her.” Ellie did
not think this at all, or at least it had not occurred to her until now, but
until yesterday it would never have occurred to her that they would be
together, so perhaps it was true. Lola had encouraged her to take the job in
Venice after Tom had cut her off, and then Lola had cut her off too. She may
have played straight into their hands, in which case she was being ridiculous
to sit here thinking that he was going to do anything but use her for sex for
the weekend and go back to Lola as though nothing had happened.

“Left you?” Tom was incredulous.

“Well I didn’t leave you, Tom. One day
everything was fine then next thing I knew you were angry about something, and
within days you had stopped talking to me altogether. I stuck around for a few
weeks, Tom, but you wouldn’t return my calls or emails, Lola said you refused
to speak to me and…”

“Lola said? Lola knew I was trying to reach
you every day. I was desperate. But I wasn’t the one having the affair with the
Italian stud was I?”

“Nor was I, Tom.” He looked at her.

“Not at the time. Later I was,” she said.

“Really, you left me to have an affair at
some unspecified date?”

“No, Tom, I had an affair with an Italian
stud, lots of them in fact, but much later. I knew no-one there at the time
that I left.”

“Why did you come back Ellie?”

“I came back because none of them were
you.”

“And what do you want from me?”

“To be with you.”

‘You wont leave me again?”

“I never left you.”

“We’ll work this out somehow, Ellie, but your
timing is awful.”

“I think it’s pretty obvious what happened
with Lola isn’t it. It’s just not obvious why. How long did it last? How long
were you happy?”

“I was never happy after you left”

“Come on Tom, you were happy to shag her
for a while. How long?”

“ Not long. It wasn’t how you think.”

“You don’t know what I think. How long?”

“ A few weeks, maybe a couple of months at
a push.”

“And how long after I left did it
happen?’
 

“ Ellie, I thought you had left me…”

“How long, Tom?”

“A few weeks.’

“Promise me? It happened a few weeks
after? ”

“Would that be alright then? A few weeks
after?”

“As long as it was a few weeks after and
not a few weeks before, I can live with it.
 
One thing. We have to tell Lola together.
We have to do it today.”

“I can’t do that Ellie. Not today. We can
tell her soon.”

“No, Tom, I’m going back on Monday, and I
want her to know before then, and I want to tell her, I want to know that she
knows.”

“You don’t trust me to deal with this?”

“You don’t want me to tell her do you? You
were just bored and I threw myself at you and now you’re going back to her.”

“Ellie your timing could not be worse. I
just need more time.”

“More time for what. Tom? More time to
find a way to keep us both on the go without knowing about each other?”

“You don’t understand Ellie, I have lived
with this for three years, I need a few weeks.”

“You’ve had three years Tom, three years
to work this out, I didn’t leave you and you didn’t leave me. That’s the only
thing we can believe if we are to trust each other, but if you don’t want to
resolve that, what am I to think? What do you want to preserve with Lola?”

“I tried so many times, so many times, to reach
you. I knew I shouldn’t have trusted that bloody Claudia.”

There was silence.

“Meaning what?”

“That I tried to contact you through
Claudia.”

“But why should you not trust her, why
would she not be reliable?”

 
“Because I slept with her.”

“Tom, are they’re any of my friends you’ve
not shagged yet? Is that all still to come? Do you just settle on a
geographical area or a demographic? Or is just all my friends?”

“It’s complicated, I told her everything I
knew. She wouldn’t give me your address but she was supposed to tell you what I
told her.”

“But she wasn’t supposed to sleep with
you.”

“Ellie, let’s get past this. We know we
were duped into splitting up even if we don’t know the details. We need to move
on but three years after I tried for months to communicate with you, you’re
turning up out of the blue and telling me to drop everything. It’s all at stake
Ellie, why do you think she wanted me?”

“Oh, so a woman can only want you for your
money? Is that what you think I want Tom? Am I so transparent?”

“I don’t mean that, you know I don’t.”

“Well then drop everything. Whatever she
has done, you’re just going to get sucked further in unless you let it go. I
don’t care what you have, Tom, I don’t care what you have or don’t have. Cut
your losses, we’re young, we can get it all back.”

“But we don’t need to lose it Ellie. If I
walk away now I will have let her steal everything away from me.”

“I don’t know Tom, I think there is more
to it than that.”

“Just give me time Ellie. Just trust me,
like you always used to. I haven’t done anything wrong.”

“Nor have I Tom, and I came back for you,
so I don’t know what more I can do.”

“Just wait. Small steps. Just wait for me.”

“Wait for how long? Or rather, wait for
how much longer? Weeks, months, years, while you juggle us both and we all live
a lie? “

“Not that, but I don’t know. Not that
long.”

“It’s been too long already, Tom, but that
would be ok if there was no more waiting. I can’t believe you want to drag this
out any longer. I won’t do it.”

Twenty-Three

At the airport, Ellie was lapsing into
thinking about the events of the last two days. It was all she could do to
think about what her plans should be now, so that she did not have to dwell on
the past. It was harder now because she was able to see for the first time that
her failure to move on so far was down to the fact that for three years she had
not wanted to. She had told herself so many times that in so many ways she had
moved on. She was more independent now, she lived somewhere beautiful a long
way from home, she was doing well in her career, and she seemed to be able to
get the interest of any man she chose as well as all the ones she did not
choose. The one she could not captivate was the problem, however, since he was
one she had been waiting for. In the back of her mind every conversation she
ever wanted to have with someone was with him, and every joke that nobody else
would get. Every place she wanted to visit was encouraged in her mind by the
fact that he would want to go there too and when he would not she would be
discouraged; even the realisation that she could go anyway whether he liked it
or not was only a hollow victory if she never got to do those things with him.
For all that she had persuaded herself that she had moved on she had not moved
on from hoping that one day he would get in touch and say he was sorry or
explain what had happened and they could just move on. Her hope had turned to
action too late in the day. Now that she had discovered Lola’s part in their
break up she wished she had come home so much sooner to resolve the issue, but
even as she thought that, she knew that his attitude to her was exactly what
had kept her away. Lola had done a job on both of them, and was sure to hope
that they would never find out. They had, but it was too late now, because the
old Tom would never have let her go, and this one let her go too easily, so it
was over and she would have to think of something else to look forward to. If
only she could stop seeing him everywhere she looked.