Authors: Cathy Kelly
one you really liked … I fancy something with boats. Do
you think they have anything with boats in it? Dalkey
harbour, maybe?’
‘Simon, I don’t want to buy any paintings,’ Evie
announced. ‘I brought you here to talk to you. Let’s go into
the gardens.’
She led the way into the actual square, along the path to
a bench that looked out over a manicured lawn. Purple
and yellow pansies bowed their soft petals under the heat
of the sun. Evie wished she was a pansy: flowers never had
to break off engagements. She sat down and took a deep
breath. This was it: she had to do it now.
Looking a little bewildered, Simon sat down beside her.
He reached for her hand and stopped, his own hovering in
mid-air over Evie’s left hand which was bare apart from
her watch.
‘You’re not wearing your ring,’ he said in an accusing
voice.
‘No.’ She had it in its little box, nestling in the velvety
pink fabric. She hadn’t wanted to take it off her finger and
hand it back to him: this had seemed nicer. That way, he
wouldn’t fling it away with rage and then later regret it on
the grounds that it had cost a fortune and he could always
sell it and realise his investment.
‘I can’t marry you, Simon.’ There! She’d said it. Blunt
but truthful.
‘What?’ He shook his head, confusion and hurt written
all over his pale face.
There was no going back. ‘I’m sorry, Simon. I should
have said this a long time ago but I don’t want to get
married to you. I wish there was a nicer, less hurtful way of
doing this and I wish …’
He interrupted her, shocked. ‘But it’s less than a week
away. It’s on Saturday, next Saturday, Evie. You … you …
you’re joking, right?’ he stammered.
She didn’t want to face those hurt grey eyes but she had
to. Evie stared steadily at her fiance and said, ‘I’m not
joking, Simon. I can’t marry you.’
‘But I love you, Evie,’ he pleaded. ‘Say you’re only upset,
say it’s just last-minute nerves … please?’
‘I can’t,’ she said in anguish. ‘I wish I could but I can’t.
I’m calling it off. Simon. I’m sorry, there’s no other way.’
‘What about all our plans? I mean, can’t you think about
it, can’t you give me a few days and try?’
He didn’t get it, she thought in desperation. Closing her
eyes, she launched into the real reason why.
‘I’m in love with Max Stewart, Simon. That’s why we
have to break it off I’m not seeing him but I fell in love
with him and that means it would be wrong to marry you.’
She opened her eyes gingerly.
Simon wasn’t running his fingers through his hair or
shoving his glasses anxiously on to the bridge of his nose.
He was simply sitting there looking at her with an expression
of such desolation Evie thought she couldn’t bear it.
‘You did say you didn’t know if you believed in true love
and that people just sort of got used to each other and
learned to live with each other,’ she said desperately. ‘I
needed something more than that, Simon. I needed love,
true love, romantic love like in my novels. I’m sorry, so
sorry.’
‘I should have known that someone like Max would
steal you away from me,’ he said quietly. ‘What hope did I
have beside him? I can’t change your mind, I know. Not
when it’s someone like him.’
His voice was resigned. There was no question of her
staying with him, he seemed to be saying, when she’d
fallen for a man like Max.
Evie was stunned by his reaction, his passive acceptance
of the situation. How sad to accept that your own
girlfriend could quite easily find someone else more
interesting than you. Simon’s opinion of himself was so
low it seemed reasonable to him that Evie could fall for
another man.
She put her hand on his. He didn’t pull away or scream
abuse at her. He let her hold his hand quietly.
‘I don’t deserve how good you’re being to me,’ she said
truthfully. ‘I never wanted to hurt you, Simon. You’ve been
such a good friend to me. I just couldn’t marry you
knowing what I do. It would be wrong, it would destroy
both of us.’
He nodded numbly.
They sat like that for half an hour. Evie spoke about
cancelling all the arrangements as calmly as if she was a
third party brought in to deal with the fall-out of someone else’s shattered engagement. She said who she’d telephone and who Simon should telephone. She said he was to tell
people whatever he felt was right: if he wanted to say he’d
broken it off then he should. She didn’t mind. He
deserved to save face.
Finally, she fished the ring box out of her handbag and
handed it to him. There were no words for that sort of
thing, no script for the handing back of an engagement
ring. That was the way she left him: sitting with the little
ring box in his hand, gazing at the flowers with unseeing
eyes. Evie cried all the way home, barely able to see the
traffic lights or the other cars because of her tears. She
cried for poor Simon who’d loved her but who’d accepted
that she loved someone else. Guilt and self-hatred mingled
with sheer, blessed relief. She’d done it, it was over,
finally over.
At the sight of her mother’s tear-stained face, Rosie
had hugged her and made them tea, before making
something stronger with far too much gin and not half
enough flat tonic. Her face swollen with tears, Evie had
begged Rosie to tell no one until she told people herself.
She didn’t mention why she had ended the engagement,
she didn’t mention Max at all. Yet Rosie didn’t seem
surprised by the news.
‘He wasn’t right for you, Mum,’ she said earnestly. ‘I
always knew it. He’s a nice person but he was wrong for
you. You need someone heroic, someone like Dad was.’
Evie cried even harder at that. More guilt. She should
never have made Tony out to be this wonderful person.
She couldn’t tell Rosie what he’d really been like, that
she’d gone back to using her maiden name when he died
because she couldn’t bear to use his. Evie had always said it
was because the people in her office knew her as Eraser
and she’d never changed it. Only Olivia knew that Evie
would have killed herself rather than be called Evie
Mitchell, the name of the man who’d been in love with a
married woman when he married Evie. He’d married her
because she was pregnant and within a month, had made it
plain that he wanted a child but not a clinging wife. His
affair would continue and Evie could like it or lump it. No
wonder she’d never cried at his funeral.
Rosie should have known the truth but it was Evie’s
fault she didn’t. She felt like a congenital liar who ran
through life lying to everyone she cared about, telling huge
untruths. She was a terrible, terrible person.
‘If only Dad hadn’t died, none of this would have
happened,’ Rosie said solemnly. ‘What you need is somebody
like him.’
She went off to work reluctantly on Monday morning. ‘I
should stay with you, Mum,’ she protested. ‘You’re still in
shock.’
‘Please go, darling,’ Evie said, grey in the face after a
sleepless night where she’d thought of nothing but Simon.
‘I’m not going into work today. I’ve got to start cancelling
things, telling people. I’ll be OK on my own.’
She cringed at the thought of telling friends and relatives
that the great wedding was off, but the worst was over.
Telling Simon had been like hitting some trusting wild
animal you’d coaxed out of the woods to feed by hand.
Yet in the middle of her guilt-ridden misery, a spark of
pure unadulterated joy burned brightly in her heart. Now
that she was finally free, she could be with Max. It was the
one thing that had kept her going during the endless hours
of the night. Max … he’d told her he loved her, hadn’t he?
He’d told Vida he couldn’t bear to be around for Evie’s
wedding, so he couldn’t be with Mia Koen after all.
He was waiting for Evie, like the knight with a white
charger, all saddled up and waiting for the damsel to call him. It seemed terrible to be happy in the midst of Simon’s pain, but Evie was incredibly happy. She was free.
She fantasised about Max’s exultant cry when he discovered
she was his. ‘Evie, my darling, I can’t believe it! I’ve
dreamed of this moment for so long. I’ve driven past your
house and wondered what you were doing so many times. I we
rung your phone number a thousand times just to hear your
voice but I never spoke. I knew you had to come to me. Now
we’ll never be apart, ever …’
She found the number in her daughter’s diary. The
phone number Max had given Rosie in Spain so that she
could ring him and arrange the job in his company.
Evie wrote it down, replaced the diary in Rosie’s drawer,
and went downstairs, feeling as nervous as a kitten. She
dialled with shaking hands, wondering how she was going
to start the conversation. Hello, Max, I’m not getting married
after all. Does that invitation to lunch still stand?
After six rings, an answering machine kicked in: Max’s
voice filled her ears, his rich, gravelly tones telling her he
wasn’t in but to leave a message. Evie could have listened
all day. She smiled as she thought of him getting her
message. She waited for the beep, still smiling. Then the
phone was picked up.
‘Hello?’ said a woman’s voice. A soft Southern drawl
that sounded like icy Mint Juleps, ripe peaches and long,
sultry days in the Atlanta sun. Mia Koen’s voice. ‘Max, is
that you, honey? I can’t hear a thing. I bet your mobile
phone’s on the blink again. You’re in a bad signal area,
honey. Call me back in a minute.’
Evie put the phone down quietly. Thank God she hadn’t
left a message. Imagine Mia playing it and laughing to
herself, laughing at the idea that the hick Irish woman was
in love with her Max. Max who lived with her in some
luxurious loft apartment with wooden floors and exposed
beams. Imagine Max listening to it with her, both of them
laughing hysterically at the very idea.
Evie went out into the garden, put on her gloves and
began to weed the flower bed at the back of the garden.
When the tears began to drop relentlessly on to the hard,
baked earth, she didn’t bother to wipe them away.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Phoebe looked at herself sideways in the hall mirror. At
five months pregnant, her bump was visible but still small.
She was lucky she could still get away with wearing bigger
sizes of normal clothes instead of maternity things, which
all seemed to be horrendously expensive when she and
Cara trekked around the shops.
‘Maybe I do want to know if it’s going to be a boy or
a girl,’ she said thoughtfully, going back into the flat’s
sitting room which was crowded with shopping bags and
Christmas wrapping paper.
Zoe groaned from her position on the chair with the
dodgy spring, where she was eating crisps and reading her
horoscope. ‘Phoebs, every second day you want to know
what sex it is, and every other day you don’t want to know.
Make up your mind.’
‘It’s important,’ Phoebe protested. ‘If it’s a girl, perhaps I
should be doing something different from what I should be
doing if it’s a boy.’
‘If it’s a boy, you’d be ravenous for beer and pizza all the
time,’ Zoe theorised, ‘and if it’s a girl, you’d be getting
cravings for chocolate and re-runs of Dynasty.’
‘It’s definitely a girl, then,’ Cara said, returning from an
emergency trip to the grocery shop in Rathmines with
another box of Mars Bar ice creams and a lot of assorted
chocolate goodies. ‘They think we’re all mad in that shop.’
she said. ‘The woman behind the counter can’t understand
why we’re buying ice cream in December.’
‘Did you explain it was for a pregnant woman?’ Phoebe
grinned, ripping open the carton almost before Cara had
taken it out of the plastic carrier bag.
‘Phoebe, we were eating just as many last December
when you weren’t pregnant.’
‘True.’
They were all quiet for a few minutes, eating happily
and half watching The Sound of Music with the sound
turned down. Phoebe loved old films but Zoe said she
couldn’t bear to hear ‘Edelweiss’ one more time and could
they turn it down for a while?
Ice cream finished, Zoe went back to reading horoscopes.
‘Listen to this,’ she said. ‘ “Leos will find happiness away
from home this Christmas but be sure to think before you
speak.” I’m glad I’m going to your dad’s for Christmas, Cara.
I couldn’t bear another festive season with the boys and my
father killing each other.’
‘You’re sure your father and Vida are happy we’re
coming?’ Phoebe asked a bit anxiously.
‘Vida says that’s the whole point of the annexe, so guests
can stay and do their own thing,’ Cara pointed out
patiently. ‘There’s only two bedrooms so you’ll have to