Page 39 of The Bookshop Ladies

‘Neither were you, obviously.’ She wanted to ask him where was he staying since he’d walked out that night, but she really didn’t have it in her. She wanted to shout and scream, but that would disgust Luc. It wasn’t very French. It wasn’t very urbane. It wasn’t sophisticated. ‘It’s eighteen ten,’ she said and she hung up the phone. And of course, immediately regretted it.

After that exchange, she couldn’t sleep. In the room across the hall she could hear Robyn’s gentle breathing. She was working so hard these days and running on the beach most mornings before she opened the shop. God, she was so proud of her daughter.

Fern padded down to the kitchen, considered making a cup of herbal tea and then picked up her jacket from the back of the chair. She headed out with the intention of walking down to the pier and sitting on one of the benches for a short while to try and let her thoughts empty out across the moonlit bay.

‘You too?’ Joy sat next to her after a few minutes. ‘I haven’t slept properly since the menopause.’ She made a face. ‘And it was early, I was just gone forty.’

‘Oh, poor you. That’s so young, these days so many women are only starting their families in their forties.’ Fern would have liked more children but Luc had been against the idea.

‘I never had that chance. I lost my baby before there was time and then… we tried of course, but…’ Joy shrugged. ‘It just didn’t happen. My husband…’ she stopped abruptly and Fern remembered she was widowed. ‘Well, eventually, I convinced myself that maybe it just never really fitted in with our plans.’

‘In my case, there was no choice, after Robyn was born, that was it.’ Fern sighed. ‘My husband had a vasectomy, before I met him. It was part of the deal when we married, of course, I was too young then to think it actually mattered.’ And then, maybe because she was sitting here and there was something about Joy that felt as if she’d known her forever, she began to cry as if her heart would break. That’s when the story of her marriage tumbled out of her, in gasping, halting sobs and gulps. Mortifying, but in the darkness, that didn’t really matter to Fern.

26

It was a gorgeous mild night, more like the south of France than the west of Ireland, Joy thought as she looked out across the bay. An occasional beam of car lights on the coast road in the distance was the only sign there were other people still awake at this hour. The sky was clear, a black velvet ceiling of pinpricked stars playing bit characters to the drama of an orange moon hanging low over the lighthouse.

She hadn’t realised before she sat there that the woman hunched over on the bench was Fern. Rather, she had made her way across the road because there was something so vulnerable-looking about the outline of the woman. Even from down the footpath, she’d been drawn to her, knowing that she somehow wanted to console her in whatever way she could.

For a long time, Joy just sat there, feeling the hard shell that had formed around her heart every time she thought of Fern Turner crack into smithereens. The words washed over her, it was a familiar story, a straying husband, a shell-shocked wife. It was surreal, because perhaps at some point, could she have imagined the tearing apart of this woman’s marriage might be the ultimate act of karma? Payback for the pain that Joy had felt when she’d learned of the affair between Yves and Fern. Strangely, sadness washed over Joy instead and snagged a small string at the bottom of her heart at the tragedy of it all, at the betrayal and, of course, at the waste of all those years and of trust and hope. There was no excuse; there were no real explanations, not beyond the obvious. Luc was a fool to gamble away his marriage for something that sounded so tawdry by comparison. God, she had wanted to hate this woman so much and now – now, she just felt sorry for her.

‘And that’s why I’m here, trying to get my head around it, only I’m not sure I did the right thing by leaving Dublin in the first place,’ Fern said finally.

‘Would he have been prepared to sit and talk to you if you had stayed?’ Joy nudged her, she didn’t want to be unkind, but if Luc had ignored the many messages Fern said she sent him, then, really there was nothing to suggest being in Dublin would have made the slightest difference.

‘Probably not. I suppose I’ve known that all along, I might as easily have been holed up in that house on my own and miserable – who knows what I’d have done out of sheer desperation? At least here, Robyn won’t let me do anything too stupid.’

‘Oh?’

‘No, no. Nothing like that.’ Fern obviously realised the conclusion Joy had drawn, because it was a reasonable enough one. She wouldn’t have been the first woman to drown her sorrows in drink and pills. ‘I mean, in Ballycove I can’t go round and knock on his door and make a complete fool of myself.’ She started to cry again. ‘Not that I need to, Luc has made a fool enough of me for both of us.’

‘This is a poor reflection on him, not on you,’ Joy said gently, but of course, she knew just because it was true, it didn’t make the pain any easier to bear.

‘Not that I’d even know where to go round to, I mean, I know nothing about this woman, Patrice. Well, maybe I’ve seen more of her than I have of most people,’ she shivered, folded her cardigan across her chest and wrapped her arms around herself protectively against the night air. ‘I haven’t the faintest notion about where she lives or even what she sounds like. She could have a fierce Scottish accent or a soft Italian one for all I know. She might be the sweetest girl in the world caught up in the throes of what she believes to be the great love story of her life or she might just be shallow enough not to give a damn that he has a wife already.’

‘Do you still love him?’ It was a simple question, but Joy had a feeling that maybe it was something Fern hadn’t fully examined, because really, her pain seemed to stem as much from the humiliation than the loss of Luc, maybe more.

‘That’s a question!’ Fern sighed. They sat there for a little while, looking out across the glistening black ocean, and then Fern turned to her. ‘Do I still love him? Do you know, I’m not sure that I do.’

‘Well, here’s a bigger question and if you can answer it, honestly, just for yourself it might make everything much easier to bear.’ Joy had no idea how she knew it, but in her bones she knew the answer to this one simple question could set Fern free. ‘How long is it since you truly loved him?’

‘I don’t…’ Fern stopped suddenly. Maybe because they were sitting in the dark and it was easier to compose yourself when you could hide in the darkness. Perhaps she had already fought too long for something that there was no saving? Maybe, she finally realised that what was worth saving was herself, rather than a marriage that had turned from love to disappointment. ‘How did you know? I mean, really, how did you know when I couldn’t see it before?’ And then she began to cry again, a soft keening sound that was a letting go more than a breaking heart. ‘You’re right, of course, you’re right. My marriage has probably been dying for years, but I wasn’t brave enough to admit it to myself. Still, I think there were times when I’ve known it with such clarity, that we had nothing in common. We were millions of miles apart, even when we were sitting in the same room. Bloody hell.’ The words came out as an exhale. ‘It’s almost a relief,’ she said and her voice sounded as if it was already lighter. ‘It still hurts, to think that he would do that, that they would go behind my back, I mean, they had to know it would end up with someone being hurt.’

‘No one is ever all bad,’ Joy said, even though, sitting here, she knew it wouldn’t be what Fern would want to hear, at least not yet. After all, if someone had said the same thing to Joy about her husband’s affair – she wasn’t sure she could have been quite so generous. ‘I mean, people find themselves in situations and sometimes, yes they walk right into them, but other times, they just wake up one day and realise what they’ve allowed to happen around them and they can’t quite believe it’s all come to this.’ That was what she felt about her marriage for a while after Yves’s death. ‘I’m sorry, I know, you’d rather hear me say that this Patrice is a wolf in sheep’s clothing, but…’

‘You’ve beenher? The other woman, I mean?’ Fern turned to look at her now and it felt to Joy at least as if she leant slightly away from her on the bench.

‘No.’ Joy smiled sadly. ‘No, Fern, I’ve been standing in your shoes, maybe for longer than I cared to admit to myself.’

‘Oh, I’m so sorry, I didn’t realise, but of course…’ she shook her head and shivered, her face caught in the street light above them. ‘It’s as if I feel I’m the only person this has ever happened to, silly, silly me. I’ve known other people in the same boat. It probably happens somewhere else, in quiet streets and little lives, every other hour of the day. Oh, God, you must think I’m… I’m not normally so self-centred.’ She reached out and squeezed Joy’s hand and it surprised Joy that she actually liked it, their two hands being clasped together like those of old school friends reunited unexpectedly.

‘No need to be sorry. It’s all a long time ago except…’ She smiled sadly now. ‘I only found out about it after my husband died.’ Then she thought about that and she knew it wasn’t strictly true either. ‘Well, maybe I knew something had happened, years ago, but I chose to pretend I didn’t see it and then, one day, it was as if I had imagined it and it hadn’t happened at all.’

‘Very French,’ Fern said with some admiration in her eyes.

‘Not so much, I know some of my friends would have just gone out and taken a lover for revenge, put it down to experience and then moved on when it felt as if the air had cleared.’

‘Now, that is very French. I wish I could be that sort of woman.’

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