Page 59 of Every Christmas Eve
Olivia was a beauty, there was no doubt about that, but Ben couldn’t stand her. He couldn’t bear to be around her for more than about five minutes, and most of all he knew every detail of how she’d done her best to bully and belittle me that Christmas at Ballyheaney House, humiliating me at every turnaround.
‘You were a couple,’ I said, my brain unable to process it. ‘We never were a couple. It was all I ever wanted, but for years you said you couldn’t do it. Not while you were in a different country. Yet you instantly made it work with her.’
‘It’s like I’m being stabbed every time you say that,’ he told me. ‘Look, I swear it was meant to be nothing, but time went on and it turned into something before it became nothing again. It was nothing!’
‘Please don’t say it just happened,’ I said, laughing even though it was far from funny. ‘All I ever wanted was for you to make that commitment to me, but you left it until it was too late. Then you hooked up with Olivia long-distance style in the blink of an eye.’
‘I’m doing my best to explain here, Lou,’ he told me. ‘And I’m not blaming you or Olivia. I was a mess.’
The few drinks I’d had and the way Olivia had behaved towards me heightened my emotions as I remembered things I’d buried deep down in my mind. The time she’d mocked my music plans as a ‘Mickey Mouse career’ or how she would talk to me in front of others while deliberately staring at my clothes or hair with a sarcastic grin in an attempt to intimidate me.
‘Her family came to Ballyheaney House to help clear up after the party that disastrous Christmas and ended up staying a while,’ Ben recounts. ‘As the days rolled on, I was missing you so much, so I played along with her games, thinking I’d nothing to lose as I’d already lost you.’
A million thoughts ran through my head. It wasn’t really my place to be offended or angry with him for being with Olivia, or anyone else for that matter, especially given the bombshell I’d dropped on him that last Christmas Eve.
‘Of all people, though,’ I said. ‘She knew what we had, and she didn’t care one bit.’
‘She didn’t,’ he said. ‘She told me as much. In fact, knowing we had something deeply special seemed to drive her on more.’
The wine I’d chosen so carefully for our romantic late night was tasting sour in my mouth.
‘I’m a bit taken aback, mostly because you said you hadn’t heard from her since, yet you did,’ I told him. ‘So, how long were you a couple?’
The very word ‘couple’ when it came to Ben and Olivia made me sick to my stomach.
‘A few months,’ he told me. ‘Lou, I don’t want any secrets between us, so you can ask me anything and I’ll tell you.’
‘How many months?’ I asked, knowing no matter what the answer was, it was only going to sting me more.
‘Five, maybe?’ he said. My mouth dropped open. ‘Six? She came to Paris to see me a few times before it very naturally ran its course. It was her call in the end.’
I covered my mouth, then got up from the floor from where we were sitting and went over to the armchair by the fire. He looked different already. He wasn’t the person I’d missed for so long after all. He had lied to me.
‘She made the call to end it?’ I asked. ‘Why?’
‘Ironically, she said she couldn’t do long distance,’ he told me. ‘She couldn’t connect with me because I was a mess over you. A broken, drunken, horrible mess and not the dashing, eligible bachelor she thought I was. I’m so sorry I lied to you, Lou. I really am.’
I gathered up our drinks and saw him to the door, then I watched him leave in a taxi. This wasn’t how I’d predictedour evening would end. Instead of the making-up-for-lost-time making-love buzz we’d both been on as we left the restaurant, I was left alone in my cottage feeling empty inside.
Where do we go from here? He said it was up to me. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
‘I’d a later night than I should have, that’s all,’ I tell Cordelia. ‘Ben and I had a little bit too much vino.’
‘Good! I was afraid you were upset over something. He told me you’d had dinner,’ she says to me from my kitchen table. ‘I think he’s off getting Mum a new car, though she’ll definitely need some refresher driving lessons if that’s the case. Whatever it is, my brother is on some sort of secret mission and isn’t telling a soul what this secret present is.’
I’m only half listening as Cordelia contemplates her brother’s Sunday-morning whereabouts.
‘Turns out he’s good at keepings secrets,’ I say, unable to conceal the bitterness that lies inside me still.
Cordelia raises her eyebrows as I sit down to join her, doing my best to shake myself into the present and stay there rather than keep going over old ground that can’t be fixed any more, but still I do.
‘Just so you know, I felt so bad about abandoning you all that last Christmas Eve,’ I tell her, hoping to put a lid on the past once and for all. ‘But your father made it clear I was getting in the way of family business.’
Cordelia, as always, has a way of setting things back on the straight and narrow.
‘Lou, you had enough on your plate back then to beworrying about how the party ended up,’ she reminds me. ‘My family’s financial mess on Christmas Eve was out of everyone’s control, including yours. But Uncle Eric came to the rescue. My father was a stubborn so-and-so, but I did feel sorry for him getting into such trouble. It was an investment gone wrong. If it hadn’t been for my uncle, we’d have had to sell up. And it looks like one of us is going to have to step in again very soon.’
‘That bad?’ I ask, slightly taken aback.
