‘I didn’t ignore them all. I answered at first, but I stopped when it was clear you weren’t listening to what I said.’
‘That was because you made me mad by not letting me pay you anything. You gave up college to help out with my career. You’re entitled to a big chunk of what I make, and I’ll bet your lawyer told you the same.’
‘Oh, he’s as mad at me as you are,’ she confirmed.
‘I told him, “Anything she wants”. And you made him write back saying you didn’t want anything from me. Boy, that was a great moment! And I’ll tell you an even better one—when I found out that you’d taken a job. A real dead-end job after all the other dead-end jobs you took to help me! How can you get a good degree if you’re wearing yourself out working as well? You supported me in the lean years. You should at least let me support you through college.’
‘Why should I?’
‘Because I owe you that,’ he said angrily. ‘And I like to pay my debts.’
Kelly regarded him levelly. ‘If you think of our marriage as a debt to be paid off, then we’re further apart than I thought. You’ll never understand, will you?’
He wanted to slam something against the wall, preferably his own head. No, he didn’t understand, and he was furious with her and himself. He wasn’t trying to ‘pay her off’, only to express his gratitude and appreciation for all she’d done for him. And it had come out all wrong, as so often with him. Before a news camera he was at ease, the words pouring out in a golden flow. But with this one person he was tongue-tied and clumsy.
‘Then explain it to me,’ he said through gritted teeth.
‘What I did, I did because I loved you. We were a team. Remember how we told ourselves that?’
‘Of course I remember. But it didn’t work out much of a deal for you, did it?’
‘I wasn’t making deals,’ she said quietly. ‘I was doing something for the man I loved. What I forgot—or was too young to know—was that two people who think they’re doing the same thing never really are. Not quite.’
‘I don’t understand,’ he said flatly. ‘I never could follow when you talked like that. I’m a plain man and I see things plainly. I don’t think that was ever enough for you.’
‘I only meant that you saw our marriage differently from me.’
‘I did you an injustice,’ he said, clinging to the one thing that was clear to him. ‘And I’m trying to put it right.’
‘But you can’t put the past right. You can’t make it something it wasn’t. It’s dead and gone.’
His combative streak would have made him fight that view, but there was something melancholy about ‘dead and gone’ that silenced him. He’d never been able to cope with her subtler wits. Handling facts was easier for him, and somehow it had always been tempting to use them to evade an argument. After a while Kelly had given up trying to make him talk things through, and he’d been relieved.
Kelly gave a little sigh. ‘Oh, well,’ she said. ‘No point in arguing now.’
‘Perhaps I want to argue,’ he said illogically.
Her lips twitched. ‘Nonsense, Jake, you never wanted to argue. You just wanted me to keep quiet and agree with you. Failing agreement, keep quiet anyway.’
‘You make me sound like a monster,’ he said, appalled. ‘A bully.’
‘No,’ she said with a touch of wistfulness. ‘You weren’t either. Just a man who always thought he was right. Much like all the others, really. No worse, anyway.’
This faint praise did nothing to appease him.
‘Have you been thinking like this all the time?’ he demanded.
‘Not all of it, no. But it wasn’t much of a marriage at the end, was it?’ She began gathering cups and headed for the kitchen. ‘No, stay there.’ She stopped him rising. ‘There isn’t much.’
She wanted to get away from him. The conversation had taken a turn that she was finding hard to cope with. She should never have started talking about love with Jake. It aroused memories best forgotten.
But do I really want to forget? she asked herself wistfully. Would I wipe out the last eight years? I know they took a great deal away from me, but they gave me so much.
She remembered herself at seventeen, a schoolgirl, slightly overweight, shy, lonely, earnest, not laughing enough. She’d worked hard at school, driven by dreams of escape from the dreary little provincial town and the single mother who’d resented her. Mildred Harmon had still been in her thirties, ‘with my own life to live’, a phrase she’d used often and with meaning.
The last year at school had been punctuated by various lectures about career options. Kelly’s sights were set on a brilliant college career, but she’d attended the meeting about journalism, expecting to see Harry Buckworth, editor of the local rag, whom she knew slightly. But Harry had gone down with flu. Instead he’d sent Jake, who’d been on the paper a year.
And that was it. All over in a moment. The twenty-four-year-old Jake had been like a young god to the ultra-serious schoolgirl. Tall, lean, jeans-clad, spinning words like the devil. And such words: a fine yet powerful web of bright colours that turned the schoolroom into a magic cave. And he’d laughed. How he’d laughed! And how wonderfully rich and free it had sounded. She could have loved him for that alone.
Afterwards she’d strolled home in a dream, scheming how to meet him again, so oblivious to her surroundings that she’d collided with someone, and been halfway through her apology before she’d realised it was him.
He’d taken her for a milk shake and listened while she talked. She didn’t know what she’d said, but when they’d left the evening light had been fading and she’d returned home nervously, wondering how she would explain her absence. But the house had been empty and cold. On the kitchen table there had been a note from her mother, out with her latest boyfriend, telling her to microwave something for herself.
After that they’d seemed to bump into each other a lot, just by chance. The meetings had followed a pattern. Milk shake, talk, stroll home. Sometimes he’d helped with her school projects, looking up facts, guiding her to useful web sites, letting her bounce her ideas off him. Or he would discuss his assignments in a way that had made her feel very grown up.
Once they’d reached her home to find Mildred peering through the curtains and beckoning them in. She’d looked Jake up and down thoughtfully, and when he’d left, said to her daughter,
‘Watch out for him. You’re becoming a pretty girl.’
She didn’t know how to say that Jake had never so much as kissed her, but two weeks later, on her eighteenth birthday he finally did so, taking her into seventh heaven.
‘I was waiting for you to be old enough,’ he said.
Life was brilliant then. Mildred, evidently feeling she’d done her motherly duty, was out more than she was in, and Kelly was free to indulge her happiness.
Then Jake had lost his job.
‘I had to fire him,’ Harry explained when Kelly buttonholed him. ‘He’s a hard worker, I admit, but by golly he’s an opinionated young devil.’
‘A good journalist needs opinions,’ Kelly protested, parroting Jake. ‘And he shouldn’t be afraid to stand by them.’
‘Standing by them is one thing. Riding roughshod over everyone is another. There was this assignment, an important one—I told him how it should be handled, and he just went his own way, wouldn’t take advice. I had to be away for a day and when I came back the paper was nearly to bed. If it had gone in like that it would have offended our biggest advertiser—’
‘Advertisers!’