Within a few months I had moved into a new flat in a multi-storey block close to the one in which my parents lived. The blocks were crammed with families and had a population equivalent to a small town. Glasgow was dotted with such ‘multis’, a legacy of the 1950s and 1960s when the city fathers tore down the tenements and replaced them with what became known as ‘high living’. It was only a euphemism.
I looked around my shiny new flat, with its cream walls and the peach curtains that I had made by hand. I was so pleased with my new independence. I had at last grown up. I was a woman rather than a girl, the perennial baby of the family.
So much had changed in three months since that evening in Kelvingrove Park when Ash asked me to marry him. In the interim I had stood by my decision that we should wait a bit longer. I loved Ash, and I wanted to marry him, but there was just ‘something’ that held me back. He was still loving and attentive, and he continued to shower me with gifts, flowers and tokens of affection. I told him not to, and yet he persisted. He made me happy but – to use that famous expression – there was a third person in our relationship: his mother.
All of Ash’s grand schemes for our idyllic future behind an imaginary white picket fence seemed to involve ‘Mum’. Mum would live with us; Mum would look after the babies; Mum would keep the house and cook; Mum would choose my clothes. Ash’s mother was a lovely, welcoming woman, but I had a mother of my own and no one could take her place. I wanted Ash and me to be a couple, and not have his mother standing between us.
Since the evening in the park, Ash had asked me on an almost daily basis to marry him. His proposals were accompanied by elaborate word pictures of large homes, big cars, success, wealth and this mysterious term ‘respect’. More than anything, he valued respect. It was a word he often used and I never quite understood what he meant by it. Men who sweep the streets inspire respect. Respect is not defined by wealth or status, but Ash seemed to believe that it was.
Even in the rosy glow of early love, I recognised that Ash’s dreams were divorced from reality. How could we achieve all of the things he wanted? More importantly, why wasn’t what he already had enough for him? He had a good and secure job, and I had provided a place for us to live.
When I moved out of my parents’ home it had really pleased Ash. It was an obvious sign that I was trying to create what could become a world of our own. In reality, however, it seemed to have remained a world of my own. I got the flat, believing it was inevitable that Ash would move in.
He didn’t. I saw him every day, but every night there would be the phone call to his mobile. It was always his mother. They would speak for several moments and then he would find excuses to leave. Strange as it may seem, this was a pattern that would be maintained throughout our relationship, even after we married and had those beautiful babies he so wanted.
In the course of our entire time together, I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of nights we spent in the same house. Looking back, I can’t fathom why I put up with it, but somehow we just fell into that way of doing things. Before we were married there always seemed to be a reasonable explanation for his nightly departure. His mother was unwell; he had forgotten to tell her he would not be home; she had made his dinner and he did not want to disappoint her.
I should have put my foot down and forced him to make a choice, but I was reluctant to do so. I still lacked confidence and perhaps feared that, if I demanded he choose between us, I would lose him. I did not worry that he was being unfaithful to me as I knew that the only ‘other woman’ in Ash’s life was his mother.
I also appreciated what it meant to feel a duty of care to your mother. I had looked after my own parents for so long and I was, in many ways, still doing so. Ash was clearly devoted to his mother and I was reluctant to make demands because a part of me believed it would be churlish to come between a parent and child. I looked around my little nest, trying to count my blessings, in the hope that everything would resolve itself in time.
The sound of a key in the lock brought me to my feet. Ash had arrived. He breezed in through the open door of the living room, one hand behind his back.
‘What are you looking so pleased about?’ I asked.
He was smiling broadly. By now I could recognise the expression that heralded yet another gift.
‘Ash, you don’t have to keep getting me stuff. I don’t need presents, I just need you.’
He beamed.
‘But this is special,’ he said, revealing his latest offering with a flourish. ‘Open it,’ he said, presenting me with a tiny velvet box.
‘Ash!’ I said.
‘Open it!’ he insisted, and I identified the same tone in his voice that I had heard on the evening when he gave me the Happy perfume.
I took the box and opened it. A love-heart ring, set with a deep-red ruby surrounded by diamonds, sat in a cushion of white satin.
I slipped the ring onto my finger and held my hand up to the light …
Chapter 5
Closer to the Flame
‘It was too late. These men now had an almost hypnotic hold.’
Ian Stephen
June: I should have listened.
‘No! No! No!’ Wilma said.
‘Please,’ I pleaded. ‘You’re my best friend. I want you to be my bridesmaid. I know you don’t like Rab, but look at my beautiful ring. See? He loves me, he really does.’
My words fell on deaf ears. Wilma was adamant. She wanted no part in my special day. I might have been blind but she could see all too clearly. She had no doubts that I was making a mistake but I was consumed by the dream shared by every schoolgirl, to have a fairytale white wedding. I had been so desperate to realise that dream that on the spur of the moment it was I who proposed to Rab.
My sister Linda was inadvertently responsible. Around the time we got engaged, she had married, and she and her husband were now expecting their first child. Our family was carried along on a wave of happiness for her. Linda was quite rightly the centre of attention, the focus of the joy that envelops you at a time like this. I wanted it too. So badly.
I wasn’t in the least jealous of Linda; I just hungered for a taste of that happiness. I couldn’t get the longing out of my head. I was, I reasoned, almost married. Rab and I were engaged, and we were living together. Why wait?
We were sitting in the flat one day when I turned to him and said, ‘Let’s get married, soon.’
Rab didn’t take his eyes off the television.
‘Okay,’ he said.
Giselle: I thought a wedding would solve all our problems.
‘Okay! Okay!’ I told Ash.
He dissolved, tears welling in his eyes.
‘Giselle, you have made me so happy,’ he said.
‘But I don’t want any big fuss,’ I warned him.
‘I promise. Just the two of us. We’ll elope. It’ll be so romantic. We’ll choose a day, get married, and then we’ll tell everybody. They’ll be so pleased for us.’
I felt a moment of coldness. Like every woman, I wanted my parents and brothers and sisters to be there to share my wedding day, but if their absence meant that Ash would be forced to become a husband, rather than a mummy’s boy, then it was a price I was willing to pay.
I held my hand up to quieten him and said, ‘And we will be together, as a couple?’
I was excited yet apprehensive. The ruby ring Ash had presented to me was a turning point, I thought. It was a solid symbol of commitment. And with a wedding ring on my finger, everyone would know that we were together.
I never doubted for a moment