* * * *
Caroline arrives at Café Rouge early, remembering that he is always late. She wants to assess him unnoticed as he walks through the door. Who cares about looking too keen? Knowledge is all.
Ben arrives, rushing through the door, looking purposeful. He’s not as late as he used to be. Could he have changed? Caroline’s stomach lurches as she sees him. She’s been hoping that life will show on his face and body, but no. He looks much the same as she remembers. He flashes her the devastating smile that shattered so many of her resolutions in the past and scoops her up from her chair to give her a hug. He still calls the shots however hard she tries to take the initiative.
Ben releases her from the hug and holds her away from him for inspection, smiling and shaking his head. “Caroline, it’s great to see you again." They sit down. "I can’t tell you how often I’ve wondered how you are and where you are. And now, to see you sitting in front of me. I can't quite believe it." He looks down for a minute and then secures her attention again with his intense blue eyes. "I'm surprised to see you single and childless. I thought you’d definitely be a mother by now.”
Caroline shifts uncomfortably, and avoids his eye, fiddling with her wine glass. "Well, there we are. You’ve stayed true to type, anyway. I always knew it would be hard for anyone to pin you down.”
This sounds sharper than she intended, and the wounded look which passes quickly across his face smoothes her ruffled feathers. He soon regains his customary warmth and good humour. They both realise that they should not dig too deep so soon, and instead keep their reminiscences on the surface. This potential relationship is still so tentative, but has so much promise.
The evening passes too quickly. The years have fallen away, and with them the hurt. It feels exactly as it did before and they both realise that their past feelings for each other have not gone. If anything, they are stronger. It seems pointless, when they have known each other so well before, to endure the ritual of game playing. They return straight to Caroline’s house, the temperature rising with every step of the journey. Caroline fumbles with her front door key in her rush to open the door back to her past life. They slam the door shut and don’t even get past the hall. They’re clawing at each other, pulling clothes off, like peeling onions, desperate to revisit each other, as if any delay will make this situation disappear like a dream. Their first reunion is urgent and uncalculated, not what either of them had imagined, but neither care. They have truly found friends.
With that hurdle cleared, now they can talk. They gather their scattered clothes, slightly embarrassed, but not regretful, and Caroline guides Ben to the sitting room. It’s wonderful to feel like carefree teenagers again after all those years of trying to be sensible. Caroline gets a bottle of wine, and they curl up on the sofa together, all tension gone, the years in between no more than a memory. Caroline delights in seeing the two glasses of wine on the table, and Ben’s shoes carelessly discarded, that glorious feeling of maleness and clutter that is now pervading her house again after too long an absence. She knows that she is back home, where she should always have been. Somehow she knows that he feels the same. They must forgive the wasted years, and make the most of this moment, and the years to come.
In the midst of bliss comes an unwelcome interruption into this perfect interlude. They hear the unmistakeable sound of a mobile phone ringing, slightly muffled, from somewhere inside Ben’s jacket, draped over the armchair.
“Leave it," begs Caroline, “it’s probably not important.”
“I’d better get it,” counters Ben, sadly. “You never know.”
He walks slowly and reluctantly over to his jacket, and looks in several pockets before he finds the phone. Glancing at the screen, he turns his back on Caroline, and moves as far away as he decently can without leaving the room.
“Hi.” He is almost hunched over the phone, and speaks as quietly as possible. “Is this important? It’s not a good moment.”
There is a long pause. He hunches more, and pushes his hand through his hair distractedly.
“Oh, God. I’m so sorry. I didn’t forget. The days have run away with me. I have been really tied up.” Another pause. Caroline feels a tingling of unease creeping into her hairline.
“Look, don’t beat me up about it. I can’t do anything about it tonight, can I? He’s already in bed. I’ll phone in the morning, and I’ll get something couriered across. And I’ll come over in a couple of days, and try to make it up.” His irritation is showing now, either with himself or the person on the other end of the phone.
“OK.” This is said with a loud exhalation of air. “ Sorry. Bye.”
Ben looks first at his phone and then the wall, anywhere but at Caroline. Finally, he walks towards her, sitting down heavily while looking at the carpet, and drums his fingers on the arm of the chair.
“You’re going to have to tell me about it sometime, you know.”
He looks across. Her eyes are hard and her mouth is set. Her happiness has gone, evaporated in a moment.
“I was going to tell you, but it isn’t easy.” Ben looks at his feet.
“So, you thought you’d wait till you’d caught me, and had me dangling on your line, did you? You haven’t changed.”
She doesn’t remember feeling this angry before; miserable, but not angry. She is twisting her wineglass round and round in her hands, squeezing the stem as if she would like to throttle it.
“OK. Look. I did say I had some baggage, but I wasn’t lying when I told you I was single. I have two kids, a girl, who I fathered when we were still at university, and a boy of five, well, six, as of today. I don’t live with either of the mothers, and the babies were both accidents. They knew that I didn’t want to have children with them, but they went ahead anyway. I do support them. I don’t neglect my responsibilities as a father.”
“Except when you forget their birthdays.”
“Yeah. Well.”
Caroline lunges at him, her face full of fury.
“How can you call a baby an accident?” She wants to shake him and force him to see what he has done.
“Well, they were. They weren’t planned.” He moves towards her, pleadingly. "Caroline, you have to believe me. I know I’ve been an idiot in the past, but I swear to you that I have changed. We’ve got another chance now. Let’s take it. Don't let's waste more time. We can have children together. It’s not too late.”
Caroline feels a strange pressure building up in her throat, as if someone has pulled a plug out in her mouth. “Children!" she snarls at him. You seem to be pretty good at having children, just not so good at staying with them.”
“But it’s different now. I realised years ago that I wanted to be with you, but I blew it. I didn’t think I’d get another chance.”
“Just when exactly did you realise, Ben, after the first child or the second one?”
He blinks. His face is hot and his pores seem to be expanding. He looks as if he might even cry, if he had a heart. “Before either of them. Do you remember that weekend I came to see you when we were both at uni?”
“How could I forget?" Caroline is up, pacing around the room. "You mean when you phoned me up because you were bored one weekend. You told me you’d finished with the girl you left me for. We had a fantastic weekend, more fool me. You messed me up just when I was starting to get over you, and then you buggered off and I never heard from you again. Is that the one you mean, Ben?”
“Caroline." He jumps up and catches her arm, but she pulls it away. "That weekend meant everything to me. I wasn’t lying. I had finished with Sue. I came to see you, and I realised what a mistake I’d made in drifting apart from you when we both went to different universities. I had everything straight in my mind. I was even thinking about trying to transfer to be nearer to you."
"So? What happened to change everything?"
He sighs, heavily. "When I got back from the weekend, Sue told me that she was pregnant. What could I do? I cou
ldn’t make her have an abortion, so I stuck with her. It didn’t work, of course, because we were too young, and my heart wasn’t in it. It was with you. We split up, and she dropped out of university, and that was that, although I have tried to keep in touch for the sake of the child. Do you understand now?”
“No.” This comes out as a howl of anguish. “Why didn’t you call me to tell me?”
“I felt ashamed. I didn’t know what to say, and I thought if I talked to you, I wouldn’t be able to do the right thing.”
“The right thing.” Caroline digs her nails hard into the top of her head. “I thought you didn’t care because you didn’t phone. Why couldn't you just tell me? Then we might have had a chance.”
“But we’ve got a chance now.”
“No, we haven’t. You’ve seen to that. f you’d just phoned me. If only. Let me tell you something." She advances towards him now. Her fists are clenched. Sinews are standing out in her neck. "You produced another baby that weekend. I loved you. I still love you. I wanted your baby, more than anything. But I thought you didn’t care. That you’d gone off without a backward look. So I looked at my situation, which was desperate, and I had an abortion. An abortion, of a baby conceived in love! Have you any idea what that cost me? It’s wrecked my life. Do you know how they treat you when you ask for an abortion at nineteen? Like a stupid little kid. You can see the disgust in their faces. And they punish you by not telling you what it’s like. You wouldn’t know what it’s like to go to the hospital at lunchtime and be back in your sad little bedsit by five o’clock, bleeding your heart out, and bleeding, literally, until you think it will never stop. No, you wouldn’t know that. And you wouldn’t know how that leaves you feeling, for ever.”
“I’m sorry." He looks it. "What more can I say?”
“Not a lot. But goodbye would do.”
“Caroline. Please, let’s try again. I can’t change the past.”
“No, you can’t. But you can’t undo the consequences either. You know how much I wanted children. I always have done. Well, I got an infection from that abortion, and it stole my fertility. I tried for years to get pregnant when I was married. We tried everything, but nothing worked, and it wrecked the marriage, not that it was ever right in the first place. Nothing could change the fact that he was the wrong man.”
Ben has nothing to say. He shakes his head in bewilderment.
“So now you see why I’ve got nothing more to say to you. I can’t even bear to look at your face anymore. Just go. Crawl back to your children. The ones you cast away so easily. And don’t ever contact me again.”
"You don't mean that. You said you still love me."
"I might love you, but I hate you more. Go, you bastard."
He has got the message. He picks up his things, and walks to the door. His hand hesitates on the door handle, but he seems to think better of trying to say something to calm her anger. It is too late. Too late for them, and too late for forgiveness. He leaves, without a backward glance, like last time, and yet so differently.
He is gone. Caroline lies down on the floor and howls, clawing at the carpet, and thumping the floor. She feels that she will never stop. Eventually she wears herself out, and falls asleep where she lies.
Early in the morning, she wakes, stiff, cold and exhausted, but calm. She goes to bed, and sleeps for a while. At 8.30 she realises with a start that she has a job, and is supposed to be there. Not possible. She phones the school, and pleads a terrible migraine. She goes back to bed, and drifts in and out of consciousness. Every time she wakes, she remembers with renewed anguish the events of the night before. She wishes that she could slip away and never wake up again.
By lunchtime, she feels calmer. She makes herself a strong cup of coffee and a sandwich. Something draws her to the computer, and from there to Facebook. Why was she so stupid? If only she had never signed up. She "unfriends" Ben and is planning to cancel her Facebook account. But then she hesitates. Something has changed. She feels better. At least she has laid the ghost. Ben is gone, forever this time. He was not worth the anguish. She can see that now. The past is finally in the past, and she will have a future. From now on, she will not be mourning for something that might have been. She deserves better than that, someone who will love her for who she is now. And she will find him, with or without Facebook.
If only she had realised all this earlier, but late is better than never.
~ ~ ~
Clare Tanner is the author of The Tranquillity Project, a novel set in the near future.
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