‘Thank you for seeing me.’
‘Did you expect me to say no?’
She heard the huskiness in Brenda’s voice and wondered if she’d been crying too. Or maybe she was just finding it difficult to speak to the bitch who had destroyed her life and broken her heart.
‘Can I sit down?’ Eileen gestured to the other seat.
Brenda nodded. ‘Sure.’
Okay. A tiny bit of progress.
Eileen took a seat before her legs collapsed beneath her.
To her surprise, Brenda took a wine bottle from an ice bucket on the table beside her, poured some into an empty glass and pushed it across the table to Eileen’s side. Eileen was too scared to lift it in case her trembling hands tipped it all over her.
‘Thank you.’ A pause.
Brenda stared at her, understandably waiting for more.
‘I don’t have anything rehearsed, or know exactly what to say, but I just needed to tell you to your face how sorry I am. How sorry I’ve always been.’ The tears were back, but she blinked them away. She wasn’t the injured party here and Brenda deserved so much more than her tears. ‘I said to Aiden earlier that it was a moment of madness and it was the only way I could describe it. I didn’t plan it, neither of us did. It just happened, and I know how pathetic that sounds, but it’s the truth and, well, I needed you to know that I didn’t hurt you deliberately. I loved you. I truly did. I’ve spent my whole life ever since regretting what happened.’
Eileen ran out of words, and Brenda wasn’t responding. She’d blown it. And she had no right to expect any more than the other woman wanted to give her. She’d said what she needed to say and she’d lived with what she’d done for thirty years – she’d just have to live another thirty without Brenda’s forgiveness.
‘I’ll go. Thank you for seeing me. For listening.’
She was about to stand when Brenda finally spoke. ‘Have you had a great life?’
There was no anger in her voice, just the question.
Eileen opened her mouth to give the stock answer she’d give anyone who asked that. Of course. Great. Wonderful. But none of those things were true, so she stopped herself. They were way past superficial small talk.
‘No.’ she confessed. ‘Not all of it. Some bits, maybe. Having Aiden, for sure. And perhaps some of the early years with Gary. I’m sorry, but I want to be honest. Have you? Had a great life?’
‘Not all of it,’ Brenda answered, with the same sad tone of resignation that Eileen had heard in her own voice a moment ago. ‘Did you love him?’
Eileen exhaled, pushing all the clichés out of the way so she could get straight to the truth. ‘Not at first. You know how much I loved… loved…’ She couldn’t say it. It was beyond inappropriate, and she’d done enough damage already.
‘Colin,’ Brenda finished for her, reading her mind just as she’d always done.
‘Yep, Colin. I’d been in love with him for so long and had always imagined that’s where my future would be, but then… well, I did what I did. Messed it up. Lost him. Gary and I just kind of stuck it out to start with, because we didn’t really have an option. Over the next few months, well, I guess I did fall in love with Gary. I became besotted with him, I truly did. But looking back, I don’t know how much of that was me trying to convince myself that everything had turned out the way it was supposed to. He was all I had. All my eggs in one basket. My mum was gone, I was in a new country, and the truth was that I was too ashamed to come home. I couldn’t face you. Over here, I knew no one and then I was pregnant. Gary had that way of making me feel like I was the only person in the room, and I think I needed that, especially after I lost you. I just needed to belong to someone, so I told myself that he loved me and I loved him and we had our family and that it was all going to be okay. That sounds pretty pathetic too. Believe me, I’ve spent the last ten years since the divorce figuring that out.’
‘Why did you divorce?’ Brenda asked.
The big question and Eileen had figured it was coming.
‘Lots of reasons. He was never faithful. Never. At first, I thought…’ she hesitated, because she’d never vocalised this and she knew that when she said it, she couldn’t take it back. ‘I thought it was because I wasn’t you.’
Brenda’s brow furrowed in puzzlement when she said that. ‘But he cheated on me too.’
‘I know, but I blamed myself for that. Thought I must have somehow trapped him. And then – and my only excuse for this was everything I said before about being alone – but I decided that maybe it was just because I wasn’t enough, so I tried to be beautiful, to be funny, to be cool. Nothing worked. Now I can look back and see that the problem was that he wasn’t trying to be faithful. There’s something in him: a drive and a need to get that attention, the thrills of the chase and the excitement of having his ego stroked.’
She stopped, suddenly aware that she might have said too much. This was the man Brenda had been in love with, the one she’d adored.
‘I’m sorry. I’m running my mouth because I’m nervous. And grateful that you spoke to me. And a whole load of other emotions that I can’t quite get a handle on yet. I don’t expect you to forgive me, but I wanted you to know that I’m so sorry.’
Brenda picked up her wine, took a sip, and Eileen wondered if she was about to tell her that she should go. But no…
‘I’m glad it didn’t work out,’ Brenda admitted calmly. ‘I can hear myself and I don’t even recognise something like that coming out of my mouth, but I’m glad. And I hate that I think that.’
