The Harder They Fall (19 page)

Josh wanted to shout “It’s killing me too!”, but how could he? Aside from the fact that he was standing in a cubicle in a women’s public toilet, he hadn’t told anyone—not even Eleanor—how jealous he felt when George showed an interest in someone else, and he was convinced it was pure egotism on his own part. For everything he’d said about the attention being unwanted, he, just like any other normal person, was flattered to know that he was loved and desired. But Eleanor was right. Shaunna was the one being cheated on here, or at least this is how it seemed to them right now, for George had kept his promise to Kris and said nothing about the affair with the guy at the radio station. On top of this, Kris and Shaunna were still trying to come up with a way of telling their friends that they had effectively been separated for nine months, and had reached a perfectly workable means of sharing their house. But sooner or later it was bound to come out, and it looked like that time had arrived.

The flight schedule between Kathmandu and Istanbul was poor at the best of times, but Andy and Dan had everything stacked against them. First off, two airlines had cancelled all flights due to the current weather conditions. Of the remaining two, one refused to take Dan because of his ‘virus’ and the other was booked right through to next weekend. The only suggestion the agent had was that they provide contact details and hope for a cancellation. And then, once they’d got to Turkey, they’d have to hope there were seats available for the flight back to the UK. Andy hung up despondently and shook his head.

“The first available flight is on Saturday,” he explained to Dan, who had earphones in and was half-asleep. It was so good to have music to listen to. Andy turned the tablet and hit ‘pause’. Dan opened his eyes and removed an earphone.

“What?”

“I said, there are no flights until Saturday.”

“Crap. What we gonna do?”

“Go on Saturday, by the looks of it. I can book the tickets now and then sort out a flight back from Istanbul, or we can leave it and hope for a cancellation. What d’you think?”

“Book the flights. If a cancellation comes up we can make a decision then, but I’m done with adventure on this trip.” Dan put his earphone back in and hit the ‘play’ button.

“Guess it’s up to me then,” Andy said and started over with the phone calls to people, whose English, whilst being far better than his Nepalese, was still rather limited when it came to understanding their flight requirements. Ellie was going to have them hung out to dry for missing the wedding—well, she probably wouldn’t, because it was beyond their control, but even so, he really didn’t want to miss it. So far he’d only made it to Shaunna and Kris’s, which was, in retrospect, the only one that counted for anything. He’d missed Adele and Tom’s; he’d missed Ellie’s first wedding, and he’d deliberately stayed away from Jess’s partnership ceremony for obvious reasons. This, he was starting to accept, was the problem. For Jess, the so-called benefits of their friendship were in the sex, not the emotional support he gave her, pepping her up through failed relationships, lousy jobs and then setting up her own practice. It sounded like a bit of a gender switch, because although the sex was important, to him it was more about having someone to go home to. In spite of the constant ear-bashings about his lack of sense, only once had she shunned him, and it was entirely understandable, but it had hurt, because it was about trust, not desire.

Yet again, Andy’s thoughts had trespassed into thinking about her and it really was too painful to keep revisiting. The only consolation was that there was a slim chance he had misinterpreted her intent in not telling him about the reunion, and her subsequent reaction to his knowing; that is, she jumped straight on the defensive, which he took as a sure sign that she was guilty of something. Still, so long as they got home for the crazy group honeymoon in Wales, there would be plenty of time for autopsies, or rather, he could but hope, relationship-saving surgery.

Eventually, with much confusion surrounding booking the flights on the one hand, and asking for notification of cancellations on the other, everything was set so that at the very least, they were going to be back home by Sunday night. It was far from ideal, with Dan almost ready to leave hospital and another five days to fill, but he was getting better by the hour, so perhaps they could go out and enjoy themselves in the mean time. To be honest, Andy didn’t feel very sociable, so it was going to be quite a drag getting through the rest of the week, even if Dan suddenly made a full recovery overnight, which was highly unlikely. Andy had caught flu when he was younger, and it was bloody awful, even in comparison to smashing up his legs in the car crash, which was the most severe injury he’d had in all his years of travelling, diving, surfing, hiking, climbing, racing, parachuting, gliding…in other words, if it suited the word ‘extreme’, then he was up for giving it a go. And that was the only other potential positive which might come out of breaking his pact with Jess.

Now that Dan had set up his tablet for him, Andy decided to suffer the expense of using the internet, if only to relieve the boredom and the requirement he’d developed to repeatedly dissect his feelings, and search for mountain climbing in Wales. It might not be a patch on the Himalayas, but it sure as hell beat sitting in a room for another week, watching on as the world did its thing, while he stayed stock-still, being something he wasn’t because that was what had been asked of him. Ellie was right when she told him that he shouldn’t change who he was for Jess, and now he was starting to appreciate precisely what she had been getting at. It wasn’t that he couldn’t see it through. If that was what it needed, he’d have done it. So, a little adventure in Wales was a win-win situation: if he got Jess back, then great; and if he didn’t, well at least he’d be doing something he enjoyed.

Dan was snoring loudly in the bed across the way, his earphones tinkling unheard by their wearer, irritatingly tinny and loud to Andy. He got up and stretched, pressed ‘pause’ again, and returned to his web search. There was lots of stuff to do in the Brecon Beacons, which was where the cabins were located. He could go paragliding, if the mood took him, or abseiling. There was even a bungee jump over a fast-flowing river. He’d not done bungee jumping yet, so a new challenge.

He was so engrossed in his planning and scheming that he didn’t hear Dan stop snoring, or notice him make his way across to spy on what he was up to.

“That’s your porn, isn’t it?” he said, glancing over Andy’s shoulder. He immediately closed the browser window.

“Err, yeah. I was looking for stuff to do in Wales next week. We’ll arrive home on Sunday night, by the way.”

“We’re going to be in big bother.”

“Tell me about it. You know, I was just thinking about something Ellie said to me a while back, just before I gave all this up.” Andy indicated to the blank screen of his tablet, but Dan knew what he meant. “She said that Jess didn’t need me to do it for her, give up my lifestyle and everything. She was right.”

“In what way?”

“Jess needs me to be myself, not the miserable bastard I’ve become recently.”

“Right,” Dan remarked dryly. “You know the real problem here? You’re trying to understand what she wants. She’s a woman. You’ve got no hope, bro.”

“That’s disgustingly sexist.”

“Yep. And it’s all based on experience. How long have I known Adele? More than thirty years and I still haven’t a clue what she wants.”

“That’s because it’s Adele.”

“It’s because she’s a woman,” Dan said knowingly. With that pearl of wisdom, he went to the adjoining bathroom and stayed there for a good half an hour. He’d grown quite a beard while he’d been ill, and Andy assumed he was shaving it off. He reloaded the page he’d been reading earlier, and adjusted his pillows; it certainly beat sitting on that awful wooden chair. When Dan finally emerged, he was showered and smelled of toothpaste, but his beard was still intact.

“Are you planning on keeping that?” Andy asked, pointing at his brother’s chin. It would’ve taken anyone else several weeks to grow something so long and dense.

“Maybe. I quite like it.”

“And will Adele like it, do you think?”

“There you go again,” Dan smirked. Andy ignored him and returned to his browsing, giving him the low-down on all the different activities he intended to try in Wales, but Dan was only half-listening, his mind drifting back homewards to Adele and little Shaunna. Even if it did prove impossible to give his two girls what they wanted, he’d never stop trying. This much he had come to realise in his time in Nepal.

Mid-September and Autumn was beginning to show its face, the first fall of leaves fluttering around their feet as they made their way along the winding path through the graveyard. Eleanor was going to church with her mother, because she’d agreed, sort of in payment for her ball gown, and because her father was going to the train station to pick up his twin brother, who had flown over from Ireland for the wedding. Ben, Luke and Teddy would be arriving between now and Tuesday, in time for the stag night, so there was much to do on this so-called day of rest, and her mother continued to fidget throughout mass, eager to get home and get on with the vacuuming, bathroom cleaning, mopping, wiping down of walls, making up of beds, and so on, in the midst of which she would still cook a perfect roast dinner. She really was quite an incredible woman and it was apparent from which parent Eleanor had inherited her organisational talents.

Meanwhile, on this quiet Sunday morning, Kris and Shaunna decided to take Casper to the beach, for last night they had each individually realised just how big a task they had set for themselves in pretending, for the entire week’s holiday in Wales, that they were still together. Over breakfast, Kris had tentatively proposed that they discuss how best to tell their friends that they were separated, and Shaunna’s initial response wasn’t promising, but she was a little more receptive once she had a cup of tea inside her. So they set off on foot, Casper with his Frisbee firmly clenched between his teeth, and walked ‘cross country’ to the nearest stretch of coast, which wasn’t the prettiest, but a perfect place to take a dog on a day like today. It was a view shared by many others, with Casper temporarily forgetting about Frisbee fetching in favour of giving a traditional canine greeting to each and every one of his kind that he came across. A woman with two Dalmatians was a little taken aback when she saw the daft yellow Labrador lolloping eagerly towards her, and dropped both leads on the sand, where they trailed along behind her two dogs as they darted here and there, chasing each other through big puddles of sea water. When they eventually wore themselves out, she caught hold of their leads and unclipped them.

“I always worry about letting them off,” she explained, “because they’re so boisterous and incapable of doing anything I tell them to. They’re brothers, you see, and I’ve had them since they were pups. Both deaf as doorposts.” She held up her hand and signalled to one of the dogs, who immediately came to her, and she gave him a treat. “The trouble is getting them to look at me,” she said, and signalled again. The dog ran off after his brother and down towards the wake, with Casper bouncing behind in a close third.

“Whereas I have the same problem because he’s too dopey,” Shaunna said, whistling loudly with her fingers. Kris rubbed his ears. “Sorry,” she grinned. Casper continued on his mission to catch up with his spotty new friends. “Ah well, he won’t go too far. He’s too much of a wuss.”

“He’s very handsome. Is he a gun dog?”

“No, although we did try him with search and rescue training, because The Dogs’ Trust said he came from a specialist breeder. It cost a fortune and the only thing we learned was why he wasn’t kept on. He’s useless.”

“He’s very loving though,” Kris justified. “He’s a loyal pet—a dog of leisure.”

“Yeah, it’s the same for my two,” the woman agreed. “Some of these breeders haven’t a clue. Anyway, I’ll see you.”

“Bye,” Shaunna and Kris responded, watching as the woman moved away from them, walking backwards and waiting for the optimum moment when her dogs were looking the right way. It came and she signalled for them to come, the pair of them tearing up the beach at speed and skidding to a halt, throwing a trail of sand in the air. She gave them both a treat and continued on her walk. Half a minute later Casper arrived and ran in circles around Kris’s legs. Kris threw the Frisbee along the beach and off they went, repeating this action as necessary, while they talked about the best way to approach their problem.

In general it wasn’t really a problem to them at all, as they’d had plenty of time to come to terms with it. Apart from the small glitch when Shaunna was trying on her dress, they’d lived entirely separate lives in most respects. They still shared meals together, and bought household shopping, because it made more sense than doubling up on items that were more expensive in individual sizes. But the social and sexual aspects of their day-to-day activities were no longer of concern to each other. For instance, Shaunna had also seen Kris with George the night before, and found it a little odd, but it didn’t bother her in the slightest. When she used to joke that she’d turned Kris straight, it was out of a need for reassurance that he was all that he claimed to be, but she never truly believed it. So, once the shock of his affair had passed, she found she was strangely at peace, and because Kris could finally be himself, his mental health improved by leaps and bounds, with immediate results. He was back at work within a couple of weeks, was eating properly again and starting to enjoy the little things in life, like walking the dog, reading a book—in other words, everything he’d always done when they were together; he also went out at weekends with some of the guys he worked with, and she didn’t care to know what he was up to when he didn’t come home.

Kris’s only worry was that they hadn’t told Krissi. She’d hinted at the question once, when she’d been visiting and noticed that her old room was filled with his stuff, but she seemed to accept their explanation that they were clearing out the wardrobes to fit new ones, and let it go. The longer they left telling her, the harder it became and they agreed that she needed to be the first to know. Shaunna sent her a text message, inviting her round for lunch, and nodded to indicate that she had replied in acceptance. So that was the first step complete. Also easy, by comparison, was the decision of what to say to their parents, and they decided against telling Shaunna’s dad, who was a little forgetful in his old age and wouldn’t cope with the news very well. Kris’s parents were accepting of his sexuality when he was younger, so although they might be a little saddened by the marriage break-up, they wouldn’t judge him badly for it. Still, there was no urgent need to tell them, as they lived too far away to find out by accident. Alas, the same was not true of their seven closest friends, or at least, the six who didn’t yet know.