The Wife Before Me(42)
There was nothing particularly original or inventive about the bullying I endured. It followed a normal process: name-calling, isolation, whispering girls who fell silent as I walked past, their laughter breaking out in my wake. My hair, being long, blonde and tangled, was ideal for pulling and I was constantly being asked if I’d ever heard of an antiperspirant called HBO, which I eventually discovered was an acronym for Hides Body Odour. These were just some of the methods used by Lisa Lynch and her friends to diminish me.
I was pinned against the school corridor wall one afternoon, holding on to my lunch money, which Lisa was determined to take from me, when Amelia Pierce came upon us. I’d admired her from a distance, envied the way she walked that tightrope of being neither the bully nor the bullied. I’d watched her perform incredible flips and forward rolls in gymnastics, her slim, small frame belying her strength.
She dived into the fight when she saw what was happening and I, unable to believe my luck, stopped cowering and fought back. A few minutes later Lisa was running towards the bathroom, her nose streaming blood. One of her friends, sobbing as she followed her, left strands of her hair twined around my fingers.
‘Let’s go find a table in the canteen,’ Amelia said. ‘Nothing like a bare-knuckle fight to whet my appetite.’
My lunch money was still in my pocket when I walked away with her, our friendship sealed.
We had much in common, Amelia and I. No mothers, widowed fathers, mine crazed by drink, hers by a protective need to shelter her that, she admitted, could sometimes be stultifying. Try alcoholism, I wanted to shout, but I stayed silent. We shared the same taste in music, clothes, books and dance. She was a natural dancer. I lacked her grace but made up for it in energy. How we talked in those days. Boys, bands, teachers, classmates and that golden bubble where our futures floated.
We were fourteen when we discovered Billy Tobin’s ice house. Billy had no objections to us using it and gave us the key to open the rusting padlock. The interior smelled mouldy, dusty, earthy. We imagined spiders and other creepy-crawlies scurrying for cover as the light from our torches flooded the dark cavern. We dared each other to go first, then held hands as we took tentative steps forward, lighting up the shelves and nooks that had stored perishable foods in the days before electricity made the place defunct. We returned the following day with sweeping brushes, dusters, candles, jar lanterns, rugs, blankets. We hammered a set of old curtains Amelia had found in her attic onto the back wall and called it our Hobbit Den. We filled it with books and magazines, listened to the Spice Girls on our Walkmans. After reading Wuthering Heights, we discovered Kate Bush and became goths. We wrote poems of unrelenting grimness that made us weep at the time and, years later, laugh uproariously when we read them aloud again.
When Amelia’s father introduced us to his album collection, our taste in music changed. We abandoned the net gloves and eyeliner for a slight man in a purple suit and became Prince fans. David Bowie was next. We were developing an interest in older men, especially those with an androgynous allure.
Nothing androgynous about the boys we befriended, except for Mark, who came out as gay when he was fifteen. He was one of our closest friends, as was Jayden Lee-O’Meara, known to us as Jay. Mark and Jay came everywhere with us, except to the ice house. That remained our own private domain and it was where Amelia cried as if her heart was breaking when Jay, her first love, moved to California.
I, too, left Ireland when living with my father became intolerable. I returned to Kilfarran, though, to nurse him through his final year. We made peace with each other before he died but it was too late for the wounds he had inflicted on me to heal.
Amelia had fallen in love with Nicholas by then. Such happiness, the walking-on-cloud-nine kind that was not yet affected by John’s dislike of him. When she introduced us, Nicholas held my hand in a firm grip. He looked into my eyes and I shivered. He knew. Without words being exchanged, he was able to see beyond the friendship I shared with Amelia and it spawned his jealousy. This realisation was instinctive. I didn’t trust my own judgement and, unwilling as I was to say or do anything to mar my friend’s joy, I decided it must be an overreaction.
Afterwards, when she phoned to tell me John had died, I came back to Kilfarran to comfort her. But Nicholas had stepped into that role and held her with a possessiveness that must have taken her breath away.
I remember their wedding day with gritty clarity. The country church at the foot of the hill. It was a small gathering, compared to the massive attendance at John’s funeral. Billy Tobin stepped into the role John would have played and was a sensitive surrogate as he accompanied Amelia up the aisle.
She was dressed in pale gold and I, her only bridesmaid, wore dusty rose. Vows were made, love sealed. We dined afterwards in a nearby hotel where, inevitably, gaiety broke out when the champagne was uncorked. The guests raised their glasses to the blushing bride. To the beautiful bridesmaid. To the handsome groom. And a toast to absent loved ones. Yvonne wore an elaborate fascinator with many feathers and was dressed in purple silk. She was upset that her son’s wedding was not the gala affair she had always envisaged and shed many tears during the ceremony.
On that wedding day, as Nicholas Madison walked down the aisle with his bride, it seemed for a short, blissful period, that love would conquer sorrow and triumph in happy-ever-after land.
Twenty-Four
The Past