Lessons in Heartbreak

‘You could take up photography,’ Anneliese had told him. Edward was very artistic, although there wasn’t much call for artistry in the insurance business.

‘I’m only an amateur, love,’ Edward said back, although she knew he was pleased. He hadn’t been raised to compliments. Edward’s mother thought praise was a word you only used in church, praising the Lord. Anneliese had always tried to make up for the lack of praise in Edward’s youth.

‘It’s pretty good for an amateur.’

‘You’re blind, do you know that?’ Edward said, smiling. ‘You only see my good points.’

‘Selective blindness,’ Anneliese smiled back at him. ‘I see the bits I like and I like most of it.’

Walking along the beach now, Anneliese knew she’d have to take the picture off the wall when she got home. It would hurt too much to see it.

The wind bit into her face, stinging her eyes. Anneliese stared down at the sand, determined to find something to shift her mind off the sharp pain in her heart. A few yards ahead of her lay a piece of driftwood, tangled up in a skein of chemical blue net from the fishing boats.

Bending slowly, she picked it up. It was a foot long, twisted like a coil of rope. Some of the driftwood was beautiful, sculpted by the sea, still a thing of beauty despite the battering.

And then there were pieces of driftwood that were just that: wood flung on the beach after thrashing around in the surf, desolate and hollowed out, ugly and unwanted. Like this one. Like me, Anneliese knew.

She wasn’t a plant at all – she was driftwood. Ugly to most people, beautiful only to the very few.

Summoning all the pent-up energy in her body, she hurled the driftwood back into the ocean and screamed at it.

‘I hate you, I hate you, I hate you.’

There was nobody to hear her scream. Her voice was caught on the wind and whipped away into the air where the seagulls paid no attention.

Edward hadn’t seemed to pay attention that morning when she’d got up at eight and said she was going to Sunday Mass at nine, then might call in on Lily. He’d murmured something that sounded like assent, and rolled over in the bed, bunching the snow white of the duvet around his lanky frame. Anneliese didn’t mind. She was a lark and he was an owl. Opposites and all that.

Ten minutes later, she was showered, dressed and sipping a cup of green tea before she hurried out the door. She’d grown to like green tea, for all that she’d loathed it for ages after the acupuncturist had said it was good for you. Why was it that things that were good for you took a long time to get used to and things that were bad were instantly addictive?

The early service in St Canice’s in the square in Tamarin was pure and perfect. The cold spring sun sent rays of light shining through the stained-glass windows, leaving dust motes hanging in the air, an effect that was for all the world like celestial rays blessing the faithful in biblical paintings. There was no music at the early service.

The choir sang at eleven Mass, with Mr Fitzpatrick strangling hymns on a rheumatic organ, with the congregation wincing and Father Sean smiling bravely, willing people not to laugh openly.

Dear Father Sean. He had a great sense of humour which he had to subdue because not everyone wanted a priest who cracked jokes. Anneliese felt sorry for him, having to toe some invisible line.

Eleven was the family Mass too, where toddlers knelt on pews and twinkled bored eyes at the people behind them. Adorable but distracting.

At nine on a Sunday morning, the church was only a quarter full and it suited Anneliese perfectly. She loved the peace of it all. Time to think but not so much time that her mind skittered off into dark areas. No, she didn’t like that. Luckily, it never happened at Mass. Something to do with the ritual of standing and kneeling, murmuring responses to prayers that were engrained in her soul because she’d been murmuring them for so many years.

Anneliese’s religion was a meditative, safe place for her to rest rather than an intense, doctrinaire version.

Then the migraine came helter skelter into her head without warning; not the full blast that required lying down, but certainly a blistering ache that made her eyes narrow with pain.

There was no point waiting: she had to go home and lie down. She could phone Lily and apologise later. Her aunt, well aunt-in-law strictly speaking, because she was actually Edward’s aunt, wouldn’t mind. Lily had many glorious qualities – she was funny, warm, had a marvellous sense of humour – but one of her absolute virtues was the fact that she never sulked or took offence at anything.

‘Take care of yourself, Anneliese, and drop round when you’re better,’ was all she’d say.

Anneliese knew so many people who cherished perceived injuries and looked for them in everything. It was comforting that Lily wasn’t such a person.

Anneliese drove home slowly, feeling the car judder with the wind, and hurried into the house, thinking only of the blessed relief of getting into her bed, only half registering that the car parked outside belonged to her friend, Nell. Edward would have to talk to her. Nell wouldn’t mind: she and Edward were great pals and Nell knew that when a migraine hit, Anneliese could only think of lying down.

And then she stepped into the kitchen to see Edward and Nell sitting together at the table, his dark head bent towards her fair one and their hands clasped.

There was no soft music or gentle lights, no state of undress. But the intimacy of their togetherness cut into Anneliese like a knife sliding into the underbelly of a chicken fillet.

‘Anneliese!’ gasped Nell, seeing her.

They moved apart sharply, quickly. In another universe, Anneliese might have joked about what the speedy movement might do to Edward’s sciatica or Nell’s dodgy neck. But she knew, with absolute certainty, that there was nothing innocent about their closeness. The migraine pummelled louder in her head, fighting with the sense of nausea that rose instantaneously.

‘We were just…’ began Nell awkwardly, and then stopped as if she had no idea what to say next.

Nell was never short of words. In contrast to Anneliese, who preferred silence often, Nell had a word for everyone and a comment for anything.

Like the rain: ‘It’d be a great little country if only we could get someone to put an umbrella over it.’

People loved that.

Or thoughts on money: ‘Spend it now: there are no pockets in a shroud.’

Now, Nell had nothing to say.

‘Anneliese, you don’t want to get the wrong idea,’ began Edward, his face a mask of anxiety as he moved towards Anneliese and tried to take her hands in his. His hair was wet from the shower. It was only twenty-five minutes since she’d left the house. He must have leapt out of bed as soon as she’d gone.

‘Explain the wrong idea to me, so I can understand the difference between it and the right one,’ Anneliese said, gently detaching her hands. Her head still felt cloudy but the powerful instinctive message in her brain told her not to let her husband touch her.

‘Lord, Anneliese, please don’t think we’d ever do anything to hurt you,’ began Nell.

She looked anxiously at Edward, pleading with him to sort it out.

You could tell what people thought by their eyes more easily than by anything else, Anneliese knew.

Over the years, she and Edward had exchanged many telling looks. And she and Nell had exchanged them too – they’d been friends for nearly twenty years, a lifetime.

Only she’d never been aware of these two important people in her life looking at each other in this way. Until now.

Anneliese felt as if she was watching the last reel of a movie where all the plot loopholes are tied up.

Nell and Edward were the ones sharing the telling looks now because they were the couple in this scene: not Anneliese and Edward, but Nell and Edward.

‘Please, Anneliese, sit down.’

Edward was still beside her, his expression anxious and his hands out in supplication.

‘I wish we didn’t have to do this but I suppose we have to. Now or never, right?’ he said, looking defeated but determined, determined to have this awful conversation.

And that was when Anneliese knew absolutely that Edward was leaving her for Nell.

Edward hated confrontation of any kind. He’d been useless on those occasions when Beth was in floods of tears, distraught over something or other.