As for Jamie, he’s okay, and we are finally talking again. When he returned last Christmas, he hugged me as usual and it was like nothing had happened – everything just slotted back into place. Jamie’s never said anything again about wanting to be Freddie’s dad, he’s just been happy to see him like he has the others. I want us to be friends. I feel like we all went through such an ordeal last summer. I want to talk about it, and so does Jamie. Both Joy and Dan don’t have that need, they’ve moved on, for them it was in the past and they don’t want to go there – ‘Don’t dwell on it, dear,’ is Joy’s usual response if I try to talk about it. For Dan, it’s probably too painful; after Ella’s accusations he was so hurt he never really talked about what happened. But whether his hurt was at being innocent or being robbed of his next fling, I don’t know.
Jamie came home from Thailand last week, and he called in to see me, which was nice. I was having a rare morning off and he happened to be passing. I made us coffee and we sat in the living room, chatting, while watching Freddie play with his toys.
‘This is nice, just like old times,’ I said, and after more talk about where he’d been and where he planned to go next, I went deeper. ‘How are you really?’ I asked. ‘Have you been able to move on… a little?’
‘Yeah. I guess. I still keep in touch with her parents.’ He smiled fondly at this.
‘I didn’t realise.’
‘Well, I haven’t mentioned it – don’t think Mum would approve, you know how she is.’
‘Yes, she wants to forget it all, pretend it never happened.’
‘I do too. I went away hoping to forget, but I can’t, and her parents are the only link – it’s like she never existed.’
‘Do you still look at her Instagram?’
‘I can’t. It would be like looking into the past, when we were happy, the wedding photos – everything.’ He shook his head, his eyes red with threatened tears. ‘No… perhaps one day?’ He tried to smile.
I look sometimes. It’s weird that the account still exists and she doesn’t; her fantasy life outlived her. I suppose it’s like a headstone for the twenty-first century: ‘Ella was here’. Our online lives are our immortality. I think she’d like that.
When she died, the Manchester Evening News did a big article all about her detailing the sadness of the new bride who couldn’t bear to live.
‘How are her parents?’ I asked.
‘Devastated. They still hadn’t got over her sister’s death.’
I recalled their grey faces at the funeral. We spoke briefly, offered our condolences, but this poor couple who’d lost both their children were inconsolable. ‘Losing both daughters…’ I shook my head, unable to imagine it.
‘They said they couldn’t rest when Ella’s sister was flying, and with Ella, they worried about her travelling everywhere – they didn’t hear from her for months.’
‘Flying?’
‘Yeah. Carmel was a flight attendant. She sounds just like Ella, a free spirit,’ he said wistfully.
I tried to smile in acknowledgement of this, but my mind was only focussing on one piece of information – Carmel loved being a flight attendant.
There must be more than one flight attendant called Carmel, from Manchester… mustn’t there?
‘What happened… to Carmel?’ I asked.
‘She was depressed, something to do with a man… he was married, said he’d leave his wife, but he didn’t and when he finished it, she lost it for a while. Her mum said she couldn’t get over it, she kept trying to get in touch with him, but he didn’t pick up, changed his number. She became obsessed for a while, even called him at home, but his wife was pregnant, said she knew all about it. She told her he’d never any intention of leaving her for Carmel. She said if Carmel contacted them again they’d call the police. Thing is, he never told Carmel he was married, and that was it for her, she felt like she’d nothing to live for. Imagine feeling like that? God, she must have been so broken. In the end, she took her own life.’
Chapter Thirty-Six
Hearing about Ella’s sister was like a bomb going off in my head. Even though I kept telling myself this had to be a coincidence, I knew it wasn’t. In effect, I’d been the one to land the final blow to Carmel. No wonder Ella hated me, she must have known. She was out for revenge. She didn’t ‘bump into’ Jamie in a bar in Manchester, she knew him online, she’d seen his posts, she knew he was Dan’s brother and she could get to Dan (and me) through him. Marrying Jamie was extreme, but I think Ella was a woman of extremes; she partied hard, she travelled all over the world and she could do anything she wanted. She wasn’t just a free spirit, she was a restless spirit and she had decided to avenge her sister’s death, but it had all gone horribly wrong.
For the next couple of days I kept my theories and the information to myself. I didn’t even tell Dan at first, I just wanted time to work it out. I also wondered at the implications – did Dan know that Carmel was Ella’s sister?
Over the past year, I’ve felt the fabric of our marriage tearing further apart, and this recent affair with Miss Thomas has ripped the last few threads. But every cloud and all that – because in a way it’s also completely freed me – I don’t rely on Dan for my sunshine, or my shadows, any more. We live in the same house, we share our children while we’re waiting for the divorce to be finalised. And I’m fine, looking forward to a new adventure having extricated Dan from my heart and my head.
On the evening after Jamie’s visit last week, Dan and I sat down to a last supper together to discuss finances now the house has been sold. We talked about the new, smaller house I’ll share with the kids, while Dan will be renting a flat nearby so he can see them.
‘Are you sure this is what you want?’ he said. I assured him for the hundredth time it was.
‘It was never the same for us after last summer,’ he sighed, pouring himself a glass of wine.
‘It was way before that, Dan.’ I looked at him doubtfully.
‘Oh, they meant nothing, you knew that.’
‘No I didn’t, and they may not have meant anything to you, but they meant a lot to me. They broke up my marriage – well you did.’
‘You really won’t take any responsibility, will you?’ he said, slowly shaking his head and looking at me. It was moments like this that made me strong, and reminded me why I was uprooting the kids, breaking up the home.
‘Do I take responsibility? Do you?’ I pause for a moment. ‘Do you ever feel any guilt about her death… Ella I mean?’
His forehead creased and he looked angry. ‘No. And why should I? She could have ruined me.’
‘Yeah, but I still wonder why she made those accusations.’
‘Because she was toxic,’ he sighed.
‘Or wanted to hurt you, hurt us?’
‘Look, Clare, I’m tired. Now, you might enjoy going over this, but I don’t. Working out the psyche of a madwoman isn’t on my to-do list, so let’s leave it, eh?’ His anger was still fresh, alive, it hadn’t subsided. He stabbed at the broccoli spears on his plate, then looked up, saw me watching him. ‘What? I just want to forget she ever existed.’