Once there was a way to get back home again…
—https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LjOl0fG72ZE
TWENTY-TWO
‘When we pulled their waterlogged bodies out of the water, Dom was nearly as blue as Vivien. He never uttered a single sound, not pain, not grief, not relief. His fingers were so tightly clenched around her corpse it was ages before we could prize them away from her cold flesh. He stared vacantly into the distance. When I called him, he turned slowly and looked at me as if he didn’t recognize me. As if we were not flesh and blood.’
Jake stops speaking, and I see him shudder with the terrible memory.
‘I brought him to my house and put him in my bed. He slept for three hours. Then came the profuse diarrhea brought on by the seawater he’d ingested, and the uncontrollable muscle tremors. He became very ill, and Shane and I took care of him. He even missed her funeral. They buried her in her wedding dress, apparently in accordance with her wishes. She had told her mother that if she should die before her wedding she was to be buried in her dress.’
As Jake speaks, a numbing cold is creeping into my body, and I hug myself and force myself to listen to his words.
‘Dom was so ill that for a while we even thought he was going to die. But he didn’t. His body grew stronger, even if his head was totally fucked. For weeks he had such severe nightmares that he would move bedroom furniture around in his sleep and wake up screaming on the floor. He was like a madman. He blamed himself. He couldn’t look at a picture of her without getting into an uncontrollable rage. I gathered up all the photos of her and hid them.
‘Then one day I came back and he was making himself an omelet. “Want one?” he asked, and I knew it was going to be all right. We ate together and he thanked me for everything I’d done. Then he left.’
Jake looks at me with somber, sad eyes. ‘Ever since then there has been no other woman in his life. One-night stands, casual flings. No woman, no matter how hard they tried, and believe me when I tell you a lot tried, and very hard too, could get close to him. Until you.’
Jake pauses and takes a sip of whiskey while watching me intently from above the rim of his glass.
I drop my eyes. Some part of me feels a flash of joy at his last sentence, but it’s muted. I think I’m in shock.
‘Don’t give up on him so quickly. He’s come so far because of you,’ Jake says, as if he’s trying to sell me the idea of staying in a relationship with Dom. As if he needs to.
I look up at him suddenly and his eyes slide away. Not immediately, but he can’t hold my gaze! I watch him take another sip before he raises his eyes to me. I stare at him. He looks back without flinching this time, but that moment he couldn’t hold my gaze has given him away.
‘There’s more, isn’t there?’ I ask.
He sighs. It’s actually a sound of relief. As if a burden is about to be lifted from his shoulders.
He nods, stands, and walks over to his desk. He unlocks the last drawer and takes a photo album out. He turns the pages to somewhere in the middle and walks back to me carrying the open album. He stands over me and holds the book out to me.
I take it from him. It’s one of those fancy albums with tracing paper between the pages holding the photos. I take the end of the tracing paper page and turn it, and pretty much just stare at the picture. It’s a photo taken outside some kind of temple. The sun is shining brightly. I’m wearing a pink tie-dyed T-shirt and a long flowery skirt. It looks like it’s been taken in a foreign land. India, perhaps. Asia, definitely.
But I’ve never been to Asia.
All these impressions hit me in seconds. I raise my eyes upwards and Jake is looking down at me, his eyes full of pity.
‘That’s her?’ I ask in a shocked whisper.
‘That’s Vivien.’
‘Oh my God!’ I cry. The girl in the photo looks exactly like me. The similarity is uncanny. Except for her hair color, I am her twin.
‘I’m sorry,’ Jake says softly.
Suddenly everything makes sense. Everything! It explains why the whole family had behaved so strangely when Dom introduced me. I’d thought it was because Dom was dating a tax inspector, but now I know. Ah! That would nicely explain away the uneasy, quickly hidden expression on his mother’s face whenever she thought I wasn’t looking.
A thought seeds itself into my head.
‘Did you already know what I looked like when we met?’
‘Yes, Shane had warned us all.’
I nod slowly, taking the information in. ‘Did Shane know Vivien?’
He frowns. ‘Of course. Dom was going to marry her.’
‘I see.’ Some part of my rational brain makes the observation that only Shane in this family is truly impenetrable. His classically handsome face had betrayed nothing when he had met me for the first time at the party. Nothing but an open friendliness and an irresistible charm.
‘Right,’ I say slowly. My whole life is falling apart around me. ‘So, Dom went out with me because I reminded him of his dead fiancée.’
‘I’m sure the fact that you look like her has something to do with it, but you’re totally different in every way.’
I look at him with disbelieving eyes.
‘Everything about you is different. She was selfish, tempestuous, controlling and impulsive, and you are careful, kind, considerate and deep.’
Oh my God. The way he describes me makes me sound so boring. I cover my eyes with the palms of my hands. What a fucking mess!
Jake comes over and goes down on his haunches in front of me. Startled, I uncover my eyes. Jake at close quarters is an intimidating experience. It’s like being too close to a live wire. Part of me wants to move away.
As if he knows that I am uncomfortable, he fixes me with his mesmerizing eyes and moves in for the kill. ‘Remember, when I said Vivien was no good for him, I truly meant it. You are the perfect match. You balance him and bring out the best in him. You make him happy.’
‘But he wants her. She is his true soul mate. I’m just a poor imitation.’ It hurts like hell to voice the thought. I feel the tears start welling up in my eyes.
‘Ella, listen to me. He was eighteen. She was his first love. Do you remember what you were like when you were eighteen? If he had married her, it would have been a disaster, and they would have ended up hating each other and getting divorced. But because she died, she has become his dancing queen, young and sweet, only seventeen. A great, lost love. But he has suffered enough. She’s gone, and you’re here.’
‘I’m nothing to him.’
‘You have no idea what you’ve done for him. The demons had completely taken over when you came into his life. You broke them up with your softness.’
I stare at him wordlessly. How much I want to believe him, but my heart feels like it’s breaking into pieces. He never wanted me. He was trying to replace her. When he was touching me, he was really touching her.
‘He never really wanted me,’ I sob. ‘The whole time he was pretending I was her.’
He reaches out a hand and touches my cheek. His hand is warm and gentle. And it makes me want to lean into it for the comfort it holds.
‘Ah, Ella. You’re not a man. I am. Take it from me. My brother wanted Vivien the way a boy wants a girl. He wants you with the passion with which a man wants a woman. Let him discover that. Give him a chance. There’s a lot of Dom that you’ve not seen yet.’ He smiles tenderly and removes his hand.
I stare at him through a film of tears. The kindness and softness that he’s showing has surprised me. He always looks so unreachable and aloof.
‘But he doesn’t want to be with me anymore,’ I say softly.
‘If you believed that you wouldn’t be here now.’