The First Time I Said Goodbye (36 page)

“And you don’t mind?”

“It will be strange,” I admitted. “But no, I don’t mind. I’ll be there with you. Hey, I’m young, free and single myself now. Maybe I could bag myself a rich old marine in his twilight years?”

My mother swiped at my hand, smacking it with an air of indignation. “Behave yourself!” she chided before bursting into a broad smile – one I couldn’t help but share.

* * *

“That’s just about the most romantic story I ever heard,” Sam said as we strolled arm in arm along the quay.

“Well, it’s not the greatest story ever told, is it? I mean, she married someone else – admittedly a wonderful, wonderful man – but didn’t ever see Ray again.”

“But she might – next week. How amazing would that be? You know, stop me if I’m being grossly insensitive, but imagine they got married? Oh, I love a good pensioner wedding – all that promise that it’s never too late to get a happy ending! I’d like to think, you know, that one day I’ll find mine. Maybe when my mother shuffles off this mortal coil and I won’t wound her any more with my rampant homosexuality.”

I squeezed my cousin’s arm as we walked on. “What I don’t get is the Auntie Dolores, the mad article who loved to party Mom wrote about in her letters – I can’t reconcile that with how she is with you. How she judges you.”

“I don’t know if it’s blatant homophobia as much as her just not wanting her baby to be gay. I was her surprise extra – her ‘wee late one’. She doted on me – the sun shone out of my rear end as far as she was concerned. I was perfection. It really annoyed the living daylights out of my sisters and brothers – so they were delighted to see my crown slip. Mammy, on the other hand, she just liked to pretend it was still there. It’s okay though. I can deal with it.”

“You shouldn’t have to deal with it though. You should be able to be who you are – and have the big gay flamboyant wedding if you want – no holds barred. Matching tuxes – designer of course. And I’d be only too happy to wear that Dior gown to be your bridesmaid.”

Sam laughed, throwing his head back and squeezing my arm. “Oh, darling cousin of mine! You are amazing. And I’d have you as the best woman, don’t you know? And for you, well, I might just let you wear the dress. It would be just divine! Which, you know, gives me an idea.” He looked away and then back at me. “The reunion, next week – I have some amazing 50s-style dresses. I’m sure one of them would look outstanding on you. Why don’t we have a bit of fun – dress up? Make a proper night of it?”

“That sounds like a plan,” I smiled, wishing my hair was longer and could carry off a Victory roll or two.

“We should get our mums into the shop too – kit them out. Get them out of slacks and twin sets, into something super-sassy.”

“When you say things like ‘super-sassy’,” I laughed, “do you really think there isn’t a person alive who doesn’t know you’re gay?”

* * *

Sitting in his garden later, a glass of wine in hand, we planned out the perfect evening. I admit I was caught up in the story of my mother and Ray. I wanted so much to meet him – to see the man she had talked about. I doubted he would look much like the handsome young marine in the picture she showed me but still I wanted to see him – to see if that twinkle was still in his eye. And for the Stella I had read about and heard about, I wanted to see the story play its way out. It would, as Sam said, be nice to have hope that stories could be resolved in a positive way – that happiness could come no matter what sadness life throws at you.

“Any regrets?” Sam asked and I raised my eyebrow at him.

“About what?”

“Your man in the States? Breaking up with him?”

“Of course I have a few regrets,” I said honestly. “I didn’t imagine it would work out this way – and I’m sorry if I hurt him. I’m more sorry for me though. Sorry that I let him hurt me and didn’t have the guts to stand up to him and tell him to stop.”

“You did that when you were ready to. That’s something in itself. Everyone thinks they know how they will react when faced with certain scenarios. That’s not always the way it goes, though, is it? Emotions get in the way. Life gets in the way. And sometimes you just can’t see the wood for the trees.”

I snorted, thinking that not only had I seen the wood for the trees, I had seen my boyfriend having sex with someone else and it still hadn’t been enough to bring the inadequacies in my relationship into full focus. “Oh, I saw the wood for the trees all right! I just had too much on my plate to deal with it and I suppose I was too afraid to admit it wasn’t working. It was easier in a lot of ways just to go on as we were. I suppose coming here gave me the space to see it for what it was.”

“And when you go home? Do you think you will still feel that way?”

“As regards Craig and me? Yes. That’s done now. It won’t change. I don’t know exactly where I go from here – pick myself up and start again – sell up, split the proceeds, move back in with my mother, maybe, until I find a place. She could probably do with the company.”

“Yes,” he said, looking off into the distance, “I imagine maybe she would.”

Yes, there was no way I could go back to the home I had shared with Craig. It didn’t feel like home – it hadn’t felt like home since the day I had found Craig having sex with someone else – and if I was honest with myself it would be a relief not to return there. Even if not returning there meant returning home to my mother at the age of thirty-seven – thinking about starting all over again.

* * *

Sam seemed to know everything there was to know about vintage-clothes buying. With a click of his mouse he could log into any number of websites and pull up any range of clothes for sale.

We had a good scout around Second Hand Rose the next morning and pulled together a few ideas for me, my mother, Dolores and even Niamh who had somehow managed to invite herself along to the reunion.

“Do you think they will mind us all gate-crashing like this?” I asked as I wandered around the shop, revelling in the stunning clothes hanging on the rails and in the antique wardrobes.

“Not at all. They’ll be grateful to have such stunners as ourselves grace their soirée,” Sam laughed. “In fairness, we’re not gate-crashing as such. My mother had many friends in the Marines and your mother near enough married one. We’re going as moral support for them – well, for your mum. I don’t think my mother ever needed moral support for anything in her life. She just blunders on with things.”

I smiled at him and nodded my head in agreement. He had a fair point.

“I’ll just be delighted if I get my mother in here to move out of her comfort zone and try something new,” I said.

“Seems to me she was more daring in her day than you give her credit for. Secret rendezvous in love nests. Travelling half the world on a whim to win the love of her life back. I’d say she could easily be persuaded.”

“You underestimate the appeal of the twin set, my friend. I’d swear if she could have got away with wearing one in the heat of the Florida summer, she would have.”

He smiled and set about his work on the computer while I set about continuing my mooch through the merchandise of Second Hand Rose.

“Do you love coming here every single day?” I asked him, once again falling under the spell of what was essentially a dressing-up box for grown-ups.

“Honestly? Most days, yes. Days when the tax returns are due or the like, I’m not a big fan, but apart from that it gives me great pleasure. I meet different people – see how women can be transformed by a dress, or a piece of jewellery. I see women come in and relive their glory days – memories flooding back of great nights out and the like just by seeing a dress, or a pair of shoes or some other trinket. Do you not feel the same about Bake My Day? I mean, you set it up from scratch – you must be proud of it.”

I shrugged my shoulders. Now, there was a question. And I suppose, at one stage I had been exceptionally proud of it and all it had meant to me. I had, at one stage, loved seeing my regular customers come through the door and keeping up with their news and gossip. It had felt almost like an extended family of sorts. But then, I suppose, when Daddy had become ill I had first of all had to deal with customers treating me like it was me who was ill. People who didn’t know what to say, or how to react so who would, for the most part, simply come in, order something without really making any sort of meaningful eye contact or who would look at me so sorrowfully that I had wanted to start crying.

Making cakes, while once therapeutic, started to feel twee. Meaningless. Helping people celebrate seemed wrong. And then as Elise took on more and more responsibility for the day-to-day running of it I started to feel far removed from it. If I was honest, it didn’t feel like mine any more.

“I was once,” I said. “Really proud of it. Maybe I will be again, but it just doesn’t feel like mine any more. I’ve been trying to fool myself that I’m dying to get back behind that counter when the truth is it’s been a case of ‘fake it till you make it’. If I’m being honest, lots of what was home and what was my life doesn’t feel like my life any more. Not even my café, which was once everything to me.”

“It’s hard when you don’t feel you fit in,” Sam said, “but you have to take it easy on yourself. You’ve been through a lot – the loss of a parent and now the break-up of your relationship. You need to give yourself time to heal.”

“Do you know, Sam, I think I’m starting to heal,” I said, and I meant it. “More than that, I think I’m starting to remember who I was – or who I was meant to be. I think I’ve given up on me for much too long – forgot who I was – but I think I’m getting back there.”

He smiled. “I’m happy to hear that, my gorgeous cousin. And if you are starting to feel a little more positive, maybe you could be persuaded to bake me some of those delicious cupcakes I have heard so much about?”

I took a deep breath. The last time I had baked had been for my father – for the cupcake he couldn’t eat – but these were the cupcakes he loved so much. Maybe I could bake them again? It was, after all, the very least I could do for Sam even if I suspected he had some sort of ulterior motive for getting me back in the kitchen again.

“Name your poison,” I said. “Vanilla, chocolate, red velvet?”

“Is it too much to choose one of each?” He winked. “Although I am trying to watch my figure! Look, why don’t you go back to my place and get baking – not much of a holiday, I admit – and we can have our two mothers over for tea later? We can formulate a proper plan. I do love making plans!”

“Okay,” I said. “If you can take me to the store to get ingredients I’ll see what I can put together. Although I warn you I might be a bit rusty.”

“A master baker like you, no chance!”

* * *

Sam’s kitchen was remarkably well stocked with ingredients for a man who swore he never baked. He said he blamed his crush on Paul Hollywood from the
Great British Bake Off
for his collection of tins and bowls, and I made him Google the same to see what the attraction was. I had to admit he had a point.

We had gone to the supermarket and stocked up as best we could with the remaining ingredients needed, and now I was standing in the kitchen, Sam having gone back to the shop, looking at what were the tools of my trade. I took a deep breath – tried to remember the good memories. Tried to remember when my father had eaten three cupcakes in a row and complained of a tummy ache – grabbing his stomach melodramatically and groaning while my mother and I had laughed and teased him for being such a Greedy Guts.

He used to say he loved to watch me work – would come into the bakery sometimes just to sit and chat with me while I measured and mixed and beat eggs to within an inch of their lives. I could, if I closed my eyes, see his smile now and hear his gentle words of encouragement. I could almost hear him whisper that he was proud of me – and that I was never to settle for anything less than happiness.

Instinctively I started to weigh and measure my ingredients. And I started to mix them together – moving around the kitchen as if it were my own, taking immense pleasure in the smoothness of the batter – the sweet smell of the cake mix. Enjoying
the blast of heat from the oven when I opened the door and the warm, sweet aroma as the cakes baked. I opened the doors to the garden and walked outside, a glass of cool water in my hand and I looked at the sky. The air was thick and muggy – a threat of rain, and perhaps thunder hung around me. My daddy always said you could smell the rain in the air and despite the heat I knew it was almost time for the storm to break.

I was reminded of his words as the first fat drops of rain started to fall. The storm would pass – the sun would shine. I stood there for a moment, revelling in the feel of the warm rain on my skin. The storm would pass. The storm was, I was sure, passing right then – for all of us.

The buzz of the timer on the cooker distracted me from my reverie and I walked back into the kitchen, soaked by the shower, and lifted the cakes from the oven, and left them on the cooling rack before going and standing under a hot shower, changing into some comfortable clothes and setting about decorating the cakes in time for Sam’s return home from work.

* * *

“I may have gone overboard,” I said, as he walked back in to find thirty-six cupcakes baked, cooled and decorated, waiting in his kitchen. “But you have what you wanted – vanilla, chocolate and red velvet. The chocolate ones have a sticky chocolate filling as well. I’m not saying they will give you diabetes from one bite, but you might find them on the rich side.”