Page 10 of Healing Hearts on Thistledown Lane: Part 4
The words came back to her later, when the family was immersed in a chaotic game of Pictionary. The notion she’d had for a while now, that Fraser was slipping away from her, still caused her stomach to clench but she thought she was starting to accept it. Until this year, she’d all but forgotten he existed; she could do that again, although it might be more of a challenge if his face was splashed across buses and billboards all over the city.
But Kirsty was right – she had her family to hold onto. She would be okay.
She would have to be.
‘Hello, Maura.’
For a moment, Maura doubted the evidence of her eyes. The last person she’d expected to see when she’d answered the cautious knock on the door of the studio was Jamie. But there he was, as tall and broad as ever, wearing an expression of uncertainty that was most unlike him. She gaped, open-mouthed, then realised she how she must look and hurriedly pulled herself together. ‘Jamie.’
His air of hesitation grew. ‘Am I interrupting? I guessed you’d probably be working, even at this hour.’
In the past, she might have taken it as a dig – it was after eight o’clock, and Jamie had always hated her working so late into the evening – but now she simply glanced down at her clay-caked hands and nodded. ‘You know me.’ She looked up at him, feeling a frown start to crease her forehead. ‘Is there something you need?’
He puffed out a breath. ‘In a manner of speaking. Can I come in? I… It shouldn’t take long.’
She looked over her shoulder, taking in the assortment of ghosts in various stages of production, the half-coiled vase she’d been battling to keep straight, and the potter’s wheel she had yet to put away from that afternoon’s session. The studio was a mess, but whatever the reason for Jamie’s visit, she found she would much rather entertain him here than in the apartment they had once shared. At least he didn’t smell as though he’d been drinking. ‘Sure,’ she said, stepping back to allow him to duck inside. ‘Sorry about the mess.’
‘No problem,’ he said, gazing around with cursory interest. ‘I saw you have an exhibition at the castle – I bet you’ve had a few commissions off the back of it.’
Maura nodded. ‘A few.’
‘I’m glad. You deserve the success.’
‘Um… thanks,’ Maura said, slightly nonplussed. Was this what he’d come to tell her? But it appeared not, as Jamie cleared his throat.
‘I owe you an apology,’ he said, holding up a hand to forestall any reply. ‘No, I need to say this. There’s no excuse for the way I treated you – I was the worst kind of idiot and I’m sorry.’
Maura waited. The man stood before her, eyes fixed on the floor, was so unlike the Jamie she knew that she wondered for a wild second if she might be dreaming. His shoulders were slumped, his hands were clasped as though in prayer and his voice was utterly devoid of his usual bombast. He looked like a man consumed by regret and she was almost tempted to reach out to him. Then he was speaking again and his next words took her breath away.
‘But more than that, I was a drunk.’ Looking up, he met her gaze with clear-eyed honesty. ‘I have a problem with alcohol and I let it affect you. For that, I’m sorry too.’
She watched him with stunned compassion. Even now, after all the pain he had put her through, her heart ached for him. How many times had she wished he would face the truth about his drinking? And how much had it cost him to admit it to her now? ‘You don’t have to apologise for that,’ she said.
‘Yes, I do.’ He ran an anguished hand through his hair. ‘My counsellor says it’s important to make amends, once you’ve decided to stop drinking, so that’s what I’m trying to do.’
‘You’ve stopped?’ Maura said, but the truth of it was written all over him. Now that he was no longer staring at the ground, she could see his skin had lost its sallow tinge. His hair was no longer lank, but shiny and soft, and his beard was freshly trimmed. The biggest change of all was in his eyes, however; they were clear and bright and direct, not pink-rimmed andbleary, the way they had been most mornings for as long as she could remember.
‘Thirty-seven days sober,’ Jamie said, and he sounded both proud and surprised at the achievement. ‘I’m not out of the woods yet, still taking each day as it comes, but my counsellor is brilliant. And now that I’m not drinking, I can see how bad it was.’ He shook his head. ‘I’m not asking you to forgive me, Maura. I just want you to know I’m sorry.’
Silence stretched between them while Maura tried to process everything she’d heard. It seemed that the end of their relationship had served as an abrupt wake-up call to Jamie, prompting him to face an uncomfortable truth, and for that she was glad. A small part of her wished he’d come to the realisation earlier, before so much damage had been done, but she’d come to accept a difficult truth of her own in the months since the break-up, which was that she and Jamie hadn’t been right for each other from the start. ‘It’s okay,’ she said. ‘I do forgive you.’
His eyes brimmed with tears, and that was perhaps the most astonishing thing of all. In the five years they had been together, Maura had never known Jamie to cry. It went against everything he believed – that rugby players didn’t admit they were hurt, on or off the pitch, that real men stayed strong and endured, that emotions were to be tightly controlled and wielded as weapons against the opposition. Something cataclysmic had occurred if he was able to set those beliefs aside now.
‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘Everyone has been so kind – my parents, the guys at the club. I had to apologise for letting them down and they insisted I hadn’t. Even Liam, although I’m not sure he meant it.’
‘That might take time,’ Maura allowed, remembering how hurt the younger man had been when he discovered who his girlfriend had been cheating with. She took a deep breath,bracing herself to voice the question she couldn’t leave unasked. ‘And is Zoe being supportive?’
Jamie’s gaze was candid. ‘We’re not together. We never were, not once I found out she’d told Liam and he’d told you. I didn’t move into her place, which is probably a good thing, given how much she likes to party.’
‘Oh,’ Maura said, caught off guard again. She’d assumed that Jamie and Zoe would be the new golden couple, perfect for each other. But perhaps it wasn’t such a surprise, she thought. Hadn’t she suspected the affair was a symptom of Jamie’s deeper unhappiness, rather than a serious attraction to Zoe herself? ‘So where are you staying? Did you rent a place?’
He nodded. ‘One of those fancy penthouse apartments someone had bought as an investment. But I’m not living there just now.’ A rosy blush suffused his cheeks. ‘I’m back with my parents for a while, until I’m strong enough to manage on my own.’
An unexpected surge of pride blossomed inside Maura. ‘Good for you,’ she said, impulsively closing the distance between them to lay a hand on his arm. ‘There’s no shame in admitting you need help.’
‘That’s what my counsellor says,’ Jamie said. He took a deep breath. ‘Anyway, I’ve said what I came to say, so I’ll leave you to your work. Thank you for understanding.’
She managed a smile. ‘How could I not? And thank you for coming. I’m glad you’re… well, I’m glad you’re okay.’
