Page 33 of Rewrite the Stars
‘Would you like it if it was the other way round with you and Jack?’ she asks me to drive her point home. ‘Would you like it if seeing an ex hurt Jack as much as it hurts you?’
I go to speak but she does so for me.
‘Please don’t live a lie, Charlotte, love,’ she tells me. ‘For goodness’ sake, don’t ever live a lie. Look what doing just that did to our Matthew. It’s not worth it.’
I also know that for Matthew’s health and for the sake of his future progress, I don’t really have a choice. But am I living a lie?
Jack has picked me up when I was on my knees with worry over Matthew, he has spurred me on when my confidence was on the floor, he knows from how my voice sounds if I’m worried about something or when I need one of his manly hugs. He knows I love spring more than summer, that I prefer dark chocolate to milk, that I take two sugars in my tea at certain times of the month but don’t bother with it the rest of the time. Jack knows me inside out. Tom has only seen me at my best, whereas Jack has seen me at my worst and he loves me even more for it.
Would I give up what I have with Jack for a stab-in-the-dark chance of another me? No, I wouldn’t. I’ve turned a corner at long last.
‘Happy birthday, gorgeous!’
It’s the most beautiful Saturday afternoon in late March, the streets are lined with fluffy pink cherry blossoms and I’m celebrating my twenty-ninth birthday and the beginning of my thirtieth year on this planet with a glass of Prosecco, a picnic lunch of exquisite bites, including black-bean crunch wraps and stuffed focaccia, in Phoenix Park. It has all been prepared and arranged by Sophie, who is sitting with me watching the world go by.
‘Is turning thirty as scary as it sounds?’ I ask her, feeling the bubbles from the drink in my hand making me merry already. The sun is shining, Sophie’s dogs Milo and Jess are running around enjoying the freedom of the open space and I turn my face up to the sky to catch some rays.
‘It definitely raises some questions,’ says Sophie in her clipped Dublin accent, which is so different to my own more rounded, country twang. ‘I know that when I turned thirty, even though Harry and I were just married, was when my mother stepped up her game in wanting me to push out a set of triplets in a puff of smoke, but I still don’t feel ready for motherhood. Do you?’
I take a sip of my Prosecco and contemplate the question.
‘It has crossed my mind, yes, especially when my days are filled with children and mothers with babies at the school gates,’ I admit, ‘but to be fair, I can’t say that Mam expects anything from me just yet. She understands that Jack and I are still in early days.’
I hasten to add that my mother and Sophie’s are like chalk and cheese in every way possible, plus I adore my mother. Sophie hates hers.
‘And your sister?’ she asks. ‘Doesn’t she feel the pinch now she’s married or is that a really personal question? Gosh, my mother will have a fit if I don’t give her a grandchild to show off sometime soon. The pressure!’
I scrunch up my nose, wondering if it’s appropriate for me to talk about Emily and Kevin’s fertility issues.
‘I suppose it’s each to their own when it comes to things like that,’ I say to her, hoping she will read between the lines. ‘Sometimes it doesn’t happen just as easily as we’d like it to, unfortunately.’
Sophie leans across and squeezes my arm, telling me I needn’t say any more on the subject. She has fast become one of my dearest friends since the night we met at the wine bar in Dun Laoghaire back in December. In fact, any nerves I had about meeting her and Harry were swiftly shoved to the side when she asked to try on my shoes in the middle of the very upper-class seafood restaurant, then paraded to the toilets and back in them to see if they suited her as much as they suited me.
We spent the whole evening in fits of giggles and walked home in our bare feet, even though it had been a rainy night at the height of winter, and when we got back to her apartment we talked until morning about our shared love of music. Sophie had been a concert violinist in her school days and we ended up singing into the early hours, much to Jack and Harry’s surprise, who recommended we start up our very own girl band and let them retire early.
‘Do you ever think that there is a parallel version of you existing, doing the things you could have done had you made different decisions in life?’ she asks me, staring up at the blue sky. ‘Like, another you? Is that a weird question? Am I drunk?’
I burst out laughing and turn towards her, totally getting her drift and loving the topic of conversation. ‘Oh Sophie, I think about this all the time! I can’t believe you think that way too!’
She pushes her sunglasses onto her head, squints at the sun and puts them back on again. Sophie is pixie-like, with her cropped black hair and petite, dancer’s frame, and to me she is a darling by name and by nature.
‘You’re going to laugh your head off at this but at one point I did think I’d end up with Jack, you know, in one of those “if we’re not married by the time we’re thirty” pacts you hear of in the movies?’ she giggles. ‘We didn’t have an agreement at all, but it was always in the back of my mind.’
I throw my head back and laugh. ‘Don’t hold back there, Soph!’ I joke with her. ‘Ah, that’s kind of sweet in a way.’
She is laughing now too. ‘But instead my future was formed because I spontaneously went to Wales for a rugby match with my dad, only because I felt sorry for him as his brother had to cancel last minute. I was at a kiosk ordering a hot dog, chatted to Harry who was quite pissed and the rest is history,’ she says, in genuine wonder. ‘Like, if my uncle hadn’t had man flu, I wouldn’t have gone to that match, I’d never have met Harry, so what on earth would I be doing right now? Where would I be and who with? It’s weird, isn’t it?’
Itisweird when you think of it. I’ve thought about it so often my head spins, but I’ve never actually had a conversation with anyone who thinks the same way about it.
I wonder all the time if I’d taken Tom’s advice that day when I sang for him back in 2010, if I’d had the courage to send out my work to record companies, would I be living in America now like he suggested? Would I ever have crossed paths with him again, would Matthew ever have had to hear his name again, would the accident have happened, would I have met Jack? One thing in life leads us to another and another and another – how much of it is really under our own control and how much is already mapped out for us, no matter how we try to change it?
Sophie sits up to pour us another drink, both of us lost in our own ‘other version’ of ourselves, and I feel a little dizzy. I stop her pouring mid-flow and she looks at me with a hint of concern.
‘You know, Charlotte, I also often remind myself that just because things could have worked out differently, doesn’t mean they’d have been better,’ she says to me, a little bit more serious now. ‘That’s what I tell myself anyhow. There’s no point worrying about “what if” even though it’s sometimes fun to wonder from time to time.’
I look at her and smile. She’s absolutely right. I briefly imagine how I’d be travelling the world with Tom had we stayed together. I’d be living out of a suitcase, I’d barely see my family, I’d find it hard to do something as simple as have a picnic in the park with a friend like I’m doing right now. It could have been fun, but that’s all it is now – something that could have been.
‘Yes, sometimes it’s fun to wonder,’ I agree. She continues to fill my glass to the top despite me stopping her seconds ago.
