Page 49 of Love Unlocked

The anger is building again, but it’s less rage and more hurt. He isn’t clinging to hope anymore, Tara is not coming back, she and Walter are not breaking up any time soon. This horrific thing can’t be undone. For the first time in six weeks, he reaches acceptance that it’s over.

He composes a text:

Dear All. It’s time I told you that six weeks ago, Walter my best friend and Tara my fiancée ended my world as I know it by telling me that they’re in love with each other. I was asked to move out. This obviously hurts beyond belief. I’m devastated that the two people I love most in the world would stab me in the back like this. I’ve known Walter since I was five years old but obviously didn’t know him or Tara at all. I’m absolutely heartbroken.

Al xx

He reads back over it, his heart aching, still unable to believe what has happened. Typing it out in his phone has somehow made it very real and final. His loved ones will feel the betrayal too.

He presses send.

He sends the message to his mum and dad. To his brothers and sisters. The members of his rowing team, which he had to leave when he moved to Dublin. He sends it to Tara’s parents, and to her sisters and brother. He sends it to Walter’s dad.

Immediately his phone lights up. First, a phone call from his mum. He can’t avoid it.

He taps to answer.

‘Hi, Mum.’

As soon as he hears her voice say, ‘Albert,’ in that tone, in that loving, pitying, motherly tone, he starts to cry. He spins his chair around to face the River Liffey. His phone beeps constantly with more messages and incoming calls. One after the other is as angry as the next, as deeply loving and supportive as can be.

Will light a candle at mass. Al’s sister.

Can’t wait for him to visit – we’ll have words. Al’s mad brother Seán.

Her loss, our gain – come back and join the team. The new stroke’s crap. His rowing cox for ten years, Beano.

Thinking of you during this time. The painter and decorator who painted their house years ago who he must have sent the message to by mistake.

Al takes his time reading through the texts, fully feeling the grief hit him with each message. He holds the office phone to his ear, long after the phone call to his mum has finished, so Natasha doesn’t disturb him. The tears flow. The anger from others is comforting and it has the effect of releasing him from his own; he doesn’t have to carry it all on his own anymore. The comforting messages are like hugs, pats on the back from people he respects and admires, people he has known from childhood, teenage years, people who care. Living in Dublin had meant he had lost connection with his core group but now it feels alive again, as if they have him, he’s falling and they’re like a giant net catching him. They’ve been there all this time. His tiny world opens up again.

Suddenly he doesn’t feel angry anymore. Even Walter’s own brother wants to beat his brother up, Tara’s parents are sorry and send their love. Tara’s sister May is apologising because she doesn’t know what’s going on with her sister. And Al … Al is just sad. Very, very sad at everything he lost and the people he will lose, because he knows that eventually everyone in Tara’s life will accept her wishes and won’t be a part of his life anymore. So many relationships wiped out in an instant. These text messages he is receiving are like a dozen break-ups.

He can’t stop crying. He manages to make his way to the gents without anyone seeing him and he cries in the stall like a kid. He hasn’t done that since he wasn’t picked for the under-twelve rowing club and he came back better than ever. He became the under-fourteens national champion. There has to be a hero story in this nightmare for him but he can’t see it now.

Walter’s dad texts him. He’s a widower, Walter’s mum died when he was fifteen, it was awful watching her die from cancer and Al had been a rock for Walter at that time, like a brother. Walter’s dad is older than most of their friends’ parents, and he texts back, in broken words – it must have taken him an age to type up what Al deems is a supportive text.

Rodent infestation in their house.

So Walter and Tara, Tara and Walter had found the mice. He hopes they uncover a new mouse every day, the gift that keeps on giving. Al feels a minor pleasure from their discomfort but mostly he feels deep, exhausting sadness. He’s finished with the revenge acts now, they have run their course. He must have accidentally included Natasha in his group text message about Walter and Tara, because she’s outside the bathroom when he emerges, with her purple swollen eye and a face filled with pity.

‘Don’t,’ he says, trying to stop her from hugging him, but she does it anyway.

‘I can get my brother to batter him if you want. I could do it myself but I don’t want to lose my job.’

‘No, no thanks, don’t do that.’ He knows she means it.

‘Are you sure?’

‘I’m dealing with it.’

‘I know how you feel.’

‘Pedro still hasn’t called?’

‘No.’

Taking comfort in each other’s sadness, they meander back to their office.