The Break-Up Clause by Niamh Hargan
Chapter Thirty-Four
It’s unspeakably bizarre, sitting in the little front room of her childhood home, having tea and toast with her parents and Benjamin Lowry. Unspeakably bizarre.
And, at the same time, it’s also … fine.
Her parents accepted the situation at face value (what else could they do?) and welcomed Benjamin in, all politeness and concern for his health. That Maeve – who would surely have had some slightly different questions or comments – is at Conor’s for the night feels like nothing short of a gift from God.
Meanwhile, as Fia has seen so many times before with Benjamin, the guy really can make conversation with a brick wall. Or, as might apparently be more accurate, he can draw out conversation from a brick wall. Because, in a turn of events Fia could never have predicted, it’s actually her dad who does lots of the talking. He offers up all sorts of tidbits of local knowledge about Dublin, encouraged by Benjamin’s rapt attention, by the questions extended here and there. To boot, Fia’s father – an avid watcher of television documentaries – seems to have quite a surprising amount of information about North Carolina at his fingertips – enough on which to base a conversation, at least. In turn, Benjamin talks a little about where he’s from. No personal anecdotes – Fia notices that. No tales from his childhood or early adulthood. But he does an engaging job of sketching out the politics and the geography of the place, nonetheless.
Aside from being interesting, it’s also sort of … sweet, the effort on both men’s parts. Fia can’t help but think, just briefly, that if things were different – if Benjamin wasn’t her summer associate, and if he wasn’t her soon-to-be (secret) ex-husband … if she’d brought him home to meet the parents, say. Well, in that circumstance – there’s no denying it – her heart would be about fit to burst right about now.
‘So, you’re surfing tomorrow, is that it?’ Fia’s mother asks eventually, once the teapot is empty, and they must all try to bring this interaction to a close somehow.
It occurs to Fia, then, that she hasn’t even asked Benjamin what activity he was allocated. Because of the volume of people involved in the Summer Summit, they’ve been separated into different groups – and different beaches – for tomorrow’s team-building offerings. Surfing, kayaking, or stand-up paddle boarding – those are the options. One thing about Ireland is that there is easy access to quite a lot of water. It is not, generally speaking, warm water, but there is plenty of it around.
On Sunday, more small-group activities will follow (this time, more land-based, more law-based); after that, there’s a formal dinner for the whole firm to round out the weekend.
‘I did get surfing, yeah,’ Benjamin says, which works out handily, for transportation purposes. ‘Although’ – he turns back to Fia’s mam – ‘in my case, it’s more like I’ll be in the water, and a surfboard will also be there, you know what I mean? I’m not really a surfer.’
‘I don’t believe that,’ Fia finds herself blurting out, before she can edit herself.
‘Why not?’
She thinks about it for a moment, and once she’s figured out the answer in her own mind, she decides just to go with the truth. ‘Because I’ve never seen you be bad at anything like that, ever.’
There’s a compliment in there, but Benjamin skates right past it. Instead, he just cocks his head sceptically, his voice deadpan. ‘Well, get ready.’
‘How much sport do they have you playing over there?’ Fia’s father pipes up then, his brow furrowing.
‘What?’ Fia replies instinctively, and a slightly awkward sort of pause follows, during which she realizes that, yes, her previous comment was a fairly questionable thing for one lawyer to say about another lawyer
‘Oh!’ she continues, flustered suddenly. ‘Just … you know what the firm’s like, Dad, especially in the summer. We’re all out playing rounders every whip about. If we give any legal advice at all, that’s a good day!’
She thinks she gets away with it. After all, what she’s said is semi-accurate. Mostly, though, Fia knows what saves her: it is that her parents do not think she would lie to them, not even by omission. The thought makes her insides tighten with sudden guilt. How gutted they would be, if they found out the full truth of her history with Benjamin.
‘Do you think you’ll be all right to be in the water, with your injury, Benjamin?’ her mother asks worriedly now, peering again at the gash on his forehead. ‘You might be better not to get that wet.’
‘I asked. Sadly, the glue’s waterproof,’ Benjamin replies.
Fia’s mother looks thoroughly unconvinced.
‘Mam’s got one of those medical degrees you don’t need to go to college for,’ Fia tells Benjamin, teasing lightly. It’s funny, the urge to slightly perform your family dynamic in front of other people. ‘She doesn’t even need Google. It’s pure instinct.’
‘Get away with that, you,’ her mother says, taking her own cue seamlessly. ‘Benjamin, I hope Fia’s a bit nicer to you over there in New York. Or have you had her sass to put up with as well?’
Benjamin turns to look at Fia, mischief in his eyes. ‘Literally none at all,’ he says.
The next morning, Fia wakes up several times before she really wakes up. The events of last night come flooding back to her, of course, but they’re quickly overtaken by thoughts of the events that are ahead today. Cursing herself (as usual) for being so slap-happy with the snooze button, she leaps up and hops into the shower, taking her toothbrush in there, too, for speed.
She has finished in the bathroom and is dashing around her bedroom when she hears a rap on the doorframe.
‘I know, I know, I’m coming!’ she says, her head still halfway inside the wardrobe. She riffles urgently through items, on the hunt not for anything specific, but merely for some suitable thing she’s going to know when she sees. As ever, she seems to have packed extremely badly for this entire trip, leaving herself doomed to cobble together outfits from whichever of her clothes happen to have stuck around in the house.
‘Your mom said that your dad is revving the engine,’ comes a voice then, and Fia leans all the way back, her attention suddenly very much piqued. Just a few feet away, hovering by her bedside table, it’s Benjamin.
‘Oh my God!’ she all but yelps. She clutches the hoodie against her chest instinctively, as though he is catching her naked, which he isn’t, exactly. She has her jeans and a bra on. But he could have caught her naked, which feels much more like the point. ‘What are you doing in here?!’
‘Uh …’ Benjamin looks momentarily a little paralysed. ‘Your mom said I should just “give you a quick knock to make sure you were definitely out of your pit”,’ he says then, his eyes flicking downwards briefly, then resolutely upwards again to face her. ‘That’s a direct quote. I really like her, by the way – she’s great.’
Suddenly, Fia feels slightly faint. The reality of Benjamin’s presence – the same reality she’s barely had a chance to think about this morning, in her haste – is now all she can think about. How on earth could she possibly have invited him here? What had seemed like a sort-of-unusual-but-okay decision last night seems borderline psychotic in the cold light of day.
Needless to say, Benjamin has not slept in her bedroom. Fia is fairly certain she could have claimed that herself and Benjamin were madly in love and shacked up together in Manhattan, and still her mother would have directed Benjamin towards Eoin’s single bed, handed him that pair of Eoin’s old pyjamas.
But here he is now.
‘Oh Jesus,’ she says weakly. ‘How long have you been awake?’
‘A while, I guess,’ he replies, right as Fia’s gaze makes its way to the half-eaten thing he’s holding.
‘What’s that?’ she asks, though of course she can see exactly.
Benjamin glances at it, too. ‘Oh. This is something called a “sausage sandwich”, Fia. And I don’t mind telling you, based on the name, I had my doubts. But, my God – your mom could set up a food truck selling just these in Brooklyn, and I swear she’d be making six figures easy.’
He takes a large bite, as if by way of illustration, somehow managing to grin even as he chomps through it.
Fia just stares at him, stunned and aggravated and … she doesn’t know what. Not even a minute previously, she’d been hurried, harried, but now her mind seems to be a complete blank. What had she even been intending to look for next? Her little mini hairbrush? A tampon, just in case? What is on the list of things she might need for a compulsory outing to the Wicklow coast with all her Yank co-workers? She suddenly has no idea. She’s hyper-conscious of whatever slivers of her skin might still be visible.
Meanwhile, Benjamin’s eyes scan the room, without even the slightest attempt at subtlety.
Fia is powerless to stop it, and immediately, she knows in her bones that this – this – is why she didn’t want him to come to the Summer Summit. It wasn’t only about the thought that she would have to see more of him. It was the thought that he would be seeing more of her – perhaps, in some intangible, unavoidable sort of way, seeing parts of her that she’d rather he didn’t.
And of course, that was when she merely envisaged him in Ireland generally – never mind sitting in A&E, improbably getting her to spill her guts about George; never mind, for example, in the kitchen of her parents’ house enjoying a minor fry-up, unsupervised; never mind here, while she is semi-clothed in her childhood bedroom.
As for that last bit in particular, he’s not seeing the place at anywhere close to its best.
Among Fia’s special skills has always been the ability to decimate a hotel room in less than half an hour. This house, as was brought to her attention repeatedly in adolescence, is not a hotel. But, nonetheless, she’s taken a very similar approach upon her return to it within the past few days. Clothes are strewn on various surfaces, her semi-unpacked suitcase still splayed open on the floor. On the bedside table, a collection of crockery and water glasses has accumulated.
‘You’re messy,’ Benjamin declares, as he takes in the scene. It’s not a question, not a hypothesis; it’s just an observation. The facts speak for themselves.
‘Uh, yeah,’ Fia mumbles. What she sometimes likes to tell other people, when the subject comes up, is that she is untidy, rather than messy. People like that. It is a relatable flaw to admit to. Not gross. But the truth is that, left to her own devices, she has the capacity to be untidy, messy, dirty – all of them. Of course, she makes an effort, given her usual communal living situation. And she makes even more of an effort in work – a colossal, constant, necessity-driven effort. But, in the privacy of her own space, it’s very different. She has been known to let things congeal.
‘And you’re late,’ Benjamin continues. He looks, at this point, about as happy as a human being can be. Fia imagines she could tell him he’s won the lottery, and still his grin could hardly get wider.
‘I’m not late,’ she says, and then, with a quick glance down at her watch, honesty forces her to amend. ‘Yet.’
This, in fact, is the usual way of it. She is very rarely late for things – she’s trained herself out of that – but she is almost always cutting it fine.
Benjamin says nothing – it is as though, in this moment, he might be recalibrating everything he ever thought to be true of her – and suddenly, Fia snaps back into action.
‘Turn around,’ she commands, and to his credit, he does so right away, with a bit of a chuckle. Swiftly, she wrestles on a T-shirt and the same hoodie she’s been grasping like armour. She reaches for an elastic band on her dressing table, sweeping her hair up into a ponytail. From the window, she can see the car on the driveway. Her father – somehow at once the most patient and most impatient man in the world – is indeed already sitting there, raring to go.
Haphazardly, she throws a few other items into her handbag, and then she’s pushing – physically pushing – Benjamin back out onto the landing and down the stairs.
He lets out a noise of protest that quickly becomes mostly laughter. His voice works its way into mock earnestness.
‘I gotta say, this doesn’t feel very welcoming, Fia. What happened to that famous Irish hospitality, huh?’ He polishes off the last of his sausage sandwich. ‘So far, you’re my least favourite member of this family by a mile.’