“Call me when you can. Not urgent. J.”

I missed this text yesterday when it came in, and I’m kind of glad I did. Let’s say I was on my phone at work, rummaging through the Nordstrom app for shoes, and this message flashed on my screen? I would have frozen first, then spent another two hours talking with Ben about what it might be about, trying to second guess whatever the non-emergency could be. And even though I should, I wouldn’t tell Alex. I don’t want to talk to him about these things.

Instead of shoe shopping, Ben had had me run to Elmwood to pick up a few boxes of books we were taking on consignment — mostly art books from the middle of last century, but a couple of first edition titles, too. My phone was off while I was visiting with the seller, who had insisted on making me a cup of tea (dainty Wedgwood cup, quite pretty) and serving up some of his (fairly disgusting) spirulina cookies, so I had no way of knowing right away that this little bomb was stashed in my hoodie pocket, waiting to detonate. “This message will self-destruct along with your peace of mind in 3… 2… 1…”

It was only after I had choked down a second cookie that I was able to wrap up conversation — the seller had picked up on my SoCal accent and then subjected me to stories of teaching at UCLA in the 90s (he wanted to make it clear he was a cool professor, and told me about his time in various mosh pits and dive bars circa 1994). But I wanted his books, so I nodded with what I hoped was a pleasant expression while he told me about the time someone named Henry Rollins kicked him in the solar plexus. (I am very used to nodding and looking pleasant while feeling deeply uncomfortable after years of hanging around in a marriage where I had outworn my welcome — whatever it had been — with a mother-in-law who delighted in cutting me down to size.) Cool Prof helped me carry the books (“That book on Kandinsky is sublime“) to the van, and gave me his card, telling me that I should give him a call if I ever want to discuss Žižek. (Ew, no. Double no if more spirulina cookies are involved.)

It was only after I climbed in the van and started setting up the paraphernalia of driving — open a seltzer, set up Google Maps on my phone — that I saw the message notification and felt my heart seize.

J. Julian.

It’s amazing how even now, with the final judgment of divorce entered three months ago, I still feel some minor flare of excitement in seeing a text from him, or (even rarer) speaking with him. Sense memory, I guess, from all those nights I waited for him to text or call — first when he was in London, then when he was over here in the States but away on business. His absence was an ache in my bones, getting worse the further and longer he was away. The six months he spent in the UK after he got his green card were the worst — still newly married, and yet so far apart. “I’m doing this for us, Melissa,” he’d tell me during our nightly calls, calls which would start with my forced gaiety and usually end in my tears. “I’m over here so that we can be stronger and more stable when I return. I don’t ever want you to worry about money. Ever.” And he was good as his word, since there always seemed to be plenty of the stuff to fill up my life.

Oh, I did love him so much! Caitlin sees me now with Alex, and wonders how I ever thought I was in love with “that stuck up toad” Julian. But there were things that Julian brought me that I treasured — an old-fashioned masculine force that was a shield for me from the world at a time I believed I needed to be protected from thinking too much. Through the whole blog fiasco (shudder) he was only too happy to lash out at anyone he thought was attacking me. When Alex — before there was an “Alex and Melissa” as we now are — was needling him not to marry me, or sending me semi-cryptic messages telling me Julian was throwing his life away to be with me, Julian stepped in to defuse the situation. He only wanted to make us all friends again, to ensure harmony between his best mate and his best girl. I’m afraid it worked too well.

But as I sat in the van, I wasn’t thinking about all the right things of Julian. Rather, I was concerned what the wrong things of Melissa were that had brought on this text. For these days, the texts and calls weren’t even of the explosive variety that immediately followed Julian’s discovery of the… whatever it was Alex and I had. (Whatever it was, it wasn’t physical, at least, not for a while.) No, communication with Julian now is limited to discussions about money, more or less. And while his lawyers have repeatedly asked him to let them carry the load when it comes to my support payments, he insists on making sure he is the alpha and omega of all such discussions with me. “It’s my money, Melissa. Any of your questions or requests need to come through me. All those lawyers do is take money away that could be used for you, can’t you see?”

But I knew this wasn’t a discussion about money — the monthly stipend had been paid on time earlier this week, and I hadn’t asked for any increase in some time (not since the aborted attempt to move to San Francisco). I wasn’t that afraid to call him back, although I had been in the first months after he stormed out of our home in Pasadena — every call an opportunity for him to dress me down for wasting his life and his chance at fatherhood (though I’d remind him that at only 32, as he was then, he could always find another partner, which only made him rage further, since “it only ever has been you, Melissa, and it never will be anyone but you”). In his telling, I had betrayed him again and again and again, starting when I allowed him to take me back as his girlfriend after Alex and I had ended our “unfortunate affair” back in Bristol. After all, he’d remind me, I still loved Alex back then. Alex never would have abandoned me if I’d actually put up a fight, and Julian then wouldn’t have had to rescue me when I was so vulnerable. And if Julian had never had to rescue me, why, Alex and I would have just stayed together all these years, and I never would have broken Julian’s heart and drained his wallet. (“You would have been his responsibility, his mess to repeatedly tend to.”) This is a story I believed for so long, I almost made it true. But it wasn’t.

A discussion about money would be easier than whatever this was likely to be. It had been years since we had had a conversation that was… relaxed, affectionate, expansive, meandering (an adjective he always used to describe my “monologues”). No, whatever he was likely to say would cut me close, would be intended to cut me close.

Better to jump into the freezing water before I could think more of the snapping turtles that lay beneath the surface. Alex would prefer that I not return any of Julian’s communications these days (occasionally Julian has a bit too much to drink and starts posting snippy things on my Insta, and though Alex says I should block him, I don’t). “You talk to him and you start believing again all the shite he fed you about yourself for years — that you’re feeble, that you can’t take care of yourself, that if you had only had a care for him you wouldn’t need to be — how did he put it? — living on the scraps of a boyfriend’s time. None of it’s true, Mel. He’s right about only one thing — I shouldn’t have been a coward and let him bully me into walking away from you. Fucker.”

Julian picked up on the third ring. His sweet voice — “Hullo, Melissa” — passed over the line and across my eardrum.

“Sorry I took so long to call you, I was on a book run and left my phone on silent. How are you? Is everything okay?”

“This won’t take long. I don’t want to keep you from your little shop, especially on a Friday afternoon. I know you have that long journey to Frisco to take. Why he doesn’t just send a car for you… he can afford it, you know.”

“Julian, no one calls it ‘Frisco.’ And it’s my choice to make it to San Francisco any way I wish to.”

The brief silence that followed was the aural equivalent of a shrug. “Suit yourself, you always did. I’m calling about Jamie. I suppose you know by now he’s getting married in October to Bex.”

Bex had sent around an informal save-the-date a few days ago, and I had already booked the time off with Ben, who said it was fine as long as I brought him back some Harry-and-Megan kitschy tea towels. Alex had arranged to spend a week back at his London office before the wedding, and 10 days of holiday after. Careful negotiations with Minty were under way for Lucy to spend three days with us in Lyme Regis, followed by a trip to Perthshire to see Cora and Fenn (and check on the state of the old house). It was to be our first trip back as a couple, the first time we would be welcomed openly as a pair. I couldn’t speed through the coming months fast enough.

“Yes! Alex told me earlier this week he’s been asked to be an usher. I’ve already booked a room in Crowborough,” I said, then a chill passed over me. If Julian knows then —

“Melissa, I don’t know if he” — Alex, since Julian can’t bring himself to say the name — “told you, but Jamie… well, Jamie’s my boy but he’s got a soft heart. He’s asked me to stand up with him as well, which simply can’t work. I tried to explain to him that surely no one would like a wedding where two of the ushers can’t be in each other’s presence. Who benefits?”

My turn to be silent for a beat. “Are you asking me to tell Alex he can’t be in the wedding?”

“Melissa, even you can surely see how… awkward this would be for everyone. He should be the better man he believes himself to be and send a gift only.” Julian sounded so certain, I almost believed him.

“And me? What about me?” I had already made plans with Miranda for the night before the wedding to have her spend the night with me while Alex was off with the other ushers and Jamie. Yeah, I can’t believe sometimes Miranda and I figured it out, but we did at Minty and Alex’s wedding. A story for another time, I think.

“Liss,” he said, using the pet name he only ever used when he thought I was being particularly muddleheaded. “No one’s saying you shouldn’t be there. I would never say you shouldn’t be there. It’s just… I think everyone would be uncomfortable if Alex was up there with me, given how unfortunately everything turned out. How would it look for me to pretend I was all right with how he disrespected my marriage? Appalling.”

“And I’m supposed to what, Julian? Tell Alex you said no?” I could already imagine how such a conversation would unfold — a lot of swearing, much stomping and liberal use of the word “cunt” as a noun, an adjective, and in a gerund form.

“It’s not like I can call him, Melissa. You have his ear. Help him see reason. Why, he could spend an extra couple of days up in that lovely old house of his with Fennella and his mum. One of things I miss most about … my former best friend was his charming family. Always loved them, especially Fenn. I do hope she’s keeping well; she’s one who always needed a bit of… special handling.”

Oh no. No no no no no. I knew the hint implicit in the reference to Fenn. Sweet Fennella, a little bonkers, wildly artistic, never had it together enough to make it through more than a year at Glasgow School of Art. She came home to Cora for a safe place to paint and draw the duochromatic studies she managed to sell a few times a year. Before there was me, Fenn was set on Julian, and he encouraged her, a little heartlessly. And in the year before I brought him to America, when Julian and I had a brief break (Caitlin said I had finally come to my senses and determined that a life being bullied wasn’t worth the pretty words Julian sometimes had for me), he had decamped to Alex’s family home to be babied by the Carr women. It was an open question how much indulgence Fenn had provided to Julian while in her home, just as I never spoke to Julian about my own pathetic attempts at dating during that time.

“You wouldn’t dare bring Fenn into this, Julian,” I yelled (I admit) at him. “You wouldn’t dare play on her feelings just to, what? Not have to be uncomfortable for two whole nights? What are you going to do, sweet talk her into pressuring Alex to stay away?”

“Melissa, your imagination is running away with you again.” He made a little tsk with his tongue. “You always were so fanciful. Please do the right thing and talk to him. He’ll know he has to put Jamie’s happiness before his own desire to get drunk with his friends, like he usually does at these things. And it’s not like you like seeing him that way. I can’t imagine you’d enjoy feeling like at any moment your paramour” — his voice sounded rotten with scorn — “might take a swing at your ex-husband. You know how unstable he can be when he’s angry. It really is for the best. Be a good girl.”

There was nothing for me to say. I couldn’t completely disagree that having the two in the same room with an open bar was a spectacularly bad idea. And it’s true that Alex would be unlikely to take a call from Julian. (“Never ask me speak to him, Mel. I can’t say I feel like being sent away to an American prison.”) And… some part of me wants peace between us three. It’s too exhausting.

“Fine, Julian,” I sighed. “I can’t promise anything.”

“Melissa, you know I’m right. You always know when I am. It will be good to see you in Sussex in October, without all the distractions we have here. Let me know when he’s agreed, just send a text.”

*click*

And here I am, Saturday night. Saturday night and Alex still doesn’t know. I tried this evening to tell him. I thought after we’d had the dinner I’d thrown together — oven roasted salmon, green beans, fingerling potatoes — I’d have the nerve. But I didn’t. And Alex is asleep, it’s not like I can wake him up to tell him not to show up for the wedding, or that Julian might start manipulating Fenn’s tender heart.

I won’t have much rest tonight. Caitlin’s right — Julian is reaching out from the grave of our marriage, and his grip on my heart and mind is still so tight. He always knew how to squeeze the life out of me.