TITLE: In Every Bar

AUTHOR: Isabelle Kennedy

FEEDBACK: kennedyisabelle@hotmail.com

WEBPAGE: http://www.geocities.com/retroeighties

ARCHIVE: Anywhere, just drop me a line first.

CATEGORY: Jackie POV, AU, pretend this is a prequel to ‘Why Nineveh Is Still Standing’

SPOILERS: ‘Falling In Love’ & ‘Death Trap’

RATING: R

DISCLAIMER: All characters are the property of Glenn Chandler, ITV & SMG Productions. No copyright infringement intended. Summary is courtesy of Kim Addonizio.

SUMMARY: ‘Listen, it's simple, I'm saying it now, while I'm still sober/While I'm not about to weep bitterly into my own glass/While you're still here—don't go yet, stay, stay/Give me your shoulder to lean against, steady me, don't let me drop/I'm so in love with you I can't stand up’

*

Nine months after Michael died, she left her husband.

She tried to convince herself that the two were not connected, but she knows they’re inextricably linked, although not in the way most people would assume. She'd known him for twelve years, long enough for any desire between them (& it was there, certainly) to have subsided into a deep friendship - fraternal, not romantic, love. Maybe, at the beginning, there could have been something. In fact, she's fairly sure (as sure as one can be about these things) that if she hadn't been so ambitious, so unwilling to risk her burgeoning career, then there would have been.

And the knowledge that, if faced with the same choice now, she might make a different decision is redundant because she won't ever have the chance to find out. Yet this is not why she left her husband.

Her hotel room is anonymous, devoid of character: the curtains and bedspread are the same off-pink colour and the carpet is faded from too many footsteps. Whenever she stays in a hotel - which is, truly, not often - she finds herself wondering what happened inside the room. Anything, really, to lift it above its utter banality. Whether anyone died or committed suicide or adultery - she imagines that the majority of modern sins (the Catholic inside her) take place in hotels. And she is not above admitting that she once committed adultery in a room very similar to this. Or rather, she thinks, he committed adultery - she was twenty-four and the clandestine affair was exciting, even if the sex wasn't.

At the time, she'd thought this man to be the one great passion of her life and now she can't even remember his name.

Brian wasn't a bad husband. He didn't drink, didn't cheat, didn't hit her (although there was one time she'd known he had wanted to) and she's seen enough in her job to realise that was rarer than people thought. But she's old enough to recognise the difference between affection and passion and young enough not to spend the rest of her life with him just because the former is safer than the latter.

He wasn't a bad husband and she wasn't in love with him.

*

It wasn’t a dramatic parting, all suitcases and shouting. He’s not like that, wouldn’t let her leave like that. And so she didn’t shout (even though she might have wanted to), she didn’t even tell him why when he asked her. When he asked her if there was anyone else, asked if she was fucking anyone else (because she wasn’t even fucking her husband by this point) she wished she could say yes. ‘Yes, I’m sleeping with someone else’ rather than ‘No, I just don’t love you’. Not even ‘No, I don’t love you anymore’ because she’s not sure she ever did.

The minibar is next to the chipboard wardrobe, the key where she left it on the bedside table. The alcohol is small & inordinately expensive, but it’s too late to go out. The Bacardi is, she thinks, too frivolous, the whisky reminds her of men she’d rather forget and so she drinks the vodka. She wishes that she had a cigarette, but she has given up again for, like, the fifty-fifth time so she doesn’t. Anyway, Stolichnaya and cigarettes would’ve been too much; she could have been seventeen again, could have been twenty-one again (when she was young enough to be decadent & entrancing, without looking cheap) and it’s at least one blessing that she’s not.

So he sat in their kitchen and she packed her belongings and divided what was hers. Never got to say ‘I’m leaving you’ and flounce out (not that she would’ve done). Instead, she told him she was sorry (and she was), that she would speak to him soon (and she probably will) and that there was no-one else (and she lied). He watched her leave & she didn’t look back (she should have looked back).

The vodka burns her throat.

*

He didn’t go to the funeral. She’s pretty sure he thought she was overreacting, pretty sure he thought she was in love with a dead man. But it wasn’t like that, not really. She’d worshipped him, had idolised him, but she’d never been in love with him. She told him that. She didn’t tell her husband about the other man, the one who (if she’d let him) would have likely fucked on the floor of a tango hall. And she wishes that she’d let him. She wasn’t in love with him, either, but she could have been, all too easily.

She pours another shot; the vodka stings her throat, her lungs, as she swallows. It tastes of nothing (how appropriate) and she stretches her legs in front of her, leans back against the bed.

She should have let him, wanted desperately to let him, wanted to feel his hands on her, wanted to feel him inside her. Except, if she had, nothing would ever have been the same again. But she doesn’t think she cares anymore.

The bottle’s empty.

*

She’s drinking the Bacardi (couldn’t face the whisky). The liquid, almost impenetrably dark, swirls in the bottle (she’s given up on the glass) and it’s too sweet – she knew it would be. She looks at the bottle and thinks, it’s partially drunk, but never completely gone (doesn’t remember which poet wrote that).

She lied. She wasn’t in love with him then, not in the tango hall, but (& it sounds like such a fucking cliché, that she can hardly bear to say it) she might, perhaps, be now. It’s pathetic really that she has to jump from man to man, like some neurotic teenager. But then it’s not because this thing (it’s terrible to admit) spans past her husband. It doesn’t matter anyway, because she’s never going to tell him, tell either of them. She’s never going to tell him (although there’s a chance she might be in love with him) because she doesn’t know how he feels, she’s not willing to risk the humiliation of feeling fifteen again. He’s probably, definitely, worth it – she thinks he might be the one great passion of her life (& she’s old enough to know for certain) – but she isn’t sure she deserves it.

She’s drunk and she’s a mess and she doesn’t care that this is the way it ends.

Finis.