Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow? (17 page)

‘I know and it’s fine, really…’

‘You must hate me, and if you don’t…then what’s wrong with you?’

I smile, unable to remember the last time he even attempted to crack a joke with me.

‘So what happened to Paul’s horse in the end?’

‘We lost her.’

‘Oh…I’m so sorry.’

‘At least it was for the best that I was there; poor old James has never had to put an animal to sleep before and your first time is always tough as hell. Anyway I took care of it for him, then ended up staying with Paul for a long time afterwards to calm him down. He’s devastated, but then you know what he’s like over his horses. Like surrogate kids.’

I nod silently, completely understanding where he’s coming from. It doesn’t seem like all that long ago when Dan himself had to put his first animal to sleep and I’m not messing, he grieved for days, torturing himself over and over again by asking the one question all vets have to deal with sooner or later – ‘could I have done more?’

He’s standing right beside me now, towering over me as always, and next thing, he’s slipped his arms round my waist. Instinctively I lean into him, snuggling into the deep, comforting, pulsating warmth of him, and we stay like that, peacefully and in silence. It’s tiny, it’s nothing, but it’s the closest and most tender we’ve been in weeks, ever since Christmas morning.

I think, OK, so if we can’t part as lovers, then let’s at least part as friends. There are yards of things that I want to say to him but this is the first soft, intimate moment we’ve had in an age and I don’t want to cast a ripple over it. Plenty of time on the long drive to Dublin for us to talk.
To say what needs to be said, to say goodbye properly. For now, I just want to hold him, to hoard him, to memorise him.

Next thing, he’s running his fingers through my hair and I’m stretching up to kiss him.

‘Oh Annie, my little Annie. What in the hell am I supposed to do without you?’

For all of about three seconds I contemplate not going at all.

I think about staying here with Dan instead. My mainspring. I think about trying harder to make things work…making more of an effort…

‘DAN? ANNIE? ARE YOU BOTH STILL UPSTAIRS? I JUST WONDERED IF YOU BOTH WANTED TEA BEFORE YOU LEFT FOR THE AIRPORT?’

Mrs Brophy and just like that…mood instantly shattered. Hot on her heels, we both hear James and Andrew clattering in through the front door, demanding tea/juices/breakfast/whatever’s going. All the normal Monday morning chaos.

‘There’s our cue,’ he sighs and I can feel him lightly kissing my hair. Next thing, we’ve broken apart as he goes downstairs to them, while I do a last-minute check of the bedroom and bathroom, making sure I’ve left nothing behind.

The goodbyes downstairs are brief and to the point, like I’m just heading off for a long weekend and will be back before anyone even notices I’m gone. No rudeness intended, it’s just that as per usual, the phones have started hopping and everyone is suddenly swept up in the usual pandemonium that’s all part of life at The Moorings.

Virtually unnoticed, Dan and I walk side by side to the
car, him carrying my heavy carry-on luggage for me and easily swinging it up into the boot. Car door clunks and we’re off. Our last and final two hours together for a full year. I have it all planned out; that he’ll walk me right up to the boarding gates…I’ll finally get to introduce him to Blythe and Chris and Alex, to prove to them that I actually really do have a husband and that he really does exist, thanks very much. That we’ll have coffee and hold hands and kiss passionately at the point of no return, when they’re calling my flight. We’ll be like a couple in a nineteen forties black-and-white movie, I think romantically, like
Brief Encounter,
with him starring as Trevor Howard and me as Celia Johnson.

But surprise surprise, it’s not to be. Practically the minute we get onto the motorway, his mobile rings. Paul Fogarty, from last night, asking Dan if he and James can bury the mare that had to be put to sleep last night, that between the three of them they should be about able to manage it. Course, Dan says obligingly, except I’m on my way to Dublin airport now and won’t get back to Stickens till lunchtime at the earliest, blah-di-blah-di-blah. I hear the whole conversation playing out like a radio play on Dan’s hands-free phone. But burying the mare will take hours and will have to be done before nightfall, insists Paul, the subtext being that Dan better dump me at the drop-off bit of the airport, then race back.

Ooo-kaaay then, I think numbly. So no coming inside the terminal to meet all the others, then. No romantic farewell at the boarding gate. Jeez, it’s a minor miracle I even got him to drive me to Dublin in the first place.

Then other clients start calling him, non-stop, one after the other, it seems every single one of them yet another
emergency: more and more people demanding a piece of him. And it’s the same, old same old. By now, we’re almost halfway there and we’ve barely said two words to each other.

‘Sorry about this,’ he keeps saying to me over and over, and I nod and manage a watery smile as I stare dully out the window.

‘By the way, Annie, when we get there, is it OK if I just drop you at the terminal door? Paul really needs me ASAP and that’ll be another two hours’ drive back.’

‘Fine. Whatever.’

I even throw in a shoulder shrug to convey complete flippancy. Because if saying goodbye means so little to him, then why should it mean so much to me? What did I expect anyway? I think, suddenly, irrationally furious. That Dan might…perish the thought…switch off his mobile so we could have this last, precious time together? And of course, the usual thing, not his fault…can’t be helped…all beyond his control…yadda, yadda, yadda. I rummage round for a feeling but can’t find a single one. Nothing but the same dull acceptance of everything I’ve been putting up with, year in, year out. Of all the disappointments and let-downs he’s put me through lately, this is a relatively minor one, so why, I wonder, am I even bothered?

Worst of all though, for the brief spells when he’s not on the phone, we’ve got nothing to say to each other. Me because I can’t seem to properly articulate everything that’s going through my head right now, while he just stares tensely at the road ahead, occasionally filling awkward, dead air by commenting on the traffic. No mention of the fact that I’m going away for so long, no promises to call me when I arrive, no talk of him coming to New York to see me, nothing.

Then disaster; when we finally arrive at the turn-off for the airport, there’s been an accident on a roundabout, and the traffic is backed up for what looks like half a mile. It’s not budging either and now it’s getting scarily close to check-in time.

Next thing an empty taxi pulls up beside us which Dan spots immediately.

‘Annie, I could be stuck here for another hour at least and you’re going to be late…what if you grabbed that cab and let it take you the rest of the way? At least the driver could use the bus lanes so you’d get to the airport on time. Then I could turn the car round here and make it back to help out Paul that bit faster.’

Seems I’ve no choice if I want to make the flight so I say yes, fine.

And so this is how I end up saying goodbye to Dan. On a busy motorway in the middle of a traffic jam, with car horns blaring all round us.

The airport scene is even worse. I’ve often thought that airports are like giant amphitheatres of emotion, with security lines and check-in desks designed to interrupt the sheer awfulness of being wrenched apart from loved ones. Designed to muffle the pain of separation.

As soon as I get to the terminal building, I can see Chris hugging her husband and little boy, all three of them in tears and I feel a quick stab of jealousy. Because they’ll all be reunited again in a few weeks for the opening night. Whereas God only knows when I’ll see my significant other again.

Blythe is here too, wearing a coat that looks like it was made out of cut-up bus seats and sniffling away as she bids
her thirty-something son/pride and joy goodbye. But then she brightens a bit when she realises she still has duty-free ahead of her to bargain hunt in.

No sign of Liz, so I figure she’s either gone on through to clear security or else knowing her, she’s already holed up in the airside bar, doubtless with an eye-opener on one side of her and a single man on the other. Then I spot Alex in the distance heading for a bookshop, with a giant oversized backpack strapped to her and looking to all intents and purposes like she’s going off InterRailing for her gap year.

‘Hubby not here to see you off, then?’ says a voice at my ear, nearly making me leap with fright.

Jack.

Looking as effortlessly cool and unruffled as ever, in a bespoke suit, carrying an ipad in one hand and a latte in the other.

‘He was…that is to say…emm…we got stuck in traffic outside the airport, so I jumped in a cab to take me the rest of the way,’ I manage to say evenly enough and without any tell-tale cracks in my voice.

‘Good last weekend together though?’ he asks politely, keeping pace with me as I make my way through the crowds to the Aer Lingus check-in desk.

‘Wonderful,’ I lie stoutly, wondering why I’m even bothering. What does it matter now? Who even cares?

‘And I’ll finally get to meet him on opening night, of course?’

‘Of course you will.’

Which sounds false, even to me.

‘Well, I’ll see you on board then. God, don’t you just hate airline travel? God’s way of making you look like your passport photo.’

I force a wry half smile at this, but luckily there’s no further awkward chit-chat though, as Jack is flying Premier class and so after a few more wisecracks about having to practically get half undressed at airport security, he nods goodbye, then makes for the posh check-in desk – the one with no queue, where you just sail through.

I queue up at economy, collect my boarding pass and head for the security gates.

And then, totally alone, I head through the gate of no return.

SPRING

Chapter Seven

Stop the world, I want to get on! It’s unbelievable. It’s extraordinary. I’m in love. Head over heels in love. But not with a bloke, with New York City. And just like any first love, it’s the most massive and overwhelming head rush. It’s completely swept me up in its wake and I cannot remember the last time in my life that I was this ridiculously, insanely bird-happy. I actually wake up singing, like some demented cartoon heroine; in fact, all I’m short of is a little Disney robin landing on my shoulder and helping me do the laundry,
à la Snow White
.

Something tells me that New York and I are going to be a lifelong affair. It’s not just the vibrant energy of the place I love, the exuberance, the way that everyone is in such a mad, tearing haste twenty-four-seven, it’s so, so much more.

Now bear in mind that I’ve just spent the last three years of my life in a remote country village where the giddy height of excitement might either be Bridie McCoy getting her bunions lanced or else Fagan’s pub being raided after hours yet again, ho hum. And to come from all of that to all of this? It’s just so breathtaking and exhilarating and though I’m practically sleepwalking with exhaustion from jetlag, not to mention all the technical rehearsals we’ve been
having, I swear there are nights when I can’t bring myself to conk out; I’m just too buzzed up on the sheer adrenaline rush of actually being here.

Funny, but even though I had one flying trip here years and years ago with Dan, another lifetime ago when we first got engaged, this still feels like my first proper visit. Probably because he and I barely left our hotel room on that holiday – we were so revoltingly, toe-curlingly loved-up that we existed only in a little cocoon of our own making, completely oblivious to our surroundings. In fact, we could have been on Mars and frankly neither one of us would have noticed.

But now that I’m actually spending a decent amount of time here and really seeing New York without the love goggles…oh my God, it’s even more than I could have ever possibly imagined it to be. Weird, but in many ways, it already seems so familiar to me from watching a thousand movies shot here, not to mention the entire box set of
Sex and the City
. Like every time I turn a corner, I nearly expect to trip over a camera crew shooting an episode of
Gossip Girl.

If every city has its own unique smell, then New York’s has to be strong coffee and pretzels and the sweet fresh smell of challah bread from the thousands of delis you pass on each and every street corner, all somehow mixed in with the stale smell of sweaty, hassled pedestrians who power walk up and down the city’s streets and avenues, twenty-four-seven. And it’s fab and I love it and somehow all the problems of home just seem to be a million miles away.

If all that wasn’t amazing enough, you want to see the apartments where we’ve all been billeted for the duration of the show! They’re right beside each other in a stunning, art deco, nineteen twenties building on Madison Avenue
at East Forty-Fifth Street, only a stone’s throw from Fifth Avenue and a short hop to the theatre. Sorry, ahem, I mean
theater.

The even-more-phenomenal news is that unlike most rentals in the city, they’re not studio apartments the approximate size of a child’s play tent; no, they’re all one-bedroomed and unbelievably spacious which effectively means that we’re living the life of luxury, like Russian oligarchs. Or one of the Hilton sisters, dependent on taste.

Another thing, at the grand old age of twenty-eight, I have a confession to make – never once, in my whole life have I lived alone and I’ve taken to it shamelessly. I love and adore my gorgeous apartment, which is big and bright by the way, with massive windows in the living room that overlook Forty-Fifth Street, a staggering twenty-five floors below me. It’s beautifully decorated too: everything is in delicate shades of white, cream and magnolia and all the furniture is blonde – the sofa, the armchairs, the floorboards, everything. Kind of makes you feel like you’re in Heaven’s departure lounge.