Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow? (38 page)

The Countess Dracula is in my home, living my life and there’s nothing on earth I can possibly do about it.

I think back to the last strange half-conversation I had with Dan. All that talk about if you love someone, then you should set them free. Is this what he was hinting at? That I set him free so he could be with someone else? Is that why he’s hardly been calling me at all lately? Because he’s already moved on with someone else?

And worse still is the thought of what mischief Jules has been up to since she got back to Stickens.

Jules. Much as I love her dearly, I think back to her awful habit of exaggerating tales out of all proportion till they bear only the merest sliver of resemblance to the truth. Knowing her, she’s blabbed on and on endlessly about Jack and everything that happened while she was here, with the result that God only knows what Dan must be thinking now.

I don’t blame Jules a bit; this is what she does and it’s my own fault, I should have known better. I should have
got to Dan before she did and I didn’t and now I have to live with the fallout.

But one thing is for certain, I can’t sit here doing nothing. I won’t. I need to be alone with Dan. I need to tell him everything. About Jack, everything. Not that there’s much to tell, but God alone knows what damage has been done and there’s only one way for me to clear everything up. Worst of all, I need to hear whatever Dan has to say to me about what’s going on in his private life. I may not like what I hear, but the very least I need is to hear it from him, first hand.

Right then. There’s only one thing for it I decide, even surprising myself by feeling a lightness, a sense of relief once the decision has finally been made.

I’m going home.

Once I’ve put the wheels in motion, the rest is surprisingly easy. For starters, all of the cast are contractually entitled to one week’s holiday during the year’s run and I’m the only one who hasn’t availed of this yet. Both Blythe and Chris already took their holidays months ago: Blythe travel led home to see her son and to give him ‘a few bob’ as she put it, while Chris and Josh took little Oscar to Disneyland, Florida during her week off. Meanwhile, Alex went out to Vegas with some pals of hers only a few weeks ago and of course poor old Liz is out of the show now, but for very different reasons. Which just leaves me, with a whole, entire week off that I’m fully entitled to.

I notify the stage director to officially ask permission and he’s terrific about it, saying that he can call in my understudy for rehearsal in the next day or two, depending on when I need to travel. As soon as possible, I tell him.
Jack, I know, is back out in LA this week for yet more meetings, but as soon as word filters back to him, he’s on the phone to me immediately.

‘You’re going
away
?’ he asks, completely stunned.

You’d swear I’d said I was going off to join an enclosed order of nuns. ‘It’s my week’s holidays. I haven’t taken them yet, so I just thought…’

‘Yes, yes, I know you’re entitled to a free week,’ he says and even though he’s calling from thousands of miles away in Beverly Hills, I can still hear the impatience in his voice.

‘But why do you have to go now? And where are you off to?’

‘Home.’

‘
Home?
Is everything OK? What’s going on? Why the sudden mad dash to get back there?’

‘Jack, just take it from me, there’s stuff going on that I need to be around for. That can’t be sorted out long distance.’

‘Tell you what,’ he sighs like he’s cutting me a deal, and in the background I’d swear I can hear the lapping of water, like he’s ringing me from some five-star swimming pool in the Chateau Marmont, being served by beautiful cocktail waitresses with PHD’s hanging out of their earlobes.

Which knowing him, he probably is.

‘If you really have to go home, then do, but how about you just go back to Ireland for a weekend, then come out here to LA for the rest of your week off? You’d love it here – blue skies, palm trees, beautiful people everywhere, I could introduce you to some movie producers…’

‘You don’t understand, Jack. I really have to spend the week at home. It’s important.’

I sound irritated, edgy and snappy. And if I’m being
brutally honest, the real reason is because I feel a bit sick at what happened between us. I hate living with it and what’s more, I hate that Jack is piling pressure on me now.

‘Well, if for any reasons your plan should change, just remember my offer is still on the table.’

It’s my last Sunday matinee before I travel back to Ireland and the only person who I’ve confided the whole story to is Blythe, who’s so completely understanding about everything that it would nearly break your heart.

‘Whatever is going on back in your house,’ she tells me calmly, ‘there’s one thing for certain – you can only sort it out by being there in person. So best of luck, pet, and keep in touch, to let me know how you get on. And you never know, maybe all your fears are unfounded and the whole thing is just one big misunderstanding. I’ll light a candle for you every day that…well…that…’

That what? I can see her thinking. Because what’s the right outcome in this mess?

‘…that the right thing happens for everyone concerned,’ she finishes off tactfully.

Light a candle? Make that a bonfire of them while you’re at it, I think ruefully.

My flight is at eight-forty in the evening, so I grab a cab for the airport straight after the show at five-ish and arrive at JFK good and early. Back in Ireland, no one knows what I’m at or is even expecting me; this is a covert visit and I’ll be arriving by stealth first thing tomorrow morning, surprise being the best form of attack here, I feel.

Not unlike the Normandy landings.

My plan is to call Dan when I arrive at Shannon and say, ‘Hey! Guess where I am?’ In my head, I have it all
worked out; he’ll dash to the airport to collect me, we’ll have a lovely reunion scene and then…the part I’m not looking forward to, we’ll go somewhere far from Stickens, far from The Moorings where we can talk. Properly talk. Where he can tell me what’s going on in his life and where I’ll come clean about mine.

That, by the way, would be about as far as I’ve got in my cunning master plan; the rest, I figure, we’ll just take from there.

Anyway, feeling more cautiously optimistic than I’ve a right to and with a spring in my step, I clamber out of the taxi, pay the fare and am just about to load my bag into a trolley before heading to check-in, when my mobile rings.

Jules. I answer the phone, silently praying that she won’t hear all the airport announcements in the background.

‘Hey, love,’ I answer, trying to sound perky and sunny while wheeling an overstuffed suitcase to the check-in desk. ‘Good to hear from you! What’s up?’

‘Oh Annie…’ Jesus, I realise she’s almost sobbing.

‘You know I promised to keep you posted on any and all developments from this end?’

I say nothing, but my stomach suddenly forms itself into a very inconvenient knot.

‘Well, there’s more news, terrible news, and you won’t like it, but I thought you really should know.’

‘Tell me,’ I manage to say, sounding hoarse.

‘They’ve all gone to Euro Disney. Earlier today. All of them. Dan took Lisa and the kids, piled them into his jeep and off they drove to Dublin for the flight to Paris.’

My knees start to buckle, but somehow I manage to find my voice.

‘Dan…went with them?’

‘Dan went with them.’

There’s three hundred things I want to ask her but a weak, watery ‘Are you sure?’ is all I can get out.

‘A hundred percent. He even put James in charge of the surgery till he gets back. I’m so sorry, Annie, I don’t know what else to say.’

I have to tell her that I’ll call her back, mainly because there’s a good chance I might physically throw up.

Somehow, I manage to drag myself and my luggage to a plastic seat beside the check-in area and sit there for a long, long time. Slumped into the chair and utterly numb. The pain hasn’t hit yet, there’s just a black hole inside of me, with the expectation of pain.

I call Dan’s mobile and it’s that long foreign ring tone, the one you only ever get if you’re on the continent, abroad. I hang up, not leaving any message and make a silent vow that if he ever calls or texts me again, I won’t answer.

So he’s really gone to Paris with her then, I think, as the knife of realisation finally plunges in. Dan who has to be physically dragged away from work. Dan who never, ever takes a holiday, for any reason whatsoever. Dan who wouldn’t even come to New York for my opening night.

Yet he’s no bother going to Euro Disney with Lisa and her kids? My flight is being called and still I just sit there, letting the long line of disgruntled, hassled passengers all walk past me to check in.

What to do, what to do, what to do?

Going back to Ireland now is out of the question. And I’m just way too shell-shocked and weak-kneed to face crawling back to Manhattan, back to all the well-intentioned questions I’d have to face from the others about why I cancelled my week off in the first place. My mind has
spiralled off into an agonising whirlwind and right now there’s only one person who I want to be with. Someone who’ll pick me up and try to put me back together, as she’s done before and I know will do again.

I pick up my phone and call my mother. As ever, she comes up trumps for me; I give her an abridged, potted history of what’s happened and in the background I can hear her tap-tapping away at her computer keyboard.

Stay calm, she tells me, we’ll sort you out. You’ve got a week off, so let’s make the most of it. She finds a flight that’s due to leave for Washington later this evening at seven-thirty and books me onto it, coolly telling me to pick up my ticket at the Delta check-in desk.

Moving numbly along, I do just as she tells me, and an hour later, I’m on a flight to DC, where Mum has promised she’ll be waiting at the other end for me.

The flight is an hour-and-a-half long and I sob my heart out the whole sorry way.

Chapter Sixteen

It’s like fecking déjà vu. Here I am, sitting with Mum, with much wailing, lamenting and gnashing of teeth as I go over and over the whole horrible story of Dan and our sorry marriage sabbatical, with special embellishment reserved for this latest update in the never-ending saga. I’m sitting at the kitchen table opposite Mum, head in my hands, like an old drama queen who’s been pulled out of retirement for one final repeat performance, except this time I’ve scarcely the energy to lift my eyes up to her.

Mum, by the way, is giving me a right dose of tough love now; I’m guessing her logic is that she’s being cruel to be kind. The two of us are in the kitchen of her elegant, sophisticated Washington apartment on Wisconsin Avenue, in McLean, DC, the heart of the embassy belt. The décor is typical Mum; she’s completely redecorated a modern condo to make it look older, to give it a bit of gravitas and to fit in with all of her antique furniture, collected over years of travelling and haggling at every auction house from Pakistan to Georgetown and back again.

Something she excels at, just like Mum excels at everything.

She’s looking at me worriedly now, serving afternoon tea
in Hermès and pearls, all neat and groomed with her sleek bobbed hair, ready for business even though it’s a Sunday and the consulate is closed.

A completely disconnected thought flashes through my mind: why so dressed up on her day off? In case there might be some last-minute lost passport emergency involving an Irish national? On a Sunday night? But I let it pass – too much else to worry about. She pours tea into two elegant china cups and hands one over to me, although what I’d really kill for right now is a glass of anything alcoholic. No, scratch that; make that a
bucket
of anything alcoholic.

‘May I remind you, Annie dear,’ Mum says firmly, ‘that you didn’t so much back away from your life in Stickens as run screaming in the opposite direction from it? Remember last Christmas, how upset you were? Everything about being there was driving you crazy – feeling that you were living in someone else’s house, the constant comings and goings of all of Dan’s family and colleagues, never seeing him from dawn till dusk…’

I nod glumly. I know. Course I remember. All too bleeding well.

‘Then this opportunity to go away for a year came along and you were off like a bullet. And as we know, the long-distance relationship thing didn’t work because let’s face it, they so rarely do, so you both wisely agreed to take a break.’

‘I know all this, Mum, I know…’

‘Excuse me, madam, I’m not finished. The point I’m trying to make is that here you are lamenting a life that you couldn’t get away from quickly enough when you were actually living it. And alright, worst case scenario, suppose that Dan has met someone else. Which I’m not even
accepting may be the case, because all we have to go on is hearsay. But say he has met someone who may just suit life at The Moorings a little more than you did? Who may even enjoy it? Dearest Annie, don’t you see?’

‘See what, Mum?’

‘That you can’t have your cake and eat it. You didn’t want that life when you had it, you chose this life instead. You wanted freedom, you got it and now here’s the price to be paid. Everything in life comes with a price tag. You’re surely aware of that?’

Jaysus. And here I was thinking that coming to DC to see my mother might in some way be soothing and restorative.

Big mistake. Huge.

‘Of course,’ she says, elegantly anointing a scone with butter, ‘if you’ve changed your mind in any way, if you’ve now decided that once your year in New York is up, you actually
want
to return home to Dan and to life in Waterford and to simply take up where you left off, then that’s very different.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Because in that case, you’ve got to figure out a way to get him back, don’t you?’

I lie awake in Mum’s spare room that night, channel surfing, unable to sleep. My mobile phone is beside me, but I forgot to pack the charger and so it dies on me.