by Cathy Kelly
‘You’re not that strange,’ he teased. ‘I’ve spent every spare moment with you for weeks now. I mean, you’re strange, sure, but my kind of strange,’ and he kissed her deeply before he pushed himself off the bed and headed to the shower.
The running of the water gave her the chance to race to the tiny cloakroom in the hall and brush her hair. She had spare mouthwash somewhere but it was probably in her main bathroom and yet she didn’t want to kiss him again with horrible morning breath.
Blast.
Racing back into her room, she sprayed her favourite peony-scented perfume all over herself. He might be asphyxiated, she thought with a giggle.
Then she heard his phone – a piano ringtone from his side of the bed.
It might be this work thing, she thought, although a picture of the person phoning with the name Beatrice flashed up on-screen. Beatrice looking like a skinny thirty-something model in high fashion clinging to Conal.
Still, Cari, fresh with lovemaking and love, grabbed it, going to bring it into the shower to him. But wasn’t the sort of smartphone she was used to and somehow, in touching the screen, she answered it.
Noise like someone standing in a factory came loudly through the phone.
‘Chéri, can you hear me? This line is terrible, we are all waiting for the plane on the runway. I miss you. I told you I did and I do. I can come to Ireland if you want.’ The voice, honeyed and exotic, pronounced Ireland as if it was a bare one-acre rock in the Atlantic with a shed on it. ‘I can meet your family, this new baby, be with you. You there, chéri? Merde!’
The phone was hung up and Cari started at it in horror.
Yvette was the so-called last lover, but this was Beatrice, Beatrice who was definitely not a work call, who looked as if she worked on French Elle, and had been a model in a past life.
Beatrice. The sort of elegant French woman who would have been superglued to Conal. Who had been superglued to him and who’d been conveniently left out of the dating narrative. He had lied to her and if there was one thing Cari would not put up with, it was being lied to. Not ever again.
Conal raced out of the bathroom, dragged on his clothes and apologised. He was rushing so much, he didn’t notice that as she sat at her dressing table pretending to put on make-up, she was just stalling for time.
‘Look, I’m really sorry, I’m really late. I’ll call you.’ And within three minutes he was gone.
Cari sat there alone and wished she had a cat. An alien baby hairless cat she could hug and cry at. Or even a loan of Juan’s schnauzer, even if it did need grooming and feeding and vets’ bills paid. Anything so she wouldn’t be alone.
Because once again, everything she thought was right had turned out to be wrong after all.
Conal rang at half nine when he was out of the meeting but Cari didn’t pick up. So he texted: ‘Miss you, sexy girl. You are amazing. I’m crazy about you. Later?’
Later? Cari glowered at the phone, rage and hurt rushing through her. She’d give him later. She’d give him a whack of her mythical baseball bat if she could and if she had one and if …
She sat at her desk and tried to hold back the tears.
Then she blocked his number on her phone and tried to work but it was hard to see emails when your eyes were full of tears. She’d fallen in love with him, like a complete idiot, and he’d lied to her: he had another woman apart from the handy Yvette.
Beatrice. Why had he not told her about Beatrice?
Wiping her eyes, Cari fired up Google. She mightn’t be curing cancer but she knew how to research. She’d start with Conal’s French lab. Those labs always had fundraisers, and fundraisers involved doctors coming along with dates to talk science to the contributors, and there might be a picture and, therefore, a surname for Beatrice.
It didn’t take long at all: Beatrice wasn’t from the fashion department of Elle France. She was a scientist who worked with Conal.
Beatrice St Antoine.
Petite, beautiful, serious with tortoiseshell glasses in most photos and that blonde mane elegantly tied back. Cari thought of Conal’s crack about the sexy scientist with glasses and hair up. Bastard. He hadn’t been joking after all.
She really could pick them, couldn’t she?
She snapped off Google viciously.
That was it.
She was not even going to speak to him again. Let him see the call from bloody Beatrice. Let him realise it all. Not that he’d give a damn – he could dump handy old Cari if hot, brilliant, genius IQ Beatrice was willing to come to crappy old Ireland for him.
Well, Conal and Beatrice could go hang.
Five minutes later, a call came in on her office line and she picked it up warily. Perhaps she should have asked someone else to take her calls for her?
‘Cari?’
It was a woman and she sounded vaguely familiar.
‘This is Amy, your aunt-in-law, Bess’s daughter,’ said the voice.
‘Oh hi,’ said Cari. She did not need family stuff right now …
‘I got your letter. It went into the wrong house and they were away and I only got it last night …’ went on Amy, in that soft, sweet voice Cari remembered.
‘What letter?’
‘About my book. I didn’t want you to think I was taking advantage of knowing you, so I used a pseudonym, A.J. Sharkey,’ said the voice.
Cari wanted to cry.
‘How lovely that it’s you,’ she said, ‘and you haven’t sent it to anyone else, have you?’
‘No, only you,’ said Amy.
‘That’s wonderful, Amy. We all love it. We want to publish it. Can we meet up?’
Amy wondered why Cari sounded so close to tears.
‘Are you all right?’ she asked gently.
‘Gosh, yes, just … er hay fever,’ lied Cari. ‘Stargazer lilies in the office,’ she added. ‘Now, let’s set a date to meet.’
Jeff picked up the call on his mobile from his brother.
‘Can you talk to Cari for me?’ said Conal.
‘Why?’ said Jeff, who still sounded like someone who was getting very little sleep.
‘Because she won’t answer my calls,’ said Conal.
There was a pause.
‘What happened?’ said Jeff.
‘That’s not really any of your business, bro, but to be honest, nothing bad. We … er … I stayed the night with her last night, that’s all. And now she’s not answering my calls. I just need to talk to her, she’s been hurt so much before and—’
‘Listen,’ Jeff interrupted him. ‘I love Cari, she is amazing but if she’s not phoning you, she’s decided not to phone you. End of.’
Conal laughed. ‘You don’t see her at all,’ he said, in astonishment. ‘She would never sleep with someone for one night. She is not that sort of person at all. How can you work with someone like that for so long and not know she’s romantic, a believer in true love, a total softie.’
‘Cari might have a tender side but she’s a cool cucumber,’ said Jeff. ‘Very good at her job too, very sharp, very clever.’
‘I know that, obviously,’ sighed Conal, ‘apart from the cleverness, she’s a total softie hiding under the carapace of cucumberyness.’
‘I should hire you with your fabulous ability to make up words,’ Jeff retorted. ‘If you’re that crazy about her and you think she’s a believer in true love, why do I have to intervene in getting her to phone you?’
‘I … er … had to race out of her place this morning?’ said Conal.
‘You had to race out of her place this morning?’ repeated his brother. ‘That can’t be it. She’s a career woman. You wouldn’t believe how often we have to get the red-eye to London. No, you did something else.’
‘But what?’ said Conal. ‘I can’t come up with anything else—’
‘Well, figure it out, bro’. I am incredibly fond of Cari and I don’t want to see her hurt—’
‘I’m glad you hold my beloved in such high esteem,’ said Conal
. ‘She deserves it. I’m crazy about her, by the way. I guess I’m going to have to try something else. I’m stuck in work all day but I’ll camp outside her house tonight if I have to.’
Every month, the four Brannigan cousins had an evening in together. Paul used to complain that even before he went to New York, he wasn’t invited, but Cari merely laughed and said they simply talked about men and periods and he’d have hated it.
Tonight, the evening in was due to be at Jojo’s but Cari had instantly detected a certain froideur when she arrived and the sensation hadn’t diminished when Hugh almost ran out of the house after barely hugging her hello and with a heartbreaking glance in Jojo’s direction. So much for the uncoiling session of a few days ago with Elaine, Cari thought miserably.
‘I am not in the mood for this,’ said Jojo as she and Cari stood in the kitchen and put crisps into bowls, which seemed to be the extent of Jojo’s catering abilities. ‘I don’t want a “let’s mani and pedi ourselves for Lisowen Castle”, which is what Trina and Maggie want.’
Cari was still devastated over Conal, but at least he’d stopped phoning. He kept leaving flowers on her doorstep every evening with a note and every morning, Cari took them into work and gave them to someone else. The note she put into the bin, unread. She didn’t know if Conal had noticed the Beatrice call on his phone yet. If he had and he was still stalking her, it meant Beatrice hadn’t come to Ireland yet and she was to be his booty-call until his French girlfriend arrived. Yeah, good luck with that.
If Conal was asking Jeff to be his lookout, he’d know how little she cared for his damn flowers. If he wanted to play pure bastard tradecraft by bedding her while having another woman waiting in the wings, she could play that game too.
Apart from the thrill of finding the new manuscript at work, she was appallingly miserable.
But she would squash her own feelings down to help Jojo.
She resolved to keep the evening light, to cheer her beloved cousin up. She would not mention Conal or the great disaster, even though once Jojo would have been the first person she’d have told.
At least Maggie and Trina were full of chat and, thankfully, full of excitement about the forthcoming party. A herd of depressed elephants could have charged through the room and they wouldn’t have noticed.
After Thai take-away food, they sat in Jojo’s pretty living room and chatted, Cari desperately trying to invest the evening with some fun for Jojo’s sake.
‘Would a sitcom of my life work?’ she asked idly, sitting sideways on Jojo’s armchair, feet dangling as she admired the series of cheap nail varnishes Trina and Maggie had amassed for their pedi/mani session, which was the current fascination between the two flatmates.
‘Are there lots of cute men in it?’ asked Trina, who had already done a pretty professional job on her hands with a shade of metallic navy blue that had just opened Cari’s eyes to the possibility of navy as anything other than a clothing colour.
‘No men at all,’ lied Cari, fighting the sinking feeling inside her. ‘The postman at work tried to nudge his arm into my boobs the other day, though. Does that count?’
‘How dare he?’ shrieked Jojo.
The two others just looked at Cari’s rather large bosom in an assessing manner.
‘I would kill to have a chest like yours,’ said Trina, who was an A-cup unless she stuck in the chicken fillets.
‘Why are none of you worked up about the whole postman thing?’ demanded Jojo, getting mildly animated. ‘That’s sexual harassment. No, you don’t work with him, actually, so it’s sexual assault.’
‘He’s looks about ninety,’ said Cari, ‘and it could have been a mistake but to be on the safe side, I gave him the evil eye so he won’t try it again. Plus, I worked in that small publishers in the city centre years ago, the one with the technical guides. I had two bosses take me out for “drinks” and try to get into my pants on my first day. After that, a pervy postman I can handle.’
Jojo shuddered.
‘You have been insulated in the nice world of fashion where nobody ever harasses anyone,’ Cari said, shrugging. ‘The real world is not so nice. I have had men talk to my chest. Lovely men, men I respect, but somewhere in there, they can’t help it – it’s testosterone telling them to look at the bits of the woman that turn them on.’
She didn’t say that she still dreamed of how she and Conal had been skin to skin and how glorious it had felt. His betrayal felt like a huge chasm inside her. Again, why again?
‘That’s a cop-out, Cari. Like saying we should all wear floor-length dresses so we don’t get raped,’ said Jojo hotly. ‘What about telling men not to rape us rather than telling us how not to dress to get raped. Nobody should stare at your breasts or try to touch them.’
‘I think models get harassed,’ pointed out Maggie. ‘’Cos they’re so young when they start and people can take advantage of them.’
‘I’d like to think that’s been nipped in the bud but face facts, girls, sexism exists,’ Cari pointed out.
She had done her best to indoctrinate her sister and young cousin into what feminism actually meant and she didn’t feel like giving a tutorial at that exact moment.
‘Now, back to my sitcom—’
‘No men in it, then it’s only half a sitcom,’ Trina said. ‘Unless it’s Orange is the New Black, which is pretty men-free, right, Maggie?’
‘Some men,’ agreed Maggie, now engrossed in delicately putting black dots onto her coral and yellow striped manicure.
‘The heroine has lots of trouble caused by men and lurches from one disaster to the next,’ Cari said.
‘And has money,’ Trina pointed out, extending one finger at Cari’s discarded shoes, which had red soles.
‘Has credit card bills due to misery shopping,’ Cari contradicted ruefully.
‘Ideally, you need another fabulous man, a ride of a man, to come into the plot and make you forget all else: pervy postmen, mean authors, scumbag fiancés,’ said Maggie, eyes shining.
Cari knew of a fabulous man but she was never seeing him again. So she made the sort of joke everyone expected her to make: ‘But where are they hiding these men? Is there a bunker somewhere with loads of them, hunks of manhood hidden in case aliens invade and we need to repopulate the earth?’
‘Ooh,’ sighed Trina and Maggie at the same time.
The four of them laughed and Jojo realised she let out some of the tension in her body. When had she turned into this person, this taut woman who couldn’t even joke with her cousins. Though she’d had a hell of a hangover because of those two horrible whiskies, that session with Elaine had cheered her up.
As if she could read her mind, Cari caught Jojo’s eye.
‘So,’ Cari said, in that deceptively light tone that meant she had something very unlight to say, ‘should I get the whisky out so we can discuss your father’s seventieth. Are you going?’
‘Ugh, whisky. I must have been mad. I hate that stuff. Two of Elaine’s measures and I had the hangover from hell!’
It had been the first time all evening Cari felt as if she was talking to the old Jojo, the one with the sense of humour.
‘Please come,’ said Maggie. ‘I know you don’t like Bess, but Uncle Ed’s happy and really that’s what it’s all about, isn’t it? Who knows, they may let some of the hidden-in-the-bunker dudes out … You know, the alien invasion repopulation team?’
‘It’s family only,’ said Jojo.
‘I think they’re asking more people to the grand dinner on Saturday night. You know, business colleagues and that sort of thing. We’re the only people in the hotel but they’re driving in. There might be some hot young billionaires for me, Cari and Trina.’
‘Ones who do not already have a trail of women following them?’ laughed Jojo, the tension leaving her finally.
‘There must be some out there,’ said Maggie, thoughtfully, ‘just recently billionaire-y, who haven’t got a trail of women yet.’
‘Or a lot
tery winner!’ said Trina delightedly. ‘Who has never really spent money and needs help.’
‘That’s more millionaire than billionaire,’ said Maggie gravely, as if she’d given it some thought.
Jojo couldn’t help herself and she started laughing, the sort of laughter that comes as a release and lets all the hurt out, even if only momentarily.
‘I’ll do up an advert,’ Jojo said, wiping the tears of laughter from her eyes. ‘Billionaire/millionaire wanted: must be a bit shy and retiring and need woman who hates tidying her apartment, OK?’
Life was so simple when she was the girls’ age – she was falling in love with Hugh, before her mother was sick, before Bess had come along – everything was simple then, except for somewhere along the way it had gone wrong.
Nothing could turn back the clock. Just as it seemed as if nothing could make her pregnant.
Could she cope with going there again? She wiped her eyes again. The tears were half amusement, half plain old tears.
Cari finally cornered her in the kitchen while Trina and Maggie worked on the finer details of their mythical perfect men, who sounded like firemen but drove Maseratis and had black credit cards.
‘You’ve been totally avoiding my calls,’ Cari said.
‘I’m avoiding life,’ said Jojo, trying to sound blithe but Cari could hear the bitterness.
‘Elaine’s determined to fix me,’ Jojo went on. ‘All I need is a dog, according to her.’
‘Juan still going strong?’
‘Amazingly, yes. He came into the shop the other day and he’s lovely. Worships the ground she walks on.’
‘Hugh worships the ground you walk on,’ Cari reminded her.
‘He used to. Now he sees this neurotic, baby-obsessed woman and she’s harder to worship. Maybe that’s who I was all along – that smiley, happy woman was just for the first thirty years and forever after, I am going to be bitter and twisted.’
‘You don’t have to be.’ Cari took a risk. ‘Your mother would hate to see you like this.’
‘Don’t go there,’ warned Jojo.