‘It certainly wasn’t.’
‘Oh, well that’s good to hear.’
‘Mainly because I’m afraid we didn’t go.’
‘Excuse me?’
‘Which, naturally I apologize for, but, well I’m afraid Lucy didn’t turn up for it and the last thing I wanted to do was go looking for her and force her into something she may not have been entirely comfortable with. In fact, as soon as I arrived and checked in, I had some business to catch up on in my room, so I’m afraid I haven’t seen her all evening, as of yet. I was hoping she might join me for dinner, but as you can see –’
I do not fecking well believe this. That’s two no-shows on our very first evening. First Jo and Dave, now this pair. Not good. Not by a long shot. Then a sudden alarm bell shoots through me. Come to think of it, I haven’t set eyes on Lucy since she first checked in either.
Oh, Christ no. Don’t tell me I’ve another guest about to cause trouble on my hands? Don’t tell me she was down in the bar boozing the night away with Dave earlier, while I was stuck in a bloody meeting?
Andrew Lowe seems to be a sensitive man though, and correctly reads my thoughts.
‘Miss Townsend?’
‘Please, it’s Chloe.’
‘I’m afraid I must ask you to make allowances for my wife right now,’ he tells me calmly. ‘You must remember, as I’m trying so very hard to, that she’s in fact the blameless party and not at all responsible for why we’re staying at your delightful hotel in the first place. So may I suggest relaxing the schedule just a tad as far as she’s concerned?’
He must cop the puzzled look on my face, but he’s far too well mannered to say any more. So the professional half of me knows now is the time to offer him a drink on the house, then beat a hasty retreat and leave him alone to his thoughts.
But then a part of me won’t let up. Because Andrew seems lovely and kind and genuinely concerned for Lucy. And he still refers to her as ‘his wife’. So what are they doing here in the first place? What in God’s name could have gone wrong there?
And then we both hear her, right before we see her. A woman’s voice, loud and clear, wafting all the way up from Reception, just downstairs.
‘Get your fucking hands pawsh off me, you human gorilla! SHHTOP IT! YOURE MAN … hic … MANHANDLING ME!!’
I do not be-fecking-lieve this. Not more trouble. Please dear God, not more –
But it’s her alright. It’s Lucy. With every head in the restaurant turned to look at us, Andrew is up on his feet in one fast move and the two of us are out the door, following the sound of the racket.
Which isn’t all that hard, really. We follow the noise down the short flight of stairs to Reception, where Lucy’s being half led, half lifted by poor Tommy the barman, clearly trying to guide her into the lift. Chris is right beside them, making soothing noises and every now and then saying useless things like, ‘Wait till you see, you’ll feel a whole lot better after a little lie down, Miss Belton!’
‘I was just relaxing and having a few harmless shrinks … sorry … I mean drinkies out the back garden!’ Lucy practically spits into poor Tommy’s face. ‘What kind of a pissing hotel do you call yourselves anyway? Can’t a guesht even have a harmlesh little drink without being hauled off like this?’
‘I’ll take it from here,’ I hiss at both Chris and Tommy as I step into the lift beside her, pressing for the third floor and just praying she doesn’t start having a go at me once we’re left alone.
As the lift door slides shut, I see Andrew standing right in front of us. And just the look on his face alone tells me everything I need to know.
Chapter Eighteen
10.45 p.m.
Andrew Lowe was an even-tempered man, one slow to anger and quick to forgive. Or so he liked to think. Difficult though, to keep a cool head when your wife – or rather, the woman you’d separated from – had clearly spent the entire evening acting like some kind of a vapid, air-headed good-time girl. The kind of girl the gutter press had insisted on labelling, ‘Lucy Belter,’ a moniker Andrew had always hated.
It was unfair, it did her absolutely no justice. If they knew the real Lucy, no one would paint her to be ‘Party Central’. Yet another crude nickname that made him wince with embarrassment.
Because this most definitely was not Lucy. The woman who caused that mortifying scene just now, the woman who practically had to be dragged into a lift by Chloe and an obliging barman, was most definitely not the girl he’d married. Yes, Lucy had always been vibrant and full of energy and fizz, it was one of the many things he’d adored about her, but never falling down drunk and making a complete sideshow of herself, as she had been this evening. Why did she insist on conforming to stereotype like this?
It stabbed at Andrew, physically hurt to think that he was the root cause of that pain and unhappiness. This had been the girl he’d loved, in spite of everything and everyone that had conspired to come between them. What had become of her? What had she turned into since they separated?
But worst of all was the one accusation that kept running round his addled mind on a loop. No denying that he himself was to blame. Or more accurately, he and his family, with Alannah playing significantly more than a minor supporting role in all this.
It was just coming up to 11 p.m., still too early for bed yet, so, with his mind racing, Andrew stepped out into the cool of the garden outside and found himself a quiet bench under an apple blossom tree, to sit quietly with his thoughts. He lit up a cigar, sat back and exhaled deeply. Under normal circumstances, a quiet cigar in a tranquil setting never failed to relax him, and God knows he’d certainly needed more than his fair share of calming down over the past eighteen months.
But for some reason, the old charm didn’t seem to work. In fact, Andrew was hard pressed to remember the last time he’d been utterly at peace with himself. He’d been living with worry and stress for so long now, it was tough to remember back to a time when things were otherwise. The few friends he still had remaining on the Board of Directors had all variously said to him that the pressure he was operating under would have felled a lesser man.
Worse, his GP was taking things a helluva lot more seriously, but Andrew brushed that aside for the moment. Bloody man, always fussing. If it wasn’t over his high cholesterol, it was some blood pressure issue. Utterly ridiculous! Andrew still had the strength and energy of someone ten years younger and after all, given that people he knew were actually taking their own lives because they’d lost everything in the recession, he figured all in all, he was holding up astonishingly well.
Until this came along. Left to him, the last thing on earth Andrew would ever have wanted was a divorce. It was the last thing that had entered his shattered mind when his whole world spectacularly combusted, just under two years ago. Not all that long after he and Lucy were first married, in fact.
He felt a sharp pang, just thinking back to Lucy and the woman she’d been back then. How breathtaking she’d looked at their wedding. He’d made a solemn vow to her that day, standing toe-to-toe, barefoot on that sandy white Caribbean beach … was it really only three years ago now? For richer for poorer, for better and for worse. Till death us do part. He’d sworn that promise to her and now look at where it had brought them. The hurt he’d caused her. All that unnecessary pain.
These days, Andrew was renting a small flat, laughingly referred to as a ‘bachelor pad’ by the estate agent, but to this day, with digital clarity, he still had recurring nightmares about the removals van pulling up outside their home, to clear away the remains of their whole life together. He could handle the loss of status, all the trappings of a life of wealth and privilege being stripped from him, bit by bit. His statement home, his Bentley, his pension reserves, all his stocks and shares, even his club membership had to go. In fact, he could school himself to bear far worse. But the loss of Lucy was something very different.
Had she been wrong to act as she subsequently did? To bring them both to this? For ri
cher for poorer, for better and for worse. There was no question that she got a raw deal, being plunged into the ‘for worse’ part of their marriage almost from the word go.
And yet, with a niggling conscience, he couldn’t help thinking back to something Alannah had pointed out. Lucy had made exactly the same vow on that tropical beach, hadn’t she? So why had she bailed out on him at the first sign of trouble?
He inhaled deeply, feeling a familiar pang at the fact that their marriage was even denied a brief honeymoon period before real life intervened. He didn’t blame her, if anything he blamed himself. And Alannah and Josh, he sadly had to acknowledge, had certainly played their part in what had subsequently transpired. Although he was quick to absolve them; after all, a great deal of pain and unhappiness had been caused to his first family when he and Lucy got together. So really, was it any wonder his children had acted the way they did?
Andrew thought back to Lucy, who right now was probably lying up in bed, surely with the mother of all hangovers just hovering over her. What to do?
‘She’s just tired and emotional at the moment, I believe is the phrase,’ he’d calmly explained to Chloe, who seemed like such a sweet-natured, understanding woman. ‘I’m anxious that she’s allowed to rest and isn’t disturbed.’
‘Of course,’ she’d reassured him.
He’d made a point of seeking Chloe out after she’d safely seen Lucy to her room and telling her that his wife – or rather, his estranged wife – had been working herself to the bone as of late and that they’d just have to reschedule their meeting till sometime tomorrow instead. With of course, his sincerest apologies.
Chloe had been incredibly diplomatic about it though and even offered to have dinner sent up on a tray to Lucy’s room later on, if she was feeling up to it. Sensitive of her, Andrew had thought, to unquestioningly accept his excuse and act as though there was nothing wrong with Lucy other than tiredness, when it had been glaringly obvious to anyone who saw her what was really the matter with her.
But then Chloe seemed considerate and discreet in small ways; the hallmark of a good manager. The sort of woman who should have been working on the board of his bank, Andrew thought, and then maybe they could have neatly side-stepped a lot of the mess they were in now.
In fact, it was taking bloody calls from work and fending off urgent emails while holed up in his room after he’d first checked in that had caused all this trouble in the first place. Had Andrew actually put his wife first, as he rightfully should have done, had he sought her out considerably earlier this evening, he’d have been aware that she was overdoing it at the bar and could have dealt with it himself there and then. But no, instead he’d stupidly stayed in his room/office, trying to put out urgent fires at the Board. For all the good that did him.
He took a deep, soothing puff on the cigar, just as yet another email pinged into his iPhone, shattering the stillness.
Damn. This late on a Friday evening? Hardly the office he figured, or yet another panicky message from a fellow board member. Not this late at night, surely?
That could only mean family trouble in that case. Josh onto him from Berlin, maybe? Or something up with Alannah, yet again? And yet what could possibly be the problem with either of them? Between them and with particular credit to Alannah, they both had to share equal responsibility for he and Lucy being here in the first place.
His phone beeped again, momentarily distracting him and pulling him back to the unread, urgent email. Ha, he thought ruefully, weren’t they all urgent these days?
And sure enough, when he glanced down and read it, his instincts had been on the money. The very second Andrew read the email, from his Chief Financial Officer at the Board, as it happened, he’d regretted it.
When sorrows come, he thought bitterly, they come not as single spies, but in battalions.
*
The letter had been handwritten and shoved under the bedroom door.
My darling.
Remember the first time we met? Remember the trainee waitress who got our order all wrong and kept texting on her mobile while we were trying to attract her attention? And how you’d probably have dealt with her in lightning quick time if it had been any ordinary day, but so anxious were we to impress each other that we just decided to find the whole thing hilarious?
Well I remember, vividly. In fact, I carry the image with me to this day. Walking into that restaurant you’d chosen, one I was unfamiliar with. Feeling rough after a late night, not being in the mood for a date at all. Silently checking the time on my watch. An hour tops, I’d given myself. So as not to appear rude. Then I’d make some perfectly polite excuse and exit pronto stage left.
And then I saw you. So much better looking in the flesh than in that horrific photo you’d sent. Did you no justice whatsoever. But you seemed to me like this tightly coiled little ball of tension, sitting bolt upright, checking your phone every three minutes, visibly jumping each and every time an email or text pinged through for you.
Well this is never going to work, was my first thought. Sod all chemistry for starters. We were just too different, too unsuited, from different worlds; in a million years, I never thought you and I would have a single thing in common. You seemed far too distracted to even focus; there was an air about you of someone in a mad rush to be somewhere else. Anywhere else.
It was only when I got to know the real you that I really began to understand. It wasn’t general antsiness on your part, just nerves. It became one of the traits I slowly grew to love about you. How you mask insecurity in a social situation with toughness, whereas actually my darling, scratch the surface and underneath it all, you’re just a marshmallow. Same as the rest of us.
Our date got steadily worse. Food arrived and I made the mistake of ordering spaghetti with meatballs, thinking the carb-hit might wake me up a bit. Now I defy anyone alive to try to impress, while trying to suck up spaghetti and with bolognaise sauce dribbling down their chin. But you were polite enough to pretend not to notice and I of course, tried to lighten things up a bit with a few gags.
Remember my asking you about the worst date you’d ever been on? You rolled your eyes and we started swapping tales from the ugly coalface of internet dating. The married men actively trawling websites, making it perfectly plain that they weren’t available evenings or weekends. ‘Daytimes only.’ One eejit had even posted a profile photo clearly taken on his wedding day, with the bride cut out, but her bouquet still visible in her severed right hand.
And so we started to laugh. Do you remember? You finally began to relax and really open up to me. I told you that when someone said in their online profile ‘fond of a drink,’ it could loosely be translated as ‘would basically suck the alcohol out of a deodorant bottle’. You said that ‘chubby’ was a euphemism for ‘overweight’ and that ‘sociable’, meant someone who’d happily spend five nights a week sitting in a bar till 4 a.m., or until the place was raided, whichever came first.
And we both agreed that ‘seeks friendship’ was the saddest of all. That meant someone who lived alone in a bedsit the size of a converted wardrobe, who’d absolutely no friends and only the odd stray cat for company.
Before we knew it, we were both laughing. Genuine laughter too, not just doing it out of politeness. What should have been a lunch that lasted a bare hour suddenly stretched out to past five in the evening.
I think I knew right there and then. Just knew. Just because you and I weren’t a likely match, didn’t mean it couldn’t work.
And now here we are.
My darling, if I could turn back time, believe me I gladly would.
Yours now, yours always.
Whatever the outcome of the next few days.
Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Chapter Nineteen
Lucy.
Thrashing about in her bed, dizzy and nauseous with sleep refusing to come, Lucy found her thoughts wandering. Maybe it was seeing Andrew again after so long, or maybe it was just the lorry-load of dr
ink she’d been laying into, but try as she might, she still couldn’t hold back the memory. Pin-sharp, like it had all only happened yesterday.
*
It had been a baking hot, gloriously sunny day too, not all that long ago really. And awful things like this weren’t supposed to happen while the entire world felt like it had just gone on holiday. She was standing on the front lawn outside their beautiful house in leafy Rathgar. Her home, their family home. Where she and Andrew had lived so happily before they got married, and for the brief tiny interlude of what you might call a normal married life they were allowed immediately afterwards.
Their primary asset, as the banks kept describing their home. That she and Andrew had bought jointly. That she’d scrimped and saved for. That she’d put so much of herself into, that she’d done countless photo shoots for magazines in. She’d worked so bloody hard to maintain it … and now this.
Her white-hot fury directed not only at Andrew, but primarily at Josh and Alannah. How could they have done this? How could they have colluded to bring this about? Leaving aside the fact that they were the single most manipulative siblings on the face of the earth, how in God’s name did they manage to pull this one off? Lucy wasn’t stupid, she knew right well they’d both wanted her out of the picture from day one. But that they’d somehow schemed their way to bringing this about?
Then image after image started to crowd in on top of her. And dream or no dream, it still felt just as raw now as it had done back then. Solicitor’s letters and registered bank letters suddenly turning into final demands. Endless months of gruelling meeting after meeting with their bank manager, their mortgage advisor, their solicitor, everyone. She and Andrew had started out battling them and ultimately ended up pleading with them. If they could just hang on to the family home, they argued. Not possible, they were curtly told. And the only option you have is to go quickly and quietly, so as not to make this any harder on yourselves.
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