by Cathy Kelly
Eight
If I keep a green bough in my heart, the singing bird will come. CHINESE PROVERB
Leila remembered once sitting in on a press conference with a one-time hell-raising movie star, and after all the questions about precisely what drugs had gone through his system, and how the heck he was still alive having taken them all, he’d managed to make everyone smile by saying that once a year, you should see the sun rise.
Leila had been up since half five, and for the first time in a very long time she’d seen the dawn arrive, its soft, heady crimson rinsed through with a wash of palest golden yellow. She’d stared out of the kitchen window in her mother’s house, feeling awe at the beauty of the sky, suddenly aware of what she’d been missing by not seeing this every day of her life.
Joyous birdsong flooded into the room along with the light, and Leila stepped outside with her mug of coffee, wanting to be a part of this magical world she hadn’t seen for years. At home, she was so flattened with tiredness from work that she got up and went to bed on the timetable of her office.
As the sun rose, she breathed in the scent of the sea, her ears attuning to the cries of the seagulls circling the hills around Bridgeport. Next door’s cat was treading a delicate path along the fence between the houses: a sleek grey creature with a bottle-brush tail held aloft as it balanced, clever eyes looking for sleepy birds.
Leila grinned. ‘You can’t be Tom,’ she murmured. ‘Nine lives or not. He was here when I was little.’
The cat eyed her with interest.
‘Pixie’s not here, it’s safe to come in,’ Leila said.
But the grey cat flicked its tail and continued on its way.
Eclipse’s offices had arrangements of flowers sent in every week. Reception often had odd flowers arranged architecturally on the reception desk. Devlin had a large tree in a container in his office which was still living thanks, Leila was sure, only to tender ministrations by the flower company. But here, despite the earliness of the year, her mother’s camellias bloomed along one wall: perfect blossoms from three plants with their glossy viridian leaves.
Leila touched them, then on impulse went into the kitchen to get a pair of scissors and snipped a blossom for her office desk.
The joy of the dawn stayed with her as she drove to Dublin, stopping for a takeaway tea and a croissant. No guilt, she told herself, biting into the flaky richness of the pastry as she sat in her car. She needed the energy, and besides, she was already overdosing on guilt about leaving her mother in the first place.
But she’d promised Devlin she’d work Thursday and Friday, and she wasn’t about to let him down. So she reckoned she deserved a treat. Why deny yourself the odd little pleasure? Life had enough damn denial as it was. She’d had her fill of it, especially after the last couple of days, spent desperately trying to deny that there was anything wrong with her mother aside from the bruises and broken bones.
Last night, when she’d left the hospital, she’d had the strangest feeling that there was something her mother wasn’t telling her. Something important. Perhaps Mum was worried about money and too embarrassed to mention it. Leila hoped it was that; money she could help with.
Susie refused to acknowledge that there was anything amiss. When Leila had rung her last night, her sister had sounded entirely irritable. ‘Leila, Mum’s in hospital recovering from surgery – of course she’s going to be stressed. And Jack has a chest infection and he’s home from school, so I can’t work.’
Leila waited for the next line: We don’t all have fabulous careers where we can take time off when we want, but it never came.
She finished her tea and set off into the traffic again. She’d been slimmer when she’d been with Tynan. Much slimmer. Most women put on weight when they were married, apparently, because they ate more as they sat blissfully with their beloved, curled up on the couch eating takeaway. Leila, though, had lost weight.
You never saw exquisitely voluptuous girls in the music industry. Thin was the standard. She’d thought that if she stayed slim, Tynan would never go off her, and look how well that had turned out. A pastry should simply be a sweet treat, not a symbol of confused emotions about weight and societal expectations.
She flicked the radio from a talk show to music. She barely listened to music of any kind these days. It only brought back memories of Tynan.
Blast him, she thought crossly. He was gone; it was about time she stopped thinking about him. There must be a book or a CD out there, something in the self-help line: Ex-husband Begone, maybe?
Ilona almost threw herself on Leila when her boss finally arrived in the office.
‘How’s your mother?’ she asked anxiously.
‘Recovering, but it’s going to be slow,’ Leila said, mentally filing her personal problems neatly away. Compartmentalise; that was the secret. ‘Thank you for asking, Ilona,’ she added, closing the door on the subject.
‘Right, what’s up? Devlin phoned me the other day and he didn’t sound like himself at all. Clearly there’s something wrong. Have you heard anything?’
Ilona shook her head. ‘No. The director of Odessa 2 is coming into Dublin and wants a premiere in aid of his LA charity.’
Leila groaned. ‘First, it’s a dreadful film, and second, we can’t do charity events unless they’re local charities or international charities with an office here. Who’s supposed to organise it all? No, don’t tell me – we are. The answer’s no.’
‘That’s what Devlin said.’
‘Good.’ It sounded as if he was back to normal. ‘I’ll go and see him now.’
‘Is he in?’ Leila asked Devlin’s assistant Eleanor, a twenty-something business school graduate who had a blunt way about her that Leila liked.
‘Yes.’
‘Good mood?’
Eleanor laughed. ‘You could say that. He’s on the phone to some mate of his and they’re talking women.’
Leila grinned. ‘Still doesn’t realise those glass bricks aren’t soundproof when he’s talking loudly?’
‘Still doesn’t,’ agreed Eleanor. ‘Whoever his woman is, he’s discussing organising a home-cooked meal for her because he thinks it’s the only way she’ll take him seriously. She doesn’t know he exists. He’s never asked her out or anything.’
‘I didn’t know he could cook,’ Leila commented, privately thinking that there could hardly be a woman on the planet who wasn’t aware that Eamonn Devlin existed. But then she stopped dead. She really ought to tell Devlin to keep his voice down when he was discussing private matters; after all, she was an executive in the business. One of his close team. And it wasn’t right to talk about him behind his back.
‘Forget we had this conversation,’ she told Eleanor.
‘What conversation?’ asked the PA, turning back to her computer screen.
Leila knocked on the door and went in.
Devlin had his feet up on the desk and was leaning back in his swivel chair, testing its capabilities with his six-foot frame and two hundred pounds of solid muscle. He was grinning into the receiver and the grin widened as soon as he saw her, although he swung his feet off the desk.
‘Gotta go, Richie,’ he said. ‘Leila, great to see you.’
Must have been some conversation, Leila decided, because Devlin looked in a very good mood.
He was wearing a grey suit with a silvery grey shirt and no tie: utterly gorgeous, she thought absently, and then realised she must be really tired because that was no way to think about your boss. Still, she felt a hint of envy for the lucky lady for whom he was planning to cook.
‘I feel I ought to tell you that sometimes what you say can be heard outside this office,’ she said, not looking at him.
‘What? What did you hear?’ He leapt to his feet, looking anxious.
‘Nothing. But the odd word can be made out when you’re having a particularly loud conversation,’ Leila said diplomatically.
‘But did you hear anything?’
Leila was too
emotionally worn out to lie.
‘Honestly, Devlin, I don’t care about your girlfriends – you can have millions of them for all I care. I just thought you should know that sound carries.’
‘Right. Thank you for that.’ His face had darkened. He sank back into his chair, dragged it close to the desk and began drumming on the wood with one strong hand. He only did that when he was annoyed.
‘Sorry, that came out wrong,’ she said. ‘I only meant that your private life is your business.’
‘Glad to hear it,’ he said crisply, still drumming.
Leila groaned inwardly. Somehow she’d managed to annoy him within minutes of setting foot in the door. Probably because she hadn’t told him about the noise issue before.
‘What do we need to talk about?’ she said flatly, sitting down opposite him.
He’d begun studying the column of figures on the paper in front of him and didn’t look up when he began to speak.
For the remainder of the meeting he seemed uncharacteristically offhand with her.
‘We’ll talk later,’ she said at the end, getting up.
Should she say sorry? Heck, no. Devlin had probably already forgotten about it all. But as his eyes met hers, his face was still dark, his expression unreadable.
That was all she needed, Leila thought as she left: Devlin deciding that she was no longer the best publicity director in the business.
It was eight o’clock by the time Leila got back to her apartment that evening. Feeling tired and hungry, she lit all the lamps to make the place brighter, changed into her pyjamas, and ate toast and jam in front of the TV. She was shattered and didn’t feel like talking to anyone, but she phoned the hospital for an update, then rang her mother’s mobile to see how she was.
‘I’m fine, lovey,’ Dolores said weakly. ‘They’re so good to me here. The physiotherapist is the sweetest man. You’d like him. He’s single …’
Just what she needed – her mother setting up her love life.
‘Mum, I don’t have time for that sort of carry-on,’ she said, trying to inject cheerfulness into her voice. ‘I’m a career girl now. I’ll be back on Saturday.’
There was nothing she wanted to watch, so she flicked on her iPad and did what Katy was always telling her not to do: she went on to Facebook.
First she clicked on to Katy’s page and saw lots of lovely messages of congratulations. She’d had the same sort of messages when she had become engaged.
When she and Tynan had been together, Facebook had been fun. Their walls had been decorated with pictures of them at music festivals, parties, weddings and barbecues. Looking at her status and seeing the words ‘Married to Tynan’ had felt as real as her wedding and engagement rings.
In love, Facebook had been a gilded mirror reflecting a happy life back at her, linking her with hundreds of other happy people.
But with Tynan gone, it hurt to look at her own or anyone else’s page. She’d changed the privacy settings so nobody could see her page, as if they might spot her crying there too, as in real life.
Apart from checking in with Katy, there was only one page she liked to visit now: Tynan’s.
I’m like a drug addict, always needing just one more hit, she thought to herself as she clicked to his page. Just one more glimpse and she’d stop, for ever …
On paper, theirs had been a match made in hell. Leila liked order, organisation and knowing precisely where she was going to be at any given time. Tynan Flynn wore old band T-shirts with ripped jeans, could rarely lay his hands on any of his possessions apart from his mobile phone, iPod and Dr Dre Beats headphones, and when asked where he might be that night for dinner and whether Leila should get Indian from the takeaway was likely to say: ‘It’s hard to pin down an exact time, honey. I’ve got to recce that new band in Whelans and Universal are interested. Once the money men come sniffing around, I’m history. I need to get in there, sell them the whole company image and lock them down.’
A former musician hired as an artists and repertoire man for the small independent record label Steel Rivets, Tynan was never off the phone, lived for music and was entirely unreliable.
Leila had loved him at first sight.
‘He’s not your type,’ Katy had whispered to her in the ladies’ the night she and Michael met Tynan.
The venue had been specifically picked by Leila so that Tynan would like it – he dismissed many places as ‘bourgeois’ and ‘overpriced’ – but also so that they stood a chance of hearing each other speaking. If Tynan had been given his way, he’d have opted for a bar with live music and indiscriminate food, and nobody would have been able to hear a thing.
‘I don’t have a type,’ argued Leila, bending down and swooshing her hair with her hands to get some body into it. She didn’t know why, but she always put more volume in her hair when she was with Tynan. She dressed differently too: the suits she wore at work were ditched for tight jeans and form-fitting jackets. Make-up was dialled up a notch too: more eyeliner and darker lipstick.
Once, she’d allowed herself to think about it and had come to the conclusion that the way she looked mattered to Tynan, and it mattered to her that he appreciated her. He wasn’t the sort of guy who’d turn a blind eye when a woman started wearing her sloppy old leggings around the house or couldn’t be bothered keeping up with the waxing.
‘When Susie went out with that actor-cum-waiter guy years ago, you hated him,’ Katy reminded her. ‘Too much interest in himself and not enough interest in Susie, you said. Tynan’s the same. He’s sexy, sure, but it’s all about him.’
There was nothing Katy couldn’t say to her; they’d been friends too long. They’d never had secrets from each other and never felt they had to hold back an honest opinion for fear of giving offence. If Susie had said the exact same thing, Leila would have been upset with her, but she didn’t mind it coming from Katy. Somehow she felt more like a sister than her real sister because Susie was always so easily hurt, so quick to cry. But no matter what Leila felt about Katy, she didn’t have to agree with her opinions, especially where Tynan was concerned.
‘Susie has always picked bad men,’ she said, unperturbed. ‘Case in point: Jack’s father – zero child support and no contact. You can’t get much worse than that. I, on the other hand, am not bad at picking men. Tynan’s fabulous,’ she continued, determinedly upbeat. ‘He has a great job, too. OK, we might be chalk and cheese, but he’s ambitious and fun. And I need fun.’
Katy stopped applying lipstick in the mirror. ‘Is he kind? If he is, I take it all back. Go for him. But fun’s not enough. I don’t want to see you get hurt.’
‘I won’t,’ said Leila, grinning at her friend’s reflection. How many times had they stood like this – shoulder to shoulder in bathrooms at parties, dinners, nightclubs? Sisters under the skin. One petite and dark-haired, one a shade taller and blonde, clear grey eyes surveying the world with enthusiasm.
Later, when Leila and Tynan’s relationship had become more serious, Katy had asked her again:
‘Are you sure, Leila? He’s a bit – well, wild. Reckless. Like he’d do anything for a dare.’
‘What’s wrong with being wild and doing something for a dare?’ demanded Leila, a woman who used cruise control on her car rather than risk going over the speed limit.
‘OK, wrong words,’ Katy said. ‘He seems like the sort of guy who’s used to breaking women’s hearts.’
‘That’s just because he hadn’t met the right woman – until now,’ Leila replied, beaming with happiness and able to ignore her best friend’s warnings because this was love, she knew it. Tynan was the missing part of her; he made her feel alive in a way she’d never felt alive. With him, she was the Leila she’d dreamed of being: free, happy, in love, joyous. What could be wrong about any of that?
Only it turned out Katy had been right about Tynan.
She’d never once said I told you so, but Leila acknowledged the fact every time she remembered the day he’d walked out of
their apartment, telling her he was moving to London for a new job, and that the woman he’d been seeing would be joining him there.
‘I meant to be out before you got home,’ he’d said as Leila stood in their bedroom, still wearing her work clothes, her keys in her hand, watching as he hastily packed his belongings. ‘I was going to leave you a note.’
‘A note?’ Leila sat on the edge of the bed and felt her entire body begin to shake. Where had this come from? Last night they’d made love. This morning he’d made her coffee as usual. How could you fake all of that?
‘Leila, babes, it hasn’t been working for a long time,’ Tynan said, not even looking at her as he swept all his aftershaves off his side of the dressing table into a smaller bag. ‘Diane’s coming with me. It’s better this way. Me and her out of your hair.’
‘Diane?’
Diane was a marketing manager in his office: younger than them both, scarily modern, with cropped platinum hair and endless legs so she never needed heels but wore them anyway. Like Tynan – who’d gone back on the fags despite Leila’s begging him not to – she was a smoker; Leila had often seen them standing outside venues, sharing a cigarette, laughing. But they were smoking buddies, nothing else. Or so she’d told herself.
‘Diane?’ she said again.
Tynan was thirty, just a year older than her. Diane was a kid, still in her early twenties: at that age, everyone over twenty-five seemed elderly. What was he talking about Diane for?
‘Come on, Leila,’ Tynan said. ‘You knew all along. Stop pretending. That time we went to Berlin and I never made it back to our hotel room – you knew.’
‘I didn’t. I love you, I thought everything was perfect.’
‘Of course you didn’t! Stop pretending.’
She’d barely slept that night in Berlin, lying alone in their hotel bedroom after leaving him with the band in a nightclub. But he’d been so plausible the next day: the band wanted to party and he’d crashed in their suite. It was the music world, he’d shrugged. She hadn’t wanted to moan; she wasn’t his keeper, after all. He was allowed to do crazy things once in a while … that was how marriage worked, right? It was all about trust.