Champagne Secrets

by Amanda Brunker

  ‘OK, it turns out that there’s actually something I want to say to you, also. But you start first.’

  ‘Oh, Christ. Rory, I’m so sorry for lying to you but—’

  ‘Spit it out, Alice.’

  ‘OK. OK. Firstly, my name is not Alice. It’s Eva. Eva Valentine.’

  Rory’s face looked emotionless, and he just said, ‘Go on.’

  Feeling my body tremble with the fear, I continued, ‘And I’m a mother.’

  ‘A mother?’

  ‘Yes, to a wonderful little daughter called Daisy. She has Down’s Syndrome, but is the most perfect baby you could imagine.’

  ‘Wow,’ whispered Rory. ‘But you never said.’

  ‘I know, I feel horrible about myself. It’s just gone on so long, and, well, I didn’t want to lose you, and things just sort of snowballed, and …’

  ‘What else?’

  ‘Mmmm, OK, I haven’t just been working as a waitress in Sir Charlie’s, either. I’ve been working as an undercover reporter in there, and, well, I’ve had to wear hidden cameras in my hair and all sorts. It’s a long story, but it’s for a TV documentary for TV4 and it’ll be out in a couple of months or so.’

  ‘Really?’ screeched Rory, with a sudden burst of animation.

  I was suddenly confused. ‘How come that got the biggest reaction?’

  ‘Oh.’ Rory smiled sheepishly. ‘It’s just I already knew your first two confessions. I wasn’t aware of that last one.’

  ‘What do you mean, you didn’t know about the last one? You knew my name wasn’t Alice? And that I had a daughter?’

  ‘Yep, pretty much.’

  ‘How? Why didn’t you say?’

  ‘Hang on a second, those were your secrets. I was just waiting for you to tell me in your own time.’

  ‘But how did you know?’

  ‘Good ol’ Maura. She told me most of your background ages ago, and made me promise to say nothing until you found the right moment to tell me yourself.’

  ‘And you’re OK with that? About Daisy and everything?’

  ‘Actually Daisy and I had a little chat.’ Rory picked up his phone, fumbled with it for a few moments, and then handed it to me to reveal a picture of him and Daisy together. ‘Look, here we are making friends.’

  Holding the phone in one hand, I held my mouth with my other, and tears streamed unannounced down my face. ‘But. How did this happen? How long have you known?’

  ‘Oh, ages now. I just called over to the house one morning when I thought you were in and, well, Maura answered the door with Daisy on her hip. She offered me a coffee, and filled me in.’

  ‘Why did she do that?’

  ‘Because she was worried about you. Worried that you were digging yourself a hole – which you were, by the way, but you’re incredibly lucky.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Cause A, I prefer the name Eva. I think it suits you much better; B, I love children. I was only being defensive when I spoke about kids before. And C, I dig your mystery job and I look forward to rating your camera work. On TV4 no less. Very impressive. Who do you think you are – me?’ Laughing through the tears, I made a terrible mess of my sleeve as I tried to mop up my face. But for some reason he never stopped smiling. ‘So, what’s the story with this husband of yours that you haven’t forgotten about? Is he liable to come through these doors on a white horse and steal you away again?’

  ‘Ha! No chance. Using the word loser is probably a bit strong. But you’ve more decency in your little finger than he has in his entire body. He has no interest in seeing Daisy. That hurts me sometimes, but she’s probably better off not knowing him. At least she’ll never miss him when he runs off again.’

  ‘Sounds like you’re both better off without him – Eva.’

  ‘Wow! My name sounds very sexy when you say it.’

  ‘Does it, Ev-a?’

  ‘Yes, it does, Roar-y.’

  ‘Hey, don’t try and sidetrack me with sexy talk. You’ve just confessed to lying to me every day since I met you. That’s not good. How do I know that I can trust you?’

  ‘Because I’ve told you the truth. You know everything now.’ I suddenly remembered about my not-so-friendly drug-dealing colleagues, but chose better of telling him. He had enough information to process already. I’d just have to gently slip that into casual conversation another time.

  ‘But who’s to say you won’t lie to me again? Is this just standard for you?’

  ‘Absolutely not. Things just got out of control. I had to keep my real identity secret to start with, and then I was having so much fun with you that I, well, I was afraid to ruin things. And then …’

  ‘What changed?’

  ‘Oh, God. Lots of stuff. But I don’t really have the energy to go into it any more at the moment. Mainly me, though. I changed. So do you think you can forgive me?’

  ‘There’s no need.’ He smiled. ‘You’ve nothing to be forgiven for. Just don’t lie to me again, please.’

  ‘OK. That’s a deal. Hey, didn’t you say you had something to tell me?’

  ‘I’m not sure. Did I?’

  ‘Ehhh, yeah, you did. So come on, then. Do your worst. I’ve spilled. Now it’s your turn. Though please don’t tell me you’re leading a double life with a family in the country, or you have a terminal disease. I don’t think I could handle those.’

  ‘OK, then. I won’t say anything.’

  ‘Really?’ My heart skipped a beat with the fear.

  ‘No. Only teasing. What I wanted to tell you was, well, that I love you.’

  ‘You do?’

  ‘I believe so.’

  ‘Even with all my madness?’

  ‘Probably because of all your eccentricities, Eva. So how do you feel about that?’

  ‘Wow! I didn’t expect you to say that tonight.’ I was just about to explain why, when tears started exploding out of my eyes again with the relief.

  ‘Hey, hey, hey. Stop that,’ ordered Rory with a worried face. ‘I was shooting for a possible blow job,’ he joked. ‘I wasn’t trying to make you cry.’ As he made me laugh again, I let out a loud snorting noise which startled both him and me. Pulling back from me slightly, he teased, ‘Ohhh, lovely, who let the pigs in? We’ve a Babe in the house.’ Then he cuddled in close to me again, and asked, ‘Well, do you think you love me?’

  Doing my best to quickly smarten myself up, I wiped away some black streaks of running mascara and dried up my nose before whispering the words, ‘I love you, too. That’s what has changed. I want to share my life with you. All of my life, Daisy included.’

  Before I got a chance to say any more, Rory clasped his big hands around my face and kissed me passionately. As if the floodgates had opened, there was so much I now wanted to tell him, but it would have to wait. There had been enough talking done already tonight. What was needed now was some heartfelt, genuine love-making. As he unlocked his lips, he signalled to our champagne and told me, ‘Grab the glasses. I think we need to take this inside to the bedroom.’ I stood up, and caught him giving me a serious stare. ‘So no more secrets from now on, you hear me?’

  ‘What about champagne secrets?’ I asked with a giggle.

  ‘No way, no more champagne secrets, either. Maybe just a few champagne kisses instead.’

  15

  ‘Let’s just do it, Eva. Right now, before you talk yourself out of it. Are you with me or not?’

  After a night of mind-blowing sex, followed by a morning of exhausting love-making, coffees and far too many mind-numbing questions from yours truly asking, ‘Are you sure you can handle taking on someone else’s kid?’ Rory had frogmarched me to a nearby tattoo parlour. There we had picked out a simple image of a daisy for us both to get inked on our ankles. I wanted to get my existing ‘M’ tattoo altered, and Rory wanted his to be matching.

  ‘It’s not quite a wedding band or ring of commitment.’ He sighed. ‘But a daisy is made up of a circle. And a circle is a symbol of eternity, since it has no begin
ning or end. So let me show you how much I love you and want to look after you and your daughter. Come on, get that gorgeous ankle of yours up on the table and let’s do this.’ Finding him hard to resist, I did what he said, and kept my fingers crossed for better luck than with the last man I did this with.

  While it possibly would have been a better plan to tell Rory about my worries about the drug-dealers before I let him get inked, like everything else I had confessed, he seemed to take it all in his stride as we sat over a late brunch.

  ‘You sure know how to get yourself into a bind, don’t you? Don’t worry, I know people who know people. But I think first I need to meet with this guy Bradley, just to get the size of him. He might need some leaning on. What do you think?’

  ‘I agree. At first I thought he was a friend, but now I’m worried he … well, I’m not sure where I stand any more.’

  ‘On a sore ankle, I’d say, if yours feels anything like mine,’ he teased, while poking at his new tattoo. ‘I have never felt more like a girl in my entire life.’

  ‘Hey, watch yourself, Mr Not-So-Macho. You never heard any yelps out of me.’

  ‘Yeah, well, you regularly go through the torture of leg waxing.’

  ‘True.’

  ‘And you’ve given birth.’

  ‘Also true, but having a tiny daisy tattooed on your ankle doesn’t come close to that sort of pain. So be grateful you’re a man. You’d never survive!’

  After temporarily deviating off course from official matters, and making several nearby businessmen a tad uncomfortable with our public displays of affection, we eventually untwined ourselves long enough to hatch a plan to meet Bradley and get some answers. Several unanswered phone calls to Bradley later, he eventually called back and agreed a rendezvous at a neutral location in the suburbs.

  Our meeting was in the lobby of a run-down old hotel, with ageing, fed-up staff who didn’t seem to care about themselves, never mind anyone else. It was the perfect place to be public, yet anonymous. I just wished I had had a camera to record Bradley’s face when, after initially thinking he was just meeting me, he saw Rory sit down and hold my hand. Bradley looked so startled, Rory might as well have been holding a gun.

  After assuring him that Rory was just there to listen and observe, I fired off a number of questions of my own, demanding I get answers to all of them.

  ‘I need you to guarantee that you will not give away my true identity. Not to any other contributors. Not to anyone else in your office. Not on the credits for the programme. Can you do that?’

  ‘OK.’ Bradley nodded.

  ‘Who do you know inside Sir Charlie’s? Who gives you your “intelligence”, as you call it?’

  ‘I can’t say.’

  ‘Why not?’ interrupted Rory, leaning forward towards Bradley, who looked more than a little intimidated. ‘This is important information, man. We need to know that you are a genuine guy. Cause right now you’re not coming across as one.’

  ‘Listen, I don’t know who you are,’ said Bradley, squirming in his seat. ‘But I don’t need to answer to anyone – to you, or to you, Eva.’ He turned pointedly to me. ‘You were hired to do a job, and once you finish the last voice-overs your final payments will be made. Simple as.’

  Feeling Rory’s grip on my hand tighten, I chose to speak up before Rory did. ‘Look, Bradley, I agree that I was hired to do a job. And if anything, I did it a little too well for my liking. What started off as undercover work on petty criminals developed into something far more hardcore, don’t you think? And that was a danger I believe you knew about from the start, but failed to let me in on.’ Feeling Rory’s large hand clench again, I nudged him back and continued, ‘I just need you to protect me now. And keep me informed of anything and everything. Do you understand?’

  ‘Yes,’ replied Bradley sheepishly. ‘But I don’t think you have anything to fear, really, once you shut down your UK mobile and move back to Dublin. There’s no way you can be traced.’

  As Rory and I shared an angry look, I asked Bradley, ‘That’s it? I’ve got to go into hiding, while you possibly go on to win an award for being the brainchild behind it all? That doesn’t seem right. Why do you get the accolades while I become the recluse? I was the one out there putting myself in danger. How come you’re not scared for your safety?’

  ‘Why should I be?’ asked Bradley.

  ‘You’re using my footage, right?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then you’re the producer of a programme that exposes drug-dealers and people who use drugs. Doesn’t that put you in danger?’

  ‘What’s your point?’

  I was just about to explain my point when my new bodyguard leaned forward towards Bradley again and told him bluntly, ‘Eva’s not going anywhere. If any trouble comes her way, it’ll be passed on to you. Got it? Just because you didn’t have the balls to go in yourself, doesn’t mean this wasn’t your doing.’

  ‘Listen—’

  ‘Listen, nothing. You know more than you’re letting on. But I can tell you now, if anyone lays so much as one finger on a hair of her head, they’ll be answering to me. Have I made myself clear?’

  Visibly shaken, Bradley made his excuses and was out the door in a flash. Fear aside, I had been a bit turned on by Rory’s masterful bad-boy act, and looked around to show him my appreciation only to see a very different man sitting beside me. While seconds previously I had had Vinnie Jones on my team, Rory was now reduced to a quivering Paul Burrell character, claiming, ‘That was kinda fun. But I think I just scared myself there.’

  With plans to catch an evening flight to Dublin to be with Daisy, Rory and I spent the rest of the day back at his place, wrapped in our own figure of eight on the couch, plotting and discussing how we could make our relationship work. That night I finally went to sleep with a clear conscience. My ankle was still throbbing a bit, and my head was dizzy from the amount of decisions I would have to make – or had already made but couldn’t bring myself to say out loud just yet. Despite all this, I was happy. In fact, the happiest I had been in the longest time.

  The next morning I bounced out of the bed. Once I had examined my ankle I set about putting my To Do list into action. Parker had thankfully come back to me with some shift work for Ruth as an assistant to the director on a TV movie he was doing, so excitement was well and truly in the air for the Valentine girls. The only bonus for the man of the house being out of work was that he could help out with the babysitting. While role-reversal was not quite his thing, Joe’s best defence was humour. ‘Looking after kids is woman’s work,’ he teased. ‘And everyone knows it takes a bloke to do woman’s work properly. Just call me the Gordon Ramsay of home-help.’

  Off to her new job, nothing could faze Ruth, but with a firm warning she told him, ‘If there’s not some restaurant-quality grub on the table, I’ll fucking turn into Gordon Ramsay myself and fucking throw a tantrum.’

  Although I felt like my life needed to be based in London, I had to put my daughter’s safety first. So Rory and I decided it would be best if Daisy and I stayed in Dublin for the short term. As a result, looking for a flat was my first priority of the day, as was getting in touch with Daisy’s old child-minder, Alice. I would have preferred to squat in the comfort of Parker’s palace at the Docks, but I knew Ruth’s house was the best option for now. Daisy would be happiest in the company of her cousins. Plus, I would get an immediate babysitter until I got the real Alice arranged, with the added bonus that I could now legitimately hand Ruth money for bed and breakfast without her having to feel embarrassed.

  Unfortunately, as the day crept on so did more than a twinge of sadness over the fact that I was making plans to move back to Dublin without the man I loved. He was texting me constantly, but my old paranoia kept reminding me that a woman out of sight was a woman out of mind. And no matter how many times he wrote the words ‘I love you’ I would keep asking myself: why does he love me? I’m just not that lucky.

  Safely rooted back
in Dublin with Ruth and family, and finding myself obsessing again, despite a long and memorable goodbye from Rory, I sought help from the one mean person I knew who could drag me back to reality – Parker!

  ‘You want me to go where? The Northside? Are you kidding me?’

  ‘Shut up, Parker. You’re originally from the Northside, remember?’

  ‘Vaguely. But I drive a CL-Class Mercedes. That’s probably worth more than the houses over there. Do you think I’ll be safe?’

  ‘If you keep talking like that, no, as I’ll be the first person to smack you. Now shut up, and hurry up. That fabulous Merc of yours needs to drive me to several potential homes this evening, so when can you get here?’

  ‘Ohhh, Eva da Diva is back! Yes, ma’am. Let me grab my driver’s cap and I’ll see you in about an hour.’

  ‘An hour?’ I screeched.

  ‘You’re too easy.’ Parker chuckled. ‘I’ll see you in twenty minutes, girlfriend.’

  After the promise of automobile grandeur, I was a tad disappointed to see a small silver Yaris pull up outside Ruth’s house. ‘What happened to my great limo?’

  ‘I left it on set. And borrowed this off one of the crew. Does it suit me?’

  ‘Sure it does. All you need to do is put a blue rinse in your hair, age another thirty years and you’re set. Parker, ’fess up, who did you get this car from?’

  ‘The dinner lady.’

  ‘Ahhh, I rest my case.’

  Two hours later I had seen more than enough depressing rentals, and ordered Parker to drive us to the Yacht for a glass of something alcoholic. ‘I could cope if these ads were honest, but they say “family-sized bathroom” and “requires slight upgrading”, instead of “comes with a bucket in a closet” and “needs to burnt to the ground to be fumigated”!’

  ‘You could come live with me, ya know? Until you got things sorted in London again.’

  ‘No, I can’t. As lovely as that thought is, your place is a total hazard for Daisy, and, well, I’ll need my own space for when Mr Lover Man comes over.’

  ‘So, the secrets are out. And he was cool with everything?’