Not easy, competing with anyone’s ex, but when the ex in question might as well be a bloody poltergeist – and a skinny one at that – it’s no joke, take it from me.
Early days, Angie. Tread softly …
And now here the two of us are, parked not far from my apartment block and on our way up there ‘just for a little nightcap’. I’m linking onto him, hobbling along in my ridiculously high heels on the cobblestones, still clinging to the stunning bouquet he gave me earlier. But after all the chat and the sheer mentalness of tonight, we’ve both gone quiet now. We arrive at the door of the Granary Building, then get the lift up to the third floor, where my flat is. I unlock the front door, we head inside and he collapses exhaustedly down in the sofa, loosening his tie and kicking his shoes off.
I find myself staring at him, just wanting to admire him in all his sexiness. Even at this hour of the night, even though he’s as wrecked as I am, even though he’s still in his work suit, he still manages to look so shaggable and handsome and – sorry, but there really are no other words to describe him – just gob-smackingly beautiful.
Oh feck this, I can’t resist for one more minute. I shoehorn myself out of unforgiving heels that have been at me ever since I put them on earlier this evening, bounce down beside him on the sofa, snuggle into him and lightly kiss the tip of his nose.
‘Thank you,’ I whisper, a bit drunkenly.
‘What for?’ he smiles.
‘For being there tonight. For braving the Blennerhassets out in force. For the beautiful flowers. For everything.’
‘Hey, it was your night; ’course I was going to be there to support you.’
He slips his arm round my shoulder now, so I move onto kissing his cheek, pressing myself up against him, loving the feel of how hard and taut his body feels beside me. Wishing he’d just kiss me back. Kiss me properly.
‘Tell you what,’ I murmur in what I hope is a seductive-sounding voice, ‘I’ve a lovely bottle of Merlot in the kitchen, how about we take a glass each into the bedroom with us?’
‘Erm … look, Ange, would it be a hassle for you if I just had a coffee?’ he asks, pulling away from me just slightly, so slightly anyone else would hardly even notice. But I do. ‘It’s just I’ve a meeting early in the morning and … well, you know yourself.’
Take it easy, Angie, don’t overreact and remember, early days …
‘No problem,’ I tell him, a bit disappointedly, sitting up straight now. I even manage to stretch a smile tautly across my face as I say it. But then as I’m fast learning, ‘you know yourself’ = Simon’s polite code words for ‘which is why I won’t be staying the night here tonight’.
No, he’d rather sleep the night back in Kitty’s house with a ghost.
And I hate the thoughts of bringing it up, particularly not tonight, which is meant to be a celebration, but I’m also aware I still haven’t told him about what happened at the interview earlier today.
Didn’t want to have to invoke that particular ghost, tonight of all nights, but I know deep down that I have to. I’m physically incapable of keeping secrets from Simon. Apart from anything else, it only gives me heartburn. Only reason I haven’t said anything up till now, is that with everything else that’s been going on this evening, I just never got the chance to mention it.
But Simon and I have one hard-and-fast rule in this. Absolutely no keeping anything from each other. We’ve both had enough secrets unwittingly kept from us in the past to ever want to go there again. So we just don’t. Simple as.
I get up to organise coffee and late-night snacks as he picks up yesterday’s paper that’s still lying on my sofa, and idly starts to flick through it.
‘By the way,’ I tell him over my shoulder on my way into the kitchen, faux-casually. ‘I forgot to tell you how the interview with the Post went earlier.’
‘Oh, yeah, that was this morning, wasn’t it?’ he calls back in to me as I click on the fancy espresso maker Sarah gave me last Christmas and let it bubble to life.
‘Yup, in the Westbury.’
‘So how did it go?’
Momentarily, I stop fishing round the back of my tiny kitchen cupboard for clean mugs and come back into the living room, where he’s still glancing through the paper.
On second thoughts, I think I’d rather be face-to-face with him for this.
‘You want to hear the good part or the bad part?’
He looks up from the paper at me now as I perch on the edge of the sofa beside him.
‘Good part first.’
‘Good part is that we should get a fair bit of publicity out of it.’
‘Come on, Ange, that’s better than good,’ he grins. ‘That alone is worth its weight in gold these days. So what was the bad part?’
‘Bad part was that I left there with a really sick feeling in the pit of my stomach.’
He’s looking right at me now, the dark green eyes focused in that intense way that he has.
‘What happened? Journalist give you a hard time?’
‘No, no, nothing like that. The journalist was really lovely …’
‘What then?’
‘Well … she started asking all sorts of questions that I just wasn’t prepared for.’
‘It sounds to me like you’ve absolutely nothing to worry about,’ he says, stretching his long legs out in front of him and stifling a yawn. ‘It can’t have been as bad as you think. That’s what journalists do, after all. Main thing is that it’s a big plug for The Chocolate Bar. Isn’t that the only reason you agreed to do it in the first place?’
‘No, I mean she started asking personal questions. Really personal stuff.’
‘But that’s just journos for you. They want to really get a decent angle on you. All perfectly normal. The woman was only doing her job. I wouldn’t let it get to you. ’
‘Simon, you don’t get it. This one had done all her Googling and … well, she wanted to know about Kitty.’
And now there’s silence while he digests this.
I study him closely, but it’s v. hard to get a read on his face.
‘So what did you tell her?’ he eventually asks.
‘I didn’t. I just faffed around a bit, then Sarah thankfully took over and changed the subject.’
Now he’s up and on his feet, coming round to where I’m standing by the sofa’s edge.
‘Come here to me,’ he says softly, and I do, folding myself in his arms, as ever, loving the deep, musky smell of him. He presses my head against his chest and we stay like that just for a moment.
‘Tell me the truth. Did you get upset when she brought up Kitty’s name?’ he asks, tilting my chin up to him and looking down at me.
‘No,’ I tell him, ‘it was just … a bit of a shock, that’s all. I mean, can you imagine how it felt when this complete stranger, who seemed to know all about what had happened, just started asking out of nowhere why the case was closed now? It just … it suddenly brought it all back to me, I suppose, that’s all.’
‘I know, I know it did,’ he murmurs, pulling me tightly into him again.
I run my hands up his chest and snuggle into him, thinking: don’t move, please don’t move. Not sure about you, but I could stay like this for ever.
‘You wouldn’t be human if something like that didn’t get to you,’ he says softly. ‘But you have to try to let it go. OK?’
‘OK,’ I mumble into his shirt.
Just then the bubbling sound from the espresso maker starts getting louder and he pulls away from me.
‘Come on, Ange,’ he says, ‘you’ve had a long day. Here, let me get the coffee, then I want you to relax and try to put the whole thing out of your head. You’re just overwrought with all the pressure you’ve been dealing with, and that journalist caught you off guard. That’s all. OK? Trust me.’
I nod and smile, suddenly aware of just how much I’ve had to drink and just how bone-tired I really am, now that all the adrenaline of the day has finally worn off. Honestly,
I think I could sleep for two weeks straight. So I haul myself back to the sofa and sink comfortably down into it.
‘Do you fancy a cheese toastie?’ Simon calls out to me from the kitchen.
‘Ha! Is that some kind of trick question?’ I shout back at him, perked up a tiny bit at the thoughts of food to come. ‘When have you ever known me to refuse a cheese toastie? With a big mound of brown sauce on it, please!’
(My own personal theory is that there is no savoury dish on earth that can’t be improved by the addition of Chef HP BBQ Sauce.)
‘Sit back and relax, it’s coming up!’
He’s dead right, I tell myself, smiling and stretching out on the cream linen sofa, trying my best to blank out the interview earlier and the very mention of Kitty’s name, which can sometimes feel exactly like a cold, icy hand landing on my shoulder. I’m just exhausted, that’s all, and that journalist knocked me off kilter, nothing more.
Then suddenly I realise … it’s been so, so long since Kitty’s name cropped up, but that’s already the second time today I’ve ended up talking about her; once at the interview and just now with Simon.
And it’s not that I’m superstitious or anything, but they do say these things go in threes.
Oh, would you just listen to yourself, I think, doing my best to snap out of it. This is why they say forget the past, and just concentrate on the here and now. Besides, that guy in the kitchen currently rustling up supper for the two of us is the single best thing to come out of all the drama and heartache Kitty put us through two long years ago. I’m the luckiest woman alive to have such a gorgeous, caring man in my life who’ll make me a mug of coffee and a cheese toastie when I’m feeling a bit wobbly after a long day. And yes, I do realise just how blessed I am to have him. What a catch he is. And then I have barefaced cheek to moan just because he won’t stay over with me at night?
‘Where’s the barbecue sauce?’ Simon calls out to me, and I know I should get up off my lazy arse and get it myself, though I’m far too wiped out to move a muscle. I spend all day in work running round after everyone else and now I’m enjoying the rare experience of being waited on hand and foot.
‘Try the bottom shelf in the fridge,’ I yell back at him.
‘Have it!’
I can hear him clattering away in the kitchen so I make to clear a space on the coffee table in front of me for the grub. Then I pick up the paper he left lying on the sofa beside me. Yesterday’s; never even got a chance to open it. I have a quick flick through while he’s still clattering around in the background. The news appears to be … Well, that there’s no news really.
Kim Kardashian attends a concert wearing a dental floss dress shocker. Yet more bad news about the Euro crisis, which by now feels like it’s been going on for approximately a decade at this stage.
Just to pass time, I flick idly down through it to the TV listings page, in case there’s a late-night movie we can snuggle up to on the sofa together, (hope momentarily triumphing over experience).
But just then, almost completely by accident, my eye falls on the very back page. The last place I’d ever normally turn to: the death notices.
It’s just about the tiniest column you’d ever see; a complete fluke my eye even fell on it at all.
I blink, in case I misread. Read it again. And again.
No, no mistake then. There it is, right in front of me.
KENNEDY, Kathleen, (née McColgan.) At St Patrick’s Marymount Hospice, Co. Cork. Formerly of Foxborough House care home, Co. Limerick. 25 September. (Peacefully, in her sleep.) Dearly beloved wife of the late James Kennedy, sister of the late Paddy McColgan and foster mother to Jean Simpson. She will be sadly missed by all her loving friends and staff at Marymount.
Memorial service Monday 29 September at midday. Rocky Island Crematorium, Ringaskiddy, Co. Cork. No flowers, please.
I try to call out to Simon, but my voice won’t make a sound.
You see? Always knew these things came in threes.
Chapter Fourteen
29 September, 6.30 a.m.
Simon and I are in total agreement. We’re going. Together. To the funeral. All the way down in the bowels of deepest Cork. It’s absolutely the right thing to do, no question. God knows, I did little enough for poor Mrs K. over the past two years (I was so busy with work, I barely had time to see own family, never mind Kitty’s), but Simon’s a far better all-round human being than I am any day.
Not that I’m saying he went down to visit her every other weekend, nothing like that, but once every so often he’d just disappear off the radar on me, not answering calls for a full day, that sort of thing. ’Course I’d instantly spiral off into a tailspin of worry, but then given my history of loved ones taking off on me, it’s all perfectly understandable. Then when he’d materialise again, he’d just shrug at me and say that on impulse, he’d hopped into his car and driven all the way down to Foxborough to check in on her.
It got to the stage where I’d know without his even having to say anything. I’d just know.
There’s only one thing I don’t get, I told him repeatedly till it must have sounded like I was nagging the guy for doing nothing more than being a kind-hearted person. Why all the secrecy? Why not just tell me what you’re up to in the first place? It would save me all the bother of worrying, when you just take off without saying anything to me. I don’t get it; we tell each other everything else, anyway. So why keep this to yourself?
And then, the blindingly obvious eventually hit me. It’s just another way for him to somehow keep Kitty’s memory alive. Bit like the eternal flame you see flickering away at JFK’s grave. Mrs K. is the last link with Kitty and I suppose that by keeping in contact with her nursing home and checking in on her every so often, he was, in small way, clinging to another porous little wisp of hope. That if Kitty were ever to come back, Foxborough would doubtless be her first port of call.
But a bit like him still living in her house, it gradually became something we just stopped talking about after a while. Pointless to. As Sarah wisely points out, you know what fellas are once they’ve got both heels firmly dug in.
Anyway, this carry-on kept up for a good year and a bit, but then a few months ago, at around the same time Simon and I first got together, all changed. Mrs K.’s condition suddenly worsened and she was moved to a hospice down in Youghal, Co. Cork. An excruciatingly long drive from Dublin, it would take you half the day just to get there. So, not as easy for Simon just to bounce into his car and take off on a whim. But every so often though, he’d make a point of phoning the hospice, just checking in on Mrs K., asking after her, that kind of thing.
Which was as it should be; absolutely the right and proper thing to do.
Like I say, though, the only niggling thing that ever got to me was all the bloody secrecy attached. For instance, I’d walk into a room and he’d abruptly hang up phone, then look shiftily at me, and again, I’d just know without being told. Got so I could smell it.
‘How’s Mrs K. doing then?’ I’d ask gently. Rarely getting more than a monosyllabic answer.
‘Same,’ he’d shrug, before leaving the room.
It’s his very last link with Kitty, I’d remind myself. And he ain’t about to sever it anytime soon. Best I can do is accept it and learn to live with fact that Kitty is never too far from his thoughts.
Which, come to think about it, makes me bit like second Mrs de Winter in Rebecca, minus all the psychological bullying from Mrs Danvers.
The character that’s so boring, no one even bothers with her Christian name.
Simon’s car, on the v., v., v. long road to Rocky Island. Not having had the time to eat any brekkie. 8.15 a.m.
Simon’s worryingly silent for most of the journey. Not a brooding, intense silence, more like the guy’s just lost in thought and completely miles away. Every now and then, I reach out to squeeze his hand like the supportive girlfriend I’m trying v. hard to be.
He doesn’t exactly pull away, but d
oesn’t take my hand either.
God knows where. (All I can see is motorway, a Statoil garage with Spar attached and a load of plastic bags fluttering past in the breeze.) 9.25 a.m.
Quick petrol pit stop. Haven’t first clue where we are, or how far we’ve got to go. And my bum’s actually like a bag of spanners from sitting so long. As Simon’s filling the tank, I run into the garage to buy us two take-out coffees and a bagful of rubbery Danish pastries. ’Course the coffee is vile, watery and tasteless. This shower have some bloody cheek, I think furiously. They should be done under the Trade Descriptions Act for having the barefaced neck to try and pass this tepid dishwater off as latte! It’s not even in same league as the coffee we serve at The Chocolate Bar, but I digress.
(Sorry. Working in on the go snack trade has given me a v. competitive edge. Note to self, STOP.)
Back inside the car, I hand Simon over what passes for coffee.
‘For you.’
‘Lovely, thanks,’ he says, gratefully taking it from me.
‘You fancy a Danish?’
‘How are they?’
‘Plasticky. Total crap.’
‘Might pass in that case. But thanks anyway.’
Having finally opened up a conversation of sorts, I decide to go for it.
‘So … em … how are you holding up?’ I ask tentatively.
‘Oh … you know.’
Jesus. It’s like pulling teeth. No, in fact, it’s more like trying to pull a train uphill with my teeth.
Also, hard as it is to believe, these are the first few words we’ve exchanged since leaving Dublin. If you could even classify the above as him actually speaking to me.
10.44 a.m.
OK, I’ve officially had enough! This is it; break point. I can’t take one more second of all this brooding, intense silence. It’s seriously starting to get in on me now. On the grounds that I’ve a fairly good idea what’s going through his mind, I decide that a quick, pre-emptive strike is the only course of action open to me.
Me and You Page 22