A Very Accidental Love Story

by Claudia Carroll

  ‘No, emm … There’s no problem here! Everything’s fine!’ I answer over-brightly, my mouth stretched into a smile so wide that my muscles start to twitch with the effort.

  I’m now sickeningly aware that even though four hundred other pairs of eyes in the room seem to be solely focused on Shania and me, Jake alone just stares straight ahead, saying nothing, doing nothing, like he’s wilfully ignoring me.

  Jake, who’s spent the whole evening so far looking over at me, checking on me, mouthing me little silent words of acknowledgement, slipping his arm round me when he thought no one was looking. It feels like the mysterious telepathic bridge that was always between us has just been broken in two. He knows, is all I can think. Knows everything.

  ‘For feck’s sake Eloise, will you let me go!’ Shania yells, if not quite savagely, then in that general area. ‘I was only trying to give you a shagging compliment, you moron!’

  I nearly burst with relief when I see the white head of Robbie from Foreign leaping to his feet to help me lead her out. He mutters something to me about finding Sir Gavin, but he’s up at the top table, rustling through a pile of notes and getting primed to make his own speech next, generally acting like his wife’s carry-on is a relatively normal occurrence that he doesn’t particularly want anything to do with.

  ‘I was only trying to tell you,’ Shania spits furiously at me as we eventually haul her out of her chair, ‘that if I had my time over, I’d do exaxtshly what you did! Not bother with a man, jusht go to a sperm bank and have done with it! Now, will you fecking well let me go!’

  Meanwhile Seth sits back opposite, fingers latticed thoughtfully, mouth pursed in a cat’s-bum shape, looking from me to Jake and from Jake to me with just one expression hardened onto his face.‘Tonight just got interesting.’

  ‘You know what they say, in vino veritas,’ is the last thing I hear him tell the entire table, as Robbie and I gently steer Shania out of the room and to safety.

  Takes every last gram of strength I have not to go back there, pick up an empty wine bottle, smash it up against his greasy, slimy head and pray that it causes lasting damage.

  I would have infinitely preferred a full-frontal, blazing row with insults being flung, lampshades smashed and voices loud enough to raise the dead. That I could have handled. Rage and passion and temper and angst, I’d deal with. Wouldn’t be much different from your average working day at the Post, to be honest.

  But not this. Anything but this.

  Jake and I are back in our room, having somehow limped through the dregs of the evening without managing to say two words, but now we can avoid each other no longer. And it’s beyond awful. Like the lovely, warm-hearted, considerate, concerned Jake, my pal Jake, my buddy, has left the building and in his place is some kind of avatar who looks and sounds like him, but who’s glacially cold towards me and who’ll only talk to me in curt, clipped yes-or-no monosyllables.

  No more than a few hours ago, is all I can randomly think, everything I wanted either for me or for Lily was in this room. And now look at us, moving coldly round each other like strangers, the attraction and desire that had been in his eyes all evening now completely ebbed away. I try to read him but I can’t, so I look at him, waiting on the blow to fall, but it never does. He’s furious, though you’d never know it if you didn’t know Jake; he’s very still.

  As soon as we shut the bedroom door and are safely in private, he begins to pack.

  Bollocks.

  So I open with the obvious.

  ‘Jake, leaving now is ridiculous. It’s past midnight for God’s sake; you’ll never get a taxi from here all the way home.’

  ‘Fine, I’ll walk if I have to.’

  ‘Well, now you’re just being childish.’

  I want to claw the line back the minute it comes out.

  A long, cold look is all I get back from him.

  ‘I think the days of you telling me what to do and how to live my life are long over,’ he says, the words enveloped in bitterness.

  ‘Can I just explain? After everything I’ve done for you, can you at least hear me out?’

  ‘Nothing to hear,’ he says, neatly packing a shirt and jacket in his suitcase. How can he be so fastidiously tidy at a time like this? I think, my twin, default emotions of anger and frustration now starting to bubble through my hot little veins.

  ‘And as far as I’m concerned Eloise, all you need to know is that I can’t be around you right now.’

  ‘Jake, you have to believe me. I was planning on telling you this weekend … Tomorrow in fact, I had it all worked out. I’ve tried to tell you before – remember when we went to dinner last week? I was determined to tell you then, but …’

  ‘Not determined enough, it would seem.’

  ‘Would you stop bloody packing and just listen!’

  Another icy look from him.

  ‘Go on then.’

  ‘Jake, you have no idea how much this has been weighing on me. But you have to understand the only reason I didn’t tell you sooner was I was terrified you might not want anything to do with us if you knew. Believe me, I did try, but there was always something, like your exams last week. So then I thought …’

  ‘You’re honestly telling me you thought some shagging exams were more important than knowing that I’m a father, and we have a child and that you’ve basically been deceiving me since the day we met? Jesus, Eloise, do you ever stop to listen to yourself?’

  ‘Look I know I should have come clean to you sooner–’

  ‘A LOT sooner …’

  ‘But that aside,’ I begin to say, deliberately keeping my tone low and even, ‘the only thing I’m guilty of is of wanting to help you–’

  ‘You’ve lied to me practically from day one, lied to me about everything, and this is your idea of an excuse?’

  ‘Well, you lied to me first!’

  Typical editorial reaction, turn the tables round, draw first blood then await subsequent fallout.

  ‘Lied how, exactly?’

  ‘Excuse me, you’ll recall the application form you were required to fill in at the Reilly Institute? Jesus, practically everything you wrote on it was a total lie! You said your name was William Goldsmith!’

  ‘I already explained that to you a long time ago …’

  ‘And that you’d written a thesis on the country’s economic meltdown?’

  ‘Oh here we go, you and your photographic memory.’

  ‘… That you played piano up to concert grade?’

  ‘What did you expect me to say? That I played the tin whistle?’

  ‘May I remind you that you also claimed you’d won gold medals for the Trinity College two hundred metres and you rowed for the college team?’

  ‘Will you let it go? What did you think I was going to put down anyway? That I played darts?’

  ‘Jake, I BELIEVED all that! I fell for every line of it and it was all a complete lie!’

  ‘I needed the money, I’d have said or done anything,’ he says coolly. ‘So I lied on some poxy form to a medical clinic three years ago. You think they’d have taken me on and paid me, if they’d known what I really was? Besides, what about you? That’s chickenfeed beside what you’ve done. Practically every word out of your mouth since we met has been an out-and-out whopper. Tracking me down to Wheatfield with this completely mental cock-and-bull story about researching a feature on ex-cons and what they do when they get out?’

  ‘I was trying to help you!’ I insist, my voice getting screechier and screechier in direct proportion to how anxious I’m getting. ‘That’s all I ever wanted to do. You have to believe me.’

  ‘Just one question before I go,’ he says, bags packed by now, one hand on the door, ready to walk out. Christ, I think, this is like a Terrence Rattigan melodrama, and I’m the 1940s housewife about to fling herself round his knees and beg forgiveness.

  ‘Why, Eloise? Why did you do it in the first place? Why even bother with someone like me?’

  I
try to compose myself, which is difficult, considering I’m on the verge of a full-blown panic attack; heart palpitation, ice-cold sweat pumping, blurry vision, the works. Even breathing is something I have to concentrate on as the air is only coming to me in sharp, jagged bursts. I can’t even feel pain yet, instead there’s just an empty space inside me with the expectation of pain to come.

  ‘You want the truth?’

  ‘For probably the first time since I’ve known you Eloise, yes, I do.’

  I slump on the edge of the bed. I’ve no choice, the dizziness is that nauseating. And suddenly the bedpost is at the oddest angle.

  A throbbing moment and I know I’ll have to answer him.

  ‘I didn’t do it for you. I did it for my little girl.’

  ‘A … It’s … You have a daughter?’ he says, voice breaking just the tiniest bit.

  My stomach clenches just at him saying that. Beyond weird. His daughter he’s talking about with such cold indifference, such clinical dismissiveness. His as well as mine.

  Just for two seconds, I wish the old Jake would come back: he’d understand. He’d listen and realise where I’d been coming from all along, he’d instinctively know how I was feeling; he’d ask me if I was okay and put all this into its proper perspective. I could talk to the old Jake, tell him all about Lily, show him the photos of her I carry everywhere with me, tell him how much she takes after him, from her strawberry-blonde mop of hair to her huge blue pools-for-eyes. I want to tell him how smart she is, how eaten up with pride I am by her. No one has a cleverer, smarter, more beautiful, more precious little girl than I have – correction, than we have.

  I could explain to the old Jake how I went on a wild goose chase all those weeks ago that took me on what felt like a trawl through every housing estate in the whole of the greater North County Dublin area. And more importantly, why. Because I never wanted my precious little girl to grow up and decide to track her biological father down, then realise that he was some deadbeat dad with a prison record. Someone who flittered from address to address, changing his identity to avoid trouble. And anyway, where would Jake have ended up had I not stepped in? That’s what I’d like to know, I think, sudden self-righteous fury flooding through me.

  Most of all though, I could tell the old Jake that, as usual, when it comes to human relations, I got it all arseways. Because at the end of the day, far from my being the one to change him, if anything, it’s been the other way around. I try to remember back to the person I was before we met and find I barely can.

  Because the battle-hardened harridan of old has long since left the building; in her place is a more rounded, relaxed human being and I’ve got Jake and only Jake to thank for that. I want to tell him all this and more, I want him to hold me like he did just a few short hours ago, so I can fill the hollow of his neck with tears, but when I bring my gaze up to his, something in his eyes freezes me in my tracks.

  ‘What’s her name?’ he asks, giving me a scalding look. ‘And don’t lie or I’ll know.’

  ‘Lily,’ I say weakly, but starting to gain a bit of strength, though my voice still sounds like it’s coming from another room half a mile away. ‘Her name is Lily.’

  ‘Oh Jesus … The little girl I met you with in the Green that afternoon?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And still you said nothing to me? Out of curiosity Eloise, is everything that comes out of your mouth a complete deception?’

  ‘Stop it – will you just stop it please? If you want the truth …’

  ‘You and truth are two words that seem at variance with each other in the same sentence.’

  ‘Insult me all you want, but the truth is that all of this was for Lily, she wanted to know who her father was; you don’t understand what it was like, she’d become obsessed with it …’

  ‘And you never wanted her to grow up knowing that her father was an ex-con,’ he says flatly.

  I nod, eyes fixed on the floor. I can’t meet Jake’s stare, don’t know if I can stomach that cold, flinty look he’s giving me.

  ‘And in all this time, you couldn’t have told me? Couldn’t have trusted me with this? We were friends for christ’s sake, best friends – and could have been so much more. But friends don’t treat each other like this. Do you know how difficult it is for someone like me to ever trust anyone? And I trusted you, worse eejit me …’

  Exactly what Helen had prophesied he’d say. To the letter.

  ‘What did you imagine I’d do anyway, Eloise?’ he goes on, face white with ice-cold fury now. ‘Drag you though the family law courts? Demand access rights? Teach a young child how to smash and grab and rob cars and not get caught? Is that really what you thought of me? “Once a con, always a con, this guy can’t be trusted, particularly not around a little kid”…?’

  ‘No, that wasn’t it!’ I tell him firmly. Because if I don’t get the chance to say this before he leaves, chances are I never will. ‘All I wanted was for Lily to have a father she’d one day be proud of, that’s all! And look at you Jake, look how far you’ve come! A few months ago, you didn’t even think you’d make parole and now look! You’re … Well, you’re …’

  I can’t even begin to finish that sentence. I want to tell him how much he’s grown on me, how much I’ve come to depend on him, but the words stick in my throat. So instead, I find myself doing one of those ridiculously over-dramatic gestures you only ever see in old black and white movies; walk to the fireplace and cling to the top of it, almost as though it’s steadying me.

  ‘I already know all this,’ Jake goes on dispassionately. ‘You don’t need to remind me. You’ve made me respectable. A working-class father wasn’t good enough for you, didn’t fit in with your notions of respectability. So instead, you moulded me into your idea of what the perfect dad should be. Jesus Eloise, do you even realise just what a snob that makes you?’

  Now suddenly out of nowhere, in the middle of all these accusations and insults, a rage of energy starts pumping through me.

  ‘It wasn’t just what I wanted,’ I tell him, wishing my voice didn’t wobble as I say it, ‘you wanted it too. Come on, admit it Jake, you wanted respectability and a middle-class life just as much as I wanted it for you. You’re a grown man for God’s sake, why else would you have gone along with it like you did? So just don’t accuse me of snobbery, because it’s not fair. A lot of what I did was wrong and I’m truly sorry for that, but please understand I did it all for the right reasons. I wanted you to realise your potential. That’s all, I swear to you, that’s all I ever wanted …’

  ‘And you’ve lied to me every single step of the way.’

  For a split second we look at each other like two actors in a play who’ve forgotten their lines.

  It’s an aching moment, but in no time it’s all over.

  ‘Don’t ever try to find me again, because you won’t,’ are his final words to me and I swear it feels exactly like a knife being plunged directly into my heart.

  Then one quick, efficient door slam and it’s all over.

  For a long time after he’d left I stood statue-still, unable to move, the blood singing in my ears.

  Took a long, long time to realise that he’d really gone.

  Gone for good.

  PART FOUR

  Chapter Twelve

  There was no doubt about it, Seth Coleman hadn’t enjoyed one of those cursed directors’ weekends as much in a long, long time; years, in fact. Back in the days when he’d first been headhunted onto the Post, he’d look forward to a directors’ weekend in pretty much the same way he’d look forward to root canal work. Back then, certainly as far as the board were concerned, it used to be one excruciatingly long Eloise Elliot love-fest. And what concerned the board was pretty much all that concerned Seth ninety-nine per cent of the time.

  Course that was in Madame Elliot’s glory days, when no one at the top could see as much as a chink in the Iron Lady’s armour; everyone from Sir Gavin down kowtowed to her, responding to each an
d every valid concern about the paper Seth had with a dismissive, ‘well you know, Eloise has worked wonders for us in the past, so let’s just see how this one pans out, shall we?’

  And so Seth had stayed on the sidelines, biding his time, waiting to pick his moment, watching the paper’s online edition haemorrhage cash as sales continued on a sharp downward trajectory. Easy enough to blame the recession for that, people just weren’t spending in the way that they used to. Which was all the more reason why the online edition was now even more critical than ever. And it was Madam Elliot’s weak spot, that was all too obvious. Her strategy was at best flawed, and at worst, not working. Which clearly meant it was time for Seth to step in.

  But something had shifted lately and now Seth, with his fondness for littering conversation with foreign phrases wrongly calculated to impress women, found himself thinking tout ça change. At the directors’ weekend she’d somehow morphed from the Ice Maiden into Miss Popularity. That was blatantly obvious to anyone with an eye in their head. Everyone had seen it, everyone from the top down had commented on it within his hearing at one time or another.

  It had been quite an extraordinary phenomenon to witness first hand; editors like Robbie Turner, who’d regularly said he’d rather pan fry his own liver than spend more than two minutes in Eloise’s company socially, now were literally fighting to get a seat next to her, laughing with her, joshing with her, treating her, well, like an old buddy. Had Seth not witnessed it for himself first hand, he’d never have thought it possible.

  This astonishing, about-turn change in Madam Elliot had all begun several weeks back, when she kept mysteriously disappearing from the office, and no one could figure out why. Then the unthinkable began to happen, she started treating those around her like actual human beings for a change and not desk-chained automatons like she was herself. Or rather, like she used to be. Letting people slip off for family events, giving them early holidays on full pay, unexpectedly and thoughtfully bringing everyone Starbucks coffees to their editorial meetings, that kind of thing.