A Very Accidental Love Story

by Claudia Carroll

  Now, every single day of my life, when I think deep and hard about it, I work out that I’m happy. Something that would have been completely inconceivable to me all that time ago. And when I try to remember the person I was back then, I find I can’t.

  ‘You’re much missed, Eloise,’ Marc from culture told me, sincerity shining out of him.

  ‘Come off it Marc,’ I teased him, ‘may I remind you that you and I did nothing but bicker the whole time?’

  ‘Doesn’t matter. You were a boss and a friend. A boss-friend, if you like. You didn’t used to be, but you are now. Well, you were until you told the board to go and shag themselves. Which subsequently made you my personal heroine. If I could only get you to change your hair a bit, that is …’

  ‘Marc! I get it!’ I laugh at him. ‘Now, would you ever quit while you’re ahead?!’

  Anyway, hours and hours and waaaay too much champagne later, as I fall tipsily out the door, with Rachel on one side of me and Kian from sports supporting me on the other I notice one noticeable exception who didn’t even bother coming to say goodbye. From the far corner of the room, I can just make out Seth Coleman’s bony silhouette standing up against the closed blinds of my old office. Looking like some kind of ghoulish spectre at the feast.

  And would I go back and trade places with him? Not on your bleeding life.

  So now it’s six months on, almost Christmas and so much in my life has already changed. Jake is still working at the language school, except he’s been made full-time now and has effectively been supporting me and Lily with his salary, paying the mortgage, the whole works. Meanwhile, I took my own good time finding another job, sticking at all times to the one set of criteria I refused to stray from.

  I will no longer work weekends.

  I will not work later than five in the evening.

  I will take six week’s holiday every year and that’s final.

  Anyway, I was headhunted for several jobs at first, basically all a repeat performance of what I’d been doing at the Post for so long, and I turned each and every one down.

  ‘Think about what you love to do more than anything else in the whole world,’ Jake advised me late one night, when Lily was tucked up in bed and it was just him and me alone. One of my favourite times of the day, basically.

  ‘And then see if you can get paid for it.’

  And that’s when it came to me; an epiphany. I thought back to how much I used to really love reporting way back in my early days and the huge kick I got out of being out on the road tracking down Jake, all those months and months ago. So I asked The Daily Echo if they’d be interested in hiring me as a freelance journalist and they snapped at it. Kept offering me editorial jobs higher up the food chain, senior editor in charge of this, executive editor in charge of that, all of which I’ve since turned down.

  And for the first time in years, I’m really, genuinely loving what I do. I’ve lived side by side with anxiety for so long, now that it’s gone, I almost don’t recognise the new lightness of spirit I feel, skipping into work late mornings, or even better, working from home. Whole days go by when I completely forget to worry, then realise; I’ve nothing to worry about. Best of all, I can carry it off and yet still prioritise mummy-time. Because believe me, nothing on earth will ever change that ever again.

  Helen, meanwhile, has still more good news to report. In a stunning development and to much silent whooping from me, she finally dumped the useless, worthless Darren and told him where to shove his B&B in Cobh. Then she reapplied for her old job in telesales and moved lock, stock and barrel back into her old flat in Sandymount. And the minute she was newly single and back in town, the lovely Ben didn’t take too long to ask her out on a proper date. I’m delighted to say that they’re still seeing each other, more and more seriously now it would seem. At least according to Jake, who reckons Helen is the first woman who’s actually made him smile again since he lost his wife. She gets on brilliantly with his little boy Josh too, and he and Lily have become the best of buddies.

  Lily now has a far more active social life than any adult I know, bar none. Since Jake came into her life, she’s now acquired the one thing she wanted more than anything, but aside from a dad, she now has a shedload of cousins plus a brand new grandma too. Jake has a grand total of seven nieces and nephews and Lily adores all of them, constantly badgering me for playdates with them, anything to get to spend more time with them. And it’s wonderful to see her playing with them, so happy. Surrounded by her family.

  So now it’s Christmas Eve and just as Jake promised us, as a special surprise present, he’s whisked Lily and me off to EuroDisney in Paris for a few days’ break. The child, I think will burst with the sheer happiness of actually being here, and to be perfectly honest, her mother’s not all that far behind her.

  As the three of us sit side by side in one of those giant cup and saucer waltzers, being swirled this way and that, screeching and laughing our heads off, loving every second of being together, I look up at Jake and there’s a moment where the two of us grin broadly at each other, unable to believe our story could have ended so happily. But it has; I can scarcely believe it, but it really has.

  Happiness I want to last for a delicious eternity.

  And suddenly the future stretches out in front of us, like a rolling red carpet, as far as the eye can see.

  Acknowledgements

  As always, huge and heartfelt thanks to Marianne Gunn O’Connor, or as she’s known in my house, Marianne; Miracle Worker Extraordinaire. Thanks for working so tirelessly and for being such a constant source of inspiration and encouragement. An agent this amazing doesn’t rightfully deserve the title ‘loveliest woman you could ever possibly meet,’ but she is, she really is.

  Thanks to Pat Lynch, for keeping the show on the road. Pat, I honestly don’t know what any of us would do without your calm, friendly voice down the other end of the phone!

  Very special thanks to the wonderful Claire Bord. Claire, I really hope you know what an absolute pleasure it is to work with you, the kind of editor any author would gladly give their eye teeth for. Thank you for all the incredible hard work you put into this book and for your wonderful thoughts and suggestions which, as always, were pitch-perfect. Already looking forward to working with you on the new one!

  Huge thanks to all the ladies at HarperCollins Avon, or the ‘A’ team as I call them. You’re all amazing and it’s a pure pleasure to work alongside you all, although somehow it never feels like work! Very special thanks to Caroline Ridding, Claire Power, Sammia Rafique, Keshini Naidoo and Helen Bolton. And a huge big thank you to the ever-patient Sam Hancock who works so hard on our digital campaigns, websites and newsletters. Looking forward to seeing you all very soon!

  Harper Collins are lucky enough to have two of the hardest working people in the business based here in Dublin, who do so much and who make our lives so much easier. A very warm thank you to the legendary powerhouse that is Moira Reilly and also to Tony Purdue, who works so hard, he’d nearly put you to shame.

  As always, massive thanks to the lovely Vicki Satlow in Milan, who daily performs miracles in selling translation rights. Vicki, you’re a wonder and I only wish we got to see you in Ireland that bit more often. But I’ll continue to nag at you!

  This book is about a newspaper editor and when I was researching it I was cheeky enough to approach Geraldine Kennedy, then editor of the Irish Times, with all the blithe confidence of the gobshite. Here’s the problem you see, everyone thinks you’re telling lies when you ring them up and say, ‘no really! I’m researching a book! Honest!) But with Geraldine, did I hit the jackpot or what? Instead of politely showing me the door, she was extraordinarily generous with her time and really went out of her way to give me insights into the workings of a scarily massive paper like that. Huge thanks again for everything Geraldine, and I wish you well in this exciting new phase of your life.

  Very special thanks to my family, Mum and Dad and to my gorgeous gang of
buddies, who’ve been in my life for decades now. (Yes, we are all VERY old, scarily old … …)

  When I first got published way back in 2004, I had the real pleasure of meeting a whole new group of friends, female writers one and all, who’ve been so welcoming and so incredibly supportive from day one. I’m so grateful to have you all in my life and on a personal note, can I just say that I’ve dedicated this book to one of those very special writer buddies I’ve been lucky enough to meet along the way.

  This one’s for Anita Notaro.

  Read on for an exclusive Daily Echo feature by Eloise Elliot

  The Daily Echo

  February 14th

  LOVE, WHERE YOU LAST LOOK.

  A Valentine’s Day Special.

  By Eloise Elliot.

  How many times have we all been told, ‘you know, the very minute you stop searching, that’s precisely when the man of your dreams will find you’. Now I’d have dismissed that as a pile of total and utter horse dung, if you’d said it to me not all that long ago. But lately, let’s just say from recent personal experience, I suddenly got to wondering all over again.

  Could there possibly be any truth in it? Can it sometimes be the case that we invest so much time, trouble and energy into finding a life partner/soulmate, that sometimes all our good intentions have exactly the opposite effect, and send otherwise perfectly decent guys running for the hills? After all, we all know that men come with inbuilt radars for women who aren’t so much looking for a boyfriend, as auditioning for a husband. Don’t they?

  And so, I decided to ask around a bit.

  One: Laura’s Story: ‘You sometimes just have to bend the rules a bit to get a result’

  So let me introduce you to my first interviewee, who has begged me on pain of death not to reveal her name on account of, as she put it, the holy mortifying shame of her story. So instead let’s just call her Laura for now, and leave it at that.

  Now Laura is a lovely, bright, successful women who tells me she’s always had many wonderful things in life, fabulous blessings, all going in her favour. A job she loved and a great place to live in, for starters. She had family, great friends, disposable income; this was a woman who had it together. But, you guessed it: for years and years … utterly and totally manless.

  And Laura had tried. God knows, this girl had seriously put herself out there. Speed dating, read dating (exactly the same thing, except you do it in Waterstones), she’s even tried a new craze, ‘eye-gazing dating’. Which apparently is a bit like speed dating, except you don’t talk to the guy sitting opposite you, to see if there’s any ‘non-verbal chemistry’. (I know, I know, but apparently it’s all the go in the States.) As it happened though, Laura just got a fit of giggles when some fella started to stare earnestly at her and that put paid to that. Brave soul that she is, she’d even badgered just about every pal she had to set her up on blind dates, and had gamely gone along on all of them. There she’d be, blow-dried, manicured, made-up, dressed-up, setting out with high hopes in her heart. And all with zero percent success.

  ‘It was the ridiculous hours I worked,’ she confided in me over coffee and a sticky bun …

  I’m an investment analyst you see, and the hours nearly kill you. I’ve got to be at my desk from when the markets first open at the crack of dawn, right through till well after eight or nine in the evening, more often than not. So of course, by the time the weekend comes round, I’m usually just too bone-tired to even think about going out at night; all I want to do is catch up on sleep. And my pals. And it goes without saying, food.

  Strange thing though; even though on paper, I ostensibly had it all – good job, a nice place to live, great buddies– the fact that I was perennially single somehow made me feel like I wasn’t living my life to its full potential. I often think the feminist movement did so much for my generation, and yet if you’re alone, you’re still made to feel it. I sometimes imagine the ghost of Jane Austen rising from her grave, pointing a bony finger at us and saying, ‘Ha! You lot thought the last two hundred years changed anything!

  Anyway, flash forward to one Saturday a while ago, when I was meeting a girlfriend for brunch in this restaurant we both loved. Best eggs Benedict in town, and don’t even get me going on their garlic fries. The perfect kick-start to anyone’s weekend, trust me. So there we were, patiently queuing for a table, both of us starving and needing a) caffeine; b) eggs, bacon, anything; and in my case c) a very large and chocolatey dessert to follow. And we were both starving. Ravenous. So hungry, we were nearly getting ratty with each other.

  Now I’m someone who normally does a lot of preventative eating before going outside the door. (And if you don’t believe me, you’d want to see my handbag; whereas colleagues all take their ipads and iphones everywhere they go, I take Hobnobs and KitKats.) But as it happened, that particular morning, I’d absolutely nothing in the flat to eat, bar a few stale Cheerios and an out-of-date Innocent banana fruit smoothie.

  ‘Ahh,’ the hostess at the restaurant told us, ‘bit of a seating problem, I’m afraid. We’re completely full as you can see, so there’ll be a bit of a wait.’

  A bit of a wait? Not on your bloody life, not with me almost violent with hunger by now and ready to start gnawing at chair legs or else turning to cannibalism.

  ‘But there’s a free table for two right there!’ I spluttered, pointing wildly at a cordoned-off section. ‘Why can’t we have that one?’

  ‘Private party,’ we were curtly told.

  Now I’m not proud of what followed, but trust me, the delicious smell of fries and eggs was starting to waft our way and take it from me, I was powerless. Homer Simpson-style drool was starting to dribble out of my mouth and I knew I either had to be eating in the next few minutes, or there’d be a riot.

  ‘Erm … yes,’ I answered back. ‘We’re … actually with the private group. Both of us. Ok if we’re seated now? Sorry that we’re a bit late …’

  My pal flashed me a ‘you filthy, shameless liar’ look, but as I told her later, the end more than justified the means. And so two minutes later, we’re seated, we’ve ordered, coffee is on its way and I’m slowly starting to feel that bit more human.

  Which was pretty much when we first took notice of the private party surrounding us. Now there must have been at least fifty of them, predominantly youngish, all incredibly well dressed and I distinctly remember almost all wearing black. Some chic, fashionista party, we wondered?

  At midday on a Saturday though? Unlikely.

  Then just as our food arrives, a guy approaches us. Friendly, warm open smile, shaking hands with us both and introducing himself as Adam.

  ‘So how did you both know Harry, then?’ he asked politely.

  Harry? I thought. Who the hell was Harry?

  ‘It’s just I thought I knew most of Harry’s friends and I haven’t seen either of you girls before.’

  Now I’m starting to get embarrassed, but my pal works in PR and is therefore that bit quicker off the mark than me.

  ‘Do you know, I was just about to ask you exactly the same thing,’ she smiled pleasantly back at him.

  ‘Oh, I knew Harry from work,’ Adam nodded. ‘Although I’ve only been at the company for the past three years, but we’d grown close in that time. I’m going to miss him like hell.’

  OK, so now an alarm bell is starting to ring in my head. He knew him? What’s with the past tense? He’s going to miss this Harry guy? Have we walked into an emigration party by accident, where the host has just headed off to the airport with a backpack and a one way ticket to Sydney?

  ‘Tragic, wasn’t it?’ Adam went on.

  Tragic? So now I’m starting to shoot my pal panicky looks across the table.

  Have we just gatecrashed … a funeral?

  Yes, was the short answer. Harry apparently had passed away in his early forties, a sudden coronary. Awful. Terrible. Just heartbreaking.

  And now here we were. Trying to pass ourselves off as lifelong buddies to som
eone who actually knew him. And all for a plate of eggs Benedict with a side of garlic fries.

  Now admittedly, yes, of course we could have ’fessed up there and then. We could have got out of there and still lived to tell the tale, but my pal is made of stronger stuff than that and decided to go down the ‘sod it anyway, let’s brazen it out, we’ve come this far,’ route.

  ‘And it’s not like we’ll ever see any of these people ever again, is it?’ she hissed to me in the loo, a while after. So we did, and somehow, someway, got away with it. Lovely, friendly Adam seemed to buy the pair of us as childhood pals of the deceased who just hadn’t seen him in years. So we chatted and we nattered and a few hours later, just as people were starting to leave, he shyly took me aside and asked for my phone number.

  Well, I have to tell him, I thought. Simple as that. And the sooner, the better. Easier said than done though, because date one was just so perfect and lovely (dinner and a George Clooney movie and oh, the bliss of finding a straight guy who’d happily sit through it!)

  So … what could I do? Ruin an otherwise gorgeous night with the first genuinely lovely guy I’d met in years?

  Anyway, date one turns into dates two, three and four and still I haven’t told him. Weeks pass, months pass, I’m falling for him deeper and deeper all the time, and eventually the nagging alarm in my head can be silenced no longer.

  So, over a quiet plate of pasta and a bottle of wine back at his flat late one night, I eventually pluck up the guts to come clean.

  ‘Adam? Remember the, emm … funeral we met at?’

  ‘Course I do. Vividly.’

  ‘Well, there’s something about it you need to know.’

  And out it all comes. How starving we were, how desperate for grub, how my buddy and I would have happily wrestled old ladies to the ground, just to get a table for brunch that morning.