Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow? (26 page)

‘Everyone does not do it and I’m concerned about you. What’s more, Jack’s noticed and now he’s up the walls worried as well.’

‘Relax, grandma, I’ve been doing it for a long time and trust me, you’d like it. Makes you feel like the whole world is in love with you. Aaaa-mazing. I feel phee-nomenal.’

‘Liz, you’re doing coke on top of all the booze you’ve drunk? Christ Alive, what is with you? You won’t be happy till you’ve partied yourself into an ICU and end up being fed through a shagging straw!’

‘Oh please, I’ve hardly drunk anything. Few cocktails, some champagne, nothing more. I may be American drunk, but I’m Irish sober. Besides, who gave you the right to start acting like my conscience? For Christ’s sake, Annie, look at you, perched on my shoulder, judging me. Well you can piss off with yourself; I don’t want to be judged, I just want to have a good time. And by the way, you really shouldn’t pull that disapproving face, you know. Makes me see what you’ll look like when you’re older.’

Bugger it anyway, I think. Pointless talking to her when she’s this high, so I decide to wait till tomorrow, when she’s come down a bit.

‘Besides, you never answered my question about Jack,’ she says, turning back to the mirror and lashing on more bronzer than you’d normally see on the whole of Girls Aloud. ‘Mightn’t be my type, but I can see that some sex-starved women might find him completely fuck-able. Like you, for instance. Don’t you just want to drag him home
and do it with him once…just to get it out of your system? So come on, tell me. What’s going on with you and him anyway?’

‘It’s called having a conversation with a man without sticking your tongue down his gob or letting him paw you up in front of two hundred people. You should try it sometime.’

Her reply could strip metal.

‘Still so bloody middle-aged,’ she sighs into the mirror. ‘Little countrified wifey let loose on the big city and all you can do is wag your parochial finger in my face because I’m having a fabulous time and you’re not. All I’m suggesting is that Jack could be like your own personal sexual nicotine patch, that’s all. To help wean you off Dan. You need to get laid, honey, and badly. It would help remove that stick you’ve got lodged up your arse. Make you far more fun to be around as well, which would be no bad thing.’

‘Right that’s it, I’m going,’ I say, picking up my bag. ‘See you outside.’

‘Oh, I’ve pissed you off, have I?’ she says, her voice dripping with sarcasm. ‘Dear oh dear, how WILL I sleep at night? Oh yeah, I just remembered. I’ve got pills for that too.’

Seems I’m learning another lesson about Liz when she’s coked up. It turns her into a very dislikeable version of herself. The very worst version of herself, in fact.

The Princess of bleeding Darkness.

‘Oh did I hit a nerve?’ she asks dryly. ‘Are you having a little anxiety stroke because I dared to tell you the truth? Or maybe you’re just cranky because it’s well past your bedtime. Must be…ohh…what…almost midnight by now? Time for your warm milk and Ovaltine in front of your new best friend, the TV, surely?’

‘Goodnight, Liz.’

My hand is on the exit handle with one foot outside the door, when suddenly she calls me back.

‘You know what Jack told me a while ago?’ She’s eyeballing me in the mirror now, while readjusting her boobs so they jut out provocatively over her top.

‘I couldn’t give a shite what he told you. See you later.’

‘Chris and I were in Sardi’s with him a few weeks back,’ she continues, ignoring me, ‘and one of the hostesses was practically flinging herself at him. So we were teasing him and probing him about whether he was single or not…’

‘For God’s sake…’

‘And you know what he told us?’

‘I don’t know and I don’t care and what’s more I really am leaving now.’

Don’t know why I even bother entertaining her when she’s high like this. Completely futile exercise.

‘That there was only one woman he really wanted, but he couldn’t get her. Know why?’

‘Course I don’t.’

‘Because she’s already married.’

And then she turns to stare pointedly at me.

That night, the dreams started

It was New Year’s Eve after my first term at Allenwood and Dan had invited me down to Waterford to stay with his family. But as it happened, that night his parents had taken the seven-year-old Jules to visit cousins a good forty mile drive away, when after dire weather warnings, the worst snowstorm in twenty years enveloped the whole of the south east. Which meant that the roads were utterly treacherous and his family had no choice but to stay put.

Which meant that Dan and I were left together at The Moorings. All alone for the whole night.

I’ll never forget it – the house was so icy cold that we pretty much camped out by the fire in the drawing room, the only room in the whole place where the temperature was fluctuating somewhere above zero. I had just spent Christmas with Mum in hot, humid South America so as far as I was concerned, this, by contrast, was like something out of Charles Dickens. The snow was beating down outside and the fire crackling away while he and I toasted marshmallows and sipped hot chocolate, side by side on the sofa, with a giant fleecy rug tucked over me for extra warmth and snugness. We’d chatted and laughed and watched
The Truman Show
on DVD and warbled our way through every Christmas-y song we knew.

But now that it was close on midnight, the mood between us had shifted and become more mellow. I’d only arrived back in Ireland the previous day and was trying my best to stifle yawns as the jet lag finally hit me.

Meanwhile Dan was stretched out beside me, hands behind his head, staring into the fire and lost in thought.

‘So,’ he eventually said after a long, easy silence. ‘You and Mike Sherry.’

‘Oh don’t,’ I shuddered. ‘He annoys me.’

‘Good. I’m glad, he annoys me too.’

‘Dan?’ I had to ask the question. Opportunities rarely came as golden as this one.

‘Yup?’

‘You and Yolanda?’

He turned on his side to face me and even in the dim firelight, I could see him grinning.

‘Yolanda who?’

For a delicious moment, neither of us spoke, we just looked at each other, exchanging souls. I smiled, afraid to say any more in case I broke the spell. Then, I started to shiver involuntarily as the fire began to die down.

‘Hey,’ he said, ‘you’re frozen. Slide over here. Allow me to be your personal electric blanket for the night.’

Well, I couldn’t resist him for another second. Gently, he pulled me towards him, wrapping his strong, chunky arms tight around me, instantly warming me up. He smelt musky and as my head lay in the crook of his arm, all I wanted was for him to bend down and kiss me. If I was frozen a minute ago, suddenly not only was I hot, but it was making me hotter just to look at him.

Then, a mile away from Stickens village, we heard the church ring out the bells for New Year.

‘Happy New Year, Annie,’ he murmured gently, so close to me that I could feel his lips gently graze my ear.

‘Happy New Year, Dan.’

Bliss, I thought. A rare and perfect moment. Lying here in his arms is sheer ecstasy and nothing, absolutely nothing could possibly improve this magical night.

‘Any new year’s resolutions?’ I whispered through the silence.

‘Just one.’

‘Which is…?’

‘Never, ever to let you go.’ And I swear, his voice was as soft as breath.

If that’s true, I thought, then before it’s barely started, my life just got made.

I looked up at him. Slowly, barely perceptibly, he moved his head down towards me and a second later, his soft lips were on mine. We kissed slowly at first, gently, tenderly. And then it began to grow more and more passionate and intense as all the months of waiting for him, longing for him, finally paid off.

Next thing I knew, my fingers were running through his thick, black hair while his hands were running down my waist and up my thighs, pulling me even closer to him, kissing me far, far harder now, far more intensely, his tongue in my mouth and mine in his.

I was wrong it seemed. The night could and just did improve dramatically.

I can pinpoint the exact moment that I fell in love with Dan and this was it.

On the stroke of New Year, nineteen ninety-nine.

With a heart-stopping jolt, I suddenly wake up in my apartment in New York City. It’s past four am but I don’t care. I just have an overriding need to talk to Dan. With absolutely no idea what I’d say to him even if I actually got him on the phone, which doubtless, I wouldn’t.

I just want to talk to him, that’s all.

Just to hear his voice.

I even get as far as dialling the first three digits of his mobile number.

Then I remember and hang up the phone.

SUMMER

Chapter Ten

June already. New York is getting hotter and more humid by the day. The streets are packed with tourists now and at this stage I can nearly spot them a mile away, with their
I Heart NY
novelty T-shirts and baseball caps, queuing up day and night at the half-price ticket booth at Times Square, all looking for discounted tickets to get into
The Lion King.

The native New Yorkers are easy enough to spot too: they’re the slightly terrifying army of professionals that you see striding in and out of buildings like the MetLife, who wear black all winter long, then abruptly switch to white around now and keep on wearing it till Labor Day. Like it’s some kind of uniform. I see them everywhere I go, strutting down Madison and Fifth, rushing, rushing, always rushing, talking into cellphones, gulping back their travelling soya lattes from Starbucks; some of the women cleverly producing fans from their Hermès Kelly bags, then wafting them in front of their slightly too-immobile faces, trying to stave off at least some of the hot, dead air that’s smothering the city like a blanket.

Never in my life did I think I’d be so grateful for air-con at the theatre and in the apartment: I’ve known humidity in my time, but nothing compares to the clammy dryness
of a New York summer. Small wonder rich people vacate the city in droves around now, to party at elegant summer-shares in the Hamptons, then return when the city cools down a bit, come the fall. (American for autumn.)

The good news is that the show is continuing to pack them in night after night and although I should be on cloud nine about this, I’ve got one constant nagging worry that just won’t go away: namely, Liz. Because if her behaviour was a mild worry a few weeks ago, now it’s escalated into a full-blown, major cause for concern. Which for the moment at least, I’m desperately trying to keep to myself, lest it leak out among the cast that her general carry-on is growing more and more unstable with every passing day. Containment, I figure at least gives Liz a chance to get her act together in private, without the white-hot glare of scrutiny from all sides, which would only escalate things out of all control. The principal worry being that if Chris hears about it, it’ll be all over the theatre in the blink of an eye and then of course the minute it filters back to Jack, the game’s up. Liz could very well find herself out of a job and frankly, I think work is the only thing that’s even remotely keeping her on the straight and narrow right now.

Ever since that awful night at Easter in Don’t Tell Mama, I’ve noticed that there are good days and bad days with her, except that now, the bad days are well and truly starting to outnumber the good ones. Example? A few weeks back, one morning at about eleven-ish, I got a call from her on my mobile, sounding completely out of her head. She was so panicky and paranoid it took me an age to get the full story out of her, but apparently, she’d gone home with some guy the previous night and had now woken up in his apartment, totally alone, not knowing where she was or who
she’d been with and without any money, not even for the taxi fare home.

Root around the place, I told her firmly, look for mail or even a household bill with the owner’s address on it. If he has a desk, try there. If necessary, go through drawers. After much coaxing and encouraging, I eventually got her to do it and as luck would have it, she discovered a phone bill stuck to his fridge.

With a Brooklyn address.

‘Stay where you are, honey, I’m on the way. And try to stay calm!’

Took me a good half hour just to find a cab that would drive me all the way out to Brooklyn, but eventually I did and when I went to buzz the intercom for Liz to let me in, I saw she was already downstairs waiting for me, trembling and terrified, a million miles from her usual swaggering, overt, sexy confident self. I got the shock of my life seeing her: she was a complete mess, her clothes were torn and manky and her eyes bloated and raw red from crying. Most frightening of all though, her nose was battered and bloody, like she’d been punched square in the face.

‘Jesus, Liz, what happened?’

‘He didn’t mean to do it,’ she sobbed, ‘we were just fooling around, we’d each done a few lines and…it was an accident. Honestly.’

I cradled her into the cab, made her lie back to try and arrest the bleeding and asked the driver to stop off at the nearest A&E. But Liz, so weak and helpless a minute ago, suddenly kicked up. No, she insisted, I’m fine. I can’t face hospital, she said, that would mean blood and urine tests and all sorts of questions being asked.

But she and I both knew what was really worrying her.
Given what was probably floating around in her bloodstream right now, who knew what hospital tests might lead to? Drug offences? Maybe even charges? In a blink, she could find herself on a flight back home, out of a job.

Next thing, she was pleading with me.

‘Please, Annie, I need you to be a pal and say nothing about this. Not to anyone. I’ll be fine for tonight, I swear. Just help me clean up my nose and no one will suspect a thing. And I’ll stop doing the stuff, I swear I will. No more lines, ever. This’ll be the last time. I promise.’

Well what could I say? I had that awful feeling you get when your back’s completely to the wall and you’re faced with no other choice.