Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow? (36 page)

‘Yes,’ I say, but more to myself than to Jules. ‘Yes, I did.’

Liz’s understudy is an Irish-American actress called Rachel Ivors, who I’ve met several times before, but never actually worked with. She even looks like a scrubbed up version of Liz; the same wild blond hair and sky-blue eyes, but given that Liz is such a hard act to follow, I figure it must be a tall order for the poor girl to step into such big shoes.

I take a taxi straight from JFK to the theatre, and am amazed to see a couple of hardened reporters with cameras waiting outside, already door-stepping the place. A few dopey questions are hurled at me as I try to inch my way through them to the safety of the stage door, such as, ‘Hey Annie? Aren’t you Annie Cole? Over here, Annie! Will you tell us just one thing? As part of the
Wedding Belles
cast, how did you feel watching your colleague berate you from the podium on live TV last night?’

I manage to keep my cool and say nothing, although the temptation to yell out, ‘How in the name of arse did you think I felt?’ is overwhelming.

I get to the stage and everyone is already here ahead of me, all set for an afternoon’s rehearsals with Rachel. Jack bounds in, taking the auditorium steps two at a time and launches straight into an intense rehearsal session. Not a word about Liz, not a single syllable passes about what’s happened or what brought us to this pass or even how she’s getting on at hospital, nothing. It’s like his sole focus now
is the sacred cow that is the show, so that’s what he works on, with all the concentration of a bomb squad.

Rachel, for her part, seems well up for it, the only one of us not remotely rattled after yesterday’s events. And if I’d thought she’d be nervous, I was way wide of the mark; in fact, I hate to say it, but it’s almost like there’s a touch of the
All About Eve
’s about her. It’s as though she’s mildly sorry about the circumstances that brought her here, but at the end of the day, this is her moment in the sun and nothing, absolutely nothing is going to stop her from grabbing it with greedy, grasping hands.

Jack spends the whole afternoon pushing us, really working us like slaves, just as he used to back in the early days, going over all of Rachel’s scenes exhaustively and grilling the girl time and again. That cruel side of him keeps rearing its ugly head; the side that places human beings as absolutely secondary to a successful show. He’s in thunderous form, snapping at everyone for giving the wrong cues, barking at the stage manager and even losing it a bit when Harvey comes into the theatre, and interrupts practice briefly.

God almighty, it feels like we’re all spending the entire afternoon navigating his mood and then tip-toeing around it.

Bloody exhausting, on top of everything else.

But never once does Rachel crack, or betray anything other than excitement at getting to step out on a Broadway stage, to play in a Tony award winning show. She even whispers to me backstage while we’re both waiting to make an entrance, that her agent is bringing in not one but three casting directors to see her during the week. I say nothing, mainly because it’s not like she was a friend of Liz’s or
anything, so why should she be concerned about her? The girl is just doing what any actor handed a golden opportunity like this would do.

I only think she’s gone a bit far when she turns to me with shining, hopeful eyes and says, ‘Annie, do you have any idea how long Liz will be in hospital for? It’s just that, if she were kept in till the end of the week, then I could get a few movie casting people to come and see me too. Any clue? Do you think it’ll be a week? Maybe longer? I only ask because you know how those drug addiction programmes can sometimes go on for ever.’

‘Liz is a friend of mine,’ I answer as haughtily as I can. ‘A very good friend. And I, for one, am just hoping and praying that she’s back to work, where she belongs, ASAP.’ This shuts her up as we both step out onto the warmth of the stage, her to do one of Liz’s big soapbox speeches, me thinking sweet baby Jesus and the orphans. Talk about blonde ambition.

We’ve got a short break before a full dress rehearsal tonight, and just as I’m about to head up to my dressing room to get organised, Jack catches up with me.

‘Hey, there you are,’ he says, lightly touching my shoulder.

I automatically move a step back.

‘I was looking for you,’ he says, staring at me intently.

‘Emm…well, I was just about to get into costume.’

‘Yes, yes, of course. Some good news to report from the box office though.’

‘What’s that?’

‘Well, it seems that on the strength of all this press attention, whether it was wanted or otherwise, we’re now looking at a sell-out show, right through to the end of fall.’

‘Right. Well, that’s terrific, I suppose,’ I answer flatly.

I’m making all the right noises, but all I can think is…fat lot of good that’ll do Liz, lying on some hospital bed, attached to a drip and a monitor, going through cold turkey.

I make to head back upstairs, when he grabs me by the arm, his touch ice cold, as usual.

‘Look, Annie, it’s been a crazy twenty-four hours, how about dinner after tonight’s run-through? Just you and I, I mean? We could talk.’

I bite my lip, wondering how I can politely get out of this. No rudeness intended, it’s just that it’s been an emotional rollercoaster of a day, and frankly all I want to do after the show is crawl home and sleep for about four days straight.

‘Would you mind if I bowed out?’ I eventually say. ‘I just…well, I really just feel like being alone this evening. I hope you understand.’

He says nothing, just eyes me up and down, then gives my hand a quick squeeze. His hand feels cool and lotioned and smooth.

And then he’s gone.

Somehow we all stumble through the dress rehearsal and Rachel acquits herself competently enough, but I have to say this though – she’s no Liz Shields. Liz had a raw, powerful, magnetic danger to her in the role: an irresistible magnet to the eye who commanded your attention and try as she might, Rachel just doesn’t even come close to her. But we all somehow stagger through and given what’s happened, that’s pretty much all any of us would have asked for.

I get home early, about eleven, try to sleep and can’t,
even though I’m utterly exhausted and tired to the bone marrow. The apartment just seems so empty without Jules. I never would have thought it, but I’m missing her chatter, her high spirits and all her messing so much…by comparison, this feels like coming home to a mausoleum. God, the irony; me that once used to love and adore being alone here and it’s driving me mental.

I’m lying in bed and the sheet that’s covering me is practically knotted, I’m tossing around that much. Thinking about Liz over and over again, eaten up with guilt. About how I let her down. How she was a friend to me when I needed one and how I didn’t do the same for her, plain and simple. I should have seen the signs, I should have tried harder to find a way to be there for her, even if she pushed me away.

I am a horrible, horrible person and the worst friend imaginable.

It’s past one in the morning, when I finally give in to insomnia. I switch on the light and am just rummaging around for the TV remote control, when suddenly my mobile beeps.

ARE YOU STILL AWAKE? MEET ME AT THE MOON.

Dan. And suddenly I’m wide awake.

We haven’t been in touch with each other for a while, well over a week. Not since that disastrous weekend at the Hamptons, in fact. Guilt kept me from contacting him; or to be more accurate, a combination of guilt and cowardice, that is. Because I know I’m going to have to come clean, fess up and tell him straight out what happened and already my whole stomach is clenched with worry, just at the very thought. Every night this past week, I’ve secretly dreaded him calling, knowing the awkward, awful conversation we’d have to have. But he didn’t get in touch or even text me
once, not all week, which given the pattern we’ve now established is a bit unusual. No idea why, but then I figure he’s busy, I suppose. Sure what else could it be with Dan?

I take a deep, nerve-calming breath and call him. It’s ridiculously early his time, past six am. and sure enough, he sounds like a man talking from the bottom of the sea, completely wrecked. Weird, I have a sense of inner pandemonium, as I outwardly try to act the way I always do with him.

He couldn’t sleep either, he tells me, so we chat for a bit about Jules, who, if her flight is on time, should be landing in Shannon in a few more hours. She’ll be home by nine-ish I tell him and he seems pleased to hear it.

I’m inclined to forget just how well Dan knows me though, because next thing, it’s as if he senses there’s something up with me.

Here it comes. Just tell the truth and get it over with…who knows? He may even understand. After all, it’s not like I slept with Jack or anything, is it?

In a gentle gear shift, he asks me what’s wrong.

Tell him! Tell him now…

But I can’t bring myself to. At least, not yet, I can’t. I’m still working out how to phrase it in my head. So instead I bring him up to speed about Liz. He hasn’t heard the news, but then that’s Dan for you; even if it were all over the media in Ireland today, he’d never in a million years get time to read a paper or sit down to watch the TV.

‘Go and see her as soon as you can,’ he says softly. ‘No matter how badly she acted towards you all, remember she wasn’t in her right mind. That wasn’t the real her. But she’ll need you in the next few weeks and months and you have to be there for her. It’s the right thing to do, Annie.’

I nod and thank him and he chats on about the general news from Stickens and how Lisa and the kids are spending more and more time up at The Moorings. Reading between the lines, it seems that the Countess Dracula is now busy inveigling herself into Audrey’s good books, running round after her, doing all her little jobs, being at her permanent beck and call.

Just like I used to do, back in the days.

Immediate burning sensation flares up in my gullet. Because I can picture the scene all too clearly. Lisa playing up to Dan, feeding him all her bullshit and wheedling cash out of him, like she somehow always does. And he doesn’t see it, but then he never does; Dan only sees the good in people, never the bad. It’s on the tip of my tongue to say something, but I can’t seem to find the right words.

Suddenly all my old worries resurrect themselves. Because who knows what machinations are running through the Countess Dracula’s head right now? There’s Dan, all alone in that big house, on a marital gap year with a wife three thousand miles away…then I remember my own carry-on with Jack and my thoughts are silenced.

I’m not exactly in any position to start laying down any extra-marital rules and regulations, now am I?

‘Course when the kids are running and screaming round the place, it’s a bit of a trial for Mum,’ Dan smiles, ‘but I think she’s getting used to it. At least, she’s not complaining as much as she used to, so that’s always a good sign.’

‘And how are Harry and Sue?’ I force myself to ask. If they’re already calling Dan ‘New Dad’ I bloody well want to know about it.

‘Dotes, the two of them. I’ve got very fond of them over
the past while, they’re great company. Lisa wants to take them to Euro Disney before they go back to school in September but of course, she doesn’t have the money, so I might just give her a dig out and pay for the trip myself. She’s been through so much, the poor woman could really do with a break.’

Of course you’ll end up paying for it,
I think, silently furious.
You were manipulated into coughing up all along, only you’re too nice a guy to ever see it…

Dan chats on about Lisa and her litany of woes and I haven’t realised it, but I’ve been completely mute for a good while now, completely wrapped up in my own thoughts.

‘Annie?’ he says. ‘Are you still there?’

‘Hmmm? Oh, yeah. Still here.’

‘Is there something else on your mind? You’ve gone very quiet. Not like you.’

Right then, here’s your moment,
the little voice in my head says.
Just come clean. You’ll feel better in the long run. All you did was kiss Jack, no more. He’ll understand and what’s more, he might even appreciate your honesty.

‘Emm…well…’

‘Oh, I knew there was something I forgot to tell you. I had to vaccinate all of Seamus Hogan’s swine herd last week.’

I kissed someone else, Dan.

‘We found pork tapeworm in about half a dozen of them…’

And it was sexy and it was passionate and I’m doing my best to make sure that it doesn’t happen again, but my worry is that it so easily could…

‘James had to take faeces samples and rush them off to the lab…’

I’ve never in my life kissed anyone other than you, but it’s just been so, so long since you even touched me that I just couldn’t stop myself. And I know that’s no excuse…

‘And it turned out to be tapeworm all right…’

Should I tell you or not? What’s the best thing here? If you told me something like this, I think it would destroy me, even though I’ve absolutely no right to feel that way or make that kind of demand on you
…

‘So anyway, we treated it with Mebedaloze, a new drug that’s just come on the market…’

Dan, what will I do? I’m lonely and I’m confused and I’m lost and none of this feels right to me.

‘And the pigs seem to be responding well. No more traces in their faeces.’

It’s comical – I’m trying to pour out my heart’s innermost secrets to him and he’s talking to me about pig dung.

‘Annie? Are you still there? I’m sorry, I’ve been rattling on. Was there something you wanted to say to me?’

And like the moral coward that I am, I back down.

‘No. No, there isn’t.’

A long pause and then his voice becomes softer.

‘You’re much missed around here, I hope you know that.’

Please, Dan, don’t. The guilt is already choking me enough without this…

‘In fact, I constantly keep thinking back to old times, when you and I were in New York together…I can’t stop myself thinking about it…when we first got engaged…God, it seems like decades ago now, doesn’t it?’