‘Sofie?’ I ask faintly.
She’s so pale, she’s almost green. She’s doubled over with cramps and people are looking. Is there anywhere she can sit? A place I could stash her until I reach the security conveyor-belt? But there’s nowhere.
What if she faints? What if she collapses? What if they don’t let her on the plane?
‘Mum,’ Neeve mutters, ‘give her more painkillers.’
It’s too soon. I’m afraid that if I give her too many they’ll thin her blood and increase the risk of her haemorrhaging. ‘Can you hang on?’ I ask Sofie. ‘As soon as we’re through here, we’ll go to a lounge and you can lie down before we get on the plane.’
‘Okay.’
It’s an agonizing twenty-minute shuffle before we reach the conveyor-belt. ‘What would it be like if Sofie had to do this on her own?’ Neeve says quietly. ‘This is such bullshit.’
As bad luck would have it, Sofie beeps on her way through the scanner and has to go into a Plexiglas cubicle to be done more thoroughly. The urge to howl rises up in me: will we ever make it home?
She passes the Plexiglas test, and once we’re all through, I walk us towards the lounge. The distances in the airport seem vast today – I should have booked a motorized buggy. I’d always thought I’d be mortified to be seen in such a thing, but right now I’d kill to be sitting up in one, slowly beeping my way past people walking almost as quickly as I’m gliding.
‘A trolley’s what we need,’ Neeve says. ‘We’ll stick Sofie on it. Keep an eye out for a spare.’
But before we’ve found one, we reach the lounge.
‘Twenty-five quid each!’ Neeve mutters, as I hand over my credit card. ‘Another seventy-five pounds. It’s utter bollocks, this whole business!’
‘Shush,’ I say. ‘Get in.’
Sofie curls up on a two-person couch, her feet in my lap, my coat over her. Neeve takes off to get ‘Twenty-five quid’s worth of free stuff’ while I catastrophize. What if Sofie isn’t allowed on to the flight? Seriously, what will we do?
Oh, God, here’s a high-heeled, bossy-arse lady to tell me off!
‘Everything all right here?’ She gestures at the little bundle of bones that is Sofie.
‘Teenage daughter,’ I say, with a confident smile. ‘Bad period pains. Need to get her home to a hot-water bottle.’
‘No shoes on the furniture.’
‘They’re not. They’re in my lap.’
‘Mum,’ Neeve says. ‘I’ve stolen enough biscuits to open a shop and the board says “Go to gate”. C’mon.’
Outside the lounge, I spot an abandoned trolley. Neeve and I coax Sofie on to it, along with her case. I push, and Neeve wheels our bags.
‘We’ll laugh about this one day,’ Neeve says.
Maybe.
At the gate, waiting to board, I feel as if holes are being burnt in my stomach lining. It probably looks like a piece of Belgian lace down there. I’m sweating with anxiety as I give our boarding passes for inspection. The steward gives Sofie a hard stare – but we’re let on.
We stash her by the window and my body is as taut as a steel hawser while we taxi, then queue, then queue some more. Finally, mercifully, the wheels are up. None of us speaks while the plane ascends higher and higher, and it’s only when the seatbelt signs ping off that Neeve and I both exhale long and loudly, then turn and give each other a tentative smile.
84
Monday, 12 December, day ninety-one
‘Darker.’ Mum is excited.
‘It’s not a good idea,’ the beautician says.
‘But why would I get my eyebrows tattooed if no one will notice?’
‘They will notice them.’
‘That poor beautician,’ Alastair says. ‘Lilian O’Connell, mother of five, has a will of iron.’
It’s Monday morning and Neeve’s latest vlog, starring my mother getting eyebrowdery, has just gone live.
‘It’s almost like a thriller,’ Alastair says. ‘Waiting to see whose will is going to prevail. My money’s on Locmof.’
‘Who?’
‘LOCMOF – Lilian O’Connell, mother of five.’
The beautician – Elaine – calmly explains that as Mum’s hair is blonde, her eyebrows have to match.
‘But who says I’m staying blonde?’ Mum asks. ‘I could change it tomorrow to red. Or blue, even! So go a couple of shades darker on the brows. Please.’
The vlog takes us – speedily – through the hour-and-a-half process, and at the end Mum has beautiful well-defined mid-brown eyebrows and looks noticeably different.
‘It completely changes my face!’ she raves. ‘I look visible. I’m a woman you’d notice. A woman you’d respect.’
‘I respected you well before this, Locmof,’ Alastair says. ‘Amy, is there any way she’d adopt me?’
‘You’ve a perfectly lovely mother of your own, you ingrate. Why do you always have to want the woman you can’t have?’ Then I see the time. ‘Oh, God, Alastair, it’s ten to one. Hurry!’
The Christmas madness is well under way – the lights, the crowds, the carrier bags, the catch-ups, the mulled wine, the hangovers. Work overlaps with pleasure, as I deliver gifts to favoured journalists and clients, then take them for lunch or drinks. Today we’re having our office lunch, although, as Alastair says, ‘It’s a bit ice-to-the-Eskimos seeing as our job is one long piss-up.’
‘Mine isn’t,’ Thamy mutters.
At home we’ve put up the decorations, although we’ve had to do without a few things, like strewing lights through the tree in the front garden, because we needed Hugh and a ladder.
In Hugh’s absence, Kiara has requested a change to our usual Christmas Day. ‘I don’t want it to be just us four, I’d miss him too much and so would Sofie. Could we do something, maybe with Derry? Or Declyn?’
‘We could go to a hotel?’
‘Oh, no, Mum!’ I should have known that Kiara would recoil at money being spent needlessly. ‘That would be every kind of wrong. And I want us to cook together!’
Shite. A million times shite. Hugh always does our Christmas dinner and Kiara’s idea of sharing the load is opening the oven door and shouting, ‘What colour is “done” supposed to look like?’
Derry dislikes cooking even more than I do. It’s going to be awful.
‘Would it be okay if I bought Dad a gift?’ Kiara asked. ‘Even though he won’t be here to open it.’
A bud of rage blooms in me: I hate him for doing this to her.
Next thing, Maura got involved in the Christmas Day arrangements and suddenly it was decided that the entire family was going to Mum and Pop’s for the lunch.
Derry broke the news to me. ‘But you’ve got off lightly, Amy, you’re on trifle and cake duty.’
‘Jackson and I will help,’ Sofie says.
To my great relief, Sofie is doing well. Wonderfully, even. She’s eating, she’s engaging in things, and she and Jackson are as together as they ever were.
‘We’ll make a trifle,’ I tell her. ‘But I’m buying the cake. Life’s too short.’
It’s Mum on the phone.
‘Amy. I got recognized from the vlog thing. In Cornelscourt. Some girls came up to me and asked, “Are you Neeve Aldin’s granny?” ’
‘But that’s great!’
‘I know, right! They wanted to see my eyebrows up-close. Then they said I was a legend.’
‘Mum. Mum.’ Neeve comes into the kitchen, while I’m reluctantly cooking dinner. My heart contracts. What now?
‘Mum.’ Her voice is hoarse. Then tears begin to fall.
‘What?’
‘It’s happened.’
For the love of God! ‘What has?’
‘Income. Money! Finally.’ She’s crying properly now. ‘An agency want to advertise on my site. They’ll pay me. The hits are high enough.’
‘Oh, Neeve!’ Things have been improving, I know. Her subscribers have increased sharply, the calibre of freebies has improved, and a few smallish
companies have suggested a brand partnership. But this is in a different league.
‘Mum, can you believe it?’ Her voice is thick with tears. ‘Actual real money. Earned by me, and not just the pennies they pay me in that effing nightclub. I’d been thinking of becoming a Deliveroo driver after Christmas and now I won’t have to.’
‘Oh, Neevey, well done! You’ve worked so bloody hard on this, you deserve it.’
‘I have to thank Granny. Her first vlog changed something.’
It did. There are thousands of interchangeable YouTube style bloggers, all pushing a cross-section of the same stuff to the same demographic. For any to succeed, they need a USP: a cute doggie, a cute boyfriend or – as in Neeve’s case – a cute granny.
‘You had the idea to film her,’ I say. ‘You’ve got to take some credit.’
‘Suddenly things have got better.’ She’s weeping again. ‘Daddy is finally properly in my life and now this! I never thought I could be this happy!’
85
Tuesday, 13 December, day ninety-two
I bump awake. The world is in complete darkness and I’m wondering what’s woken me – my head zips through my usual worries: Hugh, Sofie, money, Kiara, Neeve, Pop, Mum, Josh … Then I realize it’s Marcia. Again. The guilt is acute. I’m not built for being the other woman.
I haven’t seen Josh for nearly a fortnight – we didn’t meet last week when Sofie was in London but I’ll be with him tomorrow. Or – a quick look at the clock establishes – later today.
Josh and I have had three Tuesdays together in a hotel room, where all my sadness is put on hold. My complicated grief about Hugh disperses for those few hours and I lose myself in Josh, in how badly he wants me. During those hours, my guilt about Marcia lifts, but as soon as I’m on my own again – and that’s most of the time, I see Josh for a mere six hours a week – it returns, often waking me in the middle of the night.
What I’m doing to Marcia is every kind of wrong.
Thinking of my devastation when I caught Richie or – far worse – seeing those photos of Raffie Geras with Hugh reminds me that I’m doing to Marcia what those women did to me.
In theory, Josh is the one who owes loyalty to Marcia – I owe her nothing – but life is not that simple. In fact, when men cheat, it’s the women who get the blame: the wife for not being hot enough or the slutty adulteress for preying on a man who ‘belongs’ to someone else.
My plan had been to let things run until the end of the year. Tomorrow night – today, whenever – is the second last time I’ll be in London before Christmas. So I’ve only two more nights left with Josh. And I don’t want it to be over.
‘Josh?’
‘Sackcloth?’
‘Next Tuesday will be the last Tuesday I’m in London before Christmas. I won’t be here again until January the tenth.’
‘What?’ He scrambles to sit up in the bed.
‘The Tuesday after next week is the twenty-seventh and the one after will be January the third. There’s no point in me coming to London then – nobody will be around.’
Josh is doing calculations. ‘So we won’t see each other for three weeks?’
Now is the time to remind him of my end of year deadline, and I don’t.
‘I’m not happy,’ he says. ‘It’s hard enough seeing you only once a week.’
I feel the same.
Suddenly he says, ‘Come away with me. In the time between Christmas and New Year. For a couple of days.’
I don’t instantly dismiss it. ‘Where?’
‘Where would you like?’
‘Where would you like?’ Because I’m curious.
‘You love clothes,’ he says. ‘We could go to one of the fashion capitals? Milan?’
I’m surprisingly touched but I have to laugh. ‘Milan would put the fear of God into me.’
‘Paris?’
Sharply I shake my head, and he says, ‘Too romantic for my little Sackcloth?’
‘Too clichéd.’
An expression passes over his face … He looks pissed-off. Just slightly. But …
Quickly I say, ‘Where would you like?’
‘I like places with history. Berlin is cool. I’ve never been to Venice –’
‘We’re not going to Venice.’
‘Cliché?’
‘Cliché.’
‘St Petersburg?’
‘Absolutely not. Because Putin.’
‘The Lake District?’
‘Nowhere in the UK.’ I’m certain about this. ‘I feel shitty enough about your wife and we’re not running the risk of anyone who knows her seeing us.’
‘So where isn’t too clichéd or too romantic or too in the UK?’
I can’t think of anywhere.
‘Is there a place you’ve always wanted to go? There must be somewhere.’
There is, actually. ‘Serbia.’
He hoots with laughter, then stops abruptly. ‘Oh, God, you’re serious.’
86
Wednesday, 14 December, day ninety-three
My phone rings. I pick it up from the table and look at it – as expected, it’s Josh. Again. The third time he’s rung this morning. Usually our communication is via text, but I’m guessing he wants an actual conversation because we’d parted on very frosty terms last night. After he’d laughed at my mini-break location request, I’d got dressed in hot-cheeked silence and, even as he pleaded with me to stay, I left.
An incoming text beeps and, yep, it’s from him: Please talk to me. I’m sorry. I’m an idiot. Let me make things right.
No. He can sweat a while longer.
Like, obviously I’m going to talk to him again. This – my pique, his contrition – is just a game, one I’ve played in the past. I genuinely was hurt but – gun to my head – this bit is enjoyable.
When he rings for the fourth time, I pick up and sigh, ‘What?’
‘Can I see you today?’
‘No. Back-to-back meetings.’
‘After work?’
‘Airport. Then flying home.’
‘What time is your flight? Meet me at the airport before you go?’
‘Why?’
‘Meet me and I’ll tell you.’
He’s hunched over his phone in a booth at the airport Prêt. His coat is off, his grey-blue shirt pulling against the broadness of his shoulders, and his sleeves are rolled up to reveal his forearms. Then he sees me and smiles, the real thing, the one he commits to. ‘Amy.’ Even how he says my name is pathetically thrilling.
‘Hey.’ I sit opposite him.
‘I got you mint tea.’
‘Thanks.’
Quietly, only his mouth moving, he says, ‘I hate not being able to kiss you.’
‘Who says I’d let you?’
He sighs. ‘Will you forgive me?’
A sudden urge to cry nearly overwhelms me.
‘I’m in pieces,’ he says. ‘I’m sorry I didn’t take you seriously. I was surprised, is all. But, Sackcloth, that’s you – you keep surprising me.’ He shifts his hands across the table, and when he touches his knuckles off mine, a charge zips through me.
There are people all around us, but speedily I grab his hand, so I can feel the warmth of his palm against mine, then just as quickly relinquish it.
‘So I’ve investigated,’ he says, talking over the racket. ‘Your Serbian museum is only an hour and a half from Belgrade. It’s open for all of December because they don’t do Christmas there until January the seventh.’
‘You actually spoke to them?’
‘A woman at work speaks some Serbian. She did the translating. So, early flight out of London on December the twenty-seventh, getting into Belgrade at one p.m. local time. Hire a car, head south, be in your museum by three. How’s that sound?’
‘Um, terrifying.’
He laughs. ‘We can drive back to Belgrade that night and stay in a posh hotel for two nights. Or we can do a sackcloth-and-ashes special in your museum town – I’ve already looked,
we’d be spoilt for choice – then one night in Belgrade. We fly back to London on the twenty-ninth.’ He pauses for impact. ‘Well?’
‘What would you tell your wife?’
‘Whatever you like. I can tell her the truth.’
‘Don’t!’ That’s the worst idea ever.
‘What if I have to? What if I’ve fallen in love with you?’
I watch him. Is he even serious? ‘Don’t.’
‘Should I book the flights?’
‘Slow down. I don’t know. Let me think about it. I’ve to go now.’
‘I could come to Dublin for those nights instead?’
I definitely don’t want that. Someone would see us and tell the girls. ‘Seriously, it’s time for my plane. I’ll call you in the morning.’
‘Amy,’ he leans towards me and clamps his hand over my wrist, ‘don’t go.’
‘I ha–’
‘Get a later flight.’ His face is hungry. ‘Come to a hotel with me instead.’
I’m struck dumb. But my body has lit up, every nerve end wanting to feel his touch. It’s so tempting …
‘Go on,’ he says. Then he mouths silently, ‘I’m so hard for you.’
Under the table I slip off my shoe and slide my foot up along his leg until I reach his groin. I inch higher and he’s quite right, he’s rock hard – and the heat that’s coming off it. With the sole of my foot placed along the length of him, I press down hard. He makes a choking noise.
Unable to hide my amusement, I wait for him to recover. ‘You still good to go?’ I ask. ‘Or was that it?’
Huskily, he says, ‘I’m still good to go.’
I grab my bag. ‘Well, come on, then.’
87
Thursday, 15 December, day ninety-four
‘Who’s paying?’ This is Derry’s first question.
‘Him.’
‘Oh-kay.’ She’s impressed.
‘Bad feminist?’
She sighs. ‘People are still allowed to treat other people, right? Will you tell the girls?’
‘Are you out of your effing mind? No! I’ll tell them I’m going on a mini-break with someone I work with. But if they ask if it’s a man, I will lie. Derry, what if he eats with his mouth open?’