‘She’s friends with Genevieve Payne.’
‘And you don’t want Genevieve finding out until Hugh’s out of her reach? But what about when he’s gone?’
‘I still don’t want her finding out.’
‘But she will. Someone will tell her. Fuck it, everyone will tell her. Sorry, babes, you’re going to be trending, like, for ever.’
‘Not if I tell no one. Except you, obviously. And Maura. And the girls. And Jackson will have to know because he’s in the house so often. But apart from them, I’m telling no one else.’
Derry’s face is a mix of alarm and compassion. ‘Amy, honey, you can’t – Look, there’s no way you can keep this a secret for six months. And you shouldn’t have to – you’ve done nothing wrong.’
‘But it’s so humiliating,’ I whisper.
‘It is humiliating. But it’s going to be really, really tough and you need people who’ll be there for you.’
I say nothing. I’m kind of over depending on people. Some of my siblings, grand: our messy childhood united us. But the rest of the world, not for me, not right now.
‘It will leak out.’ She’s pulling no punches. ‘You’re better off controlling it. Treat it like a work press release.’
What – like that fanciful one I wrote in my head? Not a hope.
‘I’ve to go,’ she says. ‘I’ve a flight. I’ll FaceTime you. But tell people, Amy, manage it.’
‘Okay.’ I won’t.
She leaves, and I’m sorting the laundry basket when my phone rings. It’s Mum. I’m instantly on high alert: what disaster is after happening? ‘Is everything okay?’ I ask.
‘The girls are with me – Neeve and Sofie. They tell me that Hugh is going away?’
‘They told you?’ You don’t tell Mum bad news! We’d learnt at an early age to ring-fence her banjaxed immune system. What were Neeve and Sofie thinking of? I’ll have to have a stern word with them, Kiara also …
But it would be utter madness to make them keep Hugh’s absence a secret – they’re too young, it would be too much responsibility. Wild with sudden rage, I realize that Derry is right and there’s no way this can be contained.
‘I’d say you’re upset,’ Mum says.
‘Ah, you know …’ She really isn’t that kind of mum.
‘Would you like to hang out with me?’
‘Er …’ Hang out?
‘We can paint our nails – Neeve gives me lots of polishes.’
Lucky you. I get nothing except anti-dandruff shampoo.
‘If you like we can drink wine. It’s a great pick-me-up. I wish I’d discovered it years ago.’
She needs to get off the phone because I have an idea. ‘Thanks for the offer, Mum.’
We say our goodbyes. Then, in a blind fury, I yell, ‘Hugh! HUGH!’
He starts hurrying up the stairs, so I grab my phone and meet him halfway. ‘Get that fucking towel!’ I say.
‘What?’
‘The fucking towel that dries in five minutes!’
‘What happened?’
‘Just. Fucking. Get it.’
He disappears out the back to the shed – clearly his Departure HQ – and reappears with the small blue bundle. ‘What’s going on?’ he asks.
‘Unroll it and hold it. Smile.’
‘Why?’
‘Just fucking do it.’
I take several photos of Hugh holding the towel, a glassy-eyed grimace stapled to his face. ‘Fuck’s sake, Hugh, SMILE! Lucky you, heading off for a six-month sex holiday!’
I upload the least-miserable-looking photo to Facebook. ‘Check this out!’ I write. ‘Hugh’s travel towel. Dries in twenty minutes! Happy travels to him as he heads off for six months. Bring us back some sunshine!’ Speedily I bang out about a hundred emojis of planes, suns, ice creams, cocktails and bikinis, and post it to my 1,439 friends.
‘Amy, what did you just do?’
I whip the towel from him, scrunch it up into a ball, then fling it hard at his chest. Disappointingly, it’s too light to have much impact.
‘What did you do?’ He grabs my phone and I grab it back.
The story is out in the world now and I’m owning it. I’ll probably break the internet, but from here on in the narrative is being controlled by me.
10
Eighteen years ago
One clean bright April morning in London, in the late nineties, I was hurrying through Soho, dressed in a pair of dark blue clam-diggers, pointy pink stilettos and a button-through, candy-striped blouse. There were lots of young hip types about, bearing coffee cups or retro briefcases, looking like they were en route to work in advertising or something similarly cool – and I was one of them.
It was one of those rare days that had probably happened four or five times in my life when I felt like a round peg slotted with dazzling snugness into a round hole.
My destination was a sound studio, where I’d be working on a marketing campaign, and my head was already trying to manage any potential pitfalls.
‘Hi.’ Hugh from the studio had appeared in front of me – and I found I was absolutely delighted to see him.
‘Hi!’
We worked together fairly regularly and everyone loved Hugh. He was big and good-looking and quiet and confident. People went on about his ‘Irish’ eyes – I think they meant they were smiley. If you asked me, they weren’t that smiley – I’d sensed a slight withholding about him.
People assumed that my affection for Hugh was because we were both Irish, but that was neither here nor there. It was because he was really good at what he did – my life was so riddled with stress that anything that made my job easier was appreciated. Most mornings, facing into my day felt like going to war: I had to get Neeve up, dress her, feed her, drop her to school, get the tube to work, have meetings, manage clients … but when I was due to work at Hugh’s studio, my spirits always lifted.
When Hugh was manning the decks, things started on time. If a script didn’t fit into the thirty-second slot, he’d suggest intelligent edits, even though that wasn’t part of his remit. Or when my client started muttering that the actor’s delivery didn’t embody the brand’s core message, Hugh would intercede and tactfully coax more gravitas, or less chirpiness, or whatever was required.
‘Good timing,’ Hugh said, that sunny morning in Dean Street. ‘I was just out getting the coffees.’
‘The hardest-working man in ad-making.’
We walked the few steps to the scruffy Soho terraced house where the studio lived.
‘Hey, you look amazing this morning,’ Hugh said.
‘Good amazing or ridiculous amazing?’
‘Good amazing.’
I smiled fondly at him. ‘Over at Rocket Sounds they call me Timewarp Girl,’ I said. ‘Or Rockabilly Amy. I much prefer the treatment I get at Hugh’s Studio.’
‘It’s a definite look you’ve got going.’
By now, we were in the house and climbing the narrow, slopey stairs to the top floor, where the studio was.
‘That’s because all my clothes are second-hand due to skintness. Jesus, these stairs.’ I paused on a landing and looked out of a narrow window. ‘Look at that – the backs of other houses.’ I laughed. ‘You do know I’m only pretending to admire the view so I can catch my breath. You wouldn’t think of getting a lift in here?’
‘Listed building,’ he said. ‘Yeah, you’d never know to look at it.’ Then he added, ‘But if I could do it for anyone, I’d do it for you.’
The sudden sincerity in his voice made me look at him in surprise, made me look hard, and I don’t know exactly what happened but the light on him seemed to alter. In an instant he went from being Hugh my fondly regarded colleague to a very different Hugh.
Out of nowhere a powerful attraction had bloomed into life, like one of those super-speedy desert flowers and, with no warning whatsoever, I wanted him. I was stunned. What the hell had just happened?
Hoping for enlightenment, I looked up at him. He was a big man, not all of it muscle but, still, yeah, you would … He looked as shocked as I felt. I swallowed hard, continued up the stairs and didn’t speak again until we were with the others.