She won’t. The last time it was closer to midnight and then I had a half-hour’s drive home.
‘Why can’t Dominik do it?’
‘Dominik –’ her tone is almost bitter – ‘has a regular “gig” – that’s the word he says, like he’s Bruno Mars – on a Monday night, minding some cracked oul’ hag in Ballybrack so her son can go to Zumba. And if you’d believe that, you’d believe anything.’
‘Mum, it sounds plausible.’
‘A man? Doing Zumba? Oh, please! Anyway, everyone knows Zumba is over.’
I’m worried about her. The stress is obviously too much. ‘Mum, where do you go to on your nights out?’
‘I go out, Amy, that’s where I go when I go out. Out!’
‘Who with?’
‘Friends.’
‘What friends?’
After a long pause, she says, choosing her words carefully, ‘On a Thursday morning, me and Pop, we go to a thing with other old people who are gone in the head. We sit in a circle and sing songs from our youth. It’s desperate. The living end, as you’d say. Well, me and some of the other carers, the ones who aren’t gone in the head, we’ve palled up. We go for gin-and-tonics and talk about wanting to kill our person. It’s marvellous, Amy. It gives me life.’
What can I say? ‘I’ll be over at seven.’
45
Friday, 14 October, day thirty-two
We can talk of nothing else but the latest twist in the divorce of Ruthie Billingham and Matthew Carlisle. She’s a British National Treasure actress while he’s a narky-arse serious journalist who grills lying politicians. (‘The thinking woman’s Jamie Dornan.’)
Until a couple of months ago they’d lived a shiny, happy life with their two adorable-looking children when, out of a clear blue sky, they announced they were getting divorced. No reason was given but murky rumours circulated that Matthew had been riding rings around himself. A few weeks back Ruthie seemed to confirm the speculation by saying in a radio interview, ‘One day my perfect life just blew up in my face.’
But on Tuesday this week, Ruthie popped up on the sidebar of shame having a furtive snog with a new man – Ozzie Brown, from Game of Thrones. (If you ask me, he seems like a lightweight compared to her narky-arse husband but maybe lightweight is all she’s able for right now.)
The grainy photo of the snog prompted outraged opinion pieces, the gist being that it was too soon for Ruthie to be jumping into bed with someone else – people tend to treat her like their little sister. Ruthie made it’s-very-early-days noises, but the mood music remained judgy. Now she’s trying the would-you-begrudge-me-achance-at-happiness card and still the snarky stuff continues. (Headlines such as ‘Ruthie, Think of Your Kids’.)
But today – Friday – thrillingly terrible allegations have surfaced that Matthew has been having an affair with the family nanny, a South African beauty called Sharmaine King, who looks like a younger version of Ruthie. There’s no actual proof – it’s all ‘sources close to Ruthie’ stuff. And, even though both Matthew and Sharmaine muttered panicked denials as they battled their way through the throngs of journalists outside their respective homes, the world is up in arms.
Apparently Sharmaine has been sacked and both she and Matthew are in (separate) hiding and getting death threats on Twitter.
Matthew is well able to look after himself but Sharmaine King will be needing some image management down the line, and past experience is telling me that Tim will suggest that Hatch ‘reach out’ to her.
I very much do not want to ‘reach out’ to her. I want nothing to do with this story. Cheating husbands do not gladden my heart.
And, on that subject, Richie Aldin emailed me again yesterday, trying to persuade me to go to his wretched ball. What is wrong with him?
46
Fifteen months ago
‘So where would it happen?’ I asked Derry.
‘Druzie’s?’ She sounded doubtful.
The idea of bringing Josh Rowan to Druzie’s spare room for illicit sex felt all kinds of wrong. ‘No.’
‘His house?’
Marcia’s home? Be in her space? Possibly see her wood-burning stove? ‘No way.’
‘Then it has to be a hotel.’
‘That feels tacky. Sordid.’
Derry stayed silent for a moment and let my words settle. Tacky. Sordid. ‘That’s the reality of getting into a thing with someone else’s husband when you’re married yourself.’ Quickly, she added. ‘I’m not being judgy. Just … ’
My resolution to stay the hell away from Josh Rowan hadn’t lasted. In fact, no later than two days after the awards ceremony I’d clumsily introduced his name into a working breakfast, trying to solicit information.
Since then, at every meeting with a member of the British press, the conversation was soon steered – sometimes awkwardly enough to induce whiplash – to Josh.
‘… so, he’s a good boss, is he?’
And ‘You’ve met the wife. What’s she like?’
And ‘Up to? Me? No, nothing. Just, might have a client considering working for him and I like to know who I’m getting into bed with. Not that I’d be getting into bed with him. Only a figure of speech, right?’
A few suspicions were aroused but I’d gleaned plenty. Marcia, apparently, ‘gave as good as she got’. Which chimed with my online stalking – she seemed ballsy and confident. From admittedly scanty information, I constructed a picture of their marriage: they were one of those couples who clashed a lot, who had shouty disagreements and ping-ponged between conflict and passion.
More distressing was when, under my clumsy questioning, a female journalist confided that she knew Josh had had a thing with a twenty-eight-year-old from a rival newspaper. It wasn’t just the confirmation that he was a cheater – which had upset me plenty when he’d told me – but how could I compete with a woman in her twenties?
However, he’d ended it because – and my confidante said, ‘This is a direct quote – “You’re a great girl but you’re too optimistic for me.” ’
A bark of astonished laughter issued from me. ‘What does that even mean?’
‘You’ve met him, Amy. He’s not exactly Mr Sunshine.’
In fairness, he did look like he was nursing a secret sorrow. But that was just fanciful talk, the sort of thing a woman who was spending too long in her own head, running romantic scenarios, would think. I mean, most of the human race probably look like they’ve stuff on their mind. We can’t all be the Dalai Lama.
Then Josh invited me to lunch.
I liked the idea of lunch. It was safe. Un-date-like. Nothing to feel guilty about. And yet it was a chance to show up as the very best version of myself and see if I had any power left – power as a woman. I got to flex that muscle, perhaps for the last time.
We met in a small, cosy place in Charlotte Street, where Josh asked question after question about me, and I spilt out all kinds of random opinions, like how I disliked the modern world’s insistence that we have dinner a certain way.
‘First we have to sit upright at a table and that usually feels like a punishment. Then the food arrives and I’m obliged to stare at the plate for at least eleven seconds. Then my sense of smell gets involved. And when it’s eventually okay to eat, only tiny forkfuls are permitted, which must be chewed super-slowly …’
He was smiling slightly at this – just the right side of his mouth quirked upwards.
‘I like to eat my dinner curled up on the couch, looking at the new arrivals on net-a-porter and shovelling food into me like they’ve just declared a famine. That’s what makes me happy. And yet I’m perpetually dogged by the sense that I’m failing life.’
‘Aye.’ He’d managed to speak volumes with one word and his smile had vanished.