CHAPTER FOUR
It was eight o’clock exactly according to the clock on the dashboard. It was time to go in, time to face her husband and the entire staff of the News who undoubtedly knew exactly what was going on in her marriage. Or her non-marriage as the case might be, Aisling thought glumly.
The launch party had been going on for at least an hour already, she reckoned. But she had been sitting quietly in the car since she’d arrived, nervously fiddling with her car keys and wondering how to slip in as unobtrusively as possible.
Jo would be there, she reminded herself. Thank God for that. Even though it was over twelve years since she’d shared a matchbox-sized flat in Rathmines with the lively trainee journalist, they’d still remained friends.
Aisling knew that it was largely thanks to Jo’s determination that they’d seen each other regularly over the past ten years.
When their lives had diverged one of them climbing up the career ladder and the other climbing the stairs with piles of laundry Aisling had begun to wonder whether a high flyer like Jo would be bothered to keep in touch.
The question became academic when the demands of Jo’s job meant she had neither the time nor the energy to socialise outside work. Aisling found that two adorable baby boys required twice as much work as one. Consumed by love for her darlings, she retired from normal non-baby life until the boys reached school-going age and she began to pick up the pieces of her old life again.
Meeting Nuala, an old friend from work, Aisling realised that her world had changed utterly over the past few years while Nuala’s was just the same. Nuala talked about flexitime, staffing cutbacks and brokers who
irritated her on the phone. Aisling felt instantly boring, another mother droning on about her lovely children.
She wasn’t surprised when Nuala didn’t ring back to arrange another lunchtime meeting. That was why Aisling had assumed Jo would be the same. Too busy to squeeze in a hurried sandwich with someone she’d been close to years before. People changed, moved on.
It was a pleasant surprise to find out that she was wrong. Jo was determined to keep in contact, always on the phone or arriving for lunch when she was in the vicinity.
No matter how long an interval between their meetings, they would always slip back into their familiar friendship, laughing at the same things and reminiscing about the days when they hadn’t enough money for the gas meter and wrapped themselves up with blankets to keep warm while watching their tiny portable TV.
“I still have this recurring nightmare about not having the rent money and coming back to the flat to find our clothes on the road,” Aisling said, one freezing December morning when Jo had dropped by with Christmas presents for the boys and a beautiful enamelled brooch for
“I wake up thinking the landlord is banging on the door and the relief to find it’s all a nightmare.”
“I know the feeling,” Jo shuddered, even though they were sitting in front of the fire in Aisling’s primrose yellow living room.
“God, it was awful not to have enough money, always scraping by.”
“I was buying this gorgeous red jacket the other day and I was just at the cash register with my cheque book when I realised that it cost more than two months’ rent in Mount Pleasant Avenue! Isn’t that unbelievable?” Jo took another sip of coffee.
“I nearly put it back. I mean, two months’ rent! My mother would be horrified if she saw me spending that much money on clothes.”
“I think, by now, she’s figured out that you’ve expensive tastes in clothes!” laughed Aisling, looking pointedly at the elegant cream
crepe trouser suit Jo was wearing. And nobody’s likely to think that those shoes were in the 9.99 bargain bin in Penney’s.”
True.” Jo looked down at the cream-coloured soft leather pumps she was wearing.
“It’s crazy, really, the money I spend on clothes. But all the fashion correspondents are the same,” she protested.
“If I turned up at a fashion show in my old grey leggings and a sloppy old T-shirt, they’d all wet themselves with glee. So I have to spend money on clothes!”
Aisling laughed. No matter what elevated circles Jo moved in, she was always the same funny, kind and totally lacking in pretension. The same warm-hearted girl who’d lend her less glamorous flat mate anything, even her newest and best-loved dress.
Jo had always been a friend to rely on, the sort of person who’d be there with a box of tissues, a comforting hug and a buoyant speech no matter what happened, Aisling reflected. Unlike her sister, Sorcha, who was so tied up with her job in London that she barely had time to come home for Christmas, Jo genuinely enjoyed Aisling’s company. So what if Sorcha thought her older sister has turned into a non-person just because Aisling didn’t have a high-powered career by day, and didn’t go to management courses at night.
Jo Ryan, deputy and fashion editor of fashionable Style magazine, was one of Aisling’s best friends and not even Sorcha could call Jo boring. Lively, clever and a little bit wild, maybe. But boring, no.
Funny, warm, and a little too trusting when it came to men or so Aisling had always thought Jo had finally met the man of her dreams after years of meeting Mr. Wrong after Mr. Wrong.
“You’ll love him, Ash,” Jo said happily down the phone, one romance-filled week after meeting Richard.
“He’s perfect better than Richard Gere!”
“That good?” Aisling chuckled.
“Are you sure he’s real, or has he escaped from the pages of GQ?”
“He’s real all right.” Jo’s throaty laugh told Aisling everything.
The gorgeous photographer had obviously made it to first base. Aisling thought Jo should have waited a bit longer before going to bed with her new boyfriend. Michael had been her first and only lover. But, things were different now.
She hoped Richard wasn’t like some of the other men Jo had been involved with. Jo always seemed to make huge mistakes when it came to men. She fell for each one passionately and wholeheartedly, only waking up to their faults when it was too late. Maybe this time would be different.
Aisling hadn’t seen much of her friend since Richard had come on the scene. She briefly wondered if Jo had heard any rumours about Michael’s affair.
Surely not, she thought. Jo would have told her if she’d heard anything. Or would she? Aisling’s head was spinning thinking about it all. And I’m the one who thinks Jo goes around with rose-tinted glasses. How ironic.
Please let Jo be here tonight, Aisling prayed fervently. She and Jo always ended up sitting together at journalistic parties.
Aisling was grateful to her more extrovert friend for introducing her to the ever-changing pool of reporters, subs and photographers.
There were always loads of people she didn’t know, Aisling reflected, thinking of the occasions she’d tagged along with Jo after Michael had hot footed it in another direction.
“Come on and meet Lorraine,” Jo would say.
“She reviews books for The Times and you’ll have loads to talk about.”
Instantly, Aisling felt as if she belonged, as if she had something to talk about. Jo never made her feel colourless or uninteresting, the way Michael did.
When she was with Jo, Aisling felt more like her old self again, more like the girl who’d gone to the College of Commerce. Christmas party as the blonde from Abba. Jo had been the red-haired one, in sequins and flares. Who cared that it wasn’t even fancy dress?
God, she thought, did I ever do that? What did we look like? They
hadn’t cared what they’d looked like after half a bottle of Malibu drunk in the toilets. She’d never been able to so much as look at a bottle of Malibu after that evening. Vodka didn’t give you such bad hangovers, Jo pointed out. Gin was even better.
I hope it isn’t one of those parties with nothing but wine, Aisling thought. Tonight, of all nights, she needed the buzz from a proper drink, the gentle loosening of inhibitions which made her feel less awkward.
Michael would probably give her one of his reproving looks when he saw her drinking. Once he’d been a great man for a few beers while watching TV, but he’d recently become very anti-booze and patted his now flat stomach smugly as he refused his customary weekend Budweiser.
He wanted to stay lithe for his girlfriend, no doubt, she thought bitterly.
“I’m not drinking beer at home any more,” he’d informed her in January, when she’d just unpacked the shopping all on her own and was stowing two six-packs in the larder.
“It’s so unhealthy. And a few glasses of red wine is much better, and more enjoyable. That’s what the Italians drink every day and look at how healthy they are.” He looked pointedly at Aisling as she guiltily took a large tub of Bailey’s ice cream out of a shopping bag. Ten billion calories at least.
“A friend told me that scientists actually recommend a couple of glasses of red wine a day along with a Mediterranean diet,” he
“I must get one of my students to do a piece on it.”
Aisling wondered if the ‘friend’ he’d talked about then was the same femme fatale he’d taken to Le Caprice and if the bitch preferred wine connoisseurs to men who drank pints?
Probably. Maybe she was one of those women who delicately sipped two white wine spritzers before loudly proclaiming that she would only drink mineral water for the rest of the night.
How different from me, Aisling thought. Practically under the table after five gin and tonics, she often ended up giggling and silly at
parties. Of course, enduring Michael’s diatribe in the taxi home was part and parcel of these occasions.
“How could you tell that story tonight?” he thundered the night Aisling told the managing director’s wife her hilarious story about the first time she had her diaphragm fitted.
“Jesus, I shouldn’t bring you to parties if you’re going to embarrass me like this. I don’t know what they’re going to think.”
There was no point, Aisling decided, in saying that the managing director’s wife had obviously loved the story and had burst out laughing as soon as a shocked Michael was out of earshot. No point at all, really.
Who the hell was Michael to tell her she shouldn’t have a few drinks at parties? He was screwing some damn woman, breaking his marriage vows as if they weren’t worth the paper they were written on. He had no right to tell her what she could or couldn’t do. She’d drink what she felt like, especially tonight.
Maybe she did drink too much when she was out. So what?
If she felt inadequate in his friends’ company, he was responsible.
He always kept her at arm’s length from his colleagues and made her feel stupid in contrast to the editor’s wife, a physics lecturer no less.
Well, Michael certainly couldn’t make her feel any worse than she did now. He’d already found another woman, what could top that for humiliation? Blast him! She was going to have the biggest drink she could lay her hands on and she didn’t give a damn if Michael saw her do it.
It was time to go in. Aisling checked her make-up in the rear-view mirror and rubbed at a tiny smudge of mascara below her eye. You weren’t supposed to rub the delicate skin around your eyes roughly, she knew from those endless magazine articles.
Once she’d hit thirty, she really meant to look after her skin properly. But the new make-up routine fell by the wayside.
Before long, Aisling was back to soap and water with a little Oil of Ulay when she remembered it.
Would Michael have stayed in love with her if she had pampered her skin and spent hours toning, plucking, waxing and beautifying herself? Probably not. If he’d wanted a glamorous career woman to show off to his friends, nothing short of a miracle could have made him stay with his un-careerist wife.
She obliterated the mascara smudge, rubbing away the heavy foundation she’d applied to hide her reddened eyes.
Damn, she muttered, rummaging in her meagre make-up bag for a tiny tube of concealer to hide the damage.
Polyfilla was what she needed, Aisling thought miserably as she peered into the mirror. A passing couple looked into her dusty red Starlet as they walked hand in hand through the back gate to the newspaper premises.
Casually dressed in jeans, trendy Timberland boots and matching chunky cord jackets, they strode past quickly. The girl stared straight at Aisling before looking away, flicking long chestnut hair out of her eyes with the confidence of youthful beauty.
Aisling flushed under their scrutiny and imagined that they were thinking, “Why bother?” Just a boring old housewife trying to tart herself up when all the powder and paint in the world couldn’t cover up the beginnings of a double chin.
A drink would be nice, she thought again. Just one large one to give her courage and help her smile at the strange faces. If she could still manage a smile when she’d confronted Michael, of course. Aisling took a deep breath and opened the car door.
She couldn’t see anyone else in the corner of the car park where she’d parked. Near the door, a leather-clad figure was parking a motorcycle.
She hadn’t been on a motorbike in years and the idea of a spin down the motorway, with the wind in her face and no time to think about her life, was suddenly very appealing.
She’d rented one of those scooters on that brilliant holiday in Greece. Her father had grimly warned her about broken limbs and permanent scars. That did it. Wearing her old denim shorts and T-shirt, she’d
sped along the rocky roads with Jo racing along beside her on an equally battered scooter, laughing into the wind with the sheer joy of it all.
“Last one home has to go out with Spiros!” screeched Jo, pumping her foot up and down on the gas pedal. She wasn’t going to be the one accompanying the over-hairy owner of their apartment block to dinner in the taverna.
They were probably only going at fifteen miles an hour but it felt like flying as they passed tiny white villas gleaming in the hot Aegean sun, smiling at the local women huddled in their all-encompassing black dresses.
She wouldn’t dream of riding on a scooter any more.
Scooters and motorbikes were for the slim young girls you saw in tampon adverts, girls with bum-length hair, minuscule white shorts and lots of attitude. They were most definitely not for women who couldn’t do up their jeans any more.
The newsroom was probably full of them, she reflected, cute model types drafted in the pose for snaps with the managing director. Maybe she could ask them for hints. She could drag a few of them up to Michael and ask them was he worth fighting for?
For a moment, she savoured a picture of Michael’s face, red with anger at his wife calmly telling a group of gorgeous young women that he was a lying, cheating bastard. She’d never be able to do it, though. Fiona would, she’d love to do it, if Pat was ever dumb enough to betray
Aisling knew she’d only ever dream about slapping Michael. Like she’d dreamed of slapping her father’s face every time he made her feel worthless and stupid. Was that all men ever did?
She leaned against the car and closed her eyes for a moment. She was dreading tonight, smiling hello to all Michael’s colleagues, wondering what they’d think when they saw her Michael Moran’s once-slim wife transformed into a busty hausfrau with no conversation and zero style. No wonder he’d got himself a mistress when that was what he had to go
home to at night, she could almost hear them saying. Damn him! She slammed the car door shut and smoothed down her dress. No chickening out now.
Aisling was slightly out of breath when she made it to the imposing front doors where a security guard with a clipboard and a self-important expression on his face gazed down at her.
“I’mer … expected at the party she stammered. The supplement… My husband works here …”
“Name?” queried the guard loftily, pen poised over his list.
“Aisling Moran,” she answered and, as if by magic, the man’s stony face lit up.
“Mrs. Moran! Grand to meet you at last. Come on in before those news hounds drink the place dry!”
She found herself being bustled over to the stairs where the guard yelled up for Mick ‘… to escort Mrs. Moran to the party.”
Aisling had barely put a foot on the bottom step before another, much younger man in a similar navy uniform and a very short haircut materialised and walked with her up the stairs.
Aisling muttered something about not having been escorted anywhere for
“Not at all, Ma’am,” the muscular young man smiled cheerily.
“These stairs are a bit steep if you’re not used to them and God knows you’d never find your way around the warren upstairs if you didn’t know where you were going!”
He couldn’t have been more than nine or ten years younger than she was but, from the way he was walking beside her at a snail’s pace and the way he called her “Ma’am’, she was obviously a dead ringer for his mother. Marvellous.
“Bye now.” He gave her a good luck sort of grin and walked briskly back the way they had come, leaving her standing outside the newsroom, her heart thumping at the thought of making her entrance alone.
What are you doing here? she asked herself wretchedly.
Why aren’t you sitting at home with your head buried firmly in the sand as usual?
Because you have to find out what’s going on, the voice in her head pointed out calmly. And if you don’t find out now, you never will. It’s up to you whether you try and ignore his infidelity or whether you demand that it ends. Get a grip on yourself, Aisling, she said out loud. Go on.
She put one hand tentatively on the door before it swung back on her violently as two men in suits with ties askew pushed their way out of the office giggling hysterically.
“Aisling Moran! How are you?” Suddenly, she was grabbed by one of the revellers and enveloped in a bear hug. Tom,” she said with pleasure as she recognised the paper’s chief sub-editor, one of Michael’s best friends.
“I haven’t seen you in an age,” he said warmly. A huge smile lit up his grey-bearded face. A tall man with hunched shoulders, Tom had always been in shape, but now sported a little pot belly under his straining shirt.
Aisling noticed the heavy sprinkling of grey in his hair and beard and realised, with a shock, that she hadn’t seen him for well over two years.
But then, I haven’t exactly turned the clock backwards myself, she thought wryly.
“How are you?” he roared merrily, sending strong whiskey fumes in her direction.
This is your husband’s big night, eh? You must be so proud.
We all are.”
I’m bloody delirious, she thought, grinning back with a saccharine smile. Tom pushed the swing doors open and led Aisling into a room which buzzed with activity. MTV, RTE, Super and Sky Sports belted out at top volume from the bank of TV screens on one wall. Nobody seemed to notice the cacophony made by Pearl Jam’s latest hit, a droning Formula One race and the news in two languages. Instead, they screeched with laughter, talked rapidly and gestured for more drink as two harassed looking girls wearing black skirts and white shirts circled the room balancing glasses on large trays.
People stood around in little groups of two or three, laughing and
shouting at each other, sharing the jokes of colleagues who worked long hours together and knew each other better than their families.
“Are you saying I got that story from another paper?” she heard someone say indignantly.
“You’d swallow a brick, Pat.” said another voice.
“He’s only winding you up for a bet. That’s another drink you owe me, by the way, Shay.”
They’re all on form tonight,” chuckled Tom.
Aisling thought they all looked glamorous and dynamic.
She’d always been in awe of her husband’s colleagues, especially the women.
“Here we are she heard Tom say, as they pushed their way to the centre of the room where a group of people stood, listening to a tall, dark man.
Michael was holding court, as usual. He had this incredibly irritating habit of pontificating on all sorts of subjects, although politics was his favourite.
At home, he generally started giving Aisling his views on the most recent political crisis when she was ready to turn out her bedside light, or when she was just settling down to watchER He never realised that she was doing something else and wasn’t necessarily interested in what he thought about the Labour Party’s conference, or Bill Clinton’s speech. But then he never noticed the way her eyes glazed over when he really got going.
Tonight he was on form, preaching about the changing role of newspapers in a world of instant TV news updates. It gave Aisling a glimmer of satisfaction to see one of the not-so-eager listeners raise her eyebrows at a colleague, tacit understanding of the boss’s irritating idiosyncrasies Not everyone was as awestruck in his presence as Michael liked to imagine. For a brief moment, that was a very satisfying thought.
She watched silently, trying to look at him like a stranger seeing him for the first time. Tall, dark-eyed and with the type of bone structure the Marlboro man would have died for, he was, as most of his male colleagues complained, almost too bloody good-looking to have any
brains at all. Unfortunately for all the begrudgers, he was a brilliant writer and an even better editor. He had an ego to match.
When the yearly influx of journalism students brought eager young women into the office, keen to learn every nuance of the job, they invariably developed crushes on the good-looking deputy editor.
Michael always made this sound funny, telling Aisling how they blushed when they offered to get him a sandwich at lunchtime or asked his advice on their stories instead of talking to the news editor. Despite the way he made these stories amusing, Aisling knew he was flattered by the attention.
With Michael, flattery got you everywhere.
Not a quality to make a wife feel secure, Aisling reflected.
She watched two of the younger female onlookers gaze longingly at her husband as though he were fillet steak and they’d been starved for a month.
Aisling could have told his, admirers that he stared in that intense, Robert Redford sort of manner purely to focus his eyes when he wasn’t wearing the stylish designer wire rimmed glasses he’d bought a couple of years previously.
Of course, she never got the chance to tell anyone and she suspected that they wouldn’t believe her anyway. She could imagine these particular admirers privately thinking that the deputy editor’s piercing gaze was deeply sexy, something intended for them alone. Big mistake, girls.
“Michael, look who’s arrived!” Tom announced cheerily. The entire group turned towards the newcomers. Aisling felt her face flush pinkly as everyone looked at her and hated herself for it. Michael leaned over and took her hand. He led her gently into the centre of the group, almost as if he was pleased to see her. What an actor.
Aisling, these are most of my team for the supplement.
Everyone else, this is Aisling, my wife.” Who was writing his lines, she wondered? Was this his ‘caring editor’ performance, designed to beguile the gazing students?
Aisling could see the amazement in the women’s eyes as they took in her
flushed face and less than perfect figure hidden under a loud crimson dress. Gorgeous, clever Michael, one of the most talented journalists in Dublin, married to that! She was used to it now, that look of pity when her husband’s admirers realised that their hero was stuck with the least attractive woman in the room.
At least she’d always been sure that thinking about her husband was as far as any of his female fans had ever got. She now had devastating proof that one woman had got a lot further than thinking.
As they muttered “Hello’ with varying degrees of enthusiasm, Aisling wondered if she was one of them. Maybe that was why Michael hadn’t introduced anyone individually.
Perhaps she was standing there as cool as a cucumber, the blonde with the pancake make-up and the Kim Basinger lips, or the tall brunette with tortoiseshell glasses emphasising almond-shaped blue eyes and a thin silk blouse which left nobody in any doubt that she had bypassed the bra drawer when she was getting dressed.
Aisling watched her for a moment and turned her attention to the other women in the group. Would she recognise the other woman from Fiona’s description, would she intuitively know who she was?
“Are you all right?” Her husband’s voice broke into her thoughts. She raised cool blue eyes to meet his. Strange, she had expected him to look different now that she knew his secret, but he didn’t.
He looked exactly the same as ever, a five o’clock shadow darkening his jaw, eyebrows raised in a quizzical expression.
Until today she’d have staked her life that Michael wouldn’t dream of doing anything more than talking to another woman. She gazed at her husband, noticing the dark smudges under his eyes from the long nights he’d been working late to put the finishing touches to the supplement.
That was what he’d said anyhow.
It was more likely he was exhausted from spending hours with her, sharing meals in their favourite restaurant before steaming up the
windows of his car; the same car she drove to the supermarket at weekends with the boys squabbling in the back.
God, the betrayal. It hurt so much and it made her so angry.
Twelve years of marriage had meant nothing to him if he could just forget about her and their sons for a few hot nights with some floozie.
“Are you all right?” he asked again. She turned away. Tom returned with the drink he’d offered to get for her: a large tumbler full of gin and tonic, strong and cool with plenty of ice clinking around the glass.
She smiled thanks at Tom and took a deep reviving slug, feeling the gin hit her system like an injection of adrenaline.
Michael had already moved his attention to the next subject, his personal interpretation of the latest political crisis in Washington.
“We have to talk.” Aisling surprised herself with the calmness of her voice as she reached out and tapped him on the shoulder. Ignoring the look of surprise on his companions’ faces, she walked away from the group with him grudgingly following until they were out of earshot.
“What is it?” he asked impatiently.
“Why couldn’t you tell me in the first place? Tell me, what’s the big fuss?”
She looked steadily up at him. Would he lie or tell the truth? Probably lie.
The big fuss is about Jennifer Carroll. Does that name sound a bit familiar to you?” She gazed at him expectantly.
“I
know you’re having an affair, Michael. So I think we need a private talk, don’t you? Or do you want everyone on the premises to hear about your sordid secret, if they don’t already know, that is,” she spat.
His eyes darkened. He stared at her with the same blank look she’d seen when he was stuck talking to someone he didn’t like: cold and indifferent, his face impassive, his eyes saying nothing.
“How did you find out?” he asked, as casually as though she’d mentioned that the car was out of petrol.
“You should be more careful with your credit card receipts,” she answered.
“Didn’t you know I’d find out if you left a receipt for Lingerie de bloody Paris in your navy suit pocket?
Or did you want me to find out?”
“No.” He stared down at some spot on the grey speckled office carpet, seemingly miles away as though contemplating whether eighty per cent wool was more serviceable than pure wool carpet.
“I didn’t want you to find out because it would hurt you and I never meant to do that.”
“Yeah, right.” Aisling laughed harshly, feeling red spots of colour burning on her cheeks.
“You just wanted everyone else to find out that you were cheating on your stupid wife. Let her find out from the neighbours. Was that the way you wanted it? Is there anything else I should know or are you taking out an advert in next week’s paper?”
He had stopped looking at the carpet and was looking at her sadly, almost pityingly. Shrewd, dark eyes took in the new dress and the garish bright lipstick.
“Maybe I should have asked Fiona if you have a few other women stashed away somewhere? Or was one enough? Did you have a bet on with that bloody bitch to see how long you could keep me fooled?”
She paused for breath and took a huge drink from her glass.
Her hands shook so much that the ice rattled noisily.
“It wasn’t like that, Aisling,” he answered slowly.
“I didn’t tell anyone and I thought we were discreet, although obviously I was wrong. I never wanted to hurt you.”
“Don’t tell me,” she interrupted, ‘it didn’t mean a thing and you can’t even remember her name. Is. that your next line?
Because I know her name, even if you pretend to have forgotten it. Jennifer Carroll, isn’t it?”
She looked at him triumphantly, as though they were playing Trivial Pursuit and she’d just won a piece of pie.
“Just tell me one thing, Michael, why? Why did you do it? Don’t you love me any more, don’t you care about our marriage and the boys?”
Michael’s eyes were still cold.
“I’ve loved you for thirteen years, Aisling,” he said.
“But I’m not in love with you any more.” The emphasis on ‘in love’ hit her like a bullet. Was he really saying what she thought he was saying?
Michael shrugged and splayed his hands out in a gesture of apology.
“I’m sorry, but it’s not as if you wanted to make our marriage work, is it? You just wanted to crawl into your shell and hide from the world.” She stared at him, disbelieving what she was hearing.
“You, the boys and your damned house, that’s all that mattered to you. Not me.”
“You never wanted to be a part of my life, you never asked me anything about my day, what I did. It was always the boys.
Did you ever remember that we got married, not you, me and two kids, but us?” As he warmed to what was obviously a familiar theme, his voice sounded harsher than she’d ever heard it before.
“No, you don’t remember, do you?” he snarled.
“You cut me out of your cosy little life and I couldn’t deal with
He stopped, but his words hung in the air like icicles, cold and deadly. He could have stabbed her with them and it wouldn’t have hurt as much as the look on his face hurt her.
She didn’t want the marriage to work? For God’s sake, she desperately wanted it to work but he hadn’t given her any choice in the matter. He’d just run after some woman and now he wanted to make it all her fault!
“You’ve made it pretty clear that you don’t want to be part of my life,” he continued, ‘so I wanted someone who did want to be with me.”
His voice was calm. Maddeningly calm. She’d just confronted him with the biggest crisis a marriage could face and he was looking at her with calm indifference. He spoke about their marriage as if it was already dead as a dodo.
“Don’t give me that rubbish!” she screamed.
“Lingerie de Paris and nights in Jurys isn’t about our marriage not working.
It’s about sex you and some other woman having sex.
“You just couldn’t stop yourself, could you? Everything we had just wasn’t enough for you. So don’t try and blame me.
Don’t tell me it’s my fault!”
She stopped abruptly, aware that people nearby had stopped talking.
Normally, she’d have been embarrassed, but tonight she didn’t give a damn who heard her.
“How dare you …”
“I’m not trying to blame you,” Michael interrupted.
“It’s just that…” He sighed heavily.
“Look, we can’t talk about this here with everyone watching and listening. Let’s wait ‘til we get home, OK?”
“Home! Let’s wait ‘til we get home!” she repeated shrilly.
“You conveniently forgot about home when you were shacked up with that bitch in a Dublin hotel, lying that you were in London! So you can forget about coming home with me!
Your home is with your bloody girlfriend and I don’t want to see you until you’ve dumped her!”
“Aisling.” He tried to grab her but she managed to shrug his arm off. The door. Where was the door? She couldn’t see through her tears. She just pushed past the double doors before he caught up with her.
“Stop,” he commanded. And she did. Turning her round to face him, Michael looked her in the eyes, his pupils boring into hers intently.
“I never wanted to hurt you, Aisling,” he repeated.
“You have to believe that. But you’ve changed. I don’t know what’s happened to you, but you’re different. It’s as if you shut yourself off from me and I can’t live like that. I’m sorry.
“You’re right about me not coming home,” he added.
“It wouldn’t work. It’s better if I don’t come home tonight. I wanted to tell you everything a long time ago, but I could never find the right time. I didn’t want to hurt the kids but there’s no time that’s right for kids in the middle of at marriage breakup.”
She could feel the blood pumping through her body, keeping her alive when all she wanted to do was die.
She’d given him the chance, the chance to say he loved her and that it
had all been an awful mistake. But he hadn’t used it. He had turned her own words against her.
God, if only she hadn’t said he shouldn’t come home, if only she’d kept her mouth shut and let him explain, let him beg forgiveness, surely everything would have been all right?
She’d given him a cast-iron excuse to leave. Aisling had never quite understood the expression ‘time stood still”, until that moment.
He was standing just a few feet away from her wearing a pale blue shirt with the top buttons open to reveal a few inches of tanned neck, a neck she had snuggled into when they sat on the couch watching TV late at night. His aftershave permeated the air and, if she reached out, she could touch him, hold him in her arms and be safe for ever.
Perhaps if she wished hard enough, she could turn back the clock and keep her mouth shut. Then he’d stay with her. Then he wouldn’t need anyone else.
But it was too late. He didn’t want her. He wanted another woman in his arms and in his life. Blindly, she took another huge gulp of her drink, wanting to blot out what had just happened.
“I’ll stay in Tom’s tonight and I’ll be over to pick up some stuff in the morning.” Michael looked at her coolly, his eyes raking in the new dress and her flushed face, red from downing too much gin too rapidly.
“I better go back in. The MD is going to launch the supplement in a few minutes.”
Aisling looked at him mutely.
“Don’t have any more to drink, Aisling,” he added coldly.
“I’m not going to drive you home if you get drunk, so you’re on your own.”
With that he was gone, back to his besotted students and the whispering of colleagues who had seen everything.
Aisling slowly drained her glass and turned towards the stairs. So this is what heartache feels like, she thought numbly, walking slowly down the stairs, her beautiful new dress billowing out behind her.
The security guard at the door saw her walking towards him like a sleepwalker, her expression vacant and her eyes dull. He wanted to ask if she was all right, but he wasn’t sure how to do it.