Читать книгу Cathy Kelly 3-Book Collection 1: Lessons in Heartbreak, Once in a Lifetime, Homecoming - Cathy Kelly - Страница 17

Cosmetics contracts were the holy grail of the industry. There might be huge kudos at landing a photoshoot for Vogue but the honour was supposed to make up for the lack of cash involved in such a high-profile shoot. Editorial was great for a model’s portfolio, but mascara ads meant a whole lot more cash.

Once a model had signed on the dotted line with one of the cosmetic giants, she never had to worry about badly paid photo-shoots again. Cosmetics contracts guaranteed a lot of money up front and some security in an industry not known for it. A contract made a model more valuable in that a million billboards made her famous, made her a name. Once a model became a name and not just another slender beauty, she had a chance at the big time: more advertisements, television, endorsements. When that happened, everyone – including the model’s agency – got to laugh all the way to the bank.

The day after she’d stared at Joe and his wife outside the museum and had felt her life crashing painfully around her, Izzie had to put her pain aside for a big meeting with a cosmetic company client about a mega-million-dollar campaign aimed at teenagers. The Jacobman Corporation wanted a new model to front their new cosmetic line and Perfect-NY were, through a fabulous piece of luck, in the running to find the girl.

It was a huge slice of business for Perfect-NY and exactly the sort of job that Izzie didn’t want to be doing the day after her heart had been broken.

As she marched into Jacobman’s giant office block on Madison, she looked the part – on the outside. She was fashion perfect in black Marc Jacobs with her hair sleeked back, wearing a solid four ounces of Bobbi Brown nude make-up in order to look as if she was wearing no make-up at all.

On the inside, however, she was tired, dead-eyed, and felt as if she had barely enough energy to lift her coffee cup to her lips.

The meeting was in the Jacobman Corporation’s third boardroom – the first and second ones were big enough to host a Yankees game – and there were only four people present: Izzie, representing Perfect-NY, two people from the SupaGirl! range and a Jacobman bigwig, Stefan Lundberg.

Cosmetic companies spread their net wide when looking for the right girl for their products. But Perfect-NY had been invited to showcase any of their girls who filled the brief because the current Mrs Rick Jacobman Jnr had once been a model at Perfect-NY and had, astonishingly, never forgotten the agency which had launched her career, a rather short one which had then launched her into the arms of Rick, heir to the Jacobman millions. Around the model agencies, Svetlana Jacobman was seen as a model who’d won the ultimate cosmetics contract. Even with a cast-iron pre-nup hanging over her should it all go horribly wrong, Svetlana had joined the ranks of the truly rich.

‘Yeah, she’s fresh-faced, but she’s sorta kooky, isn’t she?’ snapped one of the SupaGirl! executives, tossing aside the third model card they’d looked at. ‘We’re not about kooky. We want a normal American teenager.’

On the other side of the boardroom table, Izzie stuck her nails into the palms of her hands to make herself keep schtum. Normal teenager – yeah, right. She’d seen the brief, and no matter how they pretended they were looking for normal, what they really wanted was a fifteen-year-old goddess who’d never seen a zit in her life in order to advertise oil-free foundation.

‘Lorelei is actually very versatile,’ Izzie said, once she’d managed to get her temper under control.

‘We’re not about kooky,’ agreed the other SupaGirl! person, who looked about twelve years old and was clearly a yes-woman for the other executive.

‘No, definitely not. Let’s skip her. Who else have you got?’ snapped the first executive.

After another half hour of this, Izzie had only four models left to show them and couldn’t face doing it, and being rejected again, without a hit of caffeine. Perfect-NY weren’t getting an early chance to place one of their models with SupaGirl! after all. This whole thing was a PR exercise to please Svetlana Jacobman and the bitchy executive had never had any intention of doing business this way.

‘I need a coffee,’ Izzie said, forcing a smile on to her face and rising abruptly from the conference table.

‘Yeah, me too,’ said Stefan, following her.

Outside the conference room was a small kitchen that was, nevertheless, bigger than the one in Izzie’s apartment.

‘No good so far, but hey, you never know, we might hit gold yet,’ Stefan said as he leaned against the door jamb and watched Izzie making her mind up between machine espresso or filter. She’d known him for a few years; he was good looking in an outdoorsy way, but he was too obvious: blond hair carefully gelled, shirt opened to show his impressive chest. Izzie had a vision of him in front of the mirror in the mornings, working out exactly which button to open down to on his shirt. She hated that: she preferred her men rougher, as though they could afford nice suits but really couldn’t be bothered trying to look so smooth. Unfortunately, that type of guy clearly couldn’t be bothered about her either, if Joe Hansen was anything to go by.

Irritation with Joe spilled out on to the general population.

‘I’m not holding out much hope for us hitting gold,’ she snapped. ‘Your Laurel and Hardy team don’t seem to like any model I show them.’

‘Ouch. Laurel and Hardy. That’s harsh. Bad day?’ said Stefan.

‘You could say that.’ Izzie went for filter coffee. She might start to shake if she had any more espresso inside her.

‘Man trouble or office trouble?’ Stefan asked.

Izzie shot him a glare. Stefan was straight, therefore not allowed to broach the ‘having man trouble?’ conversation.

With guys like him – straight, women-mad with access to a corporate gold card – man conversations always ended up with him offering himself, clothed or otherwise, as a shoulder to cry on.

‘I don’t have man trouble, because I don’t have anything to do with men.’

‘Pity.’

‘Pity, schmity.’

‘You sure you don’t want to talk?’

‘Stefan,’ she snapped, ‘I’m not talking about this with you. We are not friends.’

‘Ouch.’ He feinted grabbing his bruised heart at that.

Izzie laughed. ‘What I like about you is that I can say anything and you can take it.’

‘I’d love you to say anything to me, but you always turn me down. Like that time I asked you to have early drinks with me before the Ford party…’

‘I had to work. Besides, when I turned up, you’d found yourself a date.’

She’d been tempted by the invitation at the time, during another date-drought, before she’d given up on men altogether. But Stefan had cut a swathe through more than one model agency. She’d often wondered if he had his own wall with model cards on it and a merit-rating system.

The night in question, she’d showed up at the party to find him being consoled by a Texan model who had legs up to her armpits, a curtain of platinum hair down to her coccyx and a body made for lingerie adverts.

‘She was on the subs’ bench,’ he said. ‘You were first team.’

‘You’ve an answer for everything, Stefan,’ she sighed. ‘You do realise that if it was anybody else but me, you’d be facing a sexual harassment suit right now? You’re lucky I’m so easy-going.’

‘You, easy-going? Hey Irish, never get hard-going, will you?’

‘Let’s concentrate on what we’re doing.’

‘Not over coffee,’ he groaned. ‘We’re supposed to be doing the brainstorming in the conference room.’

‘It’s hard to think creatively with that pair wrecking my buzz. Can’t you hire executives whose facial muscles allow them to smile?’

‘Point taken. They are kinda miserable. Hard to believe, but there’s a lot of competition to get on to the SupaGirl! team. Great package, great healthcare, gym in the basement…’ Stefan pretended to flex a muscle, ‘…guys like myself, looking decorative and available for dates because hot girls from the model agencies keep turning them down –’

‘That’s it!’ Izzie banged her cup down, spilling coffee on to the counter. ‘A competition. What about a find-a-model-for-SupaGirl! competition?’

Even as she was saying it, her mind was flipping the idea over. Was it a stupid idea or a clever one? There was such a fine line between the two.

‘Brilliant!’ said Stefan, clearly not thrown off track by his meanderings being interrupted. Izzie wanted to give him a hug. He might be a macho male in some respects, but he was an out-and-out professional.

‘Absolutely brilliant. Publicity and launch in one fell swoop.’

No, hugging would be a mistake, she reckoned. Stefan might misconstrue it. She patted his arm instead in a filial gesture. ‘Glad you like the idea.’

‘Like it? I love it.’

‘Perfect-NY will represent the girl who wins and we’ll help you set up castings all around the country,’ Izzie went on. No point in her coming up with a fabulous idea and letting the SupaGirl! executives take over.

She almost danced out of the building an hour later and was on her cell phone to the office before she’d got a cab.

Everyone was on a call, so she left messages on people’s voicemails and then sat back on the scuffed black seat and realised that she had nobody else to phone. Carla was her closest friend and she’d just left an ecstatic message on her voicemail.

But there was no one else to talk to. No special someone to phone and murmur that she’d had a brilliant idea, nobody to tell her they were proud of her. Gran loved to hear about her work, but she felt a shaft of misery at the idea of phoning home in order to connect with people who loved her. The deep gloom that had lifted briefly in the conference room descended again.

Before Joe, she’d never needed to phone anyone to tell them her news. But she’d got used to it with him, and now, without him, she felt the lack of it deeply. Damn the rest of the coupled-up world. She was fed up with them.

When she got to the office, the team happily discussed Izzie’s idea before people raced off on their lunch breaks.

‘Hey, you going out for lunch?’ Carla asked her.

‘No.’

‘Good. I want to talk to you.’

Carla led a dead-eyed Izzie out on to the fire escape for a bit of privacy.

‘Yeah, what’s up?’ said Izzie, wrapping her arms around herself. She felt cold – no matter what she did, she hadn’t been warm since last night. It was like the combination of rain and sheer emotional pain had sent a chill into her bones. Even the buzz from the SupaGirl! idea couldn’t warm her up.

‘There’s a bit of prime gossip going around,’ Carla said, ‘’bout a certain married Wall Street gentleman who’s having a hot thing with a model-agency booker. Seems somebody’s driver said to another driver who said it to a hairdresser who told a client – possibly lots of clients. Hey, you know this town, everybody loves to talk – and this particular everybody happens to be a friend of mine and said it to me.’

‘New York whispers are like Chinese whispers, only deadlier, huh?’ Izzie quipped nervously. There was no way Carla could know about her and Joe.

‘Tell me it’s not you,’ Carla said.

Izzie bit her lip. It was only a momentary pause, but it was enough for Carla.

‘Oh fuck, it is you, isn’t it?’

Izzie didn’t want to look Carla in the eye. She couldn’t face the reproach she knew she’d see there. How could she explain this?

I didn’t know the full story that first day – dumb, I agree, but I didn’t know. I didn’t think. He was so charming and sexy and we connected, and by the time he said he was with his wife but not with her, well, I was hooked…

‘Izzie, you cannot be serious! What has happened to you? I should have known,’ Carla raged. ‘I knew something was wrong and I hoped you’d tell me what it was, but I never thought it was a man. A married man! Are you nuts? How many women do we know who’ve gone that route, and it always ends up bad. Always. The only person who wins is the guy.’

‘Look, he’s married, but they’re not together –’ began Izzie, thinking that it was a bit rich that her secret was out now that she’d finally decided it was over between her and Joe.

‘Puhleese!’

‘It’s not like it sounds,’ snapped Izzie. ‘You know me, Carla: I’m not the sort of woman who’s looking for a Fortune 500 guy to tear him away from his wife so I can cut up my subway pass and never work again. I just thought he was a guy, he liked me, we saw each other and –’

‘– and he told you it was over with her?’

‘Living separate lives. Together for the kids.’

Carla actually hit her forehead with the palm of her hand, the international ‘you are a moron’ gesture. ‘And you believed him?’

‘Yes! He’s not a liar, honestly.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me about him, then? I heard nothing ‘bout Mr Wall Street. Why? Because you knew something wasn’t right, didn’t you? And you knew I’d talk you out of it.’

Izzie shot her friend an anguished gaze. ‘I thought it was the real thing, Carla. You can’t fake love, and he loved me. I loved him.’

‘So why not tell me?’

‘It was all so complicated. He loves his kids and he wants to make it all right for them, Carla. He’s not a bastard, honestly. He’s the real deal and I knew he needed time,’ she said lamely.

‘Time? Yeah, time to play an away game until he rolled back to his wife.’

Izzie burst into tears, a move which startled both of them.

‘Jeez,’ said Carla.

‘It’s over anyway,’ Izzie said, weeping. ‘I believed him about needing time and then I found out he was going to a party with his wife, and it didn’t seem like such separate lives any more, so I finished with him.’

‘That’s something,’ Carla remarked.

‘No, it’s not,’ sobbed Izzie. ‘Because I’ve never felt worse in my whole life. I still believe him, but it’s too much, too complicated. I can’t be involved in that and I had to get out before…’

She couldn’t finish the sentence. Before she fell so painfully in love with him that she’d stay no matter what, was what she wanted to say. Except she’d already done that, it seemed. She didn’t care what was going on in Joe’s life, she just wanted to be part of it. Her moral compass was broken and she didn’t care.

‘Izzie!’ a voice rang out from inside. ‘Urgent call for you from Ireland. Some emergency…’

Izzie gratefully took the cup of coffee that Carla offered her and wrapped her hands around it. Their cube farm in the Perfect-NY offices wasn’t cold, but she was icy inside at the news. Darling Gran, one constant in an always messed-up world, was in hospital back home in Tamarin and she might die.

The news had shocked all thought of Joe out of her mind.

Instead, she thought of Lily, frail now more than slender, with those faded blue eyes staring out wisely at the world. Kindness shone out of her: kindness and wisdom.

Izzie couldn’t bear to think that her grandmother’s wisdom would be gone for ever when she needed it so much.

There were so many things she still needed to know, so many things she wanted to tell Gran – now, she might never be able to.

And the one thing she desperately wanted to share, how she felt about Joe, she’d never be able to tell. To a woman of her grandmother’s generation, there could be nothing worse than infidelity, and Izzie simply couldn’t bear to see Gran’s eyes cloud over with the knowledge that Izzie was having an affair with a man who was still married. If Carla, who was as liberal as it was possible to be without being a radical lesbian feminist, had been shocked by the news, imagine how devastated Gran would be. Granted, Carla’s anger was only because she felt Izzie had been conned, but still.

‘Oh, Gran,’ Izzie prayed, willing magic into the air as if that might breathe health into her grandmother thousands of miles away, ‘please, please don’t go.’

‘It was a massive stroke,’ Dad had said on the phone. ‘They found her in the courtyard outside the church. Luckily she’d fallen against the back of the seat or else she’d have cracked her head on the slabs and then, well…’ His voice had trailed off.

Her father couldn’t say ‘she would certainly have died’. Not dealing with the hard stuff was Brendan’s forte. Izzie knew it was not by accident that she’d fallen for an alpha male with vigour, courage and the ability to face life.

The noticeable differences between the man she loved and her father was the stuff undoubtedly covered on the first day of the Psychology Made Simple class.

‘When did it happen?’

‘This morning after Mass.’

‘What do the doctors say?’ Izzie steeled herself.

‘Not much…she’s in intensive care and they’ve got all these tests to do, but nobody will really say anything to me…’

Izzie could imagine her father, taller than she was, but without a shred of her fierce energy, looking round the ICU for a doctor, but not able to find anyone to ask because they were all rushing and he didn’t like to bother anyone.

Sweet and gentle was a lovely way to live, but it didn’t work in the high-speed, intensely pressured atmosphere of an emergency room.

‘Is anyone with you? Like Anneliese or Edward?’

Uncle Edward was a more forceful individual than her father and would certainly get things done. Darling Anneliese was even better: she was calm in any crisis and she’d certainly needed to be, Izzie knew.

Her cousin, Beth, would have gone under if her mother hadn’t been made of such stern stuff.

‘No.’ Her father made the word into two syllables.

Izzie waited.

‘Anneliese is on her way. I phoned Edward, you see, and told him and said to tell Anneliese, and he went all quiet and said since it was an emergency he would, which sounds strange, but I didn’t have time to ask him…’

‘But Anneliese is on her way?’ Izzie was impatient with these details. She needed to know that her aunt would be there, looking after things, looking after Lily.

‘Well, yes. I suppose. You know how Anneliese loves your gran.’

‘I should be there,’ Izzie said.

‘I wouldn’t dream of asking you to come home. You’re so busy with work,’ her father said quickly, which made Izzie feel bleak at this perceived notion that her job, only a bloody job, was more important than her beloved grandmother. Had she made them all think that? That Perfect-NY was higher on her list of priorities than her family?

‘I’m coming,’ she said fiercely. Damn the bloody job. If she had to swim across the bloody Atlantic to reach her grandmother’s hospital bedside, she’d do it. ‘Gran needs me.’

What she didn’t say was: And I need her because my heart is broken.

‘Go home,’ advised Carla. ‘You look wrecked. Lie on the couch and chill, and call me if you need me, right?’

Izzie nodded. ‘I will, thanks – for everything.’ Thanks for not mentioning Joe again, she meant.

She got a cab home instead of battling it out on the subway, and all the way home she wondered if God was so vengeful that her grandmother’s stroke was His way of getting at her for being involved with Joe.

No, don’t be crazy, she told herself. That’s like saying only you are important, so that God punishes other people to get at you. But still the thought hammered away in her head with the intensity of a horror movie watched late at night. She’d always jokingly described herself as a submarine Catholic – one who only comes up when there’s trouble. Now she realised it was true, and then some. Trouble made her Catholicism seep out of her pores and make her question everything.

At home, she checked the airlines and found that she’d never make that evening’s flight to Dublin, but that there were seats on the next evening’s.

She booked, feeling a strange sense of relief that she couldn’t leave New York just yet. She felt too unravelled to go, so much of her life still hung out there, threads flying in the wind.

She began to pack for the trip and found that she couldn’t concentrate. What would the weather be like was normally an important packing question, but the major one – how long would she be gone – was unanswerable. It depended on her grandmother’s survival.

Oh, Gran.

The silence of the apartment was closing in on her. Izzie was rarely at home on a weekday afternoon; she was always out there, being New York City Girl, rushing and racing. For what? she thought bitterly. To be alone, dealing with this horrible news, preparing to make a journey home alone too.

Where was her lover now that she needed him? With his wife, that’s where.

Izzie sat down on her small couch and cried. All the romance and the excitement counted for absolutely nothing at that moment. She could tell herself it didn’t matter that she didn’t have a husband, 2.5 children and a crippling mortgage, but at moments like this, it did matter.

She knew she wasn’t the only woman to fall for a married man, but it felt like it – she was in a club with only one member, a spectacularly stupid member.

Still, when her cell phone rang, she leapt to it, hoping that it might be him, eyes too blurry to focus on the number.

‘Hello?’

‘Hey, girl, how are you doing?’ Carla’s smoky Marlboro Lights voice was warm with concern.

Izzie slumped against the wall beside the phone. ‘OK,’ she mumbled.

‘I’m sorry I told you to go home. I got to thinking that you’d be climbing the walls by now.’

Izzie laughed. ‘How’d you know that?’

‘Instinct.’

‘Whatever it is, it’s spot on,’ Izzie replied. ‘I can see the lure of the barstool now. All those people I used to think were losers for sitting in bars in the afternoon – they have a point.’

‘You could join me on a barstool tonight? First, we eat, then we hit a club or two. Might take your mind off things.’

‘Count me in,’ Izzie said. If she stayed at home, she would cry herself to sleep, she knew.

They arranged to meet in SoHo at eight and when her phone rang moments later, Izzie answered it without looking, thinking it was Carla ringing back.

‘Hi,’ she said warmly.

‘Hello.’

It was him. Colder than he’d ever sounded before, but still him.

The driving rain hitting her face outside the museum benefit came starkly back into her mind. She thought of his arm on his wife, the stunning WASP blonde with racehorse legs, and the blank look on his face as he stared at Izzie.

Then, she remembered her father’s voice on the phone, along with the vision of Gran lying in a coma, and all the vicious things she’d planned to say to Joe vanished. She needed him like she’d never needed him before.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, starting to sob. ‘I’m sorry, Joe. It’s awful, my grandmother back home in Ireland is sick: she’s had a stroke and they don’t know if she’s going to be all right, and it’s awful…’

‘Oh my love,’ he murmured, frost gone. ‘I’ll be right over.’

He was there in ten minutes.

At the door, he said nothing, just held out his arms and let her come to him where he drew her into the tightest bear hug she’d ever experienced.

‘Baby,’ he kept saying over and over again, his hands tenderly stroking her as if she were a child.

Finally safe, she cried until her face was raw and she felt too tired even to stand.

He brought her over to the couch and they sat, Izzie curled up on his lap. The comfort from feeling small and loved was immense.

‘Thank you,’ she sighed, her head bent against the wall of his chest.

Curled up against him, she talked about Gran: about how she’d practically lived in Lily’s house after her mother died, and how Gran had been the only person who didn’t shy away from talking about her mum.

‘Dad didn’t know what to do. He thought that if we talked about Mum, I’d get upset, so it was better if we didn’t. That was fine for the first year when I couldn’t talk about Mum, but afterwards, when I wanted to, he’d change the subject so fast. Maybe he couldn’t talk for his own sake, either.’

‘What was she like?’ he asked.

‘A lot like my dad: vague and artistic. She painted. She’d walk around with paint smudges all over her clothes and on her face and not even notice. She’d go to the supermarket in her slippers and laugh if you mentioned it to her. Bohemian, I guess. She had quite dark skin, not like me, and she loved the sun. She had a mole on her back that went very dark, and she didn’t think anything of it. By the time they realised it was cancerous, she had only weeks to live.’

Joe said nothing, just carried on gently stroking her hair.

‘Dad went to pieces, like today,’ she sighed. ‘Nothing new there. Gran stepped in and took over. She raised me.’

‘Tell me about her,’ he said, moving so that they were both lying on the couch now, his long legs hanging over the end, Izzie feeling fragile against him, the way she always did because he was such a big man.

So she talked: about Gran blazing a trail in Tamarin by leaving to train as a nurse in London during the war, of the stories she’d told of being a twenty-one-year-old in another country, and how she’d coped.

‘That’s probably why I wanted to travel when I left school,’ Izzie said. ‘I’d grown up hearing Gran talk about another world outside Tamarin, and it felt like what I had to do.’

‘But she went back to Ireland, though, didn’t she?’

Izzie nodded. ‘She went back after the war, married my granddad and has been there ever since.’

‘I know you’re going home, but not for good, right? I don’t want you to leave New York,’ he murmured. ‘Your grandmother needs you now, but not to stay. I need you even more, Izzie.’

He moved his hand from stroking her hair to gently trace the curve of her waist and hip, settling around the firm swelling of her buttocks.

Fear and death made people think of love, Gran had told her once. That thought flickered through Izzie’s consciousness as she felt her body answering Joe’s hunger.

People regularly went home from funerals and made love, she knew, to banish the cold, hard reality of death. Gran wouldn’t die, she just couldn’t. As if the fierce passion of their lovemaking could keep her grandmother’s heart beating through some spiritual intervention, Izzie Silver kissed her lover back with more hunger than ever before.

Life and love couldn’t end, it couldn’t.

They ended up in the bed after all, since the couch was too small for both of them. Joe had lifted Izzie up and carried her to the bed, throwing off the pretty pillows that decorated it so they had more room, pinioning her to the bed with his weight as he adored her body, kissing, sucking, licking. The second time was gentler, more loving and less fierce.

When he was inside her, he cradled her face in his hands and gazed into her eyes with such love that Izzie wanted to cry, but he didn’t say anything, only called her name as he came.

After their exertions, Joe lay beside her, breathing deeply. Izzie was sure he was asleep, and she lay curled against him.

As she lay there, she allowed herself to dream. What if he said that this was the time for him to leave his home and come to her?

You need me now, Izzie. I’m going to be there for you. I’m coming to Tamarin too.

And Izzie, who knew she’d never, ever have asked him for that because she wasn’t the sort of woman to walk round with a chisel in her purse, trying to prise him off his wife, would say:

Thank you, I’d hoped you’d say that, but I’d never ask.

If she’d asked, she’d be no better than the sort of woman she hated: the professional girlfriends who picked married men with big bank balances and used skills like safe-crackers to get their hands on the money. That wasn’t Izzie.

But if he came to her now, how wonderful it would be. She’d be able to cope a little better if he were with her, holding her hand, sitting beside her in the hospital with Gran.

‘This is the man I love, Gran,’ she’d whisper, and even, God forbid, if Gran never woke up, Izzie would have brought Joe to meet her. She so wanted Gran’s approval of the man she loved. Even though it was all so unconventional and difficult, it would work out, because love found a way, didn’t it?

The love of her life stretched beside her and then moved so that he was propped up on one arm, staring down at her.

She gazed up at him happily, eyes tracing the familiar lines of his face and loving what she saw.

‘Izzie, I need to know why you came to the museum last night,’ he said.

‘What?’ she asked, her happy daydream crashing to the ground. ‘Can’t you guess?’

‘Well, no.’

This time, she sat up and pulled the sheet protectively over her breasts.

‘Oh, come on, Joe,’ she said. ‘It’s not rocket science. You’re one of the smartest people I know. Surely you can figure it out.’

‘You wanted to look at my wife?’

He couldn’t say her name: couldn’t say ‘Elizabeth’. As if saying it here in Izzie’s apartment would taint her. Elizabeth was the one to be protected, not the other way round.

Izzie shivered at what this meant.

‘I could look at her in any magazine, Joe,’ she said calmly. ‘I wanted to see you together – don’t you get it? You and her, together. Wouldn’t you want to see me and him together, if I was the one who was married?’ she asked incredulously.

‘If you were married, we wouldn’t be together,’ Joe said bluntly.

‘What?’

‘I wouldn’t want to share you.’ He shrugged. ‘That wouldn’t be an option. I’d never see someone who was involved with anyone else.’

Rage boiled up inside her.

‘You bastard!’ she hissed. ‘I get to share you, but you’d refuse to share me. You are so hypocritical.’

‘Me, hypocritical? I don’t think so.’ Joe’s eyes were like cold steel and they bored into her.

Izzie was shocked by the ferocity of his glare.

‘What I didn’t think we were getting into was you turning up like a stalker to watch me and my wife with our friends.’

His words actually hurt her physically. She hadn’t known words could do that.

‘I can’t believe you’re saying this to me,’ she said. She no longer felt angry, just very scared and very shocked. This was not how it was supposed to be. Where was the Joe who’d looked down on her as they’d made love, as if he’d like to gaze at her face with love for ever.

The words just slipped out. ‘I thought you loved me?’

The silence gaped like one of the valleys near the New Mexico pueblo where she’d been just days before. Outside, police cars roared past, droning sirens into the afternoon.

‘I thought you and Elizabeth were just together for the kids? That’s what you told me. Is that the truth or not?’

‘Izzie –’ he began, ‘I do love you, but it’s not that simple.’

And then she knew for sure. Carla had been right. He hadn’t loved her. He’d loved making love to her, sure, but as for the Real Thing – that was all one-sided. Her side.

‘Don’t say anything.’ She scrambled out of the bed, dragging the sheet with her, wrapping it around her body like an Egyptian mummy. She didn’t want him looking at her naked body ever again. She felt so ashamed: ashamed, humiliated, stupid. He’d used her. She loved him, thought he loved her too. But she was wrong.

‘Let’s not fight,’ he said gently. ‘I didn’t come here for that.’

The shred of dignity left to Izzie stopped her saying: What did you come here for, then? Because the answer was simple: to fuck you, my handy little girlfriend. That’s all she was. A convenience store – available for late-night drinks, dinner and free sex. For the first time ever, she had respect for the hard-boiled identikit New York girlfriends of married men. At least they understood the rules of the game and they considered it a profession. Get your man and get something from him. She’d considered herself different: his true love. She was his equal and she wasn’t the sort of woman who wanted things from a man. She wasn’t in it for gifts – she was in it for love. Except he was in it for something different. No shit, Sherlock.

‘No,’ she said, reaching inside herself and finding one last thread of calmness. ‘Let’s not fight. I have to pack.’

Pack? She didn’t care if she travelled on the flight without a single item of luggage but the clothes she stood up in. Still, it was a good excuse.

‘Of course,’ he said, sliding gracefully out of the bed. He was such a handsome male animal, she thought, watching him. Everything she found physically attractive: no fat, just hard muscle and a hard business brain, and now – she’d just found out – a hard heart.

‘What time is your flight?’ he murmured.

‘Five forty tomorrow evening,’ she said.

‘Nothing earlier.’

‘No.’

‘If you want, I could get you on the private plane,’ he said.

Like a computer finally downloading a big email, the litany of vicious things she’d planned to say earlier came online in Izzie’s brain. The thread of calm vanished.

‘But not the company plane, right? That might really let people know that you were screwing me. No, you’d have to take a favour from someone or else pay to fly me home, because God forbid that any of your employees should find out about me, the boss’s whore.’

‘Izzie,’ he said, sounding hurt, ‘I never made you feel that way, I never meant to.’

‘I know, but that’s still how I feel,’ she said.

‘Guess we’re fighting after all.’

‘No, you’re leaving,’ she said. ‘In fact, I am too. I’ve got things to buy.’ She grabbed a sweatshirt and sweatpants from her closet and went into the tiny bathroom. Twenty seconds later, she emerged, wearing the tracksuit and her hair messy from where she’d hauled it over her head. Who cared about her hair? Bed-hair and life-is-over-hair looked pretty much the same. ‘I’m going. You can let yourself out.’

‘Don’t go,’ he said urgently.

‘Tough, I’m going,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to wait here and listen to more of your lies.’

‘They’re not lies, Izzie. I love you, it’s just difficult now. Complicated –’

‘I’ll undo some of the complications, then,’ she snapped. ‘Consider me out of your life, Joe. Does that make it easier?’

She snagged her purse from the hall, grabbed her keys and was gone.

She ran down the stairs to the street in case he came after her, and then ran two blocks to a coffee shop they’d never been to together, just in case he came after her.

But he wouldn’t, she realised, as she stood at the counter and tried to summon up the brainpower to actually order something.

‘Er…skinny latte, please,’ she said to the barista.

Joe wouldn’t follow her. He didn’t want an emotional girlfriend who had expectations: he wanted an easy lay who wouldn’t cause trouble. Or did he? She’d trusted him, had been sure he was telling the truth. But if he was, and if he loved her, wouldn’t he walk away now to be with her?

She sat at a table and stirred sugar into her latte. What a hideous day this had turned out to be. First, darling Gran: now, this.

‘Oh, Gran,’ she said to herself, ‘I’ve let you down so much. Let both of us down, actually. Bet you thought you’d taught me better, huh?’

A mother with a baby in a stroller and several bags of groceries underneath, sat tiredly down at the table beside her. Izzie watched the mother and child sadly. She’d never have that, not now. Motherhood was a destination getting further and further away from her. Once, she’d thought it was a right, inevitable. Women got married and had children. Then, it became a challenge: harder than originally thought, but still possible. And now…now it looked impossible, unless she went it alone.

Suddenly, she could understand women who reached forty and went looking for donor sperm to father their babies. If there was no man on the scene to be your baby’s daddy, and the time bomb that was worn-out ovaries was ticking away, what else did you do? Wait like Sleeping Beauty for a non-existent prince? Or save yourself.

The baby wriggled in her stroller and Izzie caught sight of her properly. Downy African-American curls framed an exquisite face with chubby cheeks and huge dark eyes like inky pools. In her peachy pink sleepsuit, she looked like a little doll.

‘She’s lovely,’ Izzie said to the tired mom, who instantly brightened.

‘Yeah, isn’t she? My little princess.’

‘Does she sleep?’

What Izzie knew about small children could be written on the head of a pin with room left over for the State of the Union speech, but she knew that sleep patterns were as important to mothers as New York Fashion Week was to her.

‘She’s getting better,’ the mother said, warming to her theme. ‘She went six whole hours last night, didn’t you, honey?’ she cooed to her baby. ‘You got kids?’ she asked Izzie.

Izzie felt the prickle of tears in her eyes.

She shook her head. ‘No,’ she said.

‘Not everyone wants ‘em,’ the woman agreed.

Izzie nodded. She didn’t trust herself to speak. She pushed her barely touched latte away from her. ‘Bye,’ she gulped and ran out.

It was too late for her to have a baby, she thought, wild with grief. It wasn’t that her eggs were too old or that her body was too decrepit: it was that her heart was a dried-out husk and you couldn’t nourish another human being when there was nothing left in you.

‘Don’t go yet, Gran,’ she whispered up to the Manhattan sky. ‘Please don’t go yet. I need to see you one last time, please.’