Читать книгу Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow? - Claudia Carroll - Страница 11

My audition is at lunchtime in Dublin, which gives me barely enough time to run to Tesco and buy everything that Mrs Brophy was whinging we didn’t have in the house earlier on. Plus I also have to call Agnes at the book store to let her know that I won’t be into work today. But if I was expecting her to be a bit put out at this, I was wrong; honest to God, the sheer relief in the woman’s voice when she realised she wouldn’t have to pay me for yet another day would have broken your heart. No problem whatsoever, Annie, she’d said, sure why not take a few extra days off too while you’re at it?

Anyway, between all of that, there’s barely enough time for a lightning quick shower before I have to hop into the car and start the marathon, two-and-a-half-hour drive to the city.

Right then. As I pull out onto the motorway, I make a decision. I’m going to use this incredibly rare bit of alone time to try to clear my head and concentrate on nothing but the audition ahead. So as I boot the car up into fourth gear, I start doing all the little pre-audition relaxation tricks I remember from long ago: some deep yoga breathing for starters, in for two and out for four, in for two and out for four…easy does it…then I start to creatively visualise a positive outcome…imagining myself bouncing into a rehearsal room…being a proper, paid actor again…being back in the city and far, far away from Grey Gardens, sorry, I mean, The Moorings…earning money at a career that I actually love and adore…after three long years of treading water by stacking shelves in an empty bookshop…oh and let’s not forget sweeping dead headed roses off the floor while doing yet another part-time job in the local florist’s…then I think back to that book I read because everyone was reading it at the time…The Secret…So I focus on attracting only a positive outcome and not dwelling on forgetting my lines or blanking out with nerves or similar…

Anyway, I’m just drifting into a lovely, soothing, zoned-out happy place, when suddenly my phone rings, totally shattering my concentration.

Audrey, surprise, surprise.

‘Where are you, Annie?’ she whimpers in the little-girl-lost voice. ‘I’m at The Moorings and Mrs Brophy tells me you’ve disappeared off to Dublin for the day yet again…can that be right? Would you really do such a selfish thing without telling me? I worried myself sick about you yesterday and you know how worry brings on one of my little turns. And not a phone call from you for the whole day, nothing.’

Do not let the guilt get to you, I tell myself sternly, at all costs, don’t allow her to guilt trip you.

‘Because I’m still not feeling very well today, you know, after all the worry of yesterday, and I need you to run a few little errands for me…’

I hear her out as patiently as I can and explain that everything is fine, and that I’m just going to Dublin for an unexpected audition. A pause, and I’m half-wondering if she’ll bother to ask me anything at all about it. You know, stuff a normal person would ask, like what’s the play, what part am I up for…but no, she doesn’t. Of course not. There’s the usual half second time delay while she filters the information I’m offering, then immediately figures out whether it’ll affect her negatively in any way. And decides that yes, it does.

‘But that’s no use to me, Annie, I’m doing my Christmas cards today and I need you to be here. You should have been here to help me yesterday and it’s not my fault that you weren’t.’

I can just picture her as she says this, all swelled up like a gobbler with enough ammunition to bitch about me behind my back for weeks to come. Then I sigh so deeply it’s like it’s coming from my feet upwards and wonder what she wants me to do exactly? Write out all the cards for her? Wouldn’t surprise me.

Anyway, at this stage I’ve had years of practice in dealing with her, so I draw on all my experience and do what I always do: lock my voice into its lowest register and at all costs, don’t let her turn me into her emotional punchbag. I calmly tell her that although I’ll be gone for most of the day, I’ll be back later in the evening and will be perfectly happy to take care of whatever she needs then.

‘But you’re not listening to me, Annie, I have to get my Christmas cards posted today and I need you to get to the post office before it shuts. You know perfectly well I can’t go by myself. Standing in queues brings on one of my weak spells and I’ve really not been myself all morning, you know. And another thing – you still don’t have the Christmas tree up yet, Annie. I don’t understand, what exactly have you been doing with your time?’

I let the veiled insult pass and suggest that, since it’s so urgent, maybe she should just ask Jules to do the post office run for her?

‘Well if I’d known you were flitting off to Dublin for the day then of course I would have, but Jules was still asleep when I left the house and I don’t like to wake her.’

I can’t help smiling in spite of myself; typical Jules. She’s a terrible stickler for getting her twelve hours’ sleep. Plus, she always says that even if she’s lying wide awake in bed it’s a far, far better thing to stay put, than to get up and enter Audrey-land. And, in all fairness, can you blame the girl?

‘Oh and another thing, Annie, when I went upstairs to use the bathroom just now, I had a little look around and I couldn’t help noticing that you still hadn’t made your bed and that there were unlaundered clothes belonging to poor Dan strewn all over the floor as well. You know I hate to say it, but I really think you should think about organising your household chores a little bit better. It really upsets me when I see that the house isn’t being cared for properly and no man likes to live in a messy house you know…’

Just then I lose the signal on my phone, so mercifully this conversation ends before the mental image of Audrey combing through our bedroom when I’m not there takes root deep in my psyche.

Note to self: if I don’t get this job, then I’m asking Dan if we can buy a caravan for our back garden so we can go and live in it instead. A little mobile home that could sit in the back garden and look like it was adopted by The Moorings out of charity. With deadbolts on every door and window, to ensure some minor degree of privacy. Or if it comes to it, then I’ll just move out and live in the shagging thing on my own. Because life in a four-wheel trailer certainly couldn’t be much worse than life at Grey Gardens, could it?

Anyroadup, I arrive in Dublin a good forty-five minutes before the audition starts, park the car and head back for the National theatre. It’s a miserable winter’s day – icy cold, with a sharp wind blowing and only a weak, watery sun desperately trying to break through the heavy overhead clouds…but to me, with an audition to go to and with a spring in my step, it’s only bloody beautiful.

Funny, but in The Sticks I’m completely surrounded by natural beauty and probably the most stunning scenery you’re ever likely to see, yet somehow, I never seem to notice it. But being here, back in the city and striding purposefully down a busy, bustling street packed with stressed-out Christmas shoppers tripping over each other to grab their last minute bargains…everyone laden down with bulging bags, looking frozen and panicky and with mounting hysteria practically ricocheting off them…and I can’t help thinking that it’s just the loveliest sight I’ve seen in I don’t know how long. But then I suppose, after living in the dark for so long, a glimpse of the light can suddenly make you giddy.

Tell you one thing; even if I don’t get this job, at least one good thing has already come out of it – just being back in the city and doing an audition has put the bounce back into me and aligned my spine again, as if I just got a jolt of vitamin B straight to my heart. And a flood of gorgeous, cheering memories come back too; when Dan and I first left school, we both came to Dublin to study at Trinity College, him to do veterinary medicine, me, drama studies.

We shared flat after flat in the city, gradually working our poverty-stricken, dole-poor way from renting places where the washing machine had to double up as the dining table, all the way up to the dizzy heights of actually owning our very own apartment right after we got married. Happy, happy days – by far the happiest of my life – and now it’s like every street corner I turn holds a very different memory of a very different time.

Buoyed up with adrenaline, I run into a little coffee shop just across the road from the theatre to grab a bottle of water and no one knows me or any of my business and it’s bloody fantastic. No one asks me about Dan or Audrey or whether Jules has any intention of getting some kind of a job any time soon. No Bridie McCoy telling us about how useless her chiropodist is, no Agnes Quinn to playfully elbow me in the ribs and remind me that I’m not getting any younger, then ask me when exactly I’m going to put that huge nursery up in The Moorings to good use? No Father O’Driscoll to gently probe me about whether he might see myself and Dan at Mass one of these fine days…I am utterly and totally anonymous here and it’s wonderful. Feels like being able to breathe freely again after years of long, silent suffocation.

I bounce along to the stage door of the National and the receptionist is almost flight attendant friendly. Yes, they’re expecting me and I’m to go ahead to the green room and wait there. She politely offers me tea or coffee while I’m waiting and I thank her but say no. Then I find my way to the green room which is directly behind the main stage, guessing that some other poor actress is out there strutting her stuff right now. I plonk down on a faded leather armchair and start thumbing through the script yet again.

Fag Ash Hil was at pains to point out that, at this stage, I wasn’t expected to have actually memorised the lines, considering the short notice I’d been given to come and read for the part in the first place, but I know well enough how these things work. You’re told, ‘Oh, no need to be off book, darling,’ but the reality is that you’re expected to have studied the script the same way Egyptologists study tomb writings and it doesn’t matter a shite how late in the day you got the script.

So I’m just re-reading through a pivotal scene for the character when the door opens and the stage manager comes to get me. No time to react, no time for nerves. I get up and obediently follow him.

Two minutes later, and I’m standing on stage and it’s beyond weird having sat in the audience last night, now to be over on this side of the fence. The set, by the way, is a health spa in a five-star resort, with sun loungers dotted across the stage and offstage doors leading to a sauna, pool and steam room. It’s dimly lit and hard to see, then suddenly a split second later, it suddenly goes Broadway bright. I’m momentarily dazzled but then a disconnected voice from the dark auditorium tells me to come on down to the front of the stage. I do as I’m told, clutching the script like a talisman.

Next thing, a striking-looking, long, lean guy is swooping down the centre audience aisle and striding towards where I’m standing centre stage, in a ball of sweaty tension.

‘Well, hello there,’ he calls out smoothly. ‘I’m Jack Gordon.’

Not every day you come face-to-face with the David Beckham of the theatre world, so even though I’m blinded by the hot stage lights, I manage to squint through the darkness to get a half decent look at him. He’s a lot taller and slimmer than I’d have thought, wearing an impeccably-cut, slate grey suit with an open-necked, crisp, white shirt underneath, which somehow makes him look older than he actually is, even though he can’t be much more than early thirties. For a second, I can’t actually remember the last time I saw a proper well-dressed, metrosexual guy in a proper suit, outside of the local courthouse in Stickens, that is. Blue eyes and light brown-ish hair, but with slanting eyebrows that kind of give him the look of a satyr when he frowns downwards. And self-confidence that practically bounces off the auditorium walls; not a word of a lie, if the guy had antlers, they’d probably be well past his shoulders.

In short, he looks like a Michael Bublé song.

Anyway, he marches all the way down to the apron of the stage, walking as though he’s in his own spotlight and extends a smooth, lotioned hand out to me.

‘You must be Annie Cole,’ he smiles, flashing teeth brighter than a toxic blast from a nuclear bomb. ‘So good of you to come at such short notice. It’s an absolute pleasure to meet you.’

And his voice is thicker than a jar of Manuka honey. A twenty-fags a day voice, if ever I heard one. Anyway, I mumble something inane and shake his ice cold hand. He’s focusing really intently on me now, keenly looking me up and down, then down and back up again and it’s making me bloody nervous. And the danger with me is that when nervous, I tend to act like I’ve got St Vitus’s dance of the mouth and start gabbling like a half-wit about complete and utter shite. Mercifully though, he doesn’t initiate any more chit-chat or small talk; just directs me towards the scene that he’d like me to read, coolly telling me to start in my own time.

And for better or for worse, I’m on.

Good sign: I’m asked to play one particular scene five different times, and in about five different ways. The logical part of my brain says, would Jack bother spending so much time on me if he thought I was really shite?

Bad sign: As I leave the stage, I meet the other actress who was in before me, having a fag in the tiny yard off the green room. We both instantly cop on who the other is, the giveaway being the script we’re both clutching to our chests and each of us launch into a big post-mortem. Anyway, she says she was asked to do exactly the same thing. So much for that.

Good sign: One of the pivotal scenes, feels completely fantastic. It’s impossible to describe the massive adrenaline rush I get from performing it – closest thing I can imagine would be like what a fighter pilot must feel on take-off. Or a cat burglar. For the first time in years, I find myself feeding off the sheer pleasure of acting and loving every second of it, thinking feck it anyway; even if I don’t get the part, I’ve come this far, so I may as well enjoy myself.

Jack does a kind of deep, throaty, snorting laugh at some of the gag lines I deliver and this I find hugely encouraging.

Bad sign: Then he excuses himself to answer his mobile phone and does precisely the same laugh.

Good sign: After I’ve been put through my paces, he politely asks me about my personal life and whether the significant commitment involved in this gig would be an issue for me.

Bad sign: When I tell him that I’m married but haven’t had a chance to discuss it with my significant other yet, he just nods curtly, giving absolutely nothing away. My gut instinct is to tack on, ‘But you know, everything’s OK, because it’s not like we have kids or anything!’ but I manage to restrain myself. I mean, yes of course I’d love the job, but do I really want to come across as a complete desperado?

Shit anyway. Should have just told him the truth.

That I’ve a husband who I honestly doubt would even notice I’m gone.

Worst sign of all: When I’m leaving the stage, he shakes my hand quite formally and says, ‘Best of luck. We’ll be in touch.’ Otherwise known in the acting profession as the ‘don’t call us, we’ll call you’, kiss of death.

So now there’s nothing to do but wait it out.

It’s only early evening but already pitch dark by the time I get back to The Sticks. Dan, not surprisingly, isn’t back yet, but this would be perfectly normal. In fact it might be hours and hours before he does come home. So I decide that I’ll wait up for him, even if it’s two in the morning before he eventually does stagger in.

My plan is thus: I will stand right in front of him, hands on hips like something out of a Western, blocking his path so he can’t dodge past me, claiming exhaustion and that all he really wants to do is go to bed. I will firmly say what I’ve got to say and not get fobbed off by his mobile ringing or him brushing me aside and saying, ‘We’ll talk later.’ Flooded with determination, I make up my mind. No more repeat performances of this morning. No more being brushed off.

Enough’s enough. Some discussions just can’t wait.

I let myself in through the side door that leads down a long, narrow, stone passageway to the kitchen and am delighted to see Jules standing there, wearing her pyjamas with a pair of my slippers and raiding our fridge, as per usual.

‘And where the feck have you been all day?’ is her greeting, not even looking up from the coleslaw she’s eating straight out of the tub.

‘Jules, please tell me you didn’t go out dressed like that? You look like the kind of woman that ends up getting escorted out of Tesco. You’re like a candidate for care in the community.’

‘Ahh, leave me alone, will you? I couldn’t have been arsed deciding what to wear, so in the end I just didn’t bother. But I did put a duffel coat and Wellingtons over my PJ’s before I left the flat. Besides underwear as outerwear is a hot look right now, I’ll have you know. Anyway, you’re in deep shite with the Mothership, I can tell you that for nothing. We came dangerously close to having a code three on our hands today.’

This, by the way, is a system Jules and I have set up to monitor Audrey and her many and varied ‘little turns’. The lowest level, code one, means she’s prostrate on the sofa whinging and in need of sugary tea but if she ever makes it up to code four, the only thing to do is dial 999 toot sweet, then call the local GP and await subsequent fallout.

‘So where were you, Annie? You keep disappearing and re-appearing these days. Not unlike that TV show Scrubs.’

‘Up in Dublin doing an audition,’ I beam proudly, peeling off my coat and gloves. ‘You have my permission to be impressed.’

‘And you didn’t take me with you, you bitch! For feck’s sake, I could have done some Christmas shopping! With money you’d have had to lend me, obviously. I could have done with getting out of Dodge today; Lisa Ledbetter sat here at the kitchen table moaning for the entire afternoon. Not much point in me coming here to escape from my mother if I have to put up with The Countess Dracula instead, is there? Phrases about frying pans and fires spring to mind.’

I groan as I reach to put the kettle on.

‘You have my sympathies, hon. So tell us, how was the Countess today?’

‘What can I say? Like Lisa Ledbetter. If whining was an Olympic sport, we’d have the gold medallist living right here in our midst.’

Not an exaggeration, by the way. We all have a Lisa Ledbetter in our lives and the thing is, you just can’t allow yourself to get sucked in or else sure as eggs is eggs they won’t be happy till they drag you down with them.

‘You should have heard her,’ Jules goes on, wiping coleslaw off her face with the back of her hand. ‘She even rang Dan on his mobile to ask him for another lend of cash to tide her over Christmas. Oh, and apparently one of her kids wants to do pony riding lessons, and she got the big soft gobshite to agree to shell out for that too. I was pretending to be watching TV but heard the whole conversation. What a shameless cow; I mean, doesn’t she realise that scabbing money from Dan is my department?’

I roll my eyes to Heaven pretending to be pissed off, although I’m actually delighted that Jules is here and even more delighted that by some early miracle of Christmas, I’ve managed to miss both Audrey and Lisa. Because Jules is the perfect antidote to the pair of them.

Jules, I should tell you, is only nineteen but looks an awful lot younger still, particularly today when she’s dressed in her favourite baby-blue fleece pyjamas with her dark, jack-in-the-box curls that normally spring past her shoulders tied back into two messy, pigtails. Honest to God, the girl looks like she should still be getting ID’ed in bars.

And I know she treats this house like she’s a non-rent paying lodger, but then Jules is one of life’s naturally adorable people so it’s pretty much impossible to get irritated with her for very long. She’s Dan’s baby sister but it always feels like she’s mine too – I’ve known her ever since she was a spoilt, over-petted four-year-old girl and what can I say? From day one, we just bonded. I’d always wanted a little sister…and I certainly couldn’t have asked for one who made my life more entertaining.

And yes, of course it’s a bit weird that a nineteen-year-old college dropout should spend her days lounging around watching afternoon TV with absolutely no inclination whatsoever towards getting an actual job and supporting herself, but that’s our Jules for you. She’s one of that rare and dying breed – the entitled generation. You know, young ones who grew up having everything handed to them on a plate by doting parents and who assumed that life was all about five-star hotels and three holidays a year and wearing nothing but designer labels on their well-toned backs. The generation that landed with the hardest thump when the recession hit and suddenly all the privileges they’d taken for granted during the good years were crudely revoked.

At the time Jules had started college but when she flunked her exams last autumn, she quickly realised she’d actually have to stop partying five nights a week and actually knuckle down to some hardcore work if she ever wanted to pass. And needless to say, that was the end of that. So she moved back into her mother’s flat about five months ago and even though she claims it drives her nuts being nagged at morning, noon and night, she doesn’t seem to have the slightest intention of ever leaving. Like she hasn’t actually made the link in her own head yet between her actions and their consequences.

Don’t get me wrong, I love the girl dearly, but if you were to look up ‘indolence’ in the Oxford English dictionary, chances are it would say ‘See Jules Ferguson’. She’s like a zenned-out, calm bubble of Que Sera Sera and believe it or not she’s perfectly contented to crash out at Audrey’s for the foreseeable future, living on cash handouts from her big brother. Oh and spending all her afternoons here, the minute Audrey’s safely out of the way and the coast is clear, thereby avoiding her as much as possible. A bit like weathermen on one of those old-fashioned clocks; one goes in just as the other one is coming out.

Anyway, I pour myself out a big mug of tea and follow her into the TV room, where she’s laid out a little picnic for herself consisting of last night’s leftovers plus a bag of tortilla chips. She’s also lit the fire, but then that’s the one household chore you can actually count on her to do. I’m deeply grateful though because in this house, with the high ceilings and ancient hot water pipes, even with the heating on full-blast, it rarely gets warmer than a degree or two above freezing. Ellen DeGeneres is on TV in the background, interviewing some teen queen about her latest movie and Jules plonks down in her favourite armchair, eyes glued to the screen.

‘So,’ she says, taking a fistful of tortilla chips and stuffing her face with them. ‘Tell me all about your audition. Is it a half decent part? And by that I mean…is it worth elevating my vision from the TV for?’

I bring her up to speed on all developments in my life, debating in my mind whether I should tell her the full, unexpurgated truth. Half of me thinks what the hell, she’ll find out soon enough anyway, but the other more rational side of me thinks, no, this isn’t fair. Not till I’ve spoken to Dan. If I ever get to speak to him, that is. So I skirt around the truth and just give her the bare skeletal outline of the story.

But if I thought she’d be impressed, I was wrong. All she does is flop back onto the armchair, still munching tortilla chips, and deep in thought.

‘Shit on it anyway,’ she eventually mutters. ‘I just realised something deeply unpleasant.’

‘What’s wrong?’

‘If you get this, and if they’re only looking at three other actors, then let’s face it, you’ve got a thirty three per cent chance…then…just think…you’ll be gone all day when you’re rehearsing and then gone all night when the show is playing, won’t you? Tell me the truth, Annie, what does your gut instinct say? Do you think you’ll get the gig?’

‘Probably not.’

‘Don’t say “probably not”. That worries me. What’s wrong with ordinary “not”?’

I can’t help smiling at her. You should see her, looking at me all worried, with the innocent expression and the big, saucer-black eyes. Honest to God, for a split second, she looks exactly like she did when she was about twelve years old.

‘Because if you did feck off to Dublin,’ she goes on, playing with a pig tail, ‘that means I’d be stuck here on my own, without you, doesn’t it? Bugger and double bugger it anyway. You’ve no idea what it’s like here when you’re not around, Annie. Between the Mothership with all her little turns and Lisa Ledbetter and her whinging, this house is like an open casting call for One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. I’m not sure that I could handle it without you. Perish the thought, but if that were the case, then I might actually have to do the unthinkable and…pause for dramatic effect…go out and get a job myself.’

Vintage Jules. The first question she’ll always ask when faced with a new set of circumstances is…hold on a minute, let me have a think. Now how does this directly affect me?

‘Well, it may not even come to pass,’ I say, taking a sip of tea and trying to plumb the fault line in my heart to gauge my own reaction if it didn’t happen. Or, even more unthinkable, if it did. Oh God, just the thought of what that would involve instantly makes me break out in a cold, shivery sweat.

But Jules is already gone off on a tangent.

‘Well anyway, lucky for you, though, Annie, there’s no need to feel guilty, because as it happens, I do have an ace up my sleeve. You know how Dan’s been on at me lately about cutting my allowance unless he sees me at least out looking for some kind of work? Well, I had a brainwave last night. While watching a repeat of Britain’s Got Talent, when I get all my best inspiration.’

‘Ehh…let me guess. You’ve decided to become a pop star and you’re going to go and audition for Simon Cowell and Amanda Holden? Isn’t it a prerequisite that you have to at least be able to sing first?’

‘No, I’m going to use my own talent, you gobshite. I’m going to become an author. I’ve even got the title for my first book all worked out. It’s a loosely autobiographical story, based on the life of a stunningly beautiful, gifted nineteen-year-old girl, who’s just dropped out of college and is forced through cruel economic circumstances into living with her nut job of a mother in a tiny little backwater, in the back arse of nowhere. It’s called I Love You, But Please Die. So whaddya think?’

‘I honestly don’t know which of us is worse. You for dreaming up this crap, or me for listening to you. Although I will say this: if you did turn to writing, it would certainly put that over-active imagination of yours to good use.’

That’s another thing about Jules – she’s famous in the family for being the greatest exaggerator this side of Heather Mills. When she was a kid, she was forever getting into trouble for telling tall tales. Famously, on her first day in primary school she told her entire class that her parents were circus performers; that her mum was an acrobat and her dad could tame lions. When the truth came out, that her father was actually the local vet and her mum was a housewife, she never batted an eyelid, just said that her dad used to be a lion tamer but now looked after sick animals, while her mother was forced to abandon her acrobatic career through injury. Psychologists say that most kids tend to grow out of this carry on by the age of six, but Jules is now nineteen and still hasn’t.

‘Well, missy,’ she says, glaring at me, ‘if you’re going to disappear off for…how long? Couple of months I’m guessing? Then the pressure will all be on me to find work. So if you think about it, it’s all your fault, abe. Feck you anyway for getting a smell of a job. Now I’ll have to run out and get my debut novel published or everyone will think I’m a complete and utter loser. How long will your show run for anyway?’

I don’t answer. Instead, I busy myself tidying up the little picnic Jules has littered around the TV room floor and try my best to tune out her question. Like I say, until I talk to Dan, it’s just not fair to confide in his family first.

But Jules smells something and is straight onto me.

‘Annie? Why won’t you answer me?’

Again, I ignore her and focus on picking up loose kernels of popcorn strewn all around the armchair where she’s sitting.

‘Are you aware that right now your face is flushing like a forest fire?’ she insists tenaciously, like a dog that’s just picked up the faintest scent of blood.

‘You know, as a little treat for us, I went to Marks & Spencer when I was up in Dublin and bought some of the gorgeous beef in a black bean sauce they do. Do you fancy some for dinner?’

‘Hello? Earth to Annie? Can we stick to the subject at hand please? Is there something you’re not telling me? Something about your play?’

She even lowers down the volume on the TV, so there’s no avoiding her question. Then suddenly, she clamps her hand over her mouth and gasps, horrified.

‘Christ Alive, don’t tell me there’s full frontal nudity in the show and you’re too mortified to let on!’

‘No, there is absolutely, categorically no nudity whatsoever. Now would you just go back to doing what you do best – watching daytime TV and let me get dinner started?’

‘Annie…’ she says threateningly.

‘Or if you don’t fancy the beef, I’ve the makings of a nice chicken casserole. What do you say? I know a day isn’t over for you unless you’ve eaten an entire alphabet full of additives, but do you fancy eating something with an actual vitamin in it for a change? Instead of just another bag of tortilla chips, that is.’

‘Piss off, I’m stress eating.’

‘You? Stressed? You never gave a shite about anything in your life.’

‘Stop changing the subject. I know right well when I’m being fobbed off…’

‘…and maybe you’d like a healthy fresh salad with dinner? Maybe?’

‘Bitch! You tell me the truth this minute or I’ll break your nose with my bare forehead…’

‘Lovely talk. Where’d you pick that up, living with your mother?’

‘Annie! You know I’ll wheedle it out of you sooner or later, so you may as well tell me now, while you have my undivided attention. Now, quick, before Home and Away starts.’

I sigh so deeply it feels like it’s coming from my bone marrow, knowing right well that the game’s up.

‘You’re just not going to let this go, are you?’

‘Not a snowball’s chance in hell.’

Right then. I slump back down onto the sofa beside her. I hadn’t wanted to tell anyone ahead of Dan, but then I figure…knowing him, it could be a full twenty-four hours before I actually manage to nail him down. Plus I honestly feel like I’m carrying around the third Secret of Fatima – it’ll be a relief to get it off my chest. Not to mention a good dress rehearsal for what’s to come.

So I tell Jules the truth. The whole truth and nothing but.

There’s silence.

I didn’t expect silence.

Suddenly it’s like all the life and energy has been completely sucked out of the room. I look at her expectantly and she looks at me and I honestly think I’ll fling one of Audrey’s revolting china shepherdess figurines into the fireplace if she doesn’t say something.

Eventually she speaks.

‘Right. That settles it then. I’m getting wine.’

In a single hop, she’s up and over to the drinks cabinet and pouring us out two oversized glasses of Merlot. I don’t argue. I need the drink just as much as she does. If not more.

‘OK,’ she says, handing me the wine and simultaneously taking the mug of tea away from me, like it’s suddenly become poisonous. ‘So I may not like what you’ve just told me, but feck it, you’re like the only normal person in my daily orbit and if it’s the last thing I do, I’ll find some way to help you deal with this. So, let me just tap into my amazing powers of insight here.’

‘Ehh…sorry, did you say your amazing powers of insight?’

‘Yeah, that’s right. I’d use them on myself only it just so happens that I don’t have any problems.’

I fling a cushion at her which she neatly catches, then uses to balance her tortilla chips on.

‘Right then,’ she says assertively, sounding more adult-like than I think I’ve ever heard her. ‘Let’s start by doing pros and cons, will we? OK, I just thought of one. Pro: you’ll probably be dead in like, another fifty years, so chances are it won’t even matter.’

‘That’s your idea of a pro? Jaysus, I’m really looking forward to hearing the cons.’

‘Con: you have to tell Dan. And good luck with that, love.’

‘I tried telling him this morning, but then you know what it’s like trying to get him on his own. I might as well try to…’

‘Nail jelly to a wall, yeah I know. Funny but I thought he was only like that with me whenever I was trying to wheedle money out of him.’

She’s slumped back in the armchair now, long legs dangling over the side, frowning deeply and playing with her pigtails. All her little-girl mannerisms totally at odds with the glass of wine in her hand.

‘Pro,’ she goes on, taking another slug of the wine, ‘you may not even get the job in the first place, so is there really any point in bothering to mention it to him at all? You might only end up worrying him over nothing.’

‘No,’ I say, shaking my head firmly. ‘It wouldn’t be fair not to tell him. Aside from the fact that I physically get heartburn when I try to keep secrets from anyone. It’ll be unpleasant in the short-term, but it’s got to be done. Besides, you know what he’s like. The whole way back from Dublin this afternoon, all I could think was…if this did happen and if things actually went my way for once…I wonder if he’d even notice that I wasn’t around any more?’

‘I take your point,’ says Jules, nodding sagely. ‘There’s every chance you could take the job, disappear off and he’d barely even cop that you weren’t here.’

I throw her a grateful smile. God, it’s so lovely to talk to someone who understands exactly where I’m coming from. Really understands that is, as opposed to telling me what a lovely husband I have and how lucky I am to be married to such a hard-working man with such a strong work ethic who always puts his job first and blah-di-blah.

‘Oooh, here’s a thought. You could always just leave a note behind, saying that you’ll explain it all to him on your deathbed.’

‘Serious suggestions only, please.’

‘I was being serious. You’re a living saint to have put up with everything that you do round here, Annie, I really mean it. Remember the anniversary? You were so patient with him. I think I’d have flung my stuff into a suitcase, jumped into my car and headed straight for the nearest motorway after that episode.’

I shudder a bit just at the memory. The anniversary she’s talking about wasn’t our wedding anniversary by the way, but the anniversary of when we first got engaged, oooh, what feels like about two hundred years ago, when we were both just twenty-three years old. It was early December and at the time, we were in New York on holiday, in the dim and distant days when we still did romantic couple-y things together. Dan had just passed his finals in college and I’d just finished my first, proper acting gig at the National, my big breakthrough role, so this was like a double celebratory trip for us. We were young, we were in big love, in proper astonishing movie love and it honestly felt like the world was our oyster.

Anyroadup, one night we went ice-skating in the Rockefeller Center…that is to say, Dan was ice-skating while I was clinging onto him with one hand and onto a railing with the other, petrified I’d fall. And it started to snow very lightly and he turned down to kiss me and…well, that’s when he proposed. Completely spontaneously, totally out of the blue and yet if he’d stage managed the whole thing, the moment couldn’t have been one iota more flawlessly perfect. Even the snowflakes gently showered us, as though on cue. And it was just so unbearably romantic that ever since, that’s the date we’ve always celebrated as opposed to our wedding anniversary. December the first.

So this year, given the ridiculous hours he’d been working and the fact that we’d barely spoken to each other in I don’t know how long, I really made the effort and pulled out all the stops. I booked dinner for the two of us in Marlfield House, a stunning five-star country house hotel about fifty miles from here – one of those super-luxurious places where the staff all call you Madam and even the cushions have cushions. Not only that, but as an extra surprise, I even booked an overnight stay there for us too. That way neither of us would have to drive home and so it really would be like the second honeymoon the two of us so badly needed. All proudly paid for from my humble book shop earnings, so he couldn’t back out of it by saying it was too expensive for us either.

Anyway come the big day, Dan was out doing TB testing, a laborious, time-consuming and ongoing part of his job, so I went ahead of him to Marlfield House in my own car so as not to waste the day, arranging to meet him there in good time for dinner. But…disaster: he got a last-minute emergency call to deliver a foal on a farm a good forty miles away and wasn’t able to make it, leaving me at the hotel all alone and all by myself. Stood up by my own husband. Not his fault of course, but then it never is, is it? And it’s impossible to have a row with Dan, ever. He’s just way too reasonable and always takes full blame for everything himself, in a sort of row-avoidance, pre-emptive strike.

Completely and utterly pointless my even getting upset about it – this is the life of a country vet and by extension a country vet’s wife. This is what I signed up for. Of course I understood and didn’t get annoyed…sure how could I? And what was I going to do anyway? Get snotty because Dan works hard at a job that’s pretty much twenty-four-seven?

But it left its fecking sting all the same.

Suddenly I’m up on my feet, pacing. Dunno why but I can’t seem to sit still any more.

‘This evening,’ I say firmly. ‘For better or for worse, I have to tell Dan this evening. Even if I have to throw his mobile phone into the fish tank and physically grasp his head between my two hands in a vice grip to get his attention.’

‘Hmmm, I know what you mean,’ says Jules, wolfing back a bag of nachos now. ‘Terrible pity you’re not a sick animal, isn’t it? You know Dan, he can’t resist the scent of the wounded.’

I nod, knowing only too well what she means.

‘Tell you something though, Annie.’

‘What’s that?’

‘This could just be the fright that he needs to put manners on him. You know, when he realises that you’ve actually got a life and a career of your own outside of here. God knows, you’ve made enough sacrifices for him these past few years, and you get sweet feck all in return. If you ask me, he totally takes you for granted and never once have I heard you complain.’

She gets absolutely no argument from me on that score.

‘So,’ Jules goes on, stretching her long legs out towards the fire, ‘maybe this’ll be just the kick up the arse that he needs. I mean, when you tell him that you’re not prepared to sit around and play the surrendered wife any more. Hey, I don’t suppose there’s any chance I can stay and watch?’

Unsurprisingly, I do NOT let her stay and watch. Come eight o’clock, there’s still no sign of Dan, quelle surprise and it turns out Jules is meeting up with one of her pals from college, who lives in Lismore village not too far away. So I wave her off, full of promises to report back the full, unexpurgated transcript of my Big Chat with Dan later on.

It was my full intention to wait up for him, so he couldn’t head straight for bed without saying two words to me, like he normally would. But by half eleven, I’m stretched out on the sofa in front of the fire with the TV still on, out for the count and utterly drained after all the hoofing up and down to Dublin earlier today.

The dogs are the first to wake me; Dan often takes them out with him on farm calls and they always go bananas whenever they get back home. So the minute I hear barking and paws scratching to get through the living room door, I’m groggily hauling myself up, all set for the almighty show-down.

‘Dan?’ I call out, sleepily stumbling to my feet, ‘I’m in here.’

Our three Labradors are first into the room, jumping and slobbering all over me as I pet each one in turn. Then I look up…and there he is, filling the door with his huge, broad-shouldered, hulking frame, still wearing the giant, oversized wax jacket he wears out on farm calls and looking more exhausted than I’ve seen him in months. Honest to God, the dark circles lining his face are now exactly the same shade of black as his eyes.

‘Hey, you’re still up?’ he says, in a voice flat with tiredness. ‘I thought you’d have been in bed hours ago.’

‘Emm…yeah, I…. well…I wanted to talk to you,’ I say, with a highly inconvenient knot suddenly appearing in my stomach. ‘How did you get on today?’

‘Oh same old, same old,’ he says, coming in towards the fire for warmth, as ever, the room suddenly seeming smaller just because he’s in it. He’s left his Wellingtons in the hall but even in stockinged feet, he still towers over me by about a foot and a half. He brings the cold outside air into the room with him and smells of the outdoors: horsey and leathery. Unsurprising, given that he’s been on an equine farm for the past sixteen hours. Must be raining outside too because his thick, black hair looks damp as he runs his hands through it, trying to dry himself out a bit.

‘I was up at Fogarty’s most of the evening – Paul insisted I call over a second time, after I’d done the rest of my calls. But all is well, I think. I did another endoscopy on the filly and there’s nothing sinister. He’s just panicking because she won’t be fit for the flat season, that’s all.’

I smile up at him and change the subject.

‘Hungry?’ Good tactic; a full stomach will possibly make him more amenable to what I have to say.

‘No thanks,’ he yawns, ‘I’m just so, so tired. But James has taken the phones now, so at least I can crash out for a bit. I’ll just feed the dogs then get to bed. Early start tomorrow, you know yourself.’

It flashes through my mind how polite and passionless our conversation is. More like two flatmates who hardly ever see each other than husband and wife.

‘I’ll look after the dogs, don’t worry, but before you do go to bed, Dan, there’s something we really need to talk about.’

‘Could we leave it till later? I doubt I can take too much in right now.’

He’s half way out the door and I know this is the only chance I’m going to get, so I go for it.

‘Dan, remember I told you I was up in Dublin today for an audition?’

‘An audition? Really? You never said.’

I let that go on the grounds that the guy is practically sleepwalking with sheer knackered-ness and has probably even forgotten talking to me this morning. Chances are I’m just a big, blurry shape to him now.

‘Yes, I was and I don’t know how it went but, well, you know how it is. I just have to wait by the phone now. Oh…and say a lot of novenas,’ I tack on lightly, smiling nervously.

‘Well…best of luck. I hope it all works out for you.’

Another massive yawn from him as he winds up the conversation and makes to go upstairs.

‘Dan, that’s not the whole story.’

‘No, no, I’m sure it’s not…but can’t you tell me about it tomorrow?’

For a second my heart goes out to him; the guy is physically swaying on his feet with exhaustion right now.

‘Dan, I’m sorry, but no, this won’t wait any longer.’

OK, now I have his attention.

‘Well, what is it? Some big movie role or something?’

He’s starting to sound a bit narky now, like I’m delaying him from precious sleep time.

‘It’s a play, a new play that’s on in the National in Dublin. One of the actresses is pregnant and has to drop out, so I’d be taking over from her. If I landed the part, that is.’

‘Hey, that’s terrific…well, let me know as soon as there’s news.’

‘And…you see…there’s something else too. Something important.’

OK, now I’m learning a big life lesson. Namely that when on the brink of a potentially volatile conversation with one’s other half, never EVER leave the TV on in the background. Because it has the power to throw the oddest curve balls into the mix. Right now, there’s some late-night American soap opera on TV where a wife is having a showdown with her husband and is telling him she’s leaving him.

‘I am sick of this marriage and I’m sick of being taken for granted!’ the wife is yelling at the top of her voice.

‘So what’s that then?’ Dan asks politely enough, but with ‘then can I please go to bed?’ practically etched across his forehead.

‘I’ve had enough of the way you ignore me!’ screams the TV, as I fumble around for the right words. Shit, and I wouldn’t mind, only I’d rehearsed this in my head about a dozen times this evening.

‘Well, you see, if I were to get cast…’ I start, gingerly picking my words.

‘Do you understand? You are so emotionally unavailable to me and I’ve taken all I can of this. There’s only so much neglect a person can put up with!’ fed-up TV wife is still yelling in the background. I rummage around the sofa for the remote control to switch the shagging thing off, but of course can’t find it.

‘…the show wouldn’t actually be running at the National,’ I say, gathering a bit of momentum now.

‘And, after years of putting up with the way you treat me, I’ve had enough of you and your white silences and it’s time you heard a few home truths,’ TV wife continues to screech, as I root under the armchair cushions where Jules had been sitting earlier, still searching for the remote. No joy, so I just lunge for the telly to switch it off manually. But not before TV wife gets in the final clincher: ‘Because I’ve sacrificed my own life and career for you and get absolutely nothing in return. I’ve barely had as much as a sentence out of you in months, years in fact. We’re not man and wife any more – we’re barely even on speaking terms. So now you leave me no choice but to walk out that door and never come back, do you hear me? Enough’s enough…I’m leaving you and you’ve got no one to blame but yourself!’

‘Annie, I’ve just worked a fifteen-hour day, in yet another month of fifteen-hour days. I’m this close to collapsing with sheer exhaustion. Is there any chance you’ll just stand still for two seconds together and tell me whatever it is that you’re trying to tell me?’

Deep breath. Stay calm. And remember it’s not like I even have the job yet.

‘What I’m trying to tell you, Dan, what I’ve been trying to tell you since this morning, is that if I got the part, I would be going to Broadway. To New York.’

My mouth frames each and every word. And suddenly the fireplace is at the oddest angle.

‘But hey, that would be terrific for you…you love New York…’

‘You haven’t heard the whole thing…’

‘Which is…?’

‘Which is…that I’d be gone for one full year.’

First sparks.

I was barely twenty-four hours at Allenwood Abbey when one accepted fact was drummed into me as received wisdom; namely that my dorm-mate and New Best Friend, Yolanda, fancied the actual knickers off Dan. It seemed that everyone knew, even, it could only be presumed, the guy himself.

As it happened, the following day he and I were sitting together for my very first class – as bad luck would have it – maths. By a mile my worst subject. Yolanda had warned me that Miss Hugenot, the teacher, had a weepingly annoying habit of picking on any poor unsuspecting moron whose concentration she suspected might have drifted out the window, then hauling them up to the whiteboard to write out trig equations. In full.

Anyway, in clattered Miss Hugenot, dumping a pile of uncorrected homework on her desk, before standing imperiously at the top of the class, surveying us all down her long, thin, aquiline nose. I later discovered that she was a perfectly humane woman, but to the terrified, fifteen-year-old me on my first, proper, full day, she might as well have been the Wicked Witch of the West minus the green face-paint, the broomstick and the dum-di-dum-di-dum-dum music in the background.

Please dear Jesus don’t let her pick on me, I semaphored shyly across to Dan, who just grinned back confidently with all the calm of someone who was well able to understand the finer points of differential calculus; not least what the shagging thing actually meant. But then, as I was later to learn, Dan’s one of those rare people that maths comes easily to; for him, doing a long equation is a bit like sinking into a nice warm bath.

‘So, let me guess,’ he whispered, registering my panic and twinkling kindly down at me. ‘Either you don’t know the answer or…could it be that you haven’t done your homework?’

‘Ehhh…both,’ I hissed back. ‘I meant to, it was just that last night…’

‘Your dorm-mate kept you up chatting half the night?’ he guessed knowingly, the black eyes dancing.

‘Something like that, yeah.’

‘Sounds like Yolanda all right,’ he said, but kindly and not in any way putting her down.

Meanwhile the girl herself, seated two full rows ahead of us, had heard him utter the magic word…her own name…and turned around to beam suggestively and swish her blonde, freshly-washed locks at him. Now don’t get me wrong; I liked Yolanda very much, but even at this early stage I was starting to learn that she wasn’t much of a rules girl and didn’t for a single second believe that if a guy liked you, he’d find some way to ask you out. No, she was of the ‘take no prisoners and bludgeon a fella into submission until you eventually become his girlfriend’ school of thought. She smiled when Dan smiled and her eyes barely left his, like he was her magnetic North. And I just knew from the mildly inquiring look on her face that I’d have to relay every detail of the conversation I’d had with him back to her at lunchtime, omitting no detail, however trivial.

Then…to the soundtrack of a drumroll in my head for dramatic effect…came the dreaded phrase.

‘So,’ said Miss Hugenot, glowering at me with beady grey eyes that spotted fresh blood. ‘Let’s all hear from the latest addition to our class, shall we? Miss Annie Cole? Let’s see what they’ve been teaching you out in Karachi, then. Would you care to come to the top of the class and derive from first principles, x, x squared and x cubed, sin x, cos x and tan, from your notes? In full, if you please.’

Mike Sherry was on the opposite side of the class to me and, to a chorus of giggles immediately made this really annoying kissy-kissy noise that almost sounded like he was calling a horse, while I stumbled to my feet, trembling like jelly.

But that was all it took to distract Miss Hugenot. The full headlamps of her attention momentarily turned on Mike, to berate him for displaying such immaturity and in that split second and with sleight of hand that a professional magician would envy, Dan instantly switched copybooks with mine. So there was the answer, all perfect and neatly written and all I had to do was transcribe. Honour was saved and for the first time in my life, I was actually able to leave a maths class with my head held high.

Later on after class, as I was packing up to leave, Dan grabbed my arm and caught up with me as I stumbled off to try and find my next class.

‘Hey, wait…where are you headed?’ he asked me as I consulted an unintelligible map of the school.

‘Ehhh…room 201?’

‘Wrong way. Here, let me show you where it is.’

He took my books and strolled alongside me and to this day I can still remember the nervous, nauseous sensation of butterflies suddenly hitting my stomach. Bear in mind, I’d only ever been to all-girls schools before this and was totally unused to male attention, never mind the dense, sweaty atmosphere of sex that practically ricocheted off the walls at Allenwood. Sex and teenage pheromones that is, impervious either to open windows or deodorant. And now here was Dan, all tall and earthy and confident, utterly secure in his own popularity as only a captain of the school rugby team could be. The approximate size of a block of flats and so muscular he looked like he rowed everywhere. Handsome is such a Jane Austen-esque word, I thought, and yet it was the only possible adjective you could use to describe Dan Ferguson.

I tried to thank him for digging me out in maths class, but he just grinned and brushed it off. Then he abruptly changed the subject and asked me how I was settling in.

‘Great,’ I answered, trying my best to match his cool confidence. ‘Everyone’s being really friendly.’

That much was a polite, white lie; I was crippled with shyness back then, and the truth was that apart from him and Yolanda, I’d barely said two words to anyone else to date.

‘You must really miss your family though,’ he said gently, suddenly stopping in the packed corridor to look intently down at me. And I really do mean to look down at me – even at fifteen he was pushing six feet tall.

‘Very much,’ I nodded, ‘but I’ll see my mother at mid-term. And at Christmas, of course.’

‘She’s in…South America, isn’t it?’

‘Georgetown,’ I nodded, then stupidly tacked on, ‘in Guyana.’ By now people were starting to bang into us in their haste to get to the next class, but still Dan didn’t budge.

‘And your dad?’

‘Remarried. Lives in Moscow now. His new wife is Russian. I don’t really…that is, I don’t really see him all that much. In fact…I don’t see him at all.’

I think he must have guessed this wasn’t a subject I particularly wanted to be probed on, so he tactfully changed the subject back to Mum.

‘Still though, South America’s a helluva long way for you to travel to see your mother,’ he said, worry suddenly flashing into the coal-black eyes. ‘And then keeping in contact can’t be easy either. All those long-distance phone calls, emailing the whole time…’

‘Oh no, it’s absolutely fine, I’m well used to it.’

I might have sounded all sure of myself and blasé, but his quick mind seemed to read me accurately and he easily sensed the insecurity that lay beneath.

‘Do you have any other family here in Ireland?’ he asked kindly.

‘My grandmother…but honestly, I’m completely fine about Mum being so far away. As Yolanda pointed out to me, I’ve got to look on the positive side.’

‘Which is?’

‘She said I’m probably the only one in this school who can go home for the holidays and pick up a suntan at the same time.’

He smiled his gorgeous crooked smile at that, then changed the subject, saying that there was a big rugby match that Saturday in the school grounds against Clongowes Wood, a rival boarding school, and did I fancy coming along to watch?

‘I’m playing in it,’ he grinned and in that second I was utterly sucked into his easy, relaxed charm. ‘And believe me, if last night’s training session is anything to go by, we need all the support we can get.’

Course at lunchtime, Yolanda cornered me and didn’t so much ask as demand to know the exact nature and substance of what we’d been talking about. So I told her, correctly guessing that she wouldn’t like it.

‘He invited you to watch the match?’ she hissed, her blue eyes a beautiful study in wounded pride. Bless her, she’d been kind and welcoming to me; really bad idea to go pissing her off now. And given that I had a social circle that consisted of one girlfriend, the last thing I needed was to start making enemies.

‘Come on, Yolanda, he meant as friends, that’s all,’ I stressed. ‘He was asking me about my mother being so far away and just felt a bit sorry for me, that’s all. For God’s sake, it’s only a rugby match. Won’t half the school be there supporting the team?’

This mollified her a bit and by the time I reminded her that Dan was only being nice to the new girl, she’d finally started to cool down a bit. But not before impressing on me that Mike Sherry had expressed interest in me, that he was a sweetheart and that I’d be a right moron not to really, really, really consider giving him a whirl.

‘You know you really should give Mike a chance,’ Yolanda had said for about the thousandth time one evening during study time, as she stared out the window and through the lashing rain at Dan training hard on the rugby pitch, rolling around with the rest of the team and covered in shite. Incidentally, him at his happiest, I’d later discover.

‘You could do a lot worse than Mike, you know. Oooh, and just think; over the Christmas holidays, you and he and me and Dan could all meet up and go out together as a foursome! Wouldn’t that be, like, the coolest thing ever?’

Like I said, everyone knew that Yolanda and Dan were a couple just waiting to happen.

At Allenwood, it was accepted fact.