Читать книгу Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow? - Claudia Carroll - Страница 9

OK, two things you need to know about me: firstly, I’m really not the sort of person to mortgage my entire future on a whim. Secondly, if life in The Sticks has taught me anything, it’s this: the lower you keep your expectations, the less likely you are to get let down. And above all, do not, repeat, do not, expect miracles to happen in this neck of the woods. Long and unbelievably boring conversations with Audrey, my mother-in-law, about the correct way to make a poinsettia entirely out of icing for the Christmas cake, yes, but miracles…no, sorry, love. ’Fraid not. Not in this neck of the woods.

So when the phone calls start coming from about eleven-thirty in the morning onwards, you’ll get some idea of how utterly, unbelievably staggered I am by this bolt from a clear blue sky.

I’m up a ladder in the dusty back room of our local book shop, stacking shelves with copies of a hot, new young adult series which we’re hoping will bring in some badly-needed footfall over Christmas. Because considering it’s only a few weeks off, business is worryingly quiet and so far this morning I’ve already had the owner, Agnes Quinn, who’s been around for approximately as long as the Old Testament, explain to me that she’s really very sorry but she just doesn’t think there’ll be a job for me here after the holidays.

Not her fault of course, she was at pains to explain, people just aren’t spending cash in the same way that they used to…more and more people are buying books online now…Amazon are squeezing her out…rents are too high…recession is still having a massive knock-on effect…blah-di-blah…

I know the story only too well and sympathise accordingly. Try not to worry, I say positively, and look on the bright side. Yes, business is slack I gently tell her, but just think, it’ll give you more time to work on your own book. Her round, puffy cheeks flush at this, as they always do whenever she’s reminded about her as-yet-unfinished magnum opus. It’s a cookbook, by the way. Agnes has spent the last three years eating her way through her granny’s recipes with a view to publication.

‘Anyway, I’m sure you won’t miss working here, will you now, Annie, love?’ she twinkles knowingly at me from where she’s standing over by the till, surveying a shop floor so empty it might as well have tumbleweed rolling through it. ‘Because it’ll mean you’ll have far more time to spend up at The Moorings with your in-laws, won’t it?’

I do what I always do: smile, nod and say nothing.

Then she rips open another cardboard box that’s just been delivered and sighs disappointedly, ‘Oh, look at this. More books.’ In much the same manner as someone who’d been expecting petunias.

Anyway, just then I feel my mobile silently vibrating in my pocket. I ignore it and quietly get back to stacking shelves. Audrey, most likely, ringing from my house to whimper down the phone at me, in her frail, reed-thin, whispery, little-girl voice, like she does every day, even though she knows right well that I’m at work and therefore not supposed to take personal calls.

OK, three possible reasons for her ringing: a) she wants to have a go at me, in her best passive-aggressive way for still not having put up the Christmas tree yet; b) she’s having one of her little ‘turns’ and needs me home urgently, even though I’m at work. Not that she doesn’t have a daughter of her own at her permanent beck and call, who’s unemployed and therefore has far more time on her hands than I do. But somehow, it’s always, always me she’ll call, like I’m some kind of nicotine patch for her nerves.

Or worst of all, point c). Whenever Audrey runs out of things to guilt me out about and yet feels the need to use me as a kind of emotional punch bag, she’ll have a right good nose through the house when I’m not there, then pick on me for making some supposed change to The Moorings behind her back. Any minor shifting around of furniture or rearranging of china on the kitchen dresser by the way, all fall under this category and if I even attempt to deny said change, she’ll usually resurrect one of her favourite old gripes. Namely the fact that I had the outright effrontery to strip the flowery wallpaper from our bedroom wall and paint it plain cream instead. Not a word of a lie, when I first brought her upstairs to proudly show off my handiwork in all my newly-married innocence, honest to God, the woman’s intestines nearly exploded. The local GP had to be called, sedatives had to be administered and to this day, I still haven’t heard the last of it.

This, by the way, would be the one, single decorative change that I’ve made since moving into the house; the first and the last. How could I have even thought of doing such an insensitive thing? I’ll never forget Audrey whimpering at me, laid prostrate on our sofa like Elizabeth Barrett Browning having an attack of the vapours and glaring accusingly at me with her pale, fishy eyes. No messing, all the woman was short of was a hoop skirt, a cold compress on her forehead and a jar of smelling salts. Not only had I completely destroyed the look of that whole room, she sniffled…but did I even appreciate that the wallpaper had been there since she first came to The Moorings as a bride?

Ohh…way back in the early eighteenth century, most likely.

The Moorings, I should tell you, is a vast, seven-bedroomed crumbling old mansion house; relentlessly Victorian, with huge, imposing granite walls all around it – exactly the kind of location that film scouts would kill to use on an Agatha Christie-Poirot murder mystery and decorated in a style best described as early Thatcher. Which is a crying shame, because with a bit of TLC and if I was really allowed to get my hands on the place, I know it could actually be stunning. I often compare it to Garbo in a bad dress; you can see the bone structure’s there, if you could only strip away all the crap. All the house’s features are intact and perfect: the coving, the brickwork, the stunning, sixteen-foot high plastered ceilings, but layered in a blanket of someone else’s old-fashioned, long-faded taste. With the result that I permanently feel like I’m a guest in my own home.

From the outside though, it’s so scarily impressive that the very first time Dan took me here, aged fifteen, I remember joking to him that it was half posh mansion, half the kind of place you’d go to get your passport stamped. And he laughed and little did I think it would one day be my home.

Trouble is that ever since Dan’s father died, Audrey, Queen Victoria-like, has pretty much wanted the house to remain exactly as it was when he was alive – a living mausoleum. Right down to his boots in the outside shelter which are still in exactly the same place he’d always left them. And his favourite armchair, that no one is allowed to sit in, ever, just where he liked it to be – in the drawing room, right by the window.

Grief does funny things to people, my Dan, Dan Junior, gently reminded me after the whole wallpaper-gate debacle, so of course I apologised ad nauseam and solemnly vowed not to do anything that might bring on a repeat performance. Nothing to do but bite my tongue and support Audrey for as long as she needed. Let’s both just be patient with her, Dan said to me; together we’ll help get her though this.

Course that was around the same time that he buggered off to start working eighteen-hour days and started communicating with me via Post-it notes stuck on the fridge door, telling me not to bother waiting up for him, that he wouldn’t be home. And of course, Jules was in college at the time and just couldn’t have been arsed doing anything.

Leaving me alone, to handle Audrey all by myself.

You try living inside a memorial with a mother-in-law who still considers it to be her home, a husband who’s never around and who, when he is, barely bothers to speak to you anymore.

Go on, I dare you.

Anyway, back to the book shop, where my mobile keeps on ringing and ringing and still I keep ignoring it, wondering for the thousandth time if Audrey has any conception of basic office etiquette – that you can’t take phone calls when you’re supposed to be working. But then, that’s the kernel of the problem; she doesn’t consider what I do to come under the banner heading of ‘work’. No, in her book, being a vet like Dan is an actual hardcore, proper ‘job’, what I do is just arsing around. Just in case, God forbid, I got any kind of notions about myself.

By lunchtime, business is so slack that poor, worried old Agnes tells me I can finish up early for the day. In fact apart from a lost backpacker sticking his head through the door looking for directions and Mrs Henderson waddling in from across the street, not to buy, but to give out that she can’t pronounce the place names in any of Stieg Larsson’s books, we haven’t had any other footfall the entire morning.

Mrs Henderson, by the way, is something of a crime book aficionado and she drops into the shop pretty much every day to tell us the endings of whichever thriller she’s stuck into at the moment. Well, either that or to describe all the twists and red herrings, and then to tell us exactly how she saw them coming from miles off.

Anyroadup, between one thing and another, it’s just coming up to one o’clock before I even get a chance to check any of the messages on my mobile.

To my astonishment, not a single one of which is from Audrey.

A Dublin number, one that hasn’t flashed up on my phone, since, oooh, like the George Bush administration. One Hilary Williams. Otherwise known as…drum roll for dramatic effect…my agent.

OK, the CliffsNotes on Hilary: firstly, she wasn’t exactly a fan of my decision to move to The Sticks. In fact, she’s a sixty-something, bra-burning, first-generation feminist of the Germaine Greer school and the very idea that I’d sacrifice a budding theatre career to, perish the thought, actually put my marriage first, was almost enough to have her lying down in a darkened room taking tablets and listening to dolphin music.

Secondly, her nickname is Fag Ash Hil, on account of the fact that she smokes upwards of sixty a day and climbing. She’s the only person I know who actually went out and organised protest marches against the smoking ban, and among her clients, it’s an accepted rule that you don’t even think about crossing the threshold of her office without at least two packs tucked under your oxter for her.

Hence she normally sounds deep, throaty and gravelly, a bit like a man in fact, but…not today. Four messages, in a voice designed to wrest people from dreams and all rising in hysteria till by the last one she sounds like she’s left Earth’s gravity field and is now orbiting somewhere around Pluto.

‘Oh for GOD’S SAKE, ANNIE, why are you not returning any of my calls?! Can you please stop please stop role-playing Mrs James Herriot from All Creatures Great and Small and kindly get back to me? Like…NOW?’

This is delivered, by the way, like an edict from the Vatican. I listen to what she has to say, call her back toot suite…then hop straight into my car.

And faster than a bullet, I’m on the long, long road to Dublin.

Sticking to the speed limit, it generally takes the guts of three hours to get from The Sticks to Dublin and believe me the drive is not for the faint-hearted. It’s motorway for a lot of it, but you still have to navigate a good fifty plus miles before that on narrow, twisting, secondary roads that would nearly put the heart crossways in you. Anyway, anyway, anyway, fuelled by nothing more than adrenaline, I manage to a) drive at breakneck speed, b) not get caught by the cops and c) even beat my own personal record of getting to the city in under two-and-a-half hours flat, with my foot to the floor and my heart walloping the entire way.

I finally arrive in Dublin late in the wintry afternoon, avoiding the worst of the rush-hour traffic and miraculously managing to find a space in a handy twenty-four hour car park, right in the middle of town and conveniently close to Hilary’s office. In my sticky, sweat-soaked, heart palpitation-y state I amaze myself by even remembering to pick up a few obligatory packets of Marlboro Lights for her.

‘Annie, get your arse in here and sit down!’ is her greeting, which might sound a bit harsh, but coming from Hil, can actually be taken as a term of endearment. I obediently do as I’m told and head inside, dutifully handing over the cigarettes as we air kiss.

It’s been over three years since I set foot in this office and at least a year since we last spoke, so it’s comforting to see, in spite of my being out of circulation for so long, that precious little has changed round here. Hil still has the same grey spiky hair, the same grey trouser suits, same matching grey skin tone. Same sharp tongue, same short fuse. Oh and she still chain smokes like it’s food.

And another thing, with her there’s never small-talk of any description. Never a hello-how-are-you-how’s-your-life-been. Hil, you see, favours the Ryanair approach to her work: no frills, no extras. Time is money so it’s always straight down to business. She plonks down behind her desk, dumps a thick-looking script down in front of me, then leans forward so she can scrutinise me, up close and personal.

‘Good, good,’ she nods, taking in my appearance as thoroughly as a consultant plastic surgeon while lighting up at the same time.

‘Ehh…sorry, Hilary,…what’s good?’

‘You still look the same way you do in your CV headshot. Living the life of a countrified recluse hasn’t altered your appearance that much. Which at least is something.’

All I can gather from that comment is that she half-expected me to clamber into her office dressed in mud-soaked wellies with straw in my hair, brandishing a pitchfork and looking exactly like Felicity Kendal from The Good Life. And while ordinarily that mightn’t be too far off the truth (The Sticks isn’t exactly Paris during fashion week), at least, thank God, today I’m out of my normal jeans and woolly jumper and am in my best shop assistant gear: a warm woolly coat, a wraparound dress and a half-decent, non-mud-stained pair of boots.

‘No,’ she growls, still scrutinising me. ‘You still look like the same old Annie Cole. Which is good news. Which is exactly what we want.’

She’s got black and white pictures of all her clients dotted round the office walls and through the haze of smoke I manage to make my own photo out. Taken over four years ago, but apart from a few more wrinkles and a few extra pounds…no, I’m not really all that much different. Same dark skin, same long, dark, centre-parted, wiry hair that needs enough hairspray to put a dent in the ozone layer just to get it to lie down flat…same everything.

Funny, but looking at my own photo always reminds me of how alike Dan and I are, even the way we look. We both have the identical eye colour: deep brown, which turns straight to coal black when either of us are worn out or exhausted. We could almost pass for brother and sister. Or as Jules puts it a bit more cruelly, I look like him dressed in drag.

Ouch.

‘OK, down to business,’ says Hilary, sitting forward and balancing her fag on the edge of an ashtray. ‘You’re familiar with Jack Gordon’s work, no doubt?’

‘THE Jack Gordon? Are you kidding me? Yes, yeah, of course I am, he’s completely amazing,’ I blurt out, wondering where this could possibly be headed.

Jack Gordon, by the way, would be one of the youngest and hottest theatre directors in town; so unbelievably successful that you’d almost think the legal firm of Beelzebub and Faustus had a contract on file with his name scrawled on it in suspicious looking red ink. I’m not joking, actors nearly impale themselves just to get a chance to audition for him, never mind work for him. But then Jack’s reputation goes before him and boy, does he have the Olivier awards hanging out of him to prove it. His productions are always cutting edge, razor sharp and invariably the talk of the chattering classes. In fact, probably the only thing that’s slowed down the guy’s progress over the years is the deep drift of bouquets and laurels that he’s had to wade through.

The theatre world’s Alexander McQueen, in short.

‘Then have a read of this,’ says Hilary, tossing a bound script over to me.

I look at the title of the play, Wedding Belles. By a new playwright whose name I’m not familiar with.

‘It’s a comedy-drama and a smash hit to boot,’ Hilary goes on. ‘Set in a health spa where a group of women of different ages and all from the same family go for a hen weekend, because the protagonist is getting married. It opened at the National back in October, during the theatre festival and is still packing them in.’

Now a distant bell begins to ring.

‘Yeah, that’s right…I remember reading some of the reviews when it first opened,’ I tell her, excitedly grabbing hold of the script and flicking through it.

Fag Ash Hil just raises a Vulcan eyebrow at me, like she’s shocked that we actually do get paper deliveries down in The Sticks and don’t just communicate with the outside world via carrier pigeon. But I don’t care, because by now I’m on the edge of my seat with anticipation, wondering what all of this can possibly have to do with me and with my little life. The show is already up and running so it’s not like I can go and audition for it, now is it? Aren’t I already a few months too late for that?

‘The curtain goes up at seven-thirty sharp tonight. I’ve already managed to wangle a house seat for you, and I need you there,’ says Hilary, pulling so deeply on her fag that it’s like the breath comes from her toes. ‘Then you’ll go back to bog-trotter land…’

For the sake of diplomacy, I let that one pass. Mainly because I know only too well that as far as Hilary is concerned, if you’re based anywhere further than a thirty-mile radius from Harvey Nichols, chances are you live in a mud hut and spend your spare time either milking cattle or else throwing stones at the neighbours. When you’re not worrying about the new taxes on cider, that is.

On she goes: ‘…where you’ll spend the rest of the night studying that script like your life depended on it. Then tomorrow afternoon…’

‘But, Hilary, I don’t understand…none of this makes any sense…I mean, the show is already cast and in production…’

‘If you’d let me finish, I was about to explain that the leading actress has literally just given notice to the producers that she’s pregnant and will have to drop out of the show very soon. In a matter of weeks, as it happens. It seems that she’s almost four months gone and unfortunately for her, the pregnancy can’t be disguised any more. Plus, as you’ll see when you read the script, her role is quite a physical one, so she’s been advised by her doctors to drop out of the show as soon as possible. For the health and safety of the child, naturally.’

‘Pregnant?’ I repeat stupidly.

‘Which is where you come in. Jack Gordon remembered seeing you in a production of Twelfth Night years ago. Of course that would have been before you decided to take early retirement and disappear off into the professional wilderness…’

Again, I bite my tongue and let that pass; I’m waaaaay too keyed up right now to bother defending my life.

‘…And he thinks that you might possibly be right to take over the role…’

‘He WHAT? He actually said that?’ I almost yell, stunned that the mighty Jack Gordon even remembered me in the first place.

‘So maybe if you’d shut up for two seconds together, I could get to tell you the really good news. Jack is only seeing three actresses this week to audition them for the part. And you, my dear, are one of the lucky three.’

For the first time since I arrived here, I’m completely shell-shocked into silence.

After I leave Hilary’s office, I somehow stagger to a Starbucks, find a quiet corner and desperately try to calm down, even though my heart’s palpitating so fast, I almost feel like I should be breathing into a paper bag. I grab a mug of coffee and start reading through the script, with trembling hands and eyes that won’t even focus properly; I’m that all over the place.

The play, by the way, isn’t just amazing, it’s an absolute cracker. A wow. It’s rare enough that you find half-decent parts written for women these days, but this one really is like the gold standard. It’s an all-female cast, five women in total, ranging in age from a teenager right up to a woman in her mid-fifties. And the part I’m up for, fingers, toes and eyeballs crossed, is the bride-to-be, aged twenty four, the exact same ludicrously young age I was myself when I got married.

I’m not just saying it, but it really would be a dream role, it’s got everything. Highs, lows, thrills, spills and a twist that never in a sugar rush could you possibly see coming. A show that lulls you into a false sense of security…then gives you a swift, sharp punch right to the solar plexus. Starts out as pure farce and ends in tragedy.

So not all that different to my own marriage, when you come to think about it.

In fact, I’m so utterly engrossed in reading it that before I know where I am, it’s already past seven pm. So I race for the National theatre, which is right in the dead centre of town and thankfully only a short sprint away. I call Dan on the way, of course, knowing full well that I’ll only get his voicemail. At this time, he’ll still be out doing farm calls, so I leave a hysterical message explaining what’s happened and faithfully promise to be home right after the show. The full story, I figure, can wait till we’re talking properly. Face to face. So he can’t get away from me, or tune me out, or else start talking about bovine diarrhoea.

Course by now there’s about four missed calls from Audrey wondering what could possibly have happened to me/where am I/do I realise this is her pension day and that she needs to be driven to and from the post office? But I don’t get back to her, deciding instead to postpone the guilt trip till tomorrow. This is one fire I’ll just have to pee on later.

I swear to God though, even just being back inside the theatre does my heart the world of good. Like the little actress that’s been dying inside me for years suddenly gets an adrenaline shot right to the bone marrow. I’ve worked at the National many times before and it feels beyond exhilarating to be back and to see everyone again.

Tom, the gorgeous front of house manager is straight over to me, giving me a big bear hug and welcoming me back so warmly that I almost get a bit teary. Then the box office girls all squeal when I stick my head in to say hi and tell me it’s like old times seeing me back. Like this is the set of Hello Dolly and somehow I’ve morphed into Barbra Streisand for the night.

And the play is only mesmerising. Hilariously funny, but in the blackest way you could imagine, yet packing such a mighty powerful punch that judging from the look of the audience around me, leaves people reeling by the final curtain. The cast takes an astonishing three standing ovations and I’m pretty sure I’m the last person to leave the auditorium; I just want to stay here, soak up the atmosphere and not break the magical spell that’s been woven round us all.

Even better, a very old pal of mine going back years, an actress called Liz Shields is in the cast too, so I text her to tell her I’m here and waiting in the bar to say hi to her. Ten minutes later, she bounces out from her dressing room, still in all her war-paint, with her swishy blonde hair extensions and wearing her usual ‘rock chick’ gear of leather and denim. Looking like a young Madonna and Christina Aguilera if they were to step out of the matter transporter in The Fly, if you get me.

I’m not joking you; Liz yells out my name so loudly that half the bar turns round to take in the sideshow.

‘Holy Jaysus, Annie bloody Cole!! Come here and givvus a hug! Have you any idea how much I’ve missed you?!’ So we hug and squeal and kiss and I can’t tell you how beyond fab it is to see her again.

Liz and I trained in drama school here in Dublin together, ooh, way back in Old God’s time, and from the day we met, we just clicked. She’s completely wild and mad and fun – one of those people that you could start off having a normal night out with, like say, grabbing a few drinks in town…then you wake up the following morning in Holyhead. And by the way, that Holyhead story is no exaggeration and I should know; it happened on my hen night.

Anyway, we grab a table, order a vodka for Liz, a Coke for me and settle down into a big catch-up chat, yakking over each other just like we always used to. Juggling about five different conversations up in the air simultaneously.

‘So what did you think of the show?’ she asks excitedly, ‘and by that of course I mean, what did you think of me? Go on, rate me. And none of your plamassing either; be inhuman. Be vicious.’

‘Easy, eleven out of ten,’ I giggle back at her, loving the banter and not realising just how much I’ve missed it. For a split second not even being able to remember the last time I actually laughed.

‘Feck off, eleven out of ten sounds insincere.’

‘Right then, nine point nine if it’ll make you believe me! Seriously, Liz, do you even know how amazing you were out there tonight? Honest to God, girl, you’d be magnetic if you stood on the stage reading out instructions to an IKEA flat pack sofa…but in a show as good as this? You were bloody mesmerising! Only the truth, babe.’

She playfully punches me, then yells over to the barman: ‘What’s keeping our drinks, Ice Age?’

Pure, vintage Liz. I give her a completely spontaneous hug and then tell her the real reason why I came to the show all by myself tonight. Well, they must hear her shrieks all the way back in The Sticks. I honestly think that she’s more excited about my audition than even I am, if that were possible. Bless her, she even offers to ring up another one of the cast to get her to say her magic, foolproof novena to Saint Jude, to guarantee I land the part.

‘So tell me then,’ I ask, fishing for the one scrap of information I’m burning to find out. ‘What’s he like to work with? The mighty Jack Gordon.’

Liz sucks in her cheeks and thinks before answering.

‘Jack is…it’s hard to say…I don’t really know him, even though I’ve known him for years. He’s like nine parts genius to one part knob, if that makes sense. Hard to please. Never happy with the show, even on nights when we take three standing ovations, one after the other. Never happy with anything. Apparently the National are putting him up in some five star hotel in town and he walked straight into it and said, ‘what a dump.’

My heart shrivels at this, suddenly nauseous at the thought that I have to audition for him tomorrow.

‘Oh and he’s having a fling with one of the box office girls here in the theatre,’ Liz continues. ‘A young one barely old enough to have seen all the episodes of Friends. And he treats her like complete shite, if you ask me. Always saying he’ll call her and then not. Inviting her to dinner after the show then not turning up and leaving the poor kid standing here on her own, with the rest of us all looking at her mortified. And afraid to bitch about him to her in case it all gets back. So in short: beware. Jack’s a guy who’s very good at saying things that he doesn’t mean to people, then trampling on them to get what he wants. And because he’s lauded as the wunderkind of the theatre world, he gets away with it.’

Just then, the drinks arrive and the two of us automatically get into an ‘I’m getting this/no, feck off, I am’ tussle over who pays. ‘Anyway, do you realise,’ Liz says, mercifully changing the subject, ‘that if you do land the gig, we’d end up playing best friends? I mean, come on, Annie, how incredible would that be?’

I glow a bit, for a split second, allowing myself to believe that the fantasy might really come true. And then I remember the full details of the job, spelled out carefully to me by Fag Ash Hil in her office earlier. The massive, full extent of the commitment involved, in the unlikely event of things going my way. In other words that, no matter how overwhelmingly thrilling the thoughts of doing the gig might be, fact is, it still comes with the most massive price tag attached.

Anyway, there’s no time to dwell on that because meanwhile Liz has already buzzed onto another major catch-up topic, as she brings me up to speed on her love life.

‘So in unrelated news,’ she says, laying into the vodka, ‘I’m still single. In fact, since I last saw you, I’ve had a total of about thirteen flings, roughly about the same number of shags and only one actual bona fide boyfriend. Crap, isn’t it? Oh and by “boyfriend”, just so you’re clear, I actually mean, “guy who I saw for longer than a single weekend”. Although, to be honest, he was one of those blokes who basically would have gone home with a gardening tool. And by now I’ve gone on so many blind dates, they should consider giving me a free guide dog. In other words, Annie, I still have a massive radar for emotionally unavailable guys with low self-esteem. Commit-twits. Half the time they don’t even have jobs either. So there you go. But, in a way, isn’t it reassuring to know that some things don’t change? You got lucky and meanwhile, I’m still out there chasing after nut-jobs.

‘Anyway,’ she breaks off, waving to the barman to send over another vodka, ‘like I always say, if Matt Damon was single and if he wasn’t famous and if he lived and worked in Dublin and if he knew me…I’m highly confident that we’d be dating, you know.’

‘That’s an awful lot of ifs, babe,’ I giggle.

‘Easy for you to say. Cos let’s face it, you married the only decent guy left in the entire northern hemisphere.’

I say nothing, just shake my head and smile quietly to myself, remembering fondly back to all the long, long nights we’d spend dissecting every aspect of Liz’s dating history, then putting it all back together again.

‘But if pressed on the subject by well-meaning but irritating relations, here’s what I always say,’ she laughs, knocking back the last dregs of her vodka and suddenly putting on a posh, cut-crystal English accent, ‘“One of the reasons I’ve never married, in spite of quite a bewildering array of offers, is a determination to never be ordered around.” Go on, Annie, I challenge you to name that one.’

This, by the way, is a game we’ve been playing ever since drama school – the Quotation Game. One of us throws out a line from a well-known play or movie, and the other has to guess where it’s from. And inevitably, with her sharp brain and her great memory for trivia, Liz wins.

‘Ehh…Glenn Close as the Marquise de Merteuil in Dangerous Liaisons?’ I ask, gingerly.

‘Ten out of ten! You never lost your touch, babe. Anyway, enough about me. Tell me some of your news.’

‘News? From Stickens? Are you kidding me? I wish.’

‘Oh come on, hon, how’s that gorgeous big ride of a husband of yours? How’s your perfect married life in rural bliss?’

This is my cue to lie of course, not let the side down, smile brightly and say that everything is wonderful, lovely and perfect. All the while thinking to myself that seeing as how I’m in Dublin anyway, I might as well scatter the ashes of any sex life we once might have had into the River Liffey.

‘…which neatly leads me onto my next question,’ Liz says, munching on an ice cube from her empty vodka glass, just like she always used to. ‘If all goes well at your audition tomorrow and if you land the part, do you think Dan will be OK with…well,…you know. With everything. With the whole package, I mean. It’s one hell of a commitment. I mean, when you think about it, it’s something that could rock far less stable marriages then yours, hon.’

I look sheepishly across the table at her and take a sip of my drink.

‘The thing is, you see, Liz…he doesn’t know.’

It’s ridiculously late, almost two thirty in the morning before I’m finally pulling into The Moorings’ massive gravelled driveway, then tip-toeing up the main staircase to our bedroom. I almost have a mental map in my head now of the floorboards that creak versus the ones that don’t, so I creep in a ziz-zag pattern all the way upstairs, so as not to wake Dan. Honest to God, if you saw me, you’d swear I was off-my-head drunk, even though I was on nothing stronger than Diet Coke for the whole night.

It’s nearly pitch dark when I skulk into our bedroom, but I can still make out Dan’s huge, muscular silhouette, faintly red in the alarm clock light. He’s got the duvet covers flung off him, his thick dark bed-head is all skew-ways, and he’s wearing only a T-shirt; as ever, his hulking, six-foot-two frame taking over about ninety per cent of all available bed space. Plus he’s sleeping like he always does, in the shape of someone who’s just been washed up on a beach. Totally out for the count and utterly oblivious to the sword of Damocles that’s potentially hovering over both our heads.

Half of me is bursting to wake him up and tell him all, but the cautious half wins out; I just can’t. He’s worn out and exhausted and it would be mean. It’ll have to wait till the morning, simple as that.

Weird thing; it’s as though I’m looking at him and really seeing him clearly for the first time in ages. Noticing things I’d either blanked out about him or else completely taken for granted. His broad-shouldered, toned, fit body for one; trim and in fantastic shape from all the sheer physical exertion his job involves. The gentle sounds he makes whenever he’s in a really deep, exhausted sleep. His musky smell and the heat from his body, the sheer, pulsating warmth of him. All the joshing and messing we used to have way back in earlier, happier days, about how permanently freezing I am and about how he’s like a big, giant, human comforter, perfect for snuggling up to at night. Like I’m the air-conditioner in the summer and he’s the electric blanket in winter.

I get undressed as quietly as I can, trying my best to ignore the anxiety-knot that’s solidifying into what feels like a tight ball of cement right in the pit of my stomach. God, even just thinking about The Major Chat he and I are going to have to have at some point tomorrow is enough to get my heart palpitating all over again. What Dan might say…how he might react, what he might feel…or worse, what he might not bloody well feel at all.

My head is starting to thump with worry now, as I pull on a pyjama top and slip quietly into the comforting, dull warmth of the bed beside him. Because whether I like it or not, no amount of sugar glazing can disguise the fact that our marriage is on dangerously shaky ground and has been for a long, long time.

And now, here I am.

Potentially about to throw a hand grenade into it.

How Dan and I first met

Everyone I knew envied me growing up. Everyone. But I spent my entire youth shooting down the myth and telling anyone who’d listen that all resentment of my childhood was completely and utterly uncalled for. Thing is, my mother was, and still is, a diplomat, working for the Department of Foreign Affairs. Posted to Washington DC at the moment, as it happens, which is a massive promotion for her. For me though, it means I get to see and spend time with her an average of about once every twelve months if I’m lucky…but that’s a whole other story, ho hum.

Anyway, the thing about me was that I pretty much spent my formative years being brought up single-handedly by Mum as a lone-parent family. She and I, contra mundum.

My mother, by the way, embodies all the best qualities of Churchill, Henry V, Joan of Arc and Joanna Lumley. An incredible woman, your mother, is what everyone says about her and they’re dead right too.

My father, who I often think was intimidated by such a high-octane success story as Mum, had walked out on us when I was very small and now lives in Moscow with his new wife and my two little half-brothers who I’ve never met and most likely never will. I harbour him no ill-will though; it can’t have been easy for him, forever playing Bill Clinton to her globetrotting, ladder-climbing, hard-working, ambitious and ultimately far more successful Hillary. And believe me, my father ain’t no Bubba.

So I grew up with Mum and spent my childhood being shunted abroad from one overseas posting to another, trailing around country after country in her wake. Funny, but I often think that one of the first things that attracted me to Dan was his background; so completely normal and ordinary, with parents who were still very much a couple, an adorable kid sister and everyone happily living together under the one, permanent roof.

The perfect nuclear family.

By contrast, people constantly used to tell me how exotic my upbringing was. How glamorous. Jammy cow. You’re so lucky. Talk about living the high life and pass me the Ferrero Rocher while you’re at it, Madame Ambassador.

OK, time to dispel the myth. You see, back then Mum was never posted to any of the glitzy or cosmopolitan capitals like say, Paris, Buenos Aires or even Monaco. No, not a bleeding snowball’s chance. In fact, by the time I hit secondary school, I’d already lived in Lagos, Nigeria, East Timor and not forgetting all the bright lights, excitement and glamour of Karachi, Pakistan. So in other words, we were a bit like gypsies, only legit.

It was a nomadic, rootless upbringing, one which left me with a deep, lifelong yearning to lead some kind of settled, normal, family life. Preferably in a place where you could actually drink the tap water and leave the house without a police escort.

Plus, by the tender age of fourteen, I’d already been to no fewer than five different international schools; an experience which left me shy, a bit introverted and with a lifelong terror of change. Always the new girl, always the outsider and it was always the same old pattern: no sooner was I slowly beginning to be accepted among my peers and gradually starting to forge new friendships, than it was time for me to be uprooted and shunted off to yet another school, in yet another far-flung country with yet another set of language barriers, thrown headfirst into a group of yet more strangers.

Anyway, by the time I turned fifteen, my mother was allocated to a new posting, this time to Georgetown, Guyana, South America – a city noted for many things but sadly, not for its wealth of half decent schools. Trouble was that by then I was at the ‘exam age’ with the Leaving Certificate hovering scarily on the horizon and of course, Mum was desperately anxious that I get the best education going.

Which as far as she was concerned, could only mean one thing: boarding school. Back home in Ireland. Anyway, aided by my grandmother in Dublin, who was only dying to get her sole grandchild back on home turf, they finally hit on a suitable school: a co-ed by the name of Allenwood Abbey in County Westmeath. Not too far from Dublin airport, so I could still get away to visit Mum on the long holidays, and yet close enough to where my granny lived, so I could visit her on the weekend exeats.

To this day, I can still vividly remember the sheer terror of arriving at Allenwood for the first time, a full week after term proper had started on account of a delay in leaving Pakistan. I remember driving up the miles-long, tree-lined driveway from the school gates all the way up to the main building, flanked by my mother and grandmother, both of whom kept trying to sell the school’s strong points to me, like a pair of estate agents high on speed. Mum in Hermès and pearls, Gran in tartan and support tights. Me in the back seat, crouching down as low as I could, silently praying that no one out on the playing fields would notice the new girl arriving, then write me off as some attention-seeking git with a bizarre ‘make-an-entrance’ fixation. Not only conspicuous for being the new girl but feeling like I might as well have a neon sign over my head screaming, ‘look at me! Step right up and get a load of the freak arriving. Oh what a circus, oh what a show!’

No question about it; I felt shitty in about ten different ways.

Anyway, the three of us were ushered through an entrance hall that could almost have doubled up as a cathedral and down a vast stone corridor into the headmaster’s office – one Professor Proudfoot. I’d never in all my years seen anything like him. He actually wore a proper black, swishy cape and looked a bit like a medieval king, with snow white eyebrows overhanging his wrinkled face, like guttering on a huge building.

Professor Proudfoot then insisted that as I was a late arrival, it would be best by far if he brought me straight down to my new classroom right away. Plenty of time for me to meet my dorm-mate, Yolanda, and to do all my unpacking later on.

Vivid memory to this day: hugging Mum goodbye, the smell of her Bulgari perfume. Me looking into her face, trying to gauge whether she was as upset as I was, but her make-up was so thick, I couldn’t get a read. Then squeezing Gran and getting the same smell you somehow always got from her – strong peppermints mixed with weedkiller. (Gardening is her God and Alan Titchmarsh is her Jesus Christ.) Trying to smile brightly and fight back tears as we said curt goodbyes and I was led down the vaulted, freezing stone passageway, all the way to adulthood.

I felt like a dead girl walking all the way to my first classroom, which was in a newer extension to the school, down yet more endless corridors, one leading off another, with fluorescent lights overhead that were bright enough to interrogate crime lords.

‘Just relax, you’ll be fine,’ smiled the professor, pausing to knock on a random classroom door. So, as always, when told to relax, my shoulders seized and right on cue, my heart started to palpitate.

Next thing, we were standing at the top of the fifth-year classroom in Senior House, with thirty pairs of eyes focused on me and me alone, all staring at me with the same unnerving calm as the Children of the Corn. I was introduced blushing like a forest fire and Professor Proudfoot gave them a bit of background on me; told them I was newly arrived from Karachi, that I’d lived all over the southern hemisphere, that I hadn’t been educated in Ireland since kindergarten and that they were all to make me feel very welcome. My entire life’s CV to date, in other words.

I was aware of a couple of things happening simultaneously as the teacher waved me towards a vacant seat in the third row: all eyes following me with keen interest as a polite round of applause broke out and a pretty blonde girl grabbing my arm and whispering to me that she was my dorm-mate and that she really, really liked my suntan.

I’d later find out that this was Yolanda Jones and in time, we’d grow to become great pals. In fact by midnight that night, she and I would have bonded as soon as she discovered that she fitted into an awful lot of my summer clothes from Pakistan.

Yolanda was far more of a girlie-girl than me; in fact senior school to her was basically just a two-year slumber party. And even at the age of fifteen you could see that she had glamour genes buried somewhere deep in her. You know, the type of genetic make-up that makes a girl plump for hair extensions, acrylic nails and a soft-top sports car later on in life.

Next thing a chunky-looking fair-haired guy who looked like he’d be more at home in a rugby scrum than in a classroom wolf-whistled at me. Then, to a wave of sniggers, he cheekily asked me what I was doing later on that night – and that he’d be more than happy to show me around the place.

I wasn’t to know it at the time, but this was one Mike Sherry, the class pin-up and something of a lust object among all the female seniors. One of those guys who didn’t so much romance women as play roulette with their feelings. Later on that same day, he’d indicate romantic interest in me by tying my shoelaces to my desk when I wasn’t looking and later that same week, he’d top that by grabbing the towel I was clinging on to to keep me as covered up as possible in the swimming pool…and flinging it into the deep end. Mike was one of those guys who didn’t believe in acting cool or ignoring women he fancied; no, he was from the PT Barnum school of flirtation.

‘That’s it, Annie, the seat to your left, right by the window,’ said the teacher helpfully, as I tripped over myself in full view of everyone in the classroom, still unused to the clunky, Amish-like school shoes I was wearing. More giggles and I honestly thought I’d hurl myself out the shagging window if the spotlight wasn’t taken off me very soon.

Next thing I was aware of a big, beefy hand grabbing my arm to steady me, helping me up with my heavy schoolbag and putting it on the floor beside the desk. A firm grip, strong. I slipped into the empty seat and turned to whisper a heartfelt thanks to this giant, rugged-looking stranger. And honest to God, for a split second it was almost as though I was looking into my mirror image; sallow skin, dark, unruly hair and a pair of dark chocolate brown eyes stared back at me. Then a twinkling, crooked smile and a warm, friendly handshake.

‘Don’t pay the slightest bit of attention to Mike,’ this guy said gently, in a soft-spoken voice, ‘he won’t bite. But if he gives you any hassle, I’d be more than happy to sort him out for you.’ I smiled back gratefully.

‘You’re Annie. It’s great to meet you. Welcome to life at Alcatraz. It sucks. You’re going to love it.’

I laughed at this and then it was as if he read my thoughts.

‘Oh and by the way?’ he grinned. ‘My name is Dan.’