The Last Kiss Goodbye

by Tasmina Perry

  ‘But counselling would mean I want to save my marriage.’

  ‘You’ve got to give it a try,’ replied Ginny bluntly.

  ‘I’m not saying you’re being too harsh, Abby . . .’ began Suze, topping up her glass until the Pimm’s hovered less than a millimetre beneath the rim.

  ‘But you’re saying I’m being too harsh,’ said Abby, feeling cornered.

  ‘You can’t avoid him for ever,’ said Anna more kindly. ‘Deleting his messages doesn’t mean you can wipe out everything that’s happened.’

  ‘How could I ever forget that?’ said Abby, reminded once more of the moment her life had been blown apart.

  A text. That was how she’d found out that her husband had been unfaithful. They had been driving to a friend’s house for Sunday lunch, and had stopped at a petrol station for some fuel. Nick had run out to pay and had left his phone on the seat, the same phone Abby had used ten minutes earlier to tell the friend that they were running late, because her own phone was out of juice.

  She had expected to see a few platitudes from their host. Don’t worry! The chicken is still roasting! Take your time

  Instead she had read a message from some woman whose name she still didn’t know. A handful of words that had been like a nuclear explosion in her marriage.

  Please. Let’s just see each other again. I know it’s scary but I think we are good together. X

  The smell of the petrol fumes and the treachery of the words had almost made her vomit. She had looked up and seen Nick running across the forecourt, two bars of her favourite chocolate clutched in his fist, smiling despite the lashing of spring rain, and for a second she had wondered whether she should pretend not to have seen the message. Wondered whether she should just let her life carry on, unaffected by what she had read.

  With a matter of seconds to make that choice, she had handed him his mobile as soon as he got into the car.

  ‘You’ve had a text,’ she had said simply, and immediately caught the flicker of panic across his face, knowing before he had even read the message that things would never be the same again.

  When he did read it, he didn’t try to deny anything.

  By the time he had croaked ‘I’m sorry, Abs,’ she had stumbled out of the car, her sight clouded with tears, the sound of car horns ringing in her ears. Nick had followed her, his long strides quickly catching up with hers. He’d grabbed her shoulders, and perhaps to an onlooker, thought Abby some time later, they might have looked like a couple in a Nicholas Sparks movie poster about to have a passionate embrace in the rain.

  Instead he had explained that she was a client and that he had got drunk on one of his many business overnighters and ended up in bed with her. It was a one-off, he had pleaded. She had meant nothing, he’d had too much to drink and was depressed. But Abby couldn’t bear to be near him after that. Couldn’t bear for him to touch her. She’d hailed the nearest taxi, and by the time he returned home, she had cleared out his things, stuffed it all – even a beautiful pink cashmere scarf he had bought for her birthday, and some tickets for an outdoor cinema event – into bin bags and left them in the hall, screaming at him to leave, hurling every obscenity she could think of at him.

  Abby played with the stem of her cocktail glass.

  ‘Thanks for coming out tonight.’

  The girls nodded in encouragement.

  ‘Can’t pass up the chance to spot Federer,’ smiled Anna, trying to lighten the mood.

  ‘So, what’s everyone’s news?’ said Abby more brightly. The last thing she wanted was to dwell on her own problems.

  ‘Work, work, work,’ groaned Ginny. ‘I’ve got a deal on that is taking for ever.’

  ‘And I think I have become the anti-Bridezilla,’ said Anna.

  ‘Anna, you are getting married in six weeks. You’re supposed to be getting teary with the florist by now. Having hissy fits with the cupcake supplier, that sort of thing,’ quipped Ginny.

  ‘There are going to be no cupcakes at my wedding,’ laughed Anna.

  Ginny grinned. ‘Killjoy.’

  ‘Well I went to see a clairvoyant this week, and she said I’m about to get swept off my feet,’ announced Suze, who had been single ever since she finally left her cheating sports-agent boyfriend Terry.

  ‘I’d love to be swept off my feet,’ said Ginny with feeling. ‘Not just because I’m so bloody busy I haven’t got time for go-slow romance. I adore the idea of the grand gesture, like getting whisked off to Paris or Rome.’

  ‘Like Mikhail Baryshnikov did with Carrie in the last season of Sex in the City,’ noted Abby.

  ‘But look how that turned out,’ replied Anna cynically.

  ‘What happened?’ Popular culture always seemed to have passed Ginny by.

  ‘He hit her,’ replied Suze. ‘Petrovsky slapped Carrie.’

  ‘Yes, but she was in love with Big anyway. It would never have worked,’ pointed out Abby, remembering every moment of her favourite show. ‘And then Big came to Paris to rescue her.’

  ‘Now that was a grand gesture,’ nodded Suze sagely.

  The waitress brought over some bar snacks, and Abby nibbled at a chicken wing.

  ‘I don’t know about grand gestures,’ said Anna, directing her attention at Suze. ‘I think they can be hollow. It’s easy to spend money, or shout loud. I think it’s the little things that mean a lot. I love it when Matt goes out of his way to help me without me even asking. Or buys me a book I mentioned in passing ages ago.’

  Ginny pulled a buzzing mobile from her handbag.

  ‘Bloody hell. New York,’ she muttered before excusing herself and exiting the bar to take the call. Abby felt her shoulders slump in relief.

  ‘She’s Nick’s sister, but she wants the best for you,’ said Anna intuitively.

  Abby looked at her friend. ‘Which is what?’

  There was an awkward silence.

  ‘What are you going to do, Abs?’ said Anna finally.

  ‘Get a solicitor. Fill out a few forms. Boom. File for divorce. I think that’s how it goes, isn’t it?’ Her voice cracked, and she tried to steady herself with a long swig of Pimm’s.

  ‘Are you sure that’s what you want?’

  ‘What’s the alternative? That I forgive him? I can’t. I’ve gone over and over it in my mind, but he slept with someone else, and I can’t get past that. The betrayal, the lies . . . the trust has gone. And once it’s gone, you can’t get it back. Things could never be the same between us again.’

  ‘But it doesn’t mean he doesn’t love you,’ said Anna thoughtfully. ‘Men are weak. If it’s put in front of them, they’ll take it. Look at Tiger Woods.’

  ‘Let’s not,’ said Suze, rolling her eyes. ‘He had more than one mistress come out of the woodwork.’

  ‘She wasn’t Nick’s mistress,’ replied Abby sharply. Suze gave her a cynical look.

  ‘Don’t go getting all protective over him.’

  ‘I’m not protecting him. I’m protecting myself,’ said Abby.

  ‘You never know what you can forgive until it happens. I see it all the time at work,’ said Anna. She was a media lawyer, and the bulk of her time was spent securing press injunctions to protect her clients’ indiscretions. ‘All these people doing stupid, selfish things – making sex tapes, having affairs with co-stars – and time and again the wives or husbands forgive them.’

  ‘Maybe it’s different with celebrities,’ replied Abby.

  ‘It’s just easier to forgive, easier to put up with it,’ said Suze, shrugging her shoulders. ‘Terry was an absolute dog. The amount of times I turned a blind eye to lipstick on his collar because the alternative meant moving out, looking for a new flat, being on my own and going through the whole rigmarole of finding someone else. Sometimes it’s easier to just keep quiet, even though each time I forgave him, I lost another piece of self-respect.’

  ‘Don’t look now,’ said Anna, dropping her voice to a whisper, ‘but I think that blond guy at the bar is checking y
ou out, Abs.’

  Abby hadn’t felt sexy or attractive for a very long time, and the thought of someone eyeing her up made her jumpy. She shot a discreet glance in the direction of where her friend was looking. A handsome twenty-something man was indeed looking her way, an amused half-smile on his lips.

  ‘Damn, Abs, he’s gorgeous,’ hissed Suze.

  Abby grabbed her drink, wondering if everyone in the bar could see her blushing. Hell, you could probably see it from space.

  ‘Not interested,’ she said firmly. ‘I’m no longer interested in men. It’s all about cats and cupcakes from now on.’

  Suze grabbed the jug of Pimm’s and upended it into her glass.

  ‘Are you sure you don’t want a crack at him?’

  Abby smiled and shook her head.

  ‘In that case, I’m going to get pissed and have a go myself. You never know, Anna, I might end up bringing a plus-one to your wedding after all.’

  As they watched Suze approach the handsome stranger, Abby couldn’t help but feel a spark of admiration for her friend, so hopeful in her quest for true love.

  Anna folded her arms on the edge of the table.

  ‘People make mistakes, Abby. I don’t think it’s so bad to forgive,’ she said quietly.

  ‘Whose side are you on here?’ Abby said briskly, then stopped herself, not wanting to be unkind to Anna, who these days she considered her closest friend, the one she felt she had most in common with, the one she knew she could turn to in a crisis. Had turned to, in the days after her separation, when Anna had spent hours on the phone with her, not judging, just listening.

  ‘I’m on your side, Abs,’ said Anna, putting her hand on her forearm. ‘I just know how much you love Nick. How much he loves you and how good you were together.’

  ‘Before he broke my heart,’ said Abby softly.

  Anna rooted around in her bag and pulled something out. ‘Here’s Matt’s business card,’ she said, pushing a sliver of embossed white card her way. Anna’s fiancé was one of London’s top divorce lawyers. Abby knew of a dozen other ways to contact him, through Facebook, email, LinkedIn, which she had felt very grown-up joining in recent weeks. Matt was her mate; she could just phone him up if she wanted to speak to him. But there was a gravity in Anna’s gesture that made Abby appreciate that this was the rest of her life they were dealing with.

  ‘You know how good he is,’ added Anna. ‘But if it’s all a bit embarrassing, he’s got a couple of amazing associates who could act for you . . . if you’re sure that’s what you want.’

  The thought of it made Abby sick. Selling the house, splitting the assets, never seeing Nick again.

  She closed her eyes, imagining how much she would miss his presence in her life, even those terrible recent text messages begging for forgiveness. Nick Gordon might have broken her heart, but he had been the love of her life, and the idea of never seeing him again, never hearing his voice was almost too much to bear.

  ‘So what are you going to do?’ asked Anna, draining her glass.

  ‘I’ve got a lot of thinking to do,’ replied Abby quietly.

  It was the understatement of her life.

  Chapter Three

  Abby wasn’t in the mood for work. To be honest, she hadn’t been in the mood for work for quite a while now, but this morning as she walked up Exhibition Road from the tube, she was dreading it more than usual. She took a sip of her latte, hoping it would go some way to clearing her head, but it didn’t seem to be working. The sunshine kept glinting off the windscreens of cars, and despite her oversized sunglasses, the light and the noise and the after-effects of the night before were making her head pound like a drum. What had possessed her to go out for drinks in the middle of the working week? She wasn’t nineteen any more; she couldn’t bounce back from a hangover the way she had done at university.

  She crossed the road, narrowly missing being hit by a white van. The driver blared his horn at her and yelled something out of the window.

  ‘Big night?’

  She almost dropped her coffee as she turned to see a beaming face.

  ‘Lauren! You nearly gave me a heart attack,’ she gasped.

  ‘Sorry, but you were miles away. Thinking about all those cocktails you drank last night, were you?’

  Abby was momentarily thrown by the accuracy of her friend’s assessment. There had always been an air of the mystical about Lauren Stone, the Institute’s librarian, although much of it was by design. The boho smocks and purple tights, the geeky glasses and the obsession with horology – it was all carefully stage-managed to distract from the fact that Lauren was both beautiful and super-bright.

  ‘Sun’s gone in,’ she said, nodding towards Abby’s sunglasses.

  ‘I’m feeling a bit fragile.’

  ‘So what was last night’s occasion?’

  ‘Just a girls’ night out. A lot of bitching about how crappy men are, and more Pimm’s than is healthy or sensible.’

  ‘Good for you,’ said Lauren, putting her hand in her bag and pulling out a banana. ‘There you go. Potassium.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Don’t worry, I have an entire bunch of them in here.’ Lauren grinned. ‘I have a monster hangover too.’

  ‘Oh yes?’

  ‘I had a date.’

  ‘Tell me more. Anyone I might know? Anyone interesting?’

  ‘Very interesting. Alex Scott from the V and A.’

  ‘Result!’ laughed Abby, aware of the museum’s resident heart-throb. ‘Tell me more.’

  ‘I’ll tell you later,’ said Lauren with a wave of the hand. ‘Let’s see if he calls back first.’

  They turned in through the gates of the RCI building and waved their passes at Mr Smith, the geriatric security guard, who was sitting more or less upright next to the reception desk. Abby often wondered why they bothered, considering he only had to remember a few female faces and was hardly likely to jump up and accost them, but it had become something of a habit.

  ‘So how’s the exhibition shaping up?’ asked Lauren as they prepared to go their separate ways.

  ‘Getting there, I suppose, but Stephen’s vision of what constitutes an iconic image and mine rarely seem to meet.’

  Lauren snorted.

  ‘Not surprised; I’ve seen how the man dresses. Taste is clearly not one of his gifts. Well, if you need any help, just give me a shout. I’m not exactly being run off my feet at the moment.’

  ‘You can send me a long, juicy email about your date with Alex Scott then,’ grinned Abby.

  She reluctantly left Lauren and descended the old stone steps into the basement, taking a deep breath before she stepped through into the archive.

  ‘Morning, Abigail,’ said Stephen, raising his eyebrows at the clock above the door. ‘Two minutes past.’

  It was another of the little rituals they lived by. Abby worked late almost every evening, often coming in at weekends if a member required something specific from the archive at short notice, and yet Stephen insisted on pointing out every time she was even a second late.

  ‘So. It was a very enlightening meeting with Christine yesterday,’ he said when Abby had sat down at her desk. A smug smile spread across his face. Abby tried not to think about her boss’s sexuality – until recently, she hadn’t even been sure if he was interested in women or men. That was until Christine Vey’s arrival at the RCI. Now, just the mention of her name seemed to send Stephen into raptures.

  ‘So,’ he repeated, putting on his glasses. ‘The good news is that Christine has invited several members of the press to the launch night of the exhibition, and quite a few of them have accepted.’

  ‘Fantastic,’ said Abby, thrilled that her efforts might get some recognition in a national newspaper.

  ‘It gets better,’ he said, raising a hand. ‘The Chronicle are sending along one of their top journalists to do a review. And if they think the images are strong enough, they’ll run a four-page feature in the Saturday edition.’

/>   ‘It had better be good then,’ said Abby, feeling excited and nervous.

  ‘Indeed. In fact I’d better have a look at your shortlist later today so we can make a final selection of images. If the press are coming, the exhibition has to be electric. It has to sing, my dear Abigail.’

  His words reminded her of something.

  ‘On that subject,’ she said, hunting around her desk, ‘I wanted to pick your brains about an image.’

  ‘Pick away,’ said Stephen sagely.

  She pulled out an envelope and passed the photograph inside to her boss.

  ‘I found this in the collection last night,’ she said, leaning forward. ‘Peru, 1961. The Blake Expedition . . . Does that mean anything to you?’

  ‘Dominic Blake,’ said Stephen, nodding. ‘He was mapping a remote section of the Amazon rainforest, or at least that was the stated aim of the expedition. There were rumours, of course . . .’

  ‘Rumours?’

  ‘Oh, that he was really looking for Paititi, the lost city supposedly stuffed with jewels.’ He gave the photograph a cursory glance, then flipped it back to Abby. ‘Pure nonsense, of course, just like El Dorado, one of those old wives’ tales that quickly become legends because people want to believe them.’

  ‘So he never found it?’

  ‘Never found anything,’ said Stephen. ‘In fact, he never came back.’

  Abby almost gasped.

  ‘He died?’

  ‘One assumes,’ shrugged Stephen. ‘I believe this was the last official photograph from the expedition. He went deep into the jungle and was never seen again.’

  Abby felt her hands begin to tremble. She didn’t know why she felt so shocked, so sad.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ Stephen asked.

  ‘Nothing,’ she said quietly. ‘I suppose it makes the picture even more powerful. More perfect.’

  ‘Perfect for what?’ said Stephen crossly.

  ‘For the exhibition.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ he scoffed. ‘We can’t use this. It looks like a photo story for Jackie magazine.’