Only he wasn’t on time, was he? On time would’ve been five minutes ago. Come on, Finn, she urged. Don’t make me have to go without you.
She expected the phone to ring as she was leaving the apartment but it didn’t. She checked that her own mobile was switched on as she ran down the stairs to the underground car park. And she left it easily accessible so that if he rang while she was on the way to Brown’s she’d be able to grab it without panicking. But it still hadn’t rung by the time she got to Drury Street car park and she had to clamp down on a mixture of rage and worry as she hurried across the street to the hotel where the reception was taking place.
“Thought you weren’t going to make it, Cate.” Ian Hewitt, the managing director, frowned at her.
“Sorry, Ian. Got held up in traffic,” she lied. “Everything looks great, doesn’t it?” She looked around the room and noted the corporate logo strategically placed in all the locations she’d demanded.
“Actually, yes.” Ian smiled at her. “I guess you do know what you’re doing.”
“Some of the time anyway,” she said as she accepted a glass of Ballygowan. “Oh, look, Gerald Mannion has arrived. I know that we’re really hopeful about their order for the HiSpeed shoe. Let me go and grab him.”
She cut across the room and welcomed the client, flashing her brilliant glossy smile at him and leading him toward Ian. Then she went to meet and greet the other arrivals, always saying something different to each one, always trying to make every single person feel individually welcome.
Her phone was set to vibrate rather than to ring. At this point, almost an hour into the reception, she wouldn’t hear it over the buzz of conversation unless it was set to loud. And she wasn’t going to ruin the carefully created ambience with the strident tones of her phone bleating around the room.
But where the fuck was he, she wondered. She was anxious, but only a little anxious. She knew that he really wouldn’t have crashed the car or done anything terribly stupid like that. But what if someone had plowed into him? She wished she hadn’t thought of that. She wished she could just think that the bastard was late or that he’d forgotten about the reception so that she could be properly mad at him. Now, she knew, she’d be relieved when he turned up because that’d mean that nothing awful had actually happened. But she didn’t want to be relieved, she wanted to be annoyed.
And then she saw him walking into the room and she was both relieved and annoyed. Particularly when Ian made a beeline for him and began pumping his hand in congratulations about the TV program.
“Where the hell were you?” she demanded when he finally made it to her side.
“Sorry,” he said. “Got caught up in a meeting, had to have a few drinks afterward, you know how it is.”
“You should have rung me,” she said furiously. “I was worried about you.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Catey!” He looked at her in amusement. “What’s there to worry about? What awful thing did you think could’ve happened to me?”
“How should I know?” she asked. “A crazed fan might have stabbed you, I suppose!”
He laughed. “I haven’t got to the crazed fan stage yet,” he said. “I’ll let you know when.”
“You still should’ve called,” she told him.
“I know. Sorry.”
“I thought you’d forgotten.”
“I don’t forget,” he said. “You know I don’t.”
“Hello, it’s Finn Coolidge, isn’t it?” The buyer for a small chain of sports shops interrupted them. “I listen to your show in the mornings. It’s great. Very insightful. And now I believe you’re doing TV?”
There had been a big press announcement about Finn’s TV show. And the radio station, panicking at the loss of their star, had renegotiated a package with him for a current affairs program three days a week in the drivetime slot that they originally hadn’t wanted him to do. But now they reckoned that Finn would pull the listeners in anyway.
Finn grasped the buyer’s outstretched hand. “Yes,” he said. “I’m hoping I don’t fall flat on my face on TV. You know how it is, some of us do great on radio but end up being absolutely crap on the tube.”
“I’m sure it’ll work out really well,” said the buyer. He looked at Cate. “I didn’t make the connection,” he said. “I remember you telling me that your boyfriend worked in the media, and I read something about Finn’s girlfriend being a businesswoman too, but it was only when I saw you together that it clicked.”
“Oh, I try not to let him hang on to my coattails.” Cate smiled.
“And I try to keep her locked in the kitchen,” added Finn.
“It was nice to meet you,” said the buyer to Finn. “And any time you’re looking to do sports-related stuff on either of your shows just let me know.”
“Sure,” said Finn easily, taking the man’s card. “Nice to have met you too. Bit of a plonker,” he said in aside to Cate. “How do you put up with people like that?”
“He’s quite a good customer,” she told him. “Small chain but in good locations. And I put up with him the same way you put up with people kissing you on both cheeks and calling you darling.”
Finn looked at her. “You’re really quite ratty tonight, aren’t you?”
“Oh, sod off!” She was tired of talking to him and she wished now that he’d never agreed to come in the first place.
“OK,” said Finn. “I will.”
He walked across the room, spoke for a couple of minutes to Ian and to another of the directors and then disappeared. For a moment, Cate thought that he’d gone to the men’s room and then she realized that he’d actually left. He’d sodded off, just like he’d said. She’d been narky, he’d been bored, now he was gone.
“Bastard,” she muttered as she reached for a glass of wine despite her rule about drinking only water. “Fucking bastard.”
After Finn’s desertion, the night was very successful. Ian told her that it was a pity Finn had another obligation, only not terribly surprising. And she smiled and said that his life was very busy at the moment and they hardly got a minute to each other but she was sure he’d enjoyed the time he’d spent at the party. Ian suggested that Finn might be able to give them a certain amount of publicity in the future and Cate gritted her teeth and said that possibly he would. She hated the way everyone went weak at the knees over someone who was only fairly well known. But they all did with Finn, even the bloody men!
It was late by the time she got back to the apartment. From the coast road she could see that it was in darkness and she supposed that Finn had already gone to bed. She regretted having argued with him but, honestly, he could be so annoying. And he was certainly getting a bit big for his boots these days.
She opened the door quietly so as not to wake him. She slid off her shoes and padded into the kitchen where she poured herself a glass of water. She’d ended up drinking wine at the reception after all and was now raging with thirst. Fortunately she’d been too annoyed with Finn to get properly drunk. She yawned and finished the water. Then she went into the bathroom and took off her makeup.
It was almost one o’clock before she opened the bedroom door. She stopped in the doorway and clenched her fists. Finn wasn’t home yet. She could have clattered around the apartment in her damned high heels and he wouldn’t have known anything about it. Where the hell was he?
For the second time that day she rang his mobile phone and got his message minder. But this time she didn’t bother leaving any message.
She couldn’t sleep. Her body was tired but her mind was racing. She visualized Finn in a nightclub, meeting people, having fun without her. And it made her angry because she didn’t want Finn having a good time without her and she didn’t want to think that he was out there not even thinking about her while she was lying, rigid, in the bed worrying about him.
Why do I always worry about him? she asked herself. He’s perfectly capable of looking after himself and he never gets so drunk that he can’
t find his way home, so what, exactly, am I worried about? She rolled over and pummelled the pillow, trying to make herself go to sleep. But she was alert for the sound of footsteps in the hallway and his key in the lock.
She’d drifted into half-sleep when he finally arrived home. The sound of the apartment door clicking closed woke her properly and she glanced at the bedside clock. Nearly four in the morning. She gritted her teeth.
He moved around the apartment with his usual lack of quiet. She heard him open the fridge door and she knew that he was drinking a litre of water—his surefire hangover prevention exercise. She heard the buzz of the electric toothbrush as he cleaned his teeth and his muffled exclamation of annoyance as he dropped something (probably the chrome mug) onto the bathroom floor.
She didn’t open her eyes when he came into the bedroom and she sensed him undressing and hanging his clothes in the wardrobe. Wherever he’d gone and whatever he’d done, he wasn’t that drunk. When Finn was really blitzed he didn’t hang his clothes up, he simply stepped out of them, leaving them in a jumble at the side of the bed.
He moved to the center of the bed and flung his arm over her.
“Where have you been?” she asked.
“Nng.”
“What?”
“Out,” he said more clearly.
“I know that,” she said sharply. “Out where?”
“Friends.” He sighed deeply and his breathing was suddenly regular and even. He was asleep.
Cate removed his arm from across her body and nudged him. But Finn slept on, oblivious to her movements. She propped herself up on one elbow and looked at him—the face that launched a thousand front pages. Well, almost. He still looked strong and athletic and, somehow, authoritative, even in sleep. He murmured again and then started to snore gently. Cate clamped down on her feelings of rage. Whenever he had too much to drink, even just one can of beer too much, Finn snored. The snores started off gently and then grew louder and louder until they reached a crescendo, when suddenly he’d stop. The snoring drove her mad but the sudden silence was even worse. She always thought he’d choked when he was silent.
She slid out of the bed and went into the kitchen. She made as much noise as she could as she filled the kettle and switched it on. She hoped he’d wake up but in her heart she knew he wouldn’t. Finn liked to sleep. He was good at sleeping.
She made herself a cup of tea and stood at the huge window overlooking the bay. The string of lights curved into an enormous semi-circle from Howth to Bray. It was a view that never ceased to enthral her.
It was Finn’s view. She swallowed a mouthful of tea and thought about it. She was living in Finn’s apartment looking out of Finn’s window and drinking tea from Finn’s blue and white mug. Of course there were plenty of joint mugs she could be drinking from. They’d bought loads of damned mugs and cups over the past three years but right now she was drinking from Finn’s mug.
She turned back and looked at the living room. It was furnished exactly as it had been three years ago too. Finn’s choices. Which would have been her choices too if she’d been around to make them at the time—pale wooden floors and units complimented by the black leather couch and matching chairs. Masculine. Not flouncy or pretty or Nessa-like in their domesticity. Clean lines to fit in with the kind of life they led.
But still, mostly Finn’s stuff. She’d bought the painting by an artist who was still displaying his work on the railings of Merrion Square on Sunday mornings. It was an abstract oil painting of a bright red fish on a dark blue background. Not pretty, either, but striking. She’d also bought the big mirror in the pewter frame. And the big pewter vases filled with pale dried flowers which were decorative but not in the slightest bit girly.
She drained the mug and shivered. She was Finn’s girlfriend living in Finn’s place. Just because things had been rough the last few months didn’t mean that it would all go horribly wrong. But she suddenly felt very insecure.
“You should get married.” Nessa’s words came back to her. Conventional, boring Nessa who probably hadn’t even slept with Adam before she’d married him. Cate twirled the ends of her hair as she remembered the conversation with her older sister a year or so after she’d moved in with Finn.
“You should get married to him if you love him,” Nessa had said. “And if you don’t love him then you should think about how much of your life you’re prepared to waste on him.”
She’d tried to tell Nessa that marriage didn’t matter—for God’s sake, she’d said, this was the new century, she wasn’t going to get trapped in the moral straitjacket of the 1950s. But Nessa had shrugged and told her that it was all very well to say that marriage was only a bit of paper and that it didn’t matter but, when it came to who owned what, it did.
Cate remembered being shocked at Nessa’s mercenary attitude.
“I thought you believed in true love,” she’d said sarcastically and Nessa had smiled and said that of course she did but a little bit of realism never hurt either.
We do love each other, Cate told herself as she got back into bed a few minutes later. We love each other and we’ll get through this. Being married or not being married doesn’t make the slightest bit of difference.
6
Moon in Sagittarius
Enjoys freedom, travel and a challenge.
Bree opened the heavy front door of the house in Marlborough Road and leaned against the crumbling brick wall. It had been an effort to get up the steps in the first place and now she needed to catch her breath. She looked at Steve, slumped into a disheveled, drunken heap beside the door, and sighed deeply.
Why had she agreed to let him come home with her? It wasn’t as though she had room for him, as though her flat was big enough to allow stray men to spend the night. She pushed her untamed hair behind her ears and looked at him again. She’d felt sorry for him. As she always did. A sucker for a bleeding heart.
“Come on, Steve.” She shook his shoulder. “Time to wake up.”
He groaned softly, opened his gray-green eyes and looked blearily at her.
“I’m tired,” he said. “Leave me here.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” she told him. “You’d probably be arrested or something. Come on up to the flat and you can flake out there.” She reached out to him and pulled the collar of his cotton shirt, forcing him to stand up.
“You’re a real friend, Bree, you know that?”
“Yes,” she said wryly. “I know.”
“The others—they despise me.”
“No they don’t.” They’d had this conversation already and she didn’t want to have it again.
“They don’t respect me.”
“Steve, you’re being silly.”
“I’m not.” His voice was despairing.
“You need to sleep it off. Then you won’t feel like this. It’s the bottle of vodka talking.”
“I didn’t drink a bottle of vodka,” protested Steve.
“The Bacardi Breezers then,” she said.
“You can be a right bitch sometimes,” he said. “But you’re my best friend.”
“Thank you.” She draped his arm around her shoulder. “Now come on, it’s two flights up.”
They staggered up the stairs together and into her apartment. Steve immediately fell onto her double bed and closed his eyes again while Bree filled the kettle and made herself a cup of tea.
Another night of being someone’s best friend. She was beginning to be tired of being best friends to an assortment of men. And yet many of them considered her to be a real mate. They asked her advice about presents for their girlfriends, they chatted to her about secret worries (like being scared of getting incurable diseases or being hopeless in bed) that they didn’t feel that they could talk to other men about. They treated her like another bloke. And that was all right by her. Most of the time.
She sat down, propped her feet on the table and sipped her tea. I’m a modern kind of woman, she told herself. I don’t need to have
deep, intense relationships with men. I can be friends with them without thinking of every man I meet as a potential life mate. I’m not like Nessa who trawled through pages and pages of magazines checking to see what sort of man she’d be most compatible with and trying to make herself into the sort of woman they wanted her to be. Or like Cate who, before Finn, had had a succession of men who were clearly some kind of trophy boyfriends but who were certainly not her friends. I, on the other hand, have a much healthier attitude toward relationships. Even though some of them go horribly wrong. Well, she admitted, really all of my non-platonic relationships have gone horribly wrong.
She scratched the side of her nose as she thought of them. There had been a pattern to them, one which she’d identified and tried to eliminate although not always successfully. She fell for weirdoes. Attractive weirdoes. Handsome weirdoes even. But weirdoes all the same.
Like Gerry, who’d spent most of his time sitting in his flat smoking joints and listening to sixties songs. She’d been attracted by his effortless good looks and lack of ambition but it had stopped being quite so charming after the first month. It was fortunate that she usually came to her senses fairly quickly. Because there had been others—like Enrique whom she’d met while she was working for a couple of months in Spain and who’d kept a scrapbook of photos of his previous girlfriends in various states of undress (she’d left the town of Villajoyosa as soon as she’d discovered the scrapbook and before he’d had a chance to add her to it); Fabien, the French guy, another absolute movie star in the looks department but possibly the worst mechanic in the world and full of the particular arrogance that attractive Frenchmen always had—she’d discovered that he had two other girlfriends as well as an ongoing “relationship” with the married woman in the apartment across the road from the garage. After that discovery it was adieu to Fabien and to the little town of Carbonne.
And in England there’d been Terry—fair-haired and unlike her usual ideal man in the looks department, but attractive in a muscle-bound way nonetheless—with whom she’d lived for two months before he told her that he was leaving England and joining the Foreign Legion. She hadn’t thought that people actually joined the Foreign Legion but apparently they did. After he’d left, the police had called around to the flat to ask about him. She hadn’t wanted to know why. She’d decided then it was time to come back to Ireland.
He's Got to Go Page 6
