At that point I hung up.
By now I’d reached the Park. It was almost two hours since I left the office. And still I walked, round all our usual haunts, up past the Dairy towards the lake. Past the boathouse and on up towards the Ramble.
But the magic was gone. This time I wasn’t Holly the up-and-coming financial whizz kid strolling hand in hand with her snazzy older man – no, this time I was Holly the Fool. The lonely, stupid fool. Suddenly this city that I’d loved so much seemed huge, busy and unwelcoming. When it started to get dark I left the Park and headed back along Fifth Avenue, past the Rockefeller Centre and found myself in front of Grand Central Station.
For old times’ sake I ordered a Gin Martini in Cipriani’s, then another, then another before finally stumbling into a cab and home.
For three days I stayed in my room. For three days Monica fussed, cajoled and finally threatened me with flying my parents over. At the end of day two I told her what had happened and could barely stop her from marching the entire way back down to the Financial District to give Cain Hobson what for. I should have let her. What she did instead was almost worse. She phoned Marsha, who insisted on flying down from Washington to talk some sense into me.
Marsha’s visit did the trick.
On day four I got out of bed, went into work and requested a transfer to the Dublin office.
And for what? For the whole thing to happen all over again?
I parked the self-loathing for a second and wondered how long Oliver had been seeing Catherine. Had she known about me? Had they laughed about it?
Was it the real reason I was being sent home?
All of a sudden I felt sick. It was all starting to make a bit more sense now. Of course it was the reason I was going home. Maybe Ger Baron hadn’t complained at all. Maybe Oliver had spotted an opportunity to hang me, and between the two of them they’d concocted the whole thing.
They couldn’t wait until Christmas. Let’s get her out of here, they’d planned. I’d left New York because of a man and here I was – on my way back because of one too.
I jumped as the phone leapt into life and started wobbling its way across the windowsill.
Go away, I moaned silently to myself, you have what you want, just go away. Your clever little scheme worked.
Just leave me alone.
And then it stopped. And there was silence again. I looked at my watch. It was hard to believe that later that day I would be on the plane home. I really couldn’t believe it. I started to sob, great big, ugly, heaving sobs of disappointment and self-pity. Then, through my crying, I heard a knock on the door of the apartment.
Oh God no.
“Holly? Let me in!”
“Go away!” I screamed at the door, cursing whoever had let him up that far.
“Please, Holly, You’re totally overreacting here. Just let me in for God’s sake!”
“Go away.” This time it was more of a plea. The knowledge that he was only feet away was suffocating me.
“Oh come on, just let me in for five minutes.”
He could obviously sense the weakening in my resolve.
“No,” I whispered.
“Holly, this is ridiculous.”
I said nothing.
“Look, I understand you don’t want to talk to me. I understand why you won’t let me in. But please, you can’t leave it like this. Meet me, somewhere, anywhere. I just need to explain something to you. Then you can go away and never talk to me again if that’s still what you want.”
‘None of this is what I want!’ I wanted to screech at the door but I didn’t trust myself to speak.
“Right, Holly, I’mleaving now. In a few hours you’ll be gone. And then it’ll be too late, and you’ll never know. It’s up to you, Holl. It’s whatever you want now.”
And then there was silence again. I ran to the window and waited to see him leave the building below. There he was. My heart thumped in my chest. But then he turned and I had to duck back from the window. I’d seen enough.
Chapter 6
What was I going to do?
Of course I knew what I should do. I should continue my packing, wait for my taxi, and head to the airport, chalking another failed romance down to experience. But it was very hard not to replay his words over and over in my head: “I just want to explain.”
And then the doubts started to creep in.
Could there be an explanation? What could he possibly say that might make it all better? That I’d imagined those girls talking? That what they were saying wasn’t true?
But it had to be true. After all, he hadn’t denied any of it. That was the killing bit: he hadn’t denied it. So what could he possibly say that would make this horrible mess any better?
The thing was, I’d never know unless I met him.
No. No. No. Just go home. For once, do the right thing and just go home. You deserve better than a lying, cheating bastard like him.
I started to pack even more quickly, flinging things into my suitcases, anything to avoid the sight of my phone, still lying on the windowsill, its silence now taunting me.
But I knew I wasn’t going to go without speaking to him. It was the masochist in me.
I needed to know why I hadn’t been enough.
I needed to know why he felt the need to turn to Catherine.
I needed to see his face one last time.
I picked up the phone.
Walking the short distance from my apartment to Harvey’s, there was no escaping the irony that the only part of our entire relationship that would happen in public was its demise.
After that first night, our appetite for each other had been voracious, the flames fanned by the fact that during working hours our relationship never differed. We still sparred with each other during meetings, in fact possibly more so, and our propensity to out-do each other at every given opportunity never waned. All the mock-hostility however, only served to whip up a frenzy of intensity that had to be contained in our after-hour liaisons.
Well, apart from that time in the sixth-storey filing room.
Or the time in the lift of Goldthorpe Investments.
Or that lunchtime in – okay, let’s just say it was pretty much confined to after hours.
The irony of it all now was that the initial attraction of the entanglement had been the total lack of commitment desired from either of us. I’d just had my heart pulverised in New York and to go through such heartbreak again was way down my list of priorities. And Oliver, well, he was a popular guy, and I assumed that he wouldn’t be short of female company. God knows there was no escaping how good-looking he was. He had the sweetest deep brown eyes that seemed to be permanently peeking from under a thatch of thick brown hair. Like me, he was fiercely ambitious and I think, initially, we each expected the other to end it any minute, hence the lack of willingness to display any desire for commitment.
And then one ordinary Wednesday, he’dgone and completely moved the goalposts.
It was in early August and we’d been “seeing” each other for three weeks. That particular week Oliver was working in Monaghan on the audit of a large meat-packing company. I was back in the stifling office, finishing off a few files.
Then at 9.30a.m., Amy, the gum-chewing secretary slapped a file on my desk.
“Oliver needs that file at Gro-Span.”
I looked up at her.
“So?”
“So you have to take it up to him.”
“Eh, I don’t think so. Just put it in a cab.”
“He said someone had to go with it. The taxi will be here in twenty minutes.”
I looked at her. It was 35 degrees out. Did he really think I was going to get in a cab and make the two-hour drive to Monaghan, hand him a file and then travel another two hours back in this heat?
He had a cheek.
“Tell him I’m not going. I’m busy. He can drive down for it if he wants it that badly.”
She threw her eyes up to heaven and sashayed
her way back to her desk.
Twenty minutes later my phone rang. It was reception.
“There’s a taxi here for you.”
I cursed but, looking around, could not see Amy anywhere. Picking up my bag and the cursed file, I stormed down to reception.
Having wrenched open the door of the taxi, I flung myself into the back seat. When my leg touched off someone else’s I screeched.
“Hi,” Oliver said.
“What the hell are you playing at?” I yelled. “You nearly gave me a heart attack there!”
“Sorry,” he grinned. “Surprise!”
“Surprise? Why aren’t you in Monaghan? What’s going on?”
“Well, I decided I didn’t want to spend my birthday amidst vast quantities of meat carcasses, so here I am.”
“Your birthday?” My hand shot to my lips. “Oh Oliver, why didn’t you say something!”
“I’m saying it now – surprise!”
“SoI’m not going to Monaghan then?”
“No, Holly,” he said with his usual trademark grin, “You’re not. Don’t tell me you’re disappointed?”
“I don’t know yet,” I said coyly, my mind suddenly racing with all kinds of possibilities. “That depends on what you have planned. Your place or mine?”
“Neither,” he said. “You’ll have to wait and see.”
Soon the taxi had left the city centre and was heading out the motorway towards Wicklow. I had no idea where we were going and I was so excited I didn’t care. Then it swooped off the motorway, drove through some giant stone pillars and pulled up. The sign read Powerscourt Gardens.
“Oliver, we’re can’t go sightseeing – we’re meant to be at work!” I hissed, but he was already paying the driver. He then got out of the car and was taking something out of the boot.
A giant picnic basket.
I squealed in delight.
“Oh my God, a picnic? But won’t we be missed? Get in trouble?”
Putting down the basket, he waved the taxi-driver on. Then he turned and put his hands each side of my face.
“Today, my darling Holly, is not about work, or about us killing each other, or even,” he winked, “about what we get up to when we’re not killing each other! It’s about me and you.”
“But I – I never even got you a present!”
“You are my present,” he whispered, kissing me with a tenderness he’d never shown before. “Today we are going to sit in the most beautiful garden in Ireland, we are going to eat this delicious food, and the woman I love is going to tell me everything there is to know about herself.”
I looked at him open-mouthed. This was definitely against the rules. In an instant, the memory of myself and Cain strolling down the promenade in Coney Island came rushing to my mind.
“Please don’t say that.”
“Why not? I mean it.”
And as I stood there, warning bells ringing in my ears, my heart thumping so much I could hardly breathe, he’d held out his hand for mine, and taking a deep breath, I’d taken it.
More fool, you.
I pushed open the giant revolving door of Harvey’s, the business plaza’s brasserie. I’d deliberately chosen it as the most public place I could think of, especially at this time of the day.
I cursed silently at the already forming queue at the Pleasewait to be seated sign, my foot tapping impatiently. I’d hoped to get seated and grab a coffee to steady my nerves before he got here.
“Is it always this busy?” a voice behind me asked.
Oh for God’s sake, I really wasn’t in the mood to be polite to strangers.
“Friday lunchtime,” I murmured without turning around.
“Ah, I see. So, what do you recommend?”
Leaving me to hell alone? I almost snipped, but then I sighed – a distraction from incessantly analysing my failed relationship was probably no harm.
The voice belonged to a tall guy not much older than me. He was what could be termed “alternative-looking” with a shock of obviously highlighted hair falling over one of his eyes. Wearing the mandatory business suit for the venue, it somehow looked different on him, quirky even, as though he was really some kind of surfer dude masquerading as someone more serious. He was also weighed down with not one, but three laptop bags.
I smiled despite my misery. Not coming from a quintessentially financial background (those hectic years of waitressing in downtown New York never far from my psyche), it was refreshing to see someone a bit different.
“Do you always travel so light?” I asked, trying to make up for my earlier snippiness.
“Don’t talk to me!” he groaned, shifting one of the straps further up his shoulder. “The smaller they make these things, the more of them I seem to end up lugging around. I should be more like my brother and refuse to use anything other than a pen and paper.”
Even his accent was different, Irish, but with a definite hint of someone who’d travelled.
“No way, in this day and age?” I said.
“I jest you not. Having said that, the bloke has never made a mistake in his life so he’s probably on to something.”
I couldn’t help smiling at the glum note in his voice.
“A bit like my sister,” I said.
“Oh, I’m sure he’s worse. He’s a vet, and I think Superiority is one of the compulsory subjects in their final year.”
Just then my phone beeped.
I have a table at the window. O.
Damn him, he was already here.
I hadn’t long to collect my thoughts.
I straightened my shoulders and took a deep breath. Suddenly I wished I’d made more effort with my appearance. At first, the temptation to kohl my eyes and subject him to a plunging neckline had been huge.See if it’s still Catherine Taylor you want now, you bastard!But in the end I hadn’t bothered. Partly because all my best stuff was already in a container bound for Manhattan, partly because I wasn’t here to impress him, I was here to tell him to bugger off.
But mostly because I was just too goddamn tired and defeated.
Instead I’d spent an hour pacing my way around the apartment, rehearsing over and over again my bitter words of break-up. Muttering a brief goodbye to my queuing buddy, I headed for the window.
And then I saw Oliver, and my mind went blank.
Chapter 7
“Hey,” he said as I sat in the chair opposite him.
My stomach twisted as he looked at me, as always reminding me of a Hollywood leading man. In fact, even more so this morning with his stubble and hangdog look.
Get a grip, Holly Green.
“Hi.”
“Thanks for meeting me.” His voice was hoarse, nervous. “I didn’t think you were going to.”
“I wasn’t.”
“Oh. Well, thanks anyway.”
“Oliver –”
“I just –”
We both spoke at once. He gestured to me to continue, so I did.
“Oliver, I’m just here to say goodbye. I have nothing else to say to you.”
He flinched. “Look, Holly, I know you’re mad as hell, I’d be surprised if you weren’t, but it’s not as simple as you think. You have to let me explain.”
“Explain what? From where I’m sitting, it’s pretty simple.”
“I wish it was. Look,” he sighed, “I was going to tell you.”
“Oh really? When? On your fucking wedding day?”
“Okay, okay. I know how bad this looks, but I was going to tell you. It just never seemed the right time.”
“I think you’re missing the point!” I hissed. “It’s not that you didn’t tell me, though yes, it would have been nice to hear the gory details from you instead of from random strangers. It’s the fact that there’s anything to tell!”
“I never expected . . .” he paused, looking down, “. . . you. I never did. This, us – it wasn’t part of the plan, you know?”
“Sorry about that. Well, I won’t ruin any more of your plan
s.” I started to move my chair back from the table.
“No, wait!” Several people looked up, so he lowered his voice. “Can’t you see? Your arriving changed everything. Suddenly what I had with Catherine seemed –”
“Whoa!” This time I was struggling to keep my voice to a hiss. “You were with her from the start?”
“Well, yes, for quite a while actually.”
“You prick!” Suddenly my choice of venue didn’t seem like such a good idea. How I’d thought I’d be able to conduct this conversation in public was beyond me.
“I would have told you – I should have told you. But I was afraid.”
“I’ll bet you were! Afraid of her!”
“No. Afraid you wouldn’t want me.”
“Well, you were right. I wouldn’t have.”
“Oh, come on, I just didn’t know how to break up with her. I tried, over and over, but she’s under such pressure there never seemed to be the right time. And then as things between me and you got so good, and New York seemed to be an option, I thought: I’ll apply for New York, it’ll just fizzle out with Catherine and no one will be hurt. Not her –” he sighed, “and definitely not you.”
“And you’d get your promotion,” I said bitterly.
“Yes,” he said, suddenly sounding defensive, “I’d get my promotion. And I don’t feel bad about that, Holly. I deserve that promotion – I’ve been working for years towards it and it didn’t seem right that I’d lose it because –”
“Because you were sleeping with me,” I finished for him.
“Because I’d fallen in love with you,” he said quietly.
I looked at him. This was not the conversation I’d rehearsed for.
“Well, that’s all very romantic Oliver, but it doesn’t change anything.”
“Of course it does!”
“No, it doesn’t!” I said. “You had a girlfriend. You should have told me.”
“How could I? After everything you’d been through in New York?”
Between You and Me Page 5
