‘Yeah,’ says little Alex, curled up on the sofa with a rug thrown over her. ‘I know what you mean. People as gifted as Liz often come with a sort of self-destruct button. They seem to cultivate an attitude that rules are for fools and that they’re somehow above all that.’
Funny thing about Alex, she has the rare ability to effortlessly put her finger on the pulse of whatever everyone else is thinking.
‘Well I’m sorry,’ says Chris crisply, ‘I’m as shocked at what happened tonight as the rest of you, but frankly given the choice, I’d far prefer to work with someone a little bit less talented than Liz, if it meant that at least they were professional. Give me success without the psychodrama any day.’
Blythe nods sorrowfully, but I know just what Alex meant. God Almighty, to me this is like watching a Greek tragedy unfold. One where Liz is a bold high-flyer who dazzles everyone with her effortless brilliance, only to commit a stunning act of folly. And just when she had it all, too.
We all stagger off to bed at about three in the morning and I fall asleep praying to God, Jesus, Shiva, Buddha, Santa, anyone who’s listening, that Liz is out there somewhere, safe and alive.
Then about two hours later, I’m woken up by the phone on the bedside table. It’s Chris, oh thank you God, with news. The cops have just called her to say Liz has been found.
‘Where is she?’ I ask groggily.
‘In the emergency room of St Luke’s hospital, on Fifty-Eighth Street and Ninth Avenue. She’s taken an overdose and…oh Annie, it’s far, far worse than we thought. You have to prepare yourself.’
‘Prepare myself for what?’
‘They don’t know if she’s going to make it or not.’
Chapter Twenty
We’ve been taking it in shifts around Liz’s bedside at the hospital, holding vigil all night and all morning, vowing not to slip off to try and get some rest until someone else comes along to relieve us. Liz is in the ICU at St Luke’s hospital, in a tiny, private room, wired up to monitors, drips, wires, the whole works.
She’s slid into a deep coma, the doctors have explained to us, brought on by the massive overdose of narcotics that were in her system. Apparently she was convulsing when they first admitted her, her blood pressure was through the ceiling and she was vomiting everywhere. And on top of all that, they’ve got her on oxygen to try and stabilise her breathing, as well as an IV drip to try and get some hydration back into her.
They’re doing everything for her, we’re assured over and over again, but the battle is far from over. The chances that she could come out of this permanently brain damaged are high. Or worse still, there’s a chance she may not come out of it at all. I try to ask what are the odds of her coming out of it unscathed but I’d forgotten that the medical profession don’t deal in mindless optimism. ‘We’re doing everything we can,’ is the only oblique answer I get.
Chris as usual, takes total charge and even manages to get in contact with Liz’s family back home in Ireland, to break the news to them. Worst of all are the acres of press coverage that are bound to come out of this, not only about what’s happened to Liz, but also about the ‘friends’ of hers who supplied her with enough coke to get her into this state in the first place.
Already the police have issued a statement requesting whoever dropped Liz off at the hospital to come forward for questioning. Which means at some point, there’ll have to be a full investigation, questions asked, charges pressed.
No matter which way you look at this, it’s a nightmare.
Chris and I had been sitting up with her all through the night and all this morning – the two of us came here together as soon as we first got the phone call. Then Blythe arrived about an hour ago, white-faced and shocked, so I urged Chris to go home and try to get some rest. I had to; the woman was practically sleepwalking on her jaded feet.
Meanwhile Blythe and I have been told that even though Liz is in a deep coma, that hearing is always the last thing to go and that if we keep on chatting away to her, there’s every chance that she might just be able to hear us. Which is what the two of us have been doing non-stop, but we’re talking completely inane crap mostly. Nothing that’ll get her heart rate soaring again.
Blythe reads out the papers to her, omitting to mention that Liz herself has made page one of the New York Times and the Post not to mention several TV news shows. It occurs to me that if the Liz I know and love could only hear her, she’d tell her to shut the fuck up jabbering on about current affairs, which never interested her much anyway, and to run out and get her a fag and an ashtray, in that order. So instead, I read out a few bits to her from The National Inquirer and Hot Gossip magazine about the latest Brangelina break-up rumours; far more up Liz’s street.
A few hours later, Alex comes in to relieve us, carrying three polystyrene cups of vending machine coffee, to perk us all up a bit. She brings fresh news: Liz’s father has called her to say that he’s already on his way to New York and that his flight arrives sometime later today. My heart goes out to the poor man, having to make that long, transatlantic journey, not having the first clue what lies ahead of him.
‘Look at you, Annie, you’re a complete wreck,’ says Alex, handing me over the coffee. ‘You’ve been here all night and you haven’t a chance of getting through the show later on unless you manage to get a few hours’ kip. Go home for God’s sake. Rest now, while you can.’
‘Oh yes, love, you should,’ says Blythe nodding enthusiastic ally. ‘You’ve done all you could and more. If there’s any change, don’t worry, I’ll ring you the minute.’
I remember my mobile phone, still sitting in Mum’s DC apartment, and for about the thousandth time, mentally smack myself on the forehead for my sheer stupidity in leaving the shagging thing behind. But the others promise to call my landline at the apartment if there are any further developments, good or bad, and so reluctantly, I take my leave.
It’s a rare, sunny autumn day and as I hail a cab and give the driver my address, I slump exhaustedly onto the back seat of the car, utterly worn out and so dog tired that my brain is actually starting to pound. So hard to believe that today is only Thursday. Only a few days ago, I think, I was in Washington with Mum. Only a few days ago, Liz was onstage. And only two days ago, I went to The Plaza to have dinner with Jack, but then the less said about that particular episode, the better.
We stop in traffic and I look blankly out at the hordes of shoppers and Japanese tourists with cameras strolling nonchalantly past. Carrying discount shopping bags, snapping photos, doing all the normal sight-seeing stuff. All I can selfishly and irrationally think is, how can they act so carefree? Don’t they realise that there are people out there hovering between life and death in ICU units? That right now my best friend is attached to a monitor, clinging onto life?
We arrive at my building on Madison Avenue, I pay the driver and somehow crawl my weary way upstairs to bed, where I’m asleep the minute my head hits the pillow, still fully clothed.
I’m in the deepest slumber imaginable when suddenly the intercom buzzer on my front door goes. Instantly I’m wide awake, sitting bolt upright and already panicking. The digital alarm clock on my bedside table says it’s just one in the afternoon. In a second I’m up, my heart walloping off my chest, throat contracted, beads of perspiration already starting to stream.
It must be one of the girls, with news. Has to be.
Jesus Christ, just let it be good news, dear Jesus, just please let it be good news…
I nearly fall over, I’m racing that fast to the door and fling it wide open, expecting Alex, Chris or maybe Blythe.
But it’s not any of them.
Standing there, carrying a suitcase and looking even bigger and broader and taller than I remember, is Dan.
I look up at his rugged, handsome face, feeling his soft, jet-black eyes urgently scanning mine…and I’m in complete and utter shock, as the blood starts to sing in my ears. Then without even knowing how or why it’s happening, I fin
d myself sobbing. Big, ugly, uncontrollable tears of exhaustion mixed with shock that he’s actually here.
Dan, who I thought was back from Paris and now cosily shacked up at The Moorings with feck-head Lisa?
What the hell is going on?
‘Shhhhhh, come on, darling, it’s OK,’ he says, gathering me up into his huge arms and bundling me inside. ‘I know what’s happened and I know what you’ve been through and I’m here now and we’ll face into it together. If you’ll let me.’
‘Dan,’ I weep straight into his shirt, ‘I can’t believe that it’s you! It’s really you…you’re here!’
He’s gently put me down onto the sofa now, lifting me as though I weigh approximately the same as a dead leaf. And now he’s right beside me and I can’t stop touching him, checking that it really is him…his face, all covered in stubble like he hasn’t slept in days, his hair, unkempt, like he’s been sleeping rough and his hands which are gripping mine so tight it’s nearly hurting.
‘Am I dreaming?’ I keep saying over and over again. ‘Am I going to wake up any second now and you’ll be gone?’
‘Oh Christ, Annie,’ he says, moving right in beside me and cradling me in his warm arms, his lips just inches away from mine. ‘You have no idea what I’ve been going through these past few days, the past few months in fact; how completely useless I’ve been without you. Never in my life will I let you out of my sight again. That’s if you still want me. Because I’ve been tortured…I’ve been to hell and back ever since Jules came home from New York full of tales about this smarmy git who’s been moving in on you…’
‘Jack,’ I interrupt him, ‘Jack Gordon…but…oh, Dan, I have so much to tell you, I don’t know where to start…’
‘I have so much to tell you too, darling…so much to make up for…because I’ve been such a royal idiot…’
We’re clinging to each other now, limbs all tangled together, like we haven’t done in years. Like this is the Dan of old, suddenly and miraculously come back to me.
Then, the one question that’s burning me up. The one I have to know the answer to, no matter how painful.
Inconvenient tears start to roll and I have to really fight hard to get this out.
‘Dan? I thought you were in Paris, with the Count…I mean, with Lisa. And her kids,’ I tack on in a tiny voice.
He looks at me for a long, long time and every second that passes I’m thinking the very worst. That maybe this is the whole reason he’s come all this way? To break it to me that he’s with her now and that he and I are over? Properly, officially over?
‘Yes,’ he eventually says, his soul plain to see in his soft black eyes and for a split second I think that my heart might shatter.
‘Yes, Lisa did want me to come to Paris. Yes, she was very insistent, said it was a thank you to me for letting her and the kids move into The Moorings.’
He’s right beside me now, we’re holding onto each other tightly, forehead to forehead.
‘Dan, you can tell me,’ I whisper. ‘Whatever happened, remember that I’m still your best friend. And whatever does happen, I always will be. Nothing is ever going to change that.’
And now he’s kissing me. Softly, gently, lightly. My cheeks first, then he moves over to my earlobes. Oh God, is all I think, rolling my head back and pulling him in even tighter, it’s been years since he’s even looked at me with such longing, such desire.
‘There’s absolutely nothing for me to tell,’ he murmurs. ‘Nothing. You have to believe me, love. Lisa went and bought a ticket for me to Paris and I honestly think that right up till the moment I drove her and the kids to Dublin airport, she really thought she’d be able to talk me into it…but I’d been a complete idiot. I’d misread the signals all along, I think…well, let’s just say that I think Lisa wanted more from me than just a shoulder to cry on. An awful lot more. Her marriage had just broken up and I think she figured I was an easy target, living all alone, desperately missing you…’
I was right, I think, pulling away from him as a bitter, cold triumph floods over me. She spotted that Dan was vulnerable and had no qualms about just moving in on him. Getting him to step into a ready-made family.
‘Dan? Did you…did you think about going with her? Did you want to go?’
‘For maybe a day or two, but no more. We reached the airport, then I just got one of those road to Damascus moments where I thought, what in hell am I doing here? Have I been unintentionally leading this woman on all this time? Because if I had, it was a rotten thing to do, especially when there were young kids in the picture too. So I told her it would be wrong of me to go away with them all, turned the car right around and headed straight for home.’
‘But I called your mobile and it was that foreign ring tone! That’s what convinced me that…’
‘Shhhh love, it’s OK,’ he whispers, cradling my head in the crook of his giant arm.
‘All that happened was that Lisa took my phone with her by accident and she left me with hers. Anyway, I’m bloody glad that I came home when I did because when Jules saw me back and clearly alone, she burst into tears, said she’d made a horrible mistake and that somehow she had to get a hold of you. Which, by the way, both of us have been trying to do for the past week. Frantically. Didn’t you get any of my messages? I must have left you hundreds by now.’
I think of my mobile sitting in my Mum’s flat in Washington. Out of batteries all last week and now most likely winging its merry way to me via Fedex, with all of those messages that would have saved me all of that heart-ache. Then I think about when I got back on Tuesday, how I just deleted every single message on the landline. And how my laptop hasn’t even been as much as turned on since I got back from DC. For well over a week now I’ve been utterly incommunicado. And why? All because I didn’t want to hear bad news from home.
Let it be tattooed in ink behind my eyeballs. I am the greatest living gobshite on the face of this earth. Officially.
Suddenly, just when I want him to the most, Dan isn’t holding me anymore. Instead, he’s moved away a bit, but slowly he turns back to me and looks me straight in the eye.
‘Sweetheart, I’ve come clean with you and now it’s your turn. Is there anything you want to tell me? The same thing goes – I’m still your best friend and I’ll sit here and listen to anything you have to tell me.’
His huge, black eyes anxiously look down at me, waiting for the blow to fall. It’s no time for lies or glossing over things, so I come clean and confess all, fed up of feeling like a child caught up in an elaborate complex lie and in a funny way, relieved to finally get it off my chest. And it’s painful but somehow I do it, knowing that Jules has already paved the way for me anyway.
Dan physically winces and pulls even further away from me when I tell him that yes, I did kiss Jack and more than once too. I stress that I only even agreed to date Jack in the first place because I thought that he was off in Paris playing happy families with Lisa. And I was lonely and broken-hearted and was just reaching out to someone…but to the wrong person.
Next thing Dan has moved right away from me and is now sitting on the edge of the sofa, holding his head in his hands, deep in thought, unreachable.
Say something, I think, looking at his huge hulking frame, so far from me now.
Say anything.
‘It’s all my fault,’ he whispers.
‘Dan, no, that’s not possible! How could it be?’
I’ve slid over to him now, and am stroking his thick, black hair, then move down to gently massage the back of his brown, suntanned neck.
‘Because I drove you to this. If it was me that made you feel like you wanted another life with another man…then there’s something wrong with me, isn’t there? I mean…what kind of a husband does that to his own wife?’
‘Stop being so hard on yourself, love, that’s just not true…’
‘Annie, have you any idea what I’ve been through since Jules came home full of tales of this git wining and dini
ng you both, whisking you off on helicopter tours, taking you up to the Hamptons, all the time moving in on you, on my wife…I wanted to get on a plane and come over here and physically cripple him. I wanted to do the guy actual harm. Even allowing for Jules’s tendency to exaggerate everything, I thought, if even a fraction of this is true, then I’m in big trouble. So that’s when I called you…that night when you were on your way to the theatre.’
‘I remember. It was a weird conversation and I didn’t know what was up with you. I felt something had shifted but didn’t know what.’
‘I figured…I gave you a year of freedom genuinely thinking it was the right thing to do at the time. I knew how stifled you felt back in Stickens, how rough it was on you with me working all the time, so I thought the best way for me to hold on to you in the long term, was to let you go. On the age-old principle that if you love someone, then you should set them free. If they come back to you, they’re yours forever and if they don’t they were never yours in the first place. God knows, the first few months were rough without you, but then we’d talk on the phone and you just sounded so, so…alive…in a way that you hadn’t done in years. So no matter how much I missed you, I knew we’d both done the right thing.’
‘Dan, I…well, I honestly thought that you’d barely notice I’d even gone.’
‘Don’t, love, don’t make me feel worse than I already do. I don’t think I’ll ever forgive myself for driving you away the way I did, I’m still beating myself up over it. Then I’d hear your voice on the phone and you’d sound ten years younger, so happy, so fulfilled and that kept me going for a long, long time. But then when Jules got back and when I heard that this Jack git was so clearly intent on having a full-blown, serious relationship with you…I snapped. Couldn’t take it. Annie, I’ve been a mess ever since Jules got back. Couldn’t concentrate on work, couldn’t sleep, completely useless. I kept thinking, what have I done? What tortured me most of all was that I was the architect of all this, that I’d brought the whole thing on myself. By working so hard all the time, by neglecting you, by not treating you the way you deserved, when you’d given up so much for me. I was in the depths of depression and then all last week when you weren’t answering your phone I started to panic and assume the worst. That you were with this guy and didn’t want to take my calls. So I called the theatre and they told me you’d taken a week off. With him, I could only presume. My mind was in a pulp, eaten up with the idea of you gone off with someone else, so that’s when I just drove to Shannon airport and waited on standby for the first flight they could put me on to New York. I had to wait till today to get a seat, but I didn’t care. My plan was to camp outside your apartment till I heard from your own lips if you’d chosen this guy over me. If I’d really lost you.’
Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow Page 33
