“Dublin, Iberia 543. Negative visual contact.”
She realized that she was holding her breath, but when she spoke again the tone of her voice was unchanged. “Iberia 543, Dublin, roger. Reduce immediately to minimum approach speed.”
The pilot’s tone was equally calm. “Iberia 543, Dublin, roger. Reducing to minimum approach speed.”
Fuck, she thought, as she watched the radar. Fuck, fuck, fuck.
“Iberia 543, Dublin, you’re still closing too quickly on the number one traffic. I’ll have to break you off the approach. Turn right heading 010, climb three thousand feet.”
“Dublin, Iberia 543, roger, turn right heading 010, climb three thousand feet.”
She’d laughingly told Ben that she got off on pilots having to do what she told them, but this was different. This was her making a complete fuck-up of a straightforward approach simply because she hadn’t been concentrating enough. And she hadn’t been concentrating enough because how could she concentrate on anything other than the fact that somehow she and Ben hadn’t managed to speak civilly to each other since Thursday. Because her mind wasn’t on her job she now had a possibly irate flight crew and a definitely shaken set of passengers, who certainly wouldn’t have enjoyed a sudden swoop back into the air when they’d been expecting to touch down. It was the first time ever that she’d let her personal life interfere with her work.
She rescheduled the Iberia behind an incoming Aer Lingus flight and this time the approach was perfect. But Finola, who was doing area control and who had realized that Carey had broken off an approach, looked across at her.
“Everything all right?” she asked.
Carey nodded. “I’m going to take a break,” she said. “I have a headache.”
The situation with the Iberia flight had made it worse. She waited until Patrick Carragher was ready to take over from her and then trudged to The Piggery. The error had been stupid and basic. Not dangerous, because she’d had time and options. It was part of her job to make time and options so that mistakes didn’t turn into anything worse. But it wasn’t a mistake that she should have made. Breaking off an approach was an admission of bad control, an admission that she’d failed in what she’d set out to do — and Carey hated failure.
I should be getting used to it, she thought savagely as she filled her mug with boiling water and dropped a tea bag on top of it. I’m a failure at loads of things. Certainly everything to do with my personal life. I’ve failed to become a normal person who can have normal relationships with other normal people. And I’ve failed miserably, utterly and totally, with my marriage. She held the hot cup against her forehead as she thought about her marriage. She’d been trying desperately not to think about it for the past four hours.
After she’d stormed out of the bedroom she’d made herself a cup of coffee, the result of which was to make her feel even more jumpy. She’d sat in the kitchen and wondered whether she was more annoyed with Ben because he’d kissed Leah or because he’d been so blasé about it. And she wondered whether her anger was unjustified because it had been stoked by hearing the half-cut conversation of his mates. All the same, how could he have simply gone to bed and not talked about it? In New York they’d talked all the time, about lots of things. Although obviously not enough about their previous relationships. They’d made a pact (how bloody silly and childish was that? Carey wondered) not to discuss their past partners because Ben had said that nothing in the past mattered. He was wrong. The past always matters. After the party he’d simply refused to discuss anything further with her, had burrowed down under the duvet and clammed up. Guilt, she’d decided. Guilt at loving Leah instead of her. Guilt at having married her. Guilt at just about everything. When, eventually, she’d felt her eyes begin to droop with tiredness, she’d tiptoed up the stairs and, still wearing her white dress, she’d lain down on the bed and fallen asleep.
She didn’t wake up until the afternoon (with a filthy hangover and a mouth that tasted of stable scrapings) and Ben had already gone out. He’d left a note on the kitchen table to say that he was at the shop but probably in meetings all day. When he hadn’t arrived home by eight in the evening she’d called his mobile and been diverted to his mailbox. She hadn’t bothered leaving a message.
It was ten in the evening by the time he got back, and when she’d asked him, tightly, where he’d been, he responded that she wasn’t his minder and that just because they were married it didn’t mean they were chained together. Carey had a horrible feeling in the pit of her stomach that he’d been with Leah. Yet she was reluctant to say anything that might provoke another row, and he didn’t offer anything else by way of explanation but had sat in the other uncomfortable armchair and had opened the newspaper. She wanted to clear the air, tell him that maybe she’d overreacted the other night, but point out to him that any girl is entitled to overreact when her husband’s ex-girlfriend turns up at their wedding party and tries to get off with him again. Especially an ex-girlfriend as gorgeous as Leah. And she wanted to tell him too that she regretted having kissed — if you could call it that — Peter Furness too, and for not telling him about it straight away. But she thought that by making the first move she’d appear weak. After all, it was Ben who was really in the wrong.
So she remained silent while he read the newspaper and she said nothing when he eventually folded the paper and told her that he was tired and was going to bed.
She wasn’t certain whether he was asleep or not when she went up herself a short time later, but he lay on his side, turned away from her, and didn’t budge when she got in beside him. She lay in silent fury until she finally fell asleep and then woke up when he got out of bed that morning. She waited for half a minute, then followed him downstairs.
“Why are we fighting?” she asked as he filled the kettle.
“I’m not fighting,” he said.
“Of course you are.”
He shrugged. “I’m giving you time to come to your senses.”
“What?”
“Because you’ve clearly lost them.”
“For God’s sake, it wasn’t me who invited a maniac to the party.”
“Nor me.”
“It wasn’t me who spent more time wrapped around old lovers.”
“No?”
“No!” she cried.
“So we’re conveniently forgetting your bloke.”
“I told you,” she said. “He showed up. I asked him to leave.”
“Very nicely,” said Ben.
“It was nothing.”
“The same kind of nothing as me and Leah?”
“Yes. No. Mine really was nothing.”
“So if we take a different attitude, then there’s no problem at all.” Ben slammed a mug down on the table, shoveled a huge spoonful of coffee into it and poured on the almost boiling water. “You check out your old boyfriend, I have a brief flirtation with my old girlfriend. Where’s the big deal?”
“Oh come on!” She couldn’t help yelling at him. “Take this seriously.”
“I am taking it seriously.” He stirred the coffee vigorously and liquid slopped over the side of the mug and onto the table. “But I just reckon that we might as well leave it as two wrongs not making a right.”
“Oh, Ben…” She was close to tears but didn’t know whether they were of rage or unhappiness.
“Look,” he said. “I was as honest with you as I could be, but you wouldn’t have said a word about Peter if I hadn’t asked you. If anyone’s in the wrong, you are.”
“No,” she said. “I told him never to see me again. You’ll keep on seeing that bitch-woman.”
“Of course I won’t. And she’s not a bitch-woman.”
“Huh!”
“Carey, you’re blowing things so out of proportion as to be unreal. I didn’t realize how fucking stupid you were.”
“Don’t call me stupid.”
“I’m not staying to listen to any more of this,” he told her. “I’m playing football to
day. I’ll see you later.” And he dumped the remainder of his coffee into the sink before picking up the kitbag from the kitchen floor and walking out of the house.
She’d shaken with rage after he’d left. She’d spent most of the day shaking with rage. But right now she simply felt sick. Sick that she’d let her feelings interfere with the one thing that she was really good at, the one thing at which she wasn’t a failure. Today she’d done something she hadn’t ever let happen, even in her early days with an approach rating. Everyone would know about it because the tower would have been ready for the Iberia flight, and Finola, as the area controller, had to accept it back under her responsibility until it made the final approach again. But if she hadn’t broken off the Iberia approach and hadn’t maintained the separation, then she’d have had to do a Mandatory Occurrence Reporting form with all the questions that would entail and the horrible black mark on her file. She sighed deeply and took a sip of tea, which she immediately vomited into the sink.
“Are you OK?” Finola walked into The Piggery as Carey turned on the cold tap.
“Upset stomach.”
“I wasn’t that great yesterday myself,” Finola comforted her. “Though I’d have thought you’d be over the strawberry-, raspberry- and orange-flavor vodkas by now.”
Carey smiled wanly. “You’d think. I must be getting old.”
“Nothing else the matter?”
“No,” said Carey.
“You seem a bit distracted today.”
“Maybe I should’ve stayed out sick.”
Finola grinned. She knew that Carey never stayed out sick. “You’re not pregnant or anything, are you?”
Carey thought she might vomit again at the thought. “I hope not. I doubt it.” Then she looked ruefully at Finola. “Well, if I was, the poor thing will be pickled by now anyway.”
“Hopefully not.” Finola laughed.
“Hopefully not pickled or not pregnant?”
“Whichever you prefer,” said Finola.
“Hopefully not pregnant,” said Carey definitely. She took some Nurofen out of her bag and swallowed them. “But if I am, I guess these’ll finish off the poor sucker altogether.”
“You’re not pregnant,” said Finola. “You’re just alcoholically poisoned.”
“I must be,” said Carey. “At the very least.”
The rest of her shift passed without incident and she was able to keep herself together and thoughts of Ben out of her mind. As she drove back to Portobello she rehearsed what she would say to him. She was going to tell him about hearing the guys talking and how much what they’d said had upset her. She was going to explain her doubts about him and their relationship and ask him to understand why she felt as though she was suddenly living with a stranger. And she was going to apologize. She was going to explain, without shouting, about her relationship with Peter Furness. She was going to be as understanding as she possibly could about Leah. She would do all this without yelling at him or provoking another argument. There was no point, she told herself as she waited impatiently at the traffic lights, in writing off her entire life just because both of them had been pig-headed and foolish. Besides, he’d probably been telling the truth about the kiss. The Leah bitch could have wrapped herself around him and given him very little option. “Well, OK,” she muttered under her breath, “he had the option of throwing her across the room, but maybe not under the circumstances.”
She pulled up outside the house and got out of the car. “No more misery,” she said out loud. “Positive thinking, positive action, get things back on track. I married him because I love him. He’s still the same person I fell in love with. I can fix this because I love him. Everything else is just incidental. What his friends said doesn’t matter. They don’t really know him at all. He’s not that sort of person, I know he’s not. I wouldn’t have married him if he was.”
But Ben was out. She glanced at her watch to check the time. It was ten-thirty. Where the hell was he? All of the old doubts flooded her mind again. She walked into the kitchen. The message indicator was blinking on the machine.
“Hi, Ben, it’s me, Leah. How are you? Look, just wondered if you had time to meet me for a chat? Love you. Give me a call.”
Carey just about made it to the sink before she threw up again.
She didn’t have room in her car for all her things. When the boot was jammed she piled as much as she could into the back seat and the passenger seat, but there wasn’t enough space for her fifty-two shoe boxes. What the hell, she thought. Maybe she needed to rebuild her shoe collection. She wouldn’t miss the ones she was leaving behind. Ben could throw them out if he wanted. She regretted leaving the orange Prada mules, but they were very much the season before last and she could manage without them. And she was sorry about abandoning the gorgeous soft leather sandals she’d bought in Milan, but the heels needed to be redone on them and she’d never got round to it. She left the Perspex high heels in the middle of the bed. She didn’t regret leaving them behind at all.
When she saw the flashing blue light of the police car, she panicked and worried that they’d pull her over for not being able to see out of her rear window. But the car sped past her and she breathed a sigh of relief. It would have capped a truly horrible day, she thought, if she’d been pulled over by the cops for driving without due care. Although she wasn’t exactly sure what the bookable offense was for driving with thirty-nine boxes of shoes and the entire contents of your life in a silver Audi A3.
She still had a set of keys to the house she’d shared with Gina, but she rang the doorbell instead. It was answered by Gina’s new house-mate, the tousle-haired Rachel Hickey, who’d clearly got out of bed to answer it.
“I’m sorry,” said Carey. “I didn’t mean to wake you up.”
“What’s wrong?” Rachel peered at her sleepily. “It’s nearly midnight.”
“I know,” said Carey. “I wondered if I could bunk on the sofa for the night.”
Rachel opened her eyes wide. “On the sofa? What happened? What’s the matter?”
“Anything wrong, Rachel?” Gina walked down the stairs and stopped in amazement as she saw Carey on the doorstep. “Browne! What are you doing here?”
“Reclaiming my surname and borrowing your sofa,” she said with false brightness.
“What?” Gina stared at her. “What are you on about?”
“You all kept calling me Browne even though I changed my name.” Carey couldn’t quite keep the tremble out of her voice. “But you were right. I was wrong.” A tear slid from her eye and rolled slowly down her cheek. “I’ve been an idiot, Gina. A complete idiot.”
“Come in.” Gina almost dragged her into the hallway. “What’s wrong, Carey? Tell me.”
“He doesn’t love me.” Suddenly the tears were streaming down her face and there was nothing she could do to stop them. “He doesn’t love me and he probably never loved me and it was only bloody sex after all.”
“Oh, Carey!” Gina put her arm round her friend’s thin shoulders. “He does love you, I’m sure he does.”
“If he loved me, then why were all his pals laughing and joking about the fact that he might have a bit of rough and tumble with other women but he always goes back to Leah. And why did he practically make love to the bitch on the night of our wedding party?” Carey scrabbled fruitlessly in her pocket for a tissue and finally took the piece of kitchen roll that Rachel handed her.
“He didn’t!” exclaimed Gina. “He couldn’t have.”
“He did.” Carey gulped. “We argued about it like crazy. And I think he’s spent the last couple of days with her too. I hardly saw him yesterday, he came home really late. And he went playing football this morning but he wasn’t home when I got back. So where the hell is he?”
“Did you ring him to find out?” asked Gina.
“I didn’t need too.” Carey blew her nose noisily. “There was a fucking message on the answering machine from the bitch.”
“Oh, Carey!�
� This time it was Rachel who put her arm round her. “What a complete and utter bastard.”
“I didn’t think he was,” Carey sobbed. “I really didn’t. I thought this was the real thing. I’m a fucking idiot. I wouldn’t recognize the real thing if it walked through the door carrying a placard.”
“Maybe there’s some explanation.” Gina sounded doubtful.
“The explanation is that he did something really daft by marrying me when he’s clearly still in love with that bitch Leah.”
“But why would he marry you if he was still in love with her?” asked Gina. “It doesn’t make sense.”
“Because he’s as much of an idiot as me,” cried Carey. “Both of us thought we were made for each other, but clearly it was just being away and great sex and all of the kinds of things that happen on holiday romances, only I didn’t realize it was a holiday romance because it was New York and five degrees below.”
“Perhaps you just need to talk things through,” suggested Rachel.
“I wanted to bloody well talk things through,” said Carey. “I was all ready to. I’d decided what I was going to say. I was going to be calm and sensible and forgiving. But he wasn’t there. And I wasn’t going to hang around because he’s fucked with me for too long already.”
She took another piece of kitchen towel from Rachel and blew her nose noisily. “I nearly had a loss of separation today because of him,” she said. “I wasn’t thinking straight. Me! I always think straight, you know that, Gina. I had to break off an Iberia approach because I was worried about my love life. Nobody has ever made me do something like that before. Not even Peter Furness. And God knows, I was pretty cut up about him…” Her voice trailed off. She hadn’t told Gina about Peter’s arrival at Oleg’s and Ben’s reaction to that. But Peter was irrelevant in the whole thing. It was Leah who was the real problem.
“I’m so sorry,” said Gina sincerely. “You both seemed in love. Really you did. And your party was great.”
“Great for him,” sniffed Carey. “He was obviously thinking of shagging both of us.”
Too Good to Be True Page 21
