Too Good to Be True

by Sheila O'Flanagan

  “I shouldn’t have married you in Las Vegas,” said Ben. “I should have waited till we came home and sorted out my life and given it a proper chance.”

  “Gee, thanks.”

  “I wanted to marry you straight away because I couldn’t bear the thought of not being with you forever. But I hadn’t thought about how things would be when we got home.”

  “Clearly not. But,” she added, “neither had I.”

  “The Leah thing…” He sighed. “I didn’t know how to deal with her. I wanted to do the right thing. I loved her once and I…I shouldn’t be saying this really, should I?”

  “Go on,” said Carey grimly.

  “Everything was so different when we got back. Leah and Freya were friends. I didn’t want to hurt Leah, but I realized that I’d already hurt her a lot. She totally freaked out when I told her about us.”

  “I don’t blame her,” said Carey spiritedly. “You’d slept with her the night before you went to the States.”

  “I know,” said Ben miserably. “It was the first time in ages. I wish I hadn’t. I’m sorry. I didn’t realize, of course, that I was going to meet you.”

  “And I’m supposed to say that it didn’t matter?”

  “No,” he said. “But at the party, when your boyfriend arrived, I thought that maybe you believed that we’d made a mistake. You weren’t going to tell me about him.”

  “I know,” she said uncomfortably.

  “And Leah was there being, well, Leah, and making me think that maybe I’d got it all wrong with you in the first place.”

  “Crap,” said Carey.

  “No,” said Ben.

  “It only went wrong at the wedding party because you snogged her,” said Carey. “After all, Peter and me was a completely different situation, which I could’ve explained to you. I wouldn’t even have been outside if it wasn’t for the way she’d spoken to me earlier, telling me that you and she had slept together, making it seem as though…” Her voice faltered but she continued, “And those friends of yours — they were talking about how you always went back to her. I knew it was all wrong. But I was prepared to give it a shot. I wanted to talk. You wouldn’t.”

  “I hadn’t a clue what to say,” Ben told her. “I knew I’d behaved really badly with Leah, but I was furious with you too. I thought that I should be a bit aloof. Set out parameters.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake! What the hell kind of books do you read?” demanded Carey. “Don’t you bloody know that when you have a row with your wife or your girlfriend, you don’t go round setting parameters, you buy them large bunches of flowers and you kiss and make up? What you don’t do is be nice to the old girlfriend who caused the row in the first place.”

  Ben smiled shakily.

  “And so what about the drama queen now?” she asked. “The entrepreneurial drama queen in whose business you have a stake? Who keeps warning me off?”

  “When did she warn you off?” Ben looked surprised.

  “It doesn’t matter,” said Carey. “But it’s etched on my brain.”

  “This is the difficult bit,” said Ben, “because I really, really don’t want you to think that I’m here on account of a row with Leah — but we split up.”

  “When?” asked Carey waspishly. “Yesterday?”

  “No,” said Ben. “I suppose we broke up officially the day she opened her salon.”

  He frowned as he remembered. She’d stood up to make her announcement and he’d held his breath because he hadn’t a clue what she was going to say. She squeezed his hand and looked at the assembled group of people and she told them how grateful she was to Ben Russell for having faith in her and for lending her some of the money she’d needed to invest in the salon. And she hoped that it would be hugely successful so that she could repay him. He’d shrugged at that and had muttered that it didn’t matter, that he was happy to invest in such a great venture and he was sure that it would be tremendously successful.

  Then Leah had smiled and said that she was sure it would be too and that it was Ben himself who had been the motivation behind it. Ben’s treatment of her, she said, had given her the strength to become a different person.

  “Finally,” she’d said, “I’d like you all to know that I have given up on Ben Russell as a prospective husband. Not because he already has a wife, although that’s another one of his relationships on the rocks even though he probably still loves her — which he won’t bloody admit to himself. Nor, more shockingly, because she’s probably mad enough to still want him, but because, despite lending me the money, I think that he’s a complete shit and I’ve no idea why on earth I wasted so much of my life on him.”

  There was a murmur round the table. Freya made as though to stand up but Brian’s hand restrained her.

  “We made this decision some time ago,” said Leah, “though we agreed not to talk about it until after today. I wanted Ben to come along to our opening because he’s an investor in our company and I need to thank him for that, no matter how else I feel. But now I want to make our personal split public, so that I can’t go back. I’m asking for you all to join me in a toast. To the success of Shiki and to my own success. I’m glad that I have something else to be the focus of my attention.”

  The chuckle from the women round the table was embarrassed, but they raised their glasses anyway while Ben sat in his seat and didn’t move a muscle. He could feel Freya’s eyes on him, but he didn’t look round.

  When Leah sat down again, she turned to him and smiled. “I realize that was petty and childish — but now you know how I felt when you came back from America with a wife. And that’s why I did it. For revenge. And for closure.”

  Ben breathed out slowly as he remembered the evening. It had been hugely humiliating. Freya had been angry on his behalf, had muttered that Leah Ryder was a demented bitch and that Ben wasn’t the shit that she made him out to be. But he’d told her that it didn’t matter anymore and they’d left almost immediately.

  “Closure.” Carey echoed the words as Ben finished speaking. “Seems like we’re all looking for it, doesn’t it?”

  “What sort of closure are you looking for?”

  “Getting you out of my life too,” she told him bluntly.

  “Great,” said Ben. “It’s good to know I’m such a bastard that two women want to get rid of me.”

  “You’re not really that bad,” said Carey. “I always thought Leah was a demented bitch too.”

  “That makes me feel a whole lot better,” he said ruefully.

  “So you came here hoping for a reconciliation?” asked Carey. “Thinking that because she dumped you I’d be here, willing and waiting? You must really think I’m pathetic.”

  “Of course I don’t!” cried Ben. “And like I said, she didn’t dump me that evening. We’d talked about it before then. She’d asked if she could call round to the house one evening, picked up the keys from Rathmines, met me there. When I got home and saw her it was as though everything had suddenly come back into focus. I hadn’t been able to think straight for ages. I knew that it was really and truly over between us. Surprisingly, so did she. And then she gave me a whole bundle of divorce stuff and told me she didn’t know whether or not we’d ever do it. Although she did say that nobody could ever go back.”

  “Most intelligent thing she’s ever said,” remarked Carey. “People can’t go back. Neither can we.”

  “I’m not asking us to go back,” said Ben. “But we could go forward.”

  Carey stood up and walked to the edge of the pool. She dangled her bare feet in the lukewarm water.

  “I have gone forward,” she said slowly, without looking round. “I’m engaged to Peter now.”

  “I know. But everyone thinks it’s on the rebound.”

  “Everyone?”

  “Your mum, Freya, Sylvia…”

  “God Almighty.” Carey shook her head. “They’re talking about me?”

  “Naturally.” Ben stood beside her. “They care about you
.”

  “But Freya’s involved too.”

  “Well, they’re all very friendly. And she feels that our problems are partly her fault because of the party and everything.”

  “That’s silly,” said Carey.

  “I know. But she’s changed over the last few months. She’s so caught up in her own happiness she wants everyone else to be happy too.”

  “And she thinks you and me getting back together would be a good thing?”

  Ben nodded. Then he told her that Freya had said that he’d be out of his mind to let Carey get away because she was clearly the woman for him; that she was sorry she hadn’t realized it from the start herself; and that Sylvia and Maude also agreed that they were meant for each other and how they all believed that things could work out in the end because they truly thought that Carey loved him too.

  “They’re all completely insane,” said Carey. “And so are you.”

  “Maybe,” said Ben.

  “So our families, who were against the whole thing at the start, now think we’re a match made in heaven.”

  “Yes.”

  “And does my family know about the big break-up between you and Leah? Or did they expect you to sweep me off my feet and then come home and break up with her all over again?”

  “Of course they know,” said Ben. “Naturally Freya told them about my public mortification. Apparently your mother laughed.”

  Carey rubbed her shoulders and sat down on one of the granite benches near the pool. “What a mess.”

  “Do you love him?” asked Ben suddenly. “Peter?”

  She hesitated. “He once broke my heart,” she said. “Mind you, so did you.”

  “And now you’re engaged to him,” said Ben. “Do you really want to marry him?”

  Carey gazed into the distance. “He was good to me after I left you. I stayed with him, you know.”

  “Did you sleep with him?”

  “That’s none of your business.”

  “I’m sorry.” He sighed. “This was a mistake, wasn’t it?” He looked towards the hotel where a group of people were standing on the verandah, clinking glasses and laughing in celebration of something together. “I shouldn’t have come.”

  “Probably not,” she said.

  “I know we did it all the wrong way round,” he said urgently. “Getting married first, not really knowing each other. But I did — do love you. What I felt for you was real, unlike anything I ever felt before. I just think we needed time to work at it. I’m sorry I made a complete cock-up of everything, not just tonight.”

  She said nothing.

  “I’m not a serial womanizer,” he said. “You asked me that before and I told you I wasn’t.”

  “I only asked because you said that you were!”

  “I’m not,” he repeated. “But I know I’ve made mistakes. I’m the kind of bloke that women sit around and complain about. Emotionally stunted. Play football on Saturdays…” He laughed shortly. “I just wanted you to give it one more go. That’s why I’m here.”

  “Actually you’re here because your controlling sister and my manipulative mother and equally manipulative sister coerced you into it. And because you’ve finally split up with Leah. And you can’t face being on your own.”

  “That’s not true,” he said. “I’d rather be on my own than get it wrong again. But I don’t think being with you would be wrong.”

  “Too much unfinished business,” said Carey.

  “I know.”

  She looked down at the third finger of her left hand, where her engagement ring should have been. She wished she hadn’t forgotten to take it out of the safe.

  “If you love him, then forget I came.” Ben sat beside her. “I’ve messed things up too much for both of us. I don’t want to mess it up for you anymore, Carey. No matter what.”

  She gazed at the reflection of the colored lights in the pool.

  “Don’t you think we’d just mess it up ourselves anyway?” she asked without looking at him.

  “Maybe,” he said. “But at least we’d have given it a proper try.”

  “We thought — you and me — that it must have been just the sex,” she told him.

  “It was great sex,” he admitted. “But you know what, Carey? When you moved out, it was you that I missed.”

  “Really?”

  “Well, I missed your shoe collection too. That goes without saying.”

  Her smile was shaky.

  “I missed talking to you,” he went on. “Being with you. When I met you again — when I saw you in Habitat — I wanted to be with you. I remembered why I fell in love with you in the first place. And when you phoned me about Jeanne and Gary, I was pleased that I could help. Pleased that you thought of me.”

  “I thought of you because you were the only person I knew who might have his phone number,” said Carey crisply.

  “That day,” he said, “when I got dizzy, when you let me lie down on your sofa…”

  “Yes?”

  “I dreamed we were together again.” He looked at her sheepishly. “Actually I had a very erotic dream about us being together again, but that wasn’t the point. When I woke up, when I realized that it was just a dream…Carey, I didn’t want to leave you. But I didn’t know what to say.”

  She swallowed hard. “My place,” she said. “Brand new. And you live in Portobello.”

  “That’s not a problem.”

  “You’d move across the river?” She laughed shortly.

  “Yes,” he said.

  “I was hurt,” she told him, her voice finally breaking. “I thought we had something really good and then it turned into nothing.”

  “Oh, Carey.” He put his arm round her. “It didn’t turn into nothing. We lost sight of it, that’s all.”

  “I don’t want to make more mistakes.” She shrugged his arm from her shoulder. “I should’ve learned from my mistakes by now.”

  “I don’t want to make mistakes either,” he said. “We didn’t give it a chance and I want to give it a chance. OK, if it still goes wrong, it still goes wrong. But I really want to try.” He looked at her and made a face. “I know that coming here, doing this — well, it was flamboyant and maybe as stupid and crazy as when I first met you. You have that mad effect on me.”

  She looked up. “It’s not necessarily a good effect though.”

  “It feels good when it’s happening!”

  She rubbed one of her faded mosquito bites. “It would be really nice if everything worked out neatly, wouldn’t it? If Leah became really successful and you and I got back together again and everyone lived happily ever after. But that doesn’t happen, Ben. Not in real life.”

  “Why?” he asked.

  “Because people change.”

  “I know,” he said. “I’ve changed. I’ve changed a lot. That’s why I think it will work this time.”

  “Clever,” she said admiringly.

  “Listen, I haven’t been very clever about any of this so far. Allow me a moment!”

  “Fair enough.” She laughed.

  “I do love you,” he said. “It was just my timing was wrong.”

  “Timing is everything,” she told him as she picked up the Perspex shoes. “Everyone knows that.”

  She walked barefoot into the hotel. People were still gathered in the bar area in small groups, laughing and talking. Rita saw her and waved frantically at her.

  “Carey,” she said as she stared at the man who’d followed her into the hotel. “Is this your fiancé at last? Has he come to stay?”

  “No.” Carey smiled slowly as she turned to Ben. “No, Rita. This is my husband. This is Ben. And who knows, if we get it right this time — maybe he has.”

  Up Close and Personal

  with the Author

  AIR TRAFFIC CONTROLLER IS AN UNUSUAL OCCUPATION FOR A CHARACTER. WHY DID YOU PICK THAT JOB FOR CAREY AND HOW DID YOU RESEARCH IT?

  My house (like that of Carey’s parents) is on a flight path into Dublin
Airport. From my window I can see planes making their final approach to Dublin, and I’m always awed by the ingenuity that got them up there in the first place and the logistics which keep them in the right place at the right time — especially when the airport is very busy! So I was interested in the whole aspect of air traffic control from that perspective.

  Also, though (and more importantly), I like to give my main characters a diverse range of jobs. They’ve been financial dealers, hairdressers, mechanics, chefs…women can do anything!

  I researched air traffic control with the very able assistance of Lilian Cassin, who is the PRO of the Irish Aviation Authority and who was a controller herself. The Carey character isn’t at all based on Lilian as I had drawn up a lot of Carey’s personality before meeting her, but I think both of them share many characteristics — mainly the ability to work in a very calm way under pressure and to deal with problems quickly and efficiently.

  I spent some time at the air traffic control centres in Dublin and Shannon, as well as spending some time at the training facility in Shannon, too, while I was researching it. I loved it; it was like being on a movie set the whole time! But I know that I’d be useless as an air traffic controller as you have to be able to visualise everything in three dimensions. Not one of my abilities, I’m afraid! My favourite part was being in the control tower; it was fantastic to watch over the entire airport and see what was going on. Amazingly, given the storyline of Too Good to Be True, I met a female controller who’d just come back from getting married without telling anyone! Admittedly she’d been going out with her new husband for more than a week, but it was still a big surprise for her family and friends. And I was absolutely stunned to find my story had a basis in fact…

  WAS THERE A SPECIAL REASON BEHIND USING HERBAL REMEDIES AT THE BEGINNING OF EACH CHAPTER BESIDES THEIR CONNECTION TO BEN’S BUSINESS?

  I like to bring in something about either the characters or the setting of the book in the chapter headings. In He’s Got to Go I used astrology signs because one of the characters was into astrology; in Isobel’s Wedding I used the names of paintings by Spanish painters since part of it was set in Spain. So there was an obvious choice in using herbal remedies for Too Good to Be True. However, in a case of life imitating art, I have since become much more interested in herbal remedies myself and have used them to treat my own menopausal symptoms, giving up HRT. (Like Freya, in the book, early menopause runs in our family and I was in my thirties when it happened to me. However, her experiences and mine were different.)