CLAUDIA CARROLL
Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?

Copyright

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

AVON

An division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd.

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Publishers 2011

Copyright © Claudia Carroll 2011

Claudia Carroll asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks

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Source ISBN: 9781847562104

Ebook Edition © AUGUST 2011 ISBN: 9780007338566

Version: 2016-09-19

Dedication

For Frank Mackey, with love. This is your year Frankie and don’t forget it!

Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song,

A medley of extemporanea;

And love is a thing that can never go wrong;

And I am Marie of Romania.

Dorothy Parker,

Not So Deep as a Well (1937)

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Epigraph

Prologue

Winter

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Spring

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Summer

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Autumn

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Winter

Epilogue

Keep Reading

Acknowledgements

About the Author

By the Same Author

About the Publisher

Prologue

Thoreau said that the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. Course he wasn’t to know it, but he was actually talking about me.

Falling in love is easy, you see; any idiot can do it. It’s falling out of love that’s hard.

It takes courage, brinkmanship and a certain degree of recklessness, not just with your own heart, but with someone else’s too. Someone else whose whole existence once meant more to you than your own ever did.

And if you’ve ever sat across the kitchen table from the person you’re supposed to be living happily ever after with and wondered where in hell the spark went…well, then you’ll know exactly what I’m going through right now.

I’m looking silently across the breakfast table at Dan and trying to pinpoint when exactly we first became such a disconnected couple. And I just don’t get it. When did we first start swapping ‘I’ for ‘we’? Dan and I used to be able to have unspoken conversations together. We used to finish each other’s sentences. We used to finish each other’s food. For God’s sake, there was a time when we’d even skip breakfast altogether in favour of an extra hour, tangled up together in bed, making love in a daze of exhausted pleasure.

Now I’m wondering if I sat here dressed like Lady Gaga, singing all the words and doing all the moves from the ‘Telephone’ video, might he even look up from his Times’ Sudoku puzzle? Because the sad truth is this: like wearing nappies as a baby, or the lost City of Atlantis…any love life we once shared is little more than a hazy memory now, as we sleep side by side, like stone figures on a tomb.

The thing about this house though, is that avoidance is generally considered to be a good thing. A sign of deep maturity and awareness. We both know that we’re in a minefield and have been for the longest time; so on the very rare occasions when we find ourselves alone together, we sidestep any embarrassment by just tiptoeing carefully around each other. On the principle that if you don’t acknowledge or talk about a thing then it’ll just quietly go away all by itself.

Trouble is that all this living in denial is physically starting to give me heartburn and I honestly think I’ll scream if I don’t get to articulate what’s going on inside my head. Which is that the current state of our marriage is a steady beep emerging from a heart monitor showing a clear, straight line.

We have officially flatlined.

I take a sip of tea and unconsciously stare over at Dan, my mind in whirling, agonising turmoil but he’s too engrossed in the paper to even notice.

Honest to God, if you were to look at us from the outside, having a civilised breakfast, utterly comfortable in silence, you’d swear our lives were perfect. Dan and Annie, Annie and Dan. Even our names go together. We’ve been together for almost half of our lives, which I know makes us sound like one of those silver-haired, middle-aged couples with porcelain veneers that you’d see in an ad for stair lifts, and yet we’re not. Both of us are only twenty eight. But I can barely remember back to a time when we weren’t a couple.

At fifteen, he was my first boyfriend, I was his first girlfriend, and now, at an age when most of our old pals from our old life in the city are just beginning to think of settling down and getting married, here’s me and Dan like the Mount Rushmore of couples; utterly unchanged from the outside, even after all these years.

Dan reaches out for another slice of toast, but then his tanned, handsome face crinkles with worry as he catches my eye.

‘All right, love?’

I nod back, but stay firmly focused on the Pop-Tart in front of me.

There’s so much that I need to say to him and I haven’t the first clue where to start.

I want to tell him that even though the day has barely started, I already know exactly how it’ll pan out. It’ll be virtually identical to yesterday and the day before and the day before that. I’ll spend the morning working at a job that I don’t particularly like for next to no money, just to get me out of this house but most importantly of all, to keep myself busy. Because busy is always good. Busy means less time to think.

And on the way there, I’ll probably meet one of our neighbours, Bridie McCoy, who’ll chat to me in minute detail about that most gripping and urgent of subjects – her bunions. Like she always does. Then, when I get to the local book shop where I’ve got a part-time job, my boss will joshingly ask me the same question that she always does, day in, day out. Now that I’m pushing thirty, and now that Dan and I have moved from the city into his family’s big country house, when exactly are we planning to start a family? And I will do what I always do: an adroit subject change by asking her whether she fancies Jaffa Cakes or HobNobs with her mug of tea this morning. Never fails me.

Then by the time I get back home, Dan’s mother will have dropped in, letting herself in with her own door key like she always does. She’ll comb through room after room, lecturing me on how the good table in the dining room needs to be polished daily, or else, my particular favourite, the correct way to clean out the Aga in the kitchen. And I will smile through gritted teeth and remind myself that The Moorings is really her house, not mine, so, in fairness to her, she’s entitled.

Then later on in the afternoon, Lisa Ledbetter will make an appearance to the soundtrack of thunderclaps and a cacophonous minor chord being bashed out on an organ in my head. She’ll charge in and do what she always does: sit at the kitchen table drinking coffee while moaning about her husband’s recent redundancy. Like this was a state of events he’d brought about on purpose with the sole intention of annoying her. Lisa, by the way, is a local gal and old friend of Dan’s from when they were kids growing up together. We’re roughly the same age and its received wisdom around here that she and I are each other’s greatest pals.

But let me dispel that notion right now and tell you that any real friendship between us is a complete and utter myth. Lisa, you see, is a funny combination of needy, vulnerable and demanding; one of those people who’s fully prepared to allow everyone around her to do everything for her. Babysitting, cooking meals for her and her kids; you name it. From time to time, she even lets Dan help out with her household bills. And has absolutely no problem doing this, either.

So I’ll sit and listen and sympathise and nod my head at appropriate moments, like I always do. All while mentally steeling myself not to allow her to suck all the life and energy out of me, like she always does. If people can be divided into either drains or radiators, then Lisa is most definitely a drain. So much so that I’ve silently nicknamed her The Countess Dracula.

Later on Jules, Dan’s flaky younger sister, will breeze in, raid the fridge and then make a little cockpit for herself around the TV, surrounded by beer, nachos and last night’s leftovers. She’s just dropped out of college and doesn’t seem particularly bothered about finding something else to do, like, God forbid, looking for an actual job or anything. But she’s all the time in the world to flake out in our living room, watching all the afternoon soaps, back to back. Exactly like a lodger, except one that doesn’t pay any rent.

Don’t get me wrong though, this will actually be the brightest part of my day, mainly because I like Jules. She’s by far my favourite person round here. Otherwise I wouldn’t have any real friends here at all, just people who don’t hate me. Jules is dippy and quirky and fun to be around, like she’s got too much personality for one person yet not quite enough for two.

So you get my drift. Dan’s family and friends just come and go as and when it suits them.

Like weather. Or bloat.

But it’s all part of the joys of small town country life, it seems. And here, in the tiny Waterford village of Stickens (its real name, look it up if you don’t believe me…makes me feel marginally less bad about calling it ‘The Sticks’), privacy is an utterly unheard of concept. Honestly, if I as much as sneeze leaving the house one morning, by lunchtime at least three well-intentioned locals would have called to ask how my terrible bout of swine flu was.

No secrets in Stickens.

In fairness to Dan, he grew up here so he knows everyone and thrives on the humdrum, everyday minutiae of village life. He’s the local vet, by the way, just like his father was before him and in turn, his father was before him too. And it’s a pure vocation for Dan: he loves, loves, loves his job and is one of those people who can’t for a split second understand why anyone would possibly want to do anything else.

But when his dad passed away over three years ago…well, that’s when the trouble all started really. Dan inherited this crumbling old family manor house where the surgery is, which was way too big and unmanageable for his mother to live in anyway. So she and Jules moved into a smaller apartment in the village, which meant that there was nothing for us but to move from our old, happy life in Dublin and settle here, into Dan’s family home. It wasn’t just the right thing to do; it was the only thing to do.

Thing about Dan, you see, is that he’s officially The Nicest Man On The Planet. Everyone says so. It takes time, trial and error to creep into his affections, but once there, you’re there for life. Anyway, after his father died, naturally he was anxious to be as close as possible to his mother and sister, both of whom he continues to support financially. A bit like a one-man welfare state.

But that’s Dan for you; helping others is his Kryptonite.

We’ll make this work, I had said to him supportively at the time, even though it effectively meant putting my own acting career on hold, as we packed up our independence in the city and got ready to move. Sure as long as we’re together, we can make anything work, I said reassuringly. And if a job comes up for me, I’ll just do the long commute back and forth to Dublin.

Because our marriage comes first. Doesn’t it?

But, like I said, that was well over three years ago and since then, the goalposts have shifted. Considerably. For starters, I’m finding it far, far tougher than I’d ever have thought, hauling myself up and down from Dublin every time there’s a sniff of a job. So to keep myself busy, I’ve done just about every gig in The Sticks that comes my way. Given the odd drama workshop to kids in the local school, worked part-time at the local florist’s, you name it, I’ve given it a whirl.

But the hard, cold fact is that I’ve been treading water rather than really loving what I’m doing, knowing in my heart that if it’s acting work I really want, then I need to be in the city, where all the big job opportunities are. Not to mention where all my old friends are. We stay in touch, of course – we text and phone and email and Skype is my new best friend…but it’s just not the same as seeing people all the time, is it?

I’m constantly begging/pleading/nagging my old pals to come and visit, even just for a weekend, and in fairness, most of them have done at one time or another. But the thing about The Sticks though, is that it doesn’t exactly offer all that much in the way of nightlife. Apart from a couple of pubs where the average age profile is about eighty and the main topic of conversation among the sages of the snug is still the Civil War, there’s not a whole lot else on offer.

Bear in mind that you’re talking about a tiny village where the main tourist attractions are a Spar newsagents and a large clock in the middle of Main Street, so, unsurprisingly, repeat visits from my Dublin buddies tend to be few and far between.

But it does my heart good though, to keep in touch with our old circle. I love hearing all my girlfriends’ tales from the city, of how well they’re all doing in their careers and most of all, hearing their stories direct from life at the great dating coalface. And even if their romances don’t go exactly according to plan, at least they’re all out there, having fun/ breaking hearts/ having their hearts broken in turn/picking themselves up and getting back in the race…just like you’re supposed to be doing at our age.

Sometimes I’ll see them all looking at me, like I’m some prematurely middle-aged housewife in a Cath Kidston apron with matching tablecloths and they’ll say, ‘But you’re married! Why aren’t you at home, getting fat?’

And I’ll want to tell them the truth; that the whole reason I got married was to grow old with someone and not because of them. But instead, I’ll smile and laugh and make a joke and say that Victorian virgin brides in arranged marriages saw more of life than I did before I walked down the aisle. Then they’ll all jolly me along by reminding me that I got lucky, because I didn’t just marry a great guy, I married the holy grail of men, didn’t I?

And the heartbreaking thing is that it’s all true – I did.

It’s just that the grass is always greener on the other side of the M50 motorway, that’s all.

I often think that life here is far, far easier for Dan, who’s surrounded by his family, along with friends he’s known since he was in nappies and has grown up with. Some people live a life that’s already been planned out perfectly for them, as inescapable as a circle. And that’s Dan and he’s perfectly content with that. But the truth is that after three long years here, the claustrophobia is slowly starting to get to me. It’s like every time I glance in the mirror I see a woman who looks like it’s raining inside of her. Crushed under the weight of my own future.

Because I have deep grievances with my life here that over time, feel like they’ve barnacled permanently onto my skull. In spite of all my super-human efforts to fit in and to be a good wife and half-decent daughter- and sister-in-law…I swear to God, there are days when I physically feel like I’m being smothered. That I can’t breathe. That I’m slowly being asphyxiated as surely as if someone had tied a plastic Tesco’s bag over my head.

Worse still, that I’m going to go to my grave with an unlived life still in my veins.

Even the clinking sound of Dan’s coffee mug as he rests it on a saucer is almost enough to make me want to scream. There’s so much I need to talk to him about and yet we’re sitting here in total silence. Like an old married couple that ran out of things to say to each other years ago.

Another, tacked-on worry pops into my mind unbidden; is this what we’re going to be like twenty years from now? Because as far as I can see, that’s the road we’re headed down. Rare enough that we even get to eat a meal together given the eighteen-hour days he’s been working for as long as I can remember. Rare enough that we get time alone together at all, given that his family still consider this to be their home and just breeze in and out whenever it suits them. Not to mention his work colleagues, who treat our house as a combination of a twenty-four-hour free canteen-cum-low-grade hotel. But to think that we’re wasting this precious opportunity to talk, really talk, with him rattling away at the shagging paper and me restlessly glowering off into space…

Dan looks up and catches my eye again. A tiny sliver of hope; he used to know my mind nearly better than I did myself.; time was when he could read my subconscious as easily as an autocue. Maybe, just maybe, he’s noticed that his wife is slowly drowning right before his eyes and will throw me some kind of lifeline. Maybe, after all my fretting and stressing, he and I are something that can be fixed after all…

‘Annie?’

‘Yes?’

Come on, Dan, come on…meet me halfway here…

‘You won’t forget to pick up that fungicidal cream from the chemist for the cat’s ringworm today, will you?’

I do not befeckinglieve it.

Brilliant. Just brilliant.

When I don’t answer, he tosses the paper aside and for a split second looks at me again; really looks at me this time, his soft, black eyes now full of concern.

‘Everything OK?’

And like the moral coward that I am, I back down.

To be polite, I freeze frame a watery smile onto my face and even allow the grin to reach all the way up to my eyes.

‘Everything’s fine.’

But I’m lying.

Everything is so not fine.

WINTER

Chapter One

OK, two things you need to know about me: firstly, I’m really not the sort of person to mortgage my entire future on a whim. Secondly, if life in The Sticks has taught me anything, it’s this: the lower you keep your expectations, the less likely you are to get let down. And above all, do not, repeat, do not, expect miracles to happen in this neck of the woods. Long and unbelievably boring conversations with Audrey, my mother-in-law, about the correct way to make a poinsettia entirely out of icing for the Christmas cake, yes, but miracles…no, sorry, love. ’Fraid not. Not in this neck of the woods.

So when the phone calls start coming from about eleven-thirty in the morning onwards, you’ll get some idea of how utterly, unbelievably staggered I am by this bolt from a clear blue sky.

I’m up a ladder in the dusty back room of our local book shop, stacking shelves with copies of a hot, new young adult series which we’re hoping will bring in some badly-needed footfall over Christmas. Because considering it’s only a few weeks off, business is worryingly quiet and so far this morning I’ve already had the owner, Agnes Quinn, who’s been around for approximately as long as the Old Testament, explain to me that she’s really very sorry but she just doesn’t think there’ll be a job for me here after the holidays.

Not her fault of course, she was at pains to explain, people just aren’t spending cash in the same way that they used to…more and more people are buying books online now…Amazon are squeezing her out…rents are too high…recession is still having a massive knock-on effect…blah-di-blah…

I know the story only too well and sympathise accordingly. Try not to worry, I say positively, and look on the bright side. Yes, business is slack I gently tell her, but just think, it’ll give you more time to work on your own book. Her round, puffy cheeks flush at this, as they always do whenever she’s reminded about her as-yet-unfinished magnum opus. It’s a cookbook, by the way. Agnes has spent the last three years eating her way through her granny’s recipes with a view to publication.

‘Anyway, I’m sure you won’t miss working here, will you now, Annie, love?’ she twinkles knowingly at me from where she’s standing over by the till, surveying a shop floor so empty it might as well have tumbleweed rolling through it. ‘Because it’ll mean you’ll have far more time to spend up at The Moorings with your in-laws, won’t it?’

I do what I always do: smile, nod and say nothing.

Then she rips open another cardboard box that’s just been delivered and sighs disappointedly, ‘Oh, look at this. More books.’ In much the same manner as someone who’d been expecting petunias.

Anyway, just then I feel my mobile silently vibrating in my pocket. I ignore it and quietly get back to stacking shelves. Audrey, most likely, ringing from my house to whimper down the phone at me, in her frail, reed-thin, whispery, little-girl voice, like she does every day, even though she knows right well that I’m at work and therefore not supposed to take personal calls.

OK, three possible reasons for her ringing: a) she wants to have a go at me, in her best passive-aggressive way for still not having put up the Christmas tree yet; b) she’s having one of her little ‘turns’ and needs me home urgently, even though I’m at work. Not that she doesn’t have a daughter of her own at her permanent beck and call, who’s unemployed and therefore has far more time on her hands than I do. But somehow, it’s always, always me she’ll call, like I’m some kind of nicotine patch for her nerves.

Or worst of all, point c). Whenever Audrey runs out of things to guilt me out about and yet feels the need to use me as a kind of emotional punch bag, she’ll have a right good nose through the house when I’m not there, then pick on me for making some supposed change to The Moorings behind her back. Any minor shifting around of furniture or rearranging of china on the kitchen dresser by the way, all fall under this category and if I even attempt to deny said change, she’ll usually resurrect one of her favourite old gripes. Namely the fact that I had the outright effrontery to strip the flowery wallpaper from our bedroom wall and paint it plain cream instead. Not a word of a lie, when I first brought her upstairs to proudly show off my handiwork in all my newly-married innocence, honest to God, the woman’s intestines nearly exploded. The local GP had to be called, sedatives had to be administered and to this day, I still haven’t heard the last of it.

This, by the way, would be the one, single decorative change that I’ve made since moving into the house; the first and the last. How could I have even thought of doing such an insensitive thing? I’ll never forget Audrey whimpering at me, laid prostrate on our sofa like Elizabeth Barrett Browning having an attack of the vapours and glaring accusingly at me with her pale, fishy eyes. No messing, all the woman was short of was a hoop skirt, a cold compress on her forehead and a jar of smelling salts. Not only had I completely destroyed the look of that whole room, she sniffled…but did I even appreciate that the wallpaper had been there since she first came to The Moorings as a bride?

Ohh…way back in the early eighteenth century, most likely.

The Moorings, I should tell you, is a vast, seven-bedroomed crumbling old mansion house; relentlessly Victorian, with huge, imposing granite walls all around it – exactly the kind of location that film scouts would kill to use on an Agatha Christie-Poirot murder mystery and decorated in a style best described as early Thatcher. Which is a crying shame, because with a bit of TLC and if I was really allowed to get my hands on the place, I know it could actually be stunning. I often compare it to Garbo in a bad dress; you can see the bone structure’s there, if you could only strip away all the crap. All the house’s features are intact and perfect: the coving, the brickwork, the stunning, sixteen-foot high plastered ceilings, but layered in a blanket of someone else’s old-fashioned, long-faded taste. With the result that I permanently feel like I’m a guest in my own home.

From the outside though, it’s so scarily impressive that the very first time Dan took me here, aged fifteen, I remember joking to him that it was half posh mansion, half the kind of place you’d go to get your passport stamped. And he laughed and little did I think it would one day be my home.

Trouble is that ever since Dan’s father died, Audrey, Queen Victoria-like, has pretty much wanted the house to remain exactly as it was when he was alive – a living mausoleum. Right down to his boots in the outside shelter which are still in exactly the same place he’d always left them. And his favourite armchair, that no one is allowed to sit in, ever, just where he liked it to be – in the drawing room, right by the window.

Grief does funny things to people, my Dan, Dan Junior, gently reminded me after the whole wallpaper-gate debacle, so of course I apologised ad nauseam and solemnly vowed not to do anything that might bring on a repeat performance. Nothing to do but bite my tongue and support Audrey for as long as she needed. Let’s both just be patient with her, Dan said to me; together we’ll help get her though this.

Course that was around the same time that he buggered off to start working eighteen-hour days and started communicating with me via Post-it notes stuck on the fridge door, telling me not to bother waiting up for him, that he wouldn’t be home. And of course, Jules was in college at the time and just couldn’t have been arsed doing anything.

Leaving me alone, to handle Audrey all by myself.

You try living inside a memorial with a mother-in-law who still considers it to be her home, a husband who’s never around and who, when he is, barely bothers to speak to you anymore.

Go on, I dare you.

Anyway, back to the book shop, where my mobile keeps on ringing and ringing and still I keep ignoring it, wondering for the thousandth time if Audrey has any conception of basic office etiquette – that you can’t take phone calls when you’re supposed to be working. But then, that’s the kernel of the problem; she doesn’t consider what I do to come under the banner heading of ‘work’. No, in her book, being a vet like Dan is an actual hardcore, proper ‘job’, what I do is just arsing around. Just in case, God forbid, I got any kind of notions about myself.

By lunchtime, business is so slack that poor, worried old Agnes tells me I can finish up early for the day. In fact apart from a lost backpacker sticking his head through the door looking for directions and Mrs Henderson waddling in from across the street, not to buy, but to give out that she can’t pronounce the place names in any of Stieg Larsson’s books, we haven’t had any other footfall the entire morning.

Mrs Henderson, by the way, is something of a crime book aficionado and she drops into the shop pretty much every day to tell us the endings of whichever thriller she’s stuck into at the moment. Well, either that or to describe all the twists and red herrings, and then to tell us exactly how she saw them coming from miles off.

Anyroadup, between one thing and another, it’s just coming up to one o’clock before I even get a chance to check any of the messages on my mobile.

To my astonishment, not a single one of which is from Audrey.

A Dublin number, one that hasn’t flashed up on my phone, since, oooh, like the George Bush administration. One Hilary Williams. Otherwise known as…drum roll for dramatic effect…my agent.

OK, the CliffsNotes on Hilary: firstly, she wasn’t exactly a fan of my decision to move to The Sticks. In fact, she’s a sixty-something, bra-burning, first-generation feminist of the Germaine Greer school and the very idea that I’d sacrifice a budding theatre career to, perish the thought, actually put my marriage first, was almost enough to have her lying down in a darkened room taking tablets and listening to dolphin music.

Secondly, her nickname is Fag Ash Hil, on account of the fact that she smokes upwards of sixty a day and climbing. She’s the only person I know who actually went out and organised protest marches against the smoking ban, and among her clients, it’s an accepted rule that you don’t even think about crossing the threshold of her office without at least two packs tucked under your oxter for her.

Hence she normally sounds deep, throaty and gravelly, a bit like a man in fact, but…not today. Four messages, in a voice designed to wrest people from dreams and all rising in hysteria till by the last one she sounds like she’s left Earth’s gravity field and is now orbiting somewhere around Pluto.

‘Oh for GOD’S SAKE, ANNIE, why are you not returning any of my calls?! Can you please stop please stop role-playing Mrs James Herriot from All Creatures Great and Small and kindly get back to me? Like…NOW?’

This is delivered, by the way, like an edict from the Vatican. I listen to what she has to say, call her back toot suite…then hop straight into my car.

And faster than a bullet, I’m on the long, long road to Dublin.

Sticking to the speed limit, it generally takes the guts of three hours to get from The Sticks to Dublin and believe me the drive is not for the faint-hearted. It’s motorway for a lot of it, but you still have to navigate a good fifty plus miles before that on narrow, twisting, secondary roads that would nearly put the heart crossways in you. Anyway, anyway, anyway, fuelled by nothing more than adrenaline, I manage to a) drive at breakneck speed, b) not get caught by the cops and c) even beat my own personal record of getting to the city in under two-and-a-half hours flat, with my foot to the floor and my heart walloping the entire way.

I finally arrive in Dublin late in the wintry afternoon, avoiding the worst of the rush-hour traffic and miraculously managing to find a space in a handy twenty-four hour car park, right in the middle of town and conveniently close to Hilary’s office. In my sticky, sweat-soaked, heart palpitation-y state I amaze myself by even remembering to pick up a few obligatory packets of Marlboro Lights for her.

‘Annie, get your arse in here and sit down!’ is her greeting, which might sound a bit harsh, but coming from Hil, can actually be taken as a term of endearment. I obediently do as I’m told and head inside, dutifully handing over the cigarettes as we air kiss.

It’s been over three years since I set foot in this office and at least a year since we last spoke, so it’s comforting to see, in spite of my being out of circulation for so long, that precious little has changed round here. Hil still has the same grey spiky hair, the same grey trouser suits, same matching grey skin tone. Same sharp tongue, same short fuse. Oh and she still chain smokes like it’s food.

And another thing, with her there’s never small-talk of any description. Never a hello-how-are-you-how’s-your-life-been. Hil, you see, favours the Ryanair approach to her work: no frills, no extras. Time is money so it’s always straight down to business. She plonks down behind her desk, dumps a thick-looking script down in front of me, then leans forward so she can scrutinise me, up close and personal.

‘Good, good,’ she nods, taking in my appearance as thoroughly as a consultant plastic surgeon while lighting up at the same time.

‘Ehh…sorry, Hilary,…what’s good?’

‘You still look the same way you do in your CV headshot. Living the life of a countrified recluse hasn’t altered your appearance that much. Which at least is something.’

All I can gather from that comment is that she half-expected me to clamber into her office dressed in mud-soaked wellies with straw in my hair, brandishing a pitchfork and looking exactly like Felicity Kendal from The Good Life. And while ordinarily that mightn’t be too far off the truth (The Sticks isn’t exactly Paris during fashion week), at least, thank God, today I’m out of my normal jeans and woolly jumper and am in my best shop assistant gear: a warm woolly coat, a wraparound dress and a half-decent, non-mud-stained pair of boots.

‘No,’ she growls, still scrutinising me. ‘You still look like the same old Annie Cole. Which is good news. Which is exactly what we want.’

She’s got black and white pictures of all her clients dotted round the office walls and through the haze of smoke I manage to make my own photo out. Taken over four years ago, but apart from a few more wrinkles and a few extra pounds…no, I’m not really all that much different. Same dark skin, same long, dark, centre-parted, wiry hair that needs enough hairspray to put a dent in the ozone layer just to get it to lie down flat…same everything.

Funny, but looking at my own photo always reminds me of how alike Dan and I are, even the way we look. We both have the identical eye colour: deep brown, which turns straight to coal black when either of us are worn out or exhausted. We could almost pass for brother and sister. Or as Jules puts it a bit more cruelly, I look like him dressed in drag.

Ouch.

‘OK, down to business,’ says Hilary, sitting forward and balancing her fag on the edge of an ashtray. ‘You’re familiar with Jack Gordon’s work, no doubt?’

‘THE Jack Gordon? Are you kidding me? Yes, yeah, of course I am, he’s completely amazing,’ I blurt out, wondering where this could possibly be headed.

Jack Gordon, by the way, would be one of the youngest and hottest theatre directors in town; so unbelievably successful that you’d almost think the legal firm of Beelzebub and Faustus had a contract on file with his name scrawled on it in suspicious looking red ink. I’m not joking, actors nearly impale themselves just to get a chance to audition for him, never mind work for him. But then Jack’s reputation goes before him and boy, does he have the Olivier awards hanging out of him to prove it. His productions are always cutting edge, razor sharp and invariably the talk of the chattering classes. In fact, probably the only thing that’s slowed down the guy’s progress over the years is the deep drift of bouquets and laurels that he’s had to wade through.

The theatre world’s Alexander McQueen, in short.

‘Then have a read of this,’ says Hilary, tossing a bound script over to me.

I look at the title of the play, Wedding Belles. By a new playwright whose name I’m not familiar with.

‘It’s a comedy-drama and a smash hit to boot,’ Hilary goes on. ‘Set in a health spa where a group of women of different ages and all from the same family go for a hen weekend, because the protagonist is getting married. It opened at the National back in October, during the theatre festival and is still packing them in.’

Now a distant bell begins to ring.

‘Yeah, that’s right…I remember reading some of the reviews when it first opened,’ I tell her, excitedly grabbing hold of the script and flicking through it.

Fag Ash Hil just raises a Vulcan eyebrow at me, like she’s shocked that we actually do get paper deliveries down in The Sticks and don’t just communicate with the outside world via carrier pigeon. But I don’t care, because by now I’m on the edge of my seat with anticipation, wondering what all of this can possibly have to do with me and with my little life. The show is already up and running so it’s not like I can go and audition for it, now is it? Aren’t I already a few months too late for that?

‘The curtain goes up at seven-thirty sharp tonight. I’ve already managed to wangle a house seat for you, and I need you there,’ says Hilary, pulling so deeply on her fag that it’s like the breath comes from her toes. ‘Then you’ll go back to bog-trotter land…’

For the sake of diplomacy, I let that one pass. Mainly because I know only too well that as far as Hilary is concerned, if you’re based anywhere further than a thirty-mile radius from Harvey Nichols, chances are you live in a mud hut and spend your spare time either milking cattle or else throwing stones at the neighbours. When you’re not worrying about the new taxes on cider, that is.

On she goes: ‘…where you’ll spend the rest of the night studying that script like your life depended on it. Then tomorrow afternoon…’

‘But, Hilary, I don’t understand…none of this makes any sense…I mean, the show is already cast and in production…’

‘If you’d let me finish, I was about to explain that the leading actress has literally just given notice to the producers that she’s pregnant and will have to drop out of the show very soon. In a matter of weeks, as it happens. It seems that she’s almost four months gone and unfortunately for her, the pregnancy can’t be disguised any more. Plus, as you’ll see when you read the script, her role is quite a physical one, so she’s been advised by her doctors to drop out of the show as soon as possible. For the health and safety of the child, naturally.’

‘Pregnant?’ I repeat stupidly.

‘Which is where you come in. Jack Gordon remembered seeing you in a production of Twelfth Night years ago. Of course that would have been before you decided to take early retirement and disappear off into the professional wilderness…’

Again, I bite my tongue and let that pass; I’m waaaaay too keyed up right now to bother defending my life.

‘…And he thinks that you might possibly be right to take over the role…’

‘He WHAT? He actually said that?’ I almost yell, stunned that the mighty Jack Gordon even remembered me in the first place.

‘So maybe if you’d shut up for two seconds together, I could get to tell you the really good news. Jack is only seeing three actresses this week to audition them for the part. And you, my dear, are one of the lucky three.’

For the first time since I arrived here, I’m completely shell-shocked into silence.

After I leave Hilary’s office, I somehow stagger to a Starbucks, find a quiet corner and desperately try to calm down, even though my heart’s palpitating so fast, I almost feel like I should be breathing into a paper bag. I grab a mug of coffee and start reading through the script, with trembling hands and eyes that won’t even focus properly; I’m that all over the place.

The play, by the way, isn’t just amazing, it’s an absolute cracker. A wow. It’s rare enough that you find half-decent parts written for women these days, but this one really is like the gold standard. It’s an all-female cast, five women in total, ranging in age from a teenager right up to a woman in her mid-fifties. And the part I’m up for, fingers, toes and eyeballs crossed, is the bride-to-be, aged twenty four, the exact same ludicrously young age I was myself when I got married.

I’m not just saying it, but it really would be a dream role, it’s got everything. Highs, lows, thrills, spills and a twist that never in a sugar rush could you possibly see coming. A show that lulls you into a false sense of security…then gives you a swift, sharp punch right to the solar plexus. Starts out as pure farce and ends in tragedy.

So not all that different to my own marriage, when you come to think about it.

In fact, I’m so utterly engrossed in reading it that before I know where I am, it’s already past seven pm. So I race for the National theatre, which is right in the dead centre of town and thankfully only a short sprint away. I call Dan on the way, of course, knowing full well that I’ll only get his voicemail. At this time, he’ll still be out doing farm calls, so I leave a hysterical message explaining what’s happened and faithfully promise to be home right after the show. The full story, I figure, can wait till we’re talking properly. Face to face. So he can’t get away from me, or tune me out, or else start talking about bovine diarrhoea.

Course by now there’s about four missed calls from Audrey wondering what could possibly have happened to me/where am I/do I realise this is her pension day and that she needs to be driven to and from the post office? But I don’t get back to her, deciding instead to postpone the guilt trip till tomorrow. This is one fire I’ll just have to pee on later.

I swear to God though, even just being back inside the theatre does my heart the world of good. Like the little actress that’s been dying inside me for years suddenly gets an adrenaline shot right to the bone marrow. I’ve worked at the National many times before and it feels beyond exhilarating to be back and to see everyone again.

Tom, the gorgeous front of house manager is straight over to me, giving me a big bear hug and welcoming me back so warmly that I almost get a bit teary. Then the box office girls all squeal when I stick my head in to say hi and tell me it’s like old times seeing me back. Like this is the set of Hello Dolly and somehow I’ve morphed into Barbra Streisand for the night.

And the play is only mesmerising. Hilariously funny, but in the blackest way you could imagine, yet packing such a mighty powerful punch that judging from the look of the audience around me, leaves people reeling by the final curtain. The cast takes an astonishing three standing ovations and I’m pretty sure I’m the last person to leave the auditorium; I just want to stay here, soak up the atmosphere and not break the magical spell that’s been woven round us all.

Even better, a very old pal of mine going back years, an actress called Liz Shields is in the cast too, so I text her to tell her I’m here and waiting in the bar to say hi to her. Ten minutes later, she bounces out from her dressing room, still in all her war-paint, with her swishy blonde hair extensions and wearing her usual ‘rock chick’ gear of leather and denim. Looking like a young Madonna and Christina Aguilera if they were to step out of the matter transporter in The Fly, if you get me.

I’m not joking you; Liz yells out my name so loudly that half the bar turns round to take in the sideshow.

‘Holy Jaysus, Annie bloody Cole!! Come here and givvus a hug! Have you any idea how much I’ve missed you?!’ So we hug and squeal and kiss and I can’t tell you how beyond fab it is to see her again.

Liz and I trained in drama school here in Dublin together, ooh, way back in Old God’s time, and from the day we met, we just clicked. She’s completely wild and mad and fun – one of those people that you could start off having a normal night out with, like say, grabbing a few drinks in town…then you wake up the following morning in Holyhead. And by the way, that Holyhead story is no exaggeration and I should know; it happened on my hen night.

Anyway, we grab a table, order a vodka for Liz, a Coke for me and settle down into a big catch-up chat, yakking over each other just like we always used to. Juggling about five different conversations up in the air simultaneously.

‘So what did you think of the show?’ she asks excitedly, ‘and by that of course I mean, what did you think of me? Go on, rate me. And none of your plamassing either; be inhuman. Be vicious.’

‘Easy, eleven out of ten,’ I giggle back at her, loving the banter and not realising just how much I’ve missed it. For a split second not even being able to remember the last time I actually laughed.

‘Feck off, eleven out of ten sounds insincere.’

‘Right then, nine point nine if it’ll make you believe me! Seriously, Liz, do you even know how amazing you were out there tonight? Honest to God, girl, you’d be magnetic if you stood on the stage reading out instructions to an IKEA flat pack sofa…but in a show as good as this? You were bloody mesmerising! Only the truth, babe.’

She playfully punches me, then yells over to the barman: ‘What’s keeping our drinks, Ice Age?’

Pure, vintage Liz. I give her a completely spontaneous hug and then tell her the real reason why I came to the show all by myself tonight. Well, they must hear her shrieks all the way back in The Sticks. I honestly think that she’s more excited about my audition than even I am, if that were possible. Bless her, she even offers to ring up another one of the cast to get her to say her magic, foolproof novena to Saint Jude, to guarantee I land the part.

‘So tell me then,’ I ask, fishing for the one scrap of information I’m burning to find out. ‘What’s he like to work with? The mighty Jack Gordon.’

Liz sucks in her cheeks and thinks before answering.

‘Jack is…it’s hard to say…I don’t really know him, even though I’ve known him for years. He’s like nine parts genius to one part knob, if that makes sense. Hard to please. Never happy with the show, even on nights when we take three standing ovations, one after the other. Never happy with anything. Apparently the National are putting him up in some five star hotel in town and he walked straight into it and said, ‘what a dump.’

My heart shrivels at this, suddenly nauseous at the thought that I have to audition for him tomorrow.

‘Oh and he’s having a fling with one of the box office girls here in the theatre,’ Liz continues. ‘A young one barely old enough to have seen all the episodes of Friends. And he treats her like complete shite, if you ask me. Always saying he’ll call her and then not. Inviting her to dinner after the show then not turning up and leaving the poor kid standing here on her own, with the rest of us all looking at her mortified. And afraid to bitch about him to her in case it all gets back. So in short: beware. Jack’s a guy who’s very good at saying things that he doesn’t mean to people, then trampling on them to get what he wants. And because he’s lauded as the wunderkind of the theatre world, he gets away with it.’

Just then, the drinks arrive and the two of us automatically get into an ‘I’m getting this/no, feck off, I am’ tussle over who pays. ‘Anyway, do you realise,’ Liz says, mercifully changing the subject, ‘that if you do land the gig, we’d end up playing best friends? I mean, come on, Annie, how incredible would that be?’

I glow a bit, for a split second, allowing myself to believe that the fantasy might really come true. And then I remember the full details of the job, spelled out carefully to me by Fag Ash Hil in her office earlier. The massive, full extent of the commitment involved, in the unlikely event of things going my way. In other words that, no matter how overwhelmingly thrilling the thoughts of doing the gig might be, fact is, it still comes with the most massive price tag attached.

Anyway, there’s no time to dwell on that because meanwhile Liz has already buzzed onto another major catch-up topic, as she brings me up to speed on her love life.

‘So in unrelated news,’ she says, laying into the vodka, ‘I’m still single. In fact, since I last saw you, I’ve had a total of about thirteen flings, roughly about the same number of shags and only one actual bona fide boyfriend. Crap, isn’t it? Oh and by “boyfriend”, just so you’re clear, I actually mean, “guy who I saw for longer than a single weekend”. Although, to be honest, he was one of those blokes who basically would have gone home with a gardening tool. And by now I’ve gone on so many blind dates, they should consider giving me a free guide dog. In other words, Annie, I still have a massive radar for emotionally unavailable guys with low self-esteem. Commit-twits. Half the time they don’t even have jobs either. So there you go. But, in a way, isn’t it reassuring to know that some things don’t change? You got lucky and meanwhile, I’m still out there chasing after nut-jobs.

‘Anyway,’ she breaks off, waving to the barman to send over another vodka, ‘like I always say, if Matt Damon was single and if he wasn’t famous and if he lived and worked in Dublin and if he knew me…I’m highly confident that we’d be dating, you know.’

‘That’s an awful lot of ifs, babe,’ I giggle.

‘Easy for you to say. Cos let’s face it, you married the only decent guy left in the entire northern hemisphere.’

I say nothing, just shake my head and smile quietly to myself, remembering fondly back to all the long, long nights we’d spend dissecting every aspect of Liz’s dating history, then putting it all back together again.

‘But if pressed on the subject by well-meaning but irritating relations, here’s what I always say,’ she laughs, knocking back the last dregs of her vodka and suddenly putting on a posh, cut-crystal English accent, ‘“One of the reasons I’ve never married, in spite of quite a bewildering array of offers, is a determination to never be ordered around.” Go on, Annie, I challenge you to name that one.’

This, by the way, is a game we’ve been playing ever since drama school – the Quotation Game. One of us throws out a line from a well-known play or movie, and the other has to guess where it’s from. And inevitably, with her sharp brain and her great memory for trivia, Liz wins.

‘Ehh…Glenn Close as the Marquise de Merteuil in Dangerous Liaisons?’ I ask, gingerly.

‘Ten out of ten! You never lost your touch, babe. Anyway, enough about me. Tell me some of your news.’

‘News? From Stickens? Are you kidding me? I wish.’

‘Oh come on, hon, how’s that gorgeous big ride of a husband of yours? How’s your perfect married life in rural bliss?’

This is my cue to lie of course, not let the side down, smile brightly and say that everything is wonderful, lovely and perfect. All the while thinking to myself that seeing as how I’m in Dublin anyway, I might as well scatter the ashes of any sex life we once might have had into the River Liffey.

‘…which neatly leads me onto my next question,’ Liz says, munching on an ice cube from her empty vodka glass, just like she always used to. ‘If all goes well at your audition tomorrow and if you land the part, do you think Dan will be OK with…well,…you know. With everything. With the whole package, I mean. It’s one hell of a commitment. I mean, when you think about it, it’s something that could rock far less stable marriages then yours, hon.’

I look sheepishly across the table at her and take a sip of my drink.

‘The thing is, you see, Liz…he doesn’t know.’

It’s ridiculously late, almost two thirty in the morning before I’m finally pulling into The Moorings’ massive gravelled driveway, then tip-toeing up the main staircase to our bedroom. I almost have a mental map in my head now of the floorboards that creak versus the ones that don’t, so I creep in a ziz-zag pattern all the way upstairs, so as not to wake Dan. Honest to God, if you saw me, you’d swear I was off-my-head drunk, even though I was on nothing stronger than Diet Coke for the whole night.

It’s nearly pitch dark when I skulk into our bedroom, but I can still make out Dan’s huge, muscular silhouette, faintly red in the alarm clock light. He’s got the duvet covers flung off him, his thick dark bed-head is all skew-ways, and he’s wearing only a T-shirt; as ever, his hulking, six-foot-two frame taking over about ninety per cent of all available bed space. Plus he’s sleeping like he always does, in the shape of someone who’s just been washed up on a beach. Totally out for the count and utterly oblivious to the sword of Damocles that’s potentially hovering over both our heads.

Half of me is bursting to wake him up and tell him all, but the cautious half wins out; I just can’t. He’s worn out and exhausted and it would be mean. It’ll have to wait till the morning, simple as that.

Weird thing; it’s as though I’m looking at him and really seeing him clearly for the first time in ages. Noticing things I’d either blanked out about him or else completely taken for granted. His broad-shouldered, toned, fit body for one; trim and in fantastic shape from all the sheer physical exertion his job involves. The gentle sounds he makes whenever he’s in a really deep, exhausted sleep. His musky smell and the heat from his body, the sheer, pulsating warmth of him. All the joshing and messing we used to have way back in earlier, happier days, about how permanently freezing I am and about how he’s like a big, giant, human comforter, perfect for snuggling up to at night. Like I’m the air-conditioner in the summer and he’s the electric blanket in winter.

I get undressed as quietly as I can, trying my best to ignore the anxiety-knot that’s solidifying into what feels like a tight ball of cement right in the pit of my stomach. God, even just thinking about The Major Chat he and I are going to have to have at some point tomorrow is enough to get my heart palpitating all over again. What Dan might say…how he might react, what he might feel…or worse, what he might not bloody well feel at all.

My head is starting to thump with worry now, as I pull on a pyjama top and slip quietly into the comforting, dull warmth of the bed beside him. Because whether I like it or not, no amount of sugar glazing can disguise the fact that our marriage is on dangerously shaky ground and has been for a long, long time.

And now, here I am.

Potentially about to throw a hand grenade into it.

How Dan and I first met

Everyone I knew envied me growing up. Everyone. But I spent my entire youth shooting down the myth and telling anyone who’d listen that all resentment of my childhood was completely and utterly uncalled for. Thing is, my mother was, and still is, a diplomat, working for the Department of Foreign Affairs. Posted to Washington DC at the moment, as it happens, which is a massive promotion for her. For me though, it means I get to see and spend time with her an average of about once every twelve months if I’m lucky…but that’s a whole other story, ho hum.

Anyway, the thing about me was that I pretty much spent my formative years being brought up single-handedly by Mum as a lone-parent family. She and I, contra mundum.

My mother, by the way, embodies all the best qualities of Churchill, Henry V, Joan of Arc and Joanna Lumley. An incredible woman, your mother, is what everyone says about her and they’re dead right too.

My father, who I often think was intimidated by such a high-octane success story as Mum, had walked out on us when I was very small and now lives in Moscow with his new wife and my two little half-brothers who I’ve never met and most likely never will. I harbour him no ill-will though; it can’t have been easy for him, forever playing Bill Clinton to her globetrotting, ladder-climbing, hard-working, ambitious and ultimately far more successful Hillary. And believe me, my father ain’t no Bubba.

So I grew up with Mum and spent my childhood being shunted abroad from one overseas posting to another, trailing around country after country in her wake. Funny, but I often think that one of the first things that attracted me to Dan was his background; so completely normal and ordinary, with parents who were still very much a couple, an adorable kid sister and everyone happily living together under the one, permanent roof.

The perfect nuclear family.

By contrast, people constantly used to tell me how exotic my upbringing was. How glamorous. Jammy cow. You’re so lucky. Talk about living the high life and pass me the Ferrero Rocher while you’re at it, Madame Ambassador.

OK, time to dispel the myth. You see, back then Mum was never posted to any of the glitzy or cosmopolitan capitals like say, Paris, Buenos Aires or even Monaco. No, not a bleeding snowball’s chance. In fact, by the time I hit secondary school, I’d already lived in Lagos, Nigeria, East Timor and not forgetting all the bright lights, excitement and glamour of Karachi, Pakistan. So in other words, we were a bit like gypsies, only legit.

It was a nomadic, rootless upbringing, one which left me with a deep, lifelong yearning to lead some kind of settled, normal, family life. Preferably in a place where you could actually drink the tap water and leave the house without a police escort.

Plus, by the tender age of fourteen, I’d already been to no fewer than five different international schools; an experience which left me shy, a bit introverted and with a lifelong terror of change. Always the new girl, always the outsider and it was always the same old pattern: no sooner was I slowly beginning to be accepted among my peers and gradually starting to forge new friendships, than it was time for me to be uprooted and shunted off to yet another school, in yet another far-flung country with yet another set of language barriers, thrown headfirst into a group of yet more strangers.

Anyway, by the time I turned fifteen, my mother was allocated to a new posting, this time to Georgetown, Guyana, South America – a city noted for many things but sadly, not for its wealth of half decent schools. Trouble was that by then I was at the ‘exam age’ with the Leaving Certificate hovering scarily on the horizon and of course, Mum was desperately anxious that I get the best education going.

Which as far as she was concerned, could only mean one thing: boarding school. Back home in Ireland. Anyway, aided by my grandmother in Dublin, who was only dying to get her sole grandchild back on home turf, they finally hit on a suitable school: a co-ed by the name of Allenwood Abbey in County Westmeath. Not too far from Dublin airport, so I could still get away to visit Mum on the long holidays, and yet close enough to where my granny lived, so I could visit her on the weekend exeats.

To this day, I can still vividly remember the sheer terror of arriving at Allenwood for the first time, a full week after term proper had started on account of a delay in leaving Pakistan. I remember driving up the miles-long, tree-lined driveway from the school gates all the way up to the main building, flanked by my mother and grandmother, both of whom kept trying to sell the school’s strong points to me, like a pair of estate agents high on speed. Mum in Hermès and pearls, Gran in tartan and support tights. Me in the back seat, crouching down as low as I could, silently praying that no one out on the playing fields would notice the new girl arriving, then write me off as some attention-seeking git with a bizarre ‘make-an-entrance’ fixation. Not only conspicuous for being the new girl but feeling like I might as well have a neon sign over my head screaming, ‘look at me! Step right up and get a load of the freak arriving. Oh what a circus, oh what a show!’

No question about it; I felt shitty in about ten different ways.

Anyway, the three of us were ushered through an entrance hall that could almost have doubled up as a cathedral and down a vast stone corridor into the headmaster’s office – one Professor Proudfoot. I’d never in all my years seen anything like him. He actually wore a proper black, swishy cape and looked a bit like a medieval king, with snow white eyebrows overhanging his wrinkled face, like guttering on a huge building.

Professor Proudfoot then insisted that as I was a late arrival, it would be best by far if he brought me straight down to my new classroom right away. Plenty of time for me to meet my dorm-mate, Yolanda, and to do all my unpacking later on.

Vivid memory to this day: hugging Mum goodbye, the smell of her Bulgari perfume. Me looking into her face, trying to gauge whether she was as upset as I was, but her make-up was so thick, I couldn’t get a read. Then squeezing Gran and getting the same smell you somehow always got from her – strong peppermints mixed with weedkiller. (Gardening is her God and Alan Titchmarsh is her Jesus Christ.) Trying to smile brightly and fight back tears as we said curt goodbyes and I was led down the vaulted, freezing stone passageway, all the way to adulthood.

I felt like a dead girl walking all the way to my first classroom, which was in a newer extension to the school, down yet more endless corridors, one leading off another, with fluorescent lights overhead that were bright enough to interrogate crime lords.

‘Just relax, you’ll be fine,’ smiled the professor, pausing to knock on a random classroom door. So, as always, when told to relax, my shoulders seized and right on cue, my heart started to palpitate.

Next thing, we were standing at the top of the fifth-year classroom in Senior House, with thirty pairs of eyes focused on me and me alone, all staring at me with the same unnerving calm as the Children of the Corn. I was introduced blushing like a forest fire and Professor Proudfoot gave them a bit of background on me; told them I was newly arrived from Karachi, that I’d lived all over the southern hemisphere, that I hadn’t been educated in Ireland since kindergarten and that they were all to make me feel very welcome. My entire life’s CV to date, in other words.

I was aware of a couple of things happening simultaneously as the teacher waved me towards a vacant seat in the third row: all eyes following me with keen interest as a polite round of applause broke out and a pretty blonde girl grabbing my arm and whispering to me that she was my dorm-mate and that she really, really liked my suntan.

I’d later find out that this was Yolanda Jones and in time, we’d grow to become great pals. In fact by midnight that night, she and I would have bonded as soon as she discovered that she fitted into an awful lot of my summer clothes from Pakistan.

Yolanda was far more of a girlie-girl than me; in fact senior school to her was basically just a two-year slumber party. And even at the age of fifteen you could see that she had glamour genes buried somewhere deep in her. You know, the type of genetic make-up that makes a girl plump for hair extensions, acrylic nails and a soft-top sports car later on in life.

Next thing a chunky-looking fair-haired guy who looked like he’d be more at home in a rugby scrum than in a classroom wolf-whistled at me. Then, to a wave of sniggers, he cheekily asked me what I was doing later on that night – and that he’d be more than happy to show me around the place.

I wasn’t to know it at the time, but this was one Mike Sherry, the class pin-up and something of a lust object among all the female seniors. One of those guys who didn’t so much romance women as play roulette with their feelings. Later on that same day, he’d indicate romantic interest in me by tying my shoelaces to my desk when I wasn’t looking and later that same week, he’d top that by grabbing the towel I was clinging on to to keep me as covered up as possible in the swimming pool…and flinging it into the deep end. Mike was one of those guys who didn’t believe in acting cool or ignoring women he fancied; no, he was from the PT Barnum school of flirtation.

‘That’s it, Annie, the seat to your left, right by the window,’ said the teacher helpfully, as I tripped over myself in full view of everyone in the classroom, still unused to the clunky, Amish-like school shoes I was wearing. More giggles and I honestly thought I’d hurl myself out the shagging window if the spotlight wasn’t taken off me very soon.

Next thing I was aware of a big, beefy hand grabbing my arm to steady me, helping me up with my heavy schoolbag and putting it on the floor beside the desk. A firm grip, strong. I slipped into the empty seat and turned to whisper a heartfelt thanks to this giant, rugged-looking stranger. And honest to God, for a split second it was almost as though I was looking into my mirror image; sallow skin, dark, unruly hair and a pair of dark chocolate brown eyes stared back at me. Then a twinkling, crooked smile and a warm, friendly handshake.

‘Don’t pay the slightest bit of attention to Mike,’ this guy said gently, in a soft-spoken voice, ‘he won’t bite. But if he gives you any hassle, I’d be more than happy to sort him out for you.’ I smiled back gratefully.

‘You’re Annie. It’s great to meet you. Welcome to life at Alcatraz. It sucks. You’re going to love it.’

I laughed at this and then it was as if he read my thoughts.

‘Oh and by the way?’ he grinned. ‘My name is Dan.’

Chapter Two

Thing about The Moorings is that first thing in the morning it honestly resembles the chaos of Grand Central Station at rush hour. Because the surgery is in an extension at the side of the house and is open for business from early morning, by eight am, without fail, the house is always wide awake and buzzing.

I do not befeckinglieve this. The one morning I didn’t want to oversleep. My cunning plan was to get up at the crack of dawn and wake Dan before he did his usual disappearing act, so I could grab my chance to bring him up to speed on the latest development in my life. Before half the village descended on us, that is.

But by the sounds of it, I’m already too late. I’m up in our bedroom, frantically pulling on jeans and a warm woolly jumper and from downstairs I can already clearly hear Andrew Leonard stomping around, letting himself in with his own key like everyone else seems to.

Andrew is Dan’s father’s old veterinary partner, by the way and at seventy-five years of age, he’s still going strong and working every bit as hard as he did twenty years ago. He and Dan always start the morning surgery together and so Andrew, a widower who lives alone, has got into the habit of calling here for breakfast beforehand most days. And by the sounds of it, he’s with James, the practice’s new intern as well.

As I hurriedly pull on a pair of boots, I can hear the two of them chatting away and clattering open the kitchen cupboards, before Andrew shouts up the stairs at me that there’s no milk for the tea and would I please mind running out to get some?

Next thing I hear old Mrs Brophy. the practice’s elderly and very cranky receptionist, clattering in and yelling up at me that if I’m going to the shops anyway, would I mind picking up a few sticky buns for the tea as they ran out yesterday when I wasn’t there to do a run to Tesco?

Oh God, oh God, oh God. This is what happens when I’m missing for one single afternoon and when I oversleep on one single morning? Dear Jaysus…

‘AND WILL YOU GET SOME TEA BAGS WHILE YOU’RE AT IT TOO, ANNIE?’ she screeches upstairs at me and I call back down that I’m on my way. Mrs Brophy, I should tell you, has worked here since old Dan Senior’s time and point blank refuses to let me help her out with the surgery’s paperwork in any way whatsoever. Honest to God, even if I as much as answer the phone and take an appointment when she’s in the house, she feels threatened and, I’m not kidding, will actually go into a sulk about it that can often last for days on end. I’ve been here ever since Heaven started, she’ll snap at me, and I do NOT need your help, thank you.

Nor does she have any intention of retiring in the foreseeable future and believe me, every carrot you can think of has been dangled at her to entice her off in that direction – a Mediterranean cruise, a week’s spa break in a five-star hotel, you name it. But no, nothing doing. She gets offended if I even offer to give her a hand and there’s no budging her to leave either; a classic catch twenty-two. She’s also chronically hard of hearing with the result that anyone ringing up the house or surgery tends to holler down the phone at whoever answers, just in case it might be her.

A sudden, disconnected thought flashes through my mind: how weird it is that I should feel so completely isolated and lonely in this house and yet I’m constantly surrounded by other people.

Anyway, I scrape my hair back into a ponytail and race to the bathroom, where Dan’s just stepping out, washed, shaved and ready for the day. Perfect chance for me to nab him, because I know only too well that once he launches into his day’s work, trying to hold a one-on-one conversation with him will be pretty much like trying to nail mercury to a wall.

‘Dan, before you go downstairs, I really need to…’

‘Hey, you were out so late last night. Where were you?’

‘Yeah, I know, I had to go to Dublin…I phoned you, didn’t you get my message?’

‘You left a message? No, never got it. My phone must have been out of coverage. Oh rats, that reminds me, I think I must have left my mobile in the car last night…’

Absolutely zero interest in why I had to go to town, not even a raised eyebrow, nothing. He’s thundering down the main staircase now, taking two steps at a time in that long-legged way that he has and I’m racing just to keep pace with him.

‘The thing is, Dan, I have to talk to you and it’s really important…’

‘Sure, sure, yeah…MRS BROPHY? DID PAUL FORGARTY CALL ABOUT THE RACEHORSE WITH THE BROKEN FEMUR?’

I’m not joking, that is the actual decibel level you have to speak to Mrs Brophy at.

‘You see, I got a phone call from my agent in Dublin yesterday…’

‘MORNING, DAN,’ says Mrs Brophy, sticking her head around the kitchen door. ‘WHERE DID YOU DISAPPEAR OFF TO YESTERDAY, ANNIE? THERE’S A LOAD OF SHOPPING NEEDS TO BE DONE.’

‘DON’T WORRY, MRS BROPHY, I’LL GET TO IT…’ I yell back, before trying to grab Dan’s arm. ‘Look, something’s come up that I really need to talk to you about, before you rush off to start work…’

‘YES, PAUL FOGARTY RANG; HE SAYS WOULD YOU MIND CALLING OUT TO HIM AT SOME POINT TODAY, WHEN YOU’RE ON YOUR ROUNDS,’ Mrs Brophy cuts in.

‘TERRIFIC, WILL DO,’ says Dan, rubbing his eyes exhaustedly and dropping his voice a bit when he sees that between Andrew, James and Mrs B, we’ve got a kitchen-full of guests.

‘Morning all,’ we both say together, as I wonder how in hell I can try collaring him again.

‘Ah, there you are, Annie love. Any chance of one of your lovely juices?’ Andrew grins at me over his Irish Times and I grin back and say, yes of course, it’s on its way.

Juicing every morning is a little ritual I’ve had, ever since I discovered, a long time ago, that it was the only way I could make sure Dan was getting some kind of vitamins into him, given the number of mealtimes he’d end up skipping when he was out doing farm calls. Except these days, because our kitchen is like a bus station more often than not, I end up making juices for everyone else as well. So I head to the pantry, grab some apples, fresh carrot and ginger and get chopping, while Dan fills Andrew in on the difficulties he had delivering a calf late last night.

‘ANNIE, DID YOU NOT HEAR ME TELLING YOU TO GET TEA BAGS?’ Mrs Brophy snaps at me, on her way to open up the surgery with our new intern in tow.

‘YES, ON THE WAY,’ I smile back at her through gritted teeth, tempted to tell her that not only did I hear her, half of County Waterford did as well. Quick as I can, I feck the veggies into the blender as Andrew continues to quiz Dan about the intricacies of dystocia in cows.

(Loosely translated as a tough birth, for eejits like me.)

‘Any superfetation during the pregnancy?’ asks Andrew, peering over the top of his newspaper, with eyebrows exactly like one of the Marx Brothers.

‘No symptoms. But just to be on the safe side, I did prescribe a course of…’

‘…Anti-inflammatories. Good, good, that should do the trick. But no harm for you to pop out there on your rounds and check in again.’

‘Yeah, of course…don’t worry, I’ll make a point of it…’

‘And what about Fogarty’s racehorse?’

‘Hard to tell, I don’t anticipate any long-term damage, but I doubt he’ll be running again for the rest of the flat season…’

OK, I don’t mean to be rude, but I know only too well that this conversation could go on for about half an hour. And time is of the essence here before Dan disappears for the whole day, which leaves me with no choice but to step in.

‘Guys, I’m so sorry to interrupt, but, Dan, if it’s alright, I really need to have a lightning quick word with you before you start work…’

‘Oh yeah, you were telling me about…emm…sorry, what was it again?’ says Dan distractedly and even though I don’t have his full attention, I go for it. Let’s face it, it’s now or never. Knowing him, there’s a fair chance I mightn’t see him again till about two am tomorrow morning. If I’m lucky, that is.

‘Yeah…well, the thing is, it’s good news. At least it might be…I have an audition, you see…’

‘Hey, good for you,’ both Dan and Andrew chime disinterestedly, just as Dan’s mobile rings.

‘It’s today, you see, the audition, that is, and it means going back to Dublin for it…’

‘Hang on one sec, Annie, this might be Paul Fogarty. Hello?’

And just like that, I’ve lost him. He takes the call, of course he does; phones never, ever go ignored in this house. Turns out it’s a local farmer who needs him to call out ASAP. No surprises there; just about every call we get to the practice is urgent. In fact, the day a client calls and says take your time in calling out, sure there’s no rush whatsoever, is the day that hell will freeze over.

Dan immediately whips out a pen and starts scribbling down symptoms on a spare supplement to Andrew’s paper that’s lying on the kitchen table, still talking away on the phone and never for one second losing focus.

‘OK,’ he says patiently, ‘just slow down, I’m on the way. Any symptoms of fever or loss of appetite? No progressive paralysis? General listlessness? OK…I’m on my way. Give me thirty minutes and I’ll be there. And don’t panic, I’m pretty certain we can sort this.’

I pour out two juices while Dan wraps up the call, then hand one to Andrew and try giving the other one to Dan, but he’s too busy packing up his bag and pulling on his warmest coat from where it’s hanging on the back of the kitchen door.

‘Sounds to me it might be a straightforward case of Listeria,’ he calls back to Andrew, ‘but I’d better go out there and take a look to be on the safe side. Are you OK handling the surgery here on your own till I get back?’

‘Of course, you head off and I’ll see you later on.’

I grab the juice I made for him and follow him down the kitchen passageway, as he strides on ahead of me, huge and hulking, making the passageway seem smaller just because he’s in it.

‘Dan, I still haven’t told you the most important part of my news…’

‘Can this wait till I get back?’ he asks, heading out the side door and over to where his jeep is parked.

‘But I mightn’t be here when you get back, that’s what I’m trying to tell you. My audition is up in Dublin, you see, it’s for a part in a new play…’

‘Good, good, good,’ he says automatically, although I know right well that he’s only half-listening. ‘Best of luck with it, love. You know I’ll be rooting for you.’

He’s already clambered up into the driver’s seat by now, engine on, raring to go.

‘Dan, that’s not really what I wanted to tell you…’

‘OK, gotta go. You’ll do really well at your…emmm…your whatsit…your audition…I’m certain.’

‘That’s not actually the issue here…’

‘…and I’ll try my best to catch you tonight…’

‘Dan! Don’t leave just yet, I urgently have to talk to you…’

Suddenly one of his black-eyed glares.

‘Annie, can you not just understand? I really have to go…so this’ll just have to wait. We’ll talk about whatever it is later, OK…?’

He’s sounding irritable and narky now which I try my best not to take personally; deep exhaustion always makes him a bit snappy.

‘But this will only take two minutes! I still haven’t explained to you why…’

Jesus, by now my face must be blue from the pressure behind it of needing to talk, but he doesn’t even seem to notice. And what’s really stabbing me is that I remember a long-distant time when he would have actually paid attention. Would have listened.

God knows, might even have been supportive.

‘See you when I see you, drive safe to Dublin.’

And just like that, he’s pulled the car out of the driveway and is gone, sending gravel flying in twenty different directions in his haste to get away. Most astonishing of all though is that this is actually the longest conversation we’ve had in I can’t remember how long. Honestly.

Which leaves me feeling yet again like I’m the lowest priority in my husband’s life. Or worse, that I married a man who’s just not that into me. Because everyone, absolutely everyone and everything else comes ahead of me: cats that need neutering, constipated race horses, his mum and all her neuroses, his sister Jules and her cash flow problems, Lisa shagging Ledbetter and her entire catalogue of woes…you name it. Show any kind of weakness or neediness and Dan’s your man, whereas a strong, capable woman trying to make the best of the hand life has dealt her will always be bottom rung on the ladder as far as he’s concerned.

Not his fault; I sometimes think that he’s just not calibrated to bring happiness to one person, not when he can serve the many instead.

Funny, isn’t it? How women spend the longest time trying to separate romance from friendship. And for the longest time, I thought I was the luckiest woman on earth because I had both.

And now it looks like I’ve neither one.

He never even touched the shagging juice.

Chapter Three

My audition is at lunchtime in Dublin, which gives me barely enough time to run to Tesco and buy everything that Mrs Brophy was whinging we didn’t have in the house earlier on. Plus I also have to call Agnes at the book store to let her know that I won’t be into work today. But if I was expecting her to be a bit put out at this, I was wrong; honest to God, the sheer relief in the woman’s voice when she realised she wouldn’t have to pay me for yet another day would have broken your heart. No problem whatsoever, Annie, she’d said, sure why not take a few extra days off too while you’re at it?

Anyway, between all of that, there’s barely enough time for a lightning quick shower before I have to hop into the car and start the marathon, two-and-a-half-hour drive to the city.

Right then. As I pull out onto the motorway, I make a decision. I’m going to use this incredibly rare bit of alone time to try to clear my head and concentrate on nothing but the audition ahead. So as I boot the car up into fourth gear, I start doing all the little pre-audition relaxation tricks I remember from long ago: some deep yoga breathing for starters, in for two and out for four, in for two and out for four…easy does it…then I start to creatively visualise a positive outcome…imagining myself bouncing into a rehearsal room…being a proper, paid actor again…being back in the city and far, far away from Grey Gardens, sorry, I mean, The Moorings…earning money at a career that I actually love and adore…after three long years of treading water by stacking shelves in an empty bookshop…oh and let’s not forget sweeping dead headed roses off the floor while doing yet another part-time job in the local florist’s…then I think back to that book I read because everyone was reading it at the time…The Secret…So I focus on attracting only a positive outcome and not dwelling on forgetting my lines or blanking out with nerves or similar…

Anyway, I’m just drifting into a lovely, soothing, zoned-out happy place, when suddenly my phone rings, totally shattering my concentration.

Audrey, surprise, surprise.

‘Where are you, Annie?’ she whimpers in the little-girl-lost voice. ‘I’m at The Moorings and Mrs Brophy tells me you’ve disappeared off to Dublin for the day yet again…can that be right? Would you really do such a selfish thing without telling me? I worried myself sick about you yesterday and you know how worry brings on one of my little turns. And not a phone call from you for the whole day, nothing.’

Do not let the guilt get to you, I tell myself sternly, at all costs, don’t allow her to guilt trip you.

‘Because I’m still not feeling very well today, you know, after all the worry of yesterday, and I need you to run a few little errands for me…’

I hear her out as patiently as I can and explain that everything is fine, and that I’m just going to Dublin for an unexpected audition. A pause, and I’m half-wondering if she’ll bother to ask me anything at all about it. You know, stuff a normal person would ask, like what’s the play, what part am I up for…but no, she doesn’t. Of course not. There’s the usual half second time delay while she filters the information I’m offering, then immediately figures out whether it’ll affect her negatively in any way. And decides that yes, it does.

‘But that’s no use to me, Annie, I’m doing my Christmas cards today and I need you to be here. You should have been here to help me yesterday and it’s not my fault that you weren’t.’

I can just picture her as she says this, all swelled up like a gobbler with enough ammunition to bitch about me behind my back for weeks to come. Then I sigh so deeply it’s like it’s coming from my feet upwards and wonder what she wants me to do exactly? Write out all the cards for her? Wouldn’t surprise me.

Anyway, at this stage I’ve had years of practice in dealing with her, so I draw on all my experience and do what I always do: lock my voice into its lowest register and at all costs, don’t let her turn me into her emotional punchbag. I calmly tell her that although I’ll be gone for most of the day, I’ll be back later in the evening and will be perfectly happy to take care of whatever she needs then.

‘But you’re not listening to me, Annie, I have to get my Christmas cards posted today and I need you to get to the post office before it shuts. You know perfectly well I can’t go by myself. Standing in queues brings on one of my weak spells and I’ve really not been myself all morning, you know. And another thing – you still don’t have the Christmas tree up yet, Annie. I don’t understand, what exactly have you been doing with your time?’

I let the veiled insult pass and suggest that, since it’s so urgent, maybe she should just ask Jules to do the post office run for her?

‘Well if I’d known you were flitting off to Dublin for the day then of course I would have, but Jules was still asleep when I left the house and I don’t like to wake her.’

I can’t help smiling in spite of myself; typical Jules. She’s a terrible stickler for getting her twelve hours’ sleep. Plus, she always says that even if she’s lying wide awake in bed it’s a far, far better thing to stay put, than to get up and enter Audrey-land. And, in all fairness, can you blame the girl?

‘Oh and another thing, Annie, when I went upstairs to use the bathroom just now, I had a little look around and I couldn’t help noticing that you still hadn’t made your bed and that there were unlaundered clothes belonging to poor Dan strewn all over the floor as well. You know I hate to say it, but I really think you should think about organising your household chores a little bit better. It really upsets me when I see that the house isn’t being cared for properly and no man likes to live in a messy house you know…’

Just then I lose the signal on my phone, so mercifully this conversation ends before the mental image of Audrey combing through our bedroom when I’m not there takes root deep in my psyche.

Note to self: if I don’t get this job, then I’m asking Dan if we can buy a caravan for our back garden so we can go and live in it instead. A little mobile home that could sit in the back garden and look like it was adopted by The Moorings out of charity. With deadbolts on every door and window, to ensure some minor degree of privacy. Or if it comes to it, then I’ll just move out and live in the shagging thing on my own. Because life in a four-wheel trailer certainly couldn’t be much worse than life at Grey Gardens, could it?

Anyroadup, I arrive in Dublin a good forty-five minutes before the audition starts, park the car and head back for the National theatre. It’s a miserable winter’s day – icy cold, with a sharp wind blowing and only a weak, watery sun desperately trying to break through the heavy overhead clouds…but to me, with an audition to go to and with a spring in my step, it’s only bloody beautiful.

Funny, but in The Sticks I’m completely surrounded by natural beauty and probably the most stunning scenery you’re ever likely to see, yet somehow, I never seem to notice it. But being here, back in the city and striding purposefully down a busy, bustling street packed with stressed-out Christmas shoppers tripping over each other to grab their last minute bargains…everyone laden down with bulging bags, looking frozen and panicky and with mounting hysteria practically ricocheting off them…and I can’t help thinking that it’s just the loveliest sight I’ve seen in I don’t know how long. But then I suppose, after living in the dark for so long, a glimpse of the light can suddenly make you giddy.

Tell you one thing; even if I don’t get this job, at least one good thing has already come out of it – just being back in the city and doing an audition has put the bounce back into me and aligned my spine again, as if I just got a jolt of vitamin B straight to my heart. And a flood of gorgeous, cheering memories come back too; when Dan and I first left school, we both came to Dublin to study at Trinity College, him to do veterinary medicine, me, drama studies.

We shared flat after flat in the city, gradually working our poverty-stricken, dole-poor way from renting places where the washing machine had to double up as the dining table, all the way up to the dizzy heights of actually owning our very own apartment right after we got married. Happy, happy days – by far the happiest of my life – and now it’s like every street corner I turn holds a very different memory of a very different time.

Buoyed up with adrenaline, I run into a little coffee shop just across the road from the theatre to grab a bottle of water and no one knows me or any of my business and it’s bloody fantastic. No one asks me about Dan or Audrey or whether Jules has any intention of getting some kind of a job any time soon. No Bridie McCoy telling us about how useless her chiropodist is, no Agnes Quinn to playfully elbow me in the ribs and remind me that I’m not getting any younger, then ask me when exactly I’m going to put that huge nursery up in The Moorings to good use? No Father O’Driscoll to gently probe me about whether he might see myself and Dan at Mass one of these fine days…I am utterly and totally anonymous here and it’s wonderful. Feels like being able to breathe freely again after years of long, silent suffocation.

I bounce along to the stage door of the National and the receptionist is almost flight attendant friendly. Yes, they’re expecting me and I’m to go ahead to the green room and wait there. She politely offers me tea or coffee while I’m waiting and I thank her but say no. Then I find my way to the green room which is directly behind the main stage, guessing that some other poor actress is out there strutting her stuff right now. I plonk down on a faded leather armchair and start thumbing through the script yet again.

Fag Ash Hil was at pains to point out that, at this stage, I wasn’t expected to have actually memorised the lines, considering the short notice I’d been given to come and read for the part in the first place, but I know well enough how these things work. You’re told, ‘Oh, no need to be off book, darling,’ but the reality is that you’re expected to have studied the script the same way Egyptologists study tomb writings and it doesn’t matter a shite how late in the day you got the script.

So I’m just re-reading through a pivotal scene for the character when the door opens and the stage manager comes to get me. No time to react, no time for nerves. I get up and obediently follow him.

Two minutes later, and I’m standing on stage and it’s beyond weird having sat in the audience last night, now to be over on this side of the fence. The set, by the way, is a health spa in a five-star resort, with sun loungers dotted across the stage and offstage doors leading to a sauna, pool and steam room. It’s dimly lit and hard to see, then suddenly a split second later, it suddenly goes Broadway bright. I’m momentarily dazzled but then a disconnected voice from the dark auditorium tells me to come on down to the front of the stage. I do as I’m told, clutching the script like a talisman.

Next thing, a striking-looking, long, lean guy is swooping down the centre audience aisle and striding towards where I’m standing centre stage, in a ball of sweaty tension.

‘Well, hello there,’ he calls out smoothly. ‘I’m Jack Gordon.’

Not every day you come face-to-face with the David Beckham of the theatre world, so even though I’m blinded by the hot stage lights, I manage to squint through the darkness to get a half decent look at him. He’s a lot taller and slimmer than I’d have thought, wearing an impeccably-cut, slate grey suit with an open-necked, crisp, white shirt underneath, which somehow makes him look older than he actually is, even though he can’t be much more than early thirties. For a second, I can’t actually remember the last time I saw a proper well-dressed, metrosexual guy in a proper suit, outside of the local courthouse in Stickens, that is. Blue eyes and light brown-ish hair, but with slanting eyebrows that kind of give him the look of a satyr when he frowns downwards. And self-confidence that practically bounces off the auditorium walls; not a word of a lie, if the guy had antlers, they’d probably be well past his shoulders.

In short, he looks like a Michael Bublé song.

Anyway, he marches all the way down to the apron of the stage, walking as though he’s in his own spotlight and extends a smooth, lotioned hand out to me.

‘You must be Annie Cole,’ he smiles, flashing teeth brighter than a toxic blast from a nuclear bomb. ‘So good of you to come at such short notice. It’s an absolute pleasure to meet you.’

And his voice is thicker than a jar of Manuka honey. A twenty-fags a day voice, if ever I heard one. Anyway, I mumble something inane and shake his ice cold hand. He’s focusing really intently on me now, keenly looking me up and down, then down and back up again and it’s making me bloody nervous. And the danger with me is that when nervous, I tend to act like I’ve got St Vitus’s dance of the mouth and start gabbling like a half-wit about complete and utter shite. Mercifully though, he doesn’t initiate any more chit-chat or small talk; just directs me towards the scene that he’d like me to read, coolly telling me to start in my own time.

And for better or for worse, I’m on.

Good sign: I’m asked to play one particular scene five different times, and in about five different ways. The logical part of my brain says, would Jack bother spending so much time on me if he thought I was really shite?

Bad sign: As I leave the stage, I meet the other actress who was in before me, having a fag in the tiny yard off the green room. We both instantly cop on who the other is, the giveaway being the script we’re both clutching to our chests and each of us launch into a big post-mortem. Anyway, she says she was asked to do exactly the same thing. So much for that.

Good sign: One of the pivotal scenes, feels completely fantastic. It’s impossible to describe the massive adrenaline rush I get from performing it – closest thing I can imagine would be like what a fighter pilot must feel on take-off. Or a cat burglar. For the first time in years, I find myself feeding off the sheer pleasure of acting and loving every second of it, thinking feck it anyway; even if I don’t get the part, I’ve come this far, so I may as well enjoy myself.

Jack does a kind of deep, throaty, snorting laugh at some of the gag lines I deliver and this I find hugely encouraging.

Bad sign: Then he excuses himself to answer his mobile phone and does precisely the same laugh.

Good sign: After I’ve been put through my paces, he politely asks me about my personal life and whether the significant commitment involved in this gig would be an issue for me.

Bad sign: When I tell him that I’m married but haven’t had a chance to discuss it with my significant other yet, he just nods curtly, giving absolutely nothing away. My gut instinct is to tack on, ‘But you know, everything’s OK, because it’s not like we have kids or anything!’ but I manage to restrain myself. I mean, yes of course I’d love the job, but do I really want to come across as a complete desperado?

Shit anyway. Should have just told him the truth.

That I’ve a husband who I honestly doubt would even notice I’m gone.

Worst sign of all: When I’m leaving the stage, he shakes my hand quite formally and says, ‘Best of luck. We’ll be in touch.’ Otherwise known in the acting profession as the ‘don’t call us, we’ll call you’, kiss of death.

So now there’s nothing to do but wait it out.

It’s only early evening but already pitch dark by the time I get back to The Sticks. Dan, not surprisingly, isn’t back yet, but this would be perfectly normal. In fact it might be hours and hours before he does come home. So I decide that I’ll wait up for him, even if it’s two in the morning before he eventually does stagger in.

My plan is thus: I will stand right in front of him, hands on hips like something out of a Western, blocking his path so he can’t dodge past me, claiming exhaustion and that all he really wants to do is go to bed. I will firmly say what I’ve got to say and not get fobbed off by his mobile ringing or him brushing me aside and saying, ‘We’ll talk later.’ Flooded with determination, I make up my mind. No more repeat performances of this morning. No more being brushed off.

Enough’s enough. Some discussions just can’t wait.

I let myself in through the side door that leads down a long, narrow, stone passageway to the kitchen and am delighted to see Jules standing there, wearing her pyjamas with a pair of my slippers and raiding our fridge, as per usual.

‘And where the feck have you been all day?’ is her greeting, not even looking up from the coleslaw she’s eating straight out of the tub.

‘Jules, please tell me you didn’t go out dressed like that? You look like the kind of woman that ends up getting escorted out of Tesco. You’re like a candidate for care in the community.’

‘Ahh, leave me alone, will you? I couldn’t have been arsed deciding what to wear, so in the end I just didn’t bother. But I did put a duffel coat and Wellingtons over my PJ’s before I left the flat. Besides underwear as outerwear is a hot look right now, I’ll have you know. Anyway, you’re in deep shite with the Mothership, I can tell you that for nothing. We came dangerously close to having a code three on our hands today.’

This, by the way, is a system Jules and I have set up to monitor Audrey and her many and varied ‘little turns’. The lowest level, code one, means she’s prostrate on the sofa whinging and in need of sugary tea but if she ever makes it up to code four, the only thing to do is dial 999 toot sweet, then call the local GP and await subsequent fallout.

‘So where were you, Annie? You keep disappearing and re-appearing these days. Not unlike that TV show Scrubs.’

‘Up in Dublin doing an audition,’ I beam proudly, peeling off my coat and gloves. ‘You have my permission to be impressed.’

‘And you didn’t take me with you, you bitch! For feck’s sake, I could have done some Christmas shopping! With money you’d have had to lend me, obviously. I could have done with getting out of Dodge today; Lisa Ledbetter sat here at the kitchen table moaning for the entire afternoon. Not much point in me coming here to escape from my mother if I have to put up with The Countess Dracula instead, is there? Phrases about frying pans and fires spring to mind.’

I groan as I reach to put the kettle on.

‘You have my sympathies, hon. So tell us, how was the Countess today?’

‘What can I say? Like Lisa Ledbetter. If whining was an Olympic sport, we’d have the gold medallist living right here in our midst.’

Not an exaggeration, by the way. We all have a Lisa Ledbetter in our lives and the thing is, you just can’t allow yourself to get sucked in or else sure as eggs is eggs they won’t be happy till they drag you down with them.

‘You should have heard her,’ Jules goes on, wiping coleslaw off her face with the back of her hand. ‘She even rang Dan on his mobile to ask him for another lend of cash to tide her over Christmas. Oh, and apparently one of her kids wants to do pony riding lessons, and she got the big soft gobshite to agree to shell out for that too. I was pretending to be watching TV but heard the whole conversation. What a shameless cow; I mean, doesn’t she realise that scabbing money from Dan is my department?’

I roll my eyes to Heaven pretending to be pissed off, although I’m actually delighted that Jules is here and even more delighted that by some early miracle of Christmas, I’ve managed to miss both Audrey and Lisa. Because Jules is the perfect antidote to the pair of them.

Jules, I should tell you, is only nineteen but looks an awful lot younger still, particularly today when she’s dressed in her favourite baby-blue fleece pyjamas with her dark, jack-in-the-box curls that normally spring past her shoulders tied back into two messy, pigtails. Honest to God, the girl looks like she should still be getting ID’ed in bars.

And I know she treats this house like she’s a non-rent paying lodger, but then Jules is one of life’s naturally adorable people so it’s pretty much impossible to get irritated with her for very long. She’s Dan’s baby sister but it always feels like she’s mine too – I’ve known her ever since she was a spoilt, over-petted four-year-old girl and what can I say? From day one, we just bonded. I’d always wanted a little sister…and I certainly couldn’t have asked for one who made my life more entertaining.

And yes, of course it’s a bit weird that a nineteen-year-old college dropout should spend her days lounging around watching afternoon TV with absolutely no inclination whatsoever towards getting an actual job and supporting herself, but that’s our Jules for you. She’s one of that rare and dying breed – the entitled generation. You know, young ones who grew up having everything handed to them on a plate by doting parents and who assumed that life was all about five-star hotels and three holidays a year and wearing nothing but designer labels on their well-toned backs. The generation that landed with the hardest thump when the recession hit and suddenly all the privileges they’d taken for granted during the good years were crudely revoked.

At the time Jules had started college but when she flunked her exams last autumn, she quickly realised she’d actually have to stop partying five nights a week and actually knuckle down to some hardcore work if she ever wanted to pass. And needless to say, that was the end of that. So she moved back into her mother’s flat about five months ago and even though she claims it drives her nuts being nagged at morning, noon and night, she doesn’t seem to have the slightest intention of ever leaving. Like she hasn’t actually made the link in her own head yet between her actions and their consequences.

Don’t get me wrong, I love the girl dearly, but if you were to look up ‘indolence’ in the Oxford English dictionary, chances are it would say ‘See Jules Ferguson’. She’s like a zenned-out, calm bubble of Que Sera Sera and believe it or not she’s perfectly contented to crash out at Audrey’s for the foreseeable future, living on cash handouts from her big brother. Oh and spending all her afternoons here, the minute Audrey’s safely out of the way and the coast is clear, thereby avoiding her as much as possible. A bit like weathermen on one of those old-fashioned clocks; one goes in just as the other one is coming out.

Anyway, I pour myself out a big mug of tea and follow her into the TV room, where she’s laid out a little picnic for herself consisting of last night’s leftovers plus a bag of tortilla chips. She’s also lit the fire, but then that’s the one household chore you can actually count on her to do. I’m deeply grateful though because in this house, with the high ceilings and ancient hot water pipes, even with the heating on full-blast, it rarely gets warmer than a degree or two above freezing. Ellen DeGeneres is on TV in the background, interviewing some teen queen about her latest movie and Jules plonks down in her favourite armchair, eyes glued to the screen.

‘So,’ she says, taking a fistful of tortilla chips and stuffing her face with them. ‘Tell me all about your audition. Is it a half decent part? And by that I mean…is it worth elevating my vision from the TV for?’

I bring her up to speed on all developments in my life, debating in my mind whether I should tell her the full, unexpurgated truth. Half of me thinks what the hell, she’ll find out soon enough anyway, but the other more rational side of me thinks, no, this isn’t fair. Not till I’ve spoken to Dan. If I ever get to speak to him, that is. So I skirt around the truth and just give her the bare skeletal outline of the story.

But if I thought she’d be impressed, I was wrong. All she does is flop back onto the armchair, still munching tortilla chips, and deep in thought.

‘Shit on it anyway,’ she eventually mutters. ‘I just realised something deeply unpleasant.’

‘What’s wrong?’

‘If you get this, and if they’re only looking at three other actors, then let’s face it, you’ve got a thirty three per cent chance…then…just think…you’ll be gone all day when you’re rehearsing and then gone all night when the show is playing, won’t you? Tell me the truth, Annie, what does your gut instinct say? Do you think you’ll get the gig?’

‘Probably not.’

‘Don’t say “probably not”. That worries me. What’s wrong with ordinary “not”?’

I can’t help smiling at her. You should see her, looking at me all worried, with the innocent expression and the big, saucer-black eyes. Honest to God, for a split second, she looks exactly like she did when she was about twelve years old.

‘Because if you did feck off to Dublin,’ she goes on, playing with a pig tail, ‘that means I’d be stuck here on my own, without you, doesn’t it? Bugger and double bugger it anyway. You’ve no idea what it’s like here when you’re not around, Annie. Between the Mothership with all her little turns and Lisa Ledbetter and her whinging, this house is like an open casting call for One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. I’m not sure that I could handle it without you. Perish the thought, but if that were the case, then I might actually have to do the unthinkable and…pause for dramatic effect…go out and get a job myself.’

Vintage Jules. The first question she’ll always ask when faced with a new set of circumstances is…hold on a minute, let me have a think. Now how does this directly affect me?

‘Well, it may not even come to pass,’ I say, taking a sip of tea and trying to plumb the fault line in my heart to gauge my own reaction if it didn’t happen. Or, even more unthinkable, if it did. Oh God, just the thought of what that would involve instantly makes me break out in a cold, shivery sweat.

But Jules is already gone off on a tangent.

‘Well anyway, lucky for you, though, Annie, there’s no need to feel guilty, because as it happens, I do have an ace up my sleeve. You know how Dan’s been on at me lately about cutting my allowance unless he sees me at least out looking for some kind of work? Well, I had a brainwave last night. While watching a repeat of Britain’s Got Talent, when I get all my best inspiration.’

‘Ehh…let me guess. You’ve decided to become a pop star and you’re going to go and audition for Simon Cowell and Amanda Holden? Isn’t it a prerequisite that you have to at least be able to sing first?’

‘No, I’m going to use my own talent, you gobshite. I’m going to become an author. I’ve even got the title for my first book all worked out. It’s a loosely autobiographical story, based on the life of a stunningly beautiful, gifted nineteen-year-old girl, who’s just dropped out of college and is forced through cruel economic circumstances into living with her nut job of a mother in a tiny little backwater, in the back arse of nowhere. It’s called I Love You, But Please Die. So whaddya think?’

‘I honestly don’t know which of us is worse. You for dreaming up this crap, or me for listening to you. Although I will say this: if you did turn to writing, it would certainly put that over-active imagination of yours to good use.’

That’s another thing about Jules – she’s famous in the family for being the greatest exaggerator this side of Heather Mills. When she was a kid, she was forever getting into trouble for telling tall tales. Famously, on her first day in primary school she told her entire class that her parents were circus performers; that her mum was an acrobat and her dad could tame lions. When the truth came out, that her father was actually the local vet and her mum was a housewife, she never batted an eyelid, just said that her dad used to be a lion tamer but now looked after sick animals, while her mother was forced to abandon her acrobatic career through injury. Psychologists say that most kids tend to grow out of this carry on by the age of six, but Jules is now nineteen and still hasn’t.

‘Well, missy,’ she says, glaring at me, ‘if you’re going to disappear off for…how long? Couple of months I’m guessing? Then the pressure will all be on me to find work. So if you think about it, it’s all your fault, abe. Feck you anyway for getting a smell of a job. Now I’ll have to run out and get my debut novel published or everyone will think I’m a complete and utter loser. How long will your show run for anyway?’

I don’t answer. Instead, I busy myself tidying up the little picnic Jules has littered around the TV room floor and try my best to tune out her question. Like I say, until I talk to Dan, it’s just not fair to confide in his family first.

But Jules smells something and is straight onto me.

‘Annie? Why won’t you answer me?’

Again, I ignore her and focus on picking up loose kernels of popcorn strewn all around the armchair where she’s sitting.

‘Are you aware that right now your face is flushing like a forest fire?’ she insists tenaciously, like a dog that’s just picked up the faintest scent of blood.

‘You know, as a little treat for us, I went to Marks & Spencer when I was up in Dublin and bought some of the gorgeous beef in a black bean sauce they do. Do you fancy some for dinner?’

‘Hello? Earth to Annie? Can we stick to the subject at hand please? Is there something you’re not telling me? Something about your play?’

She even lowers down the volume on the TV, so there’s no avoiding her question. Then suddenly, she clamps her hand over her mouth and gasps, horrified.

‘Christ Alive, don’t tell me there’s full frontal nudity in the show and you’re too mortified to let on!’

‘No, there is absolutely, categorically no nudity whatsoever. Now would you just go back to doing what you do best – watching daytime TV and let me get dinner started?’

‘Annie…’ she says threateningly.

‘Or if you don’t fancy the beef, I’ve the makings of a nice chicken casserole. What do you say? I know a day isn’t over for you unless you’ve eaten an entire alphabet full of additives, but do you fancy eating something with an actual vitamin in it for a change? Instead of just another bag of tortilla chips, that is.’

‘Piss off, I’m stress eating.’

‘You? Stressed? You never gave a shite about anything in your life.’

‘Stop changing the subject. I know right well when I’m being fobbed off…’

‘…and maybe you’d like a healthy fresh salad with dinner? Maybe?’

‘Bitch! You tell me the truth this minute or I’ll break your nose with my bare forehead…’

‘Lovely talk. Where’d you pick that up, living with your mother?’

‘Annie! You know I’ll wheedle it out of you sooner or later, so you may as well tell me now, while you have my undivided attention. Now, quick, before Home and Away starts.’

I sigh so deeply it feels like it’s coming from my bone marrow, knowing right well that the game’s up.

‘You’re just not going to let this go, are you?’

‘Not a snowball’s chance in hell.’

Right then. I slump back down onto the sofa beside her. I hadn’t wanted to tell anyone ahead of Dan, but then I figure…knowing him, it could be a full twenty-four hours before I actually manage to nail him down. Plus I honestly feel like I’m carrying around the third Secret of Fatima – it’ll be a relief to get it off my chest. Not to mention a good dress rehearsal for what’s to come.

So I tell Jules the truth. The whole truth and nothing but.

There’s silence.

I didn’t expect silence.

Suddenly it’s like all the life and energy has been completely sucked out of the room. I look at her expectantly and she looks at me and I honestly think I’ll fling one of Audrey’s revolting china shepherdess figurines into the fireplace if she doesn’t say something.

Eventually she speaks.

‘Right. That settles it then. I’m getting wine.’

In a single hop, she’s up and over to the drinks cabinet and pouring us out two oversized glasses of Merlot. I don’t argue. I need the drink just as much as she does. If not more.

‘OK,’ she says, handing me the wine and simultaneously taking the mug of tea away from me, like it’s suddenly become poisonous. ‘So I may not like what you’ve just told me, but feck it, you’re like the only normal person in my daily orbit and if it’s the last thing I do, I’ll find some way to help you deal with this. So, let me just tap into my amazing powers of insight here.’

‘Ehh…sorry, did you say your amazing powers of insight?’

‘Yeah, that’s right. I’d use them on myself only it just so happens that I don’t have any problems.’

I fling a cushion at her which she neatly catches, then uses to balance her tortilla chips on.

‘Right then,’ she says assertively, sounding more adult-like than I think I’ve ever heard her. ‘Let’s start by doing pros and cons, will we? OK, I just thought of one. Pro: you’ll probably be dead in like, another fifty years, so chances are it won’t even matter.’

‘That’s your idea of a pro? Jaysus, I’m really looking forward to hearing the cons.’

‘Con: you have to tell Dan. And good luck with that, love.’

‘I tried telling him this morning, but then you know what it’s like trying to get him on his own. I might as well try to…’

‘Nail jelly to a wall, yeah I know. Funny but I thought he was only like that with me whenever I was trying to wheedle money out of him.’

She’s slumped back in the armchair now, long legs dangling over the side, frowning deeply and playing with her pigtails. All her little-girl mannerisms totally at odds with the glass of wine in her hand.

‘Pro,’ she goes on, taking another slug of the wine, ‘you may not even get the job in the first place, so is there really any point in bothering to mention it to him at all? You might only end up worrying him over nothing.’

‘No,’ I say, shaking my head firmly. ‘It wouldn’t be fair not to tell him. Aside from the fact that I physically get heartburn when I try to keep secrets from anyone. It’ll be unpleasant in the short-term, but it’s got to be done. Besides, you know what he’s like. The whole way back from Dublin this afternoon, all I could think was…if this did happen and if things actually went my way for once…I wonder if he’d even notice that I wasn’t around any more?’

‘I take your point,’ says Jules, nodding sagely. ‘There’s every chance you could take the job, disappear off and he’d barely even cop that you weren’t here.’

I throw her a grateful smile. God, it’s so lovely to talk to someone who understands exactly where I’m coming from. Really understands that is, as opposed to telling me what a lovely husband I have and how lucky I am to be married to such a hard-working man with such a strong work ethic who always puts his job first and blah-di-blah.

‘Oooh, here’s a thought. You could always just leave a note behind, saying that you’ll explain it all to him on your deathbed.’

‘Serious suggestions only, please.’

‘I was being serious. You’re a living saint to have put up with everything that you do round here, Annie, I really mean it. Remember the anniversary? You were so patient with him. I think I’d have flung my stuff into a suitcase, jumped into my car and headed straight for the nearest motorway after that episode.’

I shudder a bit just at the memory. The anniversary she’s talking about wasn’t our wedding anniversary by the way, but the anniversary of when we first got engaged, oooh, what feels like about two hundred years ago, when we were both just twenty-three years old. It was early December and at the time, we were in New York on holiday, in the dim and distant days when we still did romantic couple-y things together. Dan had just passed his finals in college and I’d just finished my first, proper acting gig at the National, my big breakthrough role, so this was like a double celebratory trip for us. We were young, we were in big love, in proper astonishing movie love and it honestly felt like the world was our oyster.

Anyroadup, one night we went ice-skating in the Rockefeller Center…that is to say, Dan was ice-skating while I was clinging onto him with one hand and onto a railing with the other, petrified I’d fall. And it started to snow very lightly and he turned down to kiss me and…well, that’s when he proposed. Completely spontaneously, totally out of the blue and yet if he’d stage managed the whole thing, the moment couldn’t have been one iota more flawlessly perfect. Even the snowflakes gently showered us, as though on cue. And it was just so unbearably romantic that ever since, that’s the date we’ve always celebrated as opposed to our wedding anniversary. December the first.

So this year, given the ridiculous hours he’d been working and the fact that we’d barely spoken to each other in I don’t know how long, I really made the effort and pulled out all the stops. I booked dinner for the two of us in Marlfield House, a stunning five-star country house hotel about fifty miles from here – one of those super-luxurious places where the staff all call you Madam and even the cushions have cushions. Not only that, but as an extra surprise, I even booked an overnight stay there for us too. That way neither of us would have to drive home and so it really would be like the second honeymoon the two of us so badly needed. All proudly paid for from my humble book shop earnings, so he couldn’t back out of it by saying it was too expensive for us either.

Anyway come the big day, Dan was out doing TB testing, a laborious, time-consuming and ongoing part of his job, so I went ahead of him to Marlfield House in my own car so as not to waste the day, arranging to meet him there in good time for dinner. But…disaster: he got a last-minute emergency call to deliver a foal on a farm a good forty miles away and wasn’t able to make it, leaving me at the hotel all alone and all by myself. Stood up by my own husband. Not his fault of course, but then it never is, is it? And it’s impossible to have a row with Dan, ever. He’s just way too reasonable and always takes full blame for everything himself, in a sort of row-avoidance, pre-emptive strike.

Completely and utterly pointless my even getting upset about it – this is the life of a country vet and by extension a country vet’s wife. This is what I signed up for. Of course I understood and didn’t get annoyed…sure how could I? And what was I going to do anyway? Get snotty because Dan works hard at a job that’s pretty much twenty-four-seven?

But it left its fecking sting all the same.

Suddenly I’m up on my feet, pacing. Dunno why but I can’t seem to sit still any more.

‘This evening,’ I say firmly. ‘For better or for worse, I have to tell Dan this evening. Even if I have to throw his mobile phone into the fish tank and physically grasp his head between my two hands in a vice grip to get his attention.’

‘Hmmm, I know what you mean,’ says Jules, wolfing back a bag of nachos now. ‘Terrible pity you’re not a sick animal, isn’t it? You know Dan, he can’t resist the scent of the wounded.’

I nod, knowing only too well what she means.

‘Tell you something though, Annie.’

‘What’s that?’

‘This could just be the fright that he needs to put manners on him. You know, when he realises that you’ve actually got a life and a career of your own outside of here. God knows, you’ve made enough sacrifices for him these past few years, and you get sweet feck all in return. If you ask me, he totally takes you for granted and never once have I heard you complain.’

She gets absolutely no argument from me on that score.

‘So,’ Jules goes on, stretching her long legs out towards the fire, ‘maybe this’ll be just the kick up the arse that he needs. I mean, when you tell him that you’re not prepared to sit around and play the surrendered wife any more. Hey, I don’t suppose there’s any chance I can stay and watch?’

Unsurprisingly, I do NOT let her stay and watch. Come eight o’clock, there’s still no sign of Dan, quelle surprise and it turns out Jules is meeting up with one of her pals from college, who lives in Lismore village not too far away. So I wave her off, full of promises to report back the full, unexpurgated transcript of my Big Chat with Dan later on.

It was my full intention to wait up for him, so he couldn’t head straight for bed without saying two words to me, like he normally would. But by half eleven, I’m stretched out on the sofa in front of the fire with the TV still on, out for the count and utterly drained after all the hoofing up and down to Dublin earlier today.

The dogs are the first to wake me; Dan often takes them out with him on farm calls and they always go bananas whenever they get back home. So the minute I hear barking and paws scratching to get through the living room door, I’m groggily hauling myself up, all set for the almighty show-down.

‘Dan?’ I call out, sleepily stumbling to my feet, ‘I’m in here.’

Our three Labradors are first into the room, jumping and slobbering all over me as I pet each one in turn. Then I look up…and there he is, filling the door with his huge, broad-shouldered, hulking frame, still wearing the giant, oversized wax jacket he wears out on farm calls and looking more exhausted than I’ve seen him in months. Honest to God, the dark circles lining his face are now exactly the same shade of black as his eyes.

‘Hey, you’re still up?’ he says, in a voice flat with tiredness. ‘I thought you’d have been in bed hours ago.’

‘Emm…yeah, I…. well…I wanted to talk to you,’ I say, with a highly inconvenient knot suddenly appearing in my stomach. ‘How did you get on today?’

‘Oh same old, same old,’ he says, coming in towards the fire for warmth, as ever, the room suddenly seeming smaller just because he’s in it. He’s left his Wellingtons in the hall but even in stockinged feet, he still towers over me by about a foot and a half. He brings the cold outside air into the room with him and smells of the outdoors: horsey and leathery. Unsurprising, given that he’s been on an equine farm for the past sixteen hours. Must be raining outside too because his thick, black hair looks damp as he runs his hands through it, trying to dry himself out a bit.

‘I was up at Fogarty’s most of the evening – Paul insisted I call over a second time, after I’d done the rest of my calls. But all is well, I think. I did another endoscopy on the filly and there’s nothing sinister. He’s just panicking because she won’t be fit for the flat season, that’s all.’

I smile up at him and change the subject.

‘Hungry?’ Good tactic; a full stomach will possibly make him more amenable to what I have to say.

‘No thanks,’ he yawns, ‘I’m just so, so tired. But James has taken the phones now, so at least I can crash out for a bit. I’ll just feed the dogs then get to bed. Early start tomorrow, you know yourself.’

It flashes through my mind how polite and passionless our conversation is. More like two flatmates who hardly ever see each other than husband and wife.

‘I’ll look after the dogs, don’t worry, but before you do go to bed, Dan, there’s something we really need to talk about.’

‘Could we leave it till later? I doubt I can take too much in right now.’

He’s half way out the door and I know this is the only chance I’m going to get, so I go for it.

‘Dan, remember I told you I was up in Dublin today for an audition?’

‘An audition? Really? You never said.’

I let that go on the grounds that the guy is practically sleepwalking with sheer knackered-ness and has probably even forgotten talking to me this morning. Chances are I’m just a big, blurry shape to him now.

‘Yes, I was and I don’t know how it went but, well, you know how it is. I just have to wait by the phone now. Oh…and say a lot of novenas,’ I tack on lightly, smiling nervously.

‘Well…best of luck. I hope it all works out for you.’

Another massive yawn from him as he winds up the conversation and makes to go upstairs.

‘Dan, that’s not the whole story.’

‘No, no, I’m sure it’s not…but can’t you tell me about it tomorrow?’

For a second my heart goes out to him; the guy is physically swaying on his feet with exhaustion right now.

‘Dan, I’m sorry, but no, this won’t wait any longer.’

OK, now I have his attention.

‘Well, what is it? Some big movie role or something?’

He’s starting to sound a bit narky now, like I’m delaying him from precious sleep time.

‘It’s a play, a new play that’s on in the National in Dublin. One of the actresses is pregnant and has to drop out, so I’d be taking over from her. If I landed the part, that is.’

‘Hey, that’s terrific…well, let me know as soon as there’s news.’

‘And…you see…there’s something else too. Something important.’

OK, now I’m learning a big life lesson. Namely that when on the brink of a potentially volatile conversation with one’s other half, never EVER leave the TV on in the background. Because it has the power to throw the oddest curve balls into the mix. Right now, there’s some late-night American soap opera on TV where a wife is having a showdown with her husband and is telling him she’s leaving him.

‘I am sick of this marriage and I’m sick of being taken for granted!’ the wife is yelling at the top of her voice.

‘So what’s that then?’ Dan asks politely enough, but with ‘then can I please go to bed?’ practically etched across his forehead.

‘I’ve had enough of the way you ignore me!’ screams the TV, as I fumble around for the right words. Shit, and I wouldn’t mind, only I’d rehearsed this in my head about a dozen times this evening.

‘Well, you see, if I were to get cast…’ I start, gingerly picking my words.

‘Do you understand? You are so emotionally unavailable to me and I’ve taken all I can of this. There’s only so much neglect a person can put up with!’ fed-up TV wife is still yelling in the background. I rummage around the sofa for the remote control to switch the shagging thing off, but of course can’t find it.

‘…the show wouldn’t actually be running at the National,’ I say, gathering a bit of momentum now.

‘And, after years of putting up with the way you treat me, I’ve had enough of you and your white silences and it’s time you heard a few home truths,’ TV wife continues to screech, as I root under the armchair cushions where Jules had been sitting earlier, still searching for the remote. No joy, so I just lunge for the telly to switch it off manually. But not before TV wife gets in the final clincher: ‘Because I’ve sacrificed my own life and career for you and get absolutely nothing in return. I’ve barely had as much as a sentence out of you in months, years in fact. We’re not man and wife any more – we’re barely even on speaking terms. So now you leave me no choice but to walk out that door and never come back, do you hear me? Enough’s enough…I’m leaving you and you’ve got no one to blame but yourself!’

‘Annie, I’ve just worked a fifteen-hour day, in yet another month of fifteen-hour days. I’m this close to collapsing with sheer exhaustion. Is there any chance you’ll just stand still for two seconds together and tell me whatever it is that you’re trying to tell me?’

Deep breath. Stay calm. And remember it’s not like I even have the job yet.

‘What I’m trying to tell you, Dan, what I’ve been trying to tell you since this morning, is that if I got the part, I would be going to Broadway. To New York.’

My mouth frames each and every word. And suddenly the fireplace is at the oddest angle.

‘But hey, that would be terrific for you…you love New York…’

‘You haven’t heard the whole thing…’

‘Which is…?’

‘Which is…that I’d be gone for one full year.’

First sparks.

I was barely twenty-four hours at Allenwood Abbey when one accepted fact was drummed into me as received wisdom; namely that my dorm-mate and New Best Friend, Yolanda, fancied the actual knickers off Dan. It seemed that everyone knew, even, it could only be presumed, the guy himself.

As it happened, the following day he and I were sitting together for my very first class – as bad luck would have it – maths. By a mile my worst subject. Yolanda had warned me that Miss Hugenot, the teacher, had a weepingly annoying habit of picking on any poor unsuspecting moron whose concentration she suspected might have drifted out the window, then hauling them up to the whiteboard to write out trig equations. In full.

Anyway, in clattered Miss Hugenot, dumping a pile of uncorrected homework on her desk, before standing imperiously at the top of the class, surveying us all down her long, thin, aquiline nose. I later discovered that she was a perfectly humane woman, but to the terrified, fifteen-year-old me on my first, proper, full day, she might as well have been the Wicked Witch of the West minus the green face-paint, the broomstick and the dum-di-dum-di-dum-dum music in the background.

Please dear Jesus don’t let her pick on me, I semaphored shyly across to Dan, who just grinned back confidently with all the calm of someone who was well able to understand the finer points of differential calculus; not least what the shagging thing actually meant. But then, as I was later to learn, Dan’s one of those rare people that maths comes easily to; for him, doing a long equation is a bit like sinking into a nice warm bath.

‘So, let me guess,’ he whispered, registering my panic and twinkling kindly down at me. ‘Either you don’t know the answer or…could it be that you haven’t done your homework?’

‘Ehhh…both,’ I hissed back. ‘I meant to, it was just that last night…’

‘Your dorm-mate kept you up chatting half the night?’ he guessed knowingly, the black eyes dancing.

‘Something like that, yeah.’

‘Sounds like Yolanda all right,’ he said, but kindly and not in any way putting her down.

Meanwhile the girl herself, seated two full rows ahead of us, had heard him utter the magic word…her own name…and turned around to beam suggestively and swish her blonde, freshly-washed locks at him. Now don’t get me wrong; I liked Yolanda very much, but even at this early stage I was starting to learn that she wasn’t much of a rules girl and didn’t for a single second believe that if a guy liked you, he’d find some way to ask you out. No, she was of the ‘take no prisoners and bludgeon a fella into submission until you eventually become his girlfriend’ school of thought. She smiled when Dan smiled and her eyes barely left his, like he was her magnetic North. And I just knew from the mildly inquiring look on her face that I’d have to relay every detail of the conversation I’d had with him back to her at lunchtime, omitting no detail, however trivial.

Then…to the soundtrack of a drumroll in my head for dramatic effect…came the dreaded phrase.

‘So,’ said Miss Hugenot, glowering at me with beady grey eyes that spotted fresh blood. ‘Let’s all hear from the latest addition to our class, shall we? Miss Annie Cole? Let’s see what they’ve been teaching you out in Karachi, then. Would you care to come to the top of the class and derive from first principles, x, x squared and x cubed, sin x, cos x and tan, from your notes? In full, if you please.’

Mike Sherry was on the opposite side of the class to me and, to a chorus of giggles immediately made this really annoying kissy-kissy noise that almost sounded like he was calling a horse, while I stumbled to my feet, trembling like jelly.

But that was all it took to distract Miss Hugenot. The full headlamps of her attention momentarily turned on Mike, to berate him for displaying such immaturity and in that split second and with sleight of hand that a professional magician would envy, Dan instantly switched copybooks with mine. So there was the answer, all perfect and neatly written and all I had to do was transcribe. Honour was saved and for the first time in my life, I was actually able to leave a maths class with my head held high.

Later on after class, as I was packing up to leave, Dan grabbed my arm and caught up with me as I stumbled off to try and find my next class.

‘Hey, wait…where are you headed?’ he asked me as I consulted an unintelligible map of the school.

‘Ehhh…room 201?’

‘Wrong way. Here, let me show you where it is.’

He took my books and strolled alongside me and to this day I can still remember the nervous, nauseous sensation of butterflies suddenly hitting my stomach. Bear in mind, I’d only ever been to all-girls schools before this and was totally unused to male attention, never mind the dense, sweaty atmosphere of sex that practically ricocheted off the walls at Allenwood. Sex and teenage pheromones that is, impervious either to open windows or deodorant. And now here was Dan, all tall and earthy and confident, utterly secure in his own popularity as only a captain of the school rugby team could be. The approximate size of a block of flats and so muscular he looked like he rowed everywhere. Handsome is such a Jane Austen-esque word, I thought, and yet it was the only possible adjective you could use to describe Dan Ferguson.

I tried to thank him for digging me out in maths class, but he just grinned and brushed it off. Then he abruptly changed the subject and asked me how I was settling in.

‘Great,’ I answered, trying my best to match his cool confidence. ‘Everyone’s being really friendly.’

That much was a polite, white lie; I was crippled with shyness back then, and the truth was that apart from him and Yolanda, I’d barely said two words to anyone else to date.

‘You must really miss your family though,’ he said gently, suddenly stopping in the packed corridor to look intently down at me. And I really do mean to look down at me – even at fifteen he was pushing six feet tall.

‘Very much,’ I nodded, ‘but I’ll see my mother at mid-term. And at Christmas, of course.’

‘She’s in…South America, isn’t it?’

‘Georgetown,’ I nodded, then stupidly tacked on, ‘in Guyana.’ By now people were starting to bang into us in their haste to get to the next class, but still Dan didn’t budge.

‘And your dad?’

‘Remarried. Lives in Moscow now. His new wife is Russian. I don’t really…that is, I don’t really see him all that much. In fact…I don’t see him at all.’

I think he must have guessed this wasn’t a subject I particularly wanted to be probed on, so he tactfully changed the subject back to Mum.

‘Still though, South America’s a helluva long way for you to travel to see your mother,’ he said, worry suddenly flashing into the coal-black eyes. ‘And then keeping in contact can’t be easy either. All those long-distance phone calls, emailing the whole time…’

‘Oh no, it’s absolutely fine, I’m well used to it.’

I might have sounded all sure of myself and blasé, but his quick mind seemed to read me accurately and he easily sensed the insecurity that lay beneath.

‘Do you have any other family here in Ireland?’ he asked kindly.

‘My grandmother…but honestly, I’m completely fine about Mum being so far away. As Yolanda pointed out to me, I’ve got to look on the positive side.’

‘Which is?’

‘She said I’m probably the only one in this school who can go home for the holidays and pick up a suntan at the same time.’

He smiled his gorgeous crooked smile at that, then changed the subject, saying that there was a big rugby match that Saturday in the school grounds against Clongowes Wood, a rival boarding school, and did I fancy coming along to watch?

‘I’m playing in it,’ he grinned and in that second I was utterly sucked into his easy, relaxed charm. ‘And believe me, if last night’s training session is anything to go by, we need all the support we can get.’

Course at lunchtime, Yolanda cornered me and didn’t so much ask as demand to know the exact nature and substance of what we’d been talking about. So I told her, correctly guessing that she wouldn’t like it.

‘He invited you to watch the match?’ she hissed, her blue eyes a beautiful study in wounded pride. Bless her, she’d been kind and welcoming to me; really bad idea to go pissing her off now. And given that I had a social circle that consisted of one girlfriend, the last thing I needed was to start making enemies.

‘Come on, Yolanda, he meant as friends, that’s all,’ I stressed. ‘He was asking me about my mother being so far away and just felt a bit sorry for me, that’s all. For God’s sake, it’s only a rugby match. Won’t half the school be there supporting the team?’

This mollified her a bit and by the time I reminded her that Dan was only being nice to the new girl, she’d finally started to cool down a bit. But not before impressing on me that Mike Sherry had expressed interest in me, that he was a sweetheart and that I’d be a right moron not to really, really, really consider giving him a whirl.

‘You know you really should give Mike a chance,’ Yolanda had said for about the thousandth time one evening during study time, as she stared out the window and through the lashing rain at Dan training hard on the rugby pitch, rolling around with the rest of the team and covered in shite. Incidentally, him at his happiest, I’d later discover.

‘You could do a lot worse than Mike, you know. Oooh, and just think; over the Christmas holidays, you and he and me and Dan could all meet up and go out together as a foursome! Wouldn’t that be, like, the coolest thing ever?’

Like I said, everyone knew that Yolanda and Dan were a couple just waiting to happen.

At Allenwood, it was accepted fact.

Chapter Four

Christmas Eve and still no word about the play. And Dan’s lukewarm reaction to the whole thing? ‘Look, you don’t actually have the job yet, so why don’t we just cross that bridge when we come to it?’ Cue him collapsing with deep exhaustion into bed for the next seven hours and that to date has been pretty much his one and only comment on the subject.

But deep down I know he’s right, of course. As of now I don’t have the job, so nothing for me to do but try and put it right out of my head. Which of course is like trying not to breathe. A few days after my first audition, Fag Ash Hil rang saying they wanted to see me for a call-back. Good sign. So up I traipsed to the National in Dublin: same drill all over again, with Jack Gordon sitting there cool as a fish’s fart and apologising for hauling me all the way from Waterford for a second time, then telling me, actually saying it to my face, that he still wasn’t any closer to making a final casting decision yet. That he needed to mull it over for a while longer and ‘give full thought to the chemistries between each of the characters’. So I was put through my paces all over again and now there was nothing to do but wait it out.

That aside, I’ve got two secret Christmas wishes in my heart: one is that I’d have news about the job…whether good or bad…by Christmas. Because nothing on this earth is worse than the not bloody knowing. Not to be though.

Lizzie rang me yesterday, hung-over as a dog after the National’s Christmas party the previous night, to celebrate the show coming to an end, ‘prior to Broadway transfer’.

Funny, but just hearing her stories about the mad piss-up they had, then how they’d all staggered into Lillie’s Bordello and stayed there till five in the morning, made me stop in my tracks. Like I’d suddenly just got a flash of the parallel life I might have had, if I’d never married. Because you know, that might have been me…out on the tiles…celebrating a blossoming career…off to play Broadway for an entire year…

God, it might yet be me, I suddenly thought, if I get good news, that is. For a split second, I allow myself to get sucked into the fantasy, the excitement of not knowing what other wonderful work opportunities might come from playing Broadway…which American agents might come to see the show and maybe even take me on…then put me up for other big jobs…I mean, who could tell? Maybe even the ultimate dream might miraculously come about…that I’d somehow get a crack at a few movie castings too?

Then a stab of reality so sharp it almost winds me; that’s Lizzie’s future I’m describing, not mine. For the coming year, the world is her oyster and if I’m being honest with myself, I envy her from the very depths of my bone marrow. And right now, she’s out partying and having hangovers then staying in bed till the crack of lunch, like you’re supposed to when you’re twenty-eight and when you’ve absolutely no one else to answer to but yourself.

And here’s me, stuck in my mother-in-law’s house, listening to all her passive-aggressive little digs for not clearing out ash from the grate properly AND for using cranberry sauce out of a jar and not making it from scratch, like all Ferguson women have done for the last two millennia.

But then I’ve no choice in the matter. Because I’m married, aren’t I? With my husband of course, nowhere to be seen. Leaving me yet again feeling like I’m trapped in a cage of my own making, watching everyone else have fun in the outside world, through reinforced steel bars.

Lizzie, bless her, made the right noises on the phone, saying all the things you need to hear when waiting to find out about a job that could potentially change your entire life. That no news was good news for starters. Oh, and that Jack had taken himself off to London for a few days to accept some award, so chances were I wouldn’t hear anything till New Year and I’d just have to put it out of my head till then.

‘Though why in the name of Jaysus he bothered leaving town just to collect some award, I couldn’t tell you,’ she’d croaked down the phone to me in a just-out-of-bed voice, though it was well past three in the afternoon. ‘The guy has so many by now, I’m surprised he doesn’t have them up for sale on eBay’.

And so to my second Christmas wish: some alone time with Dan. Did you ever see a couple that needed it more? Now traditionally at the practice, we always host a little mulled wine and mince pies party on Christmas Eve, just after the surgery closes and before everyone drifts off their separate ways. We’re only closed till the twenty-seventh and of course, I’m cooking Christmas dinner for Dan and his family tomorrow, but I’m still hopeful that not only will Dan and I get to spend all of Christmas night alone together, but the whole of Stephen’s Day too.

I’ve totally spelt it out to him. I’ve told him that this is our bit of time, for us and for no one else. That this means an awful lot to me and that by God we were going to make the most of it. No work, no farm calls, no phones ringing, no half the town descending on the house, just him and me. A.L.O.N.E. That with a possible year apart hanging over us, surely he agreed that we had a lot to talk about? Course his mobile rang in the middle of my big speech, so I doubt he took in most of what I was saying, but still.

Point made. Cards laid on table.

Come Christmas Eve and I’m at The Moorings, frantically getting everything organised for said staff drinks party. I’d already decorated the house, even remembering to put up the Christmas tree in the exact spot ordained by Audrey year-in-year-out. Though why she doesn’t just put masking tape on the carpet to save her all the bother of whinging at me that it’s not in its precise place, I’ll never know.

Anyroadup, if I say so myself, the place looks terrific: the fire in the drawing room is blazing away, cheesy, cheery Christmas songs are playing in the background and the mulled wine is mulling. I think to take my mind off the play, I’ve been over-compensating by acting like Nigella on speed these past few days. By some miracle, I’ve managed to do all the shopping for Christmas Day and not forget anything, tidied the house from top to bottom and still found time to squeeze in an appointment to get my big bushy head of hair blow-dried straight for the holidays. Well, straight-ish, given that my hair actually grows outwards and not downwards. Not unlike Sideshow Bob’s in The Simpsons.

Come six pm and just as the last patient leaves the surgery, suddenly the drawing room seems packed with people: Dan, Andrew, James, the intern, Mrs Brophy yelling at everyone and of course Jules who’s been here all day, supposedly helping me, but who’s actually spent most of the afternoon slumped on a couch with a bridge of saliva between her knees and chin, watching It’s a Wonderful Life on TV.

The room is buzzing, everyone’s laughing and enjoying themselves and just as I’m racing around in my good Karen Millen LBD, topping up glasses and making sure everyone’s stuffing their faces with mince pies…surprise surprise…the phone in the hall rings.

Silence as we all look at each other and all you can hear is Shane McGowan rasping ‘Fairytale of New York’ in the background.

‘WHAT WAS THAT?’ yells poor, half-deaf Mrs Brophy.

‘Phone,’ says Andrew, pointedly not budging. ‘Must be a patient.’

Shane McGowan and Kirstie MacColl are growling out the bit where they call each other scumbags and maggots, while tension suddenly bounces off the four walls of the drawing room.

‘I’ll take it,’ Dan volunteers.

‘No, no, stay and relax, I’m sure whoever it is will understand that it’s Christmas Eve and that we’ve closed up for the holidays,’ Andrew smiles benignly. But it’s too late – Dan’s already out the door. I’m focusing on handing out mince pies and desperately trying to convince myself that this is absolutely NO indication of how things will be over the short holiday when the practice is closed and when Dan is meant to be taking a break.

Two minutes later, he’s back in the room, rubbing his eyes with the back of his palms, the way he always does whenever he’s really exhausted.

‘Everything OK?’ Andrew asks politely, glass in hand.

‘That was Beatrice Kelly,’ Dan replies and I know with absolute certainty what’s coming next. Beatrice is an elderly widow who lives on her own and is passionately devoted to her horses, which she treats almost like surrogate children. In fact, it’s a kind of joke around here that if there is such a thing as reincarnation, then to come back as one of Beatrice’s horses would be karma of the highest order.

‘It’s that hunter she had trouble with last week,’ Dan tells Andrew.

‘Oh, the hyperperistalsis case?’

‘That’s the one. Now she thinks it’s full blown colic and she’s panicking. Right then, sorry to break up the party, but I’d better get out there.’

I get a justifiable flash of irritation when I see that neither Andrew nor James as much as offer to go with Dan, but just sit there nursing their mulled wine, nibbling on mince pies and looking at him blankly. So, silently fuming, I dump down my tray of empty glasses and follow Dan down the freezing cold kitchen passage and out the side door.

‘Sorry about this,’ he says, pulling on a pair of Wellingtons. ‘But it’s all my own fault. I told Beatrice that if she had the slightest concern about that horse to ring me immediately. And you know what she’s like when it comes to her horses.’

I force my mouth into a stretched smile and utter the one phrase that pretty much summarises my life at The Moorings to date.

‘It’s fine, it can’t be helped.’

‘No, course not.’

‘I’m only sorry you’re missing the party, that’s all.’

‘I’ll be well back in time for Midnight Mass, don’t worry.’

I manage a genuine smile at this. Although neither Dan nor myself are the slightest bit religious, still Midnight Mass is the one time of year you can count on us heathens to cross the threshold of the local church. Useless pair of hypocrites, I know, but it’s just such a lovely service, with the kids singing carols and the big tree and most of the town there, half pissed.

‘I’m not a bit worried about the party,’ I say calmly, even managing to make myself believe it. ‘Sure we’ve still got all day tomorrow and the day after. Don’t we?’

I reach up to gently brush a tufty bit of his thick, black hair that’s standing upright on his forehead, then go to gently stroke his cheek, but he’s distracted and doesn’t respond.

And two seconds later he’s gone out into the dark, icy cold evening.

Half eleven that night and he’s still not back, so after I’ve tidied up the house, Jules and I walk to Midnight Mass on our own. Well, that is to say I walk and she staggers, having spent most of the evening knocking back approximately half a bucket of the mulled wine. I’m still hopeful that Dan might meet us at the church or even join us late during the service, but when we get there, there’s no sign of his mud-soaked jeep anywhere.

A sudden stab of worry: he shouldn’t have taken this long, should he? Maybe there’d been some kind of accident? So I call him but he doesn’t answer. Which only makes worry work like yeast in my mind.

By the time the choir get to Silent Night, Jules has fallen asleep and actually snores for the rest of the service.

Holiday = not off to a good start.

Christmas morning and the sound of a mug being plonked down on the beside table next to me wakes me up. It’s Dan, still wearing the same clothes he had on yesterday and looking more shattered than I think I’ve ever seen him. And older too; for the first time in the bright morning light I notice grey hair starting to sprout round his temples. All the ridiculous hours he’s been working finally taking their toll.

‘Hey, Happy Christmas, sleeping beauty,’ he says softly, sitting down on the edge of the bed beside me and rubbing his eyes exhaustedly with the back of his hands. ‘Made you some tea.’

‘Dan! Where were you? I mean, what happened last night? I was so worried…’

‘I know and I’m so sorry, love. It was all hours by the time I got back, so I just crashed out on the sofa downstairs so I wouldn’t disturb you. Believe me, I couldn’t get away any sooner.’

I haul myself up onto the pillows, waiting for the morning fuzziness in my brain to clear and for that two-second time-lag to pass before my thoughts come back into focus. Yeah, now I have it; he went to Beatrice Kelly’s farm last night, something about a colicky hunter.

‘Problem with the horse?’

‘Well, no, not really,’ he says, the black eyes suddenly miles away, full of concern. ‘I think the main reason Beatrice called me out was that she was feeling a bit lonely. You know how tough this time of year can be for anyone living alone. I think she just wanted the company more than anything else. I tried calling you but of course, no signal on my phone up there.’

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