The Break Read online

  Then came the night he’d arrived at the front door of my mean flat in Streatham, bearing a giant muffin and a hot chocolate kit.

  We’d been together that entire week – me, my assistant, my client, his colleague, the voiceover artist and Hugh, all crowded into the attic studio. It was a challenging campaign and we were on a deadline, living on Haribo and Diet Coke and taking turns to run down to the newsagent to replenish supplies. By then I was openly happy whenever I was around Hugh, even though whatever there was between us remained unspoken.

  That evening it was time for me to leave before Hugh had finished the daily edits and I needed to hear them to prep for the following day’s work.

  ‘Go,’ Hugh said. ‘Pick up your daughter. You want me to bike the tapes round when I’m done?’

  So I gave him my home address. And could you blame me for wondering if something might happen? A man calling around to a colleague’s home is generally considered creepy, but when he appeared at my door, I thought, Here we go, I’m ready. Then he gave me the tapes and the goodies and went away, leaving me mute with disappointment.

  Two days later, we finished up that campaign and, because it ended a few hours earlier than expected, we all piled into the pub. For once I was able to stay – I’d booked a childminder, anticipating that I’d be working into the night.

  These were all things I took as signs that the planets were in alignment.

  Latish in the evening, I encountered Hugh in the corridor. He’d come looking for me. He blocked my path, then backed me against the wall and said, ‘So.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So, Beautiful Amy, what are we going to do?’

  A charge zipped through me – this was finally happening. But my terms had to be laid down. ‘I’m not in the market for anything casual.’

  He took me by the shoulders and fixed me with those eyes, not smiling now, not smiling at all. ‘There are three things you need to know. I’m crazy about you. I’m serious about this. I’m loyal as a dog.’

  ‘Okay,’ I said.

  ‘Okay?’

  ‘Okay.’

  And, oh, that first kiss. Sweet and hot, like tasting a dark chocolate truffle. It lasted and lingered, the kiss that kept on giving, more thrilling and delicious than my most lascivious imaginings.

  The first time we went to bed together, he unwrapped me like a present, laid his naked skin next to mine, held me tight and hard, hard enough to hurt a little, and said, ‘You’ve no idea how long I’ve wanted this.’

  In those early days we had kissing sessions that lasted for ever. Wonderful as they were, they were a consequence of Neeve being around – sex happened nothing like as often as I wanted and kissing had to fill the gap. Hugh and I never got the chance, the way other new couples do, to spend our first few months lounging around in bed, enjoying long, lazy weekends of sex and papers and food and more sex.

  From the word go, we were corralled by responsibilities, first Neeve, and then, after only four short months, I got pregnant with Kiara. It was an accident: I was on the pill, something must have gone wrong, but Hugh absorbed the news with equanimity. ‘Maybe a bit sooner than ideal but kids were always part of the plan, right?’

  Then when Kiara was only two years old, we took in Sofie. (Joe had left Urzula when Sofie was still an infant and by the time she was three, neither Joe nor Urzula wanted to take responsibility for her.)

  Occasionally, regret bothered me for the carefree part of our relationship we never got to have. My concern was more for Hugh than for myself, but he always dismissed my apologies. ‘I love you. I love you.’

  And I believed him.

  11

  Sunday, 11 September

  ‘So I’ve booked my flight.’

  My heart begins to race. It’s Sunday morning, it’s gone noon and, surly and sullen, I’m still in bed, making my way through the papers because it counts as work, and as long as I’m working, it’s possible to pretend that my life hasn’t been entirely derailed. Every few minutes my phone beeps – the photo of Hugh with his magic towel has exploded Facebook – with texts, tweets and missed calls. I’ve seventy-one unread messages on Facebook Messenger – seventy-one!

  I’ll never read them. There’s probably a handful of true friends in there but the majority will be ambulance-chasers. I know this because – and God knows it’s not something to be proud of – it’s what I’d be like myself if, say, Genevieve Payne posted a thing about her husband going travelling. Agog. Yes. Utterly. And sending frantic texts to see if anyone else had the inside gen.

  It’s simply human nature – we mistakenly think there are only so many disasters to be allocated, and if it’s happening to someone else, we’ll be spared.

  Hugh has spent the morning cleaning the house. He, Neeve and Kiara have been all industry, banging, clattering, running taps and calling to each other. I suppose he’s trying to be nice, as if having an un-dusty lamp will be a great consolation to me during the six months he’ll be missing.

  I should be with the girls, showing them I can be depended on, but I want to punish Hugh while he’s still here to be punished.

  At one stage he comes to the bedroom door, looking prim and virtuous in a pair of Marigolds and carrying a basin of cleaning stuff. ‘Is it okay if I do our bathroom?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But –’

  ‘No, Stupid Face. Get out.’

  And now he’s back, with real news. ‘Dublin to Dubai to Bangkok.’

  As if I give two fecks about his itinerary. ‘When?’

  ‘Tuesday.’

  ‘Tuesday, the day after tomorrow?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  Oh, God. He really is going – and so soon.

  ‘Amy,’ he says quietly, ‘am I doing the right thing?’

  This is a surprise, a huge, good one. Hastily, I sit up and, trying to muffle any hope in my voice, I say, ‘You don’t have to go.’

  I’m sorry now I posted the thing of him with the towel. I’ll have to find some way of defusing it, but that’s the least of my worries.

  He sits tight and tense, clenched in on himself. For a long, long time he’s silent, and it’s hard to not jump in with suggestions and reassurances.

  Eventually he speaks. ‘Sorry. Just having a … I’ll be okay.’

  The disappointment is devastating. ‘You’re going?’ My throat feels swollen.

  ‘Yeah. But I’m scared stiff. Will I get mugged? Will I be lonely? Will people think I’m pathetic? A middle-aged man trying to relive his youth?’

  This is the part where I reassure him it’ll all be fine. ‘Before you’ve eaten your first banana pancake on the Khoa San Road,’ I say, ‘your passport will be stolen, your bank account will be cleared out by a prostitute who’s spun you a hard-luck story and you’ll find that you’re an accidental drug mule. You’ve seen the films.’

  He laughs, a little nervously. ‘And you’ll have to come and bail me out of jail.’

  I shrug. ‘What if I’ve met someone else and just decide you can stay there?’

  Another nervous laugh. ‘Amy, I promise I will come back.’

  Who knew? Maybe he was just leaving me via the scenic route.

  ‘Tuesday’s the thirteenth of September, so you’ll be back on the thirteenth of March next year.’ Oh, God, it’s so far away.

  ‘Or thereabouts.’

  ‘Thereabouts? No, Hugh. Don’t fucking “thereabouts” me. Be back on the thirteenth of March.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘Hugh, listen to me,’ I say urgently. ‘Even if you do come back, you’ll be different. And I might be different too. “Us” will be gone.’

  ‘Things might be even better,’ he says.

  In theory. Always assuming I can get past the jealousy. That I can live with the unknown parts of Hugh, the girls he fucked, the laughs he had, those six months that he spent living life to the full without me.

  ‘Don’t go,’ I say. ‘Please, Hugh, we won’t survive it. And don’t say th
at must mean we’re not strong enough right now. This is real life and this is me you’re talking to. Couldn’t you just wait it out?’

  ‘I’ve tried waiting it out.’

  ‘Wait a bit longer.’

  He shakes his head. ‘I can’t go on like this.’

  I curse the tears that fill my eyes.

  ‘I can’t go on like this,’ he repeats. ‘I’m so sorry, Amy.’

  ‘Facebook,’ I say. ‘Are you going to be posting pictures of you wherever you are? With … whoever you’re with?’ I have a vision of him around a beach campfire, looking tanned and young and carefree, surrounded by bikini’d babes wearing bandannas on their heads. ‘Because you can’t. Think of the girls – you can’t have them seeing … whatever … you know …’

  ‘I’ll stay off it.’

  ‘Fucking make sure you do.’

  ‘Amy, I’m sorry. For all of this.’

  ‘Oh, Hugh, just fuck off!’

  If only there was someone to talk to. There’s always Mum’s peculiar offer, to hang out and drink wine, but my world has been upended enough and I can’t be dealing with a mother who’s behaving wildly out of character.

  As if the universe has heard my need for a confidante, my phone rings. But clearly the universe is a little deaf because the person calling is Maura. Again. There are already three missed calls from her. Once the number goes above four, she visits in person, and that would be all kinds of bad. She might give Hugh a severe dressing-down and maybe he deserves it but it wouldn’t be helpful.

  I sigh and answer, ‘Maura?’

  ‘Are you okay? Any news on when he’s going?’

  ‘No.’ I can’t tell her yet. I’m not able for the drama.

  ‘You need to know that you’re being quite Scapegoat-y at the moment.’

  Maura’s done a course that explained the roles assumed in families with absent parents. Apparently there are five: Hero, Scapegoat, Enabler, Lost Child and Mascot. As Maura was so obviously the Hero, she was delighted with this assessment. Declyn, the youngest and cutest O’Connell, was our Mascot. She’s had trouble matching Joe, Derry and me to the three remaining roles but basically she thinks we’re all Scapegoats. Even Declyn was a Scapegoat for a while, when he came out.

  ‘If Hugh doesn’t go,’ she says, ‘I’ll withdraw my allegation. At the moment, we’ll call you Scapegoat-in-waiting.’

  I might as well just make my peace with being Scapegoat-in-chief. ‘Bye, Maura.’

  ‘We’ll talk soon.’

  Sadly, we undoubtedly will.

  I return to my iPad and the Sunday papers. The Times has a big, positive profile on my client Bryan Sawyer, the British triathlete who’d been caught on camera earlier this year stealing teaspoons from Marcus Waring’s restaurant. Bryan had laughed off the teaspoon theft, claiming he’d done it as a dare. Then his ex-wife sold a story saying Bryan had form as a klepto, and had taken countless gingham napkins from Jamie Oliver’s restaurant. (She was photographed, looking sorrowful, at a twelve-seater dining table, with a Jamie napkin beside every place-mat.)

  A hotelier came forward: apparently Bryan had stolen two bath towels from him; then another hotelier accused Bryan of thieving seven wooden clothes hangers. A media storm ensued, Bryan’s sponsors dropped him, and he’d been in an awful state when he came to see me five months ago.

  Mercifully I’d liked him – he’s a damaged, vulnerable man who had a tough childhood – because, hard-up though Hatch may be, we don’t rehabilitate people who don’t deserve it. I’d painstakingly reconstructed his public life – charity work, a delicately curated social-media presence and a public admission of his klepto-quirk – and it’s unseemly to brag, but I’m killing it: two of his sponsors have re-signed him and today’s glowing article is an indication that my work is nearly complete. Several other papers are running mostly positive pieces in their later editions – some backlash will follow, it always does, but nothing that should impact.

  On any other day, my mood would be triumphant and there are probably a few congratulatory messages on my phone, dotted among the pebbledashery of rubbernecking, but it’s too risky to look.

  It’s not just professional pride I’m feeling about Bryan Sawyer, there’s also meaningful financial consolation: I’ll get a percentage of his sponsorship fees and, frankly, it couldn’t have come at a better time. Even without Hugh taking six months off work, money is tight. My income is unpredictable and there’s rarely very much left over after I’ve paid my share of the necessaries.

  Of course I’ll have access to our fast-reducing ‘nest egg’ while Hugh is gone … Such rage bursts in my chest. It was lovely having that money. Knowing that so many of the household problems would be dealt with was an indescribable pleasure, and now Hugh – fucking Hugh – is blowing it on a mid-life crisis.

  But is this unreasonable of me? It was his parent the money had come from. And Hugh had prioritized funds to put my niece through college because her biological parents have perpetual cash-flow problems and we’ve long given up asking for any. Also, his income is significantly higher than mine so he’s always contributed more than I have to our joint account and never once has he groused.

  The rights and wrongs of this are terribly confusing.

  I skim the rest of the papers, always scouting for business. Any celebrity who’s come a cropper and needs to be rehabilitated in the eyes of public opinion might be a potential client.

  But my head is melted so I fling down my iPad, lie back on the pillows and probe my tender feelings. It’s all too reminiscent of when Richie walked out. Back then, after some recovery time, my promise to myself was that I’d never again be that woman, yet here I am being that woman. Is this what life is all about? To bring us face to face with our worst fears until they no longer scare us?

  Could we possibly even be complicit, subconsciously, in their manifestation? Is that what I’ve done? Because floating in my head is a vague something, maybe a myth or a legend about people meeting their fate on the very road they took to avoid it. Clearly I’d thought that by choosing Hugh I’d escaped my fate of abandonment but – even though it’s taken a long time to happen – I’d chosen the exact person to replicate those circumstances.

  Well, that’s a bit of a sickener.

  Perhaps my position should simply be gratitude to have had more than seventeen happy years with Hugh. Lately there’s been a plethora of articles that say there’s no such thing as ‘The One’ any more, but a succession of ‘Ones’. That every relationship has built-in obsolescence, that sooner or later it’ll run out of road and then it’s time to move on to the next person.

  But contemplating that is just too depressing. Whatever is going to happen is going to happen, but why not defer the worry until it actually has?

  And everything might be okay. People get through worse. Far, far worse. Resilience of the human spirit and all that blah.

  12

  Seventeen years ago

  After I got pregnant with Kiara our lives changed with terrifying speed.

  ‘It’s time to go back to Ireland,’ Hugh said. ‘We’re a family now. We need to buy a place and we can’t afford London prices.’

  We couldn’t really afford Irish prices either – the boom was still going strong. But if house prices were astronomical, so were wages. Jobs in PR were abundant, as you’d expect in an economy crammed with gleeful people only desperate to spend their new-found wealth. (Which wasn’t real, but none of us knew that at the time.)

  Testing the waters, still very anxious about the hairpin turn my life was taking, I applied for two PR jobs in Dublin, and even when I ‘confessed’ to being pregnant, both companies were happy to employ me, let me leave to have Kiara, pay me for six months’ maternity leave, then take me back. Like I say, boomtown and that sort of thing so wouldn’t happen now.

  These days, my friends of child-bearing age, who work for any sizeable company, tell me that life is like a dystopian novel, one where women have to swallow thei
r pill in a public ceremony every morning in the workplace. (‘They watch you like a hawk. You can’t sneak off to puke from a hangover or put on even an ounce. If they suspect you’re pregnant, you’re immediately sidelined on to the worst project ever, to make you resign.’)

  When I asked Hugh what he thought of his chances of getting a job in Dublin, he said, ‘Should be no bother.’ Then he went a little shifty. ‘For a couple of years myself and Carl have been talking about setting up our own studio. Maybe now is the time.’

  ‘How would it happen?’

  ‘We’d get a bank loan.’

  ‘At the same time as taking on a mortgage? Wouldn’t that put a lot of pressure on us?’

  ‘We can manage it,’ he said. ‘Just about.’

  ‘Grand, right, okay.’

  ‘And another good thing about moving back to Dublin,’ he said, ‘is that with us both working, we’ll have a network of support from our families.’

  ‘With my family I’m not sure that’s a good thing.’

  He laughed. ‘C’mon, if we were ever stuck, Maura could pick up Neeve from school. If we limit her exposure to short bursts, she’ll survive the trauma. And Declyn can babysit, if we ever get to go out again. Then there’s my family.’

  Oh! Hugh’s family! They were lovely.

  His mum was warm, cuddly and a feeder; his dad was twinkly-eyed, easy-going and handy. He had a giant blue metal toolbox that opened out with accordion springs and within, organized with a logic and order that made my heart happy, was every tool anyone might ever need.

  He was the opposite of Pop – all the pictures in our house hung crooked, if they hung at all, gnarly tangles of wire sprouted ominously from broken plug sockets, and his attempts to fix anything invariably ended with him losing his temper, flinging the tool and the incorrectly sized nail or Rawlplug to the floor, shouting, ‘You useless hoor of a thing!’ and stomping away.

  Probably because of its age, things were always going wrong in our house – taps falling off, door hinges rotting, pieces of stucco falling from the ceiling into our dinner – but we learnt to not-see them. One winter, we also developed selective deafness. We’d be watching telly in the living room while the ancient radiator rattled as loudly as a jackhammer drilling into solid rock. The deafening juddering began every evening at five o’clock when the heating came on, but our solution was simply to turn the telly up to bellowing point because the alternative – Pop getting a spanner from the cutlery drawer, hitting the radiator with it until he’d managed to make everything worse, perhaps dislodging it from the wall and sending scalding rusty water spraying around the room (which happened when he ‘fixed’ the radiator in the hall) – was too much to contemplate.