Love Me Or Leave Me (15 page)

‘Of course, if you feel you’re unsuitable for what we have to offer at the hotel,’ she said gently, ‘then I completely understand. You can just walk out of here and forget about the whole thing and that’s absolutely fine. But if you don’t mind, can I just say one thing?’

‘Go ahead,’ Dawn said dully, focused on the china teacup in front of her, studying the pattern on it, like she might have to take a test in it later on.

‘Well, you’ve made it all the way here, haven’t you?’ Chloe said softly. ‘I know this must be hell for you, but you’ve come this far. So at least a part of you must have decided to go through with it. And your ex must want this too, surely.’

‘Too right Kirk wants this. In fact, everyone around me wants this.’

And without even realizing it, suddenly Dawn’s voice had choked up and the fat, salty tears that had been threatening ever since she first set foot in here were now starting to fall.

‘Shh, shh, it’s alright,’ Chloe said, instantly producing a Kleenex from up her sleeve and slipping a comforting arm round her bony little shoulders. Then she looked at her full-on, eyes full of concern.

‘It’s going to be okay, Dawn. And you’re going to be okay too. But you don’t have to go through with this, not if you don’t want to.’

‘Oh, Kirk and I will be going through with this alright,’ Dawn managed to get out through sobs muffled into the tissue. ‘Whether we stick it out here or not, we’re getting divorced. We have to, you see.’

‘No, you don’t! Not unless you both really feel it’s the right thing for you …’

Dawn took a deep breath and braced herself. ‘But you see, there’s something about our marriage I need to tell you first. Something you don’t know.’

Funny, Dawn thought. Wonder if my face went the exact same colour as hers, when I first found out the truth too.

Chapter Ten

Lucy.

Lucy was in foul, stinking humour and bloody hell, but did it show. All morning in work, it had showed, when a photographer she’d been shooting a commercial with bluntly told her, ‘You look like complete dog shit today, love. You’ve got bags under your eyes I could carry luggage around in and your skin’s like the surface of a pizza. Late one last night, was it then?’

Course, she’d told him where to shove it, but his words still bloody well stung.

Wasn’t even her fault. Well, not entirely. Lucy had a rare day off yesterday and had insisted on dragging her pal Bianca into Carluccio’s restaurant in town, ‘just for the one!’

Ha! World’s single greatest lie, she thought bitterly, popping yet another paracetamol from the plastic strip she’d rooted out from the bottom of her bag and knocking it back with a quick gulp of water. Anything to dull the crucifying, relentless hammering at her temples.

One glass of vino last night had quickly turned into one bottle of vino and blah-di-blah and on it went from there and before Lucy knew where she was, it was half one in the morning and she was drunkety drunk drunk. And of course, by then she felt on top of the world and in absolutely no mood to think about going back to Bianca’s flat, which she’d been staying in ever since … well, ever since.

Are you joking? Go home? The newly single Lucy Belter? The girl once known as Party Central? On the same Thursday night when there’d been a big international rugby match on and when the town was only crawling with hot French blokes? Not a bleeding snowball’s chance! So nothing would do for Bianca but to drag Lucy off to Lily’s Bordello, the buzziest nightclub in town, to cheer her friend up a bit while they partied on into the wee small hours.

Not a bad plan, Lucy had thought. Why not drink on and get chatted up by properly wealthy guys who didn’t necessarily have adult kids in the background, waiting to bleed him dry and piss all over her life in the process?

Anything to anaesthetize herself and keep her mind off the weekend to come and the whole ordeal that lay ahead of her.

She could barely remember what happened after Lily’s Bordello. All she knew was that she woke up the following morning with a thumping head, parched with thirst and the very real sensation that she could puke. Hauling herself up onto her elbows, she groggily groped around the bedside table for her mobile to check what time it was. She was utterly disorientated, then with a slow, sickening feeling, it dawned on her that she wasn’t even in her own bed.

Instead, she found herself in a strange hotel bedroom, with cheap nylon sheets that smelled like they hadn’t been changed in weeks, an overriding stench of damp and lampshades a delightful, lurid shade of psychedelic 1970s orange. Her breath stank like a brewery and – the cardinal sin for any model who happened to have a 9 a.m. photo shoot that day – still in full make-up from the night before. Even the pillow under her looked a bit like the Turin shroud, there was that much foundation and mascara caked onto it.

Worst of all though, she didn’t seem to be alone. Through the gloomy half-light she could just about make out the lump of a giant silhouette in the bed beside her. And it was breathing.

Shit, shit, shit.

She hadn’t, had she? Slowly, she slid her hand over to the other side of the bed and realized the lumpen shape beside her was bollock naked. Next thing, a stray hairy arm slid suggestively up her bare thigh and a French accent grunted, ‘You want to slide over to my side of the bed,
chérie?
You ready for some more?’

It took Lucy all of approximately four seconds to haul herself out of the manky bed, somehow grab her clothes and shoes from last night and get the hell out of Dodge. Christ, could this really be happening to her, she wondered, head pounding and tottering uneasily in heels as she did the long, slow walk of shame out of the dingy, two-star hotel that was more like a glorified hostel in a rough end of town, and scoured round trying to find a taxi.

This was the kind of carry-on she got up to in her early – her very early twenties, for feck’s sake! In a parallel life, she was supposed to be a happily married woman living in her beautiful home with a loving husband who adored her and maybe even a family of her own by now – not waking up in some kiphole of a hotel room with some bloke whose name she couldn’t even remember! Was this really what her life had become?

Worst of all though, the morning ahead was due to be crazy busy for her; she was shooting a commercial for some highly overpriced tooth whitening gel stuff and needed to be absolutely on the ball, efficient and looking every inch the job. But one good look in her little compact mirror told her she wasn’t near up for it.

She should have been more professional, she was someone who always prided herself on at least that. She should have known better. A lot better. But then last night, she hadn’t given two shites, had she?

Needless to say, the whole shoot was an unmitigated disaster from start to finish. The clients weren’t happy, the photographer was royally pissed off and as for the make-up artist? Lucy could have sworn he physically clutched his hand to his heart like a matron in an Ealing comedy, clad in twin-set-and-pearls circa 1950, when she’d eventually pitched up for work.

‘Can you at least try and make me look human?’ Lucy had pleaded with him groggily.

‘Ehh … just so you know,’ he’d said snippily, taking in how wiped-out and banjaxed she looked, with saggy, pimply skin and eyes more bloodshot red than blue. ‘This is a make-up brush here. Not a magic wand.’

Lucy felt it in her waters that it was only a matter of time before a call was put into her booking agent, to complain about her. Who wouldn’t? If she’d been the client, she’d have complained about herself too.

And to make matters worse, lo and behold, this was the very weekend she was scheduled to book in at that bloody divorce hotel. This evening was check-in. First time she’d have to be in the same room as Andrew since … well, she couldn’t bring herself to think about that one. Not when she was still so completely woolly-headed and ropey, it physically hurt to even try to put two coherent thoughts together.

But thank God for Bianca, that was all she could say. After Lucy had crawled back home after work, her kind-hearted pal took one appalled up-and-down look at her and shook her head in despair.

‘Oh Lucy, what have you done to yourself?’ she said, horrified. ‘I don’t want to know what happened between you and that French guy last night, but Jesus, you pull one more stunt like that again and the agency will fire your ass so fast, you won’t know what hit you.’

‘Don’t,’ Lucy groaned, her body physically aching all over. ‘Sorry, but I can’t listen to this. Not now …’

‘Into that shower immediately!’ Bianca ordered, ‘and I’ll put on some coffee to pour down your throat. Over my dead body are you going in to face Andrew in that sorry state. You’re about to head into the most intense weekend of your life and you need to be firing on all cylinders for this! Don’t worry, I’ll give you a lift into the hotel myself.’

‘You really don’t have to –’

‘Yeah, right, like you’re in any fit state to argue with me. If I put you in a taxi right now, you’d probably conk out in the back seat or else tell the driver to take you to the first bar you see. Jeez, the smell of stale booze off your breath! How many did you have last night anyway? And for God’s sake, do something with your hair! You need to let Andrew see you looking like a million dollars, so he’ll realize what he’s been missing out on! Sorry for the tough love, but the state of you now, the man will take one look at you and think he had a lucky escape. So what are you standing there waiting on? Into the bathroom, now!’

In absolutely no condition to argue, Lucy did as she was told and half an hour later, was clambering into the passenger seat of Bianca’s car, feeling if not exactly back to normal, then at least a tiny bit more human. Except of course now she was obliged to sit and listen to one of Bianca’s well-intentioned ‘little pep talks’.

‘Now you just remember everything we talked about and you’ll be absolutely fine,’ Bianca told her from the driver’s seat. ‘Keep your head held high and don’t forget the whole reason you’re here in the first place. Andrew Lowe and that family of his as good as destroyed you. God, it makes my blood boil every time I think about it …’

Not in fact, what had happened at all, at least only the tip of the iceberg. There had been so much more to it than that. Still though, Lucy nodded along and made ‘umm’ noises when appropriate, barely listening to a single word of Bianca’s advice, even though she only meant well. Couldn’t. Not today, not now. Not when all she wanted to do was crawl back under the duvet, knock back a glass of Merlot and tell the rest of the world to feck off.

‘And after all the misery his family made you suffer through, where did you end up?’

Pretty safe to say this was a rhetorical question.

‘Heartbroken and living out of a suitcase, that’s where! So this is it, love. You’ve got one single weekend to right a lot of wrongs and you can’t under any circumstances mess it up. And of course, it’s no harm to make sure you look utterly fabulous at all times and act like you’re in a good place and moving on with your life. Remember what Ivana Trump so famously said?’

‘Which was …?’ said Lucy, not looking at her, instead, desperately trying to freshen up her make-up in the tiny little passenger seat mirror.

‘Well, when she divorced The Donald, her advice to all women was “don’t get mad, get everything”. Now I hate to sound mercenary, and it goes without saying that you’re welcome to stay with me for as long as you like, but the hard cold fact is that you can’t live the rest of your life with no home to call your own. It’s not fair on you. You’ve got to give serious thoughts to splitting Andrew’s assets.’

‘Ehh, can I remind you that my soon-to-be-ex is about to be declared bankrupt? The man has nothing to split with me except debt and more debt!’

Even at that, Lucy shuddered to think how much worse things had got for Andrew since she last saw him. Sure, he’d once been wealthy, but he was a banker and a senior member of the Board at the Irish Banks Organization, which was basically how all their troubles had started. And it had been almost two months since they’d had contact of any kind. So how much further had his life free-fallen since then?

It broke her heart not being able to speak to him, but she’d been advised to communicate via her solicitor now, a Rottweiler of a woman who wanted to run all kinds of background searches on Andrew to see if he’d any hidden assets abroad. Big waste of your fecking time, Lucy had told her time and again, till she was blue in the face.

Firstly, even if he did, you can bet Alannah and Josh would have got their greedy paws on it by now and secondly, was it really worth all the bloody hassle? Anyway, Lucy had supported herself since the age of fifteen. And apart from a few recent blips, she hadn’t done too shabbily, now had she? Yeah, sure she wasn’t as young as she was, and maybe she wasn’t looking as fresh as she’d once done. But she was still well known and was still offered modelling gigs, even if they weren’t coming in as thick and fast for her as they had done back in her heyday.

Lucy was smart though, streetwise in the way the business went, and knew it was only a matter of a few short years at most before the tabloids starting labelling her ‘mutton dressed as lamb’. She’d had a good run, but snapping at her heels were another new crop of younger, hotter, fitter twenty-somethings wanting nothing more than to elbow her out of the way and move in on her turf.

Modelling was a piranha bowl of an industry like that and Lucy knew she was doing really well to still get offered work at all, at the grand old age of thirty-one. So, with grateful thanks to her booking agent, Lucy had lately started to diversify a bit.

She still had her regular slot on
Good Morning Ireland!
and now she’d been given her own newspaper column too, in the weekend pullout section of
The Chronicle
, advising anxious mothers of the bride about what upcoming Spring/Summer trends were, or else giving seventeen-year-old debs a few tips on the best (read: cheapest) places to shop for their big night.