This Charming Man (78 page)

It was easy to track Lola down. She wouldn’t confirm that she’d been seeing Paddy and – paradoxically – that was proofthat she had.

Feeling more and more stupid, I rang Palladian and told them I was out of the project. They kicked up but there was nothing they could do because the contract hadn’t yet been signed.

For the next two or three weeks Paddy continued to ring me and I never answered his calls – until one day, on some whim I didn’t understand, I did.

‘Just hear me out,’ he said, and although I hadn’t a clue how he was going to talk his way out of things, my curiosity – as always – was what did for me.

‘My office?’ he suggested.

‘Okay.’

‘I’ll send Spanish John.’

‘I’ll walk.’

Paddy’s assistant showed me into an empty room. He wasn’t even there waiting for me; I shouldn’t have come. I lit a cigarette, the flame of my lighter trembling, and decided to count to sixteen. (Why sixteen? No idea.) Ifhe hadn’t appeared by then I was off. One, two –

There he was. Firmly he shut his office door behind him and his presence filled the room.

‘Congratulations.’ I stood up. ‘On your forthcoming marriage.’

‘Look, I know.’ He looked abject. ‘But it doesn’t have to change anything, Grace. I don’t even love her,’ he said.

Much as I despised Leechy, I wondered how anyone could be so callous.

‘I’m a politician, Grace. I need a suitable wife. I’m sorry for not telling you personally. What happened was, I asked to see some rings, the jeweller leaked the story, it was out there before even I knew it. We can carry on as before.’ He had stolen closer to me, close enough to take the cigarette from my hand and put it in an ashtray. Softly he said, ‘Better than before. When are you going to put me out of my misery? I want you so much it’s killing me. Sleep with me, Grace, sleep with me.’

He put his hands on my hips and, bending his knees slightly, pressed his erection against my pubic bone and murmured into my ear, ‘That’s how you make me feel. Always, all the time.’ He whispered, ‘Think of us in bed together, Grace.’

Like I thought of anything else these days.

It was as ifI was hypnotized and I was suddenly certain that I was going to sleep with Paddy. The moment I had fantasized about for years was upon me. But why now? Now that he was getting married to someone else? That, strangely, was the reason. The shock news had showed me how much I wanted him.

We moved closer. The heat of Paddy’s breath was on my mouth. He was going to kiss me…
But Damien
… My body was opening in response to the look of intent in Paddy’s eyes. Almost swooning from his nearness, I closed my eyes, then his tongue was in my mouth and mine was in his and we kissed…
What about Damien…
? Paddy’s hand was on my breast, his fingers seeking my nipple, his body hard and warm against mine…

Damien
… My knees were buckling with desire – then in my head I saw Marnie, her face purple and swollen.

I opened my eyes and wrenched myselfaway. ‘No, Paddy, I’m not doing this.’

It came from no where. A slap with his open hand across my face, catching my eye socket with his ring. The force of it sent me staggering to the floor. I felt wetness beneath my left eye and for one humiliated moment I thought I was crying. It was actually a reliefto wipe my hand across my cheek and find it covered in blood.

‘You probably won’t need stitches,’ he said, almost like an apology.

‘How do you know?’ I said thickly. ‘You do this often?’

I’d intended to be sarcastic, but from the way he was considering me, as ifweighing up how much of a liability I was, I realized that actually, yes, he
did
do this often. Marnie might have been the first but there had been others since her. I gaped, then dropped my gaze because I thought it might be safer not to look at him.

‘Ifyou ever tell anyone,’ he said, ‘I’ll kill you. Okay? Okay?’ he said, louder this time.

I was mopping the blood off my face, astonished at its quantity and redness. ‘Okay.’

He knelt beside me; I thought he was about to help me to get up and I was preparing to shrug him away. With one hand he took my cigarette from the ashtray and with his other, clasped my wrist.

Our eyes met and after a freeze-frame of disbelief, I knew what he wanted to do.

‘No!’ Frenziedly I tried to scoot backwards across the floor.

‘Yes.’ He pinned me down, kneeling on my forearm, bringing the burning red tip onto the centre of the palm of my hand.

It was quick and terrible, immeasurably worse than I could have imagined. But more horrific than the physical pain, was that I’d been marked by him for ever.

I barely remember leaving his office. Out on the street I lurched on leaden legs through the crowds of Kildare Street and, without having consciously decided to, I gravitated towards the peace of Stephen’s Green where, incapable of anything else, I sat on a bench.

Everything had slowed down. All my thoughts were dragging.

I’m in shock, I realized. I’m in shock.

My face was still bleeding. Not pumping blood like it had initially, but there was a steady stream that kept using up tissues. I’d hold one against my cheek and a little while later I’d look at it and see that it was red and falling apart, then I’d get a fresh one.

How strange that I had a packet of tissues in my bag, I thought, feeling very faraway. I’m so not a packet-of-tissues person. But when I’d looked for them in my bag, there they’d been, like… like… little helping things…

My hand pulsed with pain, a shocking, somehow menacing pain, so severe that I thought I might vomit.

And then my rage came into focus, red and hot and thick, gathering might and viscosity. Fucking Paddy de Courcy. I was… sickened, quite literally
sickened,
by what he’d done to me. It was unbearably humiliating. He had used his superior strength on me and I hadn’t been able to do a thing about it. I’d simply had to take it.

But he was fucked now. As soon as I was able, I was going to hail a taxi and tell them to take me to the nearest cop shop – there was one in Pearse Street – and I was going to get him arrested for assault. He would regret having fucked with me, I promised myself, with bitter resolve. He’d be sorry he’d ever thought he could get the better of me. I wasn’t just some stupid girl who was so mad about him that she’d keep shtum.

I’ve never forgotten you, I’ve always known where you were working, I’ve always read your articles
. All that stuff he’d said when we were first working on the book, which had soft-soaped me into giddiness even while I wondered ifhe was just telling me what I wanted to hear, I was now certain was true. But instead of being flattered, I thought it was sinister.

Maybe he hadn’t cared about me when I was a teenager, but I was sure now that that time, eleven years ago, when I wouldn’t go home with him, had left a barb. Paddy de Courcy probably didn’t get turned down very often. Since then he’d probably regarded me as unfinished business. Not a priority – I wasn’t that important – but something on his back burner, a grudge to be avenged, ifthe chance ever presented itself…

Then I was on my last tissue. I couldn’t stay on the bench any longer. It was time to get up and make my way to Pearse Street.

I got to my feet and maybe it was because I was finally in motion, putting my thoughts into action, that I suddenly understood that I couldn’t shop
Paddy to the police. All the threats I’d made in my head were just bravado, because I knew the exact conversation I’d have with the desk sergeant.

‘
Why did Mr de Courcy assault you?’

‘
Because he was angry with me.’

‘And why was he angry with you?’

‘Because I wouldn’t sleep with him.’

‘And had you given Mr de Courcy reason to think you might sleep with him?’

‘Probably. Yes.’

I couldn’t do it. Not because I thought Paddy was in the right – far bloody from it – but because Damien would find out what had been going on. I’d lose him. And with that, I knew I was fucked. I had to suck it up. I had to take it. I had to keep my mouth shut.

I sat down again, feeling like I was going to rip open with helplessness and frustration and fuckedness. This is what it means to implode, I thought. This feeling of bursting but no relief. I clapped my left hand – the one he hadn’t burnt – over my mouth and shrieked into it. I screamed until tears burst from my eyes and my head began to clear and I saw what I had to do.

I had to go back to work.

No grand gestures. No taxi-hailing. No commands to be taken to the nearest police station. No ringing declarations that I wanted to report a crime.

I just had to do the do and act normally and go back to work.

But how am I going to explain my face? My hand?

What am I going to tell people?

What am I going to tell Damien
?

I tried to piece a story together. Someone bumped into me? Someone was running and came flying at me and knocked me over? But then I’d have fallen backwards, no? And hit the back of my head? Not the side of my face?

Okay, how about, someone ran into me from behind? Yes. Better. I’d have fallen on my face.

But how would that explain the burn on my hand?

I searched and searched in my head and eventually thought, Okay, how about this? I’d tripped on a loose paving stone, I’d tumbled and banged my face, I’d dropped my cigarette and my hand landed on it?

It was crap but it would have to do.

I tried it out on the motherly woman working in the chemist in Dawson Street.

‘Those footpaths are a disgrace,’ she said. ‘You certainly took a nasty tumble. The wound in your face might need a butterfly stitch. You should go to out-patients.’

No. It wasn’t that bad. I wouldn’t let it be that bad.

‘Could you just put a plaster on it?’ I asked. ‘Some Savlon and a plaster? Just to stop the bleeding.’

‘It’s up to yourself. I’m only saying it because I wouldn’t want it to scar, a lovely-looking girl like you.’

I would have wept at her kindness, ifI’d been that sort of person.

She wiped some antiseptic along my cheek. ‘You’re a brave one,’ she said. ‘I thought that would sting.’

It had, but I didn’t want to show it because – yes, I knew it was stupid – I felt Paddy would be winning yet another round.

‘Your cheekbone,’ the woman said. ‘It obviously took a hard crack there. It’ll bruise up in a day or so. Black and blue for the next week. Just so as you know. Cancel any photo-shoots!’

Back at work, TC, Jacinta and the rest of them weren’t exactly compassionate – they just found it too funny – but they blithely accepted the loose-paving-stone explanation. So by the time I saw Damien at home that evening, my story was smooth, well-rehearsed and obviously convincing because he was concern itself. He cooked dinner, he went out and got a DVD, he opened a bottle of wine and, after a couple of glasses, I became giddy with unexpected elation.

Damien and I were okay.

Damien and I had been saved.

I’d been so stupid. I’d been infected with de-Courcy-itis, I’d run the most idiotic, incredible risk, but it was over now, it had passed, and Damien and I were safe.

I wouldn’t think about what Paddy had done to me. I wouldn’t even let myselfbe angry. I would simply be grateful that I still had Damien.

The alarm clock rang and I woke with a jolt, plunged right into the horror of the previous night – the spectacular failure of the confrontation with Paddy, Marnie’s cold rage, Damien’s questions…

My entire body, even the soles of my feet, felt like it had been beaten
up. The adrenaline of the past few days had taken its toll. I stretched out a weary arm. Damien’s side of the bed was empty. It wasn’t even warm. He’d obviously reset the clock and left ages ago.

It felt like an omen.

In the cold light of day, I knew, full and terrible and certain, that Damien was going to find out about Paddy and me. I’d known it last night, but it seemed worse, truer, today.

Marnie was so angry, she’d probably tell Damien.

Christ, maybe she’d already told him? Maybe she’d called him at work? Maybe, even now, he knew? My heart almost seized up in my chest at the thought.

And if Marnie didn’t tell, de Courcy would. Again, maybe he’d already done it? After last night there was bound to be some sort of comeback from him. He would find some way to hurt me – to punish me – and the easiest thing would be to take away the person I treasured the most.

The whole appalling scenario played in my head like a horror film – Damien’s pain, his grief, his bitterness at having been betrayed by me. He wouldn’t be able to forgive me, I was certain of it. It was such a stretch for him to trust people and once that fragile trust was broken it couldn’t be repaired. I was panting, actually panting, with fear. This couldn’t happen. But I had no way of stopping it.

One thing I was sure of – I couldn’t let Damien find out from someone else. I’d have to tell him myself.

Maybe tonight?

But, oh my God, the thought of it…

I was trapped in a nightmare. And the thing was, this entire situation, it was no one’s fault but mine.

I’d made it happen, hadn’t I? Quite apart from my carry-on with Paddy, I hadn’t had to get involved when Damien told me about the
Press
and their story about Dee, had I? I didn’t have to appoint myselfas Dee’s unofficial investigator. I didn’t have to start poking my nose into secret newspaper deals. I didn’t have to start rounding up Paddy’s old girlfriends.

But I had.

I liked Dee, I admired her, and any sort of injustice fired me up. But, when the chips were down, what was Dee to me?

A connection to Paddy, that’s what she was. Probably the reason I’d asked to interview her all those months ago; why I’d been so pleased when
she invited Damien and me over for off-ends pasta. And definitely why I’d got embroiled in this political skulduggery.

But what the hell was wrong with me? I’d had the audacity to get irritated with poor Marnie’s long-lived attachment to Paddy, but was I any better? I
knew
what he was capable of, and I still thought I could take him on. And now – big surprise – my life had blown up in my face.