‘Or that you’d overdose? I mean, yes, but we talked about it. You explained.’
‘What did I say?’
‘That you knew everything there was to know about addiction. That you needed the Ambien until the worst pain about Yara had passed, then you could stop. And then, what – a month or two later? – you did stop. Point proven. Oh, would you look at who it is! Piet! Hi!’
Ah, for the love of feck! Piet the Swinger, here obviously by appointment.
Claire hopped up and she and Piet kissed on the cheek, then exchanged a smouldering, silent stare.
Eventually Claire remembered that I was there. ‘… Ah, you know Rachel? My sister?’
And cover story, I wanted to say.
Poor Adam at home, thinking his wife was out ministering to the needy. When, in fact, his wife had kidnapped the needy, whisking them to a members’ club, a thirty-euro taxi journey away from their car, to provide a paper-thin veneer of plausibility for a meet with a slightly thuggish, shaven-headed, sexy-in-a-sinister-way man.
By way of a greeting, all Piet got from me was a smile-free rise of my chin. For a moment he seemed to be considering coming in for a double kiss but I killed it with a look.
It wasn’t that I was pissed off with Claire – I mean, Claire was Claire, great in countless ways but this stunt was straight from her playbook. The problem was that far too much was going on in my head. I simply wasn’t able to ignore the simmering sexual tension and soldier on with the production of small talk.
I managed to endure almost seven minutes of the bullshit before I left and got a taxi back to my car.
65
Thursday morning dawned bright and blue. On my drive to work, clumps of yellow daffodils blew in the breeze and newborn lambs were literally springing in the fields. The world looked sparkly clean and hopeful – but my head was dark.
So much had happened last night and the worst thing, the most worrying, was Claire saying I’d been taking tablets day and night. I mean, yes, I had – for a very good reason. But for the first time I could see things from Luke’s perspective: I’d been taking sleeping tablets, more than the prescribed amount and at the wrong times.
I saw my side and I saw Luke’s side.
I was in the right, but maybe he hadn’t been in the wrong?
Then I remembered Mia and changed my mind. He had definitely been in the wrong.
That whole episode had been horrible. The first inklings had come late one night, when Luke sauntered in home, giving off an unusually defiant energy.
‘Where were you?’ I asked.
‘With Mia.’
‘Mia?’ That was a surprise. ‘What were you doing?’
‘Me and Mia?’ He swung off to the kitchen and, uneasily, I followed. With an insolent smile over his shoulder, he said, ‘Talking.’
‘Talking?’ I was startled.
He’d got a block of cheese from the fridge, then slapped a couple of slices of bread on a plate.
‘You and Mia were talking?’
He looked up from the sandwich he was making, stared me in the eye, literally stuck his tongue in his cheek and said, ‘Oh. Yeah.’
‘What are you … Luke?’ What was he telling me? ‘Is there something going on? With Mia and you?’
His giddy mood of mutiny vanished. ‘No.’
But it wasn’t long after that I saw them together – staring into each other’s eyes, Mia tenderly stroking Luke’s hand, neither of them even pretending to hide it. I almost vomited in the street.
When I’d called him on it, Luke had looked me in the eye and sworn that nothing was going on. I hadn’t been sure whether or not he was telling the truth. For the longest time, even years after we’d split up, I’d flip-flopped back and forth over the line, shifting from believing him to hating him. The combination of humiliation, grief and doubt meant it was the one thing about my marriage that I’d never told Quin.
And last night, I’d finally got the truth.
At work, I stared out of the office window, worrying that Caleb, Harlie’s ex, might not show. It had been such a triumph to have persuaded him in here and if he let me down – hold on! Someone was walking up the long drive; please God, let this be him.
Even from a distance, his clothes looked ridiculously fashionable, from his bang-on-trend Harris-tweed peacoat to the four inches of bare ankle between the bottom of his trousers and the start of his shoes.
In the entrance hall I met him as he shouldered the door open. He was huge.
‘Rachel?’ His smile was nervous.
Such grooming! His eyebrows were boy-band tidy, his teeth were dazzlingly white and his hair obviously got a lot of love. So much in common with Harlie.