CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
‘Hi Connie, how are things? How’s the holiday going?’ Barry asked, as his ex-wife answered her mobile phone.
‘Fine, lovely.’ Connie sounded surprised to hear from him.
‘I just wanted to let you know that Melissa and Debbie are going to drive to Greystones later this evening. Debbie texted her, so she’s thrilled. Debbie will probably call you later. I’m delighted about it, Connie, and I just wanted to thank you again.’
‘Ah, that’s great, Barry. I’m delighted myself, thanks for letting me know.’ There was genuine warmth in her voice, and he felt a sudden longing to be with her, to pour his heart out to her and tell her all his woes.
‘I suppose Aimee told you we met Juliet on the flight over, and we’ve been spending some time with her. It looks like she and Ken are headed for the divorce courts,’ Connie said conversationally.
‘You’re joking!’ He couldn’t hide his astonishment. Ken was a pompous boor, but he’d never figured he’d go the divorce route. ‘Is there someone else?’
‘Who’d have him? He’s obnoxious. Juliet asked him for a divorce, did Aimee not tell you?’ Connie was surprised.
‘Are you serious? She’s hardly spoken two words to me these last few days. It looks like Ken and Juliet aren’t the only ones heading for the divorce courts. Aimee’s talking about divorcing me. I’ll be looking for a place to stay; you might have to put me up,’ he said mournfully.
‘What?’ Now she was the one to be astonished.
‘She says she wants a divorce. She’s like a briar. She really doesn’t want this baby, you know. I’m at my wits’ end, Connie. I don’t know what to do or say. We’ve been having fierce rows. I feel she hates me. It’s horrible. The atmosphere at home is glacial, to say the least.’ It all erupted out of him, and it was such a relief to share his burden with Connie. She had always offered him such comforting solace when they were together in the early years of their relationship, before he’d felt trapped by marriage and walked away from her. Now, more than anything, he realized what a fool he’d been to let her go. There was nothing abrasive about his ex-wife, not even in their worst moments. ‘What should I do?’ he asked, glad that he had someone to worry about him.
‘I don’t know. Things might calm down, it’s the shock of her pregnancy—’
‘It’s more than that,’ he said dolefully, looking for succour. ‘It’s all work, work, work these days. She doesn’t spend any time with Melissa. Hell, she doesn’t spend any time with me,’ he moaned, enjoying feeling sorry for himself.
‘Look, Barry, you have to sort things, you’ve got Melissa and the new baby to think of. You need to talk to Aimee when she’s more amenable. Don’t let it slide,’ Connie said earnestly, and he could have hugged her for her concern.
‘Thanks,’ he said gratefully. ‘At least I have you to talk to. Give Karen my love, and have fun. I’ll keep in touch. Bye, Connie.’
‘See you,’ she replied, and hung up.
Barry sat at his desk and felt as if a load had been lifted off his shoulders. He wasn’t on his own any more. Connie would be there for him, no matter what happened, and knowing that made life so much more bearable.
‘For God’s sake,’ Connie muttered irritably as she slipped her phone into her bag and stared out to sea. She was lazing on a lounger, in a garden fringed with bougainvillea, wisteria and flowering shrubs, overlooking a small, crescent, golden beach. She’d taken a lounger to one of the palm trees on the verdant lawns that rolled down to the sea, content to be alone. Karen had gone into La Cala to pay her taxes, and Connie had been up to her eyes in the latest Lee Child novel when Barry had phoned her.
Could he have not kept his sorry tale to himself until she’d got home? And what was it with him telling her he might need a place to stay? She shook her head as she massaged sun-tan lotion into her arms. Did her ex-husband really think that he could assume she’d put him up if he and Aimee divorced? He could think again. She wasn’t getting involved, she told herself firmly. It wasn’t her problem.
She picked up her novel and tried to get back into it. Jack Reacher was a very sexy character, and she’d been enjoying her book and feeling thoroughly relaxed until Barry had ruined it for her. It was so typical of her ex-husband to unburden himself and offload all his problems on her – and typically selfish to do it while she was on holiday. Why did he think, after all these years, and after him walking out on her, that she’d be interested or even care that he and Aimee were having problems? Had it been the other way around, and she was in a relationship break-up, would he have been so quick to help her out, if all had been well with him and Aimee? As far as she could see, Barry would always feel she’d be at his beck and call, until she had a man of her own. It was a pity there weren’t a few Jack Reachers waiting in the wings. That would put a halt to her ex-husband’s gallop. Some relaxing holiday this was turning out to be, between Juliet and Ken’s episode and now this.
Connie lay back against her lounger and closed her eyes, feeling the heat of the sun on her limbs. The sea soothed her as her thoughts drifted and lethargy infused her. The heat of the early evening was less intense and stifling than it had been earlier. The balmy breeze whispered through her hair and, in spite of herself, her body sank into lassitude and her eyelids drooped. Jack Reacher reminded her of someone, she thought indolently, trying to remember whom. A strong, handsome, tanned face with a pair of deep blue eyes flashed into her mind. Oh yes, she thought, remembering. Drew. Very Jack Reacher. She couldn’t imagine Drew looking for comfort or a place to stay from his ex-wife. Drew Sullivan was a man who stood on his own two feet. It was a pity Barry couldn’t be more like him. Emotional blackmail would be well and truly wasted on Drew, from what she’d seen of him, thought Connie with a little smile, as her book fell from her hands and she fell into a languorous doze.
‘Oh, hi, Drew. Fancy running into you here. What are you doing in town?’ A petite blond woman stared up at Drew Sullivan, her green eyes raking him up and down, missing nothing.
Drew felt a jolt of shock as he gazed down at his ex-wife, Marianna. They were outside the AIB in Wicklow. She was at the ATM, and he had just left the bank after making a deposit.
‘I still bank here,’ he said stiffly. ‘I didn’t know you were in town.’ He hadn’t seen her since Katy’s wedding, but she still looked as if she’d just walked out of a beauty parlour, all perfectly coiffed hair and lashings of make-up. She placed her money in her leather wallet, and he noted her blood-red nails. She’d got those talons deep in him once, and bled him dry.
‘Dad took a heart attack; I flew in the day before yesterday. I’m just going up to the Blackrock Clinic with Mama, and I needed some cash.’
‘Sorry to hear that,’ Drew said politely. Privately, he couldn’t give a hoot about his ex-father-in-law’s heart attack. He certainly wouldn’t be attending that old buzzard’s funeral if and when it happened.
‘I guess I’m gonna stay a couple of weeks. Perhaps we could have dinner some night and catch up?’ Marianna suggested, slanting a sultry glance up at him.
‘Busy time of the year for me; horses foaling and all that,’ Drew said crisply. The last thing he wanted to do was to have dinner with her.
‘Oh, you don’t have to make a firm commitment, Drew,’ his ex-wife drawled. ‘I was just suggesting a casual meal some time; surely you don’t spend your whole life in the stables? You must have some free time?’
‘Indeed I do, Marianna. I’m my own boss now, so I can come and go as I please,’ he said pointedly, hooking his thumbs into his jeans and staring at her.
‘So what’s the big deal about dinner then?’ she murmured seductively. Drew almost laughed. She hadn’t changed at all over the years. Still fluttering the eyelashes when she wanted something. She still showed off her boobs, too, and they’d been enhanced, to say the least, he observed, as his eyes slid over her décolleté. They looked like two round balloons. He wondered if he stuck a pin in them would they pop. ‘Well,’ she said huskily, noting the way his eyes roamed over her, ‘what’s the big deal?’
‘No big deal. As I say, I’m a bit tied up at the moment. Hope your dad’s OK. See you around.’ He raised his hand in farewell and strode towards the car park, leaving her standing looking after him. Just his luck to bump into her, he thought grimly, as he headed towards SuperValu to do some grocery shopping.
Marianna came home every summer, but he always had some warning when she was coming because the girls would mention it in their emails. He usually shopped in Greystones while she was around, and did his banking early in the mornings, knowing he wouldn’t bump into her before eleven. She’d never been an early riser. Wicklow was a small town, too small for comfort when his ex was home. It drove him mad that she expected him to be friendly and accommodating. Had the woman no conception of the grief she had caused him? He had missed his daughters’ childhood and missed being a big part of their lives because of her selfishness. Some things you could forgive and some things you could forget, but that loss was too deep-rooted to do either, and some day he was going to tell her to get lost and not be annoying him, thought Drew angrily as he flung bananas and oranges into his trolley, and made his way along the aisles scowling ferociously.
Marianna Delahunt stared after her ex-husband as he marched away from her without a backward glance. He had aged so well, she acknowledged admiringly as she put her wallet in her handbag and followed him into the car park. He was striding along ahead of her and, if she wanted to catch up with him, she’d have to run, he was walking so fast.
He was so fit and healthy, and his blue eyes had lost none of their intensity. When he’d stared down at her, there was no warmth in his gaze, just cold, disdainful hostility. Marianna sighed. She remembered a time when his eyes had been hot with desire and those long, hard legs of his had imprisoned her beneath him. Sex with Drew had been fantastic. It probably still would be, she thought wistfully. Edward, her second husband, had become paunchy and flabby as he’d grown older. There was no flab on Drew – he still had a six-pack to be proud of and muscles in his arms that would be the envy of many a younger man.
She frowned as she compared her ex to her current husband. Edward fell way short, she thought angrily. He was carrying on behind her back; she knew it, and she didn’t care. What did that say about their marriage? As long as he paid for her lifestyle, he could do what he liked. She knew whom he was carrying on with, too. Kendra Duvall was a divorcee, fifteen years younger than Marianna, and equally blond, pert, petite and Botoxed. Nevertheless, Kendra’s husband, Marshall, had dumped her for a twenty-year-old bimbo, and she’d taken him to the cleaners and got a very healthy divorce settlement.
Marianna and Edward were in the same golf club as the other couple, and they socialized in the same circles. So not only was Kendra blond, pert and petite, she was now wealthy in her own right and on the look-out for a new husband. Edward was managing her investments and, it seemed, looking after her emotional and sexual needs as well. Marianna had found receipts for perfume, and jewellery from Harry Winston’s, which she’d never received, in one of Edward’s suit pockets when she’d been sending it to the dry cleaner’s. That had alerted her that her husband was up to no good.
From then on, she’d kept an eye on his cell phone and his credit-card bills. One number kept coming up on his cell phone, and she’d written it down and phoned it from a call box in the local mall one hot August afternoon.
‘Halloo.’ Kendra’s unmistakable clipped Connecticut tones came down the line. Even though she’d anticipated it, it still gave Marianna a shock. She put on a false New York twang, said, ‘Ronng numba,’ and hung up. When Edward came home, she said casually, as she placed a steaming fish-chowder starter in front of him, ‘I met Francine Crammer today, and you know how she’s such a gossip? She tells me Jamie Van Horan is leaving her husband for a much younger man, and Kendra Duvall is seeing someone new and Francine thinks he’s married, because she won’t spill. It doesn’t surprise me – she walks around with her tits hanging out and her skirts up to her bony little ass. She’s such a tarty trollop, wouldn’t you think?’
Edward had turned a deep shade of maroon, reminding her of an over-ripe tomato, and muttered something about not being interested in Francine Crammer’s silly gossip before bending his head to his chowder and eating as though his life depended upon it. When she told him she’d booked herself into an expensive spa for a full day of luxury treatments, he’d said, ‘Fine, fine,’ without any of his usual comments about belt-tightening and cutting down on frivolous extravagance.
From that day on, she had spent as she wished, and spend she did. And from that day on, she had moved out of the marital bedroom into Katy’s old one, and she hadn’t had sex with him since. ‘Your snoring keeps me awake,’ she’d said, as she carried her possessions across the landing.
‘We can’t have that,’ Edward had said dourly. ‘You need your beauty sleep.’ He’d paid for that snide remark with a brow lift and collagen treatments around the eyes and lips.
She didn’t miss not having sex with Edward. It had grown boring and mechanical on both their parts, and she was always glad when it was over and he had hauled himself off her to his own side of the bed. There was no cuddling, like in the early days of their marriage, no lazy chatting and teasing, just a turning on his side with his back to her and, five minutes later, deep, rumbling snores and, on a bad night, several loud, stinky farts.
What would sex be like now with Drew, Marianna mused as he turned right into the SuperValu car park that lay at right angles to the one in which she was parked and disappeared from view. Was he seeing anyone, she wondered, unlocking her father’s Merc, reversing out of her parking space and heading towards Brittas to pick up her mother.
She’d given up quizzing the girls when they came back from their holidays with him because, as they’d grown older, they’d become even more loyal towards him. They’d always loved him fiercely – not even distance had dimmed that. ‘Why didn’t you stay in Ireland, so we could have seen more of Dad?’ Erin had asked her once, and she’d been hard put to answer her daughter without showing herself in a bad light. Marianna shook her head almost unconsciously. All that was water under the bridge. Why couldn’t Drew accept that? Why did he continue to treat her as the most loathsome creature, as something that had crawled from under a stone? Well, this trip it was going to be different, Marianna vowed. This time, for once and for all, her ex-husband was going to put the past behind him, and she would do everything in her power to make him remember what it was about her that had made him fall so hard for her in the first place. A rare sparkle lit her green eyes. If Edward could play away from home, so could she, but for her it would be more like coming home, and Drew Sullivan didn’t know what a treat was in store for him. She hadn’t had sex in more than a year, and she was ready for it and how. Just thinking about it made her hot, and she sighed with pleasure, remembering some of the delicious things her ex-husband had done to her when they were madly in love and the world was their oyster.