Better Together (10 page)

She knew he was enjoying his time on the show and she didn’t begrudge it. It was time for him to live his dream. Running the guesthouse had been hers. A small dream by most people’s standards, but it had come true for her. It had never been Sean’s, though, despite all the effort he’d put into it. There had been times when she thought the whole thing had been a mistake, that marrying Sean and running a guesthouse with him had been the wrong thing to do. She’d wondered if his whole life with her was one long act. But he always said that it was a life that had been good for him in the end. Once he’d added, with a self-deprecating smile, that he rather liked being a big fish in a small pond, which was what he was in Ardbawn. In Dublin he’d been nobody.

But he was somebody in Dublin now. His face started to appear in the gossip pages of the newspapers, usually coming out of a bar or restaurant (and very occasionally a nightclub) with other members of the
Chandler’s Park
cast. Sean told Nina that all of these photos were staged with the aim of upping his profile and making people interested in him and the soap. They helped the profile of the guesthouse too. Nina had noticed a big increase in the number of hits on the website, and almost everyone who’d visited since Sean started
working on the show had asked about him. So his presence on screen was helping in more ways than one. She told him to keep getting noticed and keep mentioning Ardbawn. That way, she said, both of us will be happy.

And then she found out about Lulu Adams.

And everything changed.

Like so much of her husband’s life over the last few months, Nina had discovered the truth about him and Lulu through the newspapers. This time, though, it was because a member of the showbiz team on the
City Scope
newspaper (it was supposed to be a decent paper, she thought afterwards, not a gossip rag) rang her and asked her for her comments about the fact that Sean had been pictured kissing Lulu at a birthday party in one of the lesser-known city nightclubs.

‘Sean is very fond of Lulu,’ Nina told the reporter. ‘He thinks of her like his daughter.’

She was wrong, though. Sean wasn’t thinking of Lulu (who was, after all, only a few years older than their own daughter Chrissie) like a daughter at all. He was thinking of her as the undeniably hot and sexy woman that she was. And Lulu (when asked for a quote by the same reporter) said that Sean Fallon was the most passionate actor she’d ever worked with and she was very glad he was only her fictional uncle.

When Sean had come home at the weekend after Nina had been contacted by the paper, she’d asked him about Lulu and he’d replied dismissively that she was a lovely young girl and that the kiss had been a friendly peck on the cheek. But after she read the story in the
City Scope
, along with Lulu’s quote and a grainy picture of Sean and the actress with their heads almost touching, Nina knew, with a blinding certainty,
that it was something more. She stared at a second photograph of Lulu, noting her shiny blond hair falling around her face in careless curls, and she felt her stomach spasm. She knew why Sean was with her. Although he’d married a woman with dark hair and allegedly smouldering eyes, Sean’s preference had always been for blondes. And in particular, graceful, ethereal blondes like Lulu Adams. Nina exhaled sharply as she looked at the photo. This girl was trouble. She could feel it. And it scared her.

She wanted to confront her husband but she didn’t know what to say. The wrong words now could reopen old wounds and recall a part of their life that she thought they’d put behind them for ever. She knew she wasn’t wrong about Sean and Lulu but she didn’t know exactly how right she was either. Sean had told her it was nothing. Maybe, in his mind, he was right. She would wait and see. She wouldn’t rock the boat.

The following week, the
City Scope
(which had evidently hired a photographer to follow the man who’d been dubbed Ireland’s sexiest soap star) snapped Lulu coming out of Sean’s apartment at five o’clock in the morning.

Nina thought for a long time about what she was going to say to him, but when he walked in the door, all she did was sob that he was a fool and a liar and that he’d finally broken her heart. Then she grabbed the framed review of his performance from the wall and flung it at him. Fortunately (as he told her afterwards, it wouldn’t have helped to have her arrested for assault) he ducked and it had hit the wall behind him, the glass front smashing into hundreds of pieces.

‘I hope you’re happy now,’ he had said. ‘And I hope the guests didn’t hear it.’

Nina had totally forgotten that they didn’t have a private life in the guesthouse. The thought of the guests hearing their row stopped her in her tracks. But the following week there was another snippet in the
City Scope
, this time saying that the new star’s home life was ‘stormy’.

When Sean returned after the next week’s shooting, Nina, who’d spent the previous days assuring Chrissie, home from college for the weekend, that the papers were printing rubbish, told him that they had to talk.

‘I won’t be made a fool of,’ she said, trying hard to keep the quaver out of her voice. ‘I’m not young and green any more.’

‘I swear to you it’s nothing,’ he said. ‘Those idiots at the
City Scope
are blowing it up out of all proportion.’

‘You were looking at her as though it was everything,’ said Nina.

‘I wasn’t. It was just the camera . . .’

‘Don’t lie to me.’ Her voice was grating. ‘Don’t. How much of an idiot do you think I am?’

‘I don’t think you’re an idiot at all,’ he said. ‘God knows, Nina, you’ve never been that.’

‘So why do you constantly treat me as if I am?’ she demanded. ‘Why?’

‘I don’t,’ he said. ‘Lulu and I—’

‘Lulu and you what? What?’ She choked back tears. ‘I can’t believe it, Sean. Not after everything we’ve gone through.’

‘This is different.’

‘Different!’ She brushed the back of her hand across her eyes. ‘I should bloody well hope so. When I think . . .’ And
then she starting crying properly, the tears streaming down her face. ‘I was an imbecile to trust you, Sean Fallon. An utter imbecile.’

‘No you weren’t.’ He went to put his arm around her but she shook it away. ‘There’s nobody in Ardbawn who’s been a better husband than me these last years. Nobody.’

‘Years of doing what you’re supposed to do doesn’t make up for even one night of . . . of . . .’

‘OK, OK. I admit I fooled around with Lulu. But it was just a bit of fun, Nina. There was never anything serious in it. Nothing at all for you to worry about. I swear it.’

‘Nothing to worry about! You’re having an affair, Sean. And we had a deal.’ She was suddenly angry.

‘Oh, come on . . .’

‘Don’t “come on” me.’ Nina blinked furiously. ‘What are you doing with her, Sean? What are you trying to prove? You’re more than twice her age, for heaven’s sake. You can’t possibly . . .’ She’d stopped then, not sure what she either needed or wanted to say.

Sean had walked out of the room and neither of them had spoken. Later that evening he got a call on his mobile. Nina heard him say that he couldn’t talk now, things were a bit fraught, then she grabbed the phone out of his hands.

‘Don’t be stupid,’ Sean called as she raced up the stairs with it, ran into the bathroom and locked the door. ‘Nina – for God’s sake . . .’

There was no name assigned to the last call received. She rang it back and immediately recognised the distinctive girlish voice of Lulu Adams.

‘Stop chasing after my husband,’ she hissed through clenched teeth. ‘You don’t know what you’re doing.’

‘Oh, get over yourself,’ said Lulu Adams, her tone much harsher than Nina had ever heard on TV. ‘He works hard, he’s entitled to a bit of fun. Which he doesn’t get with you.’

Nina had ended the call and crumpled on to the floor. Suddenly all the fight had left her. Everything she’d wanted from Sean had gone. When she eventually unlocked the bathroom door and returned downstairs, he was sitting in front of the TV.

‘I want you to leave,’ she said.

‘For heaven’s sake, Nina . . .’

‘That was our deal. You cheat, you leave.’

‘But I never—’

‘You fooled around. That’s that. And I won’t be told I’m no fun by some chit of a girl either.’

‘She’s a kid. She knows nothing.’

‘A kid you’re . . .’ Nina clenched her fists. ‘I don’t care, Sean. I want you to go.’

‘Nina, if you kick me out now, it’ll rebound on you, not me.’

‘You think?’

‘People will think you’re crazy.’

‘No they won’t.’

‘Who knows what digging the papers’ll do?’

She flinched.

‘Please.’ His eyes were soft and cajoling. ‘We need each other, you and me.’

‘You should’ve thought of that sooner.’

‘We’ve been together a long time. We’ve made it work, Nina. You’ve said it yourself.’

‘We made it work because
I
made it work,’ she told him. ‘Now you’ve destroyed it. On a whim.’

‘It wasn’t a whim.’ He sounded desolate. ‘I didn’t mean—’

‘I don’t care what you meant or didn’t mean.’

‘I love you.’

‘I don’t think you do.’ Nina could hear her own voice break. ‘I don’t think you do and I don’t think you ever did, and I was an idiot to think that you might.’

‘You’re making a big mistake,’ said Sean.

Nina shook her head. ‘I made that a long time ago.’

It was like a
Chandler’s Park
plot, she thought later that night as he threw some things into a bag and left. Their entire lives had been like a bloody
Chandler’s Park
plot. Only in
Chandler’s Park
people seemed to be able to deal with the consequences of their actions a lot better than in real life. They moved on quickly. Other things happened to them. The men got their comeuppance and the women ended up being stronger. Usually the put-upon female characters found someone else and were happy they’d stood up for themselves.

In real life it was very, very different. She knew that she’d been so angry with Sean that she couldn’t bear to have him near her, and she knew she’d been the one to tell him to leave, but she’d never thought about what her life would be like after he’d gone. And it was miserable. She missed him terribly and she couldn’t help thinking that she’d rushed into a course of action that she’d felt forced into but was too stubborn to change.

She kept going because of the guesthouse, although at night she couldn’t sleep. She cried into the pillow that still smelled very faintly of him and asked herself why she’d been so determined to make him go. She knew the answer to that
already – it had been the ultimatum she’d given him years ago – but she couldn’t help thinking she’d allowed herself to be suckered into making a terrible mistake, mainly because she’d been so very angry at Lulu Adams. It was the younger girl’s remark that she was no fun that incensed her. How dare Sean allow her to think that?

And yet . . . maybe it was true. Because she was the one who’d wanted to live her life in Ardbawn, working all the time, even when Sean said that maybe they should sell the house (which had eventually soared in value, making it a very desirable property) and leave. Perhaps if she’d listened to him, things would’ve been very different. And that was why she couldn’t sleep at night and why she worried incessantly and why these days she felt, as Lulu Adams had put it, no fun at all.

Talia was watching the TV when Sheridan arrived home from her date with Griff, and she could see straight away that things hadn’t gone according to plan.

‘What happened?’ she asked.

‘I guess I’ve broken up with him,’ Sheridan replied. ‘My life is officially in the toilet.’

‘Oh, Sher.’ Talia put her arms around her. ‘Tell me.’

Sheridan related her conversation with her now ex-boyfriend word for word while Talia’s mouth tightened.

‘The shit,’ she said.

‘Not really.’ Sheridan shook her head. ‘I can understand it from his point of view. He’s having a great time with a mate who happens to be female, which means he can shag her as well as play pool with her. Why should he exchange that for being with a proper girlfriend twenty-four/seven? For putting up with PMT and requests to empty the bins or unblock the drains or whatever.’

‘I’m sure he has to do bin-emptying and drain-unblocking now.’

‘It’s different with his sisters, though, isn’t it?’

‘I guess so.’ Talia gave her a sympathetic smile.

‘I’m such a fool,’ said Sheridan. ‘I was so damn smug. About my job, my boyfriend, my life. Now I’ve got nothing.’

‘You’ve got the Canaries to look forward to,’ Talia reminded her. ‘We’ll have a great time there. Maybe you’ll find a gorgeous Spanish hunk who’ll take you away from all this so that you can live a life of luxury in the sun.’

‘I peel in the sun.’

‘And I shouldn’t be flippant,’ said Talia. ‘Break-ups are shit. But you’re being sort of composed, aren’t you? I always end up in floods of tears and my face like a strawberry when I break up with someone.’

‘I’m not composed at all but I don’t do crying much,’ said Sheridan. ‘It wasn’t the done thing in our house. We were supposed to learn from our mistakes and move on. Only sometimes it’s not that easy, is it?’

‘I do think that your upbringing was a bit emotionally underdone,’ said Talia.

Sheridan laughed, although her voice cracked a little. ‘We didn’t waste our tears,’ she said. ‘And I’m not going to waste them on Griff Gibson. But I wish I hadn’t asked him to move in. That way I’d still be in a relationship, even if it was headed nowhere fast.’

She was still feeling emotionally shaky by the time she left for the week’s holiday with Talia. And although she tried to enjoy the cloudless skies and the cheap booze, she was thinking too much about the past and the future to be able to relax into the present. She tried hard not to be a wet blanket for Talia, who was being a great friend and not hooking up with any of the handsome men who asked her to join them for a drink or come to dinner with them. Talia
said that she hadn’t come on holiday to have a romance, she’d come to recharge her batteries before starting her new job. Sheridan wished that she felt her batteries were recharged too. But after the week she still felt as flat as a pancake. And as sick as a parrot.