Last of the Great Romantics (34 page)

'I don't get it,' he had said. 'I thought you liked New York, I really did. I know it hasn't been easy, with me putting in all these hours, but I promise, it's not going to be for very much longer. Couldn't you just visit Jennifer another time?'

Portia had to bite her lip to restrain herself from telling him the real reason she had absconded. Rightly or wrongly, she had decided not to relay back to him the conversation she'd overheard in the restaurant on the grounds that a) it would only upset her to have to repeat what Susan had said and b) at the end of the day, she
was
Andrew's mother and he was her only child. If Susan had started a massacre at the table that awful night, nothing would alter that fact. And she was pretty certain Susan wouldn't report the row back to him either. She was probably playing the 'I'm only a fluffy, defenceless old lady all alone in the big city and my errant daughter-in-law has abandoned me and now the lions in Central Park Zoo will probably eat me alive' card for all it was worth. And let her, Portia thought, just let her.

After all, it wasn't for very much longer.

'Cheers, welcome to the Hamptons,' said Jennifer, topping up Portia's long-stemmed crystal wine glass, filling it to the brim with a delicious, crisp Sancerre. 'Boy, it is sure good to have you here.'

'Here's to our absent husbands,' said Portia, raising her glass, 'who are probably, let's see now . . . it's ten at night . . . hmm, this is really tricky . . . where on earth could they be?'

'STILL IN THE OFFICE,' they chanted together in a tipsy sing-song, before collapsing into fits of giggles.

'Mummy, I can't sleep.' It was Amelia, who had appeared at the door of the veranda in her Barbie pyjamas clutching a tatty-looking moth-eared teddy. 'You're very noisy and I'm afraid you'll scare away the tooth fairy.'

Amelia had finally lost her first tooth earlier that day, amid great hysteria, and only Auntie Portia's gentle promise that the tooth fairy would make it all worthwhile calmed her down a bit.

'Oh, sweetie, I'm so sorry, here, come sit on my knee,' said Jennifer, holding out her arms.

'No, I wanna go back to bed. Just keep it down, will you? I don't wanna have to tell Daddy that I lost out on fairy money because of you.'

They waited till she'd gone back upstairs before dissolving into more fits of laughing.

'She is her father all over,' said Jennifer. 'For her next birthday, I asked her if she wanted a Barbie dream home and you know what she said? Thanks, Mommy, but if I'm gonna be seven years old, don't you think it's time I had my own investment portfolio?'

'She's the cutest, funniest child,' laughed Portia. 'At this rate, she'll be running her own corporation by the time she's ten.'

'She misses Ken a lot. Lucy is too small really to notice him not being around, but every day Amelia says to me, "How many more sleeps till Daddy gets here?" It would break a heart of stone.'

Portia sank back into the soft cushions, took a sip of wine and gazed out at the sea. It was pitch dark and inky black; the flickering, rose-scented candles on the porch were twinkling like fairy lights and the only sound you could hear was the distant lapping of waves . . . It was the most blissed-out, relaxed, beautiful place you could ever imagine and for the life of her she couldn't understand why Ken would stay away from this perfect life, the statement home, this wonderful wife and two dotie little princesses like Amelia and Lucy.

Then she remembered. It probably suited Ken down to the ground only to appear at weekends or whenever he'd nothing else on. She glanced over at Jennifer, who was sipping her wine and staring out to sea, and she found herself wondering. Jennifer was a smart woman; did she have any idea about Ken's extra-marital dalliances? The models, the actresses, the single women he met in bars and whom he paraded around the town for a few weeks until he invariably tired of them and moved on to the next one. Or maybe there was some truth in the old saying that the wife is always the last to know . . .

It made her feel guilty and uncomfortable though, knowing something that poor Jennifer didn't.

Should she tell her?

Jesus, no. The thought alone made her shudder.

Would I want to know, if I were in her shoes?

Well, yes, I suppose I would want to . . .

Wouldn't a friend tell, even though it was being cruel to be kind? Didn't someone as lovely as Jennifer deserve the truth?

Right there and then she made the decision. She wouldn't say anything, for now. But if Jennifer asked the question, straight out, she wouldn't lie to her either. She couldn't, she simply couldn't.

'You thinking about Andrew?' Jennifer asked, sensing Portia's eyes on her.

'Honestly?'

'Yes, honestly.'

'It's so amazingly perfect here; I was just thinking that I could never leave if it was mine.' Only a half-He.

'You're probably wondering how Ken manages to stay away as long as he does.'

Portia smiled and took another sip of wine.

'I think the same when I look at you. I think: what, is Andrew crazy? Married to this beautiful Irish lady and what does he do? Works day and night and leaves her all alone. But you wanna know what, honey? This is our lot, this is what we married into and, like it or not, this is the pattern for the next ten, fifteen years. They're corporate lawyers, they're at the top of their game right now so they've gotta cream off as much cash as they can before the inevitable burn-out.'

'Oh no. You see, Andrew's only here for this one contract. Once the case is finished, he's coming back to Ireland. That was the deal we made. This job is just to pay off some of the debts we ran up renovating the Hall.'

'Portia, sweetie, you gotta get real. Andrew
loves
New York, he loves the pressure, the stress, the hundred-hour weeks, it's like he's addicted. Like an adrenalin junkie. How else could he neglect you the way he does? You take it from me. This contract is just the thin end of the wedge. I know Ken is already planning to strong arm him into working on another case this summer. And there'll be another job after that and another and another and Macmillan Burke will keep adding zeros on to his salary to get him to stay. And you love him so you'll stay with him and then sooner or later you'll wake up and find yourself in my shoes. Alone, staring out to sea and not knowing when I'll see my husband again.'

Portia had sat up now and was about to contradict her, but Jennifer went on.

'And a word to the wise, honey. Lynn Fairweather? Don't trust her as far as you could spit her.'

Ordinarily, Portia slept like a log but not tonight. For once, the soothing, whooshing sound of the sea right outside her window didn't work its tranquil magic. Hours after she and Jennifer had hauled themselves upstairs to bed, she was still wide awake and staring at the ceiling.

Suppose it was true.

Suppose Jennifer was right and Andrew really had no intention of coming home. Or worse, that he would come back to Ireland with her all right, but only grudgingly, wanting all the time to be back in New York. Could she hack it? Could she really spend the rest of her life, as Jennifer put it, as a Macmillan Burke widow? The thought of ending up alone, husbandless like Jennifer, wasn't something that appealed to her, but the thought of Andrew ending up like his best friend Ken was something much, much worse . . .

An image of Andrew and Ken out nightclubbing in some midtown hotspot flashed through her mind and wouldn't go away. Ken collecting phone numbers of the beautiful women clustered around him the way he did and Andrew with him, beside him, being his charming irresistible-to-women self. . .

She immediately banished the thought from her head. Of course she trusted her husband. That was what marriage was all about. She trusted him implicitly. It was just getting harder and harder to keep trusting someone you never saw, that was all.

Another half-hour passed and she was still tossing and turning. It didn't help that when she tried to text him, to see if he was up yet, his bloody phone was switched off.

Was this how her life was going to pan out? Away from the Hall she loved so much, never seeing the man she loved so much and trying to call his cell phone, upset and agitated and really needing to talk to him and just getting through to his voicemail? And Jennifer was certainly right about one thing.

She wouldn't trust Lynn Fairweather as far as she'd spit her either.

In the space of a few short days, Portias stay at the Hamptons had settled into a kind of routine. Every morning at daybreak, Amelia, followed by Lucy, who could barely waddle never mind walk, would bounce into her room, hop up on her bed and demand money from her. Invariably, Portia would oblige for the sake of peace and slip five-dollar bills into her grasping hand, on the premise that the tooth fairy must have got their rooms mixed up in the night.

'Stupid dumb tooth fairy,' Amelia would say, stuffing the cash into the breast pocket of her Barbie pyjamas as discreetly as a wine waiter, to be cannily locked in her safety deposit box later, safely out of harm's way.

'You are way too generous to that child,' Jennifer would tease over breakfast and Portia would laugh and cuddle Lucy and stuff her face with the divine maple syrup pancakes the housekeeper would rustle up.

In the early mornings, before the school run, they would all pile into the huge Chevrolet and go shopping at Bert's minimart, the nearest convenience store where you could buy everything from freshly caught lobster to a kite-surfing kit, along with the wax which went with it. ('The thing for your stick.') It had a wonderful seaside-ish quality to it and made you feel like you were on a permanent bucket-and-spade holiday. Jennifer and Portia would stock up, while Amelia pestered the staff by constantly asking, 'How much is that?' about every item she could reach, then trying to haggle them down. In the afternoons, though, they took turns collecting Amelia from the Quaker school she grudgingly attended in West Hampton and then, ?weather permitting, would spend the rest of the day at the beach. 'School's dumb,' Amelia would whinge as she changed into her Barbie tankini. 'All the other kids in my grade want to talk about Bratz all day long. I mean, what am I supposed to do? Just take the doll's clothes off and then put them all back on again? How lame is that? I asked my teacher about investing in blue-chip shares and she made me sing a verse of "Barney".'

The days were warm now, and bright till well after eight each evening, which was easily Portia's favourite time of day. Much as she adored the girls, she found herself exhausted by the time they'd gone to bed, which was religiously on the stroke of eight every night, no discussion. Amelia would moan about missing CNN's financial report, but Jennifer was firm. 'Time for grownup chat,' she'd say, tucking them in before escaping out on to the veranda with Portia.

There they'd drink crisp white wine, eat barbecued shrimp freshly caught that morning, and talk about anything and everything. The more they drank, the more they giggled and invariably at some point in the night they'd try phoning their husbands and would howl with laughter if either one of them actually got through.

After the weeks and months of stressing and fretting Portia had endured, firstly about the opening of the Hall, then about whether to leave Daisy with the wedding to manage and finally about being in New York with Susan de Courcey driving her insane, this was the perfect antidote. She looked and felt far better than she had done all year too. The bags under her eyes were starting to disappear, she was lightly tanned from the sea air and all the fresh, healthy food was giving her skin back its old glow. She'd also worked through a lot of how she felt about Andrew working so hard and never seeing him. Instead of feeling second best or shunted to one side, as she had done when she first came to the States, now she just couldn't wait to be with him again. She had the days counted till Susan's departure and it was almost there.

One bright sunny morning she woke earlier than usual, feeling queasy. She lay awake for a bit, trying to ignore it and doing her usual first-thing-in-the-morning ritual, which was mentally ticking off the number of days left until Susan buggered off back to Ireland, out of Andrew's apartment and out of their lives. Not counting today, only four days to go, she figured, almost hugging herself at the thought of seeing him again. She sat up and reached across the bedside table to fumble for her watch. Five-thirty a.m. No wonder the house was so quiet. You could count on at least another hour of peace and quiet until Amelia came banging on the door, looking for cash. She was about to drift back to sleep but lying on her back seemed to make the rumbling in her tummy worse, more persistent.

Seconds later, she had her head over the toilet bowl, heaving her guts up for all she was worth.

When the house eventually woke and they were all sitting around the breakfast table tucking in, Jennifer, in full mommy mode, instantly copped that Portia had touched nothing and was just gingerly nibbling at the corner of a dry piece of toast.

'Not like you,' she remarked. 'Thought you liked our east coast blueberry pancakes.'

'Maybe not this morning,' Portia answered, white as a sheet. 'I think I may have overdone it with those scallops last night. I was as sick as a parrot this morning. I had to go feed the chickens, as we say in Kildare.'